Photos: Matsuri, Poet bar & Gordon Beirsch

Saturday afternoon Matsuri

From 02-23-08 Mats...

Saturday night Poet Bar & Brewery

From 02-23-08 Nigh...

Had a great Saturday guys!

peace,
~Dixon

Moving Ducks

I'll always remember those early summer mornings, fighting you for the pool. [More Ducks Here]

I've moved, not too far but to a much better environment for me; real laid back couple, it's going to be so great for me. I've looked forward to moving for too long now. I'll take it slow and smoothly adjust to living with more healthy people, emotionally.

Their place is great, looking forward to hosting dinner partys here, the kitchen flows out to more-or-less one large area...oh the possibilities.

Joe, Scott, Doug - Thanks for all the help!

peace,
~Dixon

Searching for my platonic dance partner...

School starts next week, I'm excited, still working away at an associates - my 'exploration' time, time to find what will tide my days and finances until I more-or-less retire into teaching. Been moving around, dancing a bit more, I sneak off if the social thing starts dying down, find a shadowed corner and wiggle around; I'm pretty sure I'm not actually dancing per-se, however I found myself at a loss of words to justly articulate the thing I am doing.

I'm longing for someone to just move around with, I have a couple people in mind as possibilities but our relationships are so fledging, how do you walk up to someone and ask...'Hey, wanna be my platonic dance partner?'

The search continues...

Reverse ESL

For sometime now I've wanted to pick up a second language, I feel I need the distraction, something outside my typical classes, something 'un-attached' to the rest of my life; a people, culture, land, something different, and especially something 'clean'. The past couple months I've been thinking more and more about the missions trips Young Life does, being curious about a summer long trip to Ecuador next year as well as the early year and spring break trips to Mexico and Peru, naturally getting back into Spanish would provide a great boon should I make it on any of the trips. I've already had three years of Espanol in high school though I wasn't very studious about it, just enough to make the grade and move on. I'd start over from scratch where I'm sure I'd fly through the very beginner material. I'm having some trouble seeing Spanish as the distraction I need though, too many ties to high school and a particularly difficult time in my life, especially going into the '01-'02 year, I remember being so passionate in Ms. Kimzin's class, somehow able to find myself really caring about the language, I really don't know if I'm ready to face off with that. Also, outside of what I feel to be a vaguely possible mission trip, I really don't see any other need or want to learn the language.

Originally, when I began getting the urge to take up a secondary language, back over a year ago, I was debating between Japanese and Chinese, having long appreciated each culture, among a myriad of others, through what foreign film I managed to happen across from time-to-time. In the end I felt more inclined to learn Nihongo and scheduled a course starting this Fall.

I often go back and reconsider however, I'm still not really sure, this summer I'll look more closely at it and keep talking with my fellow club members in regards to their experiences in South America.

I have also long considered providing ESL instruction to foreigner learners, thinking it would be something I can do to volunteer without being too strenuous on me, something I can enjoy. I need to fill out some paperwork with the learning center on campus, or possibly volunteer through Maricopa Literacy Volunteers. With a bit of effort this should prove something I can do over the summer.

peace,
~Dixon

Touch

I went to a house party this week, right in the middle of spring break too which worked perfect (I had a lot of house work and miscellaneous chores to catch up with, not to mention a few hundred pages of reading and two exams to prep for). People were coming and going all night, there were a steady twenty or so; pool, movies, basketball on TV. Early into the evening we gathered around a long coffee table to play a few intimate games. We played some card games, we played a 'story game' each taking turns adding a passage to rotating scrap paper to read aloud as it returned to its original author. Later someone introduced a rhythm hand game.

Crossing arms with the persons to your left and right with your hands stretched out afront, palms down, the game is to keep in play by continuing the tap rhythm. There are a few different tap gestures you can do to mix it up and try to get people out and things can get quite hectic, especially if people aren't paying attention.

As I began to cross my arm with the girl to my right I felt awkward and as we touched I realized what it was; touch.

It had been so long since I had been embraced by one of my own peers, let alone touched. For years I had been left alone and it is there I confined myself. Its absence had grown so strong in me. With nothing sexual about it, simply how powerful that kind of acceptance is, she wasn't making any effort to keep away from my arm as she lay hers atop just as casual as anything else. It was nothing for her, merely some dumb game she introduced to help pass the time and a great excuse to laugh. Myself I'm going to need a good deal more of that if I'm going to break out of this and ever feel free again - what little and however briefly I knew of it.

I remember now a friend of a friend, someone I had only recently been introduced to, asking for a hug as we were heading off to our respective buses after school. I'm not sure I understand why but I had declined, she got rather upset by this and I recall her walking away. That was over nine years ago. Thinking about it today I really should have given her that hug.

peace,
~Dixon

Spring brakes

Today was the first day of spring break but no Rocky Point for me, I'm keeping myself home for the week. Actually I've quite a bit to catch up on, from schoolwork (I return from break to two back-to-back psych exams), housework and some medical issues. I was at my school library for some hours and it was eerie how quiet the campus was, I think the lack of bodies moving around helped me get a bit more work done though; no distractions.

I've a lot more I want to get finished up with this week and a house-party to look forward to half-way through, I want to get something rolling for the weekend before we go back though, it would be a shame for my break to go without at least one big event.

peace,
~Dixon

Air on skin.

I remember when it use to feel nice, something as simple as air on skin, then a light breeze would blow by and it got better. There are more things I can try and effort left to give, I want to stay positive.

It's getting into summer now and the weather's really begun to change, it's not at all bitter in the mornings, still a bit crisp but a nice crisp, getting up into the mid 80's in the afternoon. I want to get out rollerblading at night while it's nice and cool. I'm looking into a nearby aquatics center as well for it's lap pool. They also have a complete gym so if things start working well with swimming I'll be set to start lifting again. I'm hoping the work in the pool will help strengthen my joints up.

Life will still be rough for awhile, but I've turned it around before. I need to set my mind to it and I know I can do it.

peace,
~Dixon

Don't say goodbye.

It's difficult for me to leave people sometimes, I don't know, I guess it's like I'll never see them again, or something might happen. I feel weird, the pit of my stomach. It's as if I need something to happen to send it off well, I guess it would be different if I were living with someone I was really close to in that respect, as I would come home to them and they would be there, but somehow when I part a crowd or small group, as I did today after meeting for a club movie, I feel like I'm losing a bit of myself.

Days are up and down, the weekend started alright but I faltered by mid Sunday, sometimes I can see the best thing to do for myself but fail to follow through with going about it. I need to cultivate greater belief in myself, the idea that the pain to go through all this is less then what it would be to stay where I am.

Often I'll think of other people and their joys and it will help get me through a difficult moment, almost daydreaming or creating a scene from a movie in my mind.

I suppose things are better now then this time one year ago, I still don't recognize what I have before me as myself however, quite a long way to go, but progress is progress and I need to find contentment in that.

peace,
~Dixon

Work Work Work

This office was computer generated, could you tell?
"Office" by Jaime Vives Piqueres (2004)


I've taken up work at my school (GCC) as an office assistant through the federal work study program. It's been going alright, I have a lot more job duties then a typical office assistant, as when I started there wasn't much of an office to begin with. I've had to stock everything and now I'm working on sorting and filling a mass of paperwork for the head of the agriculture department. The gentleman I work for is a great guy but has absolutely no organizational ability whatsoever, so I'm left sorting through folders that open up to a myriad of different contents: class rosters and grade sheets in with equipment manuals, invoices and petty cash slips are stuck to minutes for conferences in Nevada and Alaska, every time I upon up a folder or interdepartmental envelope it's a surprise. It's slow, arduous, and tediously painful work, but I'm getting through it. Students working the the deportment above us, applied tech, sit there doing homework and relaxing most of their time, answering a phone or running and errand here and there when need be, but mainly they get to read their textbooks and complete class assignments. I have to get in and out of their building often and I see them there and sometimes when I do it pops up in my mind and I realize that I have a set pay amount I can earn a semester, after which point I'm technical fired, with no chance of promotion, raise, or advancement with my employment. I know I will learn a lot by working there, and I'm not about to give anything less then my best effort, I don't want to think I'm being cheated because of how difficult my job is compared to that of my peers, so I'm trying to keep a good perspective.

peace,
~Dixon

Hostel Hopping

I met up with an old teacher today to talk about what's happened since I had his class, those first seven days I was there, five and a half years ago. We talked quite a bit over dinner, and though there were times I was asking myself to try and feel what he was saying and failing, there were a couple stand out moments where I truly could feel something.

Early on he mentioned packing up a rucksack and heading to Europe. I told him I've been thinking a lot about hostel hopping as of late. He went on to talk about what it would be to tend a vineyard in Southern France, working for room, board and a bit of pocket money. I could feel that for a moment, being there, my only worry being getting to the end of a row, picking out weeds and things that shouldn't be there, the weather, the sights, the sounds. Not too long later I was thinking of the difficulties involved, how I would store my things at home, my back and joints hurting as I tended the fields, and so on, but for a moment I was there.

I need to be somewhere with grass and trees. Greenery. I've long been wanting to move, needing to. I have to stay where I am though, for a bit longer, get a couple semesters of school in me, some cash going to me and not my family for awhile, but I just have to keep the hope and idea of getting out about me.

peace,
~Dixon

A Very Merry Christmas Indeed...

On the day we were to leave for Phoenix, my little cousin was playing inside a small box, just her size, early that morning. He leened in and lent me a little something and I sucked up what I could to carry it out. Pushing her about the floor sounding off like a train, 'Chugga-Chugga Chugga-Chugga' I yelpped, 'Choooo-Choooo' I received in return and around and around the rooms we went. 'All aboard!' we cried as well pulled up to her mommies new Bichon Frise mockingly. 'No dogs allowed' I whisper her, 'No doggies allowed!' she barks at him, and around we went again.

My little cousin is growing up so fast, almost three months since the last time I saw her but I say there's a big difference. Talks a bit differently, uses a larger vocabulary and I'm more easily able to understand her. She still has her 'don't touch me' and crying moments whenever someone tells her 'No', then again she is just forty-two months old so I can cut her a little slack...but not for long missy!

I enjoyed Christmas weekend with my family in California, it was nice spending time with them. We didn't get to go ice skating Christmas Eve like we had last year as per their long standing tradition, but we did do the Christmas Eve Taco Dinner, which as awkward as it sounds, is beginning to grow on me.

Hope you had a Merry Christmas too!

peace,
~Dixon

Enrolled and eager

Well I'm all enrolled for school in the Spring, really looking forward to it. It's been long in coming and I've been needing this for sometime now. A communications course, computer science (MS Office 101), psych, and a religions history course, all pretty tame and mild for the most part, by design that's no mistake. I may need to drop one shortly after school starts, hopefully not but it isn't a big deal if I do.

Been eating up the weather we've been having, nice and cool, I've kept the windows throughout the apartment open most everyday for the last two months, it's been gorgeous out.

peace,
~Dixon

Simply simple.

I wrote the following September twenty-first of two-thousand and three:

My Day Today.
Why would I want to go day-to-day?
Why wouldn't I?
What is day-to-day?
Day-to-day is a day without loss, no gain, just a day. Every instance of the day is held in pristine detail, no element lost with no need to ever reach any instance.
Why am I here?
I am here because I am not anywhere else.
What do I want?
To be satisfied in knowing the answer. How can I want to be happy?
What is my happy?
Simple. Air feels good. One moment exits without ceasing. I eat to eat and to be able to eat again. I sleep to sleep and be able to sleep again. These things are natural and no strife is required. These things are meaningless without everything else.~Dixon

I remember reading something sometime after that, had a couple of the words still strung together and was able to pull the direct quote through a quick net search which follows:

Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.~Alan Watts

Well this is where I understood the quote to have originated from, Watts, his was a quote as well however it seems, an excerpt from a work of his he cites as being from "the great T'ang master Lin-chi" and reads in full:

In Buddhism there is not place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

I see this shortly after and it hurts:

In the landscape of Spring there is neither better
nor worse;

The flowering branches grow naturally, some long,
some short.

It's been another year, I just haven't seen what I wanted to from myself. Technically better but I don't fell a damn bit of it, I know this isn't true but I can't write what is, because if I did I would begin asking myself another host of questions that I don't have answers to. Funny, people figure me an upbeat guy, sure, he's around when they are, or some such.

peace,
~Dixon

We got to move these refrigerators.

Tomorrow should prove the last of the move, it got real stretched out from the time schedule I had preferred, but having to rely on other people to save a bit of cash it's something I expected going into it. I do appreciate the help too, a lot, so I can't complain much.

Been looking forward to moving in with my Nan for awhile now, she needs the change, as do I. I've stayed over there for a few days over a weekend once ever four to six weeks now for some years. I like going over to cheer her up, I know she gets along a lot better with me there and she goes on to tell me this all the time, often trying to get me to stay longer. It's nice to know you can have that kind of effect on someone, to really see it. Hopefully she understands I'm not there to stay long. Hopefully her boyfriend will be finally moving in with her soon, he needs to take care of some issues on his own end first though. Have a host of little things I plan on doing for her, things that usually flesh out our time together on those weekends, breakfast and dinner, help her with at the grocer, ease her frustrations with work. She is old enough to be my grandmother but I know she has a good deal of energy and spirit tucked away inside her, I want her to be able to enjoy those aspects of herself, I want to help her release them.

Myself, I'm nine months into my last 'great push' now, doesn't feel like it. I need a change of mindset, a more completeness of heart, something. Something to click. I don't know. I need to turn off feeling certain pains for a time, or to turn to a new way of perceiving them, or some cog in my mind to start turning over relieving the strain on the rest. I keep going back 'there' with most anything I do that means anything, I feel 'locked' into this other being, unnatural to myself. Everything I do is through someone else's skin, its indescribable. I'm not giving up, I can't, I know there's only one way to go about doing so and I've been long settled on that, I don't know if I'm prepared for this to be it though, all I ever come to feel, for this to make up the rest of my days for years on end. It's in me still, I just haven't found how to bring it to the forefront, all I feel are aches and pains, echoes of emotions lingering form my past.

I need something in my day, my everyday, that sustains me. Running and lifting, starting them up again, were suppose to be just that, they haven't worked out as I wanted them though. I feel my body collapsing more then anything. I often go into this idea I'm a walking corpse, doing so explains it all better then anything else I've come up with. I'm missing something.

peace,
~Dixon

Those first few strides,

Today's schedule was rather hectic, but at that I had time for myself to be able to make it to the gym right after coming home for lunch. I didn't go. Unfortunately I ended up actually thinking about it, and that's what got me. Thinking about how it's different now then sometime back when I first began lifting and training steadily and seriously. How when I lift now things pop and I get pains I've never gotten before, lifting less. How my skin's discolored in areas it wasn't before and how I don't feel too great after the session. How I know the difference first hand. It's the most dangerous thing one can have with themselves in this regard, the memory of something different, of a preferable outcome to something that was there before but no longer, I have this, the memory. I attempt the same cause but have yet to reach the same effects. You see, before I wasn't looking for anything, I was simply doing something, now I'm constantly looking for the outcomes I once knew, chasing them, shadows in my memory and catching nothing but acidic air.

I had a moment to sit while waiting to leave for the bus, all packed and ready. I began to call a friend of mine, but I had to think about it. I shouldn't have let myself. I should have either made the call or not made the call. For whatever reason I laid back a moment, kicked my legs out and closed my eyes, I was tired, but not about to sleep. I wanted to take it all in, like it would help or something. I entered one of those 'awake dreams' and within the briefest of discernible moments I was jogging in my mind, and after but the first few strides I tripped as I often do in these and woke to brace myself against a fall that never came. I turned to see the time and it was ten till, ten till the bus departs, I always set out ten till the bus departs giving me plenty of time to get there, and at this exact time is when I awoke. And I still didn't leave.

I hate it, I have this dream all too often; while setting down 'just for a moment' as I did here, or while turning in for the night, its the first dream I come to, tripping, whilst running, in the first few strides. Somehow its all too symbolic.

Staying wasn't any better. I think I'm waiting for the move to pick things up again. Waiting to get the go ahead to start running again. Waiting to see some doctors on some other issues.

peace,
~Dixon

The present distance...and the coming monsoon.

I'm going out to CA again soon as I wrote about earlier, it's 'again' as I've been for last Christmas. I was looking forward to that Cali coastal air back in December, I suppose it was there but it's hard to recall, cool breezes haven't felt good on my skin for a long time. I remember what it felt like on my feet here in the desert years back, when a gust would come along and the wind would pick up, even in triple digits it was a nice feeling. Nowadays sandals or not I'm just not able to bring myself to 'feel' it. I'll be in CA in few weeks again sure, really though just like for X-Mas I'll be somewhere else, roaming through my mind trying to mimic what I once knew as natural.

Hoping it rains a bit before I get out of there, monsoon season has yet to kick off (it doesn't usually roll around till mid July), and even though I'm not running right now due to some knee pains (I've been sticking to a stationary bike and swimming, we'll see) I'd like to kick out a few before I drive out, would be nice to run along right after a light drizzle at least. There's some isolated storms lined up for the next ten days here and there, low chances though.

Most people don't like the rain I imagine, I rather enjoy it. Rain to me means people are huddling up under awnings and crowding their friend's umbrellas. Extended heavy rains could get to me I suppose, I wouldn't know as I haven't really been exposed to that kind of weather, maybe for a bit back in Boston, but even then I came to enjoy it. I loved hanging out back of my grandmother's house and checking out how all the bugs were handling the weather right after a storm came by, ants scurrying about with their young moving to higher ground, I can still remember playing with little puddles and setting up makeshift damns with leaves and twigs under the water runoffs for the roof. Her house would swell up during the rains and I thought it gave the interior a more cozy feel. Granted I could do without the humidity, and of course monsoon rains here in AZ come with a lot of dangers: dust storms people don't know how to drive or what to do in, high MPH winds costing millions in damages and persons lives, but overall I guess I've managed to retain a child-like fascination with it.

peace,
~Dixon