untitled

she always leaves pieces of herself as if to insure i won't ever forget her.

it's affective. because i never do.

this time, she dropped a pair of gloves next to the dog's cushions. as always, when i find these pieces, i immediately text: do you want me to send them to you? even when i know her phone is off and her plane is either in the air or preparing to go there.

some people, you watch them and they make this all seem too easy. too glamorous, too practiced. for me, it never gets that way. we've been together eight and a half years, and this is the fifteenth month we've spent apart. each visit through our distance changes. each month we are apart, we change. every time is laced with pain.

sometimes, it's easy to lull oneself into accepting this as normalcy. to think: my solitude is the fabric of life now, the fact that i don't care for my thoughts, my body, my space, my surroundings--this is all a part of the daily routine. i begin to forget that once, with her, i would take care, i would seek comfort in every aspect of my living. now, a patina of sorrow covers each square inch of my being, and when my conscience recalls the warmth for a split second, i feel as though i will break.

my friend told me, you've been through this before, it means you can get through it again. then he added: that may not be much of a comfort.

it's not, really.

every time we see each other again, i'm reminded of what i've been missing. that reminder makes me petulant, resentful. i'm reminded again of my humanity. of loving things i once took for granted, of the fact that i don't need to merely survive an emotional subsistence, but that we are meant to flourish, together--struggling, negotiating, forward looking, arm-in-arm.

i sit under the covers of the bed we just shared: where i wept just minutes ago in a primal scream, where the sheets still smell of her, where we laughed this morning enjoying each other, where we fought savagely two nights ago.

each time she comes and goes, i worry sickly during her flight. a contracting sensation in my belly keeps me still like waiting for a predator to pass. i hate missing her.

i wish she'd come home.

miscegenate

if you wanna know what happens late at night in the middle of the blue-green l.e.d. lights of sanyo and sony and moonshadows falling across the spread never never is the stillness still enough for too long into the gloaming of the after where in a waiting room she has a gown tattered from too many launderings that faded puce with faded navy with faded mauve-maroon maroon marooned on the little pad of never-ending transfusing to come back and late at night i listen carefully to see if i can hear the youth of them plea and conquer and not-stillness wanting and wanting and wanting to a point that when the fucking may or may not stop something inside me says that we're fucked not completely but to a holding stand still not fucked and empty is form is void is wanting is slow is never filled to the hums of what wasn't but what might and the rain on her lashes looks too much like tears like scrubbing my back in the shower until it drains and falls and bits of me enter the sewer go to processing come out the aerator into the air and up to the clouds to the sky to the sun to the moon and come come come down down down falling on her lashes in the middle of the street where apologies were meant but unsaid and the gravel was new hampshire red and the flowing was form was empty was fucking and yet we knew the difference.

i want i want i want to see you here right here before me naked and whole and young and old and when did it matter which she was her like we could tell them apart in the first place racing blood through bare breast it's still warm warm whether it is her or her or even the forbidden her we drank from her and with her and through her i want i want i want to never have that taste of metal come through my cheeks and out through my lips that forgiving never offered and youth missed not forgotten not even wanted anymore because who wants to be 30 25 20 18 anymore anyway my greys her greys our greys are medals are talismans and fuck the fuck the fuck the want want want.

don't go.

dishes stacked on each other in a precarious heap slowly making a long low sustained stench like the faint echo of her breath in the unit where the nurse said they call it neuro breath hard breath breathe again breathe more come here to breathe by me with the warmth of fragrance only you had she had even the forbidden she had that time when we couldn't quite say the words because words felt like nails felt like stones felt too much like hurt even words of love of want of good luck when we could not even for a second think to say it back and instead we walk out to ask the nurse a question and when we come back she's asleep again not yet forever but for the last time.

i want her i want her i want her back and back and now and here and here and closer and never again in the same way but whispers of memories held close and never shared i want her near i want her in me i want inside her and her and her and her and fuck and fuck and fuck and not the same difference same different will she hear me does she hear me if she hears me will she say and if say say truth or lie lie lie with me once again and again and just once if we suffered enough when was the war won?

i want want want again
no more
more and more
not loss
the same
to change
to forever
for never
i want want want the her and the her and the her
a trinity of never and again and not ever

treyf. treyf. treyf.

come back
return
don't go
just once
forever
not ever
now go

go forth
go into the emptiness and beyond

preparing for the new year

as i was composting today, i realized that the new year would come soon. i wasn't sure what my resolution would be.

i usually don't like resolutions, i find that they are often self-indulgent and strange performances of mixed virtue and vice. but something about the smell of the compost made me pursue the thought deeper.

seriously, it was the compost.

because on my left was a beautiful pile of black gold--fertile and supple, ready to be returned to the earth to grow new things. on my left and in my hands was a stinking heap of decay--refuse from meals past. the stink was the metaphor of larger things. of cycles, of death, of birth.

i'm a buddhist, see. if yer not interested in that, you might wanna stop reading here.

it's nothing new, the buddhism. growing up, it was the only form of organized religion i ever took part in, usually through sporadic visits to temple when our family visited my mother's family. really, though, i came to know my buddhism through funerals. now, lovely partner, a born catholic, is converting to buddhism.

she shares with me the precepts and concepts and ideas behind what i have been practicing all along. at first, there was a bit of disconnect. her sources were theravada (my mother was part of a vajrayana sect, and most japanese buddhisms are mahayana), and filtered through american sources. what lovely partner said actually meant something, whereas what i knew made no "sense." but i've been listening. and i've been moved. and i've slowly come to a place where what she talks about and what i have known my whole life are beginning to make sense together.

and so, while smelling the compost, i came upon an idea. i'm still feeling it out, but i think it might take.

i will begin 2010 as a meditation on the noble eightfold path. each year, i will dedicate to one aspect of the path. at the end of the eight years, i will re-assess and perhaps begin the cycle again. 2010 will be my year of "Right View."

incidentally, the noble eightfold path consists of the following:
1. Right View (wisdom)
2. Right Intention (wisdom)
3. Right Speech (ethical conduct)
4. Right Action (ethical conduct)
5. Right Livelihood (ethical conduct)
6. Right Effort (mental development)
7. Right Mindfulness (mental development)
8. Right Concentration (mental development)

i recognize that the eightfold path is not a series of steps, to be done in succession. but i wanted to see what would happen if i pay particular attention to one aspect of the path for an extended period of time. i'm choosing this order because, well, that's how it's always presented.

in thinking about this journey, i'm particularly influenced by linda montano and her seven years of living art, based on the chakras. my exploration will be less public, i think, and being that i'm a theatre artist, and less of a performance/conceptual artist these days, i hesitate to call this endeavor a "piece" anymore than i would call living my life a "piece," which i don't often do. even though i think it sometimes.

i've come to a place where i accept that my creative process is undeniably linked to my spiritual practice. in the past year, i have met several creators who practice their craft as an extension of their spirituality. i've been humbled by observing their rigor and general posture toward life. perhaps this eight-year journey is my attempt to join them.

i share this here to hail, to incorporate. maybe you can help me with my meditation on "Right View." or maybe you can join me. i will see the world for what it is: nothing more, nothing less. neither better nor worse than it actually is. so i leave this post with a short note on what right view is from here.

Right view is the beginning and the end of the path, it simply means to see and to understand things as they really are and to realise the Four Noble Truth. As such, right view is the cognitive aspect of wisdom. It means to see things through, to grasp the impermanent and imperfect nature of worldly objects and ideas, and to understand the law of karma and karmic conditioning. Right view is not necessarily an intellectual capacity, just as wisdom is not just a matter of intelligence. Instead, right view is attained, sustained, and enhanced through all capacities of mind. It begins with the intuitive insight that all beings are subject to suffering and it ends with complete understanding of the true nature of all things. Since our view of the world forms our thoughts and our actions, right view yields right thoughts and right actions.

and so, on 01/01/2010, it begins.

sublimate

i wanted to tell you that this was not the end that this was not the last time i would see you that somehow we would find each other and you would be well and i would feel whole and the things that surround us and keep us far apart would go away that the secret you needed to tell me could stay a secret rather than spill out into the summer ohio air on a green metal bench after a day spent wandering in hopes that we could forget that the end was probably even closer than we thought that even when you began to tell me what you needed to confess that even when i had offered absolution that even when your anger and confusion had transformed into resignation and then wisdom that i wanted to tell you the end would never come and i would make a room in the house i had just bought put your name on a wooden plaque and hang it in above the bed where you would stay when you would come visit on some whirlwind trip that would include every city and country you had ever dreamt of seeing but never got to see that even though everything had said end and end and end this was really and truly and nothing other than the beginning.

the question i wanted to ask you as you lay there in that beanie that you wore after chemo but that i couldn’t because i saw where i was the question after all those nights we talked about things that you can’t tell many people those nights where you were the straight one and i was the queer one and you were the black one and i was the asian one and we had too many reasons why we were never meant to care but then we did anyway because that’s what people do after all those nights where i knew we saw the wholeness in one another i wanted to ask you if this was the redemption you wanted and wished for and did that redemption include or exclude me and peace is something that i knew you would find and did you find it at a cost or a gain because when you went to see the father of all and the father of you at the same time i wanted to ask you does your heaven allow visitors from mine because i will try to find you again in the lightness and darkness and the after glow of the once and if there’s a bouncer i don’t wanna be rude because even though the beginning was an end it doesn’t meant i wont keep looking.

songs
beats
dog-eared books of richly colored heroines
this line was crossed so many times
and in the warmth of solitude
we could hear each other’s breath
the relief of sleep
only i wish to rise

converge

we were always hungry never full trying to nourish and the belly always slender when we traveled taking junk food and remembering the days when we'd queue up beside a fry pan next to arm-chair activists and queer girls who only flirted with girls but really slept with men whose last words were you need to read more books always hungry until we stopped tasting stopped chewing not knowing when to stop or pause or wipe our mouth or say excuse me after a burp or take a sip of water going back up the line for one more plate we were always hungry so that when she couldn't eat so thin and pale and peering through crusted lashes saying i can't oh no i can't not today will you bring me what you've made not this stuff you eat it so it can't go to waste please it will just be thrown away we can't help but pick up the beige tray start to chew the food that never seems to fail to make the whole ward smell more like sick like our appetite can't be turned like we were never fed properly like eating with our mouth will somehow feed her spirit.

and that week she first started to bleed without stopping when the fluid would leak and leak into her cranial cavity when she was diagnosed with meningitis that we distinctly thought was an incurable disease reserved only for unhygenic college kids when she developed bruises just from sitting when her blood would secretly gush just not where it could be seen we stopped bleeding entirely like a stone setting right next to jesus but unnoticed and neglected into silence we stopped bleeding as women bodies do as the moon waxes red as the tide becomes still as the night invites those that must drink blood to have it flow through them the font of life flowing only through a dying body but not through the surviving one when the blood carried revived love spilling out to all around her despite the stoicism and the denial and the queer lover brought home on holiday flowing just because it was impossible to stop all while her daughter's blood ran stiller and stiller perhaps in hopes that if it just stopped altogether it could hide from the feelings of chaos and lividity could stop time in its tracks from moving forward to the inevitable stopping of blood that could not be stopped because really it ran dry too dry to live that months after her blood and the vessel carrying it had been transformed to ash her daughter had to visit a doctor just to have her blood flow once more.

the man who saw her in new york said to us she is connected to god in heaven so she needn't fear and if you want i can do a special healing for her from afar but that will take $3000 and that's very expensive isn't it that we looked at her and told her the news and seriously considered withdrawing the $3000 from our money we were never to touch but $3000 is a bargain if it means her getting up and walking but she looks through bleary eyes in that way that says it's confirmed he's a quack and besides i'm ready to die because i cried through it all these months and i've made sure to tell you the important stuff and i know it will take you long to cry through it yourself because i had to cry through the same thing at age seven but you'll do alright let's practice now so we lie down on her sterile bed and curl up with our head right next to her hand and she comforts us even though she's the sick one stroking our hair and telling us stories through dreams we share as she falls into a bleeding-brain-induced slumber and we fall into a grief-induced one.

we sleep. we walk together, with a purple horizon warm at our backs. her hair is thick and long. she puts her arm through mine. she wears white shoes. i look at her face. she looks at mine. she nods forward and i see a bright reflection of yellow light in her eyes. i look forward. i see no light. she smiles. she's a pixie. she knows more than the rest of us, even though she has always played the part of the family dunce. i understand this at last. she nods.

i wake up.

10/12 freewrite--koi

she told me to look at her pictures, that they actually came out pretty good. they did. i clicked through them and waited for my slow connection. then, it's there. a tight shot of a bright orange koi, peaking through a reflection of the sky.

"remind me to tell you about the mythology when you call," i write in the comments.

every may--less now than before, and always more in the countryside than in the city--childbearing homes will fly flags. tubular ones, shaped like the bright orange wind detectors at airports. the homes erect flag poles lined with three or five flags, each one but the bottom-most printed in the image of a koi.

the myth goes, a highly determined koi swam upstream continuously, underwent much hardship. finally, the koi swam up a gigantic waterfall and upon reaching the top, it turned into a dragon.

that's why koi are so auspicious. they represent pure potential. something so humble as a bottom-feeding, water forager could eventually transform into a mighty and mystical dragon.

it was no accident that she took that picture. she needed that koi.

***
in many ways, we were meant to be a scholar. high school was filled with music teachers who wanted me to just stop. i took ear-training classes with eight year olds and i couldn't seem to make it through a piano lesson without my piano teacher laughing at me. i know now, without malace, that my piano teacher was not very gifted. the problem was, i am. just not at playing the piano. but even though my piano teacher laughed at me, and i stayed in the elementary school ear-training class, the head of the prep school loved me. she always got me free tickets for concerts, arranged for me to take off-the-books composition training, asked me philosophical questions abaout performance and new music. she always wrote back to me and insisted i call her periodically. she knew my thinking was way ahead of my playing.

first semester of conservatory, i was utterly confused. but my piano-playing had improved immensely. some piano performance majors were trying to get me to audition to join a studio supervised by a faculty member. i remember that fondly--i might have studied with lydia rutstein.

eight years later, in waterloo records, i was staring at lydia's face on the cover of a used LP. i didn't have the heart not to buy it. i have never listened to it.

i sometimes wonder whether i was the last one admitted into my cohort. but it didn't end up mattering. i caught on. i wasn't the best, but i was better than average. i was a good thinker. that made up for my lack in musicality, talent, or whimsy. in hinsight, it was really only one professor who didn't treat me like he thought i could go far. he was a drunk who hated undergrads. and his music was boring.

i left music, for my own good, really. and the thing is, i have perfect pitch now. it's not very fast, and not so flashy. but if you hum a note, i can usually tell what it is. and if i hear a song, i can sing it back, several days later, in the same key and with the same precision as the original. if i went back to ear-training school, i would kill on their exams.

the one thing conservatory taught me was: talent helps, but you can really make up for in in old-fashioned hard work.

it's been a blessing and a curse, this realization. i left music just as i matered it enough to take elite classes but tnot enough to make a career of it. i could have stayed. i'd have a phd in music composition by now and would be collecting occasional checks from ascap for my obscure compositions that would get aired on local npr or college radio stations. gross.

teachers often love me. because i go from just acceptable to pretty damn good in a short amount of time. it's after that where i run into problems.

i was an academic for a bit. my writing was only so-so. and i hated reading. but i showed up and listened and pretty soon, faculty kept trying to convince me to get a phd, telling me i'm writing dissertation-quality work, that academia needed "people like me."

that was nice.

i took a production cllass and the professor told me i had made one of the best pieces of book art she had seen in a long time.

i'm a little more settled now. but still thoroughly confused. i only recently realized that i want to work on theatre that is physical, that treats the text as no more important than the movement or the set or the sound or the lights. and i'm taking a writing class?

did i mention i was once a crappy writer? not crappy--humble, but crappy--why should words even matter?

i don't really know why i'm writing. there are plenty of things that need to get written. but it feels like a distraction. i don't even know what theatre is like, really. the fact is, when i don't write, i become depressed, then nothing else happens well. i kept myself alive at SITI writing morning pages, taking copious notes, blogging about each revelation.

when i was about eight, mom told me a story. i was playing outside and obaachama watched. suddenly, she turned to my mother and said, "be careful of that one, she's smart."

10/5 freewrite--"i miss her so much every day"

second year of college, during the experimental composition module, corey wrote a piece called "closing statement." the score was just: "Improvise music and song using the following text, 'i miss her so much every day.'" a handful of us played it together--green chalkboards as witness, randy's prune-eyes shut in feigned interest.

a year later, at a composition recital, corey took the same piece but set it to five chords he scrawled with crayon--his counter-tenor pushing into the grey stone of fairchild chapel. playing the chords on the decrepit upright, rather than the well-tuned steinway grand, with his back to us singing up rather than forward--stretching out the prosody as far as possible. "i... i... i miss... i miss her..."

that might have been 1998. kim would have been living in chicago at that point. my parents still lived in tokyo. i was dating--probably--becky. or was it 1999? kim would have been in baltimore, my parents would have just moved to groton, and i would have been dating clara-who-had-not-yet-changed-her-name-to-hiroshi.

chicago and baltimore or tokyo and groton. it's hard to tell whether they would have been departures or returns.

when i first performed "closing statement," i thought i knew what it was about. corey probably thought he knew what it was about, too. i was most likely very indulgent. 20/21-year-olds often are. of course, 31/32-year-olds can be, too. i forgot about that piece. probably on purpose, like how you forget the water is cold when you've been swimming in it long enough.

corey wrote another song. he used yvan's words. "your absence has done my hands a favor. i now know every fold and wrinkle of my body." i think that song used toy pianos and accordions.

prosody.

when i played my thesis for mom, she gasped. it was for full orchestra. a full semester's worth of meetings with the only faculty member who could bare to look at me. she said, "wow. it's real music." i guess she didn't think any of the other recordings i brought home were. that's what four years of conservatory training are meant to do--create real music. i didn't tell her about the mathematical charts i taped to my wall. or the fact that i really had no idea what it would sound like until the day the chamber orchestra played it. the string players hated it--no vibrato and notes sustained over several measures. they don't like counting measures. i hated string players.

mom was always confused about my admission to a conservatory. "i never thought you were very... well... i knew you LIKED music."

i remember standing up from the table and spitting, "but you put it in my head! 'be the first female conductor, you have such careful hands. you're so sensitive.'"

i was the one who took a hobby too far.

kim still has much of my music in her itunes. every time the one recording of me singing plays, she says, "kt's on the radio!" i still blush.

it was one of my first gifts to her. a cd of corey's music with a guest appearance by me. it wasn't even a gift, really. she saw a stack of them and said, "can i have one?" and even though i barely knew her, i couldn't think of a reason why not. she was being so nice and attentive. i told her, "i wrote the song and words for my mom." she looked at her shoes. i'm still glad she has that song.

eight years later, on a stage in saratoga springs, i squinted at the limelights and looked down at julieta sitting on the edge of the thrust. the only words that came from my mouth were:

let me hold your small hand
let me hold stroke your thin hair
let me carry you in my arms
let me see you

julieta's abuela had died a couple weeks before. and most of our conversations were about our filipino american girlfriends. julieta looked up at me dewy-eyed and we fled to the wings as the viewpoints session moved on.

kim and i had been coming off a fight that day. the training was coming to a close. i was reluctant to part with my new friends. but i couldn't wait to come home.

that last thanksgiving, kim came up to groton to visit. mom had pulled me aside and said, "thank you for coming up separately, leaving me time to have with just you." it was a week after my birthday. we were in the living room when mom decided to give me my belated present. it was a men's dress shirt from land's end and a red tie. kim and mom sat close to each other on the couch, both beaming as i modeled my new duds.

kim said, "doesn't she look so pretty?"
and mom replied, "she does. yes, she does."