These entries are anachronistic now.

18 April 2015

I was going over some old notes on memory because I knew I needed to augment my turning point paper and I needed some ideas for additional content. I found some poorly written thing but it was too poignant to ignore and not think about and I think maybe this would be a good journal entry… Fuck. I don’t like editing and explaining myself. That’s why my paper was crap in the first place.  My ‘turning point’ isn’t a narrative on a major experience like prescribed, but rather a reflection on what brings reflection and what it feels like to travel through time in that way (for lack of a better term).   Probably, this entry along with the notes I discovered, would fit into that narrative assignment, but I don’t know. Last night I really wanted to write, to sing, to drink some wine and figure some stuff out.  I watched EastBound and Under episodes instead and revisited a certain part of limbo when I fell asleep…

Preoccupied with these unfulfilled desires, these cravings to create something even if it was as bad and shameful as everything else I’ve tried to do, then thinking of the pitying way I looked at my own soft-boiled soul, as if my soul and self were separate; the thinking me with this look in her eyes as if telling that soul with only a glance, that it would understand someday the purpose of its service. I wondered in polite disgust if I had been the one to put it in the pot in the first place…  What things do we give up for the comfort and accessibility of peace?  I didn’t want to protest, to explain myself, I just wanted to be this other part of who I am.  A silk sheet which weighs and wears like lead.  That’s what whatever this weak-willed submission to normalcy is.

Last night to fall asleep I took a few extra of my anxiety pills, not to kill myself or to mitigate some inalienable sorrow, simply because if I take two instead of one, I fall asleep more easily.  When the moony waters of it came to me at high tide it was in slow, abrasive waves, cold and raking; granules of dream-salts rhythmically embedded themselves in, allowing to be washed higher, closer, deeper… tracing and erasing crop signs on the calm of my sand-shoal-being until I was frosty and drunk from the osmosis of moonlight-in-maritime dreamscape.   And then my dreams came as shards of sullen ice, resentful that none could persuade my waterlogged (klonopin-drowned) thoughts to keep to their current, for my body was under this sheet of ice, the water in which I was immersed looked mineral-y, strangled…sometimes sapphiric, or fluorentine, or dusty. And these pubescent icicles of ideas never came close to navigating the throttled, rudderless, float of my sleep, but rather, left small breathing holes through the shelf between the air and me, so that, when I passed on from one idea to the next, my body would instinctively gasp for an urgent breath with my eyes snapping open in that painful way blinking happens on the early mornings in January in Mount Washington Valley.  I would see this veneer of a scene, a vignette of a thought as though it were being projected as a frame from a film of possibilities which exist in some way, or in all ways, in my head even if they could never occur.  I’d found some love letter, or I saw myself saying something in a place where I’d been absent, or I listened to my thought-self and saw her as a separate trapped me, that type of thing.

I went to look through my old notes on memories, on dreams, and I found an entry from exactly one year ago last night about this same type of experience.  And I wonder if I’ve stopped floating toward anything and instead I’m just drifting under this ice and maybe one day there won’t be anymore moody dream pieces to pierce my memory and let my soul breathe.

My memory of Russ is warm and makes me smile. I can still feel the give of the forest floor as we hiked together through it, always listening. I first met him in 2005 when I was working at Mt Rainier on the wildlife crew. On the first day we went out to do an owl survey, we first swung by his house to pick him up. A tall lanky man, in his late 60’s climbed into the truck. I think the five crew members and I all had the same thought, how was this guy going to keep up?

The first time you participate in an owl survey there are so many sensory impressions bombarding you. It’s April, the snow still skirts the trees and the air is crisp and fresh. You are weighed down by a field backpack which you just got, having jammed in the pile of gear given to you for the season. Compass, map, flagging, radio, batteries, whistle, first aid kit, field notebook, tree tags, binoculars and more random things you have never seen or used before.  The trees and snow seem to swallow up any sound, and the world around you is quiet in a way that penetrates your bones.

I remember feeling awkward in the snowshoes. The world around me so airy and serene, while I lumbered through, loud and uncoordinated. The rest of the crew seemed as unnatural as I did. Trying to take in what our lead was teaching us about that particular owl territory we were entering; wielding our plastic turkey whistle that supposedly could sound like an owl call if we got the cadence right.  Russ was the only one at ease on the snow; his snowshoes crunching as he passed us all by, the only one without a whistle.

We came to respect him very quickly that day. We had underestimated him. He was lithe and adept at traversing the tree trunks, slopes and watery streams, his owl call although soft was natural from his lips, unlike our toy whistles. A skill we looked on with envy.  The large pack seemed like a feather on his back, while ours pulled us off balance and slowed our pace. His manner was kind, almost humble toward us, as if his rank as a volunteer lowered him beneath us. Years of experience in the park didn’t seem to calculate in to his demeanor, even though he was by leaps and bounds ahead of us in knowledge and skill.  He was quiet and respectful that day, listening to our lead talk about how to call in an owl and what to do once you did, even though he had most certainly heard this talk before at the beginning of each season. I know I was not the only one wondering why he had bothered to come on this training session. Later we learned, for Russ, it was all about just being out there in the park, in the forest.

A friend of mine once gave me an odd compliment, “Kekoa,” he said, “When I first met you you were nothing to me, just blank. Now though, you’re very interesting.” We laughed and I told him that I knew exactly what he meant. See, we were freshmen when we first met and when I was a freshman I was nothing, blank. I am not implying that this is a quality unavoidably shared by all newly matriculated collegians but, in the story of my life, at the time when I was a freshman, my character was underdeveloped, my personality uncrystallized. Everyone has, to greater or lesser degrees, barring a few truly unfortunate souls, a raw animal magnetism that captures the imagination. Whether you have the dreamboat eyes of a matinee idol or a face like a bomb went off, there is something precious and mysterious and central to all your interactions with your fellow humans. Now, as a freshman, that precious quality in me had been utterly obscured by years of neglect. At some point, I had become ignorant of the wisdom which we innocently know as children and often forget when we hit pubescence: People generally want to be happy; only the hopelessly maladjusted actually desire to be disappointed and enraged. And so, everybody wants to like everyone else. Everybody wants to like you. Of course everybody has their own unique and inscrutable standards of attraction and it almost never works out that a person’s composition of character agrees with another persons composition of desire and that is why great men invented romantic comedies and heart-shaped chocolates. Still, it is obvious that people have desires and they have the desire for those desires to be fulfilled. Losing sight of this, believing that nobody wants anything from you (quite the opposite is true: everybody wants everything from you. For example, I hope that every individual I meet is very rich, very generous, and very interested in my thoughts about what the best Star Trek episode is (it’s Time’s Arrow), I hope that every person I meet is a masseur eager to give me a complimentary session, is actually Scarlett Johanssons’ personal assistant charged with delivering an admission of love and invitation to vacation in Belize from her, has a rare compulsive disorder that manifests in an uncontrollable urge to give me their bank cards, pin numbers, and power of attorney, etc. There are an infinite number of secret fantasies that we color each other with, at first glance) and that you are worthless to them, is the surest way to dull the your magnetic effect on the imagination of others. So, having been diminished by the neurotoxic gases that were surely being pumped through the air conditioning at my high school, I arrived onto the Evergreen campus devoid of self-worth and having not yet made the realization that other people weren’t born despising me. These feelings made me easily intimidated, discourageable, and very unapproachable.

Anthoney Moore, who I intend to interview and center my project around, is an extremely uncharismatic fellow. Hopelessly inarticulate, graceless, forgetful, lazy, filled with misplaced and poorly expressed pride, it is almost mesmerizing to watch him move about a room as his slightest gestures are inexplicably infuriating. He’s like a scab to be picked at. Anyways, I forget how I was going to connect him with that memory of my friend telling me I was boring. If I was nice I would want him to realize that it’s possible for him to change and not be such a turd or else I want to just luxuriate in my superiority over him.

Sitting silently at a judo tournament in the minutes before it starts, I look around, for the moment an outsider. The referees gather in one corner, dressed in black suit jackets, ties and grey pants, all male, greeting and catching up on each other’s lives and students. The youngest of these men is 16, quietly becoming one of the elite, a judo official. Some of them have put on their judo personalities just like they put on their jackets, others already are commanding, in charge and sure of their place as an experienced referee. Spread across the mats are groups of students, most often separated by club affiliation. They joke with each other and play around, until they are called to pay attention and warm up. Most are boys and young men. This year about a fourth are girls. There are many more of the younger girls then teens, and few adult women, but there is more this year than last. The coaches also are spread around the gym, talking to each other, comparing results from the last tournament and telling each other about the students they brought with them today. If I look hard, I can find the 3 female coaches, one is the wife of a head instructor, helping him because he can’t coach two players at one time, one a black belt student assisting her sensei and one woman who has her own club.

The excitement is starting to build as more and more competitors step onto the mat, and soon it is overflowing with young people ready to test their skills against each other, the warm up music is loud and the competitors louder. In preparation, the officials are called to meet, and now it is time for me to put on my jacket, to become an official, commanding, in charge, confident, masculine. I am the only female referee working today.

As the first competitor is called to his match, the head referee comes over to talk to our team. He says the usual things, “Keep control of the matches, support each other, you are not out there alone”, and like I wasn’t even there, “protect her- she will need everyone’s help to stay in charge, especially when the adults fight.” I respond as expected, and thank everyone for their support, as I grit my teeth in frustration. All but one of the team is less experienced then me. A few of the men outrank me though, even those who began judo after I did. I don’t begrudge them their ranks, their skills or their authority. I resent the premise that I need extra assistance to maintain control of the match’s I am assigned to referee.

The day goes by fast, match after match is decided. I’m having fun as I almost always do at tournaments. Since I have reached the point where competition is no longer possible for me, refereeing is the nearest I can get to it. Throughout the day, my referee team does exactly what they were told to do, protect me, help me maintain control- even when I don’t need the help. Matches are conducted by a center referee and two others that act in support of the match; who sit on the sidelines with the advantage of a video to replay events and correct calls if misjudged. A throw occurs and my arm is on its way up to signal the score, before I can even complete my action, the support team makes the call for me. Over and over this happens, a few times the scores are different than I started to call, but not often. The room is deafening and my voice isn’t always heard by the intensely focused competitors, this time I had to call “stop” twice to get their attention. As I rotate off the match, I get called over to the head referee’s table for advice “you need to lower the tone of your voice, the competitors ignored you because they didn’t recognize your voice as a referee’s voice.” In other words, I need to sound like a man, not just look like and act like one, in order to referee effectively. When the black belt divisions begin, I am asked if I think I can handle them. I say “of course,” I referee the best match of my day, exciting, fun and with a great powerful winning throw, just as the supporting referee called “stop” and I ignored him, as the players were mid-technique. I am called to the side of the mat for a conference, and there admonished for not following directions, and then contritely congratulated on making the right decision, at the right time. The throw will count for the win; the player will be awarded a gold medal, because I didn’t follow directions well.

At the end of the day, the ritual of working together at a tournament continues. Everyone shakes hands and bows to each other, thanking them for their support and occasionally for their advice. One after another, my referee team comes to shake my hand and tell me that “I did well today.” The 16 year old, who had just refereed his 2^nd tournament approaches and pats me on the shoulder and tells me that he hopes I learned something today and assures me that with time, I will get better. He has already being indoctrinated into the male role of the judo official.

As always, I have a several hour drive home and have time to reflect on the events of the day. I review each match that I arbitrated and each match on my mat that left me with questions or concerns, I walk myself through the events of each overturned or missed call and closely review the matches that had injuries or controversy- such as a coach protest. To assist with my review of the day, I have kept a log of matches and refer to it whenever my memory is not clear. Later, I will review past tournaments to see if there are patterns in the injuries or errors. If I am lucky, I will have photos or film to review as well. The goal is to always learn something and improve my performance.

As I think about the tournament, I also remember the many conversations I had with the competitors today. As an official, I am supposed to refrain from these exchanges, after all I might show bias. But they still happen. One of the young girls approaches me and asks what she is supposed to do when she is told to strip on the side of the mat, when I get clarification, I understand that her uniform was too small, which often happens with growing children, and she was told to change. I spent a few minutes telling her how to prepare for this at tournaments after hearing that she had nothing on under her pants. I described what to wear under her uniform that wouldn’t interfere with her techniques, and I tell her to make sure a female official accompanies her to the side of the mat. This is the regulation, although it is hard to do when all the officials are men. As she runs off to tell her coach what I said, I wonder about the way she was told to change her uniform. She was escorted to the side of the mat by a male authority figure, and in full view of anyone who walked by, she was told to “strip”.

Another girl asked me why she has to fight girls and can’t compete against the boys. A young man approached me and asked if I was a black belt, as he didn’t know that all referees were required to be black belts and that women could earn the rank, as he hadn’t seen any on the mat before today. Many other quick conversations or quick interactions occurred throughout the day as I told a competitor “good throw” or “nice technique”, “good luck at Nationals this summer”, or as I often have to say, “Use this loss to learn what you can do better next time.”

As I get close to home, I turn my thoughts to the struggles women have had to endure, just to participate in this “sport”, and how they are still continuing. I am surprised at what I finally discovered today- I’m still indoctrinated and trained to not even notice the condescension of many of the male judo players . The books we have and the stories that are told about judo’s history, barely mention women. There are a few, Ms. Fukuda- the highest ranking women in history, Rusty Kanokogi, one of the first female fighters and more recently we hear about Kayla Harrison, the USA’s first female gold medalist in judo, and Rhonda Rousey, who is making a name for herself in MMA and movies. Pick up just about any book on judo and you will find only a paragraph or two on the history of women judo players. Heilbrun says in her book Writing a Woman’s Life “The ultimate anonymity—to be storyless. Anonymity, we have long believed, is the proper condition of woman.”[i] The women of judo have been almost storyless. The story of most of the many judo woman has not been told at all. “Power is the ability to take one’s place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one’s part matter.” [ii]My part matters. So do the stories of all the women who live in the world of Judo. For it is much more than a sport we play, it is who we are, our identity, our extended family. As with most families, there is conflict, bad times, and wonderfully good times. Our stories occur in a time of revolution, of changing feminine roles and we have a place in the history of judo.

[i] (Heilbrun 1989)

[ii] (Heilbrun 1989)

I’m sorry this is really long, but it’s the shortest I could manage to get it. This is going to be a rough draft edit to my shabby turning point.

Arriving at the Vicenza airport 4 years after my first landing there, I recalled my initial dreams of what the future would hold. I’d had all these fantasies of making great friendships, doing crazy stuff in Italian cities, but mostly of having that great coming-of-age adventure. What I thought about when getting off that bus to fly home to Seattle was the friends I’d lost, that feeling of depression when great times come to an end, and that I’d bury my involvement with the military as much as possible, taking it as but one experience and moving on. In watching most of The Sorrow and The Pity, a lot of recollections of my year in Afghanistan surfaced, coupled with other memories, and in thinking of writing these journal entries, decided to bring up some of those memories for this class, extremely reluctantly.

When we landed in Afghanistan, the surrounding mountains and environment gave me what I retroactively can now call the most sublime (Kantian) moment in my life. We were all waiting for these supposed mortar attacks anxiously, for that moment we were no longer cherries. A few days days later, two of my best friends died, and about 7 people were wounded, some severely. We stayed with the bodies over 12 hours to ensure they got back to the base, being shot at multiple times. When the explosives unit came, they showed us the footprints we’d made, crossing over a dozen bombs. It was like stepping in the one empty box in a 10×10 minesweeper game. I think about those footprints of mine often, whispering to me that I’d missed them, while Salazar laid fully on top of one for at least half an hour. A couple of people were shot those final moments when we finally managed to clean the place up, I’d even laid on someone’s leg gunshot wound on accident, in which he laughed and said “you mind?” Moments before that my buddy Espinoza and I had machine gun rounds snap inches in-between our heads, scrambling in the dust trying to find cover behind the tires. It was pretty funny and pretty terrifying, because I’d said we were going to get shot sitting like that moments before. The reason I bring some of these moments up is that the group of 30 we’d come with had dwindled to less than 20, we’d come closer than ever in the 2 years we’d been together, and the one person in charge of us turned out to be a coward, which reminds me of characters in France during World War II, particularly the Resistance. I understand that fear he probably was wrenched with, because he’d been blown up hours before and thrown meters away, and had to endure losing one of his soldier’s days within arriving. We had expected him to be courageous, to be that figure to hold our hands, but he abandoned us in despair, and I cannot help but not be mad. You can never gauge what a person will be like during moments of extreme stress, no matter what pre-established notions you have of how personality and character will translate.

The one thing I didn’t realize before joining the military, was the love these old veterans had for us young cherries. During those initial months in Afghanistan I realized how much I hated war, and how pointless being there was. I already had a semi-disgust for the military, but this cemented a deeper hate for those higher unknown powers at work in decisions for America. I am anti-war to this day, but in some sick way I’m glad I got to experience war firsthand. The reason I joined really fell on a love that fell apart which lasted a few years and my desire to go out in a bang. Rarely I came across people who actually wanted to be in the military, and if they did, they were almost always patriotic. What also struck me was the intelligence most of these people I lived with had. They weren’t academically smart, but fuck were most of them extremely “street smart”. One of my best friends was from the worst parts  L.A., and another a hockey playing Minnesota’ian. Those cliche people in the military were usually the ones not in combat positions, or I just avoided them completely. One day my buddy from California and I broke into the Arena and climbed on the roof, playing my guitar and singing Home by Edward Sharpe.

Once you deploy and come across cherries back at home, you see that innocence and long for it, and you don’t care about politics or the army or anything-what you care about is making sure these cherries are going to get the chance to also come home when it’s their turn to deploy. Our poor leader rarely if ever went out on missions with us, and we never got replacements, having to do the full deployment with triple the amount of normal missions tasked out to each individual. He was one of the strongest (physically) person I’ve ever met. He won multiple wrestling tournaments and was an instructor at a prestigious combat school previously. We thought he’d be this badass dude that was going to protect us, but he spent most of the deployment in the gym. My squad leader was an Iraq vet, tiny and skinny, and smoked a pack a day. The first firefight I was in, our platoon send the 6 of us out to deal with it, being the golden squad of the platoon. I’ll never forget those events. It started with them shooting at us in their dried up river bed systems. Our platoon set up an L, and we went out the side, and crossed this small empty field. They started laying into us with machine guns, less than 150 meters away. I remember using blades of grass as cover, and firing my machine gun, feeling so proud that I was protecting my 5 squad mates as they had to retreat, running their asses off in the extreme heat. This skinny guy didn’t give a fuck, and had no break in clarity, while I was scrambling and disoriented. It took a few weeks to get the fighting down and not lose vision. Fighting in Afghanistan is hell. Not only do we carry hundreds of pounds of equipment, but we’re facing people wearing rags and familiar with the territory, able to blend in quickly with the locals. I don’t know if I killed anyone, but it gave me a shell shock feeling knowing friends with multiple kill counts. I asked myself why we were there daily, always wondering if I should just put up with the penalty of not fighting anymore. The punishments of abandoning your duty during a deployment is extremely severe. I decided to make it through, if only to do what I could to keep what little people we had left alive. When we came home from deployment, our squad leader kept only me and my buddy, who got shot up on that hill at the beginning of the deployment, in the squad. He even kicked out the golden boys, and one day while drunk in Ukraine, he told us both that it was because he saw that we’d enjoyed firefights, and that we didn’t have the crippling fear. He wanted people like that to watch over him. I felt proud and disgusted. I felt proud that I was braver than this person who was ripped and worked out every day, among others who spent their deployment shacked inside doing nothing. I’d join the war in part to see if I was coward, however unusual that sounds. We’d always heard stories of people who’d been cowards during previous deployments, and I saw firsthand people gossiping and treating them like shit. I didn’t want that to happen to me, and it was true that our platoon held a certain prestige post-deployment. But most of all I’m embarrassed at being proud of this, proud that I was able to fight back against people I didn’t know, in a war that confused and agitated me.

When we had the ceremony for the two that died, days into our deployment, while saluting the portraits of the fallen, a staff sergeant from another platoon yelled “Wombats” at the top of his voice (Wombats being our platoon name). I normally cringe at anything military related-wearing dog tags, salutes, marching, cadences etc.-but this yell was the most beautiful, tragic, and heart wrenching sound I’d ever heard in my life. Being a Wombat was something that had deep roots in our brigade, memories you hear while being smoked for hours down “the hallway”. If there’s any one strong moment in which post memory resonates for me, it’s the feeling of walking down those barracks hallways, recollecting the memories handed down to me-“this person died, this person went to Legion Co., that used to be my old room.” We had a creed that went, Pork chop pork chop, greasy greasy, beat that team, fucking easy easy, Gooooooo Wombats. It’s from 3000 Miles To Graceland, and it was the weirdest shit ever. Whenever someone died on the base in Afghanistan, you would hear Taps being played, and salute the helicopter flying away with the body. I remember someone died a day before he was to fly home. The day our 2 friends died, we heard Taps over and over and over. I remember thinking there was no point in thinking I was going to come home, and the fear of death left me until I left Afghanistan. I remember rolling that phrase off my tongue all during the deployment, and while reading War and Peace and A collection of Cummings’ poetry religiously. “I lost the fear.” Once you lose the fear, things become easy and seeing dead bodies doesn’t strike you as hard.

A few days after the Wombats yell, I’d survived a near atomic explosion. They said it was the biggest vehicle suicide in the history of the war. It turns out that the semi carrying these explosives was turned around at my checkpoint, and decided to go around the wall and blow up at the side. I remember looking at the vehicle x-ray machine and just being hit by this massive wave. Everything went black and I reached my hand up to make sure my buddy Espinoza’s top half was still there. He crawled down the hatch and we asked each other if we were okay. We got on top of the vehicle and looked at the mushroom cloud next to us amazed. There were tents everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The debris was as far as the eye can see. It killed a ton of people but I never saw them and we left that base a few days later to go to another base. Flying away I was struck with this hopeless entrenching feeling of despair that we’d lost two amazing people for absolutely nothing, and I started to question if I was even alive. The rest of the deployment was a miserable grind, always waiting for that explosive to take your legs off.  I remember having an RPG hitting 100 meters away, and then 50, and then even closer. My squad leader didn’t flinch, and even though he was a redneck, chain smoking asshole, I couldn’t help admire him and wonder just how horrible Iraq was. Their memories are what kept me going, because they’d gone through worse, so I could too.

Our post deployment replaced of the coward leader we had had asked all the cherries one day if they wanted to deploy. When they cheerfully screamed yes, he said all these kids with combat patches would throw it away in a heartbeat. I absolutely despised garrison life and anything military related, which was apparent to my leadership, but they put up with it because I somehow won every prestigious badge and passed all the schools. When he said this, it was one of the few times I realized the giant show these people have to put up when in charge of cherries, because they are burdened with guilt and responsibility if they die. We’d get stories from him throughout various times, mostly when drunk, about Iraq. He told us how he’d lost an 18 year old to friendly fire and you could see that buried pain while recollecting the many friends you’d lost in Afghanistan.

Salazar’s mother flew to Italy for the lost soldier’s family get together. The company gathered money together and paid for them to come, showing them around the city for a week. Horsley’s family didn’t come and wished to never speak to us. I talk to his brother every now and then, but other than that, I respect that wish entirely. Salazar’s mother is a wonderful woman. They have a daughter with cystic fibrosis, and I remember Salazar sending all his money to help with her surgeries. We had a toast to her, and my squad leader gave a speech. He broke down in tears during it, saying he was sorry he couldn’t bring her little boy home. That is a guilt I can honestly say is with me every second of my life. I’m not sure how easy that is to get across, but the few of us Wombats left from the deployment all share that burden. When at “our” bar in downtown Vicenza, where the bartenders each had drinks named after us, I had a moment with a buddy where we looked at each other, nodded, and he said “me too.” There’s something about losing someone in war that wrenches your soul harder than any other death I’ve ever witnessed. I think about the World Wars often and the immeasurable amount of pain the world took on from those years. My silence about the war is something I can relate to from those veterans-it’s hard to speak of war to those who don’t experience it. And most of all, it’s hard to speak of it when you are shamed of being a part of it, while being proud of those brave enough to endure it with you.

The days of coming back to Italy, drunk and ecstatic, walking around the parks and taking the bus downtown, were blissfully peacefully and tragically fake. As time goes, it’s easier to feign normalcy, but the wounds and seeing such monstrosity keep in my memory what mankind is capable of, and the importance in doing whatever it takes to strive for peace, no matter how ignorant and childish a wish of such is. As for my memories, there’s so much more, and I doubt I’ll ever talk about them again, and when I die, I know they will no longer exist without having shared them. The question I’m left with facing is: does it even matter if I share these stories?

Two rows up and one to the left his eyes were closed and his body shook with reverence for the words that flowed like fresh water over his parched lips. From my seated position I could see only his profile, so I waited with building anticipation for the two words from the rabbi, “please rise”, which would allow my view to stretch up to the highest my 10 year tip toes could reach. From this vantage point I knew I would just barely be able to glance through the sea of friday best, and see the focus of my curiosity, his riveting arms.

From just below the nicely cuffed half sleeves of his button up shirt to the point where his wrists met his wrinkled soft hands, every part of his arms were awash in brilliant color. These beautiful tapestries read like a page from a childrens bible book, or a section of stain glass beside the temple entryway. The images of torah’s, commandments, stars of davids, and hebrew lettering were interrupted only by the occasional bucky badger (our local basketball mascot).

As I gazed upon these works of art my sunday school teachers words rang in my head, “We aren’t supposed to change our bodies, they are perfect as god made them. People with tattoos can’t be buried beside their families in jewish cemeteries.” But this man came to temple every week and prayed with his whole body. He listened to the sermon with baited breath. As others whispered among themselves and flipped through the prayer books, his eyes never left the bimah, and my eyes never left his skin.

As services drew to an end I hopped up, ready to scurry out to the lobby for punch and five or six brownies, when I noticed he hadn’t gotten up. His walker stood untouched beside him and his eyes gazed down towards the off white carpeting. I approached him in small timid steps, intending just to get a closer look at those magnificent arms on my way out, but in the moment I should I have passed by, something stopped me. I found myself seated beside him.

“Why do ya have all those tatoos?”

The words had come unbidden, but the exhilaration I felt at finally having asked removed any possibility of regret or embarrassment. He smiled at me, and in an accented voice I had so often heard raised in prayer, slowly responded.

“See this one here?” He pointed to an almost buried number on his inner arm, “I got that one many years ago at Auschwitz. I thought about getting it taken off, but decided I’d rather surround it by these beautiful pictures. It shows I did what they never wanted, I lived. And I lived with faith.” He paused here momentarily, before smiling at me again and asking, “Do you like them? Did ya see the bucky?”

I bobbed my head up and down a few times, admiring the smiling badger.

“Wanna get a brownie?” I asked

And so together we walked out of the synagogue, his radiant arms grasping his walker and leading the way.

Obsession is love. Love torments you from all levels of joy, sadnes and hate. In fact, Obsession is one of the underlining themes through out the the story of Swann in Love.  It shows the reader how feelings can start from nothing, to disgust and some how can blossom into love. Love, like how beauty is explained in the novel is interpreted and felt in many different ways. Swann and Odette’s  love/relationship is at one point represented through a chrysanthemum. I found it ironic that in Japan a chrysanthemum is symbolic for  the sun, the unfolding of the flower petals represent perfection, and Confucius once suggested they be used as an object of meditation.  It’s ironic to me, because i didn’t feel that Odette and Swann’s love was genuine. It was definitely configured through out the story, but based on superficiality and class. Eventually Swann does catch  real feelings for Odette, and thats when the torture begins because the two are playing this game. I feel like this game is relatable to an extent with my current life.

April 11th, 2015

There is something about those first few seconds when the rain lets up and the sun bursts through; You can feel the suns warmth while at the same time those cold rain drops are crackling on your jacket. At this moment, the brightness of the cherry blossom’s can truly be seen. They shine with a glistening pink that releases joy inside of me. All of these flowers that burst from the trees and the plants, but, especially the white flowers and the pink flowers. They stand out to me. They are beautiful. I kiss the trees and meditate.

It’s amazing how I can walk down a city street and be the only one on it. Then I pass by a woman, probably twice my age smoking a cigarette. Her face looks to be the texture of a catcher’s mitt. It’s not a negative thing. It’s a positive. She has lived. She has done things she wasn’t supposed to do. Her parents probably told her don’t smoke cigarettes and she smoked ‘em anyways. Because who’s to tell? The kid who doesn’t smoke cigarettes could get hit by a car at the age of 18, while the kid who starts smoking at 16 lives until 62.

I am not advocating smoking cigarettes. I am just advocating the taking of a risk. I want to take risks. I’ll take a risk and talk about something I don’t know even know about ;). Should I be in fear of looking a fool? I am not perfect. I am a flawed human being. So I’ll do it. I’ll make statements people may not like, I’ll eat ice cream and I’ll smoke cigarettes. I won’t do these things all of the time. There’s no need in being wreck less. But what’s the fun in doing exactly what your supposed to do?

I realize that no matter how different we want to make things look, we are not in control of the world. And it’s a positive thing. Because now I see it. And I am free of it. I will do everything in my power not to participate in it. I’d rather be homeless. Once I can recognize I am powerless and I have no control of the world I am finally free of the burden of the world. Now, I can focus on sharing love. Ah! And I love you!

Today, before going to work where I teach kids I took a quick nap. My concerns around waking up in time leaked into my dream. I dreamt that I went to work as usual, but older kids had shown up for my toddler class. I was confused about them being there, but agreed to let them stay if they assisted in teaching.

When I woke up, but for just a brief moment when I hadn’t fully become alert, I was of the impression that I no longer needed to go to work because class already happened. Luckily, I woke up fully, went to work, and had toddler class without any interruption from the older students.

Prior to starting class I shared my dream with one of the mothers there. She too had a dream of her mundane work day, and had woken this morning feeling that since she had taken care of all that she needed to she no longer needed to go to work.

What a strong impression dreams have when they consist of such normal every day events. Going through the day unsure if you’ve already done something or merely dreamt it, had a conversation with someone or imagined it, is simultaneously interesting and confusing. In that moment of just waking, when I was still foggy from sleep, I had the utmost conviction that my middle school students had come to help me teach. Though the second time I walked into work today, this time fully conscience, they were nowhere to be found. All the conviction I felt about the events that occurred while sleeping conflicted with the reality of actually being in the space.

I’m interested in the narrator’s separation of self. This keeps coming up. Separation of his physical self and mental self in the opening pages. Separation from his heart when he must go to bed without his mother’s goodnight kiss. Separation from his consciousness when viewing something beautiful. Separation of himself from reality while reading. He even speaks of trying to transcend his soul. How much more separation can you get?

I find this particularly interesting because in my training with traditional Japanese martial arts there is an emphasis on what we call coordination of mind, body, and spirit. Through our martial practice we strive to bring our whole self together and in the moment (another thing the narrator rarely does). Even the Japanese word for heart (kokoro/shin) speaks to this unity. It is used interchangeably to also mean mind. And within older Japanese culture, the heart and mind were seen as being located near the navel, literally within the physical center of a person. To leave your thoughts to wander in your head puts you physically off-balance.

So this concept of mind/body/spirit coordination found in traditional Japanese arts comes from the culture of Japan at the time these arts developed. I wonder then if the narrator’s quest to separate all parts of himself comes from the culture of France at the time. Is this an expression of feelings of alienation? What is to be gained by splitting oneself into so many pieces?