In my dream, I was in the living room of the house in Berne. My parents told me that Chris had died in 1997. I started getting angry, then shouted. I was shouting, “Don’t you understand, I don’t have a family any more.” I was shouting and carrying on so much, that I began to froth at the mouth as if I had rabies. I could not control my emotions, nor my body, and I started shaking violently.
I woke up with the sunlight streaming through my balcony window, and birds and crickets outside in rice fields.
Who needs psychologists when all you need is a few good nightmares.
I feel as if I have two personalities, one which speaks English and one which speaks Japanese. The one which speaks English can never get past being a high school geek. The one which speaks Japanese cannot get past being a “strange foreigner.” The only time I feel comfortable now is when I am teaching. Only there can I be an actor and change who I am any time I want.
All we are, is passages, avenues through which other people travel. We are each others’ byways, highways, continuously passing through each others’ lives. Passengers, drivers, hitchhikers all.
There is nothing quite like the feeling sitting in a busy place produces, when it is quiet. The sense of empty vacancy seems more restrictive than if one were crowded, surrounded by should to shoulder hip-grinders.
There is no vibe. There are no walls of personality off which to bounce your own. How else can one tell one is alive?
That’s what we are, really; a constant turmoil between past and future, the mixing point of who we once were and who we are afraid we may become. We are constantly becoming — yet we never lose sight of the past, or if we do, we do so deliberately…but our past lies in wait, crouches and hides unbidden, always ready to pounce out from the mind’s darkness to set itself against future hopes and desires. Our previous selves eternally war with our future selves; it is the center of this conflict where we exist, and it is because of this inner turmoil we stay alive.
I was home, arguing at the dinner table. It was as if I were a teenager again. I’ve often dreamed of living in a bedroom with no ceiling over half of it, open to the night sky, with a solid rock wall on one side and sliding doors on another. This seemed to be the same house. Something like the house in Warrensburg, but somehow different. In other dreams, this house has slowly risen upward as if it were a growing tower of stone.
In this dream, I was at the dinner table. Then, suddenly I was on the back porch. It still looked like the “room” that had been set up for me when I was sleeping on the back porch between my freshman and sophomore years. Except in the dream, there was little furniture, no freezer, no old TV from my grandparents, just an old bed and some curtains. I was able to look through the kitchen wall and see the insides of the house, decrepit and broken plaster and wood.
I went to the barn to get my bicycle, and somebody came running up behind me just as I was about to leave the back yard. “Where is my bow and arrows?” I asked. He handed me a bow, but no arrows. I sped off down the side path to the street, and suddenly I was bicycling past the triangle park. Only it turned into a much large city-style park with large dumpsters and vending machines. A dump truck charged toward me, and as I veered away, it lurched back toward the park and disappeared.
Then I felt a pain in my mouth. Lifting a hand to my front teeth, I pulled out a large square and knew that my incisors had been removed.
All the answers, like the questions, are in here. Life has no meaning, I give it meaning and by doing so, seek to define it. But Life cannot be trapped; it is not an animal or emotion so easily caged, sated, confused, or led. It has a Will all its own, and Its Will merely Is. No thinking, no deliberation or pontification. No grandeur, no sweeping generalizations.
[Context: my mother had just passed away, and I was remembering that both my parents’ choice in reading materials influenced my own fictional likes and dislikes.]
I guess both Mom and Dad liked Trek from its inception [in 1966]. I remembering watching the original series (in syndicated reruns of course) in the late ’70s/ We saw it in the “TV room” in my grandparents’ house….They had a color Zenith; we only had a tiny black and white on a bookcase. I remember being fascinated by the bright reds and blues (this was the point…color TV was new in the late ’60s and the sets and costumes deliberately used bright primary colors)…
Mom had all three “Star Trek Readers” I through III, by James Blish….Later I would borrow more complicated science fiction / fantasy stories from my Dad — Frank Herbert’s Dune and Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land stood out. And of course, Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, which were televised when we lived in Berne [a small village in New York west of Albany]. Once I discovered [The Chronicles of] Narnia and The Hobbit in 3rd grade, it was all over. I was a nerd for life.
And now look at the influence on pop culture. Movies, books, music, clothes, shoes, bags…the Internet and modern media. Smartphones. Tablets. Skype. Wireless devices. Bluetooth. GPS.
Nerd-dom has conquered the world. And my mom got there first. Way to go, Mom.
[Context: While chaperoning students on overseas study in Perth, Western Australia, I badly burned my feet and back on a beach.]
It is difficult to walk, but today was slightly better than yesterday. Maybe tomorrow will be slightly better than today, and so on. One can only hope; if only life were like that, there would be an end to suffering.
There is a difference between being alone and feeling alone; being isolated and feeling isolated; being rejected and feeling rejected. Reality and emotive perception have no relation, except that which the mind projects. Eliminate the projection, and the reality allows itself to become revealed.
Only I can permit this reality to become revealed; only I can perceive, how can another remove this perception from me, if I cannot myself? No one can rely on me, if I do not rely on myself. No one can be helped by me, if I do not help myself.
No one can help me not feel alone, if I cannot do it myself. Being alone is a function of reality and circumstance; feeling alone is a function of myself, not dependent upon external stimuli. This feeling is one I must remove myself. I cannot be two, if I cannot be one.
