dream: 1/17/2022

there were fragments of a dream. over all, it seemed a happy one. there was some posting or something put out by the mililani high school track/cross country team, and there were a few photos/videos with me in it (i ran track in my freshman year, cross country in my sophomore year, and quit - dramatically - from track in my sophomore year). some of them were absurd. like there was one where the entire team of runners was hooked up like horses to some roman chariot, and horace (our coach) was kind of whipping us all along... things like that. anyway, i decided to share some of this with my friends on facebook. only, i was somehow able to enter into their real lives to do this. i may have attempted to share this with people like clifton, but what i remember was visiting greg fastabend. for some reason, he was in the middle of college, perhaps into his sophomore year (whereas i had not started college yet, for some reason). i was giving him perspective- strange, because in the dream, i was the same age- something about how quick college went, and asked him questions about where he was going to in the future. he made some comments about how he was going to be some sort of engineer, and work with [blank] (i can't remember). anyway, i showed him the pictures/videos, and he smiled for a time. then he started to get some things together to give to me, a whole bunch of old robotics stuff, and a bandolier (sp?) of tiny computer cameras...

that was it.

i've been kind of mopey lately. not really working hard at anything. trying to fall asleep a lot of the time. i think i'm still recovering from my stupid illness last week at work, as well as just trying to keep up with the incredible complexities of my work... i'd like to write, secretly, but i want it to be on my terms- like this cute detective work sort of thing, where i keep various notebooks, and write things that can always be considered progress, no matter what- no writing complete dead ends, or dead prose, or anything... always on the up and up. happy thoughts.

i love my wife, but i am so pathetic at planning anything for her. it was her birthday yesterday. tonight, we took her swimming and then we ate hot pot. simple stuff, but she seemed happy. i told her, as she was half asleep, that i wanted to be with her forever... that she was my best friend... and she murmured in her sleep happily. i was telling the truth. i cannot conceive of life without her. she is - i don't know- the river that flows my life along. without it, without her, i would dry up and die.

1/8/2022

i came upon an epiphany of sorts... first of all, let me say it's been a crazy couple of days. immediately after my first day with students, i developed a fever with chills and bodyaches. i got tested. it took them about 24 hours to get my result, which was negative. but in the meantime, i was practically delirious with fever dreams. it felt like my brain was boiling, and thoughts were seething upwards in meaningless repetitive cycles. i know i was mouthing off a lot of it, as though i were trying to let the "steam" escape...

so one of the things i thought about was, of course, how much i hate my brother. and i still do. but i realized something. whenever you hate someone you split the universe in half. and that universe includes you. the way it works is this. you start to look at the qualities of the person you hate. for example, for my brother, it is his selfishness, his greed, his arrogance... basically, the way that his feelings take up all of the air in the room... some of those qualities exist in everyone, including myself. so when i "hate" him, i also split away those aspects within myself, because i find them unacceptable...

what that led to, in me, was this sort of split current. on the one hand, there was the life that i wanted, with all the beautiful people... and on the other hand, there was this lesser place that i inhabited, playing the helpless, hapless "nice guy," who cannot for the life of himself admit his inner wants or desires- he would literally disappear in a puff of smoke if he ever dared mention anything relating to these things... this in turn led to this mentality that the only way "in" to that other world, that beautiful world that he so "deserved" (this, too, is a construct; there is no deserving anything) was for someone to see in him the value that he could not advertise himself. in other words, for me, a woman was someone who could "see" me, who would work to "translate" my own inscrutable heart, and would liberate me... somehow it had to be a woman. maybe it has to do with mother figures, etc., but in the world of men, and "brotherly" friendship, you earned respect through silence and what you did. so i had no problems getting by there. sure, i wasn't the braggart and blowhard that my brother was, but i could survive in that world...

it's a trap, of course. you cannot adopt that role, you cannot disallow yourself from being selfish and acting on your own wants, and be whole. the "nice guy" always lives frustrated, because he cannot break beyond the bounds of his own self-constrained "niceness." no one, not even angels, have the temerity and perseverance to "love" such a person. why bother, when he will never see himself truly, because he has always already blinded himself to himself?

it becomes like a koan. you have an irreconcilable difference. a conceptual gap that you are straddling. what is there to do?

*****

i still hate my brother, of course, for the things he did to my sister. one day, i will sit with my sister and have her recount exactly what he did to her. and i will try to learn from her how she goes through her life, day by day. maybe if i understood that, then i wouldn't feel so angry. or maybe i would feel more angry, who knows... but at least i can see that the qualities i paint my brother with, well, they also paint me, so i shouldn't be so absolutist in my strokes.

1/4/2022

today was the second day of work since winter break. our school was lucky in that we haven't had any kids yet. it's tomorrow that the shit hits the fan, so to speak. it goes without saying that i'm frustrated, both with our "independent" (read: republican) mayor and the impotent, no-good superintendent. both of them are just looking the other way, and telling everyone to go about their business as though nothing is wrong. news flash: we are doubling our cases about once every 3 or 4 days. we are in the steepest rise we have ever been, even when we shut everything down, even when we went to distance... and now, we are to do nothing?

okay, enough about that...

i've been going through my routines, and have just about got things to where they were before i stopped due to impossible work demands... and, of course, work is about to start again. maybe it's a losing proposition, this ideal i have, these goals i have... but whatever... i'm thinking that writing should be more than just a part of my routine, it has to get deeper in my blood if i'm to progress at it. i've been thinking that i need to keep little notebooks with me all the time so i can write down my ideas. i've been thinking that i need to just sit and write, even or especially when i am snarled into a narrative corner (which i feel i have been)... liberation comes at odd moments. like, for the kipapa story, this idea of writing from the perspective of dead people, not dead as in the ancient hawaiians dead, but dead as in recent dead, sort of trapped in limbo, making odd comments about the living, with a quiet desperation to get out of their predicament, to go somewhere... else. this is possibly a good idea, because the way i was trying to write it, with the living, and some inane story about ophelia and so on, was just getting too ridiculous... the dead can make fun of the living. the living take themselves too seriously...

and for the kappa story (hey, i just realized, kipapa is just kappa with an extra i in it)... i had this idea of the fish boy. something about why fish never have names. it's because no one really considers fish to be living beings. they are somewhere above plants, but only very slightly above plants. and we don't really name plants, do we? fish basically exist. they don't "do" anything. and so we consider that they don't have souls or spirits, in the same sense that dogs or bunny rabbits or rats do. even lizards have it better. i'd even say some arachnids have the privilege of a name... but anyway, i wanted to tie this into the boy, who feels like a fish in that sense... and something about how he IS like a fish, in that he is a natural swimmer. not a great swimmer, not a fast swimmer, like his stinking brother. after all, his brother "makes a big splash" in the water, he punishes the water, he makes it his bitch, and therefore he moves through it. there is little art in what he does. it is force and subjugation...

i think i got the idea of a swimming scene. i got the idea from "march comes in like a lion," i believe the 10th episode, wherein the main character talks about swimming, and swimming, and swimming, and swimming... a metaphor for his lonely and solitary struggle to progress through life, to find some land upon which to rest. that was very moving for me, to see him struggle, the repetition of the lines "and swimming..." i could feel the exhaustion. the longing for something solid. it somehow resonated with what i intended to write, about a person who needs to find a place for himself, a place to rest...

*****

i think, in my good moments, that i have faith in the process. the process means you just stick with it. and it means doing other things. it means sometimes just cleaning up. but all the time, a part of you is thinking about it, a part of you is mulling it over, turning things over in your head. and the process means that you are not escaping from it by doing other tasks, it means that you are constantly invested in it... your soul is tied to it, in a way. not in a serious way, not in a forceful way. but in a way that is abiding. it is, in a sense, like zen. because zazen is all about sitting, and abiding, with questions. holding questions, becoming questions, breathing questions... desperate for completion, but not desperate enough to lose hold of the question...

which reminds me: i need to meditate. i said so earlier, because i do have issues. anger issues. rage issues. forgiveness issues... unhealthy thoughts... 

dream - 1/2/2022

i had a few dreams this early morning.

in one of them, i was a newbie police officer. i was walking through some sort of encampment on a beach. one of the first things i saw were two white teens (not just white but literally pasty white). they were throwing rocks at other people right in front of me. i decided i couldn't let that slide, so i arrested one of them. i put his arms behind his back and tried to handcuff him. at one point during this struggle, this woman in lawyerly clothes came up to me, and, shoving a paper in my face, basically stated that the boy had some kind of disability, and that i had just done significant damage to his self-esteem by arresting him in front of all of his peers... i apologized, and let the boy go. i think i explained that it was the first thing i had seen that day, and that i acted based only on what i saw... i walked through the rest of that encampment feeling a bit wounded. in the darkness of the tent, i saw a boy sitting on a recliner upside down. it wasn't anything to make any sort of fuss about, but i felt that there was some kind of erosion of respect around me, that people felt that they could now do any and everything around me...

in another part of the dream, which was a mere fragment, i was sitting watching some sort of star wars related film with jw- a person who i had discovered, over the past few years, is a rabid trump supporter. in any case, i just sat there watching, as she made educated comments or anticipated the dialogue word for word,..

i am struggling to, but can't recall much of the third portion of the dream.

it is a grey rainy morning... not a good day for gardening... 

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.