11/26/2021

my most recent post was written because i felt compelled to write. i believe i woke up early, haunted by these feelings of immense sadness. right now, i'm writing out of a routine, so the words might feel stunted and forced.

yesterday was thanksgiving. it was nice. we (the four of us, now: my wife, my son, my dog, and myself) went to diamond head grill to buy an expensive thanksgiving lunch. we're missing my daughter, or course, who is spending thanksgiving with her two high school friends over at uc irvine. in any case, it was a tradition of sorts for us to pick up our thanksgiving meal from diamond head grill, and then eat it at some nearby park. although we had invitations to celebrate thanksgiving with the in-laws, frankly, we were never comfortable going there, sitting amongst the lazy, half-asleep, somewhat strangers who were all watching the football game (which i never cared much about). it was nicer just to be amongst ourselves, the four (or five) of us. oh well, let me amend that... sometimes it would be us. at other times, lynn would have to be working (or sleeping to prepare to go to work) for black friday over at godiva... this year, now that she's working for see's, they don't seem to do the crazy black friday thing, so things were laid back enough for us to eat together...

later on, we went over to uncle ferman's house (lynn's uncle) to eat thanksgiving dinner (of course, we never once mentioned the fantastic lunch we had had over at diamond head grill). the turkey at uncle ferman's was, predictably, dry. even dousing it in gravy didn't do it much justice. but it was nice sitting with aunty and uncle and talking. uncle ferman seems to enjoy my company, and talks politics and history. he lived in wahiawa for the better part of his life, and knows the area that i work very well. so he asks about whether this store has reopened or what has replaced that restaurant. stuff like that. meanwhile, some asshole plays fireworks in the neighborhood, setting musubi off running and crazy... so i have to hold him firmly, listening to his heaving panicked breathing as the background for the conversation.

*****

i'm getting old. that's always at the background of my thoughts. there's a time where you start to wonder whether there's a point in doing something... or anything. i mean, is it going to lead you anywhere? not really. is it going to change your life's trajectory? not really; things seem to be going downhill, impelled largely by actions taken long ago... and on the downhill path, you can't really change where you're heading, now, can you?

but even faced with this despair, we have to live, don't we? we have to entertain ourselves. we have to continue to harbor hopes and dreams. maybe as we get older, more of those hopes and dreams involve other people, my children, for example. but there are ridiculous dreams that i still keep to, and keep to myself. yes, they are absurd. they have no rhyme or reason. they have no point. but i guess i still have to honor them. it's better than pretending that they don't matter... because to a certain part of myself, maybe the stubborn childish part of myself, they still do matter. they matter a great deal.

maybe life is learning to affirm that part of yourself. at least a little bit.

11/17/2021

i couldn't sleep.

for some reason, memories of my time at williams surfaced. it all seemed closer somehow, like the tides had exposed the ghostly shapes of the sea floor to the moonlight, and i could see it all, its contours, its hideous emptiness. i realized how sad i was for most of my college life. i could see the infinite hope i had placed in those years, and how each day, particularly towards the end, seemed to be this growing despair that nothing was ever going to happen, that no one was ever going to save me. yes, that was (and maybe secretly is) my mentality with regards to relationships, that it was all about some kind of salvation or something. that by finding someone, really finding and connecting to someone, it was going to suddenly change the world... and, to be honest, it did, it does, but not in the way that i was thinking... it honestly felt like it just wasn't possible during the "high time" of my life, that there wasn't the right synchronization of myself, or anyone else out there, or even just the music playing at the time...

i recall how someone out there put out my name as being synonymous with- i don't know, everything clumsy and stupid. it was only when a friend of mine came across the term ("you pulled a randy otaka") that it came to light. and now, when i look back into myself, across all these years, i definitely can see it - dressed in stupid tie dye shirts and layers of clothing in the cold winters of the berkshires, always apparently hopeful, living on mountain dew and noriko sakai songs- impossibly hopeful, but only hopeful because of the incredible despair i carried within me. there was no one there. there wasn't anyone who could've taken me out of where i was. and so, i think i was just biding my time, waiting for the lights to change or something.

i'm so thankful i had some friends to "wait" with me... to make me feel somewhat normal.

*****

relationships are strange. miraculous. serendipitous. merciless. i don't get them. i don't understand why they can't happen when you need them. i don't understand how they start, or why they sometimes trail off.

*****

i think in some senses that i made a decision to become like stone. there is the vibration of a child within me, a frustrated child, who was not meant to follow his feelings... it just never was the right time for him, it wasn't appropriate for him to be let out into the sunlight... and to survive, and to live, and to have a structure- a backbone- it was necessary for me to turn into stone. to be the support for the situations in my life...

i think children like me, because they implicitly see that i am harmless. i am a memory of a person. i collect the warmth of the sun, mainly because i can no longer burn with my own feelings any more. i can pantomime their joy, because i understand its incompleteness within me, as a distant, sad memory. and i am generous in that respect, because what i want is gone, and i can simply be what they want....

but in the world of my peers- which, increasingly, don't exist- i am a non-entity. i am duty. i am work. i am responsibility. i have no real feelings, fresh and hot, of my own. i can communicate memories of feelings- but not the feelings themselves... because there has always been a disconnect- an inability to relate- and that part of me that can truly feel is sealed off- again, a distant almost absent vibration trapped in the heart of stone upon stone upon stone. the inertia of the material that makes me.

for me to be saved, i must be irreparably broken.

*****

i think we return to a time, a moment, as we grow older, when it seemed possible (even though it probably never was). there is a window into a self when hope and the world seemed to speak to each other, at the very least... maybe there was a small window, for a brief period of time... and maybe back then i was happy, in the sense of me feeling - i don't know - i could be free.

there is a different, truer sort of happiness i have felt- of the joy of my children- of the happiness i feel when i help someone... i say truer, because the happiness of others always feels unquestionable, because it doesn't deal with my own waning heart -

okay. i suppose that's enough rumination.