resentment

every morning, to wake to the same nightmare.

***

last night, my wife and i talked about resentment.  she had just learned that a classmate (to be specific, someone a couple of years her senior) had passed away.  now, my wife is a very kind person, but upon hearing this news, she was completely unsympathetic; she had no inclination to attend the funeral, despite urges from her friend, who argued that she (my wife) knew the family.  she told a story about how, on the very first day of high school band, this person (who was a senior at the time) offered my wife a seat he had prepared just for her.  after sitting on it for a few moments, the seat fell apart and collapsed, to the accompaniment of sniggers and laughter from this person and his friends...

after the call, my wife spoke about how she felt guilty for not caring about this person's death.  i thought she was being ridiculous.  the man had painted himself as an ass with that thoughtless act committed so long ago in the past, and whether he had changed or done good things in the meantime, in my wife's understanding, he would always be defined by that act.  it had nothing to do with forgiveness.

i cited people in my past, who had done cruel and judgmental things to me, and how, to me, they had boxed themselves with the shit of their actions, and that the onus of responsibility for their actions lied with them, NOT ME, to redeem them.  i was, quite frankly, surprised at the ferocity of my passion on this issue.  there were/are A LOT of people whom i could cite.  like my wife, middle school was quite a cruel time for me.  in many respects, i still haven't moved on from that time.  it has influenced my outlook on people in general.

to wit: i am no longer surprised (or as surprised) when people are assholes.  in fact, in many cases, it is the baseline expectation.  i have learned to recognize a kind of soul, perhaps someone who is weird or outcast by nature, and see in it a kindred spirit.  i have concurrently learned to (by nature) distrust anyone who is "cool" or "together" or "judgmental" (in any of those combinations), without a touch of understanding...

once there was a boy with a hole in his head. it was not in an obvious place, where everyone would see it. and it did not interfere with his major life functions, like his heartbeat or his breathing. no, it was a rather subtle hole. the boy was not even aware of its existence, until someone (or should i say, something) pointed it out to him. he had, nonetheless, been made aware of its effects. from the beginning, he noticed a difference between himself and everyone around him. for instance, when other children his age were effusive and brimming with life, expressing themselves through their words and actions, he was not. he had no obvious thoughts or feelings about anything. when questions were pointedly directed at him (for there is nothing that makes others so uncomfortable as silence), then he struggled to draw something out from within himself. sometimes, he would succeed in placating his audience by saying some words that he had somehow managed to remember from somewhere else, and on the rare occasion, he would succeed in coming up with something entirely original. but when he was true to himself and to the world, he had to admit, sadly, that he did not know. he did not know a single thing. you see, this hole drained away all of the boy's thoughts and feelings. now, he did not run empty all the time. experiences and words seemed to fill the emptiness within him periodically. but inevitably, inexplicably, these thoughts would seem to dry and dessicate within, leaving empty husks that disintegrated with less than a touch. one might argue (as he had, quite often) that this hole took away his soul. but even he had to admit that it did not, because there was within him something that still stirred and railed at his situation. there was something that made him curse himself, and apologize profusely to others; he was, for all intents and purposes, like a boy beside himself, ...

another day...  last night, after finally replacing a broken garbage disposal unit, i thought of yet another way i fucked up in college...  how, in the fledgeling days of my attempt at starting up a "japan society", i had the bright idea of showing anime, and the movie i chose was "legend of the overfiend", a brutally raunchy film about demons raping women.  i have no idea what was in my head at the time...  i guess my ideas about sexuality, even at that age, were so- naive.  i can think of a few other times when i sort of went off the deep end (or shallow, perhaps, with regards to this topic) about sex.  going to some winter study seminar about, i believe, heroes, and in some obscure discussion, trying to articulate views about how the sex act itself represented the different roles of the sexes (i know, the very description itself sounds misogynistic at the very least)...

i truly don't understand myself...

sometimes i wish i could've given in to advances.  there were a few times that women were (i realize now) practically throwing themselves at me, but for some reason, i couldn't.  i had pretty set ideas about who i would "fall in love with" (jeez, even now, i can't say "fuck"), and the proper order of things.  so, even when a girl asked me, with a lilting tease in her voice, if i wanted her cherry (-while eating ice cream...), or if another girl came to my room to study, but instead only wanted to lie on my bed (-said she was tired after walking across campus), i just sort of played along with the surface interpretation.  didn't go deeper.  honestly (?) didn't see an opportunity.  sometimes i wish i could go back to myself and give myself a flying kick to the head.

it's not that i regret it so much.  the way things turn out is the way things turn out.  it's just that i can't understand it, how i could've been so- such a blockhead...

***

i truly understand, on a daily basis, what a hollow thing life is.  if you are not initiated into the struggle to recreate yourself daily, even moment by moment, not in an idealistic, existential sort of way, but in a desperate sense, to meet basic responsibilities, particularly for the sake of those around you, whom you purport to love with all of your heart...  well, you probably just think what i write about is just pathetic horse shit.  it's reminiscent of discussions surrounding people who are depressed...  when you're in it, it is hard to even explain what a terrible chore it is to even do the simplest things; the way your perspective on life is colored some awful shade that you can't shake; to others around you, out walking on the surface of the so-called real world, you probably look mad, or at the least, pathetic...

i invent things to do.   i guess that's one of my attempts at a feeling of normalcy.  but i move slow.  it is sometimes like i have a bowl of water on my head (cued tie in to kappa!), and i have to keep ripples from disturbing the surface of that water.  i move slow, and ease into tasks...  i hate decisions, especially in rapid succession, i like just following my momentum, and perhaps breaking down obstacles...  things that are clear, the path of least resistance, all of that stuff.  just "being myself" is a myth, or a lie, or something i'm just not sure of, just not sure how to be...  the absolute buddhist perspective would just bracket this self-doubt and say that that is my realized expression of myself.  but, relatively speaking, i'm a bucket of bolts without nuts, rattling loosely, barely held together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp1ZGW9MdbI

it is midnight.

i am an awful father.  my daughter, on her first trip alone (with aunt and uncle) to las vegas, was hysterical off the plane, crying how much she missed us.  i at first tried to be consoling, but as that didn't work (and as she kept saying she couldn't hear me), i started to scold her.  now, i realize what a bad idea it was.  my wife has already talked to her, and given her a more reasoned, compassionate response.  but i am left wondering and worrying.  and thinking: what's wrong with me!?

what if it is the last time i talk to her?

***

frankly, there is something very wrong with me.

i woke up, and my first thought (or one of the first) was that of quantum leap, and how great it would be to be the guy from quantum leap, always redeeming lives... but then, what a sucky thing it was to have a memory, and to always know that your storyline, where you SHOULD be, is where you aren't...  i suppose that is the tension inherent in the story.  you cannot, for the life of you, get rid of that nagging doubt that you aren't doing what you are supposed to.

i then had the thought of a man trapped by a sinister creator.  like, he is in a dark room, and he is missing one of his organs- or better yet, a key piece of his brain, the piece that allows him to be fully thinking or fully human...  he walks and talks like a real person, but when he digs himself out, and tries to operate normally, there is a defect in him that is only apparent to others, but not to himself.  maybe he farts frequently but silently, so that others get paralyzed by his noxious odor, but he himself cannot detect it...  maybe he has some sort of tic, or his eyes do a strange dance without his knowing...  anyway, he is basically the punchline of some cosmic joke.

because that is what i often feel like.  the butt of a joke.

and the very thing that makes the joke perfect is someone who is so earnest, and so well-intentioned, being the punchline.  what better sap?  after all, someone who would wail would just be pathetic; someone who would rail against circumstances would just deliver more punitive measures...  but this guy?  he just pretends nothing is wrong, and tries to go about his business!

... i often feel like this.  i mean, they tell you to pray to god, etc. etc. etc., and in my moments of solitude, i ask him questions, i tell him concerns... i even tell him all the good and wonderful things, what i am grateful for, etc. but it never erases this nagging feeling that keeps me up at night, that there is something fundamentally wrong.  it is a worry.  a doubt...  something that is detectable by all but the person involved.  some brutally funny cosmic joke.

***

i hate judgment, although i probably commit it unawares.  i want to be the one who is patient, who cares... but the world seems to have put me in roles where i cannot necessarily be that...

***

well, to all those i offend, i apologize.  i am working on it.  and i am working on my daily quantum leap, to try to figure out what the fuck i'm supposed to do to emerge from this daily trap feeling an inch closer to the feeling of smug self-satisfaction that i believe is my god-given right, the feeling that allows me to sleep through the night, the sleep of the just... instead of always waking up at this time with wasted, vaporous dreams that recycle the endless, purposeless machinations of a mind that is broken?  where are the dreams of possibilities?  of vistas?
***
to my daughter, until i speak to you again, i am so sorry.  i was trying to be expedient, and to help those watching you, by pacifying you in the means that i thought would work.  but i miss you, terribly if i must admit it...  i love you, and i hope you are alright, and happy.  that is what i would wish.  always.  what i would wish for all people, in my world, if it weren't for me getting in the way...

today, in the late afternoon/evening, i had a massive headache as i was sitting in the yard, weeding.  i eventually had to take some ibuprofen and lie in the tub, trying to follow the threads of pain and make everything go vague.  there were waves of nausea (as there always is, particularly after i take any medication for the headache), and bouts of hypersalivation, but fortunately, the medication stayed down.  i went to the couch in the "artroom," and just lay there, waiting for the pain to "go vague."  i didn't eat dinner, and didn't move from the couch until now.

i suppose i eventually slid into a dream, though i can't remember the origin of it.  i was a high school teacher.  i had, it seemed, a lot of assistance.  there was an elderly, wise man who seemed to be my educational assistant, or second in command, it seems.  there was also nana, or irene, my mother-in-law, who stopped by.  the kids themselves seemed pretty compliant, but with kids, particularly that age, it can be a touch-and-go sort of thing.  in fact, sometimes students represent a sort of shifting, mercurial mirror, detecting any insecurity in you and reflecting it back at you...  in any case, i wanted to get across some idea about force and democracy (or something?).  i was using an image about the spanish civil way (which was TOTALLY fabricated; i know absolutely nothing about it!).  in this image, i spoke about some sort of 3-petaled flower, reminiscent of an- get this, iris, or what i conceive of an iris, with purple "petals" ringing a yellow heart.  i have always thought of an iris as a particularly ferocious looking flower, with the petals resembling a tripartite fang arrangement.  in any case, i told the kids that, during the spanish civil war, there was a choice given to the general populace, and the way that they made that choice was buy cooking the petals of this flower in oil, as in tempura, and picking a petal and eating it, designating their vote (kind of reminiscent of the "she loves me, she loves me not" ritual).  ultimately, this process yielded no clarity to the situation, and a war broke out, one which killed not only several people, but ultimately, the whole spirit of a nation...

prior to a recess session, the class was broken inexplicably into 3 groups.  i lectured one (with the whole spanish civil war nonsense), while the other two were meeting in school committees or something.  they were being particularly loud (and one group was being pretty obnoxious), so i had to take recess away from one of them...  during recess, i had the opportunity to speak to one group of bright young kids.  they seemed genuinely interested in me as their teacher (again, the feeling of the fleeting, mercurial interest of kids), and asked me questions about where i was from, etc.  one boy seemed so self-assured and confident, talking about how he had come from africa by way of ...  and in my head, i had an image of st. augustine or something...

***

lately, i have been feeling - i don't know.  i never write, because i have nothing to say.  my day drags between doing little patch-up jobs, and falling into the swamp that is minecraft.  i ostensibly say i am researching using minecraft for my students, but it is a compulsion to order an environment that drags me in.  it is the same as with every video game that i have ever been addicted to; it is all, for me, about imposing my will upon an easier environment.  a more compliant environment...

i notice that i am addicted to the beginning of things.  it is because we all meet the other with innocence at that point: the beginning of stories, the beginning of classrooms at the start of the year, the beginnings of games.  you have a sort of simplicity about you, your past, the ugliness of it, has neither caught up with you nor with the other.  everything is relatively clean.  i suppose that that is why i keep starting things up again and again.  i love, i need, that cleanliness...

but life is complex.  life is dirty.  eventually, everything catches up with you.  i know this for a fact.  it is for this reason that i am skeptical, or perhaps, there is in me an insufferable skeptic.  i look upon all beginnings, within me and without me, with an acid eye.  i am suspicious of the narratives of others, of their motives, etc.  i cannot take people or myself at face value.  as a result, very little begins- we are in a stalemate, a spanish civil war...  and sacrificing a flower, while a pretty method, will hardly yield any victory for one side or the other- and in the end, force, and a grievous sacrifice, must be made.

i want the force of some feeling to compel me to write, but all i have are pretty irises to fill my head with nonsense.  there is no feeling within me, or rather, no feeling that is not tied up within some brutal stalemate.  for example, there is a lot i could write about members of my family.  a lot that is caustic, about hypocrisy, etc.  that is, perhaps, what is most interesting about me.  but i can't.  i have to protect the "good name" of certain people.  so instead, i tend to fabricate other narratives, about people or places that never existed, and try to find the words, try to invent something of interest.  something of interest.

on radiolab, one saturday, it was implied that our idea of the soul or of the self is entirely narratival, and that who we are, or rather, who we think we are, is entirely a process of fabrication, of lying, in order to conceive of an idea of who we are that we can present to the world and to ourselves.   i have always felt this as an implicit truth, even if i never voiced it directly... that the most confident people in the world are the biggest liars...  and it is not a unique insight.  i recall kierkegaard speaking of the hero and the one who loves and writes about the hero; two very different lives and loves.  there is, in the hero, a certain blindness (we could say, a lack of awareness about the fabricated nature of the narrative s/he generates), a certain faith.  and there is in the recounter of the hero, a distinct lack of this blindness; rather, a hungry eye that seeks to account for everything, but cannot account for that very lack, the blindness, the lie, that can by its very nature not be understood, but only experienced.

life as experience.  existentialism.

***

stalemates.  acidic skepticism.  the compulsion of routine.  all these are signs of a dead or dying heart.  an old man am i.  my ties to the world are compulsions, not genuine love.  i think there is a love within me that could be construed as genuine, but it rarely expresses itself as such.  i am only lucky that, like my dream class, those around me ARE loving.  but they rarely-

-there's the rub.  i say the class is mercurial, but a mirror; yet it is only in the negative sense, i.e. as in the loss of control in its awful brooding potentiality.  but it is never a mirror when there are forces of love, of attention, of insight.  i can never believe that positive things stick to me...  maybe partially because of the buddhistic notion that dissolves all good things (i.e., that all good things must die, that change is an immutable law of the world)...  that all good things, by their very nature, are fleeting and must die.  is it that all good things implicitly carry the lie of permanence?

***

i pray to god for a wellspring in my soul.  for a blindness.  if not, i will turn into an old and dusty sage before i can say-

on radiolab today (a show which i have come to despise, due to a past terrible interview with a hmong survivor), the theme was how the soul or self was nothing more than a story told by the brain to allow it to believe in itself as some unchanging entity.  it mentioned, among other things, that what makes human beings unique was the ability to manipulate adjectivals, to mix or match them, as it were, in order to create new and unrealistic combinations and their related mental images...  the implication being that, beyond this sort of "magic show", there really is nothing there.

***

i have distinct fears, most often in my dreams...  the fear of losing control.  not of losing control, as in the control of one self over another, wilder self...  but the fear of actually losing the self.  of being possessed by another, or of forgetting oneself.  the feeling of waking to progressively reduced levels of consciousness, and finding more and more of oneself being taken away.  the feeling of charly in the novel by that name, of falling into a room of darkness, the "return trip" of the platonic voyage out of the cave.  it is the fear of fading into a dream.  it is the fear of allowing all responsibilities to slide.  for, if the self is a narratival entity, then what makes a story real/believable are the consequences and responsibilities of the characters.  if they do not have responsibilities, and if there are no consequences for the characters when they fail at their responsibilities, then -

they might as well not exist.

***

in one dream, i felt as though each choice i made were countermanded by another, a male, a controlling element.  i felt my will, my very desperation, being sucked away by this other.  as i woke from the dream, i wondered at the recent incidents of the women, abducted from their lives to become slaves and worse for a monster.  at the terrible feeling of becoming something so very reduced.  of becoming nothing other than the extension of someone else's will.  and i vowed, as in the famous zen saying, that if i saw the buddha on the road, then i would kill him.

i remember how, periodically, my grandmother would take me to see some monk lady in nuuanu to have her "remove" spirits from me, lost spirits who would cling to me, and attempt to influence my life. as if i needed that narratival excuse for my apathy, my lack of conviction of things...  the "parasite excuse" is so convenient, after all...

***

to wake, and to feel that all that one has struggled with has not addressed the relevant issue.  the true issue.  and that one has basically been wasting one's time.

that is the feeling that i seek to erase.