trash #22

the ambiguous cold

I have been vaguely sick for a little over a week now. A cough. Something also in the bones. And when I tire of it, decide that I must push myself to write or to go for walks or in other ways generally live, that is when it reminds me not to rush things.

And there is the guilt of the boy who faked illnesses constantly in his school days. It doesn't matter that I am actually sick, nor that I find the energy to teach. I am guilty of something, and shall be punished, surely.

Even so, I am in the journal today. There is an attempt to locate the lesson of this journey, or at least a cogent impression. But I would like to keep it from turning into a confessional piece.

Something that occurred. Perhaps that's all it was. I suppose it depends on the view I take on original sin, but I doubt this has much to do with anything.

I did not set out to learn a lesson. But perhaps how far I could push myself. I don't think I found out an answer. As with any venture of worth, distractions have abounded.

We are told to keep quiet. To follow where others walk. To drink with our superiors. To watch the children walking at the festival parades, and try the octopus on sticks. And not to make waves. And to make waves. To say thank you again and again. To apologize thinking that you are a dog. To look at the pines and bridges on the islands. To visit the pleasure districts. To drink coffee from cans, only warm for seven months of the year. To buy things, from the giant screens. To buy things. Everything. The signs so pervasive that they become spectacle. Especially in the evenings. To not feed tobacco to sewer rats. To never waste anything. To keep our trash with us. In our bags and pockets. To look for the remnants of the Bushido in black suit jackets and black ties and a drunken evening slouch, the things he must do out of filial duty. To accept the strangeness, the lack of concern for logic in our affairs. The humble apologies of politicians. The seemingly constant changing of the guard. To observe the night when two lovers are separated by the river of stars, the milky way, and eat rice rolled in seaweed. To go and see the cherry blossoms, and everywhere there are the famous orchards containing one thousand trees. The paper lanterns. I have learned the names of nothing. We are told, and sometimes we listen, and sometimes we are deaf. And sometimes we choose which to be. We are impermanent. Even those of us who believe ourselves not to be.

path clear/obscure

I will often reflect on Solomon's labyrinth when I become confused about path. I think it is intended that I meditate on the movement of the stars around the Earth, and I rather enjoy this misplaced center. Regardless, there is nothing but to continue walking forward. That one might become confused along a single path is confounding, nevertheless true. The question always before me, is there truly a center? And once I reach it, what will I find? I do hope that it will be the octagonal cage of mirrors designed by da Vinci to allow a person to see themselves from all angles. Unless they are fun-house mirrors, at which the distortion would be likely to support my current understanding, illuminating nothing.

But I have never actually walked the labyrinth in any physical incarnation. And I think it is impossible to know what effect the thing will have until the walking is done.

And so I must find one of these and walk it. You are welcome to join me. Although I will sometimes be quiet and turned inward, we can also share some time, and it will be better than walking alone.

i should like to make a series of panels on my office wall, one day when I have an office, and to here forget that there ever was language

trite thoughts on being in rome and doing and such

When visiting Rome, do as the Romans do. Certainly. No question.

If you decide to live in Rome, and find that the Romans go apeshit over ridiculously small things--obviously this is in your estimation and not theirs--then you don't have to make it a point to do as they do.

Just do as you do, if you can find a way not to worry about what Romans think of you.

Also, don't talk about your medical history or personal life. Romans have no sense of privacy.

japanamerica

Scripts and Lightning

There was a dream, from the floor of the apartment at Craig Place. That floor was filled with nightmares and voices, a drugged clarity. It was one of two, the first I had thought completed, but has since reasserted itself. This one, the second, I had hoped merely vivid, with no real bearing. But the disruptive lightning, the afterlife, I had seen them as tag-ons. Unimportant to what I should be taking from the dream itself. Now, as this dream begins to assert itself on reality, I think I shall write it into a script.

There is no serious thought of psychic powers, though in small moments I do entertain the notion. No, it is that in times of deep distress, there is a clarity of vision that may emerge, and if one pays attention, one can see things about oneself, the development of one's heart, as it were. It deserves a fair treatment, and I shall try to give it one.

There is thunder outside my window now. The beginnings of rainfall on the pavement. Lighting is so rare here, it is hard to explain to Texans its severe imprint on the passage of days, its power to reorder life, but it is there.

Books Hit Back

Am a little dizzy from lack of getting everything together all at once. I know it's impossible, and it is the reason one must have a schedule, organize, plan, but I am always in each moment that I am studying, wondering why I am not researching schools, and in each moment I am looking at schools, wondering what I think I'm doing not writing, and in each moment writing, wondering why I have done so little to get my things in order here, and so on.

I will take a breath.

There is the airport pickup to think of. All else failing, this will have to be beautiful. Even this is suspect. What if I should fly in on a Monday? Could it be beautiful on a Monday?

Sighs. I really will ride into the mountains soon.