tomorrow is a new day.

Tomorrow I leave from Maui to fly to Oakland. In the bay area I will start a life that is drastically different than any form of life I have lived before.

I already feel renewed. I already feel reinvigorated. In fact, it's hard for me to imagine a better place to go to; cosmic harmony seems to be filling this chubby puppy pretty well!

Of course I am aware that there are other places I would almost equally feel so invigorated for: New York for example. What good people reside there! (You know who you are, please). I must visit there.

But things are feeling right right now. Let's keep them that way. The stars are assuming their special formations in the sky, nature's leaves are rustling in the wind a perfect pace. This is when you know the direction is right.

A strange outburst of expression, I know. But let it be.

Love, Teodoro

I saw Talladega Nights today. I appreciated its satire of American culture. Good job Will and Ali G.

There's about a day 'til I am in SF. It's already feeling good. I even signed up for the carshare program so I will be driving around in a Prius or a Mini or a Toyota Tacoma whenever I want to!

I think that once I am there and settled that I can contribute more to this old website. However, my life may not again offer me all of the long moments of free time that this kind of writing and reflection requires. It's a good and bad thing of course. We'll see what happens; maybe I can make it work.

Tonight I was out on the other side of the island with a bunch of old high school friends. It was good times... We toasted to our futures, an important thing to do, from time to time.

Drifting Dream Memories

Life has changed so much.

I no longer live in a small house with tatami mats. I no longer go in the morning to hang out with pre-school kids and make them jump up and down. I no longer drive through kilometers of countryside as the sun goes down.

For a few more days I am on this island in the middle of the pacific. Then I will be thrusted over to the other side of the pacific, in an entirely different reality yet again.

It is hard not to think back with pangs of nostalgia, from time to time. Yet, it is not that simple; it is not as if I want to be there still....

It's changed so completely, so quickly. Like waking up from a dream. Everything vanishes and yet there are tidbits of what had happened while you were sleeping that flash in your head. Disconnected bits of faded colors. And yet they were real.

Life: Weirder and Weirder.

Here is the article. How? I ask...

The Beast in the Ocean

Yesterday I was at Pa'ia Bay Beach with my old friend Dannee and right as we were getting out of the water a dude walks up to us and asks us if we saw the strange shark-like fins jutting out of the water. We looked back at the light blue-green, filled with calcium and salt, and sure enough we saw a sharp-edged dorsal fin peak over the surface. The body, traveling slowly, was dark and large. Soon enough the rest of the beach's inhabitants crowded over to take a peak but the beast had already left. I really wanted to walk up to it to confirm its species (it was only about twenty feet away from me), but I didn't want to go down in history for being the man who got bit because he was stupid enough to walk up to a tiger shark.

My brothers have left. Luckily, my friends have picked up some of the slack created by their departure. Also luckily I have now received my new cell phone and can thus call all of my friends again. Joy to the world. They may be far away, but now they are only a phone call away.

My Brothas

My brothers and I had something that happens rarely these years: more than a week together. It was a really nice reunion and I am sad that they left tonight. Luckily, I will soon join them in the wonderful state of California.

So now I have a little over a week left with my parents on this beautiful island. It will be a good time.

And that's all for tonight folks. More will appear as the spirit moves itself. Patience, the mother of all virtues.

Animals, Animals

Today my brothers and I left for the beach early in the morning. A special beach where a beautiful underwater coral garden can be witnessed.

There I saw three sea turtles close-up. They didn't mind me. Actually, two of the sea turtles appeared five feet in front of my brother and me. The first one calmly lifted its head a few times to breath and then went down below, then the second did exactly the same. They swam with their two front feet-wings that have the interesting effect of making them look like angels (while their two rear feet-wings dangle in the back like horizontal rudders). They look like angels, and to me, they may as well be angels. I love sea turtles; maybe they are even my favorite animal. They are as cute, and as weird, as can be. Just like the lizard in the photo above that was crawling around the yard.

I'm always astonished by animals (especially humans). We are such weird, complicated, yet simple contraptions of life. If only we could all be as graceful as those angel-like sea turtles.... What harm could they possibly do to the world? How much cuter could they be?

This is my dad, Robert.

He's just coming out with a new book, American Vulgar: The Politics of Manipulation and the Culture of Awareness. It is on sale on Amazon.com here. You can check out the chapter "Vulgarity and Nature" here. And his publisher's page for the book here. Please support him.

yet Kyushu still whispers (from time to time)

These feral cats inhabited a small island off of the coast of Kumamoto-ken's Amakusa.

home of heart and mind, the quest

Today I found some hilarious happy birthday cards from my old English buddies who were part of a drinking group called "the Apostles." They were a great bunch of guys and I miss them. Haven't seen them for ages it seems. One of the cards features two somewhat pathetic looking cartoon-realistic male kids on the front and says in bold letters "Happy 15th Birthday" (it was my 21st). Those Apostles each had their comedic spunk. They even wrote me poetry; what a lucky soul I was.

Roughly two (and a half) weeks til California. I welcome the challenges and remain thankful at the chance for me to continue my quest.

humanity, humanity

One thing this year has given me is time. That's what I had initially wanted. I desired as much time as I could get just to reflect and be creative. Now that this era of my life has ended, I can declare that I have accomplished my goal.

Naturally it was a dramatic time. Extended reflection allows for the perception of a broad spectrum of human experience.

Before leaving for Japan, a good friend of mine and I were enjoying a last sunset on my favorite beach on Maui, Makena's Big Beach (just 13 minutes away from my house by car). He told me that during the next year "you could be your own worst enemy." Those words were wise in more ways than probably either of us recognized at the time.

There is a popular phrase in English about how if you see bad things in others, then those things also exist within you.... I forget how it goes. That phrase certainly relates to my friend's words of wisdom.

But Japan also allowed me a few morsels of wisdom. From Japan I gathered that when people can work together, they can effectively diminish the bad sides of humanity. I also learned that hard work is by far the best cure for a troubled mind. (In Freud's phrase "love and work," both words are, for the most part, equally important).

The contrasts and dualities of human nature are stunning to say the least. The human heart, the source of our body's energy and the symbol for our most vital goodness, pumps in utter darkness. It pumps, mostly, at its own pace, uncontrolled.

I have come to the conclusion that human life would be unliveable if we were all somehow granted full awareness of the cogs, details, and elements of humanity. One could also argue that full awareness would mean a fundamental change in our nature and thus we would all be entirely different beings....

Awareness is an interesting ideal, and certainly many forms of awareness are still desirable and good. But awareness, in the most complete sense of the word, is neither a required attribute to successful human life nor a likely way to attain well-being. But it is still an ideal, still something I enjoy pursuing.

You see, even awareness is a topic with many sides in which to get lost. Perhaps awareness is like a woman with a thousand faces of which only three can be seen at any given time and place. 'I don't know;' that is a good phrase with which to end a discussion of awareness.

Japan, where are you?

It's been three days or so since I've left Japan. I feel like an old friend is missing from my life. Sometimes I wake up at night and the air just doesn't seem humid enough (not really).

On the drive to Fukuoka airport I saw a man with a flag in a hand to signal that road work was ahead. Then as I got a closer look I realized that it was no man at all! It was a robot! That was kind of scary. Then there was some sort of traffic jam right before the exit to the airport, but we still made it with time to spare. Then, at the desk they made me transfer the weights of all my bags in front of Nakamura, his daughter, and dad. Grrrreat. It was pretty funny.

Maybe I'll just continue to write about Japan for a while even though I am not there anymore. There are still many things to write about. Consumerism, education, the Japanese sense of wonder.

P.S. hello everyone, where have you all run to?

culture shockin'

I managed to leave Japan right between the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a pretty intense time to leave, at least for me. At the same time that I sat down with my Japanese family and talked about how sad it was for me to leave there would be news about the anniversaries on the tele. Well, luckily most people have learned to distance those events with current American people (in Nagasaki, however, I did notice some tension among the older crowd in the trams).

Now I am in America, or at least one of the very most western bits of the U.S.A.. And while flying into Oahu I was chatting with a new Japanese friend, Kentaro, and he pointed out Pearl Harbor from our window, and I said "yup, that's it." I felt, of course, absolutely no anger. But that is a whole different thing.

And now we have terrorists roaming the earth looking for terrifying ways to kill people.

I, in the meantime, am on Maui messing around with a short movie project. Trying to make a meaningful piece on Maui's new wind power. It's my first movie project, so I'm sort of crossing my fingers. For some reason I have a very strong feeling about the new windmills (and I think the world needs to embrace them a lot more rather than complain about them being eye sores - the truth is they are a lot better than the alternatives (for the most part)). And they are beautiful, so there.

That is kind of my news in a nutshell. I am reading Stumbling on Happiness and Natural Capitalism. I am also spending a lot of good quality time with my bro Nick.

I'm baaaack.

Hey there amigos and amigas.

I am back on the isle of Maui and it feels really good. I have to say that I have an excellent family. Thanks for being excellent, family!

Also, I am going to be keeping busy with a short film project. Should be fun....

Taiwan

Now I am in Taiwan. I ate some food using a voucher that Eva Airways gave me. I am pretty impressed with their service (especially considering that it was the cheapest flight home I could find). There were some warnings about bird flu that they played on the monitors before landing in Taipei.... I am not too worried. If I can pick up a hawk off the ground and not get bird flu, then I am strong like that.

I'm tired now. I want to sleep but the benches aren't shaped well for that. I am happy that I am in Taiwan despite the fact that I haven't left the airport. I feel like it's just a little window into the Asia beyond Japan that I haven't seen (yet).

Just in case you were wondering, the photo above is not from Taiwan, it's from Beppu. Also, it was really taken like that.

Left my heart in Ubuyama

I am at Fukuoka Airport now. My supervisor, Nakamura Yuusuke, his father, and his youngest daughter drove me and helped me get my bags checked. Now I have just a few minutes left before I board the plane.

Part of me wants more time in Japan. But I guess I fear what I could become (another foreigner teaching English for money) and I fear what I wouldn't become.... Some people say that fear is a bad thing. I mostly disagree. Fear is one of the most important elements of our intelligence. Without proper fear we would surely lose. It is only the stupid fears that we must fear, the wrong fears (then we must fear fear itself...).

I know that I am leaving an amazing country where the culture is both extremely precise and extremely down-to-earth (they even sit on the floor with no shoes on during meals). I know that this place has so much less crime than most of the continental U.S.. I know that the people here are unparalleled in their niceness. Still I must leave, or still I am leaving. (And yet I have the option to return as I have a return ticket... and didn't give up my Alien Card).

I learned Japanese in a strange way. I put down the books, gave up on the mathematical way of learning the language, and just spoke and listened. So the Japanese I do know is the Japanese that was most important for me to know. I feel very good about my Japanese and am very happy that this year allowed me to learn it in such a way.

What else... the clock is ticking. I will be in Taipei today for around 8 hours. I am either going to try to tour the city or write some things; either would be fruitful and useful for me. I imagine that someday I might have a more lengthy chance to visit the big, hot city, and today my main goal is getting back to my island home in Kihei.

Nakamura's mother (obachan as I call her (grandma)) asked me again why I was leaving. I said "family" and she understood well. But I also felt as though I had family right in front of me when I said that, so I felt just a little guilty.