dream 2/24/2022

as is often the case, i recall the second dream very vividly, and after recounting it, i recall threads of the earlier dream only vaguely. so i will talk about the second dream first.

there was this movie called shang chi and the ten rings. i saw it. but anyway, in the dream, there appeared to be this part where, in order to join this team- and, indeed, for the audience, in order for the storyline and the movie to proceed, each person had to stab their own heart, and then put something in it. i was desperately trying to do it. i tried to use these blunt wooden objects, and press them in various places on my heart (now that i think about it, there are definitely connections to my previous dream, which i hope to highlight later). in any case, i was unsuccessful at first. i started to realize that maybe i was pushing in the wrong place. maybe i was pushing directly into the sternum. so i had to shift my location slightly to the left, so i wasn't just trying to press directly into the bone, but was accessing an intercostal space- the fourth intercostal to be exact (i used to be an ekg tech, so i know about using the 4th intercostal on the left side- it's one of the places we put the stickers for the ekg machine). anyway, even with the shift in position, the whole stabbing the heart thing wasn't working. finally, someone handed me a plastic butter knife, the kind with a slight serration on one end. and i decided to try it. and guess what- gradually it worked! this whole part of the dream was extremely vivid- i could feel something gradually going into my heart... when i pulled out the knife, some thick purple blood began to escape the wound, and as my heart beated, thin jets would squirt out. i got whatever it was i was supposed to get to plug the wound and put it in...

anyway, from that point on, the movie was supposed to proceed, the storyline was allowed to proceed. so i took my seat in the movie theater. i was waiting for the movie to begin, and just scanning some of the faces in the audience. it was at that point that i saw my sister, with some of her friends. and then, i noticed some of her friends had boyfriends, and that their significant others had faces that i recognized- maybe people off of my fb friends feed. and then i saw jani (brother's wife) and then my brother himself. and then i saw min, who is my friend, but who also is a good friend of my brother's. i saw all of these people sitting around me, laughing, having fun. they were all one big social group. and then i began to feel betrayed. i may have written about my strained relationship with my brother (in real life, i haven't spoken to him since 2010)... but i felt betrayed by everyone. in real life, i have been trying to meet with my sister, take her to lunch or dinner, but she has always said she was busy. that fact from real life seemed to bleed into the dream, and i thought, she said she was too busy to meet me, yet here she is with all of these friends, and with my own older brother... and min, who is ostensibly my friend, who was my friend first before i introduced him to my brother- i saw that he preferred to spend time with my brother rather than me. and i felt so incredibly betrayed and alone. i didn't want to be seen by all of these people, so i went off to find a seat of my own, far away from everyone (i remembered i was wearing a lab coat for some reason). unfortunately, min had seen me, and he started to follow me. in irritation, i just left the entire movie theater, and remember walking down the fire escape stairs...

couple things about my little stunt (stabbing my heart)... i recall (before the movie started) overhearing someone talking about how he had done something similar ( i could see a wound on his chest, plugged up by yellow wax ).... i recalled or saw an outtake from the movie about how they tried to get some korean stunt guy to actually do what i had done, but even he backed out...

so there was this other level of betrayal, that i had been the only one stupid enough to actually do what the movie encouraged... even though it asked it of everyone... and not even the actors in the movie itself- not a single person- had dared to do it... yes, so i felt stupid for having done it.

*****

in the previous thread of the dream, i was a vampire. i was this older female vampire. i had had a couple of acolytes, servants, who were not aware that i was a vampire. somehow at one point, they decided- or were charged with the task of- killing vampires. before they realized i was one, i tried to make my escape. i don't recall what i did initially to get away. but i remember jumping off the edge of some freeway into a large lake... and as my former servants were shooting crossbow bolts into the water, i made my way underwater to an island within the center of the lake. i seemed to be looking for a location that was suitable for something, perhaps to build a fortress or maybe to have a last stand. anyway, i saw an island that was covered in scraggly pines, and had orange clay like soil. i remember distinctly this cliff formation on one end of the island. because at one point, i was at the top of the cliff, and my servants were trying to hunt me down, and i tried to hide by hanging off the edge of the cliff... i slipped, i believe, and fell- not necessarily to my death, but down to the bottom of the cliff... and i think that's when the idea of stabbing me through the heart came up... because the servants realized that that was the best way to kill me...

*****

anyway, when i woke up from the second dream, there was this incredible feeling of aloneness and betrayal. i felt like all of these people were having secret get togethers around me and leaving me out... perhaps some of it was due to listening to this story on npr about how people nowadays do not have friends (i think the tag line was that a study had showed that up to 50% of people do not have a single close friend). and that got me to thinking about who my friends are. and not just facebook friends (the story on npr actually distinguished between online contacts and what they described were "embodied" friendships, that is, contacts that you actually met in person). and i thought about how i don't have any "embodied" friendships... not really. there is the aforementioned min... but he's really dean's friend now. and in any case, i did nothing to initiate or even really maintain that friendship. it was and generally has been all him... so i started to think about what's wrong with me, why do i not have any real friends (aside from my wife). why am i so unfriendly?

it's not necessarily that i miss it. maybe it's something that has been so absent in my life that i don't even feel its lack any more...

my daughter has been wrestling with some of the same issues... although people want to have a relationship with her, she simply isn't interested. i recall myself, for most of my life, consumed by an intense loneliness, desiring some sort of relationship to help me feel human... i have a hard time understanding her, on the other side, propositioned repeatedly, but declining, out of an absence of feeling... but now, maybe i am the same as her. discontinuous with the human race...

i think my mentality, my job, all of it, are "surrogates" for true relationship. my desire for "art" (which, in my head, is the absence of an audience which paradoxically is only enlivened by pretending an interested audience) - it is a way to keep people away from me, it is an "aesthetic" attempt to relate to people but in reality it keeps everyone away from me... my job- my passion/compassion to help people- which i feel is real- maybe is a compensation for my inability or unwillingness to have truly "embodied" friendships... there is a sense of bitterness maybe, or, as in the dream, a betrayal... this sense of having been wounded in the heart, and thus, alone in that woundedness... somehow that wound makes me different from everyone else, unable to relate to anyone... that's the feeling, the overall feeling, i got from the dream...

i woke from the dream, and even though it is 3 am, i recounted it verbally to my wife. she said, "why wasn't i in the dream?" and i told her, "yeah. in dreaming and in real life, you're my only friend."

my only friend.

i went to a funeral recently for my student's father... anyway, it got me to thinking, if i died, who would come? who would care that i was gone? and i thought, maybe a few people, out of an obligation. but no one who was really my friend. no one who would miss me- viscerally. yes, people would stop seeing me go from place to place, running my stupid errands. but no one who actually had real conversations with me, or who really cared what was going on in my head or my heart (for that matter, when was the last time that i spent the time to listen to people - not my charges, not my students - but real people that are my age, or adults in any case?)... when was the last time that i really cared about the people around me? and not just "do something for them." because i always am doing something for people. it's my job, among other things... but just be open and vulnerable and allow a connection to form? i have always been moving, moving, moving... building art bridges... learning languages... etc. etc. etc. the accumulation of skills... but not really connecting to people. i don't know how. and i maybe don't want to... but i wish - secretly? - that i could have friends.

dream 2/20/2022

i had a couple of dreams...

in one, i was in some house in a colder climate (i could see the mountains outside covered in pines, and an expansive but cold sky). the house i was in was neglected... there were these- not exactly roaches, but more like these sort of bugs that invaded my aquaponics system, these wet roly-poly bugs- crawling all over the place on the wooden floors. and kate, one of my fellow teachers, kept discovering reasons for the infestation; like she found this bunch of uneaten food down one of the drains or something...

...

in another more disturbing dream...

my car, the blue bomber, was in some canal, with other cars. i suppose there was some flood or something. i needed papers from it. i suppose i had realized that i was taking courses over at williams, on wednesdays or tuesdays or something, but in my business, they had become lesser priorities and as a result, i had completely neglected them; there were finals coming up that i had to check on and study for. my papers, or i hoped, some of them, were in the car. only trouble was was the car was in the middle of this canal of water. so i leapt from the sidewalk onto my car (there was a bit of an audience)... i realized that if i opened up anything (my door) that the water would flood into the car (it was halfway up the side of the car). so i crawled around the car like a monkey... the car, disturbed by my presence on it, began to drift... there were deeper holes in the ground that threatened to pull the car under, and i didn't want that to happen... i avoided them, but suddenly the car tumbled down this ledge, and fell on its back side... and then tumbled until it was right side up again... somehow that dream faded into the next one, which also looked at things from the perspective of water...

...

i was like 007 or something in this large mansion of death. there were zombies everywhere, red with blood, their faces unrecognizable, some of them spewing out their guts... the white marble of the mansion was red with gore and blood. there was a sort of venetian moat travelling through the center of the mansion. somehow my view of everything was from this moat, which was occupied by some monstrous crocodile... the crocodile was being fed by the body parts raining down from above... when i found myself again, i was on the underside of a bridge, one of the very few places that were still somewhat clean. i was clinging onto it for dear life... there was some control panel on the underside of the bridge which i seemed to be messing with... however, i was discovered by some zombie...

...

i was in the mansion itself. there was still the sense of death, or at least, that i was doomed, a prisoner. but there were no zombies visible. only different agents of some cruel man. these agents looked swarthy, like from some south asian country, malaysia, singapore, vietnam... i wasn't sure. but they had these smiles that communicated that they would very much like to kill me... i can't remember the details, but somehow i made my escape, ran as fast as i could down a corridor outside... and i could see their smiles, relaxed and assured as though they knew my escape was entirely impossible...

i somehow got into the streets, where there were more people. there were prostitutes, unattractive, malnourished, waiting around some structure like a bus stop... i was caught, and as i was being dragged on the ground by the agents, i saw a band of mendicant monks dressed in yellow (although it was clear that they had abandoned their religiosity long ago). there was a midget monk with a japanese face. he said "kiru" (cut) and wielded an ugly little knife. i spoke to him: "nihonjin?" (japanese?) and he nodded yes, before i continued to be dragged away...

...

my perspective seemed to shift, and i was no longer the person being dragged. instead, i was a young spritely girl jumping over the crowds, on structures and statues that lined the orange-lighted streets... at one point, it seemed that i was on some sort of pyramid like structure, with stairs going up into the night sky. a woman and her child beside me mentioned something about jesus christ in korean, about how that would save me, but even in the dream, i kind of scoffed at that, and simply made my way up and beyond... i kept doing this and doing this, until...

i was in the alcove of some museum of history. there were various historical structures lining both sides of the entrance alcove. i had been clamboring on top of the structures, gradually making my way to the entrance. there was a girl beside me. i realized that something was off in the order of the statues, off in the sense that it was different from when i had passed this way before (apparently, i had gone on this before). i had remembered there was a structure (with a bird head) that was particularly unstable. there had been an order at the end of the sequence, something like: western western eastern... and it was different now.

- i also had the insight- not sure if it was when i was in the museum or before- that some civilizations just had too much "culture." the statues were so ornate as to be unrecognizable and- messy. and i wondered if some cultures were like people, who wearied of the accumulation of ideas and things- most of them useless and meaningless- and if cultures ever wanted to just forget and begin again, clean of the past... 

anyway, i had a debate with the girl and the curator of the museum who showed up... they doubted whether anything was wrong with the sequence. but the curator started talking about how they wanted to sequence the pieces by "the human heart." and she started speaking with a dramatic flourish (in french), something about the progression of "liberte!" and i countered that it should simply be ordered by history...

and that was it. that was all i could remember...

*****

i am still having a hard time writing. i think the part of the dream about weary cultures is related to me, to my weariness of writing this useless avalanche of a story in my head. why can't i just write little pieces, to match my short asthmatic breath? 

*****

i've had a kind of epiphany. i really have been trying to work out the "plot" of this convoluted story i'd started to write called "kappa noodle." i had considered using a strategy of writing different plot points on notecards, and "connecting" them on a corkboard (similar to what detectives always do when they are trying to hunt a serial killer)... the trouble was that i would start writing a notecard, and then get pulled in- i would attempt to answer a question about a character, say, motivation, and then get tangled in a thousand other questions... it really felt like - (and i just came from this) - pulling a bundle of vines that are smothering up a tree... everything wraps around everything else...

when i look at the dream, at least some parts of it... i think that the structures represent the plot points. the girl jumping over them is the prospective reader (or maybe the writer, planning things out). the comment about ditching the accumulation of culture is perhaps a part of myself, that is tired of trying to work out this gordian knot, and would just like a clean break from it all... and the discussion with the museum curator represents a kind of debate within me; on the one hand, of maintaining "historicity" (which in this context relates to logical sequencing), versus the progression of the "human heart" (which in this context means following the significance, the feeling, the drama - or, alternatively, of just going by feel, not by logic). the exclamation of "liberte" represents the feeling of freedom promised by that perspective...

at least, that's what i THINK is being said.

dream 2/13/2022

had another dream of sorts... for context, i have been struggling with the plot of the story i'm trying to write. and by struggling, it literally feels like it is whittling me down into madness... anyway, from what i recall of this dream: we had started to redesign our house so that it had elements of nature indoors. like, in the middle of one room, right in the middle of the carpet, was a tree growing straight to the roof. or rather, there were a bunch of treelets, because they hadn't exactly grown into one trunk yet... oddly enough, there were trees also growing out of me, like out of my leg, because i guess at one point part of the plan was that i stand in the center of all of it, and be like part of this tree growing in the middle of the room...

in another room, there was a system of ponds.... like, again, right in the middle of the room. i was concerned, because there were parts were the pond wasn't bordered well, and i could feel the water leaking into the surrounding carpet. at first, the pond seemed very small and shallow. in fact, it had nothing living in it. but as i looked closer, there were snails in it (little water snails), and then goldfish... and before i knew it, there was this giant snapping turtle, which swiftly crossed over the paltry bamboo fence around the pond. i followed it, and while it passed over a white towel on the floor in the kitchen, it left a long trail of yellow poop on the floor. i tried to catch it, but as i rounded a corner, it kind of disappeared. i returned to the pond, hoping it had returned... as i did so, i noticed some wriggling in the carpet, and saw the legs of a giant harvester spider... and then, before i knew it, there was a wooden scorpion, some kind of cross between a harvester spider and a scorpion... it was attacking me. its legs were so thin they were basically invisible to me, so when i fought it, it was more a matter of just randomly flailing. after a while, i started running from it, and it quickly pursued me around the house...

*****

my story simply grows more incongruous. i am trying to map the plot, etc. etc. to find the structure, the plan, of the story... but i keep getting pulled into wrestling with details... like, if i do this, then how is it consistent with that? what is the motivation of this character? why would he/she care? it really eats away at me. oftentimes, i just lie on this couch and am rambling to myself about details of the plot. sometimes i dream obsessively about some detail, and it seems i have come up with a solution, but really, it's just repeating some stupid aphorism over and over... when i wake the inconsistencies are still there... i have struggled out a basic structure to the plot, but it seems... i don't know... i have to flesh it out... i think, unfortunately, that my process is never clean, and it involves a  degree of suffering, of measuring out my own flesh to cut and eat...

i feel like i am falling into depression. i feel like i am going mad. i am becoming somewhat neglectful and tired and arthritic and whatever... and i don't seem to particularly care. i long for sleep, but then i hate sleep. but it pulls me down relentlessly. i want the promise of a dream, a dream that would liberate me. not the sort of dreams i get, these nightmares, these ugly things. these meaningless things...

dream: 1/23/2022

this was a dream (of sorts). the trigger to remember it was the moon knight, because a lot of these so-called phase 4 marvel characters were in it, supposedly. what i can recall is that there was this weird character who sort of wore this red dead-poolish thing over his head, along with a backwards tie... and at the same time, there was this youngish korean/japanese girl who kept following him, and trying to communicate with him. there was some kind of connection between the two... and they kept meeting each other at "events," like massacres or odd phenomenon (like some kind of interdimensional portal)... there were other characters, it seems, but for some reason, i can only remember those two clearly...

this dream sort of occurred to me as i was rolling on the carpet beside my wife, who was lying on the downstairs sofa... it wasn't exactly comfortable, although i had once prided myself on the ability to sleep on a hard floor... it required me changing positions periodically in order to "balance out" the bruises, so to speak (no, there were no bruises to speak of)...

i'm kind of in a limbo with regards to writing, and other things. it feels like everything "real"- work particularly- is coming to a head. i don't know how else to describe it... i am incredibly tired at it all. the way the world doesn't work. the way that each little incremental step forward is accompanied by failure of yet another joint in the machinery... if entropy is so all-encompassing, why fight it? why not just let it all fall to shit? that's what i ask myself, in my more weary moments...

dream: 1/17/2022

there were fragments of a dream. over all, it seemed a happy one. there was some posting or something put out by the mililani high school track/cross country team, and there were a few photos/videos with me in it (i ran track in my freshman year, cross country in my sophomore year, and quit - dramatically - from track in my sophomore year). some of them were absurd. like there was one where the entire team of runners was hooked up like horses to some roman chariot, and horace (our coach) was kind of whipping us all along... things like that. anyway, i decided to share some of this with my friends on facebook. only, i was somehow able to enter into their real lives to do this. i may have attempted to share this with people like clifton, but what i remember was visiting greg fastabend. for some reason, he was in the middle of college, perhaps into his sophomore year (whereas i had not started college yet, for some reason). i was giving him perspective- strange, because in the dream, i was the same age- something about how quick college went, and asked him questions about where he was going to in the future. he made some comments about how he was going to be some sort of engineer, and work with [blank] (i can't remember). anyway, i showed him the pictures/videos, and he smiled for a time. then he started to get some things together to give to me, a whole bunch of old robotics stuff, and a bandolier (sp?) of tiny computer cameras...

that was it.

i've been kind of mopey lately. not really working hard at anything. trying to fall asleep a lot of the time. i think i'm still recovering from my stupid illness last week at work, as well as just trying to keep up with the incredible complexities of my work... i'd like to write, secretly, but i want it to be on my terms- like this cute detective work sort of thing, where i keep various notebooks, and write things that can always be considered progress, no matter what- no writing complete dead ends, or dead prose, or anything... always on the up and up. happy thoughts.

i love my wife, but i am so pathetic at planning anything for her. it was her birthday yesterday. tonight, we took her swimming and then we ate hot pot. simple stuff, but she seemed happy. i told her, as she was half asleep, that i wanted to be with her forever... that she was my best friend... and she murmured in her sleep happily. i was telling the truth. i cannot conceive of life without her. she is - i don't know- the river that flows my life along. without it, without her, i would dry up and die.

1/8/2022

i came upon an epiphany of sorts... first of all, let me say it's been a crazy couple of days. immediately after my first day with students, i developed a fever with chills and bodyaches. i got tested. it took them about 24 hours to get my result, which was negative. but in the meantime, i was practically delirious with fever dreams. it felt like my brain was boiling, and thoughts were seething upwards in meaningless repetitive cycles. i know i was mouthing off a lot of it, as though i were trying to let the "steam" escape...

so one of the things i thought about was, of course, how much i hate my brother. and i still do. but i realized something. whenever you hate someone you split the universe in half. and that universe includes you. the way it works is this. you start to look at the qualities of the person you hate. for example, for my brother, it is his selfishness, his greed, his arrogance... basically, the way that his feelings take up all of the air in the room... some of those qualities exist in everyone, including myself. so when i "hate" him, i also split away those aspects within myself, because i find them unacceptable...

what that led to, in me, was this sort of split current. on the one hand, there was the life that i wanted, with all the beautiful people... and on the other hand, there was this lesser place that i inhabited, playing the helpless, hapless "nice guy," who cannot for the life of himself admit his inner wants or desires- he would literally disappear in a puff of smoke if he ever dared mention anything relating to these things... this in turn led to this mentality that the only way "in" to that other world, that beautiful world that he so "deserved" (this, too, is a construct; there is no deserving anything) was for someone to see in him the value that he could not advertise himself. in other words, for me, a woman was someone who could "see" me, who would work to "translate" my own inscrutable heart, and would liberate me... somehow it had to be a woman. maybe it has to do with mother figures, etc., but in the world of men, and "brotherly" friendship, you earned respect through silence and what you did. so i had no problems getting by there. sure, i wasn't the braggart and blowhard that my brother was, but i could survive in that world...

it's a trap, of course. you cannot adopt that role, you cannot disallow yourself from being selfish and acting on your own wants, and be whole. the "nice guy" always lives frustrated, because he cannot break beyond the bounds of his own self-constrained "niceness." no one, not even angels, have the temerity and perseverance to "love" such a person. why bother, when he will never see himself truly, because he has always already blinded himself to himself?

it becomes like a koan. you have an irreconcilable difference. a conceptual gap that you are straddling. what is there to do?

*****

i still hate my brother, of course, for the things he did to my sister. one day, i will sit with my sister and have her recount exactly what he did to her. and i will try to learn from her how she goes through her life, day by day. maybe if i understood that, then i wouldn't feel so angry. or maybe i would feel more angry, who knows... but at least i can see that the qualities i paint my brother with, well, they also paint me, so i shouldn't be so absolutist in my strokes.

1/4/2022

today was the second day of work since winter break. our school was lucky in that we haven't had any kids yet. it's tomorrow that the shit hits the fan, so to speak. it goes without saying that i'm frustrated, both with our "independent" (read: republican) mayor and the impotent, no-good superintendent. both of them are just looking the other way, and telling everyone to go about their business as though nothing is wrong. news flash: we are doubling our cases about once every 3 or 4 days. we are in the steepest rise we have ever been, even when we shut everything down, even when we went to distance... and now, we are to do nothing?

okay, enough about that...

i've been going through my routines, and have just about got things to where they were before i stopped due to impossible work demands... and, of course, work is about to start again. maybe it's a losing proposition, this ideal i have, these goals i have... but whatever... i'm thinking that writing should be more than just a part of my routine, it has to get deeper in my blood if i'm to progress at it. i've been thinking that i need to keep little notebooks with me all the time so i can write down my ideas. i've been thinking that i need to just sit and write, even or especially when i am snarled into a narrative corner (which i feel i have been)... liberation comes at odd moments. like, for the kipapa story, this idea of writing from the perspective of dead people, not dead as in the ancient hawaiians dead, but dead as in recent dead, sort of trapped in limbo, making odd comments about the living, with a quiet desperation to get out of their predicament, to go somewhere... else. this is possibly a good idea, because the way i was trying to write it, with the living, and some inane story about ophelia and so on, was just getting too ridiculous... the dead can make fun of the living. the living take themselves too seriously...

and for the kappa story (hey, i just realized, kipapa is just kappa with an extra i in it)... i had this idea of the fish boy. something about why fish never have names. it's because no one really considers fish to be living beings. they are somewhere above plants, but only very slightly above plants. and we don't really name plants, do we? fish basically exist. they don't "do" anything. and so we consider that they don't have souls or spirits, in the same sense that dogs or bunny rabbits or rats do. even lizards have it better. i'd even say some arachnids have the privilege of a name... but anyway, i wanted to tie this into the boy, who feels like a fish in that sense... and something about how he IS like a fish, in that he is a natural swimmer. not a great swimmer, not a fast swimmer, like his stinking brother. after all, his brother "makes a big splash" in the water, he punishes the water, he makes it his bitch, and therefore he moves through it. there is little art in what he does. it is force and subjugation...

i think i got the idea of a swimming scene. i got the idea from "march comes in like a lion," i believe the 10th episode, wherein the main character talks about swimming, and swimming, and swimming, and swimming... a metaphor for his lonely and solitary struggle to progress through life, to find some land upon which to rest. that was very moving for me, to see him struggle, the repetition of the lines "and swimming..." i could feel the exhaustion. the longing for something solid. it somehow resonated with what i intended to write, about a person who needs to find a place for himself, a place to rest...

*****

i think, in my good moments, that i have faith in the process. the process means you just stick with it. and it means doing other things. it means sometimes just cleaning up. but all the time, a part of you is thinking about it, a part of you is mulling it over, turning things over in your head. and the process means that you are not escaping from it by doing other tasks, it means that you are constantly invested in it... your soul is tied to it, in a way. not in a serious way, not in a forceful way. but in a way that is abiding. it is, in a sense, like zen. because zazen is all about sitting, and abiding, with questions. holding questions, becoming questions, breathing questions... desperate for completion, but not desperate enough to lose hold of the question...

which reminds me: i need to meditate. i said so earlier, because i do have issues. anger issues. rage issues. forgiveness issues... unhealthy thoughts...