min

I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.

2010-11-08T05:02:41Z

I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.

When I say you, I mean each & every one of you who might read this,
save a few with whom I can
(have this conversation with you)

When I was a child, I wanted to have this conversation with the world.

I wanted to know intimately the hearts & minds of every
stranger I passed on the street,
male and female,
young and old, & this wanting was a kind of pain
at the beauty I could see inherent in every person,
so often locked up & hidden even from themselves,
an ache like intensely missing someone I'd yet to meet.

There is always what one means to communicate, & what one actually communicates.
It seems to me that communication in virtual reality tends to be abstracted:
ideas of ideas, thoughts of thoughts, mirrors facing mirrors unto infinity,
shadows casting shadows.

You can read between the lines in my turns of phrase,
my choices of words, what I do not say,
the patterns, the timing,
but all you'll find are more shadows.

Face-to-face, vis-a-vis, though,
what's given away in the weight of the voice, a gesture of the hand,
a tightening of the throat, the subtle changes in body chemistry,
where your eyes look as you are talking, what makes you laugh suddenly
or fall silent, all this enhances
(& sometimes directly contradicts)
what is spoken, adds complexity and depth,
more & more so with history & familiarity.

I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.

Most of my generation is only just recently getting used to a medium
I've been swimming in since I was a child, getting to 'know' each other
through exchanging parcels of words. I don't mean to minimize, but I have
more of a perspective on this than most; I've been through it & through it & through it.
Seems like everybody is texting now & I have to wonder
how long it will be until it won't seem at all crass to send
the most emotional of messages via text...

..."Yr mother just passed away"...

... "I love you" (said for the very first time) ...

Love is a word we could talk about.

We could run a concordancer on it. That's a linguist's tool,
(& a word I love, simply for itself: concordancer)
a program to sift through corpora (that means bodies, but
in this context: bodies of collected text) & it would tell us

the words the word love most frequently occur hand in hand with:

'you'
'i'
'me'
'my'
'true'
'real'
'don't'

I want to have this conversation (and others) with you, but I can't.

No, I--

I want to walk down a wooded, late-autumn path with you, swaddled
in scarves with the exposed parts of our faces flushed,
talking with you, our voices raised over the the crackling of leaves underfoot,
pausing to catch our breaths as without meaning to
we've started walking faster to warm ourselves.

I want to sit in the tall back booth of a dimly lit bar with you, voices
low & intent in whiskey honesty while the bartender cries "last call",
passing our only remaining cigarette back & forth between us.

I want to drive down a lazy Sunday road with you, sharing
half-thoughts as they spring to mind & sharing the silences too.

I want to know you & not only the words you formulate for me to unpack,
& not to deceive myself that one is equal to the other;
I want not to hide from you, nor for you to hide from me.

I want to have this conversation with you, but I can't.

There's no time in the world for me to have this conversation face-to-face with all of you,
(that is, even if you wanted to have this conversation with me)
not without spreading myself too thin for any one to be worthwhile,
& we can't have this conversation in email or instant messenger
or internet relay chat or social network status updates or blog comments
or vlogs or video chat. We can have other conversations there but
not this one.

& since I can't have this conversation with you, I'll wish for this instead:

I wish for you to have
(or continue to have)
this conversation with somebody who will have this conversation with you,
vis-a-vis,
& i wish that you will not hide from him or her
& i wish that that somebody will not hide from you.

confession

2009-09-23T13:02:34Z

i've jumped ship to facecrack. will still post any longer blog entries here occasionally.. but for shorter snapshots of my life & thoughts, add me at http://www.facebook.com/minae. i post longer entries there too, as Notes.

vegas

2009-08-17T02:42:54Z

Sunning, swimming, sneaking people-watching behind sunglasses. Fake white-sand beach and fake waves, but the Nevada sun is blazing and real and reminds me of childhood.

Two blond siblings in the water; the elder possesses a strikingly aquiline profile, the profile of a marble statue on the face of a teenage girl, lovely and conscious of it, striving to remain poised and adult while her younger brother, full of mischief, splashes and nimbly tumbles through the water around her. Young Hispanic girl swims past, all huge brown eyes and dimples and rounded sweetness, into the arms of her waiting father. A couple in the distance, neck-deep: a woman and a man, cocooned into each other's arms. She's smiling up at him with genuine tenderness. Tall black woman wades in, elegant and model-thin with her hair up, a tension to her slender limbs. Two lifeguards in red trunks drape themselves across surfboards at the deep end, tanned and muscular like lounging lions.

Dozing on a reclining beach chair, I watch a Japanese family of four arrive and settle themselves in front of me. The centerpiece of the family is clearly the mother: a slight, petite woman in a long sundress and a wide-brimmed sun hat, her hair cut fashionably short. Her eyes are large, moon-shaped and limpid. Her other features are tiny and doll-like.

She's pale pale pale like the moon. Her face is pristine and weary. Small tired lines around her mouth which never smiles. When I was seventeen, I went back to Korea, and found the shops full of lotions meant to lighten your skin. Dark skin means that you're a peasant who works in the rice paddies.

She sheds her sundress to reveal a tasteful designer swimsuit beneath. The colors match her hat. Of course they do.

The father is bespectacled and amiable. He busies himself applying sunscreen to his wife and their two small girl children. His wife pays no attention to him as he meticulously rubs sunscreen into her back; he may as well not be there. She's looking around, frowning slightly, as if something's out of place and she doesn't quite know what.

The two children look like me at that age - long wild black hair, black button eyes, button noses, limbs burnt deep brown from the southwestern sun. Tiny brown bear cubs posing as children. One of them coaxes her mother into a game of patty-cake. The woman sits and plays patiently, albeit without enthusiasm. At the end of the game, the corners of her mouth lift slightly -- a hint of white teeth.

dreamlogic @ 2009-07-15T17:52:00

2009-07-16T00:53:40Z

"if i am i because you are you
and you are you because i am i
then i am not i
and you are not you.
but if i am i because i am i
and you are you because you are you
then i am i
and you are you
and we can talk."

dreamlogic @ 2009-07-11T03:23:00

2009-07-11T10:25:12Z

thinking that: an addiction-prone personality is one that is very good at creating narrow justifications & avoiding personal responsibility.

what I find attractive:

2009-07-02T23:23:41Z

- measured self-control. but also: the ability to release that control.

- long-term planning & discipline. the capacity to delay instant gratification, even suffer, in the short-term, to reap richer & deeper rewards in the future. but also: the capacity to experience & immerse oneself within the living breathing moment.

- a sense of self that extends beyond the self. we may all be 'selfish', but for some, the boundaries of what is the 'self' has a broader circumference. i want to blur the lines between me & you & him & her & us & them & the dirt & the stars & the sea, and yet still retain my own sense of identity.

and they said:
the center is everywhere and circumference nowhere
the center is everywhere and circumference nowhere
your center is everywhere and circumference nowhere

The longest day.

2009-06-21T14:52:28Z

It's the self that blinds the self.

sleepless

2009-06-12T13:24:32Z

To Do:

- Resist entangling myself with another person, or persons, romantically. Enough with the relationship jumping. Stabilize self, first and foremost. Stop and reflect.
- Find a healthier balance between personal life and work. The pendulum has swung in both directions; find the middle ground.
- Figure out my living situation, and a new car. (You know what I miss about having a car? Being able to offer other people rides.)
- Go camping in the woods, if only for a few days.
- Keep taking capoeira. This is a good time to learn something new.
- Give myself more alone time. I've been rather over-social in recent months, and I've realized it's often been more of a calculated distraction than an actual social impulse. (Time with closest friends can count as alone time.)
- Take time to appreciate friends, old and new.
- Research grad school options. Study for GRE.
- Get more involved with local community action.
- Allow myself to grieve honestly.
- Take ownership of my contribution in the disintegration of my marriage; let go of the rest. Hope for, as they say, 'the wisdom to know the difference.'
- Appreciate the growth it/he did spark - no matter whether intentionally or accidentally. No matter the damage done; I did grow wiser and stronger from this.

That's how the light gets in.

2009-06-11T21:04:09Z

The birds they sang at the break of day.
Start again, I heard them say.
Don't dwell on what has passed away
or what is yet to be.

Ah the wars, they will be fought again.
The holy dove, she will be caught again,
bought and sold and bought again.
The dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything;
That's how the light gets in.

We asked for signs; the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed, the marriage spent,
Yeah the widowhood of every government -
signs for all to see.

I can't run no more with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.
But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud,
and they're going to hear from me.

You can add up the parts, but you won't have the sum.
You can strike up the march, there is no drum.
Every heart, every heart
to love will come,
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything -
That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack in everything -
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.
That's how the light gets in.

-leonard cohen, "anthem"

dreamlogic @ 2009-03-08T19:34:00

2009-03-09T02:44:30Z

There's a Buddhist story I read as a teen that resonates with me on many an occasion. I can't recall where I read it, but reconstructed in at least approximate form from memory, it goes something like this. (And there may be other versions.)

A student monk is bid by his master to sit and meditate. After a long while, he gets up and runs to his master in sheer terror. "Master!" he cries out, "While I was meditating, demons descended upon me and visited me with the most terrible temptations and frights! It was awful, what should I do?"

The master hits him upside the head and says, "Go back and meditate."

The student monk returns to his meditation. After a long while, he gets up and runs to his master once more, beaming with happiness. "Master!" he cries out, "While I was meditating, angels descended upon me, I felt the light of the world, all was full of wonder and joy!"

The master hits him upside the head and says, "Go back and meditate."

dreamlogic @ 2008-11-07T12:40:00

2008-11-07T20:44:23Z

Sometimes I wonder if people in other countries are learning English grammar from internet memes like lolcats.

I just got a piece of spam trying to get me to click on a link with this subject line: "Barack Obama can lost President's Chair".

our story - william stafford (again)

2008-10-31T01:38:30Z

remind me again - together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
some time we'll cross where life
ends. we'll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
i'll touch you - a new world then.
stars will move a different way.
we'll both end. we'll both begin.
remind me again.

dreamlogic @ 2008-10-27T13:17:00

2008-10-27T20:25:26Z

What and how we frame it. An art to taking things out of context. Place in new, or simply place focus upon it. A photograph, a snatch of conversation or tune, a moment, a fragment. A sleight of cognition: nothing is ordinary.

dreamlogic @ 2008-10-22T17:00:00

2008-10-23T00:01:54Z

Infinite: the capacity of the human mind for self-justification.

the painted porch (we play upon)

2008-10-22T21:47:46Z

patience: "the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like"
- derived from Latin pat, to suffer. (some of its cousins: passion, passive)

suffer: from Latin ferre, to carry, to bear. (a few cousins: fertile, birth, burden, metaphor)

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this thing that disturbs thee, but thy own judgement about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgement now. - The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, trans. by George Long.

dreamlogic @ 2008-10-21T15:55:00

2008-10-21T22:54:14Z

tension

&

transgression

Poetry repost

2008-07-23T22:53:37Z

I read this poem in baranoouji's LJ some months ago, and it's haunted me since, like some poems will do.

"Quarantine", from Against Love Poetry by Eavan Boland

In the worst hour of the worst season
of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking-they were both walking-north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and a woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

sunburnt...

2008-06-16T20:23:44Z

Fell asleep on the beach at Sauvie, Saturday. The sun did a number on me, but I can't blame it. I'm just happy it's out.

Headed out in a couple days for SE Oregon for camping with mutants, gone till Sunday. Incidentally, looks like where we're headed this year is the same as where the '97 rainbow nationals were, a forest east of Prineville where I hitchhiked with Jane up from southern California in late June when we were 18 year old vagabonds. It was a beautiful place, and I'll be glad to revisit, exactly 11 years later.

Straight On Till Morning

2008-05-14T07:39:24Z

A toast to timing. In my last post, I described a place we visited last Sunday called Never Never Land in Tacoma, WA. Today, we heard that this forgotten little park is scheduled to be demolished this Thursday. Goodbye, Neverland.

A few more pictures in memoriam:

All aboard the pirate ship:

What monster in the well?

PS. Two lucky finds today... I wandered by chance into a magic shop while at the hardware store picking up more pipe for hoops, and I walked out with a set of juggling balls. P. went to pick up a guitar off Craigslist on behalf of his mother and ended up getting a deal on a lovely Chinese hammered dulcimer called a yangqin. Our toy chest grows.

Never Never Land

2008-05-12T21:25:12Z

Quick photo post. Some words.

P. and I were up in Tacoma and Seattle over this weekend. Sunday, before we left, we dropped by a huge, gorgeous forested park in Tacoma: Point Defiance Park with P.'s young nieces and nephew. Within its depths is a small and forgotten pocket called Never Never Land, populated with child-sized houses and figures from fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The houses are separated by narrow walking trails through the woods.

Built in the 60s and many of its previous structures lost over time, Never Never Land feels dilapidated and abandoned, but this I liked. This gives the place a wonderfully eerie Grimm ambience, as if the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood could truly leap out and devour you as you walk down the pathways. ("I'm scared!" P.'s 3-year old niece Anora cried out at one point. P. assured her that he was a monster who would eat any other monsters we came across, so she was safe.) Peeling paint, rusty nails, penned graffiti inside the tiny ramshackle houses from what I'd guess are teens who go there at night to drink and make out. From what P. says, it's similar to Enchanted Village closer to Seattle (and Enchanted Forest in southern Oregon), but Enchanted Village is much larger. We plan to take his nieces & nephew there sometime this summer, since neither they nor I have ever been there.

Playing with my hoop inside the entrance:

Entrance to Never Never Land:

The Hickory Dickory Dock house:

Candy house, probably the witch's from Hansel and Gretel:

Penned graffiti inside:

Another little house:

I've been taking fusion belly dance classes, and on the side, I've been teaching myself hula hooping. Dancing with a hula hoop is fun in its own right, but I find that it really helps me with muscle isolations, rhythm, and kinesthetic awareness for dancing in general.

I made the hoop I'm playing with below.

Spinning it up my sides/arms:

To my neck (one of the first tricks I learned):

Back to work with me.

dreamlogic @ 2008-05-06T15:56:00

2008-05-06T23:01:55Z

I will be in Seattle Thurs-Sun. Paul is playing a show at Fuel in Seattle on Thursday night, and another show somewhere in Tacoma on Sunday night. I will likely be guest spotting on keyboards for one or both shows.

We're staying with his sister up there, and I'll be working from my laptop - any recommendations for good free wifi spots in Seattle or Tacoma?

Also, heads up people, Four Tet is playing a Portland show in June at Holocene!

dreamlogic @ 2008-04-29T14:37:00

2008-04-29T21:46:49Z

P. is a latecomer and entered the Radiohead 'Nude' remix contest with only a week of voting left. Voting ends May 1st. There's no prize other than exposure.

Please listen to his remix if you have some time and vote if you like it. Here's why I like it: he took the 'stems' that were provided and used them to craft a new song from the pieces. He didn't listen to the original while he was remaking it. If you listen to a lot of the other remixes that have been posted, you'll notice that many of them sound very much like the original, with just a few tweaks here and there. There aren't many that took the approach of, "Here are some sounds. What can I make from them?" But anyway, that's just my take. Listen and vote if you like.

PS. P. is playing a show at Fuel in Seattle on Thursday May 8th, and some other place in Tacoma on that Sunday. Hence, I will be up in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

music tonight

2008-02-29T23:26:49Z

At Rererato, an art space in NE, Alberta district. All-ages early show, P.'s project Sad Music for Happy Humans plays at 7pm. Details here. Stop by, say hi. Dancing after, but where?

(work it out for yourself)

2008-02-17T02:35:03Z

pre-judgment: the illusion of thought. the abandonment of self-responsibility, a betrayal of self.

for example, as related to conversation and honesty: every time you think, "i can't talk to X about this because X would react in such-and-such a way/i can't be honest to X because X wouldn't understand" whether because X has not understood in the past, or because no one in a larger subset that X appears to be in has understood in the past, you have pre-judged qualities of X and have made that a part of a static worldview.

you have mistaken the map for the terrain.

the terrain is ever-changing, so wake up, look up, look at what's in front of you before you stumble into the abyss or get eaten by the lions or fail to realize you've been walking in circles for days and you're about to get sunstroke. the terrain does change, but not when you're walking in the same damn circles. your map has an expiration date of yesterday.

don't rob yourself of the chance to perceive for yourself, rather than dancing with ghosts of perceptions past. don't rob others of the chance to be perceived as they are now, not as ghosts. no, change isn't easy for anyone, so maybe you've become jaded to the thought that it ever truly happens, but when it does, you don't want to miss it for the world.

dreamlogic @ 2008-02-16T13:22:00

2008-02-17T01:48:21Z

I read a thought-provoking reader review of the book 'The Selfish Gene' on Amazon.com some time ago. Excerpts below, and further thoughts from me further below :

-----------------------------------------------------------

"The literal idea of 'The Selfish Gene' contains a mistake. The concept 'selfish' applies to entities possessed of a self - paradigmatically, humans. A gene has no self. To apply the term selfish to a gene is, thus, to make an error.

. . . Dawkins' concept . . . directly inspires ideas of the molecular level being the level of genuine agency. Consequently, it relegates the ordinary human level to one of passivity. We become slaves to the genes; in the words of his 1976 preface: 'We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.'

. . . There seems to be something innately appealing in the prospect of relinquishing our own personal responsibility. Dawkins plays on this, as do all forms of determinism . . . Forces beyond our control make our decisions for us. These forces might be physically larger than us, such as those posited by Marxist theories of economics and society, or those of religious determinism, or they might be physically smaller than us, such as subatomic or molecular interactions, as per DNA. In every case our capacity to act wilfully, to make decisions, to be responsible for ourselves, is made illusory and the locus of true control shifted to another deterministic realm. Suddenly, we are free of sin, and of blame, but we pay the cost of being incapable of controlling our destiny. There is the added consequence that these inhuman forces are not the sort of entities which can be held personally accountable for their actions - they are, after all, utterly impersonal - and so nobody, literally no person, exists who can take responsibility. The world becomes a mechanism.

Another way of approaching these issues is to say that the terms used in moral and evaluative discourse are established at the level of human interaction. This is their paradigm use, and all other usages are derivative. The meaning of a term such as `selfish' is established in the realm of human motivation and behaviour. This is where it makes literal sense. Elsewhere, it can be imported, but then it is in an important sense a metaphor - and this metaphor relies on its literal roots to secure its meaning. If we, as ordinary humans, are selfish, and at times we undoubtedly are, then we can tell a story about genes being selfish, or if we are at times sad, then clouds can be seen crying; however, if genes, or quarks, are found not to be literally selfish, or to lack all manner of moral judgement, this does not mean that we as humans are never selfish, or lack a moral schema. Is this what happens when readers become distressed by this book? Do they see that genes are not capable of selfishness, that what is being proposed is a mechanism, incapable of being considered either moral or immoral, and that since, according to Dawkins' fable, we humans are just 'robot vehicles' for our genes, we too are immune to morality? If so, the animistic story has mistakenly become more real than reality - it's important, although not always easy, to remember what is the story and what is the reality from which the story is derived." (Emphasis mine.)

-----------------------------------------------------------

The full review is much longer, and worth a read. I italicized the last sentence above; there is a connection between the reviewer's exhortation there and my last post that made me recall this review.

I said in my last post: "It's something about the way our subconscious spins stories, and what seems to be the human impulse to create meaning, and about the strengths and weaknesses this brings..." Lately, I've been thinking about the weaknesses. The human craving for meaning can be inspiring and beautiful, but it can just as easily -- or even more easily -- be corrupted by our other weaknesses, become 'the opiate of the masses'. Fear, shame, anger, denial, greed, the need to be accepted and belong, blind lust, lust for power, et cetera.

Stories (...metaphors...allegories...) are sometimes seductive and powerful NOT because they are used to speak to a truth, but because they are used to speak to a weakness, to provide a justification for, and ultimately deliverance from (the responsibility for) a weakness. And because those 'weaknesses' are very strong, such stories trigger the same kind of emotive reaction in people that feels very much like "truth"... if you feel it strongly, it's right, right? That feeling of revelation, of epiphany... do not trust it. Question deeper. Often one may find that it's like that rush of new emotion at the beginning of a relationship that's so strong that eureka! you think it must be love. But wait: there's still work to do.

Conversations at home of late often touch upon/delve into the question of genetic/biological imperatives versus our thinking selves, and the importance of our own responsibility for our choices. So much around me I hear/see/read the kind of thinking described by the reviewer above: "In every case our capacity to act wilfully, to make decisions, to be responsible for ourselves, is made illusory and the locus of true control shifted to another deterministic realm."

I hear people saying/writing, over and over again, "This is how I am because of X, this is the way the world works because of Y, hence there is no use to struggle against it, we should instead just learn to accept things for how they are..." Sometimes, I do think it is optimal to accept instead of struggle, but let it be a real choice and not merely an excuse, an exercise in sophistry...

(Tangential thought here as I'm momentarily amused by how, often those who are seduced by deterministic worldviews, where we are ultimately not the ones in 'control', do so because of the predictability in such a worldview, and what does this predictability afford them? a sense of control... security.)