10/9/2020

 it being fall break, and not having much else to do, i have been driving through my routines more quickly. don't get me wrong. there have been things to take care of. for example, i had to really help my son with his algebra 2 assignment (overdue). and in the process, i had to recall a lot of my math stuff. it was actually nice to work with my son on math. it felt like we were working together on something, which is not something that happens very often. i tend to give my son his space. i'm not sure why. well, maybe i do know why. i think, at this age, that kids want their own space. i mean, i can literally feel it when they start to switch off, when i get too passionate about something, or when i start droning on and on about my own experiences... kids their age, they really are almost physically averse to that kind of droning lecture. and, to be honest, who wouldn't be? so i try not to say too much. i try to keep my talks with my kids brief and to the point.

*****

i have been meditating and doing zhan zhuang more regularly. i've noticed a few things. for meditation, one of the biggest obstacles is this feeling of losing focus. my eyes literally blur and probably go cross eyed or something, and my thoughts just get foggy. and next thing you know, i have to snap to. it's sort of like when you are struggling to stay awake in a really boring class, i suppose, only, it's a bit different. i can literally feel my thoughts jumbling up, and sort of accumulating like a cloud... and that's when it all gets vague. the only way i piece it apart is by a continual process of awakening... by noticing this thought or that song or that image or whatever. it's funny. i think most of consciousness is composed of these associations, rational or not. i remember charlotte joko beck talking about this... how "thoughts" are basically just a mental phenomenon often linked to either other mental phenomena or to physical sensations. even traumatic events are just links between a memory (in whatever form it takes) and the physical sensations that were burned into you. so a lot of meditation for me, at this point, is just noticing these. i don't actively seek to "tease apart" these knots. i just notice them. and notice them. and notice them. and eventually, i think from the constant noticing, the associations start to wear down. or maybe they just become really apparent. and through being seen, paradoxically, they disappear.

in zhan zhuang, i've also been noticing things. you can start to feel tension. it is as a pain. but it is also a shape. you can almost "see" the shape of the tensions in your body. for me, i have a ball of tension in my right shoulder, and in my right calf. i mean, there are definitely other places that i notice and release, but those two places are particularly stubborn and resistant to change. it's funny, but i always remember holding tension in my right calf. i used to think it was cool (this was probably in elementary school or something) when i would lean the ball of my foot against the bottom of the chair in front of me, and then "vibrate" my leg... i could do this because there was always this residual tension in my calf muscles... but only on that side. as for my shoulder... well, i have been noticing it clicking a lot. when i do exercises that involve my shoulder, there is a kind of grinding of the humeral head (accompanied by clicks). for that matter, i have something similar going on with my right hip as well. i guess i'm kind of falling apart in that way. but it's strange. at first, when doing zhan zhuang, i couldn't do anything about some of that tension, especially the tension in my calf. so by the end of a session, it got so that i almost had a hard time walking. and as, in my routine, i would play the piano after doing zhan zhuang, i literally could not use the damper pedal very well, because my foot would keep vibrating from the residual tension... but today, i had no problem. i just kept feeling the shape of the tension and telling it to open, relax, and sink...

*****

on sunday (in two days), i will be participating in some sort of writer's workshop. i'm actually very nervous about it. for one thing, most of the other people in the workshop are actual actors. i definitely am not one. i also feel like i don't have stories in my head right now. and conversations (which i feel this may emphasize, because it seems as though a lot of the writing will be dialogue based) constantly elude me. i know that my characters don't speak "realistically." i tend to be a conceptual writer, even in dialogue, unfortunately... so there's a lot of self-doubt. but, whatever...

10/8/2020

 i am home. it's thursday. things have been pretty uneventful. the only real errand i ran today was going to wahiawa to do some grocery shopping, and taking my kids out for ice cream (black sheep). at the moment, i'm in the bedroom typing and listening to my neighbor talk to his son. the son (who is probably in his 20s or 30s) can't say a single sentence without using the word "fucking." he belongs to the demographic of white non-college educated who is a hardcore trump supporter. nuff said on that.

i have been giving some thoughts on writing. i think i think about writing when i'm drawing. i spend a fair amount of time drawing now, and at times, i feel like i'm drawing some pretty intricate things (as far as i'm concerned, i still think faces are some of the most difficult things to draw convincingly). i sometimes have to recorrect proportions in the middle of the drawing, because they clearly are wrong- either i can tell visually, because things look "off," or i realize i have to because- well, it's like drawing a circle where the ends don't meet. in any case, what i'm trying to say is that writing is an involved, often times difficult thing for me... but i don't seem to complain or feel tired or despair. i just keep going with it. i always keep going until i feel like i'm done with the drawing.

this is not the case with writing. i think i've put off direct writing in a lot of senses. by direct writing, i mean writing precisely what i intend to have published. instead, i've written a lot "indirectly." most recently, i've taken the advice of judy blume and tried to write an entire notebook trying to work out my thoughts on a story... all before actually writing it. i think it was somewhat productive. it allowed me to think through a lot of possibilities... but i guess that's just it. they're all just possibilities. i haven't committed to writing "the" story. and, of course, it means i haven't committed to finishing the story either.

i am also reflecting on this because i've listened to adam mizner, this taijiquan instructor. and he has spoken about the importance of setting "skillful" goals. as he puts it, it is useless and inappropriate to set goals like: "i will be able to do fa jin (the skill of emitting or projecting jin- a sought-after skill in taijiquan) in one year." this is unskillful, particularly if you're just starting out, and have no idea of what's involved in mastering fajin. it's like saying you're going to get somewhere when you've never been there before... what mizner did recommend was setting goals that emphasize the causes, and not focus on the effects. so, saying that you would practice post standing for one month is a far better goal, because it emphasizes the practices that lead to development...

in that sense, what i'm doing IS beneficial, because it is a step in the right direction, and will likely eventually get me where i'm going.

i guess what i am pondering over is the age old debate about different pathways to enlightenment (or any goal, really): the gradual path vs the sudden, or unrelenting, path. as an old man, i think i tendto opt for the gradual path anyway. but i realize the drawbacks of it, the feeling that i'm never pushing through to break the barriers to the end.

10/6/2020

 yesterday was monday, the first official day of my fall break. i spent the morning over at leilehua high school, where i was one of the teachers/presenters for a fall steam project for interested 5th graders in the complex. i made a short video explaining levers, and how some of the principles behind levers could help students in making their mobiles. it was fun. i always feel awkward in front of cameras, and the set up that they had, with a huge screen with all the participants, and a "stage" where you stand and speak to everyone... well, it was kind of daunting. i always don't know where to look when i'm in a virtual meeting like that. i prefer to look at the face that i'm addressing, but most of the time, that's nowhere near where the camera that's projecting me is. so when i looked at myself, i was always speaking off to the side or something... oh well.

yesterday was also lynn's first day back to work (interesting how that always works out). she had a really long, really hard day. basically she needed to dispose of a ton (maybe literally!) of expired food stuffs. that basically meant filling a car with boxes and boxes of heavy food stuffs, transporting it to the dumpster, and heaving it in. over and over and over again. i offered to help, but she said that some of her friends had come to assist her today. thank god for friends!

i've been able to chug along through my routines, though maybe that's being a bit selfish. i should be addressing my son's issues. he still has an outstanding project for algebra ii, and we were kind of stuck on how to translate the graphs of these lines so that the overall shape (a snowflake) is centered on his birthday, 6, 29. i kind of remember the stuff, but not really, so i couldn't offer direct assistance. i think if i research the topic a bit, i could figure it out. anyway, maybe i should be doing stuff like that. or going over some of the classes he'd had a difficult time with. and maybe i will. but it seems as though i have this break before me, and i'm already still riddled with work obligations and such (today, after taking the kids to a doctor's appointment, i have to go into campus to test a student for his iep)... oh well. i need to start reprioritizing things so i address my son. i do love him, a lot, but it is sometimes difficult to address the real complex problems surrounding him. it's always tempting to take the easy path out.

right now, i hear the croaking voice of this bird. strangely enough, it can also produce the sweetest songs. i believe it is some kind of nightingale or songbird or something, imported from elsewhere. it has an orange breast, and it has this slow-moving tail that it moves ponderously up and down. anyway, it has taken up residence in or near our yard. i think the big draw is probably my worm bin. one day, i had tipped the worm bin on its side to allow some of the excess liquid to drain out, and next thing i know, this bird had hopped in to the bin to feast on the available worms. since then, i have always been watching out for that bird when i tip the bin. it is actually pretty bold, and won't immediately flee in my vicinity. anyway, one day i tipped the bin, and pretended to weed or something near a corner. i noticed the bird trying to creep around a pillar to get at the worms. it was pretty comical when i caught it in its almost-act... anyway, i kind of like that bird (and its probable partner, whom i never see). the birds i really dislike are the bulbuls, because they are smart and sneaky, and feast on a lot of my red crops.

*****

i've been reading a few short stories again. the last couple that i read from amy hempell (sp?) were better. but i still find the characters so- obtuse? so strange. so- off. that again, it's hard for me to sympathize or feel any investment in them. i think the need to create a "splash" with these short stories, and present something so off-beat and off-kilter that it forces attention... well, it also tends to make things far more abstract and inaccessible. maybe i lack the kind of empathy that can immediately "get it"; like, tell what the issues are, tell what the signs are... i don't. and maybe that is what makes me such a clod with, well, women, and most people in general.

(although, i think, i have a strength in empathizing with children.)

i've also read further into tobias wolff's book, "old school," which i thought was going to be a collection of short stories, but is actually a novel in its own right, divided up into themed chapters. it's a great book. i understand why david sedaris liked him. i also found it kind of telling and endearing that wolff actually remembered sedaris coming to his book signings, even before sedaris was famous. it speaks of the kind of attention he pays to people...

in the latest part of the book, the protagonist enters a writing competition to earn the right to speak to a visiting author. i suppose it's a periodic thing at this school, and there have already been visits from robert frost and ayn rand. now ernest hemingway is coming, and he happens to be the protagonist's favorite author (and, he claims, the best writer of his time). the day before entries were due, he still hadn't started writing his entry. he chances upon a piece of writing by a girl in a literary magazine from one of the nearby girls' schools, and he is immediately siezed upon by the writing. he actually claims it as his own story, he identifies with it so much. he just changes the names and some finer points of the situations, and turns it in. it's funny how he doesn't seem to consider it plagiarism initially... he just feels like the girl, with her frank writing, is capturing HIS story, only in her particular context. he wins; ernest hemingway loves the story; but of course, he gets found out...

in any case, one thing that struck me... and maybe it's because of ernest hemingway, whom i have read one book of ("old man and the sea")... but this notion of writing the truth, in bold but honest lines, has always been something i've wanted to do. i guess i've run into one of two problems: either the truth has been so singularly boring for me (no major events, no remembered events), or it has just been too difficult to write plainly and simply about what is the pain in my heart. maybe, with regards to the latter, it has been buried so deeply beneath scar tissue, that it is hard to feel it any more...

*****

well, i've got errands to run. have to take the kids over to the doctor's soon...

10/3/2020

 it's another saturday.

on thursday came the news that trump and melania both tested positive for covid-19. before i could really stop myself, i felt a great sense of elation. i mean, come on, this was payback. the guy couldn't care less about the more than 200,000 people who had died under his watch. he and his administration had been flaunting a disregard for the basic measures that had been put in place to prevent the spread of the virus. so why shouldn't he catch it, and suffer for it? maybe it would teach him a little empathy.

but i guess i caught myself wishing ill on the president... and i feel a more measured reaction now.

*****

my son aiden failed a class this quarter. i had a long talk with him last night. my initial reaction was disbelief. i told him that it actually takes a lot of work to fail a class. i told him that you almost have to actively try to fail. (maybe not true, but hey).

i have felt a lot of guilt with regards to my son. i may have expressed my sentiments in earlier posts about this issue. long ago, when there were first signs of a problem with aiden, i recall reacting with a lot of rage. there was so much, in fact, that our (then) asshole neighbors put in a call to the school to file a report on me. but when the counselor talked to me, i kind of had a wake up call. maybe it wasn't productive for me to harp on my son so much. i learned about this thing called ialac (i am lovable and capable), basically this notion that the self-esteem of the child was important. and when i heard about how aiden's ialac was damaged, well, it broke my heart.

i think i bore the scars of that regret long after. i think that, ever since, i have been careful not to push my son too hard. contrast that with my daughter, whom i have pushed very hard. but then again, they are completely different children. my daughter is, despite appearances, very driven. my son, not so much. he has strengths in other areas. for one thing, i feel he is more affable and caring (in some respects) than my daughter. i always tell him that he "has a good heart." i also recently read one of his writing pieces, and i felt that, for all of his minor grammatical errors, he actually has a strong voice, one tinged with irony and friendly sarcasm.

but i guess those strengths do not balance out with some of his deficits. he has this pattern of behavior of basically "floating" and escaping responsibilities. whenever i ask him about how his school is going, he gives some patent answer, and then he returns to his videogaming and chatting with his friends. i have pretty much opted to not respond, or not pursue things, unless he comes to me to ask for help. i feel that it's no longer my place to "helicopter" and monitor him aggressively. maybe that is a fault or failing of mine, and maybe part of this is a kind of resignation (laziness) with regards to his performance. maybe a part of this is a holdover from the notion that i need to protect his esteem. maybe a part of it is this feeling that i cannot impose my own standards and expectations upon him. in any case, that's what i've done...

last night i had a relatively long talk with my son about these issues. i talked about opening his eyes to his life, being cognisant of problems, and addressing them directly. i told him that he needs to work hard, and ask for help when necessary... i told him that running away from your problems only makes them bigger.

... i also wrote a letter to his algebra ii letter. i in no way blamed the teacher, and basically said that we were disappointed in aiden. i did hint that i was not happy that the school had initially rebuffed our efforts to get him a 504 (accommodations) earlier in his high school career. i stated that i believed we should revisit the issue, now that we have had sufficient evidence of his difficulties... i only hope that it's not too late.

i'm sure that they'll come back and say that i haven't been active enough in monitoring and intervening on behalf of aiden as his parent... i don't think i'll have a counter to that, aside from this notion that he should be old enough to take responsibility for his own learning... (but this gets to the vicious cycle, or begs the question... if he did take responsibility for his own learning, then we wouldn't need all of these accommodations...)

*****

when i've done zhan zhuang and sitting meditation lately, i'm able to last 30 minutes without too much strain. i've noticed (or am able to sense/feel) the snarl in my right shoulder that makes it less mobile. it feels like this deep, small tangle. each time i am aware of it, i just think "open and relax," and move on... i also am constantly feeling my low back and hips tighten throughout the process, and have to repeatedly relax and drop the tension... not sure if i'm doing everything right, but at some point, you have to just do it, and correct your mistakes later.

9/28/2020

 yes, i am accelerating my routines now. i suppose that my work life has fallen into place. every day, i have a plan, and my ea and i execute it efficiently. even the kids (when they come) have fallen into the plan, and have steadily improved under our watch. so i guess with things settled on that front, i'm able to pursue my personal interests with greater fidelity...

i'm really into this guy named adam mizner. he's a taijiquan person. however, he's different in that he's demonstrated fajin under conditions that i would consider to be more "real life." and he's explained the phenomena clearly and simply. that's not to say that he's made it easy. it's clear that, for him, the path is, as he puts it, "bitter." it involves a lot of sitting and standing... a lot of drudge work. meditation and stuff. but i guess since i'm an older coot, i'm okay with it. i feel like i've been told to do that sort of work all my life, but as a younger fool, i'd only done those things half-heartedly. but with my heart settled, and fine with pursuing my desires, i suppose it's a lot easier. there's less resistance now. so i do sitting meditation regularly in my routine, and i also do standing meditation (zhan zhuang).

i did some zhan zhuang this afternoon. i think i'm getting better at it. i just keep telling myself "open and drop." that is, when i encounter or am made aware of tension in my body, i repeatedly just tell it to "open and drop." my shoulders start to burn (throughout the 30 minutes, i'm holding my arms out in front of me), but whereas before i would have a lot of tension that would build over the course of the meditation time (to the point where things would be trembling), now, i'm able to just "notice" the pain and release it. it never quite "releases," but i guess i'm reducing the tensing as much as possible. i also notice tension in my hips and buttocks, and release it as much as i can (i imagine this is following the taijiquan idea of "opening the kwa"). all that tension goes down to my legs and to my feet. it honestly feels as though my feet are being smashed into the ground. i don't know how to really release the tension from my legs, because they are the supports, and it doesn't seem as though the released tension has anywhere to go. but i imagine i'm releasing things there anyway.

yes, yes, i've probably said similar things before. and i've been on other trips or wagons before, riding on hopes for something better. but i don't know, maybe something feels different now. again, there just seems to be less resistance. i think in the past that i felt guilty or something for following my desires. i think i wrestled a lot with feelings of obligation or duty, or the expectations of others. but as i get older, i realize that life is too short, and that i might as well honor this body and this spirit by following the paths i'm interested in... after all, in a few years, i may not be able to do these things. i may be just a decrepit old man. so i'm just going to try to better myself in the mean time.

*****

i have been thinking a lot about my psyche. about how, deep down, i think i do things for the attention of women. even figurative women (muses). i was recalling my life when i was like about four or five years old. back then, i was in the koteki marching band for the tenrikyo religion. i was likely the youngest kid there at the time. there were a few instances where, i recall, i was so tired marching that i kept going in a daze, even when everyone stopped. and i remember struggling with the whole left-right-left thing (because i could never quite remember which side was left and which side was right). anyway, in the early years of my participation in that band, i was always surrounded by these pre-teen to teenage girls. i guess they all thought i was cute or something, and adopted me as their unofficial mascot. i loved the attention, but it seemed contradictory. paradoxical. i think the girls lavished attention on me because i was so young and so inescapably innocent... but i wasn't, and didn't want to be. the odd thing was that, as i grew older, there was this feeling that i wanted to be understood and accepted as an equal, but the thing was, there was this templated relationship with women that always made of me this goody-goody child. i didn't know how to relate to women on a "level playing field." in fact, i always thought the only thing they could love or respect about me was my capacity to always be a "good guy." in a lot of ways, i am still like that, trapped by a pattern of my youth.

this has interfered and interrupted with my capacity to express love (and lust) because the me that could speak of such things and that could even have those sorts of feelings was always buried beneath something that had to maintain this "cute" ineffectual facade. in a lot of ways, that aspect of me- i think- is dead. i can't conceive of it. i couldn't conceive of it, even when things were literally "in my face." i can't summon those feelings within myself... i can't create a believable story of it... somehow, those aspects of myself, if they even still exist, are so weak... they speak through decades of denial and silence.

so that's the paradox. i perform for these female audiences. maybe even now i still do. i have realized that "relating" to real women in the sense of having them pay attention to me in the way i'd want them to- well, it's impossible, and laughable, and disloyal. so i don't really feel that much (which is a good thing, or it would make it impossible for me to function). but i think the pattern still imposes itself upon me. in my weaker moments, i imagine some "angel" that would have seen me and known me, and felt sympathetic to me... similar to those teen girls who once, long ago, saw fit to bestow upon me the blessing of their attentions... unreachable. unattainable.

i used to have fantasies about striking up conversations with attractive women... i mean, women for whom attraction was mutual (like, really? did any ever exist?)... playing the game within conversation and deed. but it never happened...

my relationship with my wife, which really was the first and only real "relationship" i ever had... it was actually more of a friendship that developed into something deeper. and perhaps that was the best way - maybe the only way- that something could have happened. because i likely would never have broken out of the prison of my warped and distorted way of relating. i simply couldn't... i know people in high school who almost despised my way of relating... my penchant for putting women on pedestals and almost worshipping them, while simultaneously negating my own existence... at the time, it was- how should i put it- so emotional, so "right." i guess it sort of goes along with the whole adolescent mentality, the "drama" of it... but it too, i see now, was a trap... always a trap of negating or erasing the self in the face of this irreconcilable gap between myself and the idealized women...

well, enough psycho-babble for one day...

9/27/2020

 it is sunday. i have been rushing through my routines, as usual... nothing really new to report. i went to my father-in-law's house for an errand, and there, i got to see his monstrous garden. when i asked him why his plants were so huge, he didn't really give me an answer. i asked him how he prepared his soil, and he just said that he added nitrogen to it. well, somehow he has successful fertile plants growing... while my plants are slowly drying in the sun. maybe it has to do with the fact that i can't monitor my plants as much nowadays since i am working... i water the plants sometimes only once a day (before i go to work, in the darkness of early morning)... it would be nice if my son watered them later in the day... but he doesn't. and sometimes, lately, i just come home and basically collapse... so, bottom line, no regular watering. this, in the middle of a few days with no rain.

right now, there is news that trump's tax returns have finally been seen by reporters. great. but i feel that his supporters are so bone-headed, that they will continue to support this grifter. a third of our country is, frankly, a lost cause.

*****

hmm... i don't know what else to really talk about.

yesterday, i drove down with my wife to aoki's, just to get some shave ice. we sat on the rainbow bench, and ate our rainbow shave ice. my wife was looking for the day geckos that frequent the trash bins, likely licking up the colorful syrups to augment their vibrant colors... only, yesterday, they weren't really to be seen. it's likely because yesterday was the first day that aoki's opened up in a long time (due to the pandemic). so they haven't caught on to the reopened system yet. funny, though... as we were ordering our shave ice, i did see one of those glittering green geckos crawl up behind the register.

the drive to and from haleiwa was pretty nondescript. you could see places where some assholes had tried to burn the landscape. periodically, along the road to haleiwa, you would see regions that were blackened or browned by a brush fire. there was one grove of coffee trees, protected by a windbreak of norfolk pines (?)... you could see the browned lower branches of a stand of the pines, where a fire had almost broken through to the vulnerable valuable crops beyond...

i saw the water tank, just near the crest of that final hill where you see the blue horizon of the sea stretch out below the land. for some reason, i had this image of that same water tank in years, decades, before... and i imagined a group of young people sneaking up on top of it, on the dusty surface, and having sex beneath the stars... and then, afterwards, restless, this youngish guy (with a hippie beard) grabs a spray can and starts to create art... perhaps in the afterglow (i remember thinking this word specifically) of intimacy, inspired... not in a desperate passionate way, but a quiet reflective mood. and his girlfriend watches silently, pretending to be asleep.

my wife mentioned that the mountains, this close, looked as though they were painted... a verdant green, highlighted by the setting sun. i saw mt. kaala, with its observatory so high up. it's supposed to be the highest point on our island... i had a thought of the second place mountain, just adjacent, and how jealous it was... that it was nameless just because another had assembled a slightly larger pile of rocks about itself.

dream - 9/26/2020

 it's actually only been 9/26 for an hour or two, but...

the dreams were fitful. basically, all i have are a collection of images.

in one, there was this food processor, which basically resembled one of those curved vent pipes on ships... to operate, you basically just shove food down the pipe, and eventually, it gets sucked down somewhere to props that chop it up safely. when i initially passed it, there was this huge cake of homer simpson on it. it had been made by my daughter, apparently, but no one had touched it. i realized it wouldn't drain in its present state, so i started to collapse the cake so that the fragmented pieces would be pulled down the drain. i remember the smell of the cake as i broke it up- maybe, at the time, in the real world, my wife was making butter mochi or something, because i seem to recall the smell as being good (to me). later, i piled on some other discarded food, this stuff, not as appetizing, some sort of cabbage and meat deal... i recall my wife (or my mom) commenting on these "old style" food processors...

funny, but as i was pushing food down and watching it drain, i recall thinking about ron saiki. for some reason, he had been in one of my classes or something, and forwarded this untoward and completely backward view continuing to support the trump administration, when reality had long since verified him to be the complete and utter failure that he is. i recall thinking of other people, including reid (this other classmate of mine from high school, who, upon the election of trump, had basically verified that he'd voted for him)... even this reid was no longer a supporter, converted after a long hard denial of the truth...

there was this one scene where our family was eating at some dark, oak wood restaurant. and donnie yen came up to thank this one guy rickie, who apparently had starred in a kung fu movie long ago with donnie. donnie himself was sitting with his old friend and co-star jet li. people were thinking about how nice the guy was, for always recognizing even old and somewhat obscure associations. he was not someone who forgot the "little people." yet a part of me, perhaps influenced by my recent reading of "old school" by tobias wolff and the protagonist's adolescent feelings of rebellion stirred by ayn rand's "fountainhead", felt that donnie yen was being ingratiating... that true warriors didn't give a shit about the little people... i also think i was dreaming of donnie yen and jet li because, prior to collapsing in sleep, i had been watching that awesome scene from "hero" in which sky and nameless battle in their minds...

...can't recall much else from this fitful dream...