11/30/2021

i've been reflecting on why i tend to be so incremental about things. it's like my heart doesn't have the capacity for grand emotions. i can only capture fragmented moments, little vignettes. sometimes they pretend at greatness, sometimes they can be evocative, but they are like the broken fragments of a mirror, capturing only a tiny portion of some larger, unguessed image. i can't see things whole. i can't feel things whole. in narratives, as well, i cannot envision the entire arc of the story. i can only capture brief snapshots of things, snippets of conversations, etc.

i have wondered why my heart is like this. i have often spoken before about how different i feel. or rather, how i don't have the capacity to feel. how my impressions are like these muffled vibrations... i am guessing at a message whispered through a concrete, unfeeling wall.

i have blamed people, like my brother, for this. i have said that my brother took the "high path" of feeling, the place where he is allowed to complete the circuit of his desires, and express his thoughts in arcs of neon, impossible to deny, impossible to ignore... whereas i am like a morning fog... if i act, it is without apparent intention, a molecule here and there, until i obscure vision...

yasunari kawabata wrote a book called the "master of go." in my mind, i envisioned it as the conflict between my brother, who is forceful and violent in his assertion of his desires, and the "master," who is inscrutable, ordinary, and who works "in increments" that are hard to read. the book chronicled the loss of the master to the "new way of playing," the style of logic and "strategy" (in a derogatory sense). i have always liked to believe in the master's style, of living in a way that was at once both natural and simple, and intuitive and impossible to read or defend against... again, like the morning fog... before you know it, formations have arisen from the mist... i have longed to be that sort of way. the way of intention, it has always stunk of my brother... i have always claimed that my brother "stole" that pathway from me. he was the "king of the hill" with regards to his desires, so i had to learn to walk a different path. i blame him, but at the same time, i wouldn't want to, or perhaps, i wasn't capable of, being like him...

i blame him, because my way of being, of living, of conceiving, of communicating, is likely frustrating to those around me, and to myself. my own desires are always muted, or unsynchronized. there are times when i wish i could have been like me, when i could feel my own desire clearly like a broad river of light, connecting me with the world... i wish feelings could flow from me with the force of their own pressure. but the current within me is weak, meandering, mysterious... sometimes stagnant. but mostly subtle to the point of dissolution... and i hate that at times.

this makes me kind. in the sense of harmless. but i am not the "bold" kindness, the kind of kindness that demands gratitude. i have always preferred to help people and disappear in the helping. because frankly, any sort of praise stinks of my brother's way of being, of him interposing himself between the sun and the earth, as though it were he that was the blessing that kept the fucking universe alive. i HATE that. i don't know exactly why i hate it so much, especially because i long for myself to be like that in certain moments to free me...

because i am the way that i am, i have always looked to others to "free" me... to "read" the subtle inscrutable feelings that i myself have a hard time feeling and freeing, and to thence translate me into some clear message of love. it was always good intentions, after all... and i felt that if only someone could feel my signal, then i would be understood, and a circuit could be closed... but no one has the time or capacity to do this. angels, maybe... but no one real, no one human. and to be honest, i'm not sure if they would be reading something within me, or actually rewriting me into some sort of figure that i really wasn't. that's the thing about fog and clouds. it's all subject to interpretation... maybe only a reflection of the shape of the observer's mind... maybe that's all i am, is a shapeless, formless thing that just longs to be solid, held... but which is only a transitory phenomena between falling water and rising water...

i don't know how to write any more. most of the time, purposive writing, writing to complete a play or a story, it just seems to "lose its steam." again, i think i'm not meant for long form (or even short form) narrative. it isn't how i live my life, or experience time. i am fragmentary... and i don't know how to accurately capture that in narrative form of any length... i have ideas of how to write with my heart in it, but most of the time, i have a hard time even feeling if i have a heart. it is so distant. it is so frustrating...

it would be easier if i really didn't have a heart, but i do have something, something with inertia and weight, that resists all efforts to move indiscriminately... it is like a heavy bear tied to a chain or something. i can't speak to it, and it could kill me or eat me, but it mostly just sleeps, and keeps me from moving forward... it is my burden, my weight. yes, that's what my heart is like sometimes, a grumbling mass, sleeping and reluctant and indecipherable.

11/26/2021

my most recent post was written because i felt compelled to write. i believe i woke up early, haunted by these feelings of immense sadness. right now, i'm writing out of a routine, so the words might feel stunted and forced.

yesterday was thanksgiving. it was nice. we (the four of us, now: my wife, my son, my dog, and myself) went to diamond head grill to buy an expensive thanksgiving lunch. we're missing my daughter, or course, who is spending thanksgiving with her two high school friends over at uc irvine. in any case, it was a tradition of sorts for us to pick up our thanksgiving meal from diamond head grill, and then eat it at some nearby park. although we had invitations to celebrate thanksgiving with the in-laws, frankly, we were never comfortable going there, sitting amongst the lazy, half-asleep, somewhat strangers who were all watching the football game (which i never cared much about). it was nicer just to be amongst ourselves, the four (or five) of us. oh well, let me amend that... sometimes it would be us. at other times, lynn would have to be working (or sleeping to prepare to go to work) for black friday over at godiva... this year, now that she's working for see's, they don't seem to do the crazy black friday thing, so things were laid back enough for us to eat together...

later on, we went over to uncle ferman's house (lynn's uncle) to eat thanksgiving dinner (of course, we never once mentioned the fantastic lunch we had had over at diamond head grill). the turkey at uncle ferman's was, predictably, dry. even dousing it in gravy didn't do it much justice. but it was nice sitting with aunty and uncle and talking. uncle ferman seems to enjoy my company, and talks politics and history. he lived in wahiawa for the better part of his life, and knows the area that i work very well. so he asks about whether this store has reopened or what has replaced that restaurant. stuff like that. meanwhile, some asshole plays fireworks in the neighborhood, setting musubi off running and crazy... so i have to hold him firmly, listening to his heaving panicked breathing as the background for the conversation.

*****

i'm getting old. that's always at the background of my thoughts. there's a time where you start to wonder whether there's a point in doing something... or anything. i mean, is it going to lead you anywhere? not really. is it going to change your life's trajectory? not really; things seem to be going downhill, impelled largely by actions taken long ago... and on the downhill path, you can't really change where you're heading, now, can you?

but even faced with this despair, we have to live, don't we? we have to entertain ourselves. we have to continue to harbor hopes and dreams. maybe as we get older, more of those hopes and dreams involve other people, my children, for example. but there are ridiculous dreams that i still keep to, and keep to myself. yes, they are absurd. they have no rhyme or reason. they have no point. but i guess i still have to honor them. it's better than pretending that they don't matter... because to a certain part of myself, maybe the stubborn childish part of myself, they still do matter. they matter a great deal.

maybe life is learning to affirm that part of yourself. at least a little bit.

11/17/2021

i couldn't sleep.

for some reason, memories of my time at williams surfaced. it all seemed closer somehow, like the tides had exposed the ghostly shapes of the sea floor to the moonlight, and i could see it all, its contours, its hideous emptiness. i realized how sad i was for most of my college life. i could see the infinite hope i had placed in those years, and how each day, particularly towards the end, seemed to be this growing despair that nothing was ever going to happen, that no one was ever going to save me. yes, that was (and maybe secretly is) my mentality with regards to relationships, that it was all about some kind of salvation or something. that by finding someone, really finding and connecting to someone, it was going to suddenly change the world... and, to be honest, it did, it does, but not in the way that i was thinking... it honestly felt like it just wasn't possible during the "high time" of my life, that there wasn't the right synchronization of myself, or anyone else out there, or even just the music playing at the time...

i recall how someone out there put out my name as being synonymous with- i don't know, everything clumsy and stupid. it was only when a friend of mine came across the term ("you pulled a randy otaka") that it came to light. and now, when i look back into myself, across all these years, i definitely can see it - dressed in stupid tie dye shirts and layers of clothing in the cold winters of the berkshires, always apparently hopeful, living on mountain dew and noriko sakai songs- impossibly hopeful, but only hopeful because of the incredible despair i carried within me. there was no one there. there wasn't anyone who could've taken me out of where i was. and so, i think i was just biding my time, waiting for the lights to change or something.

i'm so thankful i had some friends to "wait" with me... to make me feel somewhat normal.

*****

relationships are strange. miraculous. serendipitous. merciless. i don't get them. i don't understand why they can't happen when you need them. i don't understand how they start, or why they sometimes trail off.

*****

i think in some senses that i made a decision to become like stone. there is the vibration of a child within me, a frustrated child, who was not meant to follow his feelings... it just never was the right time for him, it wasn't appropriate for him to be let out into the sunlight... and to survive, and to live, and to have a structure- a backbone- it was necessary for me to turn into stone. to be the support for the situations in my life...

i think children like me, because they implicitly see that i am harmless. i am a memory of a person. i collect the warmth of the sun, mainly because i can no longer burn with my own feelings any more. i can pantomime their joy, because i understand its incompleteness within me, as a distant, sad memory. and i am generous in that respect, because what i want is gone, and i can simply be what they want....

but in the world of my peers- which, increasingly, don't exist- i am a non-entity. i am duty. i am work. i am responsibility. i have no real feelings, fresh and hot, of my own. i can communicate memories of feelings- but not the feelings themselves... because there has always been a disconnect- an inability to relate- and that part of me that can truly feel is sealed off- again, a distant almost absent vibration trapped in the heart of stone upon stone upon stone. the inertia of the material that makes me.

for me to be saved, i must be irreparably broken.

*****

i think we return to a time, a moment, as we grow older, when it seemed possible (even though it probably never was). there is a window into a self when hope and the world seemed to speak to each other, at the very least... maybe there was a small window, for a brief period of time... and maybe back then i was happy, in the sense of me feeling - i don't know - i could be free.

there is a different, truer sort of happiness i have felt- of the joy of my children- of the happiness i feel when i help someone... i say truer, because the happiness of others always feels unquestionable, because it doesn't deal with my own waning heart -

okay. i suppose that's enough rumination.

10/23/2021

 posting here:

...it at times pains me to admit this, but it is entirely true.

over the summer, i took on the task of teaching a therapeutic ethics/clinic safety course at the acupuncture school. it was the first time i had taught the course (and indeed, i hadn't even taken the course at my school, because it hadn't been offered). i had decided early on that i wanted to make the ethics portion of the class open-ended; although i would share the ethical codes of different governing bodies and entities, i tried to maintain that the ethical realm was fundamentally personal, and therefore, subject to interpretation...

bad idea. or, rather, good idea, but wrong context.

it quickly became apparent to me that there were (and are) many in the acupuncture community that hold an anti-vaccine stance. there are many reasons for this, some possibly legitimate (...possibly...); but in many cases, it boils down to a distrust of "the medical industry" or "big pharma." i completely understand this, even if i don't entirely agree with it (or rather, i don't generalize it to the point of distrusting it in all instances). it is the motivation that drove many to alternative medicine in the first place (practitioners AND patients)...

i guess things came to a head (somewhat) when i got to the clinic safety portion of the course. i had to share information about different infectious diseases, and the precautions we had to take in order to prevent transmission to patients. and, of course, i had to talk about THE communicable elephant in the room, so to speak: covid. as soon as i started talking about masking precautions and about vaccination, i began to hear strong objections: questioning of fauci, questioning the cdc guidances, questioning whether it was even really as bad as the "fake" media claimed it was... i was somewhat at a loss as to how to respond. it's one thing to hear these sorts of conspiratorial slants when talking to people in normal, everyday contexts (it's why you never give away anything about yourself nowadays)... but to hear these sorts of objections in what is ostensibly a medical context?

it was extremely difficult for me to proceed.

i found (find) myself the only consistently masked individual at the school... i am probably one of only a few who are vaccinated...

i love and respect my colleagues and students, and i know them to largely be caring, compassionate individuals. but in regards to these matters, i must say that an opportunity to demonstrate an ethical and professional stance with regards to covid has been missed... it's ironic, but my insistence that ethics be fundamentally personal was precisely the weapon i intended to be used against the present wave of conspiratorial, anti-institutional nonsense... instead, that weapon was taken to further entrench people in an "i decide what's right" mentality...

ok, that's my rant to some aspects of my profession...

10/15/2021

it has again been quite some time since i wrote an entry for this blog... life has been all-consuming. my work, in particular, has dominated my attentions. let us say that the entire covid issue serves only as the background for a majority of my concerns. i have several difficult cases this year, which- truth be told- should not be my responsibility, but are... my room, which is already full, is constantly changing to accommodate new "guests," students who require semi-isolated environments. i'm now debating whether to create a third such environment for a third "guest," all the while addressing about a dozen different students... very different students... at the same time, my robotics materials have migrated from my portable to be stored in a classroom near the library (requiring me to weekly set everything up in the library, no small task, and put it all back away again), to now being given a room of my own to store and do robotics in (which i have yet to see)... it has all been a kind of dream, a floating feeling... and as we are not yet to a normalized season, with true tournaments, i often have the feeling that i'm just going through the motions... it is difficult to teach students mechanisms, especially intricate mechanisms like this thing called a "choo-choo mechanism", which turns the rotational motion of a motor into the pull and release of a catapult... i think (like myself, if i'm honest) a majority of the students are "playing" at ideas, as they have hit a wall in terms of their creativity and capabilities... and while i'm trying to provide them with ideas and options, i think that, largely, this crop of students doesn't "get it." eventually, i'll have to set a deadline for the vex iq stuff, just get it done with, no matter how infeasible and inoperable a majority of the student robots are... that will allow me to move on to other sorts of challenges...

anyway. there's that. and there's concerns about finances and such. again, we're struggling to pay for, save for, willow's college. and there are also concerns about how willow is doing, not just academically, but simply how she's getting on with her chaotic roommate, and things like that. it's hard to feel powerless to solve your child's problems... i mean, there are things i can do, but ultimately, my daughter has to wrestle with and figure things out on her own.

*****

i'm getting old... we conceive of a lot of things, i conceive a lot of things, including, well, sexuality, in terms of standards that probably no longer apply... or perhaps will no longer apply. the dreams i have with regards to these matters are, frankly, ridiculous, not at all related to my reality. but then again, is that what fantasies are supposed to be? in any case, there's an overwhelming sense of "what's the point," after all this time, that repeatedly intrudes and ridicules what i'd "hope" for... ultimately... i feel at times as though i need to shift my vision of who i am or what role i am to play... a lot of my desires, etc., are frankly a nuisance. they distract me. they fill me with longing. but they are not relevant. and, so long as i am haunted by them, neither am i.

i can't conceive of how things would happen, anyway. my mind's eye is so skeptical of anything, that all such fantasies are fragmented, insipid things, dream figures... nothing convincing. i can't remember that feeling that, perhaps, i used to have, of people being doorways to entire other universes... maybe they are, but those doorways are for other people to "walk" through... for me, people might as well be walls...

i recall how vulnerable i used to be. how silence was so dangerous. words were things you threw at each other to keep yourself from falling into other people. i remember that it was impossible to look into people's eyes (maybe, in a sense, this is still true) because if i did, i would fall into them. or i would disclose something that i didn't intend to... i always needed (i always need) to look upon a surface as i speak my thoughts, to trace the patterns of the tiles on the floor for example, in order to find a - in order to believe in- something solid. it's like the formation of a crystal- how you need to have a seed crystal to formalize a pattern and create a crystalline wave...

at times, i wish i could experience other people. but i only experience people in all-consuming ways. (or maybe i long to be all-consumed, even if i would never ever risk it). in truth, i'm such a routinized, self-contained individual that it would be impossible. i'm a stodgy old man now, and anything truly self-destructive and passionate would be seen as an inconvenience, no longer proper and appropriate for someone like me, someone with stiff knees, and failing eyesight...

*****

i feel somewhat content with the writing i have produced via the writing workshop classes... maybe it's because of the (undeserved) positive praise that my fellow writers have heaped upon me... we always remain positive to each other... but in any case, i have a sense that what i've written has a solidity, a believability... and a point. it is "something." and now, i feel confident of reworking, editing, coming up with new ideas. like today, i came up with an additional scene, set in an imaginary world, called "styx and stones." more thoughts, ideas, to resonate and reinforce some of the themes of the play...

*****

oh well, nothing much more to report. i'm trying to get back into my routines, i'm hoping this fall break will allow me the opportunity to do that... but we'll see.

dream (9/26/2021)

i had a dream in which i was riding some sort of plane or transport somewhere, i think with phil (though i'm not sure right now). anyway, once we arrived, i was trying to get myself together, and took a while to find my shoes. once i did, i was getting our things- not from baggage claim, but from this hallway or something. we had a lot of things. anyway i was pushing this cart full of our stuff... then, there was this point where i approached this place where they were digging out some sort of ancient ship. i could see the shape of the ship (top view) embedded in the side of this orange-rocked hill. the path that i needed to take ran up the right side of this hill- into this little cave. i went in- and discovered what was perhaps the body of a child- i wasn't sure... i found little shoes, and little socks- but it was indeterminate whether those were on the body of a child, or were just placed there... in any case, as i discovered these, someone mentioned (or i realized) that there had been some child missing. below the shoes and socks that i had discovered was a bookshelf, filled with books from some sort of publishing series (with the same patterned covers), only the books ranged from children's titles to more advanced stuff... it seemed like what someone would have picked up at a garage sale, not knowing what to get to help a child learn... and that was pretty much it.

9/1/2021

hello... how are you?

*****

it has been a long month or so. school (elementary school) has started up again. the acupuncture school finished, and then (yesterday) started up again. and we went over to california for a week to drop off my daughter to berkeley. (oh yeah, and during that week, i got to meet and briefly hang out with a couple of old friends, one from college, and one from high school).

the thought i've had (and still have) is that life is short. i've said it before, and you've heard it so many times that it loses its meaning. but i'm here to tell you, from this side of life, that it's true...

*****

there's an episode within cowboy bebop (this now old anime show from the later 1990s, i think from 1996)... one character, faye valentine, had suffered amnesia after some sort of cryogenic sleep... her character post cryo developed into this wry, self-sufficient gambler type... but she could not remember her life from before... anyway, in this one episode, she and her friends discover an old vhs tape that her previous self had recorded, as a message to herself... i guess it's been done before, like in that arnold schwarzenegger movie (total recall)... but this was much better, and far more poignant... because in the video, faye is a teenager, with all the innocence and hopes and dreams of someone on "that side of life," who wants to give a message to "cheer herself on." she comes up with a cheer (and performs it with pom poms), and the message is "don't lose, me!!!" but when she says it, it keeps coming out as "DON'T LOSE ME!!!" ... which is sad, because that innocent hopeful self is gone and forgotten, a part of herself that she can no longer remember...

i sometimes feel that way. i mean, i can remember the past, but only in traces and shadows... sometimes i think the "meat" of the past, the thing that gives it the most content, is probably the most insubstantial part of it, the part that has proven itself to be unreal... the hopes you felt, for instance. the air of possibility... i can sometimes feel it, or sometimes relate... sometimes... but only from the outside. and maybe it's because i've seen a bit on the other side of life, how so many things never came to fruition, despite my cherished belief that they would... i've seen other kinds of happiness, other kinds of fulfillment... and developed other hopes... but sometimes it feels like, in the process of living, we are always leaving behind other pieces of ourselves, other "faye valentines"... and sometimes that is sad.

i also have been reflecting on who we live for. sometimes you don't even realize that you were living for someone else, trying to earn someone else's respect, until they disappear, or die. my grandmother, for instance... i guess, secretly, i had wanted to write stories to earn her respect... maybe a lot of people. my parents, etc. but as i get older, and as the stars slowly wink out from my constellation, i realize... maybe there's no one left that i care to impress... no one connected directly with me, i mean... and i start to think, what's the point? i mean, i portray it as a negative thing, but it's also liberating... i also have realized that this compulsion to write, or tell stories, even if it's futile... by a certain point in life, you have to try, because it's the river you're on, and you can't fight it. maybe all the vicissitudes of life are just realizing that you can't fight what you already are. you can only pretend, or distract, but it will always come back to you, pushing you, wounding you, killing you, even...

i am tired. i am sad. but somehow i take joy in the little things, day to day. i like to talk to people. i like to laugh with my students sometimes (even as they frustrate me)... i like to look at my wife when she doesn't think i am looking. and make my face look weird or stupid (it's not hard). i like to talk to my son, in that way where you are trying to be casual and not too judgmental... all of these things, all of these people, i love... because i know what time and memory will do to them... right now, i love them in a gentle sad way. i think that's the one gift i have right now, is a kind of appreciation of people and things in my life- because it all goes away. even (or especially) because i will have to, i am always, going away...

life is short.

life is short.

life is-