sugarless blues
and the woes and the woos
how the sway of the stillness
keeps 'way the muse
and the too literal
way the words i choose
why no one writes poetry
the way you tell the news.
varicose are these verbose cues
the blood won't rise with them heavy shoes
and without blood words lack the living hues
and so the words cant out in cyanotic blues.
Monday, October 6, 2008
cent-er
what cannot amount to much,
even amassed as a mountain of blue-green
what you disregard as not
worth the effort of a stoop
and a scoop
therein lies the mistake.
aside from superstitious blessings
a single penny could save your life.
ground yourself in what is
infinitesimally worthless
the asymptotically diminishing
be humble as that which
could buy any thought at all.
if you bend to pick one up
the one and all may bend to you.
after all, in order to rise
you need to stand on the
humble blessings of the ground
underlying.
even amassed as a mountain of blue-green
what you disregard as not
worth the effort of a stoop
and a scoop
therein lies the mistake.
aside from superstitious blessings
a single penny could save your life.
ground yourself in what is
infinitesimally worthless
the asymptotically diminishing
be humble as that which
could buy any thought at all.
if you bend to pick one up
the one and all may bend to you.
after all, in order to rise
you need to stand on the
humble blessings of the ground
underlying.
shoot
there are some actions which schools nowadays consider "bad behavior." one of them is "shooting." i understand the reasoning behind this, particularly after all the school shootings... but let's examine the notion of shooting. to a child, it must be the preferential and less messy way to "interact violently" (or otherwise) with another. after all, a child usually feels powerless in "hand-to-hand" combat, particularly with an adult, or even a kid slightly bigger than him/herself. shooting is that magical thing, by means of which one's will is transferred across the distance to affect another. i mean, if i were a kid (which i pretend i still am), WHY WOULDn't i want to shoot?
it's kinda funny... shooting is easier to depict in tv shows, because it is "clean." in hand-to-hand combat, hitting and such, the blows are so much "messier" and violent. and yet, ironically, it is shooting that is the problem, PRECISELY because it makes violence (true destructive violence) so much easier. it keeps violence (or the results of violence) at a distance...
imagine a world in which the principle of shooting (long distance warfare) were an impossibility. i think war would be much less likely and appealing. we grow up in an age where violence (the consequences of it, the REAL injuries, etc.) is kept more or less at a distance from us. to most of us civilians, a war is just a plane flying over somewhere and dropping bombs. it is "held at bay." but if it were "in our face," if it always had to be, then maybe we would be less likely to commit it; and maybe our kids would be less likely to commit acts of real murder (via weapons that make killing far too easy).
...
here's another absurdity. you watch cartoons, and in them, for some reason, when a ROBOT gets destroyed, it is okay, it is supposedly much more palatable, than when a "living creature" gets shot... honestly, what's the difference? sometimes, robots are depicted with personalities (like in the latest star wars clone wars cartoons); do they have "less right to exist"? do they "feel nothing" when they are blasted into pieces? and can children distinguish the difference?
the effect on kids is the same. they will shoot, and shoot, and shoot. robot or no.
...
my son is in a shooting phase now. i honestly have ambiguous feelings about this. on the one hand, i realize that it is ultimately an expression of violence. but on the other hand, i suspect it is a natural part of development, particularly for boys, to bifurcate society into good and bad, and play roles that are, ultimately, about violence and subjugation, and do involve "shooting." i'd much rather have him do this than start randomly punching people...
i teach my kids about gentleness, about its importance. and compassion. about feeling empathy for others, particularly those who are weaker, younger, etc. i hope that this serves as a prophylactic against what i term "blind violence" or (synonymous, in my mind) "clean violence." violence ultimately "hurts," and to identify the pain in others as analogous to your own makes you far more reluctant to commit it wantonly...
it's kinda funny... shooting is easier to depict in tv shows, because it is "clean." in hand-to-hand combat, hitting and such, the blows are so much "messier" and violent. and yet, ironically, it is shooting that is the problem, PRECISELY because it makes violence (true destructive violence) so much easier. it keeps violence (or the results of violence) at a distance...
imagine a world in which the principle of shooting (long distance warfare) were an impossibility. i think war would be much less likely and appealing. we grow up in an age where violence (the consequences of it, the REAL injuries, etc.) is kept more or less at a distance from us. to most of us civilians, a war is just a plane flying over somewhere and dropping bombs. it is "held at bay." but if it were "in our face," if it always had to be, then maybe we would be less likely to commit it; and maybe our kids would be less likely to commit acts of real murder (via weapons that make killing far too easy).
...
here's another absurdity. you watch cartoons, and in them, for some reason, when a ROBOT gets destroyed, it is okay, it is supposedly much more palatable, than when a "living creature" gets shot... honestly, what's the difference? sometimes, robots are depicted with personalities (like in the latest star wars clone wars cartoons); do they have "less right to exist"? do they "feel nothing" when they are blasted into pieces? and can children distinguish the difference?
the effect on kids is the same. they will shoot, and shoot, and shoot. robot or no.
...
my son is in a shooting phase now. i honestly have ambiguous feelings about this. on the one hand, i realize that it is ultimately an expression of violence. but on the other hand, i suspect it is a natural part of development, particularly for boys, to bifurcate society into good and bad, and play roles that are, ultimately, about violence and subjugation, and do involve "shooting." i'd much rather have him do this than start randomly punching people...
i teach my kids about gentleness, about its importance. and compassion. about feeling empathy for others, particularly those who are weaker, younger, etc. i hope that this serves as a prophylactic against what i term "blind violence" or (synonymous, in my mind) "clean violence." violence ultimately "hurts," and to identify the pain in others as analogous to your own makes you far more reluctant to commit it wantonly...
Sunday, October 5, 2008
unsettled
my mind has been racing, and the world has been a blur. lynn went away on a business trip on, let's see, thursday... so i've been managing things, taking care of the kids and such, pretty much on my own. today, we went to a birthday party at build-a-bear, then to the "beautiful park." yesterday, the kids went to expression sessions over at the contemporary museum of art in makiki, and built sock puppets (of, ideally, arctic animals, since that was what the story theme was). all in all, the kids have been really good, but i HAVEN'T... i've been a somewhat unfocused parent, just transporting the kids and summarily issuing orders. i hate being like this, but somehow, i am very temperamental; as willow says, "do you have a temperature today?"
ideas circulate through me like wine. restless, pointless ideas. i am reminiscent of the writer in sandman's "calliope," granted "ideas in abundance" from the sandman, so many ideas that he eventually goes made and scrawls them on walls with his own bloody fingertips...
i need to settle down, focus, integrate. i actually returned to an old practice of counting my breaths this morning, and it seemed to calm me down somewhat... as soon as i strayed off on a tangent long enough to break my count, i just "returned to the breath" and started back at 1.
there's a good deal of panic, and a good deal of reason for it, in a lot of things. a lot of signs, etc. even myself, pretty oblivious (perhaps on purpose) to everything, even i get worried now and then. but i still operate, function, even if i am a bit jangled. there are always things to do to keep you from really worrying...
... regarding "centralized life..." there really is a resistance to being centered. a centrifugal force. the only way to get to the center (the operational axle, the eye of the storm, where everything is "easy") is to BE the center. trying to get to it is as ridiculous as an ant trying to crawl his way to the center hole of an LP spinning at 78 rpms... BE a center.
if being a center becomes habitual, something, there is some accretion, something adheres... or that is the hope. perhaps you build up inertia or something. and if you have enough of it, YOU are a center of power, and the universe, with all of its myriad influences and forces, starts to turn around YOU. that's the ideal, that's the plan, anyway... but first, it's a matter of resisting all externalizing tendencies, and just centering, feeling, being.
i need to settle, integrate.
1-2-3...
ideas circulate through me like wine. restless, pointless ideas. i am reminiscent of the writer in sandman's "calliope," granted "ideas in abundance" from the sandman, so many ideas that he eventually goes made and scrawls them on walls with his own bloody fingertips...
i need to settle down, focus, integrate. i actually returned to an old practice of counting my breaths this morning, and it seemed to calm me down somewhat... as soon as i strayed off on a tangent long enough to break my count, i just "returned to the breath" and started back at 1.
there's a good deal of panic, and a good deal of reason for it, in a lot of things. a lot of signs, etc. even myself, pretty oblivious (perhaps on purpose) to everything, even i get worried now and then. but i still operate, function, even if i am a bit jangled. there are always things to do to keep you from really worrying...
... regarding "centralized life..." there really is a resistance to being centered. a centrifugal force. the only way to get to the center (the operational axle, the eye of the storm, where everything is "easy") is to BE the center. trying to get to it is as ridiculous as an ant trying to crawl his way to the center hole of an LP spinning at 78 rpms... BE a center.
if being a center becomes habitual, something, there is some accretion, something adheres... or that is the hope. perhaps you build up inertia or something. and if you have enough of it, YOU are a center of power, and the universe, with all of its myriad influences and forces, starts to turn around YOU. that's the ideal, that's the plan, anyway... but first, it's a matter of resisting all externalizing tendencies, and just centering, feeling, being.
i need to settle, integrate.
1-2-3...
Thursday, October 2, 2008
i like the sound of rain, and the cool feeling of it as it seeps in through the open screen windows... especially late, late at night when people should be sleeping... it makes me feel like the world is protected by the encircling swath of clouds, the regulators of temperature, and that i am protected from that by my man-made house: a box in a box in a box... embrace in an embrace in an embrace.
...
once, i reflected that life was either moving in or moving out. it was an oscillation between those two tendencies... when you "move in," you try to get comfortable in the moment you occupy. you're more or less optimistic, or at least tolerant, either of the place you're in, or of your capacity to adjust/change that place. and you accumulate furniture and other knick-knacks to ground you, to stain you... when you "move out," you're leaving, perhaps you're sick of the present moment, but even if you're not, there is a part of you that pushes away from it, in favor of the next "nest." and you hold garage sales and "cleanse" yourself of attachments to the world. you travel light, or at least, put stuff in storage: "you can't take it with you."
in between, in between, who are you? and what is place?
i recall, in some of my old religion/philosophy courses, that in the post-modern world, the questions become less substantive, and more contextual... "who are you" becomes less a question of substantives, or at least the substantives keep "breaking down" and "breaking apart," and you rely more upon reframing such questions as, well, "reframings": "who are you" is better answered as "where are you." identity is framed and reframed continually by context...
...
have you ever repeated a word so many times that it starts to sound strange? like it is a weird and awkward shape in your mouth? not only unused words, but every day words, words like "the" and "and" that undergird and support our whole linguistic structure?
i used to do this every now and then (don't ask me why). a weird experience. it makes you wonder at language, and its whole claim to reality...
similarly, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, and wondered what precisely you are? what is it that endures in you, that connects that strange dream you had, or that moment of blind passion you had, or the everyday mundane boredom you feel while driving to work, or... etc.?
WHO ARE YOU?
the thing that stares out at the mask in the mirror, the thing that receives the picture through the mask... somehow it seems that it wasn't meant to see itself, wasn't meant to look too closely... the wonder of who we are sometimes breaks down the movie; like strobe-lighting a film...
YET: once you become aware of the arbitrariness and absurdity of your own "selfhood," somehow... well, i won't speak for others, but it made me understand others better. it made me more gentle. i can't quite articulate how. maybe it is in the fashion of how being aware of your own death, and being aware that all things die (that we are connected by our endings, or more specifically, by the fact that we all end), you are able to draw analogies to the behaviors/experiences of others... we are all "reactions" and avoidances of the fact of death, after all... so maybe we are also reactions and avoidances of our own arbitrariness, irrationality, absurdity... our pretend social construct self that appears to have a day-to-day enduring reality, that appears responsible, thinks rationally, is only the (necessary) avoidance of who we really are...
some people think that the above sort of thinking leads to anarchy and irresponsibility, but i'm more of the view that it's completely the other way around: that true society demands an understanding/experience of what it risks and what it avoids. inauthentic "moral" society is precisely the overcharged avoidance of ignorance, with all of its excessive reactions and abreactions to "bury" what it cannot stomach: most eloquently captured in the recent phenomenon, the "securitization of bad debts..."
...
have you ever wondered why it is that our capitalist system demands GROWTH at all costs? that growth is the final criterion for the "health" of a company? i think now we are facing the consequences (in ALL realms) of that flawed notion. our edifices of selfhood that we built to govern over reality (like a false and overbearing cloud) is now raining down upon us in mocking fragments. our incessant appetite for "security" has destabilized (made "insecure") our foundations...
...
i wonder when this phase of mine, this root apathy, will ever end. i tried to go to my sister's court date on monday, only to discover that it had been changed to later in october... i wanted to go, as a representative of my family (no one else is going). i wanted to go, to see her again. i wanted to go, so i wouldn't feel so guilty at living my life, living my shell of a life...
all the crises going on around me, well, they disturb me mildly, but i only care about me and mine, and of course, it is only the "lost sheep," that single stray, that preoccupies the shepherd. sometimes i FEEL her despair. i feel her turning inwards, collapsing in on herself, as she realizes they are no scaffolds or supports protecting her now... and i know that there isn't a ground within yourself, unless you catch yourself. you could damn near fall forever if you aren't careful...
i remember things about my sister and i... or i don't... she was always my accompaniment... maybe because i developed out of the "hands off no care" policy of my older brother towards me, that i was kinda the same way towards my sister... maybe she needed more interventions, more caring... i thought i did a good job taking care of her, riding with her to school and to japanese school, playing with her in my odd isolationist ways... but maybe i was just using her to appear like a good brother. maybe i didn't "see" her...
i wish i could go back to those days of innocence. riding to rec. center 3 in the saturday afternoons, going swimming together... taking her to mcdonald's and cashing in our gift certificates for ice cream cones... lying on warm chalk rock boulders at mililani high school, before japanese school started... i never thought anything was wrong. i never suspected anything could happen to us, to that...
...but maybe that ground that i continually return to, the ground of the past, it's long since ceased being HER ground, she has fallen through it, beyond my reach.
... she is sinking, and sometime soon, she may be floating.
...
once, i reflected that life was either moving in or moving out. it was an oscillation between those two tendencies... when you "move in," you try to get comfortable in the moment you occupy. you're more or less optimistic, or at least tolerant, either of the place you're in, or of your capacity to adjust/change that place. and you accumulate furniture and other knick-knacks to ground you, to stain you... when you "move out," you're leaving, perhaps you're sick of the present moment, but even if you're not, there is a part of you that pushes away from it, in favor of the next "nest." and you hold garage sales and "cleanse" yourself of attachments to the world. you travel light, or at least, put stuff in storage: "you can't take it with you."
in between, in between, who are you? and what is place?
i recall, in some of my old religion/philosophy courses, that in the post-modern world, the questions become less substantive, and more contextual... "who are you" becomes less a question of substantives, or at least the substantives keep "breaking down" and "breaking apart," and you rely more upon reframing such questions as, well, "reframings": "who are you" is better answered as "where are you." identity is framed and reframed continually by context...
...
have you ever repeated a word so many times that it starts to sound strange? like it is a weird and awkward shape in your mouth? not only unused words, but every day words, words like "the" and "and" that undergird and support our whole linguistic structure?
i used to do this every now and then (don't ask me why). a weird experience. it makes you wonder at language, and its whole claim to reality...
similarly, have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, and wondered what precisely you are? what is it that endures in you, that connects that strange dream you had, or that moment of blind passion you had, or the everyday mundane boredom you feel while driving to work, or... etc.?
WHO ARE YOU?
the thing that stares out at the mask in the mirror, the thing that receives the picture through the mask... somehow it seems that it wasn't meant to see itself, wasn't meant to look too closely... the wonder of who we are sometimes breaks down the movie; like strobe-lighting a film...
YET: once you become aware of the arbitrariness and absurdity of your own "selfhood," somehow... well, i won't speak for others, but it made me understand others better. it made me more gentle. i can't quite articulate how. maybe it is in the fashion of how being aware of your own death, and being aware that all things die (that we are connected by our endings, or more specifically, by the fact that we all end), you are able to draw analogies to the behaviors/experiences of others... we are all "reactions" and avoidances of the fact of death, after all... so maybe we are also reactions and avoidances of our own arbitrariness, irrationality, absurdity... our pretend social construct self that appears to have a day-to-day enduring reality, that appears responsible, thinks rationally, is only the (necessary) avoidance of who we really are...
some people think that the above sort of thinking leads to anarchy and irresponsibility, but i'm more of the view that it's completely the other way around: that true society demands an understanding/experience of what it risks and what it avoids. inauthentic "moral" society is precisely the overcharged avoidance of ignorance, with all of its excessive reactions and abreactions to "bury" what it cannot stomach: most eloquently captured in the recent phenomenon, the "securitization of bad debts..."
...
have you ever wondered why it is that our capitalist system demands GROWTH at all costs? that growth is the final criterion for the "health" of a company? i think now we are facing the consequences (in ALL realms) of that flawed notion. our edifices of selfhood that we built to govern over reality (like a false and overbearing cloud) is now raining down upon us in mocking fragments. our incessant appetite for "security" has destabilized (made "insecure") our foundations...
...
i wonder when this phase of mine, this root apathy, will ever end. i tried to go to my sister's court date on monday, only to discover that it had been changed to later in october... i wanted to go, as a representative of my family (no one else is going). i wanted to go, to see her again. i wanted to go, so i wouldn't feel so guilty at living my life, living my shell of a life...
all the crises going on around me, well, they disturb me mildly, but i only care about me and mine, and of course, it is only the "lost sheep," that single stray, that preoccupies the shepherd. sometimes i FEEL her despair. i feel her turning inwards, collapsing in on herself, as she realizes they are no scaffolds or supports protecting her now... and i know that there isn't a ground within yourself, unless you catch yourself. you could damn near fall forever if you aren't careful...
i remember things about my sister and i... or i don't... she was always my accompaniment... maybe because i developed out of the "hands off no care" policy of my older brother towards me, that i was kinda the same way towards my sister... maybe she needed more interventions, more caring... i thought i did a good job taking care of her, riding with her to school and to japanese school, playing with her in my odd isolationist ways... but maybe i was just using her to appear like a good brother. maybe i didn't "see" her...
i wish i could go back to those days of innocence. riding to rec. center 3 in the saturday afternoons, going swimming together... taking her to mcdonald's and cashing in our gift certificates for ice cream cones... lying on warm chalk rock boulders at mililani high school, before japanese school started... i never thought anything was wrong. i never suspected anything could happen to us, to that...
...but maybe that ground that i continually return to, the ground of the past, it's long since ceased being HER ground, she has fallen through it, beyond my reach.
... she is sinking, and sometime soon, she may be floating.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
everything repeats
i'm STILL a pretty quiet and nonsocial person... i have no real "colleagues," either in acupuncture, or at school... it's funny. you think you outgrow your old patterns. and maybe you do, in a sense, like that old story about the nautilus... but you still retain the same shape, only in a bigger shell...
here's my "explanation" for why i don't believe in camaraderie (in most situations), and have a hard time being "intimate" with people. i grew up with the expectation that the only thing i could do was offend or embarrass if i revealed myself... i learned that to be taken seriously, you must "sink then float." i learned that self-effacement was the way to respect... and that "if you hate yourself enough, then not only will people not have to do it for you, they may even feel bad enough to feel sorry for you." i know, bad philosophy, but when i attempt to look at things objectively, i realize that that has been my modus operandi like forever...
i don't hate people at all. i like them, i like to give people what they want, what they need... but fundamentally, i guess i don't trust people, or at least don't trust the "bonds" they seem to build. familiarity is impossible to me... it is only earned after this sense of parallelness, like another has walked in solitude, like me... it is only in owning up to the solitude and solitariness of each individual death... or something buddhist like that.
...just excuses i suppose.
maybe people (I) never change. we just learn to grow comfortable in our skins. in our fates.
here's my "explanation" for why i don't believe in camaraderie (in most situations), and have a hard time being "intimate" with people. i grew up with the expectation that the only thing i could do was offend or embarrass if i revealed myself... i learned that to be taken seriously, you must "sink then float." i learned that self-effacement was the way to respect... and that "if you hate yourself enough, then not only will people not have to do it for you, they may even feel bad enough to feel sorry for you." i know, bad philosophy, but when i attempt to look at things objectively, i realize that that has been my modus operandi like forever...
i don't hate people at all. i like them, i like to give people what they want, what they need... but fundamentally, i guess i don't trust people, or at least don't trust the "bonds" they seem to build. familiarity is impossible to me... it is only earned after this sense of parallelness, like another has walked in solitude, like me... it is only in owning up to the solitude and solitariness of each individual death... or something buddhist like that.
...just excuses i suppose.
maybe people (I) never change. we just learn to grow comfortable in our skins. in our fates.
more interesting etymologies: "vicarious"
vicarious
1637, from L. vicarius "substitute, deputy" (adj. and n.), from vicis "turn, change, exchange, substitution," from PIE base *weik-, *weig- "to bend, wind" (cf. Skt. visti "changing, changeable;" O.E. wician "to give way, yield," wice "wych elm;" O.N. vikja "to bend, turn;" Swed. viker "willow twig, wand;" Ger. wechsel "change").
this is interesting to me because i intended to use the loose rhyme "icarus vicar(i)ous" in the story "moth-eaten." i wasn't sure it was appropriate because we usually use the word vicarious in the context of someone who "experiences" things from a distance, through the filter of another, i.e. "vicarious pleasure." icarus, on the other hand, is precisely NOT the observer; he is the anti-hesitant youth who flew to the sun and plummeted to the sea...
yet in the story "moth-eaten," the subject is divided into two, and one of them can be seen as a "substitute" or "deputy" (old original definition) of the subject, "vicariously" experiencing what the other half cannot. so in this sense, "icarus vicarious" is appropriate...
1637, from L. vicarius "substitute, deputy" (adj. and n.), from vicis "turn, change, exchange, substitution," from PIE base *weik-, *weig- "to bend, wind" (cf. Skt. visti "changing, changeable;" O.E. wician "to give way, yield," wice "wych elm;" O.N. vikja "to bend, turn;" Swed. viker "willow twig, wand;" Ger. wechsel "change").
this is interesting to me because i intended to use the loose rhyme "icarus vicar(i)ous" in the story "moth-eaten." i wasn't sure it was appropriate because we usually use the word vicarious in the context of someone who "experiences" things from a distance, through the filter of another, i.e. "vicarious pleasure." icarus, on the other hand, is precisely NOT the observer; he is the anti-hesitant youth who flew to the sun and plummeted to the sea...
yet in the story "moth-eaten," the subject is divided into two, and one of them can be seen as a "substitute" or "deputy" (old original definition) of the subject, "vicariously" experiencing what the other half cannot. so in this sense, "icarus vicarious" is appropriate...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)