Five summers ago I was living in New York City and waiting to hear feedback on my first attempt at a novel. I'd taken time off after my half-year stint in the art book publishing industry and wrote every day for three months. I eventually had a novel, or at least something resembling one. I think it was June, and nobody had written back to me in a week. I understood that people had their own lives, and I had taken two years to share anything after leaving college and saying I was a writer. I'd been writing here and there, but never for an audience. I had too much to go through first. And books to read to shed light on those experiences while showing me how it was done by the masters.
I got some mixed feedback, and then fortuitously got in touch with my old writing professor, Dan. He never had an e-mail back in college, and he retired when I was in New Zealand. Even worse, he'd written my recommendation for my study abroad application, and I couldn't thank him in person afterward. The English Department refused to provide any contact information to me. Luckily, a former fellow writing student messaged me one day, brought up my writing, and told me to send it to Dan at his new e-mail address. I got back in touch with him, and he told me to mail it to him tripled space in 16 point font. I had to wait a month to hear back from him.
At the time I was working at ABC Television in the data department for a temporary job. I can't complain at all about my job, because it was the best job I ever had. They had thirty minutes of work for me to do in the morning, and then I just read books I'd tracked down at the New York Public Library for free. While my co-workers drifted in between their repetitive tasks and their TV screen (there was one in every office) showing daytime television like Regis and The View, I used my time on the company dime to exercising my reading mind in its prime. I say to YOU that libraries are FREE and that's how I've found 90% of the maps to love a place to be genki while searching its mysterious shelves for magic, entertainment, wisdom and hope. I really was struggling to keep my head together that summer, more than ever. One reason was I'd already opened my eyes really wide and the world was a balance beam bridging the gap between beyond standard poetry and innocent insanity. Innocent or not, feeling out of synch with the world because you're more aware of how synchronized the world is than the rest of your immediate environment prepares to be willing to admit is a lonely feeling indeed. I wasn't necessarily smarter than anyone else. I was lucky to know so many brilliant creative minds and beautiful hearts, and although there was plenty of pleasurable overlap which kept me afloat even more than my beloved books and music, something was still missing in my life. So I read and I read and made sure my brain and my belly stayed fed. Beyond that I was free to go as mad as I pleased with synchronized poetry.
The mainline for that magic was more music than literature or actual poetry (although I reread Leaves of Grass frequently). The truth is that I had a broken heart entering the summer, and I was desperately trying to fill the void with something. So I listened to music and read thinkers and lived life with my friends when they were available. One was Joe, who lived with me for two years in Queens, and another was Jim, who had just moved to Astoria earlier that year. Joe and I had known each other since freshman year, and Jim since sophomore year. We all lived together and did a big road trip through the south senior year. Jim lived in New Jersey my first year in Brooklyn and came to visit a lot and listen to vinyl records of great jazz, classical and classic rock magic helpers. He's also an excellent musician, and plays keyboards in some extended improvisation bands (it's sometimes hard to keep track of how many, but the Static Rising is the most consistent and mellows me out masterfully). He also loves most of the music that someone should love, and he directed me to
THE MOST MAGICAL MAGNIFICENT MESMERIZING MUSICIAN
We were hanging out in my room when he told me to look at this Youtube clip of a really talented keyboard/piano player. I was reading a book and was reluctant to look up, but when I did I couldn't stop. I saw someone doing something that I didn't know people could do. That is, I already knew that I couldn't play piano or keyboards or any real instrument besides a couple guitar chords. But this person was dominating the instrument, and having the greatest time doing it. The biggest smile in the world, and totally in control of a flow that no other human could know how to grow into such a spectacular show. That weekend we went to the Blue Note Jazz club in New York, on 3rd street in the village. I barely made it to the line in time to meet my friend Jim and his fellow musician friend, and we were one of the last groups to get in the sold out room. Amazingly, our seats were directly behind the genius. We only saw this master artist's face for about a quarter of the show, when occasionally switching to a keyboard, but most of the time we had a close-up view of the hands on the keys, which no one else in the room could see, moving in a furious frenzy that was both intimidating, harmonious and heavenly. It will forever inspire me.
Her name is Hiromi Uehara.
She does it all. Don't be intimidated. Enjoy it. It's greatness in your lifetime. It's the music of the spheres.
That summer I was interested in the fabric of reality and read the following quote from Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe:
With the discovery of superstring theory, musical metaphors take on a startling reality, for the theory suggests that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the cosmos. The winds of change, according to superstring theory, gust through an Aeolian universe.
Music is what you are. If you don't believe some nerdy super-string theorist studying the most cutting edge theories about what you and everything actually is, then trust a rhyming musician named Lil' Wayne, who goes on "I am Music" tours. Well, maybe not about everything, but at least about the fabric of reality.
_________________________
A few years ago Japan had a horrible earthquake, tsunami and melt down. I had bought a ticket to go there to teach English for a year the week before, but my flight was still three weeks away. I held out until the last minute, and then had to get my flight refunded. But I waited it out and made the journey eventually when it was safe enough to go about a month later. I taught English, wrote about pictures, met other teachers from around the world and did my best to have some adventures despite the constant work routine.
My favorite adventure was Mt. Fuji. My big sister Kadumi and her friend went all Thomas the Tank Engine with me for the first few hours of climbing the mountain at night under the light of a full moon. Eventually she told me to go ahead because her friend needed to slow down to handle the oxygen change. Kadumi urged me to carry on without them since I was so clearly excited to be running and climbing up a mountain after being crammed inside the smallest room in the most populated city I'd ever lived in my whole life. It was the only wilderness adventure I had that year. The year before I practically lived outside with all the traveling I did. I gave Mt. Fuji everything I had, and loved every step of the way under the stars listening to the chatter of the thousands of fellow seekers hiking to the top to see the sun rise in the land of the rising sun.
As I sat on the side of the volcano in the moments before dawn, I began to reminisce. I remembered how I'd waited all night on a Chinese mountain to see a full moon, but in Japan all I had to do was go once and the moon shined the whole time, floating to the other side until tomorrow and eventually letting the stars have all the attention. I thought about how I'd been wandering the whole wide world of webbed water for a year and a half, and I had no idea that I was going to do so for another year and a half before finally finding a place to be me freely. I felt like I was in the right place in space, listening to the most moving song in the soul symphony, Hiromi's "Place to Be":
I listened to many other songs while climbing the mountain and while resting at the top, and I also listened to the murmur of the crowds trying to stay warm while awaiting the life force source. Right before the top I found this dirty American flag with a drawing of
on the white stripes, before the stars swimming with you in a sea of blue. I dusted it off and tied it to the side of the same little school backpack my dad bought me for my Oriental passage which began 18 months earlier in India. I'd been back to the US and even across it since, yet here I was on a journey through the East again. That flag stayed on my bag as I drove across the country and hiked in every national park that I could while I moved to my current place to be.
Later that year I found myself eclipsing a very important personal milestone in my life: despite all the earthquakes and the tsunami filling me with more fear about a journey than ever before, I had not only lasted seven months in Japan, but I was having a better experience than I could have asked for. I had two amazing teaching jobs which taught me how to communicate with humans of all ages, regardless of our opposite grammatical structures and historic cultural norms. I made myself write every day and finally start eating some healthy food on a regular basis. I'd increased the menu from cheerios a long time ago, but now the focus was on health. I also met some pretty stellar co-workers. After seven months of it, I had beaten my personal record of living away from America, set when I first traveled around the world from India to Ireland. The universe rewarded me and thousands of other eye love waters with the glorious glow of a Hiromi show. It's the best performance I've ever witnessed in my life. I say that sincerely as someone who should write seven novels about all the brilliant magical musicians I've seen and heard and felt during three Bonnaroo's (please imagine a Musical March Madness) and three years in New York City. I remember feeling like everything was worth it, just knowing that that music existed and someone was going through all of the effort to let us enjoy her feel the magic of the world in a new wonderful way.
I am a story teller. I live life and then I show what happened with sound vibrations and light waves, depending on whether I'm using my voice or recording it for you to see. Sometimes I imagine pure imagination, but I find that the pure imagination that makes up my world as it is is far more entertaining and interesting.
Even so, I am so freakin' jealous of musicians. So many of my friends are musicians, and they look like they're having the time of their lives, and they are. They remind me over and over that goodness and genki and ultimate enthusiasm of the mind's heart is the purest art. I know as a writer and a human that every service is double-edged in some way, and that whatever the craft, an artist has to sort through angels and animals in their own imagination more than most. What I'm saying is that we all direct the flow of the show however we best know, but you musicians are just so... so... I don't even know! You make me grow! You make me survive and enjoy the show! You lift me up when I'm low! You help me feel what I know!
Life so far has been a series of discovering experiences and magical helpers.
"To radiate goodness is marvelous, because it is tonic, invigorating, vitalizing. But just to be is still more marvelous, because it is endless and requires no demonstration. To be is music, which is a profanation of silence in the interest of silence, and therefore beyond good and evil. Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act."
Today, the magical helper is Hiromi.
I got some mixed feedback, and then fortuitously got in touch with my old writing professor, Dan. He never had an e-mail back in college, and he retired when I was in New Zealand. Even worse, he'd written my recommendation for my study abroad application, and I couldn't thank him in person afterward. The English Department refused to provide any contact information to me. Luckily, a former fellow writing student messaged me one day, brought up my writing, and told me to send it to Dan at his new e-mail address. I got back in touch with him, and he told me to mail it to him tripled space in 16 point font. I had to wait a month to hear back from him.
At the time I was working at ABC Television in the data department for a temporary job. I can't complain at all about my job, because it was the best job I ever had. They had thirty minutes of work for me to do in the morning, and then I just read books I'd tracked down at the New York Public Library for free. While my co-workers drifted in between their repetitive tasks and their TV screen (there was one in every office) showing daytime television like Regis and The View, I used my time on the company dime to exercising my reading mind in its prime. I say to YOU that libraries are FREE and that's how I've found 90% of the maps to love a place to be genki while searching its mysterious shelves for magic, entertainment, wisdom and hope. I really was struggling to keep my head together that summer, more than ever. One reason was I'd already opened my eyes really wide and the world was a balance beam bridging the gap between beyond standard poetry and innocent insanity. Innocent or not, feeling out of synch with the world because you're more aware of how synchronized the world is than the rest of your immediate environment prepares to be willing to admit is a lonely feeling indeed. I wasn't necessarily smarter than anyone else. I was lucky to know so many brilliant creative minds and beautiful hearts, and although there was plenty of pleasurable overlap which kept me afloat even more than my beloved books and music, something was still missing in my life. So I read and I read and made sure my brain and my belly stayed fed. Beyond that I was free to go as mad as I pleased with synchronized poetry.
The mainline for that magic was more music than literature or actual poetry (although I reread Leaves of Grass frequently). The truth is that I had a broken heart entering the summer, and I was desperately trying to fill the void with something. So I listened to music and read thinkers and lived life with my friends when they were available. One was Joe, who lived with me for two years in Queens, and another was Jim, who had just moved to Astoria earlier that year. Joe and I had known each other since freshman year, and Jim since sophomore year. We all lived together and did a big road trip through the south senior year. Jim lived in New Jersey my first year in Brooklyn and came to visit a lot and listen to vinyl records of great jazz, classical and classic rock magic helpers. He's also an excellent musician, and plays keyboards in some extended improvisation bands (it's sometimes hard to keep track of how many, but the Static Rising is the most consistent and mellows me out masterfully). He also loves most of the music that someone should love, and he directed me to
THE MOST MAGICAL MAGNIFICENT MESMERIZING MUSICIAN
I have ever seen in my life ever ever... .... ever.
We were hanging out in my room when he told me to look at this Youtube clip of a really talented keyboard/piano player. I was reading a book and was reluctant to look up, but when I did I couldn't stop. I saw someone doing something that I didn't know people could do. That is, I already knew that I couldn't play piano or keyboards or any real instrument besides a couple guitar chords. But this person was dominating the instrument, and having the greatest time doing it. The biggest smile in the world, and totally in control of a flow that no other human could know how to grow into such a spectacular show. That weekend we went to the Blue Note Jazz club in New York, on 3rd street in the village. I barely made it to the line in time to meet my friend Jim and his fellow musician friend, and we were one of the last groups to get in the sold out room. Amazingly, our seats were directly behind the genius. We only saw this master artist's face for about a quarter of the show, when occasionally switching to a keyboard, but most of the time we had a close-up view of the hands on the keys, which no one else in the room could see, moving in a furious frenzy that was both intimidating, harmonious and heavenly. It will forever inspire me.
Her name is Hiromi Uehara.
She does it all. Don't be intimidated. Enjoy it. It's greatness in your lifetime. It's the music of the spheres.
That summer I was interested in the fabric of reality and read the following quote from Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe:
With the discovery of superstring theory, musical metaphors take on a startling reality, for the theory suggests that the microscopic landscape is suffused with tiny strings whose vibrational patterns orchestrate the evolution of the cosmos. The winds of change, according to superstring theory, gust through an Aeolian universe.
Music is what you are. If you don't believe some nerdy super-string theorist studying the most cutting edge theories about what you and everything actually is, then trust a rhyming musician named Lil' Wayne, who goes on "I am Music" tours. Well, maybe not about everything, but at least about the fabric of reality.
_________________________
A few years ago Japan had a horrible earthquake, tsunami and melt down. I had bought a ticket to go there to teach English for a year the week before, but my flight was still three weeks away. I held out until the last minute, and then had to get my flight refunded. But I waited it out and made the journey eventually when it was safe enough to go about a month later. I taught English, wrote about pictures, met other teachers from around the world and did my best to have some adventures despite the constant work routine.
My favorite adventure was Mt. Fuji. My big sister Kadumi and her friend went all Thomas the Tank Engine with me for the first few hours of climbing the mountain at night under the light of a full moon. Eventually she told me to go ahead because her friend needed to slow down to handle the oxygen change. Kadumi urged me to carry on without them since I was so clearly excited to be running and climbing up a mountain after being crammed inside the smallest room in the most populated city I'd ever lived in my whole life. It was the only wilderness adventure I had that year. The year before I practically lived outside with all the traveling I did. I gave Mt. Fuji everything I had, and loved every step of the way under the stars listening to the chatter of the thousands of fellow seekers hiking to the top to see the sun rise in the land of the rising sun.
As I sat on the side of the volcano in the moments before dawn, I began to reminisce. I remembered how I'd waited all night on a Chinese mountain to see a full moon, but in Japan all I had to do was go once and the moon shined the whole time, floating to the other side until tomorrow and eventually letting the stars have all the attention. I thought about how I'd been wandering the whole wide world of webbed water for a year and a half, and I had no idea that I was going to do so for another year and a half before finally finding a place to be me freely. I felt like I was in the right place in space, listening to the most moving song in the soul symphony, Hiromi's "Place to Be":
"I believe life is a big journey to find the place to be"
YES
I listened to many other songs while climbing the mountain and while resting at the top, and I also listened to the murmur of the crowds trying to stay warm while awaiting the life force source. Right before the top I found this dirty American flag with a drawing of
"TOP Mt. FUJI 3776 m"
on the white stripes, before the stars swimming with you in a sea of blue. I dusted it off and tied it to the side of the same little school backpack my dad bought me for my Oriental passage which began 18 months earlier in India. I'd been back to the US and even across it since, yet here I was on a journey through the East again. That flag stayed on my bag as I drove across the country and hiked in every national park that I could while I moved to my current place to be.
Later that year I found myself eclipsing a very important personal milestone in my life: despite all the earthquakes and the tsunami filling me with more fear about a journey than ever before, I had not only lasted seven months in Japan, but I was having a better experience than I could have asked for. I had two amazing teaching jobs which taught me how to communicate with humans of all ages, regardless of our opposite grammatical structures and historic cultural norms. I made myself write every day and finally start eating some healthy food on a regular basis. I'd increased the menu from cheerios a long time ago, but now the focus was on health. I also met some pretty stellar co-workers. After seven months of it, I had beaten my personal record of living away from America, set when I first traveled around the world from India to Ireland. The universe rewarded me and thousands of other eye love waters with the glorious glow of a Hiromi show. It's the best performance I've ever witnessed in my life. I say that sincerely as someone who should write seven novels about all the brilliant magical musicians I've seen and heard and felt during three Bonnaroo's (please imagine a Musical March Madness) and three years in New York City. I remember feeling like everything was worth it, just knowing that that music existed and someone was going through all of the effort to let us enjoy her feel the magic of the world in a new wonderful way.
I am a story teller. I live life and then I show what happened with sound vibrations and light waves, depending on whether I'm using my voice or recording it for you to see. Sometimes I imagine pure imagination, but I find that the pure imagination that makes up my world as it is is far more entertaining and interesting.
Even so, I am so freakin' jealous of musicians. So many of my friends are musicians, and they look like they're having the time of their lives, and they are. They remind me over and over that goodness and genki and ultimate enthusiasm of the mind's heart is the purest art. I know as a writer and a human that every service is double-edged in some way, and that whatever the craft, an artist has to sort through angels and animals in their own imagination more than most. What I'm saying is that we all direct the flow of the show however we best know, but you musicians are just so... so... I don't even know! You make me grow! You make me survive and enjoy the show! You lift me up when I'm low! You help me feel what I know!
Life so far has been a series of discovering experiences and magical helpers.
"To radiate goodness is marvelous, because it is tonic, invigorating, vitalizing. But just to be is still more marvelous, because it is endless and requires no demonstration. To be is music, which is a profanation of silence in the interest of silence, and therefore beyond good and evil. Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act."
-Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
Today, the magical helper is Hiromi.
The music master just shared her newest cutting edge experience
of imagination language land with US
The flawless flow of fun has just begun
from this I-land of the Rising Sun
MOVE!
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