i woke tonight with a feeling of deep sadness. depression, perhaps. i realized that the last time i had been in japan was about 19 or 20 years ago. TWENTY YEARS. the memories of that time, which i believe were seminal, seem fresh, and yet in that interval, twenty years have passed. japan was still inscrutable, a country and experience which owned my heart, and yet was something that my heart could never understand or fully belong to. and back then, it inspired certain dreams about life, about purpose... and here i am, twenty years later, and feeling no closer to anything substantial, no different from the child i was so long ago, still duped by the same illusions. nothing seems to have changed.

... of course, things HAVE changed. i am married with two children. i have work that i believe in... but i suppose that in some ways, nothing has changed... i don't know how to put it. i realize that my focus on the present, on immediate purposes, it is basically a way to hide from some fundamental, irreconcilable truths... but in the face of certain things, i justify this reduction of perspective, because, well, i can't deal with that broad perspective- the idea that i can never swallow the world, that time passes quickly and makes our lives irrelevant, that in another few years, my present concerns (which largely revolve around my children) will have died and gone on, and what will i have to live for then?

there was an interpretation i had of martin heidegger's "being and time" which i thought was strongly buddhistic: the notion that a singular awareness of death led one to an epiphany about the purpose of life, and to live/devote oneself to that purpose... it is hard, at times, to believe in that purpose, because death questions all purpose. but we might say as well that death qualifies all purpose as well. what do i live for? and can that purpose survive, even as everything in life passes away? can it inform all of my actions so that they are authentic, and not merely distractions, or means to hide?

have i been hiding all my life? and what alternative is there to hiding?

***

all the lives i've touched. all the lives that have touched me. i'm sorry if i disappoint. death and life erase everything. i'm left an amnesiac (by choice?) every moment, trying to affirm this experience, this life, this world, even as all evidence insists that it is without substance...

i had a dream about professor herbert ganse little. apparently (in the dream), he was an old friend of an npr radio host, from elementary school days, and he was giving a talk on some university campus that i just happened to be wandering through. aside from being a wise teacher, i had felt (and heard) that professor little was someone who was a great friend (professor mark taylor had admitted as much once, and he being such a solitary "difficult" figure).

the funny thing is that i don't remember his actual speech. but i remember standing in line to talk to him, and to get his signature (as if professors have those kinds of fans). i recall that the others in the line seemed so young and enthusiastic, probably present students with so much potential within them. i felt myself tired, and perhaps not a bit of a disappointment. i tried recalling bits of what i had learned in his classes (sociology of religion primarily), things like "es gibt" and weber, but like most things, they were just fragments. i was going to tell him that i was a special education teacher, and that i loved what i did (which was true)...

i have had several "masters," people whom i trusted to look into my soul and grant some sort of approval. i have always been found wanting, whether it was taylor, little, or shodo kawabe. i always left these teachers with this feeling of regret, but following the currents and motivations that were hidden within me, and hidden to even myself, in order to become what was appropriate for the moment. for a while now, i thought i had left these masters behind, and found a life that was authentic and real. it's hard for anyone to question your "motivations" or your "search" when you have a wife and kids... but then again, maybe this dream appeared to reveal how much i have been hiding all these years.

professor little always spoke of "drawing out", "unpacking" things. it wasn't enough to give some glib answer. you had to explain it, pull the truth out of yourself like some magician's handkerchief out of your mouth. only then would you understand something of the truth and of yourself.

life is a drawing out. and it never ends. and similarly, i am always a student. there is no hiding from this role, because life is never something that is mastered. i think mastery is the illusion, the idea that things have died within you, and that there is no going forward. i think the takeaway i had from this dream is that i need to stop hiding in the dead forms and roles of my life, and find that pull within me, the pull to know, the pull to explore, the pull to be something more again.

because (all evidence to the contrary) i am still alive.

when there is no hope, then everything will fall to pieces. entropy and all of that.

the idea put forth by the show "quantum leap," that "another" could jump into your body for a period of time to set things right, it is a premise that i attempt to enact in my daily life. of course, i don't literally believe in or wait for "another" to jump in; however, i have to pretend a fresh perspective day by day, and oftentimes moment by moment, in order to go on. because i know at times that life can seem screwed up, problem-riddled, and if i don't believe in this "fresh pair of eyes" that comes in to save things, then i might as well let everything go to shit. because it will.

wrestless

hi all,
i have taken a long hiatus from writing to this blog.  perhaps life grows uneventful.  or perhaps life is so eventful, that there is no space within the heart or mind to sit back and comment about it.  not sure which is applicable in the present case...

i have been reading, off and on, joseph conrad's heart of darkness for a very long time.  and this evening, while sitting at dominos, waiting for pasta and cheesy bread for my son, i finally finished the story.  so, as i'm reading about kurtz's final words (the horror!  the horror!), i am in one of the most mundane of all places, as far from death and the dark wilderness as one could be.  the irony did not escape me (or, rather, i did not escape the irony).

i worked for a time at the endless job of weeding my front lawn.  i have visions of somehow pulling every invasive weed out of the lawn, and then providing sustenance for the remaining straggling grass in the form of water and fertilizer.  visions, yes, but i never seem to get past the first step!  weeding makes you humble.  it makes you realize that things must be wrested from disorder constantly, without end.  to stop, and "rest" in the status quo of things leads to entropy and infestation, and all those other words that we habitually dread...

which led me consider how "wrest" and "rest" (although homonyms) imply vastly different orientations towards life.  to "wrest" something (like meaning, or order) means to pull forcibly, often with a twisting motion.  "wrestle" comes from "wrest."  to "rest", on the other hand, implies a passivity or a placement.  i consider images of "wrestling with god" or "wrestling with death", and also the paradoxical/contradictory/parallel statements of "resting in god" or "resting in death."

much as we would not like to see it, life is struggle.  it is endless struggle.  it is not an easy path up a lazy river.  it is a serious endeavor, beset by fog and snags and a hostile darkness...

and, i'll be honest, i am tired, and not so ambitious.  i have been doing more "resting" and less "wrestling."  and who's to say i am wrong?

today, i took the kids to the hawaii state library.  while they searched for manga, i looked for books that i wanted to read with them.  i found a book called "dear mr. henshaw" by beverly cleary.  it was a newberry award winner.  i remembered reading the book sometime, i'd like to hope it was in the sixth grade, because that's about the age of the main character in the story, but i'm actually thinking it was later.  it was one of those books that happened to be lying around, and that i'd picked up on a whim.  anyway, as i skimmed through it, i remembered what an important book it was for me, how seemingly innocuous but deeply moving.

it was the story of a boy (at the outset, in the second grade) who writes letters to his favorite author, mr. henshaw.  as readers, we never get to read mr. henshaw's responses back to him over the years.  we only hear how the boy responds to them (sometimes with anger, as when mr. henshaw reflects an assignment back on him, and has him answer 10 questions).  in any case, the boy yearns to be an author like mr. henshaw, and takes a lot of the advice he gives him to heart.  he starts a diary (and in it, writes everything in letter format, addressing all of his entries to a dear mr. (pretend) henshaw).  we learn a great deal about the boy, leigh botts, whose parents divorced, and who lives with his mother near the central california coast.  much of the story centers on his yearning to be with his father, who is a trucker with a dog named bandit.  in fact, it may be argued that leigh's relationship with mr. henshaw is a surrogate or substitute for the relationship he wanted to have with his father.

the story is somewhat sad, and in the end, there is no real resolution (as there isn't in real life).  he does get to meet with his trucker father, and somehow has, if not a heart-to-heart, at least an acknowledgement of the regrets and the distance of their relationship.  it ends (and i'm paraphrasing here) with something like, "i felt sad, but i felt better."

***

i like to think it was a book like that that made me, at one point, want to write.  but i'm not sure.  i recall wanting to write with some of my "nerd" friends back in intermediate school.  i think the first time i got "serious" with writing fantasy was with my distant friend kendall, who, at the time, was living in town and attending st. patrick's school in kaimuki.  i think that if it weren't for that friendship, i probably wouldn't have developed as serious an interest in fantasy, and in writing, as i eventually did.  i recall that, at one point, we would work on chapters and read them to each other.  i always thought his ideas far surpassed my own; his writing as well, which happened to have such great word usage and imagery...  one of his stories started off with someone who traveled a great distance in something resembling a sarcophagus (or i might be channeling something like rendezvous with rama).

my stories often were like reboots of the hobbit or something.  always about some grand quest.  i think what i was longing to write about, and recapture, was this feeling of camaraderie, of people doing something important, and in the process, finding friendship...  if leigh botts had his absent father, i suppose that friendship was something of an absence for me...  not that i didn't have great friends, but i guess i always wanted something more of them, like a "goonies" relationship or something.  instead, we were always just loners in parallel or something...

***

i woke this morning at 3 am.  i felt empty inside, as i often do.  thankfully, my wife was sleeping on the couch perpendicular to mine.  i massaged her calves (as i had promised to do, but fell asleep), feeling for the "grinding" areas where the tissue adhered, and worked them to a smoother, more consistent feel.  i thought about things.  infant ideas.  like the word cell.  how it could be a prison cell.  or it could be like a cell, a small piece of something alive, working blindly to a purpose.  like love.

i wonder at times about love.  for a while, i have imagined what would have happened if i had followed some of the infatuations of my youth.  maybe it's like memories burning off or something.  it's not that i don't love my wife, or that i'm not happy or something.  it's just that- i'm getting old, and i get haunted by the feeling that somehow i missed out.  missed out on other lives, and, yes, sensuality/sexuality, and just experiencing the intimacy of being with another person; a relative stranger.  i suppose that that's young person talk, irresponsible talk, but i'll be honest: i've never been with anyone besides my wife.  and i "lost" mine at such a late age.  i've often wondered what was wrong with me.

there is a place for that sort of "irresponsibility," but somehow, i wasn't allowed, or didn't allow myself, to follow that.  and i wonder if i missed something...  and sometimes, when i meet some people, and particularly when there is a hint of generosity or kindness, i feel tempted to respond in kind, without boundaries...  but i can't.  and i suppose there is the fear that, as i get older, those doors of opportunity will close with a kind of dark finality, and i'll be "stuck" with this life and with no exit.

whew, sounds so dark.

i want to reassure everyone at this time that i am faithful to a fault, and would never do anything.  i love my family, and would never jeopardize it on a whim.  but i think life is, if nothing else, this sort of relentless restlessness, an unceasing vibration, and i want to reassure myself, remember, that i am alive.  that i am alive too.

***

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkXqArE9Vc4

i met with my sister this morning.  i brought two of her children with me, so that they could visit with their mother.  for most of the visit, i stayed quiet and just listened to the back-and-forth between mother and children...  it was sad for me, i suppose.

***

the world, this island, this person... nothing can be totalized or "summed up."  there is so much- difference- even within one individual's memories.  nothing really leads up to anything else.  there is diversity in perspective...  we like to imagine, or symbolize, life as a pathway, but it really isn't, or it isn't always like that.  at times, it is like a landscape, with no visible paths, no place to go...  and we stare at its diversity and wonder at it, wonder at our place in this world.

***

i have fallen in love so many times.  and it breaks my heart that i cannot touch this world, i cannot mean anything more to this world than be a face among a thousand other loveless faces, that i cannot be something more to it than... what i am.  i am sometimes driven to distraction by other lives, lives that i cannot possibly touch.  it makes me feel so sad, and so empty inside.

at times like these, i coast.  there is no sense in volition during such times.  you are guided by the emptiness, and the silence, which i think (despite the despair and sadness) is something akin to god.  because i do think god speaks through silences.  he listens to you so that you can become.

***

time passes so quickly.  so torturously swift.  i am halfway through a dream, and it wakes me, in destructive increments, to the end.  what is this love in the midst of a fleeting dream?  what does it mean?  i wish you well.  in another life (but there is no other life), i could've been more...  but then again, i probably would have been much the same, which is an almost, which was actually nothing at all.