Living Paradise

Vacations; Stepping Out of our Safety Zone

2011-08-13T20:58:00.000+09:00

The motel room is dark leaving me alone with my thoughts. Not always a pleasant sensation. Leaving a home leaves me vulnerable to existential questions, particularly in darkened rooms on distant highways... And for a New Yorker who has lived most of his adult life overseas, this small town rest stop in Tennessee is the perfect place to taste this. That mental stuff I usually suppress.

Thankfully I am a man with friends and family, and a loose yet real bonding to my birthright Nation. This acute condition are the inevitable questions, for a man in his 60's. You too have them from time to time, when you are feeling wobbly at the knees, and the possibility of death colors itself... inevitable. Thankfully there is cable TV, and WIFI access, to hide inside most of the time, but occasionally the darker truths creep in.

That is why the Gideon people are so diligent in providing their favorite book. Leaving us doubters even fewer places to hide. Time is precious and bountiful, until it disappears in a puff. Life is clumsy and cumbersome until it hangs on a wire at the edge. Friends and family are in our hair until they are gone forever, sponged up by some mystifying quirk of nature, leaving us with only our thoughts.

... The sun is rising now behind the curtains. Truckers are starting their engines. Soon there will be a country diner breakfast, and a world of distractions. And... when I catch a glimpse of another hummingbird perched on some brilliant flower... I will be thankful.

Those 'deeper' thoughts will be waiting for me, just there... in another motel room, in some other corner of the universe. Existential darkness and radiant hummingbirds, who could ask for more. You take them all when you have the chance. Knowing nothing for sure is for sure.

New Orleans jewel of the South

2011-08-08T19:12:00.000+09:00

There is plenty of beautiful aloneness when cruising the South... miles and miles of forested back roads with kind strangers sauntering about in pursuit of humble dreams. But the town of towns, where the world ends and art begins, is New Orleans. This is a crude awakening, a bold print of exquisite contradictions. A city between the extremes of East and West, decidedly a Southern Mecca for all those who question the legitimacy of normalcy. Home of the brave, the chaotic, the inspired, and all that is criminal in the human soul of duplicity. Sin and sinister sprinkled on a tourist town of undulating color. A place everyone should visit at least twice.

Late night in a cheap motel

2011-08-03T18:04:00.000+09:00

There is a raw potential in the massive scale of forested hills lining the interstate... Cruising Pennsylvania... As dad relates tales of our kin, sprinkled in memory and the local geography, a mental patchwork of vivid colors woven, tangled, laced in my head. We are as American, as the Hindi motel owners who shelter us everywhere... as the poly-diverse Chinese immigrants preparing our take out, as the rough hewn multi-generational US Italian, Irish, new breeds, tattooed and pierced like modern island warriors, in their massive rusty big wheeled battleships.

Colored thoughts of eccentric great uncles mingled with the social political gymnastics, of dealing with the precious still alive... feelings of family housed in a nation of diversity. America the beautiful, America the ugly duckling waiting in intensive to be revised... America where 'Wow' is the only suitable exclamative.

Adjusting to my homeland

2011-07-31T13:30:00.001+09:00

I have lived much of my adult life in Japan, a quarter of a century, much of that in and near Kyoto. This leaves me in a surreal state of mind as I move about in the land of my birth, U.S. of A.

To witness the startling diversity of physical stature, so many people larger, in so many ways, than what we are accustomed to in Asia... to adjust to the scale of space, so much square footage unused, between buildings, along roads, even within interior spaces... a mystifying gluttony of under utilized inches. In Japan all is consciously allocated to use, in the US so much is outside of anyone's concern, a no man's land of neglect and potential.

I am here with my son to discover, to gently uncover, our heritage. To make sense of an identity. To be an American on a road trip in 2011. Three generations, my dad at 89, myself at 60, and my son 19...

David Crowder*Band Rockumentary 4: Twitter Will Kill You

2011-04-16T08:19:00.000+09:00

Mark warns David that Twitter will only lead to certain death. David and Jack lose their lives to the Twitter craze.

David Crowder*Band Rockumentary Episode 4: "Twitter Will Kill You." Created by Jordan Bellamy, Key Grip and 2nd DP- Kelly McTavish, Frisbee Provider- Seth Hale,

2011-04-08T18:06:00.000+09:00

Richard Dawkins first published in 1976 The Selfish Gene, perhaps his most infamous of titles. You can now enjoy him reading this book, with Lalla Ward, in an Audible edition with all the most recent endnotes and added chapters (second edition 1989) included.

Publisher's Summary

Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.

In his internationally best-selling, now classic, volume, The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains how the selfish gene can also be a subtle gene. The world of the selfish gene revolves around savage competition, ruthless exploitation, and deceit, and yet, Dawkins argues, acts of apparent altruism do exist in nature. Bees, for example, will commit suicide when they sting to protect the hive, and birds will risk their lives to warn the flock of an approaching hawk.

You may know this author by his controversial title The God Delusion. A must read for any one who wants to hold their own among the religious herds pounding at the gate.

"...For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe. But Dawkins, who gave us the selfish gene, anticipates this criticism. He says it's the scientist and humanist in him that makes him hostile to religions—fundamentalist Christianity and Islam come in for the most opprobrium—that close people's minds to scientific truth, oppress women and abuse children psychologically with the notion of eternal damnation...."

From Publishers Weekly

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Another Day in Paradise...

2011-04-05T23:12:00.000+09:00

News Junkie, virtue or addiction?

2011-03-29T11:50:00.000+09:00

I was on holiday in Cebu, initially, intentionally avoiding my daily diet of cyber-socializing. Yet the very first solace I found was the hypnotic hum of cable-news in air-conditioned rooms. And then the final clincher, a devastating earthquake in my home nation, Japan. It was then I wish I had my own computer, and hung-tense on the remote, clicking between BBC, Singapore News, and CNN. There was absolutely little I could do, yet still, I stared blankly fixed on the TV monitor, poolside in paradise.

Since, I have returned to my 27" iMac, Facebook, and the labyrinth of connectivity in my home. I can only question both the soothing rub of inter-connectedness, with friends and family, and the obvious futility of simply knowing what has happen, but, in fact, doing so very little.

There has been a blanket of benefits, all of us donating in a myriad of ways, yet in the end we all dangle on our own bootstraps. So, like my neighbors, I prepare for work, check on friends and family, and fall back into the routine. In our own immediate world, we are still alive, still connected, still well enough to login one more time.

John Galliano formerly of Dior

2011-03-01T09:06:00.000+09:00

John Galliano is a British designer who has recently undermined his career, when a cellular phone recorded his racist remarks at a Paris bar. His comments, though extremely distasteful from a man who specializes in extreme tastefulness, among drunks is rather common banter, and why I do not like hanging out with heavy drinkers. He will now suffer the slings and arrows for both his political incorrectness and his inability to deal constructively with his angry inner child.

The curious variable here for me is the discovery of his website... a truly brilliant piece of online theater. Apparently brilliance does not necessarily make one consistently clever. One more celebrity has fed the hungry ghost of public pulp and will again verify the adage any publicity is good publicity. Now discover his website and confirm the adage.

The Four Horsemen

2011-02-23T20:42:00.001+09:00

The Four Horsemen Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens

Perhaps the foremost authors in the world of new atheism, this free two part two hour discussion is a fully gratifying experience. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys brilliant minds in honest dialogue.

Collision of Lives; Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson debate

2011-02-19T11:33:00.000+09:00

It is always refreshing to listen to the witty genius of Christopher Hitchens and, in the case of this film, enjoy an articulate bright-minded Christian. Douglas Wilson is the perfect good brother to the evil twin Christopher. Like Steve Jobs, another brilliant mind cast in the role of villain, I dread Hitchens and Jobs passing. In their fight against terminal ailments, I'd love for them to come out winners... this one last time. The Atheistic intellectual dance, often cheerfully researched on my beloved Apple devices, remains a positive stimulant, close at hand, day long and night longer.

I need great minds to sooth my own rocky inner voices.

Lisa Gansky

2011-02-18T07:52:00.001+09:00

Lisa Gansky has a mind a man could love. Her recent performance on FORA.tv sent me searching for her in Googleland where I found her interviews on TechCrunch with Andrew Keen. Her new book Mesh has her media-izing all over the internets. If you do not know her Mesh, Mesh-it-up and see what happens. Her credentials are impeccable, her talk as sharp of a whip you will ever be hit by. Sit up and listen, stand up and cheer, or simply buy her book.

Learning to be me

2011-02-16T21:05:00.000+09:00

Being blessed with time, where I can tweak my life, my home, my relationships, but most of all spend time letting myself be... a bit terrifying... afraid I am not maxed out to fully utilizing this opportunity... yet too getting down with myself...space... quiet moments stretching out into a day, doing all those many little things around the house, making ToDo lists and actually completing all those little tasks, even coming back when the task is stymied to finally triumph over cumbersome details... Still many back brain targets festering, yet I feel these too will be faced and delegated a time and a focused assault may arise. I understand this space can be blown away when hard fact life clicks in and takes precedence, yet, for now, I am happy.

Under a blanket of powdered snow

2011-02-14T18:04:00.000+09:00

Extraordinary quiet... White to gray as sunset downs, beyond our Western higher ground, here on snowed-in Hieidaira. Nested, I have begun the game of low-card diet... a way to highlight rituals and invigorate sacrifice. Relationship shift as Valentine's Day articulates ambiguities and unresolved tendencies. I am free between semesters. I order the training package from the Giggling Guru, Madan Kataria, on line from India. I want to laugh and make my classes even more fun in the coming academic year... thinner, more cheerful, and free. Like a single long stem rose cut for romance, destined to die in a voluptuous display of beauty eternal. The glowing retina burn of welding torch passion.

Happiness on Eating Hope

2011-02-10T20:37:00.000+09:00

I am not quite certain why, but I feel I am about to enter into a contract with the devil yet feel as high as an angel. I will resume dieting, hardcore dieting, and will lose some serious weight in a most ex·cru·ci·at·ing way...

Self-made Hells and Other Stories

2010-09-12T17:10:00.001+09:00

Locked inside by self exile.

Soft outside fumbling flesh,

heart disturbed by obsess...

Obese thumb fumble FALTERED

discussing disgust and discipline disfunction.

Can I find a better way to reflect on my summer of funk behavior;

A curious bliss of consumption and nest bonding,

showered by moving cumulus clouding.

Am I moving or spinning as an unfettered bit?

Power drilling to dead-enders...

All hail Contemptuous reflectors on my Harley handbasket...

cruising to my home-made hell.

Father to Father, farther and farther

2010-09-09T15:32:00.001+09:00

I am warmly impressed by this mythified portrayal of a saintly monk, written and read by Tony Hendra. Unfortunately this author's daughter's 'accusation' of incest-molestation, puts a damper on my enthusiasm (discussed in detail in Jessica Hendra's HOW TO COOK YOUR DAUGHTER)... So much the cliche of our times, revelations of tainted ecclesiastics, 'Is anything sacred?' The dark depth of the soul... rings out poorly, from my cracked bell of new-found atheism. All too often this summer have I tasted bitterness, when waking from my extended nightmares and tainted dreams.

My observation, this clipped-wings summer, has been layered and valuable. I am deeply pleased to have finally a chance to be with my children. We finally fortified conventional family quality-time, lost during their Junior and Senior High School years... dealing with the long distance of their international school, with hobbled home-stays and youthful misadventures. It is true, our living on university teacher-time, we did have holidays. Yet, the sweet daily contact of normalcy eluded us... at that very intensified time, when we were all desperately mentally 'accommodating' their mother's suicide.

At least now we have the luxury of youthful purposelessness... something I had as a young buck in the wilds of summer Adirondacks. A time when all dad's worked back on Long Island, and most moms hid in screened-in cabins, as their youngsters ran and swam in near nudity, full voracity, and unbound puberty. My children's life has been tainted with the distorted luxuries of bi-culturals, slivered between uncharted domestic explorations and barely plausible plans of home life. All doing our best, as it can be said, over and over again.

Hotsy Totsy

2010-08-27T11:55:00.000+09:00

A rotund but demean figure from Long Island. Once hotsy-totsy New York artist on pilgrimage to Zen, but now a subservient figurine on the trophy mantle of time. How to salvage an aging vulgar carcass, revitalizing a zombie into a tomorrow of vital todays?　

Sunset on a sizzling Nihon

2010-08-22T18:21:00.000+09:00

I listen to Christopher Hitchens' "The Portable Atheist" though I wish this recording had been read by the author. His biting wit and sarcastic Cambridge lilt compliments his enthusiastic embittered atheism. I love the depth and breath of his criticism and find him an angel of rational argumentation, an artist of divisiveness. I envy the voluminous tomes of quotable details he carries on his shoulders... And find the perfect tone of the audio artist that reads his text, Nicholas Ball, a misguided use of narrative perfection. Hitchens is best read by Hitchens.

Dame if Hitchens isn't the kind of mental athlete I wish I were. Instead I am a cerebral hooligan, a vandal spraying verbiage on dirty walls, to impress the street urchins I run with, a suburban ghetto of wannabes. A couch potato cliche of armchair quarterbacking ego-grandized causes, in a game that doesn't matter.

Nobody should care what I think, and when they do, I loath my unpracticed goal attempts at conceptual clarity. If I were captain I'd bench my mouth. Fortunately, athleticism is magically attuned to evolutionary theory. I fade now as I speak, a dinosaur of impractical ego dimensions.

Wuthering Heights

2010-08-02T11:45:00.000+09:00

Wuthering Heights (1939) reminds of the romantic values that cast the shape of our present. I hide in the air-conditioned cocoon, of computer, oral gratitudes, and the delusional state of constant news.

In news today, via Fareed Zakaria and Riz Khan, I am presented the economic reality, seasoned with the moral tale 'to be thankful for still owning my own home, and having a job.' Our international statistical reality is the USA, despite all its present hand-ringing, is still chief dog, among the mongrel leaders of Japan, India, and China, and I, having never appropriately established myself within the American dream, live in limbo under the Sword of Damocles.

For Cicero this legend suggested that virtue is sufficient for living a happy life. "Does not Dionysius seem to have made it sufficiently clear that there can be nothing happy for the person, over whom some fear always looms?" Yet in my case, fear laughs as I cower. Fear of ill-health and inevitable death, a coward left unarmed, on the gates of my own persistence. My own insistence that this is who I am.

Begotten in the Wilderness

2010-07-26T18:29:00.017+09:00

Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt)

creator of the Grail Message.

"Things Fall Apart" the Nigerian classic by Chinua Achebe, has consumed my day. The heat is unbearable and I hide, chasing thoughts on the internet. The perpetual oil spills of Nigeria, highlighted by the BP oil sill in the Caribbean, lead me to better understand first of the geography of Nigeria, then the politics, then theology (discovering The Grail Movement in the process), and eventually to downloading Peter Francis James' narration of an African long-lasting best seller. I slip and slide through correspondence, and have solidly become a prisoner of my internet connection. Only the kitchen can temporarily distract me from my zombie belligerence to my sublimation to a childhood addiction TV.

I fantasize the greatness of evolving a personal philosophical outlook, and loom over the diverse genius who have created their own grounded outlook... thus my interest and recent investigation in the Grail Movement, my old friend the Hare Krishna mantra, and Jodo-Shin-shu's Shinran (founder of the Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism).

Hare Krishna Mantra in Devanagar

I believe it will all end up as a video podcast, though I fear my shadow side dominating my expression and weighing down my communication with too much angst, spoiling the soup I hope to savor in my later years.

Second Generation 'Henro'

2010-06-18T10:49:00.000+09:00

My son, Zen, begins his pilgrimage today, to the 88 temples of Shikoku... a 'henro' like his father 25 years earlier. Zen's mother also had walked the 'henro michi' in her early thirties before meeting me, in her transition. Like many pilgrims 'on the cusp of change' a rite of passage, a superb opportunity to reflect, while rediscovering the kindness of strangers and the natural beauty abundant in Shikoku... the trail beckons.

Reiko had met and fell in love with a Buddhist priest in that journey. A priest whose mother, a typical temple parental oligarchy, rejected her as a suitable match ...and now, nearly 30 years later, our son, at 18, will bring some of her ashes, to sprinkle on each of the eighty-eight. Perhaps a piece of her will find the peace which eluded her in life.

Zen is a declared atheist, yet, being of Japanese soil, he understands the power of simple ritual, reflection, and form. He will take on the challenge, and allow life to be created around him, bringing his own dignity and effort into the mix. The dogma of religion and philosophy will scurry from behind, trying to keep up with his youthful vitality and stubborn perseverance.

I will be here, on our family mountain-top homestead, with his sister Kai. Kai will soon be 21 and also finds herself in transition. Confronted by the exorbitant cost of American private universities, we as a family have had to reevaluate our options. Study 'kanji' (advance level Japanese writing) here in Japan, apply to more affordable US schools, study in the Philippines where an education is still reasonable, or to find a job... all options I would personally enjoy for myself and excitedly support for her...

Yet none has yet to light a flaming inferno under her heat-resistant derrière. Instead, over a low flame of discontent, she simmers in indecision, a slow burn of despair for her and consternation for her father. Only time will tell what path awaits us all.

I, too, live along the way and wonder when I will step again. As an American, I know the merit of the open road and the desolate chill of a man with no sense of home. I waver between clinging to the earth of domesticated normalcy here in Japan and stepping out into the abyss of brave options... between university fail-safe and life free-fall.

Pain of Parenting

2010-04-03T11:23:00.000+09:00

Because my children are, by far, my greatest source of fulfillment, they in turn can leave me emotionally drained. My children now live in the angst of transition, no longer kids, not quite autonomous adults. I am deeply invested in their next choices, and so feel stymied by their naiveté, and frustrated by their frustrations. The irony does not escape me. It is not difficult for me to empathize, to remember my variation of adolescent trauma, passion, and anguish. And so I feel their pain, compounded by a parent's concern.

I am brutally not naive. In fact, I am tiredly predictable in their eyes. I swing between wanting to take to wing for myself, leaving them on the branch leaning forward toward their own flight lesson or concocting some impractical tandem, tied to them as they jump. I do not have the resources to have us all in flight at the same time, as I have no financial net to catch missteps and aerobatic miscalculations. Somehow we all three need to be separate stars in flight simultaneously... the choreographic nightmare that haunts me today.

If we fall, we will fall hard. Street wisdom states 'them is the breaks' an inevitability in our 'school of hard knocks'... Yet as a single parent, I am both psychologically, nurturing mother and pragmatically pestering father. How does one play 'Good and Bad cop' simultaneously? "Nudge them out of the nest with one big push" comes one order from the left brain, "But are they ready?" squeals the right... "But how else will they know" recants Dad-side, "Can we afford to take that chance" Mom-me meekly counters. And so the sleepless night, of one head with two voices, languishing long and unresolved.

Apparently we all need to be brave, witness the limitations, and relish the challenge. A bit too flowery for someone who approaches sixty with such sweaty trepidation.

Authentic Spring

2010-03-17T09:46:00.000+09:00

A righteous spring morning, affirming the ambitious push of my sprouts in the potted plants of my roadside garden. My walk and talk mornings with Arthur have dramatically improved my stamina. A dark mind set lingers, the futility and inevitability of my gradual demise into 'older still' has been mean.　Just too much has failed, too little manifested in full flower. How much I would appreciate a refresh, a raising from the tomb of a savior.

Being lost in researching album covers, for my massive iTunes music library, has allowed me to mentally dance through my music history. This followed my collectors lust of downloaded movies, again revisiting a history of personal images shared with film buffs everywhere. I feel grateful to the passion of strangers made accessible via the net. An intimidating army of minds and manic behavior allowing sojourns from this desktop.

Guilt Ridden Paradise

2009-09-25T15:20:00.000+09:00

A large butterfly flickered outside my window. This is the first day of Autumn and quite beautiful. I reluctantly left my house and drove to a friend's coffee shop in town, but, finding he had yet to open, I could not wait 15 minutes. I returned back here to my idyllic place of residence. I am certain no present existing image of heaven, be it Christian, Islamic, or Buddhistic could ever work for me. I need stimulation and heaven is just too perfect.
My present dilemma is:
I need to leave this complacent safety zone and find 'my thing'.
Something that would draw out all my creative juices... and allow me to again feel fully engaged.

Mass Consumption

2009-09-09T17:13:00.002+09:00

When did I become such a rabid consumer? Had I always been one or was there some paradigm shift in my concept of happiness? One sign marking this transition is my migration from action to reticent inaction. There was a time when the balance of my life was such that I would take whatever asset I could accumulate and immediately use it to make art, travel, and simultaneously enter a new life style. This was a precarious time, living on the edge between immediate actualization and desperation.

This was not a world for raising children or deep reflection, this was a time for virile efficiency, a time where things got done because I had clear choices. As I shifted from glorious and pragmatic irresponsibility to that of husband, father, teacher, the mud rose around my ankles. Pleasure was from that which padded my life, that bulge of fat, technological toys, affectations of power, a cosmetic shield of intellectual prowess, the stink of wasted produce on an inappreciative audience. So much tossed into massive waste bins. Mismanaged opportunity due mostly to a lack of focus, a lack of discipline, a lack of eventuality.

We spent the summer tearing away layers of excess and yet still I see it everywhere, A shameful residue of artifacts in every corner, demanding to be dusted or discarded. And beyond this? An important part of my vision is blocked by the heap. My heart coated when it should be let to float up, freed from these long years of accumulation.

In God I Speak

2009-02-24T10:54:00.003+09:00

Today I ordered a newly published book "The Atheist's Way: Living Well Without Gods" by Eric Maisel. My life is filled now with cross-referencing writings on new theistic perspectives and that of the doubters. On audio this past week I enjoyed 'Life of Pi,' 'The Joy of Living (Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche),' 'Summer's Path'... an endless stream of rationalists, attempting to bring sense to the mystical under footing of modern living.

At present I would need to accept Eric Maisel's point, we need to stop the paradigm of looking for 'the meaning of life' and move forward to creating meaning from where we are. While it has always been my quest to find a father figure to bounce off of... Some hero to follow in luscious abandonment, surrendering responsibility to a wise paternal prerequisite. To my big daddy guru, who I am free to reject at will, while rationalizing great strides forward into sensual abandonment and or intellectual irresponsibility... with the tried and true psychological device of 'God knows and I trust'.

Oh faith, glorious faith in absolutes... holy books, charismatic leaders, political parties, corporate institutions, for God and Country. Too bad this is the generation of Myth Busters... a news media bent on undermining all our false idols, while subliminally casting doubt even on our own cynicism... a steady diet of expose and big-eyed puppy dog theism. We Americans, noted for our Christian fundamentalism underpinning our crusty cynical humor, what a study in schizophrenic double-speak.

So, in honesty, I embrace a New Age-fudge of semantic play, that old God, as male-dominatrix (Old Testament Bully) with a counter-ego of the new Sweet'N-Low Jesus, just doesn't play well in my fantastical-Sedona. So I bite the bullet and drink the current Kool-aid of some Super-consciousness, just beyond third plate, somewhere near the out-of-bounds pole.

I know my definition of God could not stand the smell-test of my favorite sceptic podcasts, nor satisfy the faith-based directives of the average American, yet that is where I stand. Daddy God remains the issues for psychiatric digression, while Mother Mantra-hum lies impotent on the cutting floor of hard-nosed dialectics. Have pity on my lost soul or celebrate my triumphant autonomy, either way my back hurts and I feel incomplete.

The Pain and Glory of Post Election

2008-11-14T15:28:00.011+09:00

Chalmers Johnson created a gruesome trilogy finishing with "Nemesis." His books, documenting in part the tragedy of the Bush years, are a brutal reminder of what many now will begin to forget... how very much was destroyed in my native nation America, and most pointedly in Iraq, these last eight years. As a healing pilgrimage I will drive tomorrow through the autumn forests of Kyoto prefecture to the small village of Obama, and bask in the pop naivete of my Japan. Last Sunday I had thrown a Obama party and in tearful optimism celebrated with an international gathering of friends and bar patrons the great election of 2008. My drive tomorrow will be one more salute to our bubbling optimism that has laid dormant for far too long. We here and eleswhere in the expat community have not been this happy for a very long time, and for those of us, who faced race riots in our youth and years of animosity and fear, these are again hopeful times.

Real Times as Times Change

2008-09-23T14:34:00.004+09:00

I listen to an audio book version of 50+ by Bill Novelli with Boe Workman. The author was affiliated with AARP, formerly the American Association of Retired Persons, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the United States. I and all my fellow Baby Boomers are now this demographic. Despite critique from their competitors '60 plus Association', a group probably to the right of AARP and one I am not truly qualified at 57, the "World's Largest Circulation Magazine" The Magazine AARP encourages me to reflect more deeply on my present prospects and so is helpful in my present angst about the financial crisis.

How much I long for change... not only in the present political balance, but more importantly on a fundamental personal front, but not one from outside by the tyranny of financial ruin and loss of health, but one built on solid choices and personal integrity.

I punish myself with critical self-critique allowing my anxious thoughts to circle the wagon without my firing a shot in defense.

I take small baby steps when the goals worthy of a life need giant leaps and bounds. Tomorrow I will begin the day early walking in exercise with a young friend, mosey over to work at the start of a new season, and later eat sushi with a partner. All the while the thoughts circling, like fiendish tweety birds around "putty tat" Sylvester's head.

Which and other questions

2008-06-09T06:38:00.002+09:00

In June Japan, there is a rainy season, prior to a rather oppressively humid summer. In between the downpours can be blissful cool clouds or hilariously sunny days. We teachers scurry, entangling our students in assignments and final tests. No one rests easy. For me, it is a horror of anniversaries, mixed emotion events scattered over a life time. If I were proceeding at full potential, perhaps I would not have this backlog of chores. Perhaps, it is easier to focus on my shortcomings and confess than actually do what I must. Perhaps there are no perhaps, just procrastination.

Parental Angst

2008-04-28T03:02:00.002+09:00

Everyone has heard of the mind-buck of being the parent of teens. Just before it happens there is hardly a foreshadow, in fact one can hardly imagine it... Yet it very well could happen, and in some cases linger a life time.

If I had an answer I would be writing it here.

Bliss Time

2008-04-24T07:02:00.002+09:00

Mornings are my bliss time. I lull myself to sleep with profound, though demanding, theological text and audio files. In the morning I feel refreshed after the initial angst of remembering the nights, dueling in dream-mares... That surreal evening of half wakefulness inside images of no clear message, yet brooding emotions.

In the morning breakfast is always welcome, despite its simplicity. In the morning dressing is a fresh start, and a chance to create a color theme for the day. In the morning I can enjoy a sparkling podcast and feel the message. I am an information junky and my AM fix feels the most invigorating.

Today I will rendezvous with a friend. These interludes pull me through the energy drop as I teach. A drop due to the nemesis of a pathology, insisting on improvisation without a full armory of weapons. There is in my methodology a belief in student-centered pedagogy, yet the demands of this wish would mean far more attention to detail, to distinguish one student, one class, one university in the mental mix of my day.

My mind is as a dinosaur, as student 'need and opinion' is processed, there is a time lapse, between the experience and its processing. I miss diagnosing one student's need into the face of another, a jumble of emotional impressions and pedagogical solutions.

For years I have developed elaborate systems of administration. Lists and teacher diaries, attempts at identifying needs and directing lessons. These experiments in analysis and solution stuff my draws and filing systems. Is there a final solution? Or is it simply a state of endless anxiety... a painful process, chasing the needs of the classroom with my dwindling human resource of energy and mental alertness.

Back to the firing line... aligning my sites and practicing my marksmanship.

Brutal Mood Shifts and Burns

2008-04-05T20:15:00.002+09:00

Hail a frequent disposition, a curdled yoghurt dripping from an antiquated musical metaphor. Thank God a spell check follows me, an obliging carrier of stimulants. I felt sad despite euphoric quality time with my son, disappointed at my loss of control... of what? What exactly more do I want as my realm? A garden that grows as my own... what for? Kids who live somehow from my clues... how absurd! I have my wards, mounting the hill, ready to take on all my canons and artillery precautions. I have never been ready for any day. There has not been a day done very well for a very long time. I want to shuffle and redeal. To call out to a mother who has been dead since before death even was an issue. Bristling, again I am over stuffed. But what for? Certainly not satiated satisfaction! I have lost walks of dimension, meals of gratification, sex of any depth... fat beyond recognition of anything worthy of the price of admissions.

Mentalstration

2008-04-03T17:05:00.002+09:00

Bloated... excessive lunch and attempted gardening tasks. Silence in retreat. I switch on my last listed podcast to make noise as I type. This strange insular relationship with digital space. Politics, philosophies, technological news. Building what?

When a man reaches his 50s does he have a way to fabricate a future? If he is a single dad, has an established career, owns his own home and all the middle-class assumed assets from blender to hedge cutter... how best to allow alternative paths to enter in to the mix?

How best to be, that is the question for men of my age.

Chains on Thoughts

2008-03-31T09:43:00.002+09:00

Tad Perry has written, and provides on the internet, his "Quick and Dirty Guide to Japanese." I had printed this out, some time ago, and from time to time I give it a read. He has made an honest effort of sincerely developing a sequential and somewhat logical series of instructions.

If one were to make an effort, and persevere beyond a week or two, one might begin to grasp the monumental challenge of this second language, Nihon-go. For someone like myself, steeped in this second language up to my 'life in Japan' neck, any learning would help.

The reason I have brought this up is, all tasks, like losing weight, learning a second language, creating a new dynamic lifestyle, etc. feel monumental. All are theoretically attainable, yet all are monumental.

In my daily ruminations I love to imagine ambitious projects that will have two or more goals and lead me on to a long held objective. A Manga book on Japanese grammar, a videocast of film clips of life in Japan, ESL Video podcasting, some physical challenge that will also assure weight loss, are just some of the examples that dance through my head quite regularly.

This is a pattern of 'programing my life' with a great adventure and challenge, a methodology that has worked in the past. My walking the streets of Manhattan, My Japanese pilgrimage, My many art projects, becoming a parent, are all examples in which I have succeeded in achieving several goals simultaneously.

But something has changed at this stage in my life. It feels less and less likely that I can muster the enthusiasm. I am locked in stage one, planning. This may be due in part to the complexity of parenting. Maintaining the 'normalcy' of a household lends itself to stagnation and procrastination. I tend not to want to rock the boat. And too, there seems to be a still strong after-taste of my wife's suicide, that fundamental earthquake of the soul, which says, not all change is good.

I suppose too, there have been a long series of smaller revolutions in my life, long trips and experiments in alternative communities, which did not initiate the personal transformation I had imagined. There is a certain level of 'stick-in-the-mud-ism' in my life, that is both reassuring and frustratingly anchoring.

I would not mind the anchor, if I were more confident in this angst-filled pot I stew in. I am endlessly disquieted by voices of discontent, yet stifled from affirmative action. In sociopolitical parlance, I am on the welfare ticket of a decent job and so stymied from self-initiative. I lack strong enough motivation to jump to the next level.

I am in my own way. I am fat off the system while feeling the victim of my own inaction. A victim of my own smaller successes, I feel I am missing the full glory. I do not snap to attention when a sweet narrative prescribes a pragmatic solution.

Instead I languish in lazy distractions until time to act has past. I no longer trust my inner drill Sargent, nor the cajoling mother of compassion with her platter of promising sensuous delights. I belly up and whin like a 300 pound only-clild. Why can't I have everything without the added effort, without the risk, without the investment? Don't you just hate brats like that!

And so I sit in my soiled nappies wondering why I find myself so unappealing. I would need to be conscientious, to be ambitious in my goals, to model the behavior I prefer to preach. And... inevitably... be willing to risk and invest, to sacrifice some of this security I cling to.

To qualify as a grown-up, I will need to climb over the comforting confines of my crib, and venture out beyond the kitchen, into the land of suits and ties, sweat and toil, responsibility and commitment... Gulp!

Peering through the bars of this self inflicted wallowing, I see spring through a distant window. I somehow still trust myself, as I stack my toys against the sides in order to lift my chubby leg over the polished pine boarders of my creaking crib. This nerd might be ready to abandon the solace of this Blog infested computer for the scented air of actual life.

This fat kid is heading for the front door and won't stop until he is neck deep in the baptismal waters. The image is quintessentially planted in the fertile fields of imagination, next step is over the wall to freedom... Beyond the abstract to applied resolution. Glory hallelujah! He is arisen from the dead!

Living Halfway

2008-03-26T09:44:00.003+09:00

Today I will push through the remainder of my in room activity, a stack of magazines and books by my bedpost waiting to be read. I want to clear through this to bring on the Spring and new school term. It is cool and rainy enough to justify this remaining inhouse activity.

Springulating

2008-03-24T17:00:00.003+09:00

Today was a miraculously beautiful day, but, much like all of this winter, I merely percolated in front of my computer... stopping periodically to clean house, cook, or interact with Kai and Grandma. This has been a rocky road, an abstracted time, occurring primarily in my head. It was the winter of head. It was a winter of romantic companionship fading... Now soon I will be slipping on a haircloth, of edgy acclimation, while I again adjust to rooms filled with adolescents.

My exploration was in the realm of atheism, culminating in Catholic nostalgia and a sad yearning for the simplicity of Spiritual naiveté. 'New Age' was so promising, while I watched my wife dissipate into depression and suicide. Now I look out onto the fresh frontier of a mental health community which is no further developed today than the compassion of Republicans under Bush. We have all been under Bush, as if under the weather, for eight horrific years. Meanwhile, how little seems to have been learned.

I so much had wanted to win the war against obsessive eating, only now to find me a comical bit actor in my own self-authored tragedy. I will let my subscriptions run out for my Vegetarian and atheist magazines, let the air clear of logical pursuits, and let the waves lap, against the side of my head.

Sea salty foam carrying sand and sediment... You read this, from your small minority of one, perhaps the only one who ever saw more. I write this for you, shipwrecked on your own sandy coast.

We are now light enough to float on wind. Years of accumilated baggage will not hold us down. The mind has open windows. We are loose, though we cling, momentarily, to those who flurry near by in this twisting Spring breeze. We'd like to bond again but, chances are, we will always be free of each other. Free of the love that once made us invincible.

When tears won't help

2007-12-03T07:39:00.000+09:00

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.

Cold Sweat and the Club

2007-10-04T08:57:00.001+09:00

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.

Moving to the Visual

2007-10-03T08:39:00.000+09:00

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.

Full Moon at 3:45am

2007-09-26T03:46:00.000+09:00

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.

Silent Sweetness

2007-09-24T07:20:00.000+09:00

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...

Complete first movie in 25 years

2007-09-20T16:28:00.000+09:00

at Http://homepage.mac.com/rlseltman/iMovieTheater18.html

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.

The Canon HV20 was Purchased

2007-09-11T14:59:00.000+09:00

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!

Rainy Morning

2007-08-29T13:24:00.000+09:00

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?

Calculating Catastrophe

2007-08-04T14:44:00.000+09:00

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.

Shaken but not stirred

2007-07-19T14:07:00.000+09:00

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.

No Way if my way is the only way

2007-07-07T22:00:00.000+09:00

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?"

Rose, thorn and fragrance

2007-06-27T06:30:00.000+09:00

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.

Ants in My Pants

2007-06-16T14:15:00.000+09:00

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.

Trying to Evolve

2007-06-10T03:24:00.000+09:00

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.

Living Frustration

2007-06-06T04:08:00.000+09:00

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.

Distinguishing Priorities

2007-05-24T06:54:00.000+09:00

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.

Haunting in Paradise

2007-05-16T08:02:00.000+09:00

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.

Trouble in Paradise

2007-05-15T02:05:00.000+09:00

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.

Cool Morning

2007-05-07T04:58:00.000+09:00

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.

Wicked Wonderment

2007-05-06T12:17:00.000+09:00

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.

Factoid May=Depression

2007-05-05T11:27:00.000+09:00

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.

Happiness in fulfilling Times

2007-04-30T10:36:00.000+09:00

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.

Petal to the Metal

2007-04-29T07:35:00.000+09:00

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.

Whispering Thank You's.

2007-04-27T19:29:00.000+09:00

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.'

Flowers' Flush

2007-04-26T08:26:00.000+09:00

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

Double Take

2007-04-23T11:24:00.000+09:00

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

2007-04-23T06:11:00.000+09:00

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

Keep Sake

2007-04-22T11:29:00.000+09:00

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.

Waking Early

2007-04-18T09:40:00.000+09:00

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.

The Pleasures of Spring

2007-04-14T07:45:00.000+09:00

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?

Glorious Spring to Image-maker

2007-04-13T07:57:00.000+09:00

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.

Changing of the Guard

2007-04-12T00:36:00.000+09:00

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.

Learning

2007-04-11T19:23:00.000+09:00

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...

2007-04-11T06:53:00.000+09:00

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.

The Success I am Having

2007-04-09T19:47:00.000+09:00

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.

Time is of the Essence

2007-04-08T19:43:00.000+09:00

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.

The Miraculous Monster of Self

2007-04-07T10:36:00.000+09:00

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.

New Ruby Sheets for my Luxurious Queen Bed

2007-04-04T07:55:00.000+09:00

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?

The Miracle is Always so Precarious

2007-04-01T00:36:00.000+09:00

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.

Dieting Deviations

2007-03-28T16:49:00.000+09:00

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.

Self-teaching aides, Video Blog Tutorials

2007-03-25T10:18:00.000+09:00

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.

Tears as Witness to Meaning

2007-03-24T15:21:00.000+09:00

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.

Sweet Silence

2007-03-22T13:32:00.000+09:00

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.

Planning; Art or Obsession?

2007-03-17T08:51:00.000+09:00

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.

The Work of Byron Katie

2007-03-14T11:59:00.000+09:00

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.

Coming Closer

2007-03-13T20:26:00.000+09:00

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.

Frustration indigenous to Paradise

2007-03-12T15:25:00.000+09:00

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.

Self Inflicted Frustrations

2007-03-10T08:22:00.000+09:00

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.

Reticence, Anxious, and Fear

2007-03-09T18:27:00.000+09:00

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.

Vulnerable Paradise

2007-03-07T08:13:00.000+09:00

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.

Working the Weather

2007-03-05T15:22:00.000+09:00

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.

Experiential Spirtuality (Click to see Mushin)

2007-03-04T19:40:00.000+09:00

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)

2007-03-04T09:24:00.000+09:00

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.