i got a chance to visit my long lost sister today.  my parents asked if i could deliver her driver's license to her working place.  i didn't expect to actually see her; her instructions were to deposit the license in an envelope on the working place door.  but when i walked up to the place, the door was actually open, and there were people inside.  as i called to the people to signal that i was going to leave the license in the envelope, my sister responded and came out from behind some curtains.

she looked thinner than when i last saw her (that's a good thing), and seemed a lot more alive and active.  at first, i had a hard time registering that this person was actually my sister.  sure, i'd seen her in passing, whenever she stopped by my parents' house to visit her kids.  but this seemed to be the first time in a long while that i'd actually seen her "alive."  her words were colorful and funny, but i couldn't really "hear" them, as my eyes were drinking her in.  i recall one observation i had was that her eyebrows and eyes were really starting to resemble my dad's...  kind of a downward turn that made them look inherently and inescapably sad and distant.

anyway, i told her that her youngest daughter was in the car, as we were planning on taking her and my own kids to some art thing at ala moana.  so she asked to see her.  i led her over to the car where everyone was waiting.  as soon as her daughter saw her, she cried out "mommy!" and ran out of the car to hug and hang onto my sister's leg.  it was touching, and kind of sad...

***

i love my sister, and miss her dearly.  her path has always been a harder one (largely, though not entirely, of her own making).  it doesn't seem so long ago that she was that vivacious kid that used to tag along with me wherever i went.  how our paths have diverged!  i feel a deep sense of loss in the distance that time and experience has put between us.  i hope that on some fundamental level, we are still the siblings that we once were...

***

anyway, nowadays, and at the present moment, i am feeling very very tired.  i sleep a lot more than i can afford to, but i still don't seem to get any real rest.  i still long for something to happen in my sleep, for something to restart within my soul...  i still want to feel clean, restored, and ready to engage with the world.  instead, there is this persistent need to hide away and hibernate...

my hands feel vague and warm.  i think when my heart settles low, as it does when i am in this sort of weary, fixated mood, then the energy tends to flow into my hands...  it tingles.  i like this feeling, though i am not sure how effectual it makes me for anything... 

i've been pretty tired at work...  my mind has been preoccupied with family issues.  there is a deep schism in the family at the moment, and it looks to be permanent.  i, for my part, cannot see any way to resolve it, except to hold to the vague promise of time healing all wounds...

i keep wanting to sleep forever...  it seems like rest doesn't come when the world is unsettled like this.  i feel so sad for my parents, for the crap that they have to put up with...  as my father somewhat snidely remarked: kodomo wa sonna mon da ne...  which roughly translates to: "kids...  what can you do?"  my mother, meanwhile, has clung to her recent (at least in my book) faith.  i'm glad she has that, even if, in my somewhat jaded perspective, it seems kind of like a hypocritical clutch of the good book...  no matter what, my parents deserve to be happy, and, failing that, a modicum of psychological comfort...

***

there are large moths that visit the eaves of our house regularly.  far from a sense of foreboding, i like to think that they are ancestors, come to check on us.  when i am on the verge of sleep, i like to imagine their wings, fluttering the dust of their wisdom upon me.  i like to hope that one of them, my grandmother perhaps, will come to me in my dreams and have a chat with me, as they did when we were all in the same living moment together...

if anything, i need the solidity and comfort of their presence now.

***

winter is coming.  in recent nights, it has gone from cool to cold, and it has become harder and harder to wake up and get the day started.  winter is the season of quiescence and a beckoning kind of sleep...  it is the season of seeds frozen in the hard earth.

i recall the white mantle, how it smothered all time, in other places and other lives.  i recall how it seemed to last forever.  i recall walking cold and empty hallways, hearing the echoes of other lives, occupying the space left behind by other people like air within a frozen bubble, probing the boundaries of myself, yearning to be free...

now in this other life that i now lead, i am undeniably content.  there are real lives that love me, and that fill me up with a gratitude and a sense of connection to this world...  and yet, at odd moments, that old lonely meandering returns, like some ghost restless within an empty husk.

i suppose we cannot entirely kill who we were.  who we are.

there is something within me that cannot be reasoned with.  i can call it madness, but is a heavy boulder mad?  is a wild creature mad?  whatever is in me just doesn't do what it's supposed to.  it is something that doesn't "get with the program."  we take it as a matter of course that there are things in the outside world that resist us.  but what about when it is within us?

religion, dreams, the metronome-like flailing of a soul trapped... these are all my possible reactions against the dead-weight of this thing...

i plead with it.  i deaden my eyes in an attempt to see something that might spark a motivation within it.  i sleep, hoping that on the morrow, it will have diminished, and i can move forward, freed from its burden.  sometimes these techniques work... at other times...

***

again, we refer to religion.  not the dead religions.  not the religion that others have pantomimed over the centuries.

religion is a repetition of the movement of binding back the wordless, the ineffable, only on our terms.  we confront a wordless thing in a wilderness we have set aside within ourselves, and without ourselves; we make ourselves lose all volition and control so that it may speak in a voice that cannot be ourselves, but still must be relevant to ourselves.  and in this way we convince those other wordless things within and without to adopt a sacred constellation, and move forwards towards some vaunted purpose.

in my sacred constellation, there are real people (most now gone), and possibly unreal beings (or possibly real interpretations of unreal beings), and stubborn principles.  my grandmother, my sister, all of the teachers and friends that i have left behind, miki nakayama, the path through the wildnerness, the poverty of the wanderer, the life of "found" art and blessings, ... and an idea of blood and family, and an unspoken oneness with all people and things.

i speak and plead with aspects of this constellation to get myself to move, but there is a part of me that remains unconvinced.  unconvince-able.  invincible.  i am helpless before it.  my recourse is, as always, to be powerless before it...

***

there is a current schism in my family, and i fear that it will be permanent.  perhaps the faults were always already there, and it only took a small trigger to bring those cracks to the surface.  i apparently tried to bridge these fractures, but perhaps i didn't try too hard; and perhaps, deep down, i didn't even really care.

***

i had an insight, perhaps a flash of self-pity.  there are the winners, and there are the losers.  the winners are the ones with the voice and the power.  they steal the voice of the losers, and step on the faces of the losers to keep them downtrodden.  the daily life of the loser is a tragedy, but it is awash in countless days of tragedy.  and the world looks upon the loser, and says, ah, but that is their lot.

so when, on a fluke, the dog has his day, oh what a mournful day it is for the winner, to feel, for a moment, a reversal of fortune!  and how the world mourns with him!  and how the world comes to look upon the loser with contempt, for it is the loser's one day of victory that has brought sorrow upon the winner!

the loser does not want to play the game.  but perhaps the refusal to play is in itself a ploy, predetermined or not.  the loser has become so accustomed to not playing "with heart", that it is difficult to even know if he was a heart left; if he truly cares about something to put himself at stake.  the loser has adopted a wisdom, that there is something in the world more important than being right.  he does not do things to obtain victory over another; he simply wants- what?  and would he fight for it?

***

the flailing is dying down.  a quiescence must fall upon the soul.  it must play possum another night, and perhaps on the morrow find the bonds that resist him loosened or untied.

***

i will love this world.  i will embrace it.  i will hold this moment.  it will burn me away, but i will hold to it.  and perhaps one day, i will disappear.  there will be no me, and no control, and no resistance either.  there will be...

something missing

something missing.

in ruts
there are found pieces
placed or shed or even
violently disavowed
but in not one
what i miss.

eye and tongue
drifts the
flavorless glaze
spread thick
a pushing tick
of time
drags
another identical
interval.

the possibility of beginning again

it hasn't been a pleasant fall break.  on monday and tuesday, my son was sick with a high fever and vomiting.  on wednesday, there was a "true break," and i was able to take my kids and two of the cousins out to fish in the ocean off of heeia pier.  but today, my daughter caught the same cold that my son had, and was in bed all day.  on those days when my kids were sick, i stayed home with them.  i also have been feeling some kind of malaise of late, with frequent bouts of diarrhea (i know, tmi) and a lethargy that i've been finding hard to shake...

there is a kind of despair that you feel when you realize your break is more than half over, and that you haven't taken advantage of it yet.

***

on the way to work this evening (my other teaching job), i realized that i would need to restart my outlook.  i think i have been neglecting to do this lately, partially because it becomes harder and harder to do the more time passes, and your outlook becomes smothered over by the patina of rust and decay and habit that accrues with experience.  but it is vital and necessary; a necessary fiction, if you will.

there is a (cynical) song called "clean" by depeche mode that reflects the conflict between a jaded "knows better" perspective and the need to "start again."  i think the lyrics go something like this:

"clean, you know what i mean, an end to the tears and the in between years and the troubles i've seen."

"white wedding" by billy idol is another song that reflects this feeling, the need for a "fresh" start...

as i've grown older, i've come to realize the fiction of the restart, and no longer commit it with the conviction that i once had.  you can't really escape your mistakes, or, for that matter, the mistakes of others, or even (outside of the realm of "mistakes," which betrays the assumption of a "should" and a volition which may not even exist) just plain circumstances.  you can't escape your obligations, your inescapable debts to the world...  someone will visit you to make the collections, if not tomorrow, then another day...

BUT.  there also comes a point when it is difficult to function without pretending ignorance or oblivion of circumstances.  and at those times, it is vital to practice the skill of forgetting and saying, "once upon a time," with a tacit understanding that that time is now.

the life of an organism is filled with such restarts: sleeping, shitting, bathing...  why is it so strange that the life of the soul, the narrative of the individual, also require such restarts?  do we assume that the self is a smooth evolving, that it too does not require times when it empties itself, or loses its mind, or loses its way?

***

remember this: the capacity to forget is almost more important than the ability to remember...  and it is not that "memory" and "forgetting" are a duality.  rather, it all comes down to how things are "held."  there is a blur between memory and oblivion.  it's not an on-off switch.  in a way, we cannot forget what we remember, and we cannot remember (bring back) what we have forgotten (what has passed on)...  perhaps in this (and i'm not alone in this observation), we come

there is something more important than being right.

***

i don't want to play at this game called life.  it isn't fun.  it's tiresome.

there are people in this world who cannot abide by anyone having fun "at their expense," i.e. winning even once.  if you claim one meager victory at the game, then they will trounce you 10 times in a row to let you know that it was a complete fluke.

someone did this to me throughout my childhood.  and the world let this person do it.  and the world loved this person as he did it.  because that is what the world loves.  a winner.  a go-getter.  i did not hate this person for it.  i, like the rest of the world, admired him...

growing up for me meant that i had to find another game, a secret game, and pretend not to play it.  i always knew that once i started to become good at something, that someone would come along and destroy it, just to show that i didn't deserve it.  this meant, for the most part, that i was a shadow of a person, with glints of genius and creativity (as ALL people have), who kept swallowing and swathing it all in darkness, because i was afraid of being seen.  being seen meant that someone would smother out the little burning embers.  being seen was the end of the world.

i did not know i was wounded.  the world teaches you that you must never speak of your wounds.  the irony was that those who wounded me would complain of pretended offenses, and because their voices were so clear, despite the hypocrisy, they would garner attention and aid.  but whenever i attempted (or even now attempt) to speak of wounds which damaged me so much that my eyes could not see them, nor my voice whisper of them, i am castigated for feeling sorry for myself.  and so, the offenses of the past were buried, as though they never happened, and any attempts to unearth them seemed, in the eyes of the world, self-pity and lies...

another irony was that, in concealing myself, i had in essence become the hater that i sought to escape.  i had swallowed the knife of the one who had wounded me, and cut myself deeper than anyone else could...  thus, in moments when i should have been happy, a part of me, that part of me that i had created, carefully carved out my shins with skilled slices, undermining my own stilted supports...  "i hate myself" replaced "they hate me."

***

i am a shadow person.  the world i live in is occupied by shadows.  my past is a blur of shadows.  muted impressions.  deep within me is a hatred of this life of shadows, a yearning for the clarity that i sense others have.  but at the same time, there is this fear of that clarity, for it would likely destroy everything that i have grown up to be, shade upon shade upon shade...

like a shadow, i derive my form and sustenance from others.  i say i love people and support them, but perhaps what i really mean is that i need to have a role and identity by showing the world i am a good person by helping them.  i am the beetle or centipede beneath the pavement, claiming that i shoulder the burden of it, when in reality, it is my concealment, and it is i who derive all the benefit...  how i hate myself as i realize this!  how i wish someone would smash me out of existence...

writing, a shadow play of words (shades of meaning), is in itself little more than another attempt to garner acceptance through concealment.  it is a longing for a lover/reader who will reconstruct in their mind's eye a real person out of these echoes and whispers and shadows that i write.  "believe in me, help me believe in anything, cause i want to be someone to believe."

***

i say i love people.  i loved my grandmother.  and yet perhaps i did not love her so much.  why then do i not live in the clarity and conviction of the path that she laid out for me?  why do i not honor her wishes?  i continue to live in the shadows, perhaps deeper than before.

i claim i love my sister.  and yet, i allow circumstance and time to dull my memory of her.  perhaps it is all my fault that she has committed yet another crime.  hell, she is hardly even a person to me any more...

***

what is love?

i imagine it to be an invisible embracing of all that is.  i repeatedly cling to this notion that it is blind.  it is blind, not in the sense that it does not see, but in the sense that it does not attach to what it sees; it looks beyond the eyes of the world into the truth of the heart.  deep within that abyss, in a place that no person can see themselves, love can go, and can unlock secrets and redeem everything.  love believes that i am a good person, and that i can do good things, despite everything.  despite the mistakes i've made, and the promises i have not been able to fulfill.

in moments when i am desperate (and they come nowadays, deep in the night, when the footsteps of time echo within me, and I am not certain whether I should panic because I can't settle, or because I always settle too much), i call on, i look for, love.  i find it in fragments of people and time.  in reality, those times may have passed, and those people may have turned away, but i try to remember those moments anyway.  they are all i have to cling to.

god for me is just like me in the sense that s/he has been so shrouded in the shadows and rags of hypocrisy in the eyes of this world, that i almost cannot believe in a fixed, institutionalized vision of him/her any more.  churches have become hypocritical precisely because they think they see god and claim a righteousness based upon that image.  it is in this sense that the dispossessed and downtrodden are closer to god than the church, for their eyes are broken.  god can only be seen and called upon by those who "cannot see" any longer, who cannot believe that any man-made, fixed conception ever is a satisfactory god.  there are too many cracks to slip through, too many ways for a man and a soul to be unacceptable and unforgivable.  if god truly is what s/he is, that which embraces and creates all, then there can never be a way to speak of him/her without limiting him/her, and god's salvific and redemptive power.  you will help him, but not her?  you will love that person, but not this?  you will allow this one to win, and be righteous, and that one to fall away?

NO.

there is something more important (and fundamental) than being right.

***

tonight, in the midst of the hissing winds outside, i will "pray" for shadows to fall away.  i will pray for love to find me, wordless and plain, a good person with a good heart, who can do simple things to uncover the goodness in the world around him...

it is late (in many senses)...

today, i went home early from work because i felt sick. i woke with a headache this morning, and as i went on with my work tasks, it gradually gnawed itself into a feeling of malaise and nausea. during lunch, i ate a few bites of lunch, felt like it wouldn't stay, and basically just sat back with my eyes closed, trying to shut everything out so that i would restore (i.e. control-alt-delete) back to normalcy...

i came home, and drifted in and out of sleep, hoping to come back, so i could get back on track with work. it didn't really happen... but i am feeling better, thanks for asking (haha).

***

this evening, as i worked with my son on his kidbiz, i thought about what my son would become. was this current level the ceiling of his capabilities? i don't like to think of such things, but at times, reality, or one of its more pessimistic gophers and go-aheads, will sneak in and whisper things to me...

oh well. i have come to understand one thing. my son is a wonderful person. i love who he is right now. i am uncertain as to his future, but i am content that he is someone who will always do good in this world. my job as his parent is to work with him, yes, to become something better than he presently is, but it is also (and i will strive to never forget this!) to love him as he is, appreciate him as he is, in this present moment, because he is like a fleeting beautiful thing right now, and i don't want to miss out...

perfection, the better path, "knowing better", "doing better", etc. this is the so-called will of heaven, the stamp of destiny. but heaven, in terms of the chinese version, knows very little of the vicissitudes of life on earth; and likely cares even less... for some people, perhaps with a more vigorous, cruel and disciplined heart, it has been possible to forge a clearing and manifest "heaven's will on earth," some rare and perfect thing, a representation of what is possible stolen from the vague fog of impossibilities...

but as for me... yes, at times, i will be swayed into inspiration by such things. perhaps at times i will seek to follow intimations of such pathways to light and perfection. after all, (haha) i am only human, right? but always, there is the voice of the world, the callings of IMperfection and suffering. there are the matters of old accounts to be settled, of endless old and new indebtedness. i live and breathe in this world, not in some rarefied spotlight just beneath the clouds... i choose to be here, because i understand that love is here, and it is earned through honoring its bonds, even when they take you far away and through unimaginable hardships... and love and the truth it engenders, love is far more real and compelling than anything that heaven screams to me...

i will not be ashamed, neither for me or for any of my own. so long as i am real to myself, and real to those i love, i will have made my mark, even though i do not scar or disturb the implacable heavens in the least.

***