i guess i really don't care about most things in this world in their particularity, and so, those things don't care very much about me. they don't speak to me, when i try to summon them and remember details about them. they are barely distinguishable from the sea of everything else, and are always slipping away into anonymity and oblivion. that's why i can't tell a story. i can barely remember anything. i can barely feel anything. and because there is no independent existence, my failure to remember details about the world results in a failure to reconstruct my own identity.

i live in a shadow of dishonor. that's what i call it. it is a place where despised things curl up and mutate, but never die. it is a place of the hated, disgusting things, the things people turn away from reflexively. today, i reflected on why i live here. it is because i have always felt unworthy/worthless in the eyes of the world. ironically, when you carry that feeling within you, you not only ARE that to everyone else, but you are that because you spread that feeling of unworthiness/worthlessness to everyone else. i realize that i do that to people, because, in considering myself beneath contempt, i simultaneously (though unintentionally) make others feel beneath contempt. perhaps they are looking for me to redeem them somehow, to care about them; but because i feel that i am the hated one, and do not look up at them, they feel despised/hated/whatever.

the funny thing is, i find that i really DO NOT care about most people, nor about much of the world. i don't find much of interest in them, and usually when i DO find something interesting, it is so far removed from myself that it might as well exist in another universe or something. there is no communicating between the worthlessness that i am, and anything of real worth in this universe.

i have found a lot of ugliness in the world. i have felt a lot of resentment towards people, and towards "god." and yet, most of that ugliness is a result of me, and my inherent worthlessness, which i cannot blame upon anyone else, and yet, which i cannot seem to change of my own volition. there is goodness in this world, rare though it may be, but it exists in another dimension from me.

in buddhism, in the heart sutra, it is said, "there is no suffering, and there is no escape from suffering." i look at the latter part of that statement, and find, if not hope, then a grim reminder of my path. i hate myself, and i hate my perspective of the world, and i suppose i must say that i hate my world. but i can't escape from who i am. i can't change. i'm sad at that, that i must always be despised by the world, no matter how much i try to be a good person... but no matter what i do, it will never change, the fact of me being in the shadow of dishonor will never change. god and the ancestors and everyone in the world will always consider me a piece of shit, and spit upon my prayers... but that is my lot.

when it was my birthday, i wished my family would come together. since then, my brother has drifted off, his hatred of the family rekindled and renewed. it seems he only tried to reunite (or pretended to) in order to insure that his voice in my parents' will would remain (because i'm sure that's what his wife really wants- the inheritance). as far as my sister, for a time, there was hope that she would be released into supervised custody under my parents; but since then, her sentence seems to have become a minimum of 2-3 years in jail. maybe she won't last that long there. i don't know. and, following my realization of myself, maybe i truly don't care.

my view of the world is fading. i can't hold onto anything. i care about things in simple ways, in ways which appear to me, but the majority of the world, and perhaps vision/truth is a democracy, thinks i am nothing. i bear that burden for the moment, but it etches away at me daily, every moment. in another world, the real people live, and they understand truth, and they build monuments out of their lives to it. i am still always at square one, and always will be here. forget about me please. i have already forgotten about you.

today is sunday, march 10th.

on friday afternoon, there was a brush fire in the gully behind our house. i think i was the first to spot it. i was on the upstairs computer, and i happened to hear a bit of crackling coming from the gully. when i looked that way, i noticed a plume of white smoke coming up, and as i went to the window, i could swear that i heard a bunch of kids running. i called the fire department, and then i went to my backyard to watch the spectacle. the fire was actually quite fast, and in 5-10 minutes, i could see the flames start to lick up the sides of the gully, not far beyond the wall of california grass that lined the rim of the gully. a tree near the edge of the gully ignited. soon, my neighbors and i were spraying the grass with our water hoses, in preparation for the fire's arrival. just about then, the fire department arrived, and drove directly into the canal, and put out the fire from there...

yesterday, there was the whole eat-the-street thing on the street above ours. i was actually looking forward to having a relaxing day at home, and heading up to the event for lunch and for dinner. but it turns out that we were invited to a friend's son's birthday party, and i volunteered myself to help out with games. so for the majority of the morning, i was trying to plan out some last-minute games for the 5-year-olds who would be at the party. most of the games i put together, it turns out, weren't used; the kids were disinterested, and the parents weren't willing to corral the kids (they were just kind of sitting around and eating and talking), so only a few kids did what i had planned anyway. i stayed at the party for pretty much the whole duration, from set up to clean up. not the most relaxing way to spend my day off, but it was for a good friend.

which brings us to today, a rainy sunday. i've got nothing much to report beyond that. sorry.

today was my birthday. i wanted to go hiking this morning, but the weather kind of sucked (or looked like it was going to), and my daughter complained about not wanting to go (to the point of almost crying, even), and so, i got irritated and said that i was going to go off on my own. while driving off, i kind of thought how immature i was being, and by the time i was on the freeway, decided that i would go to mililani mortuary instead, and visit my grandparents. so, i wound up sitting on the grass in front of my grandparents' grave, kind of talking. i had no flowers. i wonder if it's awkward to go to a grave without flowers. i think flowers are your microphone to the spirits. they must have been like, "you never call, and you never bring us FLOWERS!" oh well.

i spoke about the family situations. about how i thought i was trying my best. stuff like that. and then, some lady was parking her car almost exactly where i was (like, she almost drove onto the grass), so i, kind of embarrassed, picked my glasses off the grass, got up creakily, and walked back to the car.

on the way back, i passed some guy whose car had broken down on the side of the road. now, the road to mililani mortuary passes through an offshoot of kipapa gulch (if it isn't a part of kipapa gulch itself), and it's not a good place to have your car break down. he needed a jump. and i thought, why would anyone run out of power (meaning, they had parked) here, of all places? i offered to jump his car, even though he kind of looked like a tweaker (his eyes and face were kind of red, and he looked irritable). but the jumper cables weren't in my trunk. i suppose i had put them in the other car, the car driven by my wife. so i had to apologize, made some vague promise to get the cables and come back (which i fully intended to do), and drove off. when i got home, my wife was gone, so i couldn't help that guy...

i came home, and started working in the yard, finishing off the weeding of my lawn...

***

in the afternoon, i had to pick up my mom and my nephew from behind mililani shopping center. my mom was fuming. apparently, my mom and dad had gotten into an argument after my nephew's soccer game; my dad had told my mom to get out of the car, and my mom had obliged him. my nephew got out to accompany her...

so i picked them up and drove them home. i listened to the situation, said nothing committal, and dropped them off. my mom was steaming, saying she wasn't going to stay at home, that she would go to a hotel... oh great. we were supposed to have a dinner for my b-day, and my estranged brother's family was supposed to come... and it looked like my own parents couldn't get along?

the argument had been about my nephew's soccer. his team has been having a miserable season. i think he's an okay player himself, but there is no teamwork in his team. the players are all disconnected, kicking the ball in the general direction of their goal individually, but no one follows through, the passes don't "arrive." so anyway, i guess my mom was yelling a bit too much at the game (she has that habit), and my dad kind of got annoyed. after all, it's not as though my nephew can save the team on his own... so.

my mom eventually called and said the dinner was still on. but my brother was coming late, and leaving early, which meant he was going to be visiting with us for 30 minutes at best. he said that he had a prior engagement, unspecified- but for the rest of us, it was clear that he didn't want to be with us at all...

my b-day dinner was tense. on the one hand, my parents didn't want to sit together. on the other, when my brother finally did arrive, he was clearly tense. he sat between my parents. his wife sat with her daughter on the childrens' table. she didn't even come over to say hi to my parents or to me. when i tried to break the ice a little by mentioning the basketball team that he was coaching, he said nothing. when my parents tried to ask about little things, he said nothing... it was clear that he had come with a lot on his mind...

of course, i was to blame. i had written a TERRIBLE letter to him. i had intended to hurt him, as he had hurt the family. i knew it would make him so upset that he would "follow through" on the path that he and his family had been traversing for a while, that is, to leave the family completely. after a few days of very bitter messages back and forth, he called late one night. my brother and i had a conversation that night, which i felt was heartfelt and sincere, a conversation in which a lot was explained, and in which both he and i (but mainly he) apologized, and called for reconciliation. there had been some small hope by the end of that conversation...

so that brought us to tonight, to this crappy dinner in which my brother's family made a brief, tense appearance, and vanished to whatever prior commitment had been so very important that it trumped spending time with a family that he had cast off from him for at least half a year, and potentially forever. some "reunion."

***

my wife had to leave for work, which left all the kids, and my parents. i suppose it was kind of a sign when the lighter that the restaurant provided to light the two candles on my cake didn't work. that was sort of how the day had gone...

anyways, after the brief and embarrassing happy b-day song, i had a little talk with my parents. i tried to calm them down, get them to at least be on speaking terms with each other. i said something about how they both were different, and that they both depended on each other for their complimentary natures, and that part of getting along was accepting those differences, and not expecting or demanding each other to be anything other than who they were. i think it helped. they were at least smiling...

***

i cannot put anything back together. i try to hold things in proximity, with duct tape, but it is in the nature of things to fall apart and away. i hardly know what my own path is any more. i hardly care.

i've been thinking about my own oblivion with regards to my life. i can hardly remember people, details from my past, experiences i have had. and i think it's largely because a part of me doesn't really care about anything, about any part of life. and i think it's because i consider myself to be a nothing person to others, and that, whether i like it or not, that mirrors and morphs into thinking of others and the world as a nothing place.

in the present, there is always a concern to keep one preoccupied, there is always something to love and to hate. but beyond the burning moment, there is nothing else, there is no past and no future, no memory and no past. there is no continuity, nothing lasts, it is always just a momentary drama, to be replaced by another momentary drama. i hold to love, i repeat it like a mantra, even as it slips away over and over. perhaps that is life, that is all life is, is this imperfect and incomplete attempt to pretend something better. an illusion of hope.

oh well. ultimately, i am so grateful for my family, broken as it may seem. i love my wife, my kids; my parents, for holding together, and for taking the time to try to have this dinner for me; for my nieces and nephews; for my brother's family; for my sister... i love them all, and have no choice but to love them, no matter what happens. thank you for my family... and thank you for this life, even if i can't help but not care for it at times.

i had a dream... about a buddhist temple... or perhaps it was a school of martial arts... in any case, there was some kind of meeting after practice/service, and although i did not realize it during the practice/service, there was some dissension in the ranks, some kind of fundamental complaint/issue/grievance requiring attention...

oh yes, and immediately before that, there was an issue at my school regarding a student who had done something, similarly requiring immediate attention. and for some reason, i was with said (?) student in the office, and we were looking through files or something, and the student kept picking out words to describe the situation from some box of index cards... and later, i was talking to someone, perhaps my wife, about it; talking quite loudly, in fact, about how that student, despite what he had done, and despite his low aptitude for most things, had demonstrated emotional sensitivity, i.e. how he could sense a situation, sense something in the air, which might indicate that "trouble" had or was occurring, for example, an argument, and adjust his own behavior accordingly. and i said, again, quite loudly, how that was so invaluable, it was a skill that could almost guarantee survival. while my wife (?) looked on dubiously, i had a thought that i should not be talking so loudly about a student, i.e student confidentiality issues, but then i had a second thought that i was saying positive things about this student, and i hadn't mentioned him by name...

i recall bringing out a project of mine, one in which i had actually made a collage of sorts out of actual (real) food, and it was in book form. i recall reading the book to my wife (or whoever was with me), noting that the pepperoni on the pizza was kinda coming off the paper. the last two pages seemed different, and referred to this situation, or whatever, that i mentioned above.

...

anyway, back to what i mentioned originally, about this temple/school or martial arts. after the practice/service, students met informally (or so it seemed; i noticed similar groups of about five apiece congregating outside of the practice/service hall), and talked about their feelings. as in real life, i had been totally oblivious of any of the goings-on, so i had nothing to contribute. i noticed that one of the girls, this one latina girl with really long black hair, was still in the practice/service room talking with someone, so i surmised that whatever had happened was between her and the person-in-charge...

at one point, i looked behind, into a hallway, and saw the head monk (?) storming down the hall with large footsteps, complaining to his "wife" that, after all he had done for some, it still upset him how they always departed and left him (he said "hanarete" which means to leave, fly away)...

***

i felt kind of "storm-rattled" after that dream. outside, the wind was picking up again. i was relieved to note that it was only (?) 1:00; i had a few hours of sleep/procrastination/whatever. i wrote down some of the concerns that have been distantly rattling within me, wrote this message, and... hopefully a few more hours of sleep, along with better, more salvific dreams...

trench warfare is a condition of stalemate. it is a condition of thorough investment ("dug in"), but with little, if any gain. attempts by one side or the other to circumvent this condition often result in horrible casualties on BOTH sides: for example, the usage of chlorine gas.

we think when nothing moves that it is in a zero state, and that the cause of that state is a lack of motive force, one way or the other. but in reality, oftentimes, an immobility is a result of a NET zero gain, a situation where a powerful force for movement is negated almost precisely by a powerful inertia. hence, trench warfare.

life in the trenches is a pitiable thing. what seems like "progress" is akin to an ant digging blindly in soft earth. what is a "promise" is a gain of an inch, taken from questionable, shifting landmarks. the best thing in trench warfare is a moment of uneasy ease, when things apparently (but always only apparently) are going one's way. a shift in the wind, or something equally mysterious, could bring disaster once again.

***

other battlefields hold dramatic, miraculous victories. perhaps with a larger scope and lens, we would see that, in the big picture, these victories, too, are only apparently movements in any given direction, and that "human progress" is hardly progress in the truest sense of the word. those imbued with "faith" and "hope" are simply myopic, though pretending to be the opposite...

... yes, i am being extremely cynical right now. i question everything, including my own existence, which is tied to my purpose for existence, which i still, after so many many years, cannot find. in this moment, i am remembering voices of people who have read my work, and asked me, in all honesty, why i wrote what i did. there was, in their eyes, no worth or redeeming quality in what i said. and i took their question seriously, and asked myself, why do i try to write? what is the "message" i was trying to invest in the work, and by extension, the reader?

i have no overarching vision of the world. my vision is limited to the perspective of worms, or that of men reduced to worms, digging in the earth and cowering from bullet paths. there is no bravery here. there is no change here. i wish there were otherwise. there are half-snatched tales we tell ourselves, just to remember we were something else, or perhaps more properly, just to pretend we were something else. something about open skies, about love, about standing on the ground. something about freedom.

on wednesday or thursday night of last week, my brother called. i had been dreading this call. you see, on sunday night/monday morning, i had let loose with a letter detailing all of the grievances i had against him. i won't go into it here, as some of you may have already read about some of them, and it's all water under the bridge in any case. there were repercussions to my letter, which occurred over the next couple of days... so, what i had been expecting with the phone call was an angry tirade which i would have to endure, and then hang up loudly... instead, my brother had called to apologize and call for renewed attempts to reunite the family- ALL of the family, including my estranged sister. it was quite honestly the best thing that could have happened... i am thankful that my brother chose this pathway.

***

the wind and rain are loud and hard tonight. it has been this way for the past couple of days. i have been very very sleepy this weekend, and this morning, i awoke to a dream of a seashore. large creatures, monstrous creatures, were washing up ashore, to taste the air, and then slithering back into the sea: a basking shark, a tubiferous colony of worms (not sure if tubiferous is a real word, but it was in my dream)... then, later, cracks appeared beneath the sand, and what at first looked like monstrous roots, but in reality were parts of some enormous sea creature, were peeking up from beneath the surface of the world... incidentally, we (my family?) were at first on the sixth floor in some seaside view hotel room, only the glass sliding doors of the room didn't open out onto a lanai or veranda, but opened out directly into a drop to the scene below... later, we (again, my family, with a couple of other snobby white diners) were eating breakfast at some seaside restaurant, with the ocean just below and beyond a rock wall railing. my son aiden fell back and over one of the railings, and entered the sea below with an audible and visible splash. i rolled my eyes and went down to the sandy seashore to save him...

***

it is now the next morning, the morning before work (school) starts again. i just had a dream about a new sci-fi idea (or perhaps an old one). because resources on the earth are scarce, when children want to go to parties, they plug in to some kind of collective dream, not unlike an mmorpg (sp?) like guild wars 2 or something. they are given some kind of nutritional supplement pill so that the "food" that they eat within this dream would be complimented by some actual nourishment. but in the dream, they could travel throughout this prefabricated environment, eat wonderful things, have exciting adventures... and it would be safe, because it would be a dream. but for some reason, there would be a danger if someone were to "pull the plug" while the dream were going on...

my dream skipped to another segment, one were we (my family, meaning me, my brother, and my mom?) were in some kind of culdesac. i wasn't even sure what we were doing there, or what we were waiting for. i was "just there." i recall looking around at all the fenced off yards. the scene was actually nice. from this vantage point, it was possible to look into the oblong and rectangular pools of the rec center (i recall thinking how nice they looked from this angle). and, there was some other house that had a cool pool that we were forbidden from entering, that we could just catch a glimpse of, but which was hidden from sight from this particular vantage point... anyway, my brother and mom were talking, and suddenly i realized what we were waiting for: my dad lived in one of the houses, and my mom had not received any word from him in over a day. i suddenly had a vision that he was in trouble. i thought about how clueless my mom was, and jumped the fence, ran to the house, and started peering in, calling out "dad!?" he answered (with his voice) eventually, and i saw him sitting at the dining room table. at first, i was relieved, but as i kept calling out, he refused to answer, and all i saw was his back, sitting at a lit table... and i guess i had a vision that we were in a dream, and someone was about to pull the plug.

***

yesterday, as we were eating lunch in the food court area of ala moana, i thought about the pathway of eyes. i thought about how my eyes drifted across the sea of people, and seemed to be drawn to certain individuals (of course, women). i saw one woman who resembled, in certain respects, my aunt in japan, only, she never visited hawaii (because of an aversion to planes; her husband died while piloting an experimental air force jet). i saw another woman in the table across from me, perhaps with her extended family (including her parents), sitting across from the husband of her sister. said husband was carrying and feeding a baby. anyway, i thought this woman had pale skin, and rather large breasts for a japanese woman. i wondered at what she felt like, on a trip to hawaii, husbandless, with the rest of her family, her parents, sitting with her. and then, also across from me, but to the right, was a filipino looking woman with her family (husband and son). she looked very fit, and her face was vivacious, and for me, kind of magnetic. there are certain eyes that are kind of charismatic, in that they seem to represent a spirit that is clear about the world...

anyway, as i ate (halfheartedly) my stromboli from sbarro's, next to my two kids, my eyes drifted across to these three women. it reminded me of elementary school or something, when i felt vaguely attracted to various infatuations, and played a sort of game of daring my eyes to rest, like some kind of flitting butterfly, on one or another girls, and then darting away and feigning disinterest whenever my gaze was caught, even incidentally. there was even a method of trying to make my gaze "symmetrical" and fair; if i had been looking at someone far to my right, and i was "caught", i would immediately look far to my left, just to show to the person who had caught me that i had only been in the middle of an equitable survey of the landscape.

i thought about the eyes of the japanese girl, and how, if you caught them at just the right moment, for example, when she was laughing and smiling at the baby across from her, and wiping her mouth with a napkin, her thin eyes could see the whole world, and me besides. i thought about how those eyes were analagous to the eyes of vast sea monsters from my dreams, or the flat eyes of japanese ghosts taken in photographs... how they seemed to see everything, and nothing. and i thought about the fear of love, of those wonderful/terrible eyes, eyes that could swallow the whole world, to not only see the whole world in the vastness of their vision, but to somehow single out one mote, me, as a target, as a reason, as a focus...

***

i was reading a chapter about gestalt therapy. i suppose, at one point, that i had been treating someone, an older gay gentleman, who had some knowledge about gestalt therapy, and who intimated to me some experiences he had had with it. in retrospect, perhaps the only reason he had allowed me to work on him for a few consecutive sessions was that he had been interested in me. in any case, i guess that's what sparked my interest in gestalt.

i think gestalt is a wonderful theory, similar to zen. its practice is less a science than an art. the ability to participate in another's therapy by artistically pointing to the "whole" which is at once the solution (derived via the patient's meaning-discovering self) to the narrative, and an experience of the present now. at some point, i despaired of ever being so free with a patient. i consider myself "easy" with people, but as time passes, i realize it is only because so much of me has been walled off from others (and myself)...

... which brings me to a thought: i think people with pets are similar to people with their libidos, with their subconscious energies... sometimes two people with dogs, well, their dogs will want to hump each other, or kill each other, but their owners will pull them away, oftentimes with an apologetic word or glance. and i think, that's civilization for you. you walk around, and you want to have sex with this person, or you would want to kill that person, but before you get the chance, you pull yourself away, yank that chain against all the panting struggle, apologize perhaps to the other party, as though that dog, that instinct, were not in fact you, and you walk away...

i think, i worry, about how much of me is walled off, walled away. i worry about how my living present is like a patina for all the things i've felt and experienced, and i have a remarkable talent for amnesia, for forgetting all of the energies and experiences of my past in order to allow my functional present to proceed... i'm "good" at that. sometimes when i reach for the past, even for things that should be "real" and significant, everything fades, and there's only this clunking automaton in my head that draws a clumsy map of where things should have been, or when things should have happened... i do not live, really. i was not there, really. i have nothing to bring back from all of the places i have been.

i at times try to fantasize, to create a love story. yes, i am happily married, but sometimes in trying to create a narrative, i try to instill the feeling of being in love when i was young. and i realize that there are holes in the narrative, places that i cannot proceed, things that i cannot feel. when i was young, my "love story" involved me, the harmless stalker type (being honest here) who believed in chivalry and all of that nonsense, somehow finding an opportunity to immolate or otherwise destroy myself, for the sake of this untouchable virgin princess type (who, yes, being honest here, was hardly virginal). in other words, there was never any possibility for true relations, and, in fact, the presence of one required the destruction of the other (me). jeez, i used to get so caught up in that sort of fantasy. doing the actual deed, for some reason, never came into the picture.

now, i can hardly summon the feeling, or the words, or how a relationship should proceed...

with lynn, i'll have to admit, i was kind of not looking for anything. i had walled off my passions, my incessant urges, and had become this nothing sort of person (perhaps the same person i am today). in the process, i made a friend, a dear friend, of her. in many respects, it was as though love happened because i wasn't looking for it. it sort of grew naturally, via getting to know a really wonderful person, who happened to want something of me that i wasn't sure i even had...

again, i am happily married- but sometimes, it saddens me that there isn't more of an "interest" in me that is allowed to surface, a basic interest (even sexual, violent, etc.) in this world. i function. i proceed through tasks, often imperfectly, but i do what i need to do. but then, where, when, who am i? will i remember these countless days of not remembering? the nodes of my existence are those i love and care for, but people change, and perhaps in the future, i will have only been some kind of blind and overlooked karsten thot bridge, only visible when it is closed down and rusted, and nothing can pass over me?

i had a dream just now.

at the end of the dream (for it seemed, as all dreams do, to have many parts), i overheard a discussion between (i believe) two acupuncture students of mine. one was trying to describe a shape. i overheard this description, in which the student really struggled to find the correct words, something about a symbol of archimedes. in my head, in listening to that description, i saw it, and finally interjected, and said, "oh, that's like a pac man, pointing downwards." unfazed, the student continued, and said something about a korean symbol that incorporated a circle, a square, and a triangle. i wasn't sure what it was supposed to symbolize...

i recall musing how i no longer thought like that, no longer struggled with concepts that were larger than myself. i gave up on things like that long ago.

and then sometime later, i think i woke up. somehow i knew it was 3, or around 3, and when i looked at the clock, it was 3:15. i had a thought that this was the time period directly after the time of the rat. the rat is the liver, and the liver is the last channel in the chinese meridian system. in many ways, the transitional time between 1-3 am and 3-5 am is significant, because it occurs at that moment when the energies of the previous day shift into the energies of the next day. sometimes, i believe, when there is a problem at that juncture, you wake up. it is almost as though there is some unfinished business in the previous day (and, if it happens repeatedly, some chronic unfinished business) that leaves you unprepared for the new day.

as i used the bathroom, i had this image for some reason of my older brother calling to make up, or something, and me rushing out the door, and then him shooting off my head with a shotgun. aside from the standard self-pity thoughts, about how regretful (?) some of those gun-toting nra supporters at my school would be, learning about me being shot, i had a thought that this would be the good beginning of a story, i.e., that about the creation of a kappa...

i have been thinking, earlier, that a good story doesn't require a whole lot of explanation. or perhaps, it shouldn't. you only need to situate characters in an unusual "situation" (to sound redundant), and attempt to describe it in the most ordinary way possible, using their ordinary eyes. for example, in watching part of kick ass once again... the internal monologue of the main character is using teenage language, and is not particularly profound, but it is powerful in that it very simply describes his feelings and thoughts, when the character makes an unusual conclusion (i.e. become a superhero).

there is a sadness and a worry deep within me that restarts... an interruption to inner peace. i (as before, as endlessly before) wander the halls upstairs, i mention a mantra of love to those sleeping in rooms... i putz around, and then i struggle to return to bed. there are so many worries, and there is no easy way to assuage them.

***

i think certain people, including my brother, are crazy. in fact, in fact, i try not to think or talk about them at all. i think doing so just spins a narrative, and that spins me into my own "mythology" of hatred. i would rather just say "empty boat" and continue on.

which gets me to thinking (ah, not following my own advice) that the goal of writing stories is antithetical, in many ways, to the goal of meditation (at least in the zen tradition). whereas the one is trying to create an INTERESTING edifice, a "story", the other is trying to short circuit all story processes.

oh well, back to sleep and dreams.

i wish i didn't have a thing to do tomorrow. or the rest of my life, for that matter.