plot twists: what if a person could bifurcate into two alternate universes? however, like the heisenberg uncertainty principle, each half (or double?) could only know certain aspects of reality. one half would retain the consistent memories, because to it, its desires would have been fulfilled, and thus, there would be a "stream of consciousness" as it were. the other half would lose memories, or at the very least, lose memories of the person he once was; he would be free from desire, and hence, paradoxically, be empowered with the ability to "see desire." however, he would no longer know what it means to desire himself, and could no longer remember the stirrings of desire.
man longs for two things (at least): to participate (to be in love, to be at war, etc.), and to not participate (to be at peace, to sit in the throne of mastery). the two can have a cyclical or dialectical relationship; that is, one may serve as the goal of the other, or one may turn into the other (in the manner of yin and yang). however, it is equally possible that the two can be in direct conflict, as in the situation of a man who falls in love, and yet retains a deeply spiritual aspiration to be free from desire. this, in essence, is the "embodied" heisenberg uncertainty principle; you can only know the specific location, or the specific velocity, but you can't know both simultaneously... you can only know where you are, or where you are heading, but you can't know both simultaneously...
if the monk-half loses memory and a "taste of desire," then he is empowered with the ability to see desire, in the form of strings. these are the red strings that tie people to their destinies...
***
i can't seem to shake this funk. this morning i felt nauseous. i had to head into kaneohe to work on someone, and in the midst of grey drizzly rain, i did so, taking gulps of air to quell the need to throw up. i think i am quite adept at working through most discomforts, but i still need to pay back in the end...
my dreams have grown more disturbing of late. they have little specificity or clarity, but are more like water-color blurs of decay and rot... yes, at times, i feel as though i am rotting from within. i suppose i am. i guess i simply hate this feeling: of trudging through life as through shit or molasses. i have many aspirations, but i also have many (more) responsibilities... we must, of course, pay the piper... always pay the piper.
i slice up life into context. it is the only way i can stay alive, retain a semblance of responsibility. in this boxed up moment, there is clarity. i know what the problem is, i know what to do. but outside of the boxes, outside of the partitioned moments, there is only a roiling, swallowing sea... and i haven't even a skin to separate my innards from bleeding out into it...
while driving back across the h-3, the rain fell in rustling curtains, and the shadows of the mountains were concealed by their white. i thought of that white, of blank slates, of oblivion. and how danger loomed within it, the solid shapes of consequence hidden beneath their palimpsestic cover-up... sometimes the shapes of the trees would float up out of nowhere, and i would glimpse rivulets of white, the collected waters, dropping in waterfalls...
i thought about the "kipapa" story... this would be the mechanism of oblivion, and of entering the dream... not unlike the initial fog of elsinore (?) in hamlet... yet another fragment to incorporate.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Thursday, March 5, 2009
bad bad bad
two roads diverged in a sylvan wood
and i / i diverged as well
i could not choose which way i should
nor allow that time would tell.
and i / i diverged as well
i could not choose which way i should
nor allow that time would tell.
random ideas
whatever happens to yakuza pinkies? after they are cut off, are they just dropped into the waste disposal? or are they kept, sort of as "collateral"? not that they'd be worth much... but then again, what if there were some secret worth? i believe that in japan, an invisible red (contradiction?) thread connects a person to their true love via their pinky (in chinese medicine, the heart channel ends at the pinky). what if, even after its severance, the connection to "love" or "destiny" remains? by severing the pinky, an act of loyalty, one essentially severs one's tie to "original destiny," placing oneself in the hands of the yakuza lords...
the image resonates with me. i intended to write about silkworms. i intended was to portray silkworms and their "silk" via a very pornographic image. i could alternatively use this: yakuza pinkies being silkworms, and their invisible red thread, the "silk."
***
i've also begun to rethink the "willow weep for me part two" story. i want to tie in, more explicitly, the imagined wanderings of my grandfather, before he passed on. in fact, his death is the trigger of the "unsettled discontent" that takes hold of the protagonist, his "midlife crisis." it is when he sees his grandfather's "freshly dead" body, and feels the pulse that is and isn't, that he begins to wonder about the nature of life, and in particular, his own life. and when he reflects upon the aimless wanderings of his alzheimer's-ridden grandfather, he begins to think about the failure to recognize home, and how it is analogous, oddly enough, to what he feels. i don't want to tie the two threads together explicitly, because that would make things too neat and tidy, but i would like them to occur in parallel, not precisely as the protagonist's explicit memories or imaginings, but as the retelling of an absent third perspective... we'll see.
***
is there a pattern to my psychology and my stories? i suppose so. i don't believe in "simple redemption." at the very least, it doesn't make a good story. i wonder if this makes me a "muck raker" or a bitter and cynical soul. i would argue that it does not. in "practice," in every day situations, i serve people patiently, and to the best of my ability. i sincerely wish the best for people. yet, somehow, when it comes to myself, and to my stories, things cannot ever be so simple. in today's common parlance, we speak of "complexes" as psychological snarls. if a person (consciously or unconsciously) makes his life "complicated," for whatever reason, is this synonymous with inventing a neurosis?
the image resonates with me. i intended to write about silkworms. i intended was to portray silkworms and their "silk" via a very pornographic image. i could alternatively use this: yakuza pinkies being silkworms, and their invisible red thread, the "silk."
***
i've also begun to rethink the "willow weep for me part two" story. i want to tie in, more explicitly, the imagined wanderings of my grandfather, before he passed on. in fact, his death is the trigger of the "unsettled discontent" that takes hold of the protagonist, his "midlife crisis." it is when he sees his grandfather's "freshly dead" body, and feels the pulse that is and isn't, that he begins to wonder about the nature of life, and in particular, his own life. and when he reflects upon the aimless wanderings of his alzheimer's-ridden grandfather, he begins to think about the failure to recognize home, and how it is analogous, oddly enough, to what he feels. i don't want to tie the two threads together explicitly, because that would make things too neat and tidy, but i would like them to occur in parallel, not precisely as the protagonist's explicit memories or imaginings, but as the retelling of an absent third perspective... we'll see.
***
is there a pattern to my psychology and my stories? i suppose so. i don't believe in "simple redemption." at the very least, it doesn't make a good story. i wonder if this makes me a "muck raker" or a bitter and cynical soul. i would argue that it does not. in "practice," in every day situations, i serve people patiently, and to the best of my ability. i sincerely wish the best for people. yet, somehow, when it comes to myself, and to my stories, things cannot ever be so simple. in today's common parlance, we speak of "complexes" as psychological snarls. if a person (consciously or unconsciously) makes his life "complicated," for whatever reason, is this synonymous with inventing a neurosis?
i recreated the conditions of the dream. i wore the same clothes. i slept in the same position on the same uncomfortable couch. i even read the same words i'd read before, and trailed off on the same sentence. but it never came. nothing came.
people say dreams are all in your head. but even if they are, then why are they so ephemeral and uncontrollable? why can't i make them come when i call, when i need to return to them? i had some unfinished business with that dream. there was a place i needed to get to, and someone i needed to meet. there was a promise that held me suspended throughout its duration. the journey through the jewels of that celestial crown, wonderful though it may have been, was only circumnavigating the whole point of it all. and i want to get to the point.
perhaps dreams are as real as the past. and, like it, they withdraw the further we try to reach. and, although "history repeats itself," the past and dreams cannot be repeated, no matter how much we would like, no matter how hard we try.
people say dreams are all in your head. but even if they are, then why are they so ephemeral and uncontrollable? why can't i make them come when i call, when i need to return to them? i had some unfinished business with that dream. there was a place i needed to get to, and someone i needed to meet. there was a promise that held me suspended throughout its duration. the journey through the jewels of that celestial crown, wonderful though it may have been, was only circumnavigating the whole point of it all. and i want to get to the point.
perhaps dreams are as real as the past. and, like it, they withdraw the further we try to reach. and, although "history repeats itself," the past and dreams cannot be repeated, no matter how much we would like, no matter how hard we try.
... in the later days of the empire:
perhaps those few that could see the shape of the times knew that their perspective was, at best, an anomaly; they knew that the larger population would actively and vociferously deny that perspective, and could therefore never unite in the collective effort that would be required to reverse conditions. some of these few went mad, delighting in orgiastic ecstasies, believing tomorrow would never come. some others held to what they deemed their responsibility in these troubled times, arguing with hoarse voices to a world that could not hear, feeling anxiety and panic and despair consume their humanity, until they too were driven mad.
and some, considering that the end of the world was not a sufficient justification for the end of their humanity, calmly lived their lives as they had always lived them, waking with the dawn, working an honest day, and returning to laughing children and loving spouse... sleeping deeply and well, with dreams of tomorrows that somehow transcended the real abyss interrupting the future.
this was the thinking of this misunderstood few: the end of the world had pretended to come many times before. there were the middle ages, for instance, or various periods of uninterrupted and pointless war. why would today's situation be any different? and even if this WAS different, and the world was unequivocably going to end, well then, so what? PEOPLE DIED EVERYDAY. the end was always coming to someone somewhere. and while it may seem different for the end to come piecemeal, as opposed to a all-in-a-piece, for each individual dying soul, such difference was academic. death would come to everyone, eventually. should certain death stop people from living, and the world from turning?
thus it was, at the end of the empire, that the greater part were ignorant, and the few bifurcated into madness and sanity. and those who isolated few who knew but remained sane, resembled in almost every way the vast ignorant masses...
perhaps those few that could see the shape of the times knew that their perspective was, at best, an anomaly; they knew that the larger population would actively and vociferously deny that perspective, and could therefore never unite in the collective effort that would be required to reverse conditions. some of these few went mad, delighting in orgiastic ecstasies, believing tomorrow would never come. some others held to what they deemed their responsibility in these troubled times, arguing with hoarse voices to a world that could not hear, feeling anxiety and panic and despair consume their humanity, until they too were driven mad.
and some, considering that the end of the world was not a sufficient justification for the end of their humanity, calmly lived their lives as they had always lived them, waking with the dawn, working an honest day, and returning to laughing children and loving spouse... sleeping deeply and well, with dreams of tomorrows that somehow transcended the real abyss interrupting the future.
this was the thinking of this misunderstood few: the end of the world had pretended to come many times before. there were the middle ages, for instance, or various periods of uninterrupted and pointless war. why would today's situation be any different? and even if this WAS different, and the world was unequivocably going to end, well then, so what? PEOPLE DIED EVERYDAY. the end was always coming to someone somewhere. and while it may seem different for the end to come piecemeal, as opposed to a all-in-a-piece, for each individual dying soul, such difference was academic. death would come to everyone, eventually. should certain death stop people from living, and the world from turning?
thus it was, at the end of the empire, that the greater part were ignorant, and the few bifurcated into madness and sanity. and those who isolated few who knew but remained sane, resembled in almost every way the vast ignorant masses...
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