at the moment, i am SO tired and unmotivated.  i suppose it doesn't seem so, but this whole family thing, and my impotence before it, has really gotten me down.

***

what i said about friends earlier, what i MEANT was this: for me, the truest expression, what allows me to get to the heart of things (or at least, MY heart) involves peeling away and forgetting all expectations people have, all the superficial pictures people have of me, and just saying/doing the truth.  oftentimes i am so smothered by all of this that even I don't know what that truth is until i go through this process.

i believe that the truest art is only found in this process, when one communicates with the silence and the darkness, when one "speaks" with what does not respond, and with what cannot be seen, and with what cannot be conceived.  this conversation, which always occurs in the deepest isolation within oneself, is a conversation with god.

in the end, when you shoulder your burden in life, and you just "do it," there's nothing to be said about it...

***

i recall something (vaguely) that charlotte joko beck once said with regards to suffering.  she tried to say it by referring to the etymology of the word "suffer," and although i can no longer reconstruct that etymology, there have been moments when i definitely understood what she meant.  in "suffering," there is the image of a tremendous burden that one must bear, and in that image is contained all the reluctance and hesitation and pathos that makes suffering a thing to be avoided at all costs.  but there is a moment (if one can find it) when a decision is made, and one becomes "one" with suffering, and then suddenly, it isn't such a big deal, because you ARE it, you're no longer thinking about it.

...well, i wouldn't say that it isn't a big deal, but what i mean, and what i think beck meant, was that in adopting it, in becoming one with it, you are no longer standing outside of your situation judging it; you are it, inescapably it, and that's alright.

escape.  es-cap-e (quoting dory from finding nemo).  it's a paradox, but most of the battle of life involves not escaping it.  the rest is (relatively speaking) easy.  or, rather, for the rest, it doesn't matter if it's easy or hard, because it's you.

***

it's what i have to do.  it's what will happen anyway.

***

thank you, grandmother, and shodo, and everyone (whom i imagine looks out for me; and even if they don't, well, it gives me someone to thank when i am feeling grateful for scraps of understanding)...

i have learned to hate someone.

it is a terrific burden.  but it is a truer better thing than my usual modus operandi, which is to shrug things off, and shoulder what i can.  now, i know that there are times when the hypocrisy of people is sufficient to allow true hatred.  i just have to be careful not to let that one hatred infect others.  because the hypocrisy of this one individual highlights the hypocrisy of many.

breath.

... i need time to forgive and forget.  i always do.  (but then again, perhaps that is my problem.  maybe i SHOULD hate.  maybe i should hold a burning ember in my heart...  there is something paradoxically cleansing in the moment of hate, before it realizes the double edged nature of its momentum...)

***

i try to help my family in meager ways.  i have been trying to take all the kids out (ALL of them, including my nieces and nephew) in order to alleviate the burden on my aging parents.  soon, i am sure, the responsibility of caring for these children will fall upon my wife and i, because no one else will want to take the responsibility.  although my wife is reluctant about it, i feel that she is akin to me in my belief in filial obligations, and basic compassion.  with family, you have no choice... (unless you are someone who thinks that blood is something you can wash your hands of...)

it is sad to me, particularly at this time of year.  my grandmother, whom i loved dearly and still miss, she believed in holding the family together at all costs.  now, perhaps 5 years after her passing, i find that my family has progressively fragmented apart.  in the immediate aftermath of my grandmother's passing, a rivalry between my mother and her siblings sundered relations, such that we have not seen our aunt and uncle (and their families) very often for years.  and now, this fall/winter, i no longer have relations with my brother and my sister.  it is a sad thing, and i feel that i have failed my grandmother, and her aspirations...

...but there is little that i think that i could have done.  at least, there is little i could have done, and remain "in character."  sometimes, i think that it is ironic/paradoxical that the very reason people "get along" with me is because i am unassuming.  and yet, in this season, it is my unassuming nature that prevents me from cajoling a relationship between all disparate parties...  and besides that, my brother has inspired in me a feeling of such intense hatred, that it truly throws me out of balance, and exhausts me in the simple processing of this rage.  there are things i will NEVER forgive about my brother, even if relations will proceed...

(but then again... but then again...  i once chided my mother regarding the sundered relationships with her siblings, saying that it was grandmother's wish that the family hold together, and NOT ONE WEEK after her death, there were attempts to break away.  and at that time i told my mother that she should be bigger than that...  maybe it is the same thing, the very same thing, with me...)

***

i think i am averse to people, in one very fundamental sense.  the realm of people, as represented by "facebook conversations," can be nice, but in most senses, is trivial and superficial (in the worst sense of the word).  it is quite literally a distraction.  i do not operate on that realm, or at least, i do not operate optimally there.  as i may have mentioned, i have always felt that true friendship was like people on isolated, but visible, mesas, living parallel lives, suffering their own trials and tribulations...  a sense of distance was always incorporated into it.  it wasn't because i didn't believe in helping people... but it was more because i felt that, in this world, one didn't and shouldn't and can't EVER count on people.  you can't expect friends to save you (they literally never have).  and to put that expectation upon them is to be unfair to them...

i guess i have issues with "friends."  with "brothers."  with a lot of things.  suffice it to say that i have very few friends who are close, and, let's be honest, none outside of my family that i can hang out with here.

[got to go.]

i got a chance to visit my long lost sister today.  my parents asked if i could deliver her driver's license to her working place.  i didn't expect to actually see her; her instructions were to deposit the license in an envelope on the working place door.  but when i walked up to the place, the door was actually open, and there were people inside.  as i called to the people to signal that i was going to leave the license in the envelope, my sister responded and came out from behind some curtains.

she looked thinner than when i last saw her (that's a good thing), and seemed a lot more alive and active.  at first, i had a hard time registering that this person was actually my sister.  sure, i'd seen her in passing, whenever she stopped by my parents' house to visit her kids.  but this seemed to be the first time in a long while that i'd actually seen her "alive."  her words were colorful and funny, but i couldn't really "hear" them, as my eyes were drinking her in.  i recall one observation i had was that her eyebrows and eyes were really starting to resemble my dad's...  kind of a downward turn that made them look inherently and inescapably sad and distant.

anyway, i told her that her youngest daughter was in the car, as we were planning on taking her and my own kids to some art thing at ala moana.  so she asked to see her.  i led her over to the car where everyone was waiting.  as soon as her daughter saw her, she cried out "mommy!" and ran out of the car to hug and hang onto my sister's leg.  it was touching, and kind of sad...

***

i love my sister, and miss her dearly.  her path has always been a harder one (largely, though not entirely, of her own making).  it doesn't seem so long ago that she was that vivacious kid that used to tag along with me wherever i went.  how our paths have diverged!  i feel a deep sense of loss in the distance that time and experience has put between us.  i hope that on some fundamental level, we are still the siblings that we once were...

***

anyway, nowadays, and at the present moment, i am feeling very very tired.  i sleep a lot more than i can afford to, but i still don't seem to get any real rest.  i still long for something to happen in my sleep, for something to restart within my soul...  i still want to feel clean, restored, and ready to engage with the world.  instead, there is this persistent need to hide away and hibernate...

my hands feel vague and warm.  i think when my heart settles low, as it does when i am in this sort of weary, fixated mood, then the energy tends to flow into my hands...  it tingles.  i like this feeling, though i am not sure how effectual it makes me for anything... 

i've been pretty tired at work...  my mind has been preoccupied with family issues.  there is a deep schism in the family at the moment, and it looks to be permanent.  i, for my part, cannot see any way to resolve it, except to hold to the vague promise of time healing all wounds...

i keep wanting to sleep forever...  it seems like rest doesn't come when the world is unsettled like this.  i feel so sad for my parents, for the crap that they have to put up with...  as my father somewhat snidely remarked: kodomo wa sonna mon da ne...  which roughly translates to: "kids...  what can you do?"  my mother, meanwhile, has clung to her recent (at least in my book) faith.  i'm glad she has that, even if, in my somewhat jaded perspective, it seems kind of like a hypocritical clutch of the good book...  no matter what, my parents deserve to be happy, and, failing that, a modicum of psychological comfort...

***

there are large moths that visit the eaves of our house regularly.  far from a sense of foreboding, i like to think that they are ancestors, come to check on us.  when i am on the verge of sleep, i like to imagine their wings, fluttering the dust of their wisdom upon me.  i like to hope that one of them, my grandmother perhaps, will come to me in my dreams and have a chat with me, as they did when we were all in the same living moment together...

if anything, i need the solidity and comfort of their presence now.

***

winter is coming.  in recent nights, it has gone from cool to cold, and it has become harder and harder to wake up and get the day started.  winter is the season of quiescence and a beckoning kind of sleep...  it is the season of seeds frozen in the hard earth.

i recall the white mantle, how it smothered all time, in other places and other lives.  i recall how it seemed to last forever.  i recall walking cold and empty hallways, hearing the echoes of other lives, occupying the space left behind by other people like air within a frozen bubble, probing the boundaries of myself, yearning to be free...

now in this other life that i now lead, i am undeniably content.  there are real lives that love me, and that fill me up with a gratitude and a sense of connection to this world...  and yet, at odd moments, that old lonely meandering returns, like some ghost restless within an empty husk.

i suppose we cannot entirely kill who we were.  who we are.

there is something within me that cannot be reasoned with.  i can call it madness, but is a heavy boulder mad?  is a wild creature mad?  whatever is in me just doesn't do what it's supposed to.  it is something that doesn't "get with the program."  we take it as a matter of course that there are things in the outside world that resist us.  but what about when it is within us?

religion, dreams, the metronome-like flailing of a soul trapped... these are all my possible reactions against the dead-weight of this thing...

i plead with it.  i deaden my eyes in an attempt to see something that might spark a motivation within it.  i sleep, hoping that on the morrow, it will have diminished, and i can move forward, freed from its burden.  sometimes these techniques work... at other times...

***

again, we refer to religion.  not the dead religions.  not the religion that others have pantomimed over the centuries.

religion is a repetition of the movement of binding back the wordless, the ineffable, only on our terms.  we confront a wordless thing in a wilderness we have set aside within ourselves, and without ourselves; we make ourselves lose all volition and control so that it may speak in a voice that cannot be ourselves, but still must be relevant to ourselves.  and in this way we convince those other wordless things within and without to adopt a sacred constellation, and move forwards towards some vaunted purpose.

in my sacred constellation, there are real people (most now gone), and possibly unreal beings (or possibly real interpretations of unreal beings), and stubborn principles.  my grandmother, my sister, all of the teachers and friends that i have left behind, miki nakayama, the path through the wildnerness, the poverty of the wanderer, the life of "found" art and blessings, ... and an idea of blood and family, and an unspoken oneness with all people and things.

i speak and plead with aspects of this constellation to get myself to move, but there is a part of me that remains unconvinced.  unconvince-able.  invincible.  i am helpless before it.  my recourse is, as always, to be powerless before it...

***

there is a current schism in my family, and i fear that it will be permanent.  perhaps the faults were always already there, and it only took a small trigger to bring those cracks to the surface.  i apparently tried to bridge these fractures, but perhaps i didn't try too hard; and perhaps, deep down, i didn't even really care.

***

i had an insight, perhaps a flash of self-pity.  there are the winners, and there are the losers.  the winners are the ones with the voice and the power.  they steal the voice of the losers, and step on the faces of the losers to keep them downtrodden.  the daily life of the loser is a tragedy, but it is awash in countless days of tragedy.  and the world looks upon the loser, and says, ah, but that is their lot.

so when, on a fluke, the dog has his day, oh what a mournful day it is for the winner, to feel, for a moment, a reversal of fortune!  and how the world mourns with him!  and how the world comes to look upon the loser with contempt, for it is the loser's one day of victory that has brought sorrow upon the winner!

the loser does not want to play the game.  but perhaps the refusal to play is in itself a ploy, predetermined or not.  the loser has become so accustomed to not playing "with heart", that it is difficult to even know if he was a heart left; if he truly cares about something to put himself at stake.  the loser has adopted a wisdom, that there is something in the world more important than being right.  he does not do things to obtain victory over another; he simply wants- what?  and would he fight for it?

***

the flailing is dying down.  a quiescence must fall upon the soul.  it must play possum another night, and perhaps on the morrow find the bonds that resist him loosened or untied.

***

i will love this world.  i will embrace it.  i will hold this moment.  it will burn me away, but i will hold to it.  and perhaps one day, i will disappear.  there will be no me, and no control, and no resistance either.  there will be...

something missing

something missing.

in ruts
there are found pieces
placed or shed or even
violently disavowed
but in not one
what i miss.

eye and tongue
drifts the
flavorless glaze
spread thick
a pushing tick
of time
drags
another identical
interval.

the possibility of beginning again

it hasn't been a pleasant fall break.  on monday and tuesday, my son was sick with a high fever and vomiting.  on wednesday, there was a "true break," and i was able to take my kids and two of the cousins out to fish in the ocean off of heeia pier.  but today, my daughter caught the same cold that my son had, and was in bed all day.  on those days when my kids were sick, i stayed home with them.  i also have been feeling some kind of malaise of late, with frequent bouts of diarrhea (i know, tmi) and a lethargy that i've been finding hard to shake...

there is a kind of despair that you feel when you realize your break is more than half over, and that you haven't taken advantage of it yet.

***

on the way to work this evening (my other teaching job), i realized that i would need to restart my outlook.  i think i have been neglecting to do this lately, partially because it becomes harder and harder to do the more time passes, and your outlook becomes smothered over by the patina of rust and decay and habit that accrues with experience.  but it is vital and necessary; a necessary fiction, if you will.

there is a (cynical) song called "clean" by depeche mode that reflects the conflict between a jaded "knows better" perspective and the need to "start again."  i think the lyrics go something like this:

"clean, you know what i mean, an end to the tears and the in between years and the troubles i've seen."

"white wedding" by billy idol is another song that reflects this feeling, the need for a "fresh" start...

as i've grown older, i've come to realize the fiction of the restart, and no longer commit it with the conviction that i once had.  you can't really escape your mistakes, or, for that matter, the mistakes of others, or even (outside of the realm of "mistakes," which betrays the assumption of a "should" and a volition which may not even exist) just plain circumstances.  you can't escape your obligations, your inescapable debts to the world...  someone will visit you to make the collections, if not tomorrow, then another day...

BUT.  there also comes a point when it is difficult to function without pretending ignorance or oblivion of circumstances.  and at those times, it is vital to practice the skill of forgetting and saying, "once upon a time," with a tacit understanding that that time is now.

the life of an organism is filled with such restarts: sleeping, shitting, bathing...  why is it so strange that the life of the soul, the narrative of the individual, also require such restarts?  do we assume that the self is a smooth evolving, that it too does not require times when it empties itself, or loses its mind, or loses its way?

***

remember this: the capacity to forget is almost more important than the ability to remember...  and it is not that "memory" and "forgetting" are a duality.  rather, it all comes down to how things are "held."  there is a blur between memory and oblivion.  it's not an on-off switch.  in a way, we cannot forget what we remember, and we cannot remember (bring back) what we have forgotten (what has passed on)...  perhaps in this (and i'm not alone in this observation), we come