unfoldment
like wet wings
fresh from the coccoon
you are born:
heavy
and strange
and vulnerable.

impossibly clinging
and shivering,
the air is aswarm
with accusation and
a questioning
of your being:

"what right have you?
how dare you live?
aren't you ashamed?"

at first, it is easy
to ball inwards
like lips sucked in teeth
or a fist holding nothing
saying "yes yes yes" to everyone
while something inside
silent "no's."

but, despite your efforts,
there is a drying
and an unfoldment
that you cannot hide
as inevitable as flowers
opening to sun and sex and death
or eyes to eventual blindness.

and now you are clinging desperately
not from the weight of wings
but the weight of the wind that catches them.

hold on, how you try,
but you can't.

never had a choice,
never had a chance
against what you could not resist:

yourself.

snippet

today, aiden accidentally pissed on his shirt when he was using the bathroom... except i didn't know about it until i was carrying him, chest to chest. i asked him, "when did you get your shirt wet?" he responded: "i didn't have a watch."

echoes down the drain

have you ever read "tikki tikki tembo" (or something like that)? children's book. read it. it has a remarkable resonance with what i'd like to write: amphibious. or maybe i'm just imagining things...

by the way, with regards to the kappa, which, for some reason or other, i seem to be fixated on... there are several theories regarding the origin of the kappa. one has to do with aborted or drowned children, who floated down the river (the bloated anuses of drowned corpses, by the way, served as evidence of the manner in which kappa "fed"). another has to do with the portuguese (?) monks who visited japan, whose robes were called "capa," and whose tonsured heads probably resembled bowls...

the notion of unwanted children and monks resonates, if not with all elements in this single planned story, then with other elements throughout the marsilani work (as conceived)...

random thoughts: sick, sick, sick

i had a sarcastic thought today... something about how teaching is like a disease. and good teachers are highly communicable. bad teachers have their disease-knowledge cooped up inside of them, and they pretend like they're all deadly, but nobody can "catch" them... i aspire to be so virulent, that they'll name me after a plague... like "typhoid randy."

***

i am sick. AGAIN. i thought i was over the recent wave of disease, but i guess it was not one wave, but two. the kids have been sneezing snot all over the place, but i thought that was all something i'd built immunity to, so i didn't hesitate to remain up close to wipe their noses, etc... now i am feeling really wasted, and my head is starting to feel like a clogged up drain pipe. bummer bummer bummer.

i just got home, but the wife and kids are out, apparently getting dinner. which is fine, because all i feel like doing right now is crashing...

***

it has been a rough week (for me): the imovie project that rumi (my mentor/cooperating teacher) and i have been doing has been progressing, albeit with a few technical (technological) glitches... i've really enjoyed working with the kids this week, largely because i can sense that they're really excited about their projects. technology, and particularly "cool" technology like making imovies, i think it really motivates kids... tuesday was my observed lesson, which went well. it was my final lesson for the semester, and my observer was really impressed and commented about how well rumi and i seemed to work together. i agreed. it really has been a great experience for me, and i'll admit that i'll be a bit sad when the semester ends in a couple of weeks (i could end earlier, but i want to see the imovie project through)... wednesday, aside from clinic (and all the guilt i feel for not "systematizing" the clinic experience as i'd long ago promised), i had (along with two other students) a powerpoint presentation on language arts teaching strategies. ultimately, i think we did really well, although, to be honest, some of the other groups seemed much more coordinated in their presentations... and that brings us to today.

this morning, aiden had his children's house christmas program. aiden was a cow. although he was really cute, i have to say that i was a bit disappointed that he wasn't singing any songs, or following the gestures of the remainder of the class... it concerns me that he perhaps isn't maintaining the basic focus needed to pick up on what the rest of the class is learning... in many respects, aiden is "behind" willow. with willow, it was easy. i would feel concern over some aspect of her development, and it would seem like she would read my mind, and work to improve herself (tying her shoes, writing, reading). with aiden, interventions have to be explicit, and at times, forced. it kinda still shocks me that he still hasn't mastered his pencil grip, or that he has difficulty with phonics. now, when i see him every day (and i'm making a point to do this every day), i drill him on his phonics, i drill him on writing his letters (and maintaining proper pencil grip), and i try to have him count to twenty (something always gets lost between 14 and 16). today's performance kinda gave me the sinking realization that he might be behind in other respects as well...

...but ultimately, i love my son fully and unconditionally. i think about children who suffer from severe developmental problems. there is, i recall, a form of autism called progressive degenerative disorder; i believe, if i'm not mistaken, that it afflicts girls, and that there is a rapid, inexplicable loss of several capabilities, from language, to motor skills, to, eventually, breathing. such children don't live very long. i think about parents of such children. how are they to approach their child? for most parents of "normal" children, there is such a drive to achieve that they often lose sight of the fact that a child is a rare and precious thing... and that we have to cherish and love our children, and try to make life as wonderful an experience as possible...

i want to be the kind of parent that loves unconditionally.

there is a parent who happens to live nearby, and boasted that she was sending her child to punahou, because she didn't want her child to associate with the "mediocre kids." i HATE this kind of thinking. i mean, sure, it's one thing to want the best for your children, but to couch things in those terms, to constantly think of your child as being "better" than others... it likely becomes problematic, not for those (like me) who feel dissed, but predominantly for the child him/herself: put on a pedestal, unable to relate to the "mediocre" world...

i think about the realization such a parent would have to come to terms with if her child were diagnosed with "progressive degenerative disorder" or something...

so i guess... i want aiden to be the best he can be, but more than that, i want him to always feel like, no matter what he is or accomplishes, he is the "best," he is unconditionally loved...

the waters run gray in sleepytown, and in the drains they carry gray water into the black, and with an angry hiss that nobody hears they disappear into places that nobody sees. and after a time, the waters, that were once rain, and once gray, settle like the sediment in a place so black that the shadows lose and forget themselves. and in this place, in the depth of a pool that has forgotten the taste of light, lived the first kappa.

what's a kappa you ask? if you asked him, he wouldn't know. the kappa was a name given to him by the first people who had spied his kind, the japanese. and to them, he was something halfway between a ridiculous joke and a nightmare. they depicted him in waterbrush scrolls, a monkey-child with a bowl pate, doing mischief with foxes and badgers. and in ghost stories, or cautionary tales, they spoke of him in hushed voices, of how his kind crept out of dead pools at night, hungry for the livers and offal of children and women, sucked out through their anuses. a creature between dread and laughter. some thought him a myth, but then again, cryptozoologists claimed he was real, and a lost evolutionary link, broken, and dropped into the midnight places of the world...

a dream of jonny greenwood

last night was pretty crappy sleepwise. i have to admit, clinic is kind of something i dread. not because i don't like the interns, or working with patients. it's just, every week i promise that i will do more to systematize things, like creating a systematic clinic manual, and because of one thing or another, i always end up doing little or nothing... and every wednesday morning (which is inevitably a scramble), i'm reminded of that lack of progress...

nevertheless, in the waning (?) moments of my sleep (interrupted at about 4:30), i had a pretty cool dream. i was in some auditorium. towards the back row, with all the cool kids. at some lecture. and for some reason, i had a synthesizer in my lap. some cheap clunky thing, but it was a synthesizer, and it was portable enough for me to carry it around. and guess what? to my left, maybe a row back, was jonny greenwood from radiohead. and he had this really nifty synth, like a moog or something (like i know anything about synths), and when he spied mine, he came over, and introduced himself (like he needed an intro), and asked if he could mess with my synth. and in a moment, he started doing stuff with it i'd never seen nor heard before... he started playing this song that kept singing "atlanta, atlanta," which was weird, because i hadn't seen him input any audio into the synth, nor even record his own voice saying anything... and what he did was so- effortless, it was like child's play to him... play...

and i woke up feeling, i don't know, inspired. and cool. like jonny greenwood actually played on my synthesizer.

check out sharit's blog!!!

i just started perusing it, but it's really fascinating, interesting, and written in sharit's characteristic bright and humorous style. to those of you who don't know, sharit is a friend from high school who is the "cybrarian" at kcc, and who is interested in really cool things, like creating electronic records of the nisei veterans before it's too late. apparently, she went to brazil for an international uchinanchu (okinawan) festival, and returned with a neat travelogue (i notice there was a LOT of stuff about food...). just a really nice blog to visit, if you're into uchinanchu stuff, or brazil, or an intelligent, interesting traveler and scholar of the world and people.

oh, before i forget, here's the address:

gruacach.blogspot.com