and it's always in the back of my mind

ahhhhh, new day
I feel a bit refreshed and mentally cleansed. It's aloha friday and I will find an excuse to get out of work early. A little writing goes a long way towards cleaning my mental pores. I should do it more often. Ommmmmm bliss.

"but i feel sure that time will come,
if it goes on at all." i slowly bled the hours out of this day and now it is gone. i can't believe that i haven't finished that kids story yet. instead i have spent most of my time dwelling on all the stuff i gotta get done tomorrow and how little i feel like doing it. i could use a good kick in the ass to knock the mope out of me. i am not even sure why i am dragging the way i am but i can certainly feel it inside. my get up and go seems to have got up and left. i think if i get in a lot of exercise this weekend sprinkled with a lot of writing and very little hanging out waiting for others to call or respond to e-mails, i will be just fine. i was going to go out Friday and Saturday night but Tuesday night really took it out of me. too much Oktoberfest. now i feel guilty and want to focus on getting ready for that damn marathon. it's a damn marathon now because i have so far to go before i will be ready but once it is done it will be a sweet marathon. it's a good focal point right now because i feel my birthday sneaking up and i would much rather focus on something else. i know how i went into that rant about people who don't appreciate their birthday and how excited i get about mine but i just want the party and gifts, not the extra year to my total. before i get anything i have a ton of stuff to mail out to people that is completely overdue. like a dream put on the shore awaiting the tide. but soon they will be sailing. one by one, they'll be gone from floor and swimming in your living room. i got stuff for 'topher, CJ, Julie, Strom, Bert, my sister, my other sister, my mom - boy, you name it. lots o shizznit for the postman to be toting on his back. on a completely different note, i really hope my concerns in the sporting world are eased this weekend. i need the Viking to beat the Bucs for their first mickey fick win of the year and i need Bonds to make some souvenirs in San Diego. if those two things happen, and i add to the postman's burden, and i do some running, and i do some writing, and i stay away from the "sugar and spice and everything nice" category, it should be a nice weekend. oh yeah, my cousin gets in to town tomorrow. she's nice and all but i am not that close with her. shoot, but i will be tourguide boy nonetheless. but i know her a bit and i know she won't be anything like the second cousin that visited last time. that is a COMPLETELY different story. crazy. speaking of which i am constantly thinking about how long i can/will stay here. i feel like i need to make a decision soon because of my impending move and just how i approach my relationships here. i feel like i am in a personal limbo and need to mentally commit one way or the other. even if realistically i can't control my ultimate destiny, i need a game plan. when i talk to friends on the Mainland (chris, mark and miles) i feel like i should try and get back as soon as possible because that is where i will end up eventually. but when i think about all the opportunities there are here to try and get involved in the future of Hawaii I think that this is where I should be. i don't know until i do a lot of soul searching or perhaps selling. on that note i bid thee adieu. "it meant to me that love and terror were intertwined so powerfully and went so deep that any kind of love could fail." i went back to the bookstore and memorized it. yes, it's that good.

Still stuck on Human Wishes, 9-27, 1012am
Tomorrow is Caroline Jackson Thacker's birthday, she'll be three, and Monday was Delaney Seward's first birthday. They are my two godchildren. I haven't sent them anything. So if you ever think of naming me as your kid's godfather, think again. I am however working on a children's story that I will e-mail to their parents so they can read them the story as their present. It's gonna be about a kid who collects things and hordes them until he has so much stuff that it slows him down from playing with his friends. Hey, did I mention it was a kid's story, it's simple, small moral at the end and bam! that's all you get. I got the idea for the story awhile ago but now I have a reason to write it. I will also have the time and space to write it now that my roommate's parents are heading back home today. They were good people but I made a conscious effort to be gone a lot so I didn't see a lot of them. They went to a luau last night and really enjoyed that. It's the same one I took Monique to about four years ago. She came for the rolling stone's concert (slept through it) and did lots of running around on the island. my next visitor is helen. she comes Friday, 10/12. It will be good to see helen and chat about the bay area scene. I should start planning little things to do in the evenings otherwise I won't know what to do. We'll go hiking, jogging, do cultural things and I will unleash her on the nightlife. I think she will really like the guys of Hawaii; REALLY. I didn't plan enough stuff when Elisa visited and I felt her trip could have been a lot better if I had. Catherine was lucky that we got to go to another island while she was here. Kauai is so beautiful. My job is pretty sweet in that I get to go to the Big Island and Kauai next week. I just need to work it so that I do my job better and enjoy it more. I was talking to 'topher on the phone the other day and I was really missing the bay area. I told him if he could find me a decent job I would be back there in a heartbeat. I have been with WFI for a year and a half and although I appreciate a lot of what it has to offer, I am tired of it. I think my boss plays a big part in my dislike of it. He's so loud and obnoxious and everything that is not Hawaii that it kills me. I could go on and on about him and his overbearing, grating "personality" but I will spare you. Of all the people who have met him I think Elisa disliked him the most (but there was definite competition). Anyway, I am at work right now wishing I was far away. I need to plan my next trip so mentally I can go there when I am as bored as I am right now. I really want to go to south america: chile, argentina, venezuela (not Brazil because they speak Portugese and I don't) but that will have to wait until at least next year. I should try and save up some money and quit this job and go traveling. I need it. But it doesn't look like I will be saving any money anytime soon. I may be moving in November to a nice condo on the back of Diamond Head. We'll soon see. For now I will concentrate on getting ready for the Honolulu Marathon and making it through a boring day at work.

You're the bleach for my needle
I would have to describe this past week as the long weekend that wasn't. Instead of giving it my all to hilly streets lined with purveyors of fine food and beverages, I was working a thankless job for an artless boss. I did however get a call from the friends I was going to meet up with in the City and they were carrying on in my absence. Chris was nice enough to say it wasn't the same without me, and instead of getting all choked up about it and really accepting what a wonderful pieve of life I was missing out on, I sort of moved the conversation on. But hopefully there will be time. Time to fly, time to land, time to live out the dreams of life to their bitter end. oops, that was supposed to be positive and feel goody, I slipped. Besides not going to SF, seeing Bonds hit a homer to centerfield, going to see Wynton Marsalis and getting a kiss on the cheek afterwards (hey Mo said she got one, so I figure . . .), and missing out on the Anchor tour, it was a pretty good weekend. I rushed around all morning to finish a project, then rushed over to Maui and met with the most non-responsive planning department in the world, had a few drinks there with Carlos before rushing back, then went on a speed hike that worked my knees to rubber, saw some kiddie soccer, saw some women's volleyball, was convinced that Santa Clara chooses their players on size of ass, went home for a brief sleep, went over to my brother's and made breakfast for four and watch football. I ended up watching football ALL day long because I was kicked to the curb by my friend in favor of her laundry. I ended up watching Malena again, liked it again. Then went home and wrote in my journal. Pretty lame ass weekend. The hike was good for me though. I really wanted to go bowling on Sunday but I had a good thing going on the couch at my brother's place so I didn't actually breakdown and cry when I got my official notice of being kicked to the curb on Sunday. I shouldn't have parlayed it into a full day of couchness though. I did bang out a smoking breakfast though so I felt like I was royalty as I propped myself on compliments to watch tv. I was about to leave for home much earlier but Mando convinced me to stay for a movie and pupus. Now to get back in the swing of work, ugh. There will be another weekend soon, and then another, so I got that going for me.

human wishes, 9-18 at 826am
"That made me realize love and terror were intertwined so powerfully and so deeply that any love could fail." Mmm, poetry. That's paraphrased (because I can't remember the words exactly and I don't own the book) from Robert Hass' poem "On Squaw Peak". The poem itself is about the loss of his "ghost child". When I read the poem though I didn't think of it in terms of his wife having a miscarriage but just how people deal with loss in general. And maybe because it had the word "terror" in there it made me think about the people who lost friends in the attacks (but this entry isn't about that) and how they are coping. In a much bigger picture it gave me comfort in knowing that someone else sees love and terror growing on the same tree. It kind of reminds me of my friend who was asking about her potential new beau and how she wondered how excited she should let herself get because she had been hurt so many times before and didn't want to set herself up for another fall. I love reading good poetry, or better yet, having great poetry read to me. The poet standing up there giving proper inflection and animation galore. It's always an amazing display of openness on the poet's part. Up there saying this is me, and here I am, spoon feeding myself to you. I can't think of a more vulnerable place to be. The same goes for musical performances, art openings, anything where original art is on display. Maybe even sporting events. They are out there displaying skills which really brings the game to a level of artistic endeavor. I will miss being able to see the SF Giants and Wynton Marsalis perform their art but perhaps I will make it back to see what Miles is churning from his soul these days. He has an art opening November 10. I'll let you know the specifics later. And if you want an invitation sent to your doorstep, send him your name and address. If nothing else you will at least get a cool postcard-size invite out of it. His e-mail is king_bowl@netzero.net (I think) And by the way, you can mention to him that I am king bowl. Gotta go to work, now that I am not on vacation. I am only an hour late!

taking orders which are media-spawned, 9-15
The last few days have been pretty torturous. Trying to work while visiting a gagillion websites to gain some sort of perspective on what happened and what is next. One link Chris gave me was to Znet which I just finished reading. I was reading all their rhetoric about not putting the hurt on innocent people and thinking about all that I have seen on the TV. I don't think anyone on television would ever voice caution or objections to retaliatory military action, not a chance. I think what struck me the most off of Znet was something professor Robert Jensen of the University of Texas wrote, "Yes, we need to do something -- but something to shift our policy in the Middle East from rule-by-force to the quest for justice. Nonviolence is not simply about refusing to make war; it also is about creating justice in the world so that war is not necessary." And first let me say to professor Jensen, yes that certainly would be a nice world. But "the ideals we had once upon a time seem useless now, the rent must be paid." I don't know whether I mean that in a mocking way; pointing out that there are so many people who have all these grand ideals until they are tested by real-life situations and then they abandon them like bell bottom jeans. Or, do I honestly think that the death of innocent Americans should translate into the death of those who masterminded those attacks and of those who may be standing nearby them. Greta was right, we should have responded quickly, while the iron was still hot. Otherwise you give people time to reconsider their initial responses based on fear, extreme anger and pain. I will have to send professor jensen an e-mail and tell him to get out his hippie clothes and reassure him that war is on its way and that we don't live in that world of justice - yet. but it's always in the back of my mind.