https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkXqArE9Vc4

i met with my sister this morning.  i brought two of her children with me, so that they could visit with their mother.  for most of the visit, i stayed quiet and just listened to the back-and-forth between mother and children...  it was sad for me, i suppose.

***

the world, this island, this person... nothing can be totalized or "summed up."  there is so much- difference- even within one individual's memories.  nothing really leads up to anything else.  there is diversity in perspective...  we like to imagine, or symbolize, life as a pathway, but it really isn't, or it isn't always like that.  at times, it is like a landscape, with no visible paths, no place to go...  and we stare at its diversity and wonder at it, wonder at our place in this world.

***

i have fallen in love so many times.  and it breaks my heart that i cannot touch this world, i cannot mean anything more to this world than be a face among a thousand other loveless faces, that i cannot be something more to it than... what i am.  i am sometimes driven to distraction by other lives, lives that i cannot possibly touch.  it makes me feel so sad, and so empty inside.

at times like these, i coast.  there is no sense in volition during such times.  you are guided by the emptiness, and the silence, which i think (despite the despair and sadness) is something akin to god.  because i do think god speaks through silences.  he listens to you so that you can become.

***

time passes so quickly.  so torturously swift.  i am halfway through a dream, and it wakes me, in destructive increments, to the end.  what is this love in the midst of a fleeting dream?  what does it mean?  i wish you well.  in another life (but there is no other life), i could've been more...  but then again, i probably would have been much the same, which is an almost, which was actually nothing at all.

what's that movie, high fidelity?  i never saw the whole thing (for shame!) but i recall john cusack's character organizing records "autobiographically."  music sort of timestamps things, i suppose.

so: i recall picking up this album (along with ok computer, another seminal album) on a brief trip to san francisco, to attend a kiiko matsumoto (acupuncturist) conference.  the conference was at some wharf, and next door was some import car convention.  i recall seeing these "slick" people in their neon cars, and, compounded with other impressions of the city (open green spaces with people reading, ultimate frisbee), wondering what life would be like in such a place, and with someone.

i WAS accompanying someone, who was a close friend, and also my ticket for a place to stay...  i recall that, during that trip, she disclosed a secret to me, and from the moment of that disclosure, i remember feeling simultaneously very protective of her, and at the same time, incredibly distant from her.  this was the album that played in the long car ride back to l.a., to this awkward and pregnant silence.

middle of nowhere

there is a feeling of emptiness whenever someone leaves.  it is as though a piece of yourself, something that you had taken for granted, has gone.  and it's not an obvious piece, like an arm or a finger.  it's something internal and vague, like maybe someone stole a kidney in your sleep and left nothing but some neat, near-invisible scar.  it is an emptiness inside.

and suddenly, i wonder what it is that is missing.  i was being all business-as-usual, operating like a juggernaut through each successive day, with each task before me producing a focal point to be broken and resummoned, again and again and again.  the faces of those around me, and beside me, the conversations i had with them, out of peripheral vision, they were collateral conversations about the weather, or something else harmless and inconsequential...  i, they, could've been something more, but they never were allowed to be...

and now they are gone.  they have left.

and, yes, i can live without it, without them.

but i wonder if that isn't the problem?

***

i sometimes feel that there is a danger within me, like a vast abyss.  and i push words, and put distances between myself and others, to keep people from falling into me.  i guess i only have two switches: polite and reserved, or- something dangerous and beyond intimate, identity-consuming...  there is a sadness in not being able to let people in, but it's a necessary sadness.  there is no alternative but to hold the world at bay from this gravitational pull within myself.

peng jin

this is a video by ian sinclair, explaining the difference between quality, method, and technique.  quality is primary, and in taijiquan, that quality is "peng".  usually "pengjin" is trained via pile standing practices.

perhaps that last post wasn't the best way to start off the new year… but i suppose i was just being honest. that perhaps is my biggest challenge right now.

i am the younger brother.

people have been telling me that it is my responsibility to bow down to my older brother and restore relations somehow. i keep telling them that i have been doing that all my life, and it is not my call anyway; my brother decides when to call it quits, and if any one (especially me) tries to convince him otherwise, then he just ignores me. same as when, whenever i would try to tell him something important, he would turn on the tv to fox news or espn, and whenever i would solicit a response, he would flat out ignore me or make a comment about obama or whatever. treat me like a piece of shit.

my brother, as he prides himself, has so many friends. so what does he need a brother for anyway?

it's funny, i keep referring patients his way, and then they return telling me how wonderful he is... and then, not long after, they start looking at me funny, because all professional courtesy aside, he probably can't help but let slip how much he loathes his brother (if he even admits he has one; he currently has no sister, after all). and these are people i work with.

there is a secret i could tell. i have kept it because i wanted to protect all parties involved, and because i don't think it's my place to tell it... but it's kind of like bilbo and smaug the dragon. my brother is so self-righteous, that this vulnerability tempts an arrow... but no, i wouldn't do it.

i'm sorry, i just have so much anger and rage towards my brother. at times like this, i can't help but think about it, with everyone speaking about peace and harmony and everything. the world (as always) sees him as this successful together fellow, and looks at me as his piece of shit brother. and maybe they're right. after all, he can stomach the hypocrisy, and belch out insults my way, while i glower in silence with all of this stuff that i still dare not say... everybody thinks it's my role to beg for forgiveness.

i am the younger brother.