In Twilight Regalia

Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
How beautiful is this world!
Forget all your turmoil,
Enjoy the profusion of flowers.
How colorful this world is!

These pathways call out to me and say:
“Somewhere, someone’s waiting for you!”
This path now bids me:
“Somewhere, someone’s waiting for you!”

Why is the heart restless?
Who is it going to meet?
What the heart most desired–
Maybe that’s about to happen.

Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Life is the vehicle and time is the wheel
You may find a flood of tears and a garden of happiness,
Everyone is waiting for you, brother.

Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
How beautiful is this world!
Forget all your turmoil,
Enjoy the profusion of flowers.
How colorful this world is!

Where ever I look in these paths
I find colors melting in gazes
cool breezes give cool shade
Far away is an unknown village

What sort of cloud has spread?
Where has the heart brought me?
What dreams has it shown me?
every dream comes true…
when the fires of love are lit
On the path you choose of your heart,
You will find pearls in every oyster of time
When you listen to your heart.

Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
How beautiful is this world
Forget all your turmoil
How colorful this world is!

The heart feels lightened,
like a burden is lifted from the shoulders,
Like the inocense of childhood has returned,
Like bathing in the River Ganges at long last.

My heart feels pure,
now bonds are strengthened,
now life feels fresh and new.

Life is filled with love and a song is on the lips
This is your victory, traveler!
Whereever you go, may you always find love
and blaze a path o traveler!

Keep roaming thus o traveler,
Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
Who calls out to me?
River mountain, stream and lake, forest and valley
whose beckoning hand do I see?

Keep roaming thus, o traveler,
How beautiful is this world!

[NOTES: Bollywood is always a tad romantic and cheesy, but you have to listen to this piece while driving on a crisp spring day with the windows down. It RAWKS. Yes, it does.]

He won’t watch it. Probably not.

All in an instant one’s hopes to create and rejoin can be ruined. Some wounds are too deep for people to give over.

The film “Letters from Iwo Jima” is too hard to accept for Koreans. It humanizes the Japanese of an era who dehumanized so completely those around them, that they simply cannot accept it. If it is seen at all in Korea, it would be very surprising.

Koreans don’t forget. They don’t; the Jews, the Koreans, the Native Americans, the minorities in almost every land, including the many blacks in so many parts of the world, the Chinese at Nanking, the Serbs, the Palestinians, and back around to the Jews…. How do we forgive something so terrible that it can ruin even the attempt to bridge over something long past?

Sometimes there doesn’t seem hope for my husband. He will always be an indoctrinated and propagandized child of a severely wounded people. An unstemmed bitterness keeps them apart from all the rest of the world — while the Japanese government holds out without a word of apology all these years.

I don’t think most of Japanese youth even know about the atrocities committed to the grandparents and great=grandparents and great=great grandparents of those Koreans in the TV dramas they watch today. They were equally indoctrinated. They dance and swoon over Gackt Camui (at least half Korean) and now Bi (”Rain” — who is really Jung Ji Hoon, entirely Korean) and have no idea. They watch Korean soaps even as their government sends ships into Korean waters, purporting to own a Korean island.

The wound is 70 years ago, but still so fresh, for the Koreans.

I am a patcher and fixer of people, so I’ve been told, sometimes to the point of being told to STOP fixing.
And I with friends on both sides of that sea, have no real way to help.

So I looked at it from a microcosmic view: Could there be some guidelines? What would you do on an individual scale, when two children won’t stop fighting, just won’t stop ?

They say, “reward both sides when they cooperate.” (Aid/Sanctions? Does that work?)

They say, “separate them and train them separately on cooperation.” (This has not been tried, has it? We just punished with an atom bomb…)

They say, “when intervening, remain calm and do not lay blame on either side.” (I doubt this would be possible. It was after all unprovoked. But we’d have to remain silent on that.)

They say, “children who are feeling loved are least likely to fight.” (Respect, yes! That’s what makes them both tick, it’s true.)

They say most importantly: “Limit your own fighting and arguing. Children will learn how to be peaceful from you. Don’t expect them to do it well if you don’t show them how.”

(Here our cowboy efforts in Vietnam and Iraq leave us flat.)

So I, the Ms.-Fix-It I, recommend these actions not to the two wounded sides, but to my own government:

Dear U.S. Military and Government: Who the hell is really going to listen to, say, Switzerland on the peacekeeping front? Let’s face it — it has to be us, and we’ve made a mess of things.

Are the countries of Korea and Japan, not to mention the rest of the world, really going to believe in us? In peace? Even in economic coexistence and cooperation?

Not if we keep botching these ridiculous ground wars and political coups in the name of cleaning up the world. It’s possible that our hands were never completely clean, but — there has to be an extreme change even for us, right here. Sooner than now.

At least Clint’s crying in the wilderness. Perhaps he should have been more than just Mayor of Carmel.

Dear U.S.: I know it’s on a long list of fix it items and you’d rather go watch Clint’s WWII movies, but hey. Please. Somehow. There’s some real repercussions going on, some of which are right here in my living room.

I was listening to a podcast this morning on financial goal setting — one of the many podcasts I breezed through on a whim, since podcasts are free, and I feel like I’m garage sale-ing for information without achieving any clutter. Such a deal!.

This particular podcast, although aimed at our financial plan in life, had language so simple that my mind wandered (as it often does the moment monetary planning comes up) into the emotional. The speaker was setting up a moral. She said that in a 1979 survey done at Harvard, a large group of graduates were selected to state whether they:

1) had no goals in particular (They were about 84%.)
2) had an idea of set goals for themselves for their future, but they were not defined (They were 13%.)
or
3) they had actually formulated and written these goals down. (They were only 3%.)

Ten years later, those surveyed were interviewed again. The ones who had had an idea of goals for themselves, that 13% group, were earning double what the 84% group were earning. But even more remarkably, the 3% group who had actually formulated and written their goals down were earning TEN times more.

The moral, she suggested, was to formulate and write down your goals if you really intend to get somewhere.

It occurred to me at that point that I had spent my childhood and all through into my 30s writing down my plans and goals and dreams. It was called a journal.

It occurred to me that I had asked in writing for a particular kind of man-of-my-dreams, and that I had in fact gotten him.
I had asked for freedom and travel to Japan, and I had done it.
I had planned to be a certain kind of creative being, and I became her.

But none of those goals brought what I had expected would be achieved by their attainment. The results were not as expected. And yet, they were still valuable.

The lover disappeared, leaving friendship in his wake; but it was a friendship that couldn’t be broken by the worst of storms.

Japan was not the place I thought it was, and I could not live there; yet it changed me in a million unforeseeable ways.

The creative person I planned on being was almost too large a pair of shoes to fill. I couldn’t sustain it, and yet, I toy with returning to her again and again. I have a proud past as both reward and impetus.

I have come to the conclusion that we should in fact write our goals down: but know that they will need to be well overshot of what you expect to actually achieve. I realized I need to dream even higher and plan more.

I’m going to start focusing on some intense over-fantasizing and planning right now:

1. I would like to live in a VERY LARGE DWELLING. VERY VERY LARGE. And beautiful. I need to find out what to do to achieve large. (Steppes of Mongolia?).

2. I would like to live in a much smaller body, and I need to actually find something that will allow me to stop deterring myself from it. I need a love of something that will make me so happy to work to lose this weight that I will love it for itself, and the weight will stay off. (Now what the hell IS that thing?) I will try to do at least three new things by end of year to see if they will be the thing that sticks. (Yes, three. That’s not being conservative. I know my lack of interest in this department all too well.)

3. I would like to live among people that I can see everyday and live closely with again; a group of friends who will surround me. Which means that I will need to find where the people such as me actually exist, and connect with them. My goal is to find at least three such people by end of year. (First strategy: Buy new iPod phone, locate all the swishiest Starbucks with it, and start networking by flashing aforementioned iPod phone.) (Well I don’t know if that would hook all the right sorts, but I’m definitely hooking somebody. Soon.)

4. I intend to tour Europe within three years. (I think this one is pretty achievable — but I want to do it without it being a tourist hell. I want it to have a real soul. I want to come home with connections.

5. I intend to have a dog within five years.

6. I intend to do everything in my power to increase my husband’s feng shui, because Man, does he need it.

7. I intend to throw away some old-life flotsam so I can make room for new-life flotsam. I realized hanging onto my old junk was actually a real need in my soul to hang on to the creative life I used to lead. I need to find a way to get the creativity back and keep moving.

8. I don’t think I can plan for this, but I’m going to put it into the atmosphere: I want to have a HUGE windfall of money, and be able to do a lot of good with it. A little for me, and the rest for the daughters of the world that have been put on doorsteps. Particularly in China and Korea.

9. I want my husband to not just love me, but “fall in love” with me, when we are old.

10. I want my words to have some meaning and permanency for the people I leave behind; and failing that, the music I have loved and sung.

Dear Maddy,

I am so happy to have found you on the web and see that you are still making your pottery, and successfully, too!

I am wondering if you’ll remember me at all, since we were friends very briefly in Urbana. I a was Jen back then, and have gone through many permutations since. I am now married and my name is Jeanne.

I was a singer/guitarist then, who was also making stained glass windchimes, and windchimes made of keys, about then. I was with Matt J at the time, and he and Kimmer M were just getting to know each other. I think you knew her, and can’t recall if she lived in your house then or not?. Anyway.

I just wanted to tell you that as time has rolled by in my life, I have looked at various chapters for little jewels I can keep close to my thought.

One of those jewels was a time you may have completely forgotten, but it meant a world to me.

It was breakfast!

You asked me over for breakfast, and I thought that was novel and very nice, but didn’t know what to expect.

I arrived in your big Victorian house and found that the sun was streaming in the tall windows on one side in the dining room and you were making some pancakes that had something interesting in them — perhaps banana? in the kitchen.

But what struck me was the lovely table you set! I was not expecting anything formal — none of my friends did that, as we were all broke musicians and students. You were as serendipitous as my friends, but you had a sense of graciousness to which we were unaccustomed.

You had set the table with a pretty cloth (I don’t think it was a table cloth per se) and cloth napkins, and a whole service of your beautiful colorful pottery (which I’m sure looked quite different then from yours now). I remember it was a green and black or darker green pottery set.

I remember tea in a quirky fun teapot you had made (I had never had tea at breakfast before), and juice, and those terrific pancakes on your plates. I also recall little bowls you brought out with fruit and different toppings and we had some kind of granola-yogurt-coconut concoction that was new to me and yummy. I remember it was all so colorful and charming and we had a great time laughing and talking, and to me, it was one of the most harmonious hours of my life. A perfect moment, if you will.

I had always wanted to thank you for making such a vivid lovely image in my mind. It was one of the things I remember best about that time in my life. As I grow older, those are all that is important.

Oh, and by the way, thank you for showing me how to get my hair up in a bun and have it stay put. I have been grateful for that on many a hot day.

I hope you have some time to say hello back by e-mail, and I hope you’ll have a look at my blog if you can’t recall who the heck this is.

It’s here:
http://intwilightregalia.blogs.friendster.com/in_twilight_regalia/

Please ignore that it’s on that stupid Friendster site with so much advertising crap on it.

Warmly,

J.

I had such strongly visual dreams last night that I thought I wouldn’t be able to go back ever again when I woke up and then ultimately went back to sleep. But I did. I usually can’t get right back into the same dream I was in, but this time I did, almost like a repeat.

Why would I dream this dream (even to embellishment on the first dream) twice?

The dream was that I have in the background of my mind, a husband to get to (I think it probably is my current husband, but it’s kind of irrelevant, since he’s only a motive for movement, and not seen).

I am in a little town, almost like an old fashioned town, and everything is very cramped and packed in in all of the stores, including me. I am carrying my purse, stuffed to the gills, another bag stuffed full that’s larger, and a large black camera and something else, perhaps things I bought? Under all that weight and walking through all these shops that are indoor and the buildings are made of wood, old grey weathered wood, packed in tightly together. I can see no windows or light in most of them because they all seem to face each other.

Inside, I am shopping for gifts for friends, sorting through various purses, scarves, all budget, looking at small toys, one in particular that seems to have a mouse pop out of it, made of sponge inside.

I price things and talk to people (they’re old, most of them), and I meet someone who I want to buy drawing pastels from, and yet when they say they have them, they show me only a display box where lots of wicks are lit and there is supposed to be a display of colors in the wax under the wicks, but it all appears to be the same color. I demand to see actual pastels, this is not helpful. I don’t know if I actually get them.

Then I talk to various people’s mothers, and some guy who tells me about a person who has a problem, or isn’t very high IQ or something, and I see her in a group later. I spend a long time trying to leave through various stores and coffee shops that have various products, being distracted, almost buying or buying something, and/or setting down my purse and then trying to find it again, and worrying all the while that it will be stolen (that’s a recurrent theme in my dreams, my purse being stolen), and losing track of some of what I was carrying and and then going back for part of it or all of it (ditto another current theme), and eventually I am trying to mentally leave, to drive back.

Here’s an interesting seque:

As I’m standing in one of the dusty old wooden stores on the front of a block (it therefore has a window), just near a packed in row of parked cars, I and all the others in the shop are surprised by seeing a HUGE truck with a flatbed come through the tiny street, narrowly missing the elevated train tracks or something like that up top, and it’s carrying an ENORMOUS, 12 foot high birthday cake with pink frosting.

We are all speculating what this could be about and who it’s for, when suddenly the flatbed rises up and it becomes like a dumptruck forklift thing underneath and it lifts the huuuuuuge birthday cake up into a position that suddenly looks precarious, and we all begin to shout, because he’ll drop it! we’re sure he’ll drop it! Oh NO! He did drop it, FLOOOMPF, right over on top of a car, just like a pie in the face for the tiny car, and then the truck retracts its platform and drives off as people are coming out from every store freaking out. What the?.

Now they all start laughing incredulously because we realize someone must have planned dumping this huge cake on this particular car. Who would do that? What’s that about?? Who owns this car? We’d like to know the rest of the story behind THIS! Reporters are called from an old black payphone on the street.

I walk away, thinking, wow, someone must have had a serious fit of anger over SOMEone. It’s funny! It’s not funny. Ok, it’s funny. Maybe.

I try to leave all the madness eventually and I try to drive in my car (which is considerably smaller than any real car) back to my husband.

But everything is tiny and closed off, only walking room, and even then the streets seemed to be strewn with all kinds of metal junkyard junk and clutter. There isn’t any smell, it’s not garbage, it’s just….. junk strewn everywhere, and I can’t get through. From the main block where I am I know my husband is waiting for me not but five blocks away, but I can’t get through any of the streets.

I finally pick something that looks wide enough at least halfway down, and I realize people just get out of their cars and move things in front of the doorways, blocking the people inside, and then the people behind the doors move it all back into the streets. So I try to too, getting out of my car and lifting huge pieces of metal out of the way, and wondering when I’ll ever get home, and stuck with all my loot in the car, and do I just abandon this whole thing or not? I try driving over some of it. I get halfway down an alley and I’m stuck again. I could back up and try something else? And that’s where my dream ends, cluttered, cramped, frustrated, exhausted, chaos.

…I think I need a two bedroom apartment. I really do.