it's the same playlist it's been for a few years now. the songs were chosen to be melancholic and kind of sorrowful but not slow, still punchy and party like. sort of. you remember listening to the list the first time and this time won't be the last. it's a familiar habit to go back on when the sadness of another year passed sets in. the list has survived more than one partner and more than one drug and more than one prescription and more than one bottle of alcohol. "severed crossed fingers there" st vincent crows. you drank more than you had in awhile after pregaming with enough water to make sure you could. half a 12% beer and a shot or two of whiskey later and a glass of champange here you are. it's 2am and she's gone upstairs to sleep while you put on the end of flcl as you put away the last few dishes. it's the same show it's been for years now. the show is melancholic and kind of sorrowful but not slow, still punchy and party like. it's a familiar habit to go back to when the sadness of another year passed sets in. you used to do this at 3am on saturday night at your parent's place and then yours. you have a few resolutions, just like mamimi, who wanted to be a photographer. "i don't know what happened to her after that" naota says. i'll see you next year. i think that's a resolution enough in and of itself.
Friday, January 1, 2021
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
she is always there
she is always there. she is there when you leave work at 5, parked next to your slowly breaking down 2003 camry, getting out of her car to hand you some lemon bars and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, because she misses you. she is there outside your condo with tomato plants earlier in the summer. she is there on the phone asking you for a christmas list, so she can get you gifts that remind you that she is always there.
she is in your first grade classroom, pulling all the work you were turning in to your teacher out of the dropbox to look over it and make sure it was good enough. she is in 5th grade going through the homework you're going to turn in the next day to make sure it's perfect. she is there in your high school, roaming the halls in front of your classmates, going to each teacher to talk about your grades, your friends deriving an incredible source of humiliating language aimed at you from it.
the first day of your first job out of college she is always there, sitting next to your desk for two weeks straight. after the work day was over, she'd be there at home to eat dinner with, to say goodnight to. she is there the first day of your first job ever, ordering a bacon egg and cheese biscuit. some days she is there three times, your eight hour shift broken up by three stops through the drive thru as she orders something different each time.
she is always there except for the very few times she is not. at age 3 you are left at home for an hour or two (it was only supposed to be 15 minutes), just lying on the floor reading dr seuss. she doesn't get home until 5 at the earliest, sometimes 6, sometimes 7, and the later it is the more you can actually watch the few tv shows you want to watch. she is gone sometimes on sundays to show houses and you can actually bust your toys out and let your imagination run wild, as long as it's all put away by the time she is there. she isn't there when you finally, for the first time, open up that you are being bullied. neither parent is there. they don't need to be there for that. there are more important things to attend to.
she is there when she is "supposed" to be. she's there at every sporting event, band performance, graduation ceremony. she only forgets you at school once, and is only late 100 times. she is there in the basement to make sure you are working out in 7th grade so that you can get better at sports. she is there when she measures the circumference of your biceps to see if you are making progress.
she is there in your counseling sessions she works to sign you up for in high school because your grades are dropping and clearly that means she needs to be there even more. she sits there and you clam up, unable to open up to the counselor. she's there again with your counselor in adulthood, your dad and her taking you there in the blizzard of a saturday after you dropped out of school again, her sitting in the room animated while your father sits there silently. she is there driving you to your counselor every week for the first couple years until she seems content that you are actually going to your session.
you go to australia when you are 17 and she is only there once, on the phone, in a 24 day period. you have the time of your life. she makes sure the next time you travel she tells you she has to be there once a day, time zones be damned, as if the time of your life has to be contorted and manipulated and reduced to something she can hold, until it's not even the time of your life, but of hers. you tear up writing this paragraph at the realization.
she is there even when she is not. when you're driving around town, in every vehicle that looks remotely similar to hers, your heart skipping as you know she'd be watching every move you make on the road, judging your competency. in high school she is calling your friend's houses at random times when you go over to remind you she could be there, and you should be.
she doesn't need to squeeze you tight to make it feel like you are being choked. her presence leaves you with constant claustrophobia, and when she is gone it doesn't relent. she has trained you to know she is behind your shoulder, in the car in the next lane over, on the phone, outside your classroom. she is always watching. you didn't have time for church growing up, but you got your dose of omnipotence. you would lie awake at night in fear wondering where she would be next. your computer? your nightstand? your backpack? your private writing? she is always there. and so you dream of getting so far away she couldn't possibly be. so many thousands of miles that there is no way she could be anywhere near you. and then you think about how'd you'd have to come home for days and days and days at a time for holidays, because she is always there.
Friday, September 18, 2020
predation, chinaware, and buddha
in 1st grade the present author was compelled by the teacher to write a fiction story. you see, the class at the time was going over the full timeline of species on planet earth, from dawn of life to human, covering everything from trilobites to carpet mites. the teacher, with somewhat notoriously difficult handwriting, had a note on the board about a specific period known for an abundance of "predatory fishes." the present author's classmate raised a hand, and, given the messiness of said handwriting, inquired about clarification on the two word phrase; asking, somewhat hesitantly, if it said "predatory dishes." the teacher chuckled, said "i can see why you'd ask that, the 'f' looks like a 'd'" and proceeded to rewrite the word to make it clearer. he then turned back to said classmate and told him he should write a story about predatory dishes, as it would be funny, and that he should ask for my help writing it, out of some misplaced notion that i was good at writing stories (this blog post, while not a fictional story, offering easily one of the greatest arguments against said claim). we wrote a story about dishes with extremely sharp, canine teeth, pointy silverware, and perpetual grins, running around trying to chop people up and eat them.
that teacher would end up teaching history in college, but at that specific time, he might have been teaching the future. for you see, the present author has spoken often, although not in some time, of one of the most simplistic renditions of an important piece of buddhist thought. that is, we exist is a cycle of eternal suffering until we shed desire. that until we do so, unending birth and death continue unabated, filled with pain. and perhaps no other activity quite accurately portrays this cycle as the kitchen on a thursday night. imagine, if you will, stepping into a dirty kitchen before thursday night dinner, and having to embark on a long session of "cleaning dishes." imagine, now, that those dishes, once cleaned, are immediately used to cook and plate the dinner you will fix. finally, once consumption is concluded, said dishes must now be cleaned again.
one could extend this out to an extremely varied host of activities, from waking up, going to work, and coming home, to any broad scale repetition. but expanding the scope out far enough on anything renders the specific analysis pretty meaningless. ergo, the present author must conclude that washing dishes encompasses the four noble truths better than anything else. suffering is true, and it is caused by a perpetually full sink. to end the suffering? just end the desire in having clean dishes, and invest in a large stack of disposable Chinet. not only does it save on having to clean, but truly; how sharp can the teeth of predatory dishes made of recycled paper really be?
the walls are closing in
when i was in 3rd grade our class went over to the local ymca (it was 2 blocks away from our school) every tuesday and thursday for swimming lessons. a game we used to play was where me and my friends would hold our arms out, and slowly close them together as we walked across a street, or across the field we would go through, or across a bunch of sidewalk squares, whatever. if our hands touched together before we did so, we were squashed, either by lava walls, poop walls (i mean we were like 8-9 years old), you get the picture. often we'd be seen hurrying up our last few steps to escape our own demise. it did not matter to us that we were in control of our own walls, each of us playing a version of the game where we were our own judge, jury, and executioner, parameters fully in our control. suffice to say, i don't think any of us every were "crushed." our hands never came together until we just made our goal, perpetually safe.
i don't know what made that exciting back then, because as i got older, i think it's fair to say those very walls - well, not the poop ones - were one of my greatest fears. the walls were closing in on me when i was failing out of university, so i decided that perhaps the best way to avoid it all was to just end it all and let the walls swallow me up.
the walls are back again, in a way i never thought they would be. i write to you from a country whose leadership has decided that the walls are good for us. that if we all get smashed into the shit we will be better for it, or that dying in it is ok if it kills the right people. there is no matter of control over these though. every single day the inevitability of a deadly virus striking me, my loved ones, my friends and family draws nearer. i can only do so much to push the walls off.
those same walls trap me here. i don't take my privilege of having seen most of the country and a decent chunk of the world lightly, but now i am truly trapped. nobody wants me, us, the people who live here. we have been walled off from the rest of the world because of our insistence on letting the walls do so.
i wrote a while back i would never write anything political on this blog, for i had nothing valuable to contribute, and that remains true, but i find myself drifting to writing about these walls. some, realistically, 250,000 people here have been crushed by them. and they continue to bind and squeeze and grind away. one day they will likely get to me. i only hope i can climb over them enough to get out. that i will not be crushed by them like so many others. it is entirely out of my control. there are no hands to bring together or pull apart.