in whose memory do you live?

***

the ties to the past are often also what hold us upright. without their anchors, we are like a shapeless, purposeless piece of canvas, vulnerable to the wind and the elements...

***

the boy must unlock his heart. it tethers him to the bottom of the sea. he must swim into the deep and the darkness, against the nature of the life and buoyancy that almost bursts within him, and find a place to insert the key that was given him...

the boy loses his heart in the darkness. he found it too heavy to carry with him, and so it sits, silent, at the bottom of the sea. he learns that there is a secret way to carry a piece of his heart with him, so that he may pretend to be like the others, so that he can pretend to be human. the secret was hinted at in a book by island heritage press that he once read, even before he knew how to read. it was a story about how an old wise man captured the moon by digging a hole in the sand. the hole collected a puddle of seawater, and that puddle held the full reflection of the moon within it... and there was a second story, that of kaguya hime, or rather a portion of that tale. the tale of the second hopeless prince and suitor to the moon princess, he who had to steal a beggar's bowl from beneath the half-closed eyes of a buddhist statue. he failed... the kappa reiterates that the bowl is key. he holds a bowl upon his pate, and it is formed of pennies rusted together... a concatenated string of words and phrases...

e pluribus unum. out of many, one. copper. hemocyanin. blue-blooded... in god we trust...

if you can carry the moon in a bowl, then perhaps you can also hold your heart within it...

the boy learns (from the kappa) the secret of carrying your heart. and he learns the pride and vulnerability of the kappa, that one who carries his dreams in a brimful bowl can never ever bow down...

the third and last lesson of the boy has to do with this very quandary... how it becomes necessary to be an empty bowl... to lose everything to become something.

this is the truth, the full circle truth, of the poem: "the heart is like a stone, tacit and silent. cast it away."

***

i feel such sadness at the passing of things. such infinite sadness. the world is fading before my eyes. i will keep this understanding, this brimful bowl of tears, and continually empty it through humility and bowing, even as it is refilled continually by the tragic rain.

***

i am sorry that i haven't been posting regularly (to the empty reverberating space in this echo chamber of mine). things have been hectic (as usual).

my japan grandmother passed away a week ago today. she had been having back pains, and my dad had told us that he thought she was deteriorating. i visited her with the kids about four or five days before she passed. she was bedridden and in pain, unable to find a comfortable position. i tried what i could to alleviate her pain, through touch and adjusting her pillows. at one point, she put her hand on mine, and i wasn't sure, but i like to think- i'm not sure...

i went over to her place early the next morning, i think it was 3 am or so, and tried to "break in" through the sliding doors. for some reason, they were locked up. it was pretty suspicious, i admit, this young hooligan wandering about in a retirement community, climbing fences and such. and there was this old woman walking her dog at around that time, and at one point, i passed her by. i just admitted to her that i was worried about my grandmother, and for some reason, the answer seemed to fly. at least she didn't call the cops... in any case, i remember sitting in the dark on gravel just outside her window, listening for any sound, praying that she was okay...

the next few days seemed to see improvement in her condition. she was able to get up. the problem at that point was getting her to eat, and to have bms. i assumed that everything was on, if not the right track, then at least a better one. my dad was going to her place about five times a day, and notifying us that he thought we didn't need to have her move in with anyone...

then on tuesday, it happened. i got the call after a particularly miserable day at work. i felt like something dropped, and left a hollow ringing space in me. i raced over to her place, with kids in tow. a fire truck, ambulance, and a couple of police cars were already there. i went in, amidst the crowd, and saw a couple of emt workers trying to do cpr on her. to see them pumping her chest, so fragile and white beneath their gloved hands... i felt- i don't know. my mom, as usual, was voicing the emotions for the family, but it was my dad that i sympathized with the most. he was moving around in the background, keeping busy, but whenever he stopped, i could see the sadness in his face... his own mother, last tie to a family fraught with tragedies, and lives cut short.


today, i attended my grandmother's viewing. i still had/have a hard time understanding what i feel. i always think i should feel more, that the sadness should come welling up, and overflowing me. but instead, there is a deadness, a weight, a silence within me that just holds me numb. at the time, i felt a grating frustration at the way my mother handled the whole viewing affair; it felt like some kind of circus or something, with the great grandchildren reluctantly giving pre-written speeches, with people taking pictures with the deceased (so wrong...), and with my grandmother's paintings being given away, as at an auction... ultimately, however, i realize that my mother does what she can, stepping into the void of my father's silence and passivity. this is her way of expressing love and appreciation to my grandmother. my father's way is hidden and solitary...

i approached my grandmother's body awkwardly, especially in the "circus" atmosphere established by my mother. before returning, i said a few clumsy words, staring at some corner of a chair, not knowing who i was supposed to be talking to on such occasions, and why: the deceased? god? this audience? and what was i supposed to be saying, to what end? to get some kind of emotional rise? in any case, i talked about how my grandmother had always been nonjudgmental and unfailingly supportive. it was my grandmother who set up my stay at kannonji temple in hokkaido, after hearing about my interest in zen buddhism. i spoke about her quiet ways. her love of art, of painting, of fine and meticulous work. i recall admiring the way that she helped me pack my things into a box when i was leaving japan, how she folded everything precisely so, tied parcels up, arranging things like a puzzle so that they fit perfectly...

the one good thing about the viewing was that i got to see tomoko and yuuko once again. tomoko is my cousin. she actually was here only a few weeks ago. her departure back to japan seemed to be the trigger causing my japan grandmother's decline. no, i won't go so far as to say that, but... anyway. yuuko is tomoko's mother. they are both kind, bold, intelligent spirits...

nothing untowards.

***

he says, they call it sublimation. when something magically goes from solid to gas. like dry ice. yes, dry ice. nice thing, that. it doesn't mess around, being a liquid, touching things and sticking, getting everything wet. it's, well, clean...

but, she says, you can't really simply replace one with the other, can you? changing ice into clouds, when all the while you're so very thirsty, so very- dry, as you put it? in the middle of you, there's a dry cracked need, and you can't deny it. can't overlook, overstep it.

he pauses, chooses words carefully. it's true. undeniable. in people, in me, the change and the choice isn't always as clean or easy or automatic as i'd like, and there's something remaining, a bitterness, a sadness, perhaps. but i know, if i am to maintain myself, maintain my impartiality, my responsibility, i- i can't. so, imperfect or not, i make the leap. i- sublimate.

***

on the other side of himself, the twin that is his negative image gives in yet again. and in the moment of release, there is one flashing fulguration of insight, in that disappearing instant when you get what you want, and you lose all wanting for it. and he glances for an instant, as though caught in the strobe flash of a lightning strike, at the pattern of himself, random and erratic splashes, collecting in the arced and heaving folds and valleys of another nameless her. there is a secret in that ultraviolet fluid, in the shape of its calligraphy, and he struggles to decipher it...

this morning, i woke with an insight of sorts. a deep calm filled me, and i thought that no matter what the world threw at me, i would be unperturbed. zen masters never feared death, or the end of the world. they had so thorough an experience of selfhood/emptiness that nothing could disturb them. their eyes open, breath flowing. i felt that, or thought i did, in the face of potential stress. concerns flitted through my mind like butterflies or dust motes. but i was in my own skin, in my own delicious space, and even if the world came crashing in on me, i would still be- this. this experiencing. this- thing...

the world is an impossibility. but yet it is. i am a miracle. i cannot understand myself, and i cannot capture my experience of time and space. but yet i/it all happens nevertheless. everything is an incomprehensible dance. we can't know the full rhythm, or when the chorus happens, or what the lyrics are saying. we just move to it all, whether we want to or not, whether we know what we're doing, or are just reacting. it all happens. i felt that this morning, and i felt alright with that...

concerns

past couple of days i've been really tired. maybe it's because i took a break from the p90x (i needed to, to get my blood test for my life insurance policy- we'll see how the results come back)...

it's been a restless kind of sleep that's drugged me and dragged me down. my dreams feel like voices that are not my own, that have been imprinted into me like a needle vibrating through wet vinyl... carving me up. i suppose that that is the worst kind of dream for me, the dreams that leave me feeling dispossessed of myself, as though i am out of control, and incoherent... last night, i thought of that whole kappa noodle story i've been working on (more like working off) for, like, forever, and i thought of ways i could tie that feeling into it... the need to find one's own voice speaking within one's own head... and later today, i thought how interesting it would be to have alternate voices speaking to me, as surrogate advisors, like the beatles (after all, i practically taught myself how to read using their lyrics) or alfred hitchcock... these, as counters to the ambiguous and sometimes nightmarish advice of the kappa...

the thing that i hate about being tired is it withdraws me away from life, and living. and there is so much of that around me.

i am reminded how antisocial i am almost every day. and the consequences of that stance. i don't necessarily want that, but i feel resigned to it. the way i react to the world is almost physical. i've come to accept things, the discomfort i feel around most people, the need to maintain a distance, and to contextualize conversations to prevent revelations of the mollusk i am inside, but at times, it is sad when people take me the wrong way. i don't mean to be aloof. in fact, i think i have chosen things to do (even if against my nature) distinctly to push me in the face of serving others. i really want to help. even if, in the process, i am disregarded.

instinctively, i react against arrogance, because i feel it is my antithesis. how is it possible for some to so deny the nature of things and the universe that they can hold themselves even for an instant above others?

i would like to speak (after a long silence) about judgment and the current it engenders, and the secret way to defeat it. there is a world of hatred and gossip and duplicity, and it can feel at times suffocating to walk within it, underestimated and hidden beneath the laughing weight of a thousand thousand words. but if you walk true, if your heart is within what you do, and if you can discover your secret art, your tie to the sacred, then you have nothing to fear. as shodo once said to me, "words are like the echoes of the cast off moltings of cicadas at the end of summer"; they are the hollow sounds of the hollow people. if you can delve into the plenitude of your silence, into the true feelings of your heart, then you can find the place that the words cannot touch. and you can find yourself, your true self, there.

it is impossible to predict what your individual art/religion/spirit is. i have, at times, glimpsed it, and felt comfort in, the feeling of brokenness, and the truth of storms. i have, at various instances, constructed constellations from the broken leavings of the world, like a crazy bower bird, and felt a certain rightness in that, in the "snapshot" of the feeling of being thrown... now that i have become a bit more domesticated, i find my greatest peace in my wife and my children, especially in watching them sleep. whatever fills you to overflowing with a feeling of oneness or "truth" is your link to god, to spirit, to sacredness. sometimes, when the hatred of the world crowds in, it is not only preferential, but vital, necessary, that one discover, rediscover it...

if you are a fellow silent walker in this world of sibilant and sycophantic whispers, then take comfort. i walk with you, even as you walk alone...