12/28/2021

as each day passes, the dreaded approach of work gets closer... i enjoy this idyllic time away from those hard responsibilities... abundant food. but nothing to do except what i want to do. i get to explore my interests. i get to relax into myself.

last night, i had a pretty freaky dream. it was mainly freaky because i spoke (shouted) out loud in my sleep (according to my wife). there was this room and i saw a screen or something, and a shadow across it. i had a sense that there was a great evil that had possessed the screen. so i and two other people, i believe my wife was one of them, were about to enter the room. i told them that we had to say this prayer or something, in order to exorcise the evil spirits. so when i walked into the room, i was full of fear, but i was trying to shout the words of this prayer. and i could feel my voice get muted by the shadows, so i struggled to say things louder... and just as i was about to repeat everything, i guess i woke up- or maybe was woken up. my wife was saying that i had shouted in my sleep...

i just finished watching salman rushdie's masterclass. he had a lot of great insights. one thing he said was that you should decide whether you are a minimalist or maximalist. i guess i would class myself as a minimalist. he also said that you should decide whether or not you're a planner, or whether you like to improvise. i would say that i rather like knowing where i'm going, as long as it doesn't deaden the journey, if you get my drift. another thing that he said was that you should get close to the bull. i suppose he got this line from ernest hemingway, who used to watch a lot of bull fights. what he meant was that, when you write, you should do something dangerous. dangerous in terms of subject matter, or maybe artistic danger, meaning you are attempting to do something highly incongrous or challenging... and finally, he said something about how you should just get rid of things that aren't working. don't really try to fix things. just get rid of them...

maybe that last would be helpful, if only it didn't lead to me just ditching projects...

*****

i still hate my brother. i'm trying to meditate on it. but it's not like it leads to any sort of solution, in that there's no way for me to "feel good" about it. it's the same way with republicans in general, i suppose. i mean, perhaps at one time in the past, there was a way to appreciate their views, their conservatism, their stances on freedom of business, etc. but now, it's simply wrongheaded, and dangerous, and there is no reasoning with them. so i can't just "feel good" about them, or let it go. i mean, i can refuse to take responsibility for everyone, and i can simply focus on my little corner of the universe- and being good and kind to those "under my watch." but somehow, the hatred has a way of insinuating itself into everything, polluting everything. i can hold the feelings, and my reactions to them, in a dispassionate way... and when i focus on the "moment," i can sometimes divorce myself from the "meanings" that people and ideas are supposed to hold... i think, at times, that that is the relativistic versus the absolute understanding in buddhism (and the nondual understanding that they are not in opposition to each other)... i worry at times that going too far in blanking my feelings will make me lose touch with people. i worry that i am just not compassionate or caring, and that i do things out of an idea of caring, but not out of genuine feeling. i worry at times that i don't feel much of anything any more. and that becomes problematic for writing, because if you don't feel, then you can't write and make anyone else feel. you'd be faking it all the time.

*****

maybe i am faking it all the time.

*****

from the absolute perspective, there is no point to life... in that there is nothing that i can do that will really have lasting (eternal) significance. but i do them anyway. it's like that line from the soul asylum: "you can't believe in yourself. you can't believe in anyone else. so why sit and wait for the new world to begin?"

*****

for me, perfection comes in feeling the current of life run through you. it comes in isolated moments, in blind tasks, that i can imbue myself into. there must be a tension, or rather, a pressure, in the flow. in order to feel it, there has to be that pressure/tension. if you withdraw the goalposts, and make the end interminable, and you eliminate the simple point, then things go slack, and there is this feeling that "anything goes." i don't like that. i distrust it. i find it messy. some people might say that there is liberation in that, but i guess i'm a planner, and i guess i like to know where it is i'm going... despite my longing and wish that i were a romantic individual, i really am not. my only strength is i like to please people, and will immerse myself in the pleasure of the moment- the blindness of it, the feel of the skin of another's soul... the current of a dance... and maybe i am that way with life as well, when i can feel it.

i like- or i idealize- the moment when i can make someone happy. unquestionably happy. but i don't necessarily think about "what's best" for someone...

*****

what is it i'd like to say? i'm not sure...

12/21/2021

it has been quite a year... i feel tired and overwhelmed. i just want to drown in the simplicity of every day life. there are always things to take care of. there are always things to worry about... lately, i've begun to feel the weight of time... like, i recall thinking of investing in the start of a project, and then worrying about the regret i would feel in a year, or two years, or more, years wasted of a life rushing to its end. somehow as i get older, the activities that i partake in have more weight. or perhaps they should. or perhaps they shouldn't. but in any case, the question has arisen. when you've got less gas in the tank, then you really start to think about where you're going, and whether it really is worth going there.

in my last writing, i wrote about how my heart is incremental. and i think it is... i long for a quick stroke of brilliance, like writing in some luminescent, silvery ink, a wound across space and time that would be immediately recognizable and palpable. but i am not like that, i don't write like that... and yet, i was thinking that art is not life, and that if i am not like that, then perhaps i need to really meditate and peruse my thoughts, and distill them to a heightened purity that can then be expressed... that's the idea, anyway. to be honest, i haven't really worked that hard on my writing. there have been so many- SO MANY- other things to worry about...

i think- as i often do nowadays- about sexuality and intimacy. it is a funny thing. it's an analog to life in general, i feel. if you don't feel it, if you don't feel turned on, then you simply can't play. you aren't interested in playing... if the river of life doesn't fill you with its current, if you don't get pulled and pushed and tossed by it, then... in a sense, you aren't alive. and anything you say or do- well, your words will be "dead in the water" so to speak, heavy stones that aren't moved, and do not move... you can't turn someone else on, if you aren't already as well... i also thought about that aspect. to sit apart, uninvolved, to feel a kind of quiescence and peace and stability- these are things that are desired, in this chaotic world- but at the same time, that sort of stance would negate the possibility of participating in life... at least in a way that is authentic.

and as i get older, i realize the futility of that, the sexuality of it all (which, as i said, is an analog for other things). it is a dying light, the last flickering of a flame in the winds of winter. and yet, i cling to it. for what alternative is there? i know, there will come a time when it will all snuff out. and then it will only be the pale shifting insipid light of memories, the ignus fatuus, that will glow about and above me like the stinking false fires of the dead... but in this moment, i will live. and i will help others to live. to feel life, to feel alive... i am still on this side of the divide, and i will burn it up with all the passion that i can muster...

*****

i have been thinking again about amphibians. creatures with "two lives," that can live in water and out of water. but instead of being an advantage, these creatures are half alive. they are never master of their element, but captives of it. they can never leave water fully behind. and instead of dominating both realms, they are prey in both realms. true, their life cycle embodies a complexity that is absent in other species. but what gain is there in that complexity?

in the same sense, we have words like "ambiguity" or "ambivalence." to be two is not to be better. if anything, these result in a cancellation of motion. a lack of clarity.

when i speak of my heart, i understand that i am, like a frog, an amphibian. i understand two realms. i feel two currents. but instead of gaining anything from this, it always makes of me an insubstantial being... i cannot be purposive without questioning purpose; i cannot "simply be" without feeling i am wasting my time and life. there is no simplicity of being in me, there is always, always, always, a relentless questioning and mockery...

i wish i could convey this in a way that would be understandable and "clear," but in every expression there is that ambiguity that both is an expression and betrayal of the message.

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.