4/3/2021

i am getting more and more frustrated with my writing, to the point where i don't really want to work on it any more. i got lost in the plot of the previous project. i think i need to work on characterization more. however, the more i "think" about it, the more i feel like the narrative is falling apart... i wish i could make it a simpler, shorter story. something that allows me to just accurately depict a feeling, without all the complexities of a plot.

i wish writing were something where you could just allow something natural to flow out of you. well, i think there's an element of that, but actually most of what comes out initially isn't suitable, isn't polished, doesn't make sense, and it takes a lot of work to get it into something remotely palatable to audiences...

*****

i listened to salman rushdie, and every time i listen to him, i feel a small renewal of hope. he goes over a variety of strategies, possibilities, for how to write the narrative to best effect. for him, writing truly is a craft. so i'm going to weigh my options, and try to write detailed character biographies to make my characters more real... and we'll see what happens then.

*****

part of the problem is i'm not really sure what i want to say. and then, i'm still not sure how to say it. what is my point?

3/29/2021

 i'm feeling pretty tired at the moment, so maybe this won't be a long entry.

some interesting news... during our breaks, i have been wandering with the kids out into the upper field of the campus. one day, while walking close to the fence that borders one side of the campus (separating it from the wilderness and a drop off to a stream), a wild pig approached us. it was funny, because one of the students had been making pig noises, and he likely attracted this pig...

and then today, we walked to the very far end of the upper field. it is so far away that i had never actually gone there. it is a rather secluded area, surrounded on one side by that fence (beyond which lies the stream) and on the opposite side by the back sides of a few nearby houses. anyway, the kids had noticed a shed of some sort, and wanted to go check it out. "maybe there are pigs there," they said. so i walked with them over to the end. we found a plaque embedded in the ground, resembling a grave stone. it said "this garden is dedicated to the memory of jeffery sunshine wong, wahiawa elementary school, special education." and beyond it, was a fenced off region, with a locked gate...

this was really intriguing. who was jeffery wong? and what was this garden? did it belong to our school? when could we use that space to grow stuff?

anyway, eventually through facebook friends of friends, i learned that jeffery had been a student at my school, in the special education department. he had died of some heart problems, and the family had dedicated that area as a garden to the school. my principal is checking out if that area is indeed part of the property of the school. if so, then it may be just the space for us to start our school community garden!

*****

as i mentioned, i am very tired. 

i haven't written more in the story, although i did write a rambling thing which i term "kappa notes." i don't know if it will help me with the actual trides. but we'll see soon.

3/27/2021

some news updates: my daughter got into berkeley. it's strange. she was really down because she hadn't gotten into ucla and another school. she had gotten into scad, this college in georgia, but that wasn't exactly her first choice. meanwhile, a lot of her friends were bragging and gloating about getting into other colleges. my daughter was feeling like she hadn't measured up... even though, as a result of the pandemic, and as a result of the throwing out of standardized test scores by certain colleges, the playing field was paradoxically even more competitive than it had been in years... she was resigning herself to having to attend uh west oahu, which was something that we had recommended, had things not settled enough to allow for a safe experience at a distant college... so, my daughter simply wasn't checking her emails. she didn't want to find out if she got into berkeley or not (which was her dream school). maybe she felt that by not knowing, she would not experience the disappointment... that was when my wife kept urging her to check. when my daughter finally did, and came down giddy with excitement, i had to suspect that my wife was somehow "in the know." she didn't. but she said that she had a strong intuition... i feel like she is strange and powerful in that sense, in her certainty of things...

in any case, things are not all that "certain." getting in is one thing, being able to pay for it is another. we're sort of considering the options, how much we're able to front to pay for my daughter's education...

*****

in other news: i developed an abscess on the back of my shoulder. it was large and red and swollen, about the diameter of a tennis ball... it had grown to the point where it was becoming sore due to the pressure. so i "popped it." it was... surprising how much and how violently some of that stuff came out. at first, mostly the "white stuff," but at one point, a spurt (which got all over the bathroom mirror) of something resembling ketchup mixed with mayonnaise (i'm sorry if this grosses people out). anyway, i was okay with just squeezing out as much as i could and cleaning it up... but my wife insisted on me going to the doctor. so i did. and i got some antibiotics to address the underlying infection...

i felt pretty tired afterwards, so i've been off and on napping this afternoon...

*****

as far as writing is concerned... i felt a deep despair about continuing my story. it just seemed as though i had written myself into a corner, and i couldn't get out... actually, it's not so much a corner, as this infinite stretching out into nowhere, and i'm running out of paint. what's the point, i felt. i mean, in a larger sense, there is little point, as no one would ever want to read these stories. there's nothing particularly happy or redeeming or even meaningful in them. i lost the heart. i lost the feel of the story. it has all been, or largely been, the squeezing of an empty tooth paste tube. i really don't have much left to say. maybe all i have to say are just momentary spurts: like the abscess on my neck... or cumming... (okay, going into gross territory again)...

i had an idea of giving up, and just writing little snapshots of me and my brother. at least they would be real, or semi-real... and then framing them with a discussion of "mimicry." but...

since, i have just had the idea of reexamining the story as a whole, refining the plot. perhaps making it tighter, in the sense of having the trials occur with greater rapidity. i think i got so lost in the machinations of the plot line that i forgot the heart. i also think that, for a story about my brother, he hardly appears in it... and i have to do something about that. also, as salman rushdie says, even minor or trivial characters shouldn't be "sketches," that you need to apply the same attention to detail that you grant to the main characters as you do to the unimportant characters... and yes, i think that my story is lacking in that sense. i mean, i try to give characters distinct voices, but i frankly didn't really think through a lot of their backgrounds. their motivations. i just gave them jobs, basically... so bottom line, maybe i won't walk away from the story just yet...

i keep thinking about people who have (overtly or covertly) expressed that they wouldn't want to read my story, and i think that that brings me down. but who cares? it's not really about them, now, is it?

dream 3/25/2021

in the dream is a pond/garden i created. it had two "halves." one half is more of a garden. i recall working it, digging out plants. i can remember a couple of large hyotan squashes growing end to end. i have a harder time visualizing other parts of that garden at the moment...

the other half, which seemed to run on the side of the house, became more like a large pool. there were rocky outcroppings, on which bathed huge frogs and toads. in fact, at one moment there was a toad so huge that it resembled a large boulder. in the water, were other large things, other large creatures, all self-sufficient...

yes, i recall in the "garden section," there were these snails and slugs, so big, with so many straining necks... (although in real life, they are the bane of gardeners). all this life, to a purpose...

*****

i am so tired. i have this huge lump on the back of my shoulder. last night we (wife) were attempting to "pop" it, as it does have somewhat of a head. but it hardly made a dent in it. it has became a large diffuse swelling. maybe it's cancerous. i don't know. perhaps it's a reason to see a doctor, finally.

sometimes, i think, i wouldn't mind passing on. there are things i wouldn't mind doing. my story, for example, maybe finishing it, and then having it published or performed. but even with that, i realize, even with that, as for love, and all the other great things, it's often hit or miss... and most of the time, i miss. (i am recalling other memories, perhaps from the dream... memories of that very question: of whether you should keep trying for happiness, the happiness of finding the right person, or whether you should just "go it alone." i kept encouraging that, thinking of myself and my wife as some sort of model... but even in the dream, it was like, i wasn't sure whether that was always the best advice, as love is always like a gamble. and hope? maybe the very hope that made me survive? it's like the refusal to "get a clue.")

anyway... a lot of the people i'd hope to "prove" myself to (and secretly or not, i've always lived to "prove" myself to people), they have either passed on, or- i've realized- they don't really matter much. and what do i care about garnering the attention of people i don't really know? and that sort of defeats the whole purpose of any of these ventures... perhaps i wanted to move other people or something. but much of the time, when i'm writing, i'm hardly moved myself... maybe because i'm so involved in the machinations of it all. so when it comes down to it, it feels like i'm a magician... and if the trick "works," then it hardly feels like anything, maybe it only confirms that there are more gullible people in the world than not. most of the time, though, it won't work. it won't convince anyone...

again, the great things, those feelings of accomplishment, sometimes they seem purely hit or miss... it's the cynical way i see the world at times. i believe in reason, in principle, in kindness. but the world doesn't, necessarily...

i love my wife and kids. but sometimes i feel as though my steam has run out for my leg of the journey. sometimes i feel as though i'm just spinning my own wheels.

3/23/2021

i have been really tired... i came back from work yesterday, and basically napped the entire afternoon away. i ate dinner, and after that, did a bit of reading and listening to salman rushdie. but then after that, i kind of collapsed into sleep again. i got up at about 3 or 4 in the morning, and although i had planned to get up at this time to do some taijiquan and work out, i had a hard time surfacing from sleep. even right now (it's about 6:30), i'm having a hard time restarting...

in any case, i did listen to salman rushdie. he spoke about using the tricks and techniques of "old stories" (myths, etc.). he mentioned, in particular, the "arabian nights" (1000 nights in 1 night)... he talked about frame stories, basically a story that houses other stories within them, like rooms within a house. he also mentioned techniques used by oral storytellers... some techniques i recall were switching between several narrative streams (a complex interweaving of different plot lines)... when it works, and how it can fail... as well as embedding stories within stories (not exactly like the frame story, but more like the nested russian doll). i like how he sort of shoots down the conventional understanding of telling a story (start at the beginning, and end at the ending)... that actually rarely works...

i currently am writing a piece that has a somewhat complex plot line (at least far more complex than what i am used to). it sort of evolves as i go. i have a general idea of where i want to get to, but as the plotlines develop, my ideas of things keep changing... even with regards to characters: their motivations, their abilities, etc. i think part of this is a result of my "schedule" of writing... i write about 4 pages a week (at least once a cycle)... during the week, a lot of ideas pop into my head... a lot of questions... like, why would this character do that? does that match with what the character did or felt at the start? things like that. sometimes ideas come out of nowhere. like this idea i had of this one character being a "spy." i don't know why i chose to do that. it definitely wasn't something i consciously considered when i created the character...

*****

it is actually now 5:52 in the evening. i got interrupted (as usual) by life...

i just came back in from cutting one of the ficus trees from hell. i laid a ladder onto the side of the tree, and even with that assist, i needed to use my extension pole saw ("halberd") to attempt to cut this branch. my strategy currently is to cut off as many of the hanging branches as possible so as to take the weight off the main trunk(s). that way, when i work on cutting those parts off in segments, it won't be a gamble as to where they will fall. right now, i'm just stacking everything in a pile by the side of the wall...  

for once in my life, it only started raining AFTER i had come back inside the house. usually, i'm out of sync with nature, such that whenever i start to work outside, then it starts to downpour HARD. i felt so fortunate. maybe things will go my way from now on, ever after, forever more. HAHAHA!

*****

okay, i guess i'd better post this before i get "out of sync" with the universe again. see ya later!

3/20/2021

"start as you mean to go on." this is advice that salman rushdie says, concerning opening sentences. for him, the opening sentence is both an invitation (a promise) to the reader for what is to come, and permission for the writer to "pour forth the water" of the story...

*****

it is already friday. it is the last day of my spring break. i feel, in some senses, that i have wasted it. there were always matters to attend to... the disposal and delivery of items that had been cluttering the house. matters concerning a property that my mother and i are purchasing. stuff like that. because it has been raining every day of this break, i have found it very difficult to progress on the gardening. besides that, there is the looming, growing problem of the trees that i have to cut down and dispose of. as i may have mentioned, there have been idle thoughts of attempting biochar- which opens up its own "can of worms" (to mix composting imagery... never knew there was such a thing). there are proper ways to do biochar, and improper ways, i suppose. for me, it's mainly about disposing of the waste in an environmentally beneficial way. pure and simple. i may not recapture all of the carbon that i should be, but... what the heck. but yes, the trees are looming behind me, growing steadily by inches and pounds, reaching desperately for my second story window, and for the eaves of the house, so that, in one deadly windstorm, they may collapse and rain destruction upon our sleeping heads... i need to cut them. i have heard offers of chainsaws to borrow, but i have irrational fears of cutting off fingers or limbs due to my inexperience... oh well.

*****

today was a sort of good day in the sense that we went over to my father-in-law's house so that my son could ostensibly learn how to do an oil change. there were no disasters. i had some anxiety about the car suddenly rolling, and smashing either my head or my son's (as we were lying on the cardboard, staring up at the underside of the car). but nothing like that even remotely happened. i think the worst of it was when we removed the nut on the oilpan at the bottom of the car, and the stream of sludge was unexpectedly forceful... but even so, we caught most of it in the box of lint, as was supposed to happen... afterwards, the car ran as good as it's ever run. and that was a good feeling. it was also a good feeling, a kind of solid feeling, for us to have a nice conversation with my father-in-law, mother-in-law, and aunt. and to feel that my son was a decent person, good-hearted, good-natured.

*****

why do we do these things? am i really filling my life, or is it just an echo, a repetition of emptiness? i don't know. i like to think that if today were my last day on this earth, then i'd probably live it the same way as any other day. meaning, i'd defined the things that i was interested in, or the things that were important to me, and i was working towards them. i realize that a lot of them may be selfish... or seem selfish... they don't usually involve other people... but it's only because... why? i feel like we all just need our space. i spend time with my wife, with my kids, running little errands... but beyond that...

i feel, at times, that i've paid my dues (not true, of course). that, i "gave at the office." so i should be entitled to pursue these interests... i also find that most of my "interests" are more attempts to fulfill the promise of what my life should be. they are attempts to "better myself." of course, that sort of set up always makes me question things... like, why can't i just "collapse the distance," and just "be"? why do i always have to... ceaselessly... look for the next thing to do, and the next thing, and the next thing? is there a danger in drifting?

i think that that has always prevented me from, say, pursuing relationships... i always "filled my time" with business, so i didn't have to think about the loneliness. well, the loneliness intervened anyway. and i had always found it a waste of time to "feel", because most of the time, those feelings were so futile and vague and self-destructive. much better to pursue art or understanding. do something.

you can never resolve some of those feelings, some of those regrets. you can only move forward. so says i, even though i also believe in meditation, and "sitting with your shit." who knows. who cares.

*****

some day, i would like to be the kind of person who can just be the one whom people like to be around. that would be nice. sitting, talking with people, learning about their lives, helping them in little or big ways. i think that would be nice. to be relevant. a part of things... but of course, right now, i am a self-centered being. the one redeeming factor is that i am not down, and i seem engaged in the world, at least in the aspects that i have defined as beneficial for me...

*****

maybe i need to see a therapist. maybe i am working through a mid life crisis. i don't think i will ever break. i'm either too cowardly, or too complacent. i love my family too much. and the part of me that longed for something better... maybe it's a dying vibration, an echo that can no longer be made out. should i be sad at that, or happy?

3/16/2021

it's another rainy day... i proceed through my routines, as usual. i think if nothing else i am cultivating a kind of stubbornness. another way of putting it is that i am building momentum. eventually, i will be so heavy and set upon proceeding on to the next thing and the next thing that i will be a juggernaut. maybe, in the process, i will destroy everything before me, instead of enjoying it or having it change me or open me up somehow... but alas, what alternatives?

i'm looking into biochar. the reason is because i have so much wood in my backyard. my huge project is to clear the trees that currently dominate the backyard. by big trees, i mean they are huge. they are ficuses, and if you know these trees, you understand why they can be so problematic. i mean, they grow nice foliage and everything... that's not the problem. or perhaps it is. they grow too well. they "blossom" nicely, to the point that they fill all space, and sent branches up and out. currently, there are branches that could reach the house if i don't trim them back...

so in any case, i have a problem with too much wood. and i need to dispose of it. but i also want to do so in an environmentally beneficial way... hence the perusal of biochar as an option. i'm also looking into something cheap. because i am not willing to break the bank to do this sort of thing. there are ways to do it for next to nothing. it's probably not the most efficient way to do it... like i might produce some potash in the process... but all in all, i think digging some sort of pit and doing some sort of slow burn of the wood would probably be the best thing to do.

anyway.

*****

i am listening to salman rushdie for the masterclass series. i appreciate his candidness. i understand (as with the previous author) that there is a lot of "mucking around" to figure out what you are doing when you write. as he says, the ultimate truth is whatever works. in terms of technique, i appreciate his idea of using "mirroring" or "echoes." i never knew it had a name, but i think that that's what i aspire to do in my writing... provide several conversations or situations that "mirror" or "echo" each other, definitely not in precisely the same way (because identical situations are merely repetitions that do not inform the audience in any way), but in ways that offer opportunities to see the same thing from different perspectives... but, in all, allow the reader to "glimpse the big picture." i think, of all haruki murakami's works, the best one in my experience was the first one i read: hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world... the reason i felt this novel was most successful was because it had a split narrative (actually representing the process in the protagonist's brain), with completely different settings, etc. yet as these two narratives occurred within the same individual, there were "ghost echoes," or little images that passed between the two like a ping pong ball... and that somewhat informed or hinted at the whole that was hopelessly fractured... i would like to write something like that...

*****

i get flashes of ideas on how to proceed with my never-ending story. one idea i recently had was to do a "bait and switch," to put in a dummy protagonist into the copper bowl to allow the real protagonist to be spared from the acts demanded of him... and to allow him to see or watch the process without fearing its consequences... not sure how that would work, but at least it would make the plot interesting... and it would make the character yagoro more consistent, in that he actually acted out on his merciful leanings...

*****

anyway, nothing much else to report. gray day. gray night.