Monday, December 3, 2007

When tears won't help

If only she had tried a bit more, she could have fairly easily passed so many of her courses, so easily caught the train on time, washed the odd dish, cleaned and kept clean her room. But instead she corners herself into the shadows of self doubt and impossibility. All was and still is possible, but it takes a willful act and a persistent practice of such an act.

As a father, best for me to proceed by example... make my own transition lifestyle, and succeed. It may not work to help her, but at least I will have felt I tried, and helped myself in the process.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Cold Sweat and the Club

This morning on the way out the door I discovered my wallet missing. I started to panic as I checked all the obvious and even less obvious places it may have fallen. Drenched in a cold sweat I considered how I could go to work without a drivers license, no cash, and no cards to access cash. I considered all the tremendous hassle I would need to undertake to reorder all my charge cards, ID cards, my many bank cards, etc.

The panic was real as I began to mentally plan counter steps to cancel classes, track shops where it may have fallen, as I radically expanded and repeated my search. In fact, the wallet had fallen into the roll wheels of my computer chair and would move as I moved the chair, obscuring its view. Only when I radically moved the chair did it shake itself loose and reveal itself.

Now I must collect myself and try and understand what insight this lesson had for me. Ironically the whole process was triggered by a call from a friend who told me I was welcome to his club if I did not express any opinion close to the author atheist Dawkins. Apparently it is not in the spirit of the club to question the legitimacy of religion.

To be censored from an academic club because of my appreciation of the work of any author is curious and distasteful. Smacks a bit of the inquisition and helps me better appreciate the hurdles facing atheists of conscious. I am not deeply invested in the atheistic perspective though as an American my underdog cheerleader side wants to kick in. God bless the club, all others please shut up.

As I typed this, my children's school called and my daughter is being sent home after being caught in a lie. Is there any way to process all the subtleties to these life lessons? Best just to do my best to teach, parent, and befriend while listening to what life is saying, no matter how painful the message.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Moving to the Visual

I keep reaching toward an understanding. Is there such a place or is it always a slippery slope away? The computer mount web-cam required a system upgrade but it works, albeit sluggishly being USB.2 fare. The video blog notion is both titillating yet terrifying because it requires a commitment to film, verifying both inadequacies and inspiration. Yet process is essential. Products are needed to test theories and encourage learning.

The world can bare tremendous 'tomas', the sluggish sludge that clogs the pours and slows down innovation. This week I lost three days in part due to a surprise season change cold. I will need to do make-up classes now. Yet next week will have to be a week of production. Clear out the first concept of student generated material, despite their all too common ambivalence. If the concept works I can repeat it, if not stop it early. It may be simpler to just work with better motivated classes.

It has been fun playing with technology, yet I feel I have achieved no great inroads into expression. My website continuously needs more time than I am willing to surrender and now too with video I feel reluctant to invest even more time. Yet this is essential to move to the next level... a large body of experiments, completed by Christmas.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Full Moon at 3:45am

I am wakened by impulse... I feel concern for my loved ones... the circling band of feminine affectionate, who populate my life, call me into confusion. A big full brooding moon peers through my window. Thankfully, peace reigns on this mountain and I can collect my thoughts, in these wee hours.

I have a need to follow through on romantic opportunities, despite the whirlwind down-drafts and disturbing chills. There is a greater urge within the tenderness of concern, the folds of skin, the scented seclusions of intimacy.

Breath deeply, relax my jaw, and understand that it is a greater death done with love. Compassion calls at times for aloneness and distance. That may be what is needed now, yet the pendulum will weigh in again... bringing with it the deeper rooted truths we each bare and care so dearly to share.

I will hear their voices, their accolades of love and their brutal analysis of my vices. Their truth with melt around me, as the pains of a new spring reveal the scents hidden by winter snow, on the tundra of a billion defecations. Honesty has its price.

Yet in the end, after the methane has dissipated upward and cleared the air, there will be flower blossom from ancient fruits, consumed in exuberant passion. This truth telling will some how make sense... And we will again wear garlands around our crown and rub our lips together.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Silent Sweetness

Stepping back, allowing the wave of space and prosperity... the sweet advantage of employment, home, and health. Collecting my thoughts and neatly spacing them out on the table of reality. Today is cool, as autumn re-enlists for another cyclical adventure.

For school teachers it is back to school. That swirling hubbub of chaotic repetitiveness and speculative planning. In the back yards of love come new opportunities to understand where we stand, who we might be, and where this might relate to other passing ships.

I have a notion to implement a YouTube lesson plan. One in which we create five minute shorts, collecting the opinion of young Japanese on diverse provocative topics. Attempting to communicate individual truths, to the collective consciousness of a world audience, could be both fun and a productive language learning experience for my students.

Right now this is just a seed of an idea, but I hope to test the waters in class this week. We shall see. It may be fun and constructive, or, like so many of my 'brilliancies', fade on the way side of deflated and obsolete lesson plans. At least it is best to try...

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Complete first movie in 25 years


A bit shaken and sore... the familiar pattern of exhilaration and focus, around the clock inspiration, and the follow through with the realities of distribution and futility. Yet, in the mix was an increase of learning, as I brought relevance into my research (all the books, magazines, and podcasts I have been studying this last year or so).

Futility is a flaw in self-perception; the swing vote of impotence verses gradual growth. That which distinguishes preservation of a process from the quelling of individual proaction as too risky, in other words, choosing a creative process that will be self-sustaining. Without an economic incentive, most hobbyist fade away.

My goal is to create a podcast business plan which is not economically motivated yet still has longevity, true sticking power... self fertilizing and personally fulfilling.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Canon HV20 was Purchased

A good camera, and now I flounder, afraid to take the first step... patterned procrastination. Post-procrastination: when I create an edge. Yet why is this necessary when the past reveals all truths to my methodology? Hiding in creature comforts makes for a palatable self-contempt. Set up a mechanism for success.

I use a better older tripod than the free one I received on purchase of the camera. This feels more stable. I find the remote control very handy and discover the mike plugged in cuts the internal mike. Need to read the instruction book more carefully. I notice that reading the book without hands on attempts is fruitless (the book will put me to sleep) but once I have gotten into the process of actually using the camera the manual becomes readable.

I am reluctant to get into the water, but, once in, I love to swim!

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Rainy Morning

The kids back in school... I am alone. In just my undershorts I trim the garden trees and bush in the cooling rain; Grandma style, the Japanese approach to pruning in my Moss garden. Chop, chop, chop, clip, clip, clip.

I struggle with the thoughts of video, reaching too deeply into my youth, confronting procrastination and a swirling quagmire of shadows. Can I cut this? Should I test the waters? So many impressions, a logical progression from years of journal keeping and a youthful false start as a filmmaker. Fear of exposure, embarrassment, commitment, responsibility... my so many technical limitations and the complex complications of worthwhile creation.

And then there is my next semester of teaching. How do all these pieces fit together?

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Calculating Catastrophe

Pending pain, as reminded, from time to time, by physical and social break downs. Glorious imaginative projects, often centered around Videocasting, dance on a mind tortured by terror. What terror? you say...

Narcissistic Prima donna was an art performance I created in New York twenty odd years ago, exposed in preview, a life of self absorption. As an artist all I have ever known, or attempted to express, remains self-absorbed. And now the depth of decay lassoing my daily consciousness brings forth this same old theme. Yet guilt riddled anxiety, facing the trauma of exposing one last time, all the madness, all the tedious madness, of a man who has not changed toward artistic maturity but instead the deadening disease of regurgitated reflection.

I still write a journal after 30 years and my thoughts have never caught the wisp of a muse. Do it, you say. Manifest your freaking vision and let it die in the air of actualized feces, fertilizing the creative with negative example. No man or woman of mindfulness can justify a contemplative angst of non-action. Better to pour my proactive shlock and serve it to the digital mainstream, to be dissipated into the stratosphere of crystallized dribble of modern social media.

Do it? You say. And I wonder who the hell you are to ask. Haven't you been reading my posts for the last thirty years, and hasn't 'how I am' as a fumbling procrastinating blob, stuck yet? Do you really believe there is something to do that is both possible and worthwhile? And you answer, in a cynical but supportive tone... "why not do all you can, no one will be effected much, and there is always the outside chance something will come of all of this.

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Shaken but not stirred

Is it the weather or the transition from work to recess... a headache slips up the side of my head. Keeping focused, one wonders if I have always been, what is called, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Just keep getting back to the tasks at hand and hope all will settle into place. Make life wonderful.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

No Way if my way is the only way

Argumentative, combatant even, inconsistent energy level, fragile health due to lazy use of the body and abandonment to oral gratification... Opinionated, psychotic at times (rationalized or actual ramification to trauma), all in all transformational. Or is it all just talk? Begging the question, "What would be success?"

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Rose, thorn and fragrance

The taste of life is so subtle, delightfully complex, bitter sweet... aromatic. Here in Nihon, we have the moist wave of clouds encircling my home, in the magical haze of the rainy season. Temperatures fluctuate from tropical forest to chilly damp mountaineering. My life is riddled with hard core emotional delicacies, a gourmet buffet of buffering challenges. I will not articulate these here, these petty chores, trails and tributaries, that crown all domestic and professional integrity. We all have sweaty brows in this climb up and out.

I tried unsuccessfully to retire the God concept, interwoven as it is into my pea brain personalized didactic. How can I teach in a head created by others, even when that head is my own? Yet I enjoy the skeptic's freshness, the raw dance of persistent ruthless critique. It is a cruel world, demanding an intellectual purity, always slightly over my own horizon.

I wish I could justify my primate tendencies... my swinging pendulum of man and beast. But the internal holocaust and its hedonistic healing are two sides of the same thick skull. Pain and pleasure is how we monkeys learn. I wish I could ask for forgiveness, yet so clear, I error in my very nature... my very core convoluted, to what is expected. I relentlessly remain responsible, within my own philosophical dictum.

In other words: Tragically, majestically, you get what you see... I stand here before you, naked, apple still in hand. Guilty as charged in my wild man innocence. Welcome to the real world, post-Paradise lost; Eternally Adamized.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Ants in My Pants

I have quietly spent my Saturday absorbed in podcasts, and now will begin my day of expanding my garden and visiting a gallery opening. My pursuit of science, or at least the initial trappings of such, has revitalized my academic pursuits, from other visceral perspectives gone asunder. I haven’t time now to describe in detail this transformation, as there are too many variable. Instead I will simple acknowledge Hitchens, the podcast 'Point of Inquiry', and the comical biographical work "Letting Go of God" by Julia Sweeney.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Trying to Evolve

Perhaps I have found the adjustment to eliminate the trouble I was having with this software. In life there is so much personal work going on, yet the angst that 'time is too short for actual understanding' pursues... true transformation being more elusive than mere bug fixes.

Point of Inquiry, a secular humanist podcast, has me buying books again like crazy. Previous to this topic, on-line purchased books have been coming on my resurrected interest in film-making. Also, gardening and gardening books have flooded into my life, with trees following roses following diverse flower collections springing from feminine companionship, in and on every available space in yard, terrace, and house.

The transition I sense is grounded in my geography, an inner relationship with my house here in the hills of Japan. The anniversary of my wife's death looms on the horizon of summer bringing with it further reflection and the remaining deep pangs of sadness. My decision to pull in, and stay here in Japan this summer, is a shadowy choice. There are as many subconscious reasons as conscious, as I try to map out progressive actions, within a soft-focused vision of the future, laden by such dense fog.

There could be so much to say here, but I dissipate much of my reflective writing into a handwritten diary I use throughout the work day. Over 40 years of diary writings, spread across book shelves or stuffed into boxes stored in attics on two continents... so much fire wood for my funeral pyre.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Living Frustration

There is a bug in this software. Our social upbringing creates similar bugs in our psyche. Daily we are tasked to rewrite our own programming or learn to live with our flaws... Thus frustration.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Distinguishing Priorities

Living in Paradise, a place where fortune has placed me within arms reach of all my needs and most pleasures, has a residual effect: That massive excess hanging over my belt and making me short of breath.

It is as if there is a built in accumulating tab with all joy in life. But there is no causal relationship between happiness and payback. Instead, there is wise lifestyle choices and less wise lifestyle choices. But since I have come to equate eating in excess as my preferred activity over exercise, there is in fact a relationship between joy and risk.

There comes a time when daredevil eating needs to be packed in the attic along with extreme sports and psychedelics. At my age I need to know better and to act accordingly.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Haunting in Paradise

I calculated the hours I actually work and, including travel and mid-class lunches, I do not work over 30 hours on those full weeks I do work. The actual time is closer to 25. Yet interestingly enough the anxiety and disappointments, the frustrations and residual hard feelings, can last throughout my week... Into my dreams... permeating, even slightly poisoning the food I eat, the feelings I experience, the moods I express.

I feel I am working hard to eradicate these social dysfunctions but the causes are subtle and the cures radical and unpractical... most likely un-achievable transformations of character. Even though the disease itself is life threatening in its persistent blight on the delicate mechanisms of consciousness... What can a body do?

The solution may be a surrender to one side of this persistent duplicity. A loss of income, slipping into the cold hard world of cashless-ness, onto the loser side of this consumer society I seem to enjoy so much. Or a gradual undermining of my sense of self. Feeling that value of spirit, that my opinion matters more than the logistical management of mine and others egos. Is ego and idea permanently entwined, to where there is no hope of grace and dignity without Machiavellian manipulations?

Can I be a genuinely good person and yet still express character and individual flair? Let us hope what flames of pain and pounding one feels now will heat the irons to a greater tensile strength tomorrow. I will continue to try and filter through all these acidic emotions, hoping some clarity awaits down the road. One day, this day, today.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Trouble in Paradise

The dichotomy of my days has been growing. On one side are perfected times with family and friends and on the other a troubling time on certain days with passive resistance and lack luster interaction with my students. There has also been the recent car accident, which has reopened old wounds both physical and psychological. There is that run-away train feeling.

A recent trend to increase classroom size, with classes expanding to upwards to 35, and the dumbing down needed as more troubled and lower teared students enter the pool with current demographics shifts... less students born into the school system means more of the bottom placed in previously unattainable schools... But all of this reads like rationale. My job is whatever is placed before me, as well as the emotional adjustment needed to deal with the challenges of both the classroom and administrative challenges of my employment.

The 'run-away train feeling' is a life time of teaching and living catching up with me. Those tail-ends of unresolved emotions, heated up by the layering of new feelings. In affect, my trying to please everyone and not succeeding.

I have made several adjustments, each day to the various needs of my students, in the diverse classroom settings I currently teach. Some of it has been quite successful while other attempts are lost in the numbers. At core, though, is my awareness of my inevitable responsibility to my life situation, i.e. I am in charge; parallel to much is also outside my control, i.e. I am not in charge.

This duplicity, with my will to master my situation on one side, and this observation that so much is outside my ability to control, has me grasping at straws.

An emotional centering is advisable now. I can feel my mind trailing off in distinct directions: relationships, work related, needed transitions for the future, distracting yet essential pleasures, the trials and tribulations of driving, parenting, maintaining this richly diverse lifestyle...

Time to psychologically regroup and set my priorities in order. But there is so very much on my plate and much of it so very delicious. Perhaps the best perspective is slowing down into this moment and managing the particular place I am... Look deeply at this feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction while tasting the sweetness of all my many many blessings.

Monday, May 7, 2007

Cool Morning

I ask myself, "Why was it, I didn't take a walk all weekend, but instead stayed by the computer, and even there hardly did anything constructive?" But no reassuring answer followed. Friday was beautiful, in part, because it included a walk with friends and my son.

Another week has begun, something needs to get me out... I understand this... yet... "Let's find time to take a walk today!" I say, as if making a plan... Insisting it is a plan.

Needing to get my friends involved, to combine this simple task with my strong socializing need; combine my need for affection with motion beyond the expedience of the bedroom.

"Expand my definition of physical pleasure" I reaffirm. Survival by depletion of my copious form is as relevant as the dissemination of semen. Though one is dependent on the other, my lazy nature settles for the path best lubricated. Dark humor aside, exercise is essential for my survival.

I need to internalize this message and get the job done, day after day, after day.

Sunday, May 6, 2007

Wicked Wonderment

A deliciously dense cloud covers my mountain home. The patter and ping of rain splattering endlessly on my tin roof comforts me. Even the cool air feels refreshing, safe here in my wooden steel framed castle.

Thankfully the despair and disease that cursed my yesterday has subsided to normalcy, peaking as pleasure in being alive. Life is lovely when your children are safe.

There is such a torrent of collective pain as we watch via accessible media the wars of the world. We understand so much of what can go wrong. This is why I spend so much time lingering in beauty and peaceful pleasures, simple solutions, and sweet gentle affections. I hope to be more and more a beacon of bliss and less detractor and cold-hearted critic.

So deeply ingrained is my ego-based grumpiness. So much more useful would be a likability factor amped-up to max... so much better for me, my family, my students, and all the many who must contend with my cantankerous nature each and every day.

Saturday, May 5, 2007

Factoid May=Depression

In the waves of trivia, in which I swim, came the factoid: December, despite the myth, is not the highest for suicide; May is. May comes after a hard sad winter but May's spring brings no relief. Believing in the future is always a risky proposition, when the present doesn't work well. I live in paradise, so, by default, I am an authority on sadness... something to do with comparative perspectives.

Today I see I have these romantic ties to my tools as a symbol of prowess, more than any massive hunger for the creative process. I want the cool factor of being seen as powerful, by operating top-of-the-line cool stuff, though I am not as willing to do the legwork of mastership of these tools.

I suppose mine is a common infliction. A consumer society soldier of conspicuous consumption. Convenience and pragmatic motivation (sugar, salt, and sex) seems more relevant for me to make things. Simple and expedient means more for getting me to do something, than the actual cool state-of-the-arts technology I covet. I like stuff now more than making stuff, objects over action... a toy junkie. But to get the job done, simple and in tune with some motivation is best for me.

I discuss this here after watching myself procrastinate. Procrastinate learning even the simplest of technology, all the while fantasizing ambitious complex projects.

The advent of spring means summer to me, after a hard muggy initiation, total un-productivity. Like life away from a big city, life without a product lacks a rationalization for existence. A city without an art process, a tool without mastership, a spring without vision reaching toward manifestation, are formula for depression.

Process justifies the tool. Depression is the recognition of factors without motivation for appropriate action. A feeling, a feeling that the vision really is meaningless, before giving the action a chance to wash all that self-doubt away, is a May depression and could evolve into a June suicide.

Though these theories might apply to an exaggerated version of reality, they still do not explain my wife's suicide in June 2000, nor why I circle the fire of art creation at such a distance. Am I a moth with a greater destiny than consummation in flames or simply a coward afraid of standing naked in my ordinariness as every man. Was this what Reiko tried to face, Her human ordinariness?

Thankfully I already live in paradise, and all this speculative dancing does not diminish the fact. Truth will triumph by the inevitability of 'what happens will happen' with or without us. Though, some of us will be missed deeply for a very long time. So all that remains is, what do I plan to do with my present symptoms: High Blood Pressure, lock jaw tension, and a perpetual resistance to radical but necessary change.

Monday, April 30, 2007

Happiness in fulfilling Times

There were moments in the aftermath of Reiko's death where it was hard envisioning being fulfilled again. Now I dance among pleasures... good friends, companionship, affection from my children... all the bounty of the earth, available within the peace and sanctity of Japan.

As I write this, I watch Claude LeLouch's classic 'Smic Smac Smoc'. How is it America never discovered Claude LeLouch?

I discovered his work as a film student, in New York City in the early seventies, and have never found much mention of his work, anywhere in the States, since. He combines a deeply philosophical romanticism with a love for the pure fun of cinema production.

Thankfully, I can still enjoy his work, on the miracle of a DVD six film collection, created by the Canadian 'imavision'. Quality and story last through time.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Petal to the Metal

My feet are feeling around for the kick start pedal on this day. Podcast distracted recently, proactive inklings dissipate quickly... need to keep plowing through. Glorious Golden Week can not be wasted by secondary objectives.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Whispering Thank You's.

The flowers abound, blessing brightly, color.
Soft sensual yet firmly wet.
Wild mental mountains of pleasure.
Pause
Glory in fifties, settling peacefully,
Hearts held in holding hands.
Soft silences
and, then,
we whisper

'thank you.'

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Flowers' Flush

Sunny,
sided to proceed.
Motion to breeze.
Looking toward sunny,
forward to funny...
feeling a need to Spring.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Double Take

There is more than a duplicity in all moments... more like a kaleidoscope of variables... different threads lacing simultaneously through our head. Only mass murderers and the financially successful have the luxury of simplicity... the advantage of just two worlds, private and public.

Most of us see windows appearing along every corridor, looking out on fresh horizons chuck filled with alternatives. And with this inner and outer vision comes all that damn responsibility. We know what each world will be permitted to ask. Each new demension has the right to ask for our best... full honest consciousness.

Yuck... the task of being 'full focus on' is so daunting, even when one's self-expectations are as low as mine appear to be. Oh well... we grow our own ingredients, with our daily labor, and, if there is a maturing of produce, we get a tasty stew...

Then we get to sit, stewing in our choices. It is all very simple, in its complexity. All very complete, in its infinity of options. All so life like.

Crisp Freshness of Morning

It is I who am most crisp in the morn. Morning man despite a sleepless night of videocast viewing and twisting dream-wake consciousness. The simple reading of a seven rule diet point of view, and this Bloggers multiple responses, has me reemerging today as a dieter.

The Seven Horrible Truths about Dieting and Exercise

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Keep Sake

I mentally fondle my video-cast notion of flowers... trying to determine if this is a valuable life step or just a passing fancy. Would this notion be met best as a still photo process or motion video? I have a completely unexplored micro-lens on an out-dated Olympus digital camera. Why not develop my concept around the resources I now have, and then take it from there.

Is there any audio or additional data needed? Is it visual aesthetics, some greater level of experience, or a life-style creation I am after?

While there is a wish for all three, isn't it necessary to take one step at a time? Begin by amassing images. Find if I really have content worthy of publishing, and begin from there, concerning whether I am talking about video-podcasting or RSS blog photo feeding.

At present, I am mashing all in my head, and all these various forms of expression have their own distinct characteristics.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Waking Early

I achieved delightful moments waking early on a Wednesday. Water my plants, listening to many podcasts, making breakfast, sporadic cleaning... My mind dances around and around this notion of video podcasting. Technical perspectives, philosophical points of view, life style choices... a major puzzle moving to some choices.

Will this all dissipate or come to a deeper understanding? Death and other examples of brutal finality darken all my thoughts... that and the endless quagmire of classroom realities. Thank God I am blessed with a workable life style... a relieving pace of space and time optimized for moderation. I must keep working to perfect my presence in the most troubling classes while preserving my quality of performance across the board.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

The Pleasures of Spring

Added red lily bulb seedlings to my planters yesterday on my return from Costco. Flowers have expanded in this life, a curious parallel with so many other old people. Is this some biological phenomena in which old people reach toward the earth for pragmatic pleasures?

Friday, April 13, 2007

Glorious Spring to Image-maker

The 'guerilla camera' choice verses a larger more professional level camera, has me again focusing on Canon's HV10, which crosses the advantage of High Density videography with light weight portability. A friend on campus talked about how he does not bring his large camera to events because it is just too big. Since one aspect of my video ambitions is productivity, in an already busy life style, it stands to reason I go small.

My Nikon Coolpix E100 has been a disaster, having been already to the repair shop and again not working. The handling is awkward, the on and off switch unclear, and so the battery life unpredictable. With the Canon HV10 I will have a 3.1 million pixel image, comparable to my present resolution and adequate for my purposes, which are web based.

Mobile camera phones are another positive possibility though at present they do not have the quality and control I would like to experiment with. But, in time, I hope to experiment more with this 'keitai' medium in the near future. I suspect I will also move up in technology, tempted by the semipro-models of Canon XHG1 and XH A1, or even the pro level XL H1. But first I need to prove the feasibility of my producing a consistent product while maintaining my present lifestyle.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Changing of the Guard

The Don Inus rude joking at the expense of the Rutger's basketball team highlights the difference in values between the world I was brought up in and the evolutionary forces in the collective conscious. My family is ripe with bigoted language and humor and I hear it too in my own usage despite my desire to evolve. Growth is a painful process that cuts away at improvisational velocity. It is more fun to fall back on old standby Schlock humor than to evolve to the next level of oral awareness. Yet I truly do want to speak my truth... not the historical truth of previous ignorance but a transformational expression of what I have come to believe is right.

In me is a greater self and this is what I aspire to. No need to play the old worn out tunes of racist and sexist ignorance.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Learning

I am psyched at this crazy idea of flower photography... adding a flower a day to my blog entries. It makes no sense except that I am into flowers these days and spend time everyday grooming my flower gardens and potted plants, along with my several room display flower arrangements.

Classes are going well despite the usual ruffled feathers as I roll in both barrels blazing. There is an honesty and sincerity in my style that will eventually cause unwanted confrontations, yet what real choice do I have? I listen carefully to each critique or complaint or subliminal message and try my best to factor in the input... but I also know in cross cultural interaction there is always the possibility I will need to fold in any one hand.

I love what I do, but I do it with such an intensity that it drains me completely. Maintaining a balance, pacing my driving in my car, in the classroom, and in my social interactions is essential... graceful multitasking... a 'Grace' race. Feeling from the other's perspective while in the dance of it.

Already on Cue, babbling distractions...

Multitasking is synonymous with raising a family, particularly while working a career as a university teacher, at several different scattered schools throughout the week. Being a single dad only accents the challenge and demands the skill.

Nutritional eating and routine exercise can be integrated into this life style. Not only is this possible, symptoms suggest... it is essential. Multitasking is an art of priorities, merging the task of saying 'NO' to lazy default habits with the proactive solution of saying 'YES' to healthy life alternatives.

Make it a conscious awareness... but step it up, from guilt creating reaction, to verification. Verify any truths inherent in replenishing the biological soul. Find out why healthy well-balanced individuals are happier by emulating their routines.

Get well.

Monday, April 9, 2007

The Success I am Having

There is a paradise I live. I teach my first classes of the semester and for lunch meet a friend. We eat well... there is always Ramen here in Kyoto. We walk in the woods... there is always a beautiful flower laden path in Kyoto. We return to my room... my special place at home in the hills above Kyoto. A place where love making comes naturally. A palace in the hill of dreams.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Time is of the Essence

On PodTech.net, a 'Bird Flu Influenza's coming epidemic' podcast burnt a hole in my heart. It is coming and there is very little (actually next to nothing) we can do about it. This slants all my activities toward absolute trivia. But I do not want a nihilistic stance to be my flag. So I ended up looking at video cameras and buying a 500GB hard drive.

All of us podcasters want to be loved, to feel important, to make a living having fun... few will make it over the hump. But I want to try anyway. But about the influenza epidemic... now that is nihilistic provocation.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

The Miraculous Monster of Self

Am I getting well? The pleasure palace of my home has been tormented by idiosyncratic pain about the head. Fluctuating between a guerrilla style camera, pocket size, or one set to the upper end aesthetic of High Definition, I am steps away from proactive shooting. How tormented my decision has been languishing in memory of the ten year diabolic hole of filming 'The Abortion' my first and last full length feature. I do not want to go there yet I do want to approach motion image again from a fresher perspective... Videocasting... Vlogging... Video Blogging... Video Podcasting.

Frontier demanding qualities of content and image. Flow bolstered with drama. Impact... informative... Entertainment with personal relevance to both producer and audience.

Gotta love it... if I can just get over the early hurdles of sticking out my face and risking... truth.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

New Ruby Sheets for my Luxurious Queen Bed

The sun appears after an evening blasted with a yellow full moon through my western windows. I will walk today, away from my video-podcasting mania, and that subtle anxiety prior to new classes. I will walk into the arms of good health, of friendship, and genuine affection. I will walk into deserved joyful meals, and needed sleep.

I do not sleep well here in Paradise. Is it the moon, a life of jaw clenching trauma, or sins un-repented?

Sunday, April 1, 2007

The Miracle is Always so Precarious

In the luxury of time, to do 'my own thing', is the sickness Buddha warned me of. In the quiet paradise of good children, a beautiful home, and unbounded prosperity is the binding of fear... Of street wise experience... hard nosed memories of brittle moments crumbling around my feet.

I want to move toward physical manifestation... magnificent moments created in digital subtlety of color and light... Blended stories humorously woven in depth of character and solid insight.

Would an Intel Mac, Canon camcord, Firefox, and massive storage be the christening of a sail ship... allowing me endless island voyages with bellowing canvas and sunny skies... or will I sink with the weight of a battleship, an admiral unwilling to face the new tactical efficiency of terrorists?

Do I think too heavy, when I think High Density, or am I allowing for a bolster of fire power, added ammo against the bastille of my normalcy? Spell check permits me to write well enough to be understood... perhaps today's digital technology will help me find the visual voice I surrendered when I left New York.

To allow that flow again could be transformational.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Dieting Deviations

Dalando's Diet Blog will consume the devastation of tedium, the facing of addictions and the avoidance of avoidance, i.e. becoming physical. All steps can only expand as far as my stride. Stride on ... Stride on.

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Self-teaching aides, Video Blog Tutorials

Seek and you'll find.

Been scanning the web for video-podcasting info and have found, finally, the best basics tutorials. Thanks to Video Blog Tutorial @ http://www.freevlog.org... The image of my own video blogging is now coming into focus.

For inspiration and raw fluid info I am now tuned daily into 'XOLO.TV', 'On-being', 'Boom Chicago', 'Rocketboom', 'The New Wrinkle', 'commandN h.264' with my adding and subtracting independent and team vloggers daily.

'The DV show' and also 'Inside Home Recording' (audio programs both for video and audio troubleshooting) are two too long but good examples of pragmatic self-education tools, plus recently inactive, though still downloadable, the very helpful video shooting advice at 'Izzy Video DV Tutorial'...

'PodTech.net' for the tech insider perspective, along with pop 'ABC News Ahead of the Curb', 'Business Week - Tech 101 Video podcast'... 'CNET News.com daily tech news', 'CNN SHOWandTELL', 'MacBreak', 'MacCast', 'Macworld Podcasts' and also 'Macworld Video', 'NPR Technology', 'NYT Tech Talk', plus pro 'Photoshop TV', 'Podcast Academy', 'This WEEK in MEDIA' and also 'This WEEK in TECH', 'TWit Video', and last, but certainly not least, 'Videomaker Presents' the quintessential amateur approach to home video.

I am psyched.

Saturday, March 24, 2007

Tears as Witness to Meaning

Glorious moments punctuate my day with tears. I see the haunting perfection of individual triumphs materialized as media moments, and I am moved. Yet there is a divide between my world of inspiration in leisure and the tormenting truth that I have yet found my creative process. A life time of failed events, of non-happenings, and procedures that have come up short... have poisoned my promises.

Next step is camera, point-and-shoot. Upload and revitalize my web presence. Make alive in tune with my time, a coming together of what I have always been plus alpha. I have maintained a blog from long before it existed. Now that blogging has circumnavigated the globe and met my world here on the other side, it is time.

A more power Mac Book Pro, a wide digitalized monitor, ample media storage, and a HD camcorder. And begin; Doctor Mercy (a Ghanian friends Medical journal), Kyoto Philippino (Life here in Japan for Philippine workers and students), Kyoto Streets (walking visions), Kyoto Inside Out (My Kyoto), Pleasure Pain (My love-hate relationship with Movement), Ain't Art Kyoto... A bubbling vanity of overflowing draws waling out for objectification. You saw it here first folks.

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Sweet Silence

I religiously over eat, a passionate distraction utilizing the lusty loop of greed to dissipate actual insight. But I did manage to varnish a second coat on the upstairs terrace, in anticipation of Spring. The sweet sweet silence soaks me in a bath of opportunity. My estate now perfected, in this time allotted to lucky academics, between school years here in the Orient. Here in the safety away from a degrading de-evolution of American civil liberties... though safe here in Japan only being a fragile balance of smoke and mirrors. All of us 'in the know' know, when the US allows her wings to be clipped by Neoconservative idiots, we shall all pay.

So I gravitate, in a swirling of confirmations, toward video-blogging... a rekindling of filmmaker yearnings, overcoming the historical pain of incompletion and technological hair-pulling. Perhaps now I can meet again with my tools and negotiate an expression worthy of my world.

Love and leisure, how sacred this moment.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

Planning; Art or Obsession?

To what degree does the perpetual mapping of time interfere with spontaneity? Theoretically, one maps in non-linear thinking by including meditation, or some erotic interplay, athletic physical activity, stimulating entertainment, social interaction or other free form of play... But how insipid is the structuring of freedom?

Surely the most effective spiritual practices are a riff of time structures, vigorous routine. Business models, more often than not, offer promise when time management is enhanced. Personal chaos can be remedied simply by stepping into a controlled schedule, requiring full physical and mental attention away from our dizzying mental wanderings.

The mind is both a friend and culprit in determining inevitable success. To be in paradise requires an elastic vigilance. The courage and ability to say yes and no, to demands placed on our time. To choose, or choose not to choose, is a subtle art. Deciphering what to do next requires space for reflection and disciplined action.

Planning done well is art, done poorly life depleting. Yet getting started either way remains key.

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The Work of Byron Katie

There was something that caught me, when I stumbled on to Katie's work, and I ordered her 2006-2007 32-CD set. Is her assumption that we are all wise true? Testing her four sentence formula:
1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it's true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?

And remember to turn it around.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Coming Closer

The sky in winter Japan is an ongoing window into paradise known. Grandma is here. Everyone should have a Japanese grandmother for their children. I am so close now. This PodTech.net is so in tuned with the motion I find myself, this jog course of energy of mind. English Teaching in Japan... Teaching in Japan (science, math, the best of the best). I am coming close to an understanding of the videocast in my future. The lose of work may meet a compromise of efficiency. I may find a way to slip into the creator's life style, an undivulged projection of my youth. Too much on mind, yet all is relevant to this core of consciousness. Obviously I need to fix my teeth, pay the bills, lose weight, exercise, paint the porch, keep tight with my extended family, reunite with my professional identity. This is a year of potential. I can use it well. Last year was an exploration into body science, and a birth of vegan awareness and self education. Now I reel in this revolutionary gesture and come to a balance. But I am a hunter, I know that now.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Frustration indigenous to Paradise

So many blessings today. Help from an angel, raw cash, sweet kindnesses, absence of pain... Perhaps it is only really hard work which can eliminate my anxiety. That anxiety that I must do so much more. I do Do so much, yet there are those around me with quick silver energy and a work ethic so sharp it can cut through these mental distractions. Am I doing, when I take in my research? Push on, more effectively... find a tool to swing real soon. Revitalize my web presence and terminate my relationship with my server provider.

Cut clean in final preparation for my emerging image. Teaching English in Japan. Artfully pragmatic, focused, and nurturing, community based, and profitable.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Self Inflicted Frustrations

I was empowered on awakening but, as the entanglement of sunlight activity settles in, I again lose my thread. The delight of poetic play can spin me into a Sufi shuffle, setting me back hours, even in the sweet silences of my cozy room.

I was pleased that my chat could bring some solace to a friend facing depression. And in this simple interaction, hope that I may serve some greater purpose... even in the bumbling normalcy of chaotic living. We help each other, and there is a bit of a rush in this.

Friday, March 9, 2007

Reticence, Anxious, and Fear

The palatability of procrastination enables me to evade for just so long. In the morning though, the aftertaste of indecisiveness lingers, from a tormented night of lock-jaw anxiety. A list of what I put-off reads Ike a psychosomatic cook book, or a book dealer's inventory of used 'Self-Help' books.

I still struggle with calling the US trying to eliminate my dead wife's name from our savings plan. How I hate the inner city drawl of middle management do-nothings, who have me perform like a circus bear yet provide nothing, but a promise to send further forms to fill.

How I hate to deal with the automated web-forms on my overseas domain server. I allow myself to be victimized by their self-concerned sales team, and absentee tech support. Instead of carrying my revenging angel out into the open, so that he may spread his wings and bring wrath upon my enemies, I linger in altered states of denial... perennial procrastination.

Only when the pain gets unbearable does the dental work get done.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Vulnerable Paradise

My room is softly silent. Listening, the layers of biology, body functions, from digestion to cyclical desire for procreation, make their presence known. The first step for civilization is to fulfill these body needs, health, nutrition, and sexual satisfaction. But next is the vacuums void that creates intellectual hunger, a need to create.

But create what?

When we are hungry we end up in the kitchen and our palette screams out descriptors, mapping a plan for which foods to prepare. Drawing from pantry and fridge we create our transient pleasure palace, mounds of our favorite food gobbled down to satiety. Sex, mapped by social ritual of phone calls and rendezvous or some automated variation involving the internet, too is fulfilled via proactive pursuit.

But art, and our need to create it, is far more allusive. The intellectual whore house of television, printed media, and on-line consumption does not ever fully deter the desire to make something special. Of course one can damper and self-delude by massive doses of intellectual stimulation and experiential entertainment. Yet, in the end, only creation, full-fledge materialization of a vision, can stop the angst of an artist.

And for better or worse, I have always been, more often than not, an artless artisan... a needy man staring through the picture window of a world rich in expression. I must reenergize that self-definition of artist that once was hard-wired into my psyche. Yet I keep dissipating my fiery creative-juices by down time in the pursuits of pleasure. Vision must include decadence and deprivation in the final work, or I must streamline out distractions with a monk-like dedication. Whatever the methodology, a functioning studio and a stone chiseled conviction is as utilitarian as kitchen cutlery and boudoir bravado.

Initiate the creative process, and hope that art will come of it.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Working the Weather

Rain, cold and wet, draws me in, drowns me in dreary dreams and drizzly distractions. I am the weather. Where is the will? What does it take to join inspiration with actualization... these seeds of despondence... Decay in the floor boards, dry rot decaying my foundation. I smell a project. I feel so close near a way of being busy 'creating'... yet there is such a strong air of disbelief. Ain't no money in it, no immediate wellspring of love. Need a handle, umbrella to the weather of lost confidence. A Merry Weather to hold my hand through this storm of indecisiveness.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Experiential Spirtuality (Click to see Mushin)

To understand a bit of the Wild Goose community experience... here is a video tape of the work of Mushin, a Berlin spiritual teacher, now with a community in both Germany and Czech Republic. Mushin is the long time disciple of Michael Barnett. Though Michael and Mushin have recently separated their disciple-master relationship, the influence is apparent. Michael was in turn the student of Osho. I have invited both Mushin and Varuni, two long time disciples of Michael, here to Japan to perform workshops in their own unique brand of Energy Work. All three are still very active in Europe.

Recent Mushin Video documentary
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=2130241432103744511&hl=de

Michael Barnett and One Life (with links to Varuni's work)
http://www.wildgoose.net/

Mushin's English blog
http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/

Living In Paradise (Click for Lov-e.com)

I am blessed with a university teaching career which allows periodical breaks... a time where I can reflect, clean house, and set things straight. There is an ironic anxiety that comes with such an advantage. I truly want to accomplish great things, while in fact I am often just treading water. A compassionate reflection will understand the challenges of a single father of two teens and allow myself the luxury of a social life along with the busy-ness of parenting. On my back burner, beyond pending dental care and on-going domestic chores for two households (two separate homes separated by a two hour one-way comute) is a desire always to be a better teacher, to some how get back into shape, all the while making time for a healthy social and intellectual balance. I get tired just trying to describe the matrix I have created for myself. Living in Paradise can be at times a formidable challenge.