by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution: I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#6: I am you, as you are me, as we are they, as they are us

“The memories change as I grow older. It use to be on purpose.”

A longstanding belief goes that our friends reflect different aspects of ourselves. Each one is a facet in the gem that makes us who we are, and in turn the friends that they keep are facets of another connected gem. The metaphor kind of goes haywire at this point, so I’ll just continue on.

Social networking sites are fairly popular and nigh unto ubiquitous at this point in time. The idea behind them is great: let people assemble the groups of people they know all the while meeting new people typically by mutual association. Friends of friends and all that.

I enjoy diving into my overinflated friend list and seeing who I can find. I’ll often find connections that I didn’t know existed among some friends. When where you grew up in was only a tiny island in the middle of the ocean, circles of friends are bound to interlock. Sometimes I’ll stumble upon a friend that I had somehow forgotten in shuffle from one point in my life to the next. These friends, the forgotten ones, are special to me because each of them carries history with them either consciously or not.

For many people, the company you keep is constantly in flux whether the changes come fast or slow. More often than not I have trouble keeping track of where I’ve been and how different my life is even when it is only over the course of a year. For example, last year I changed addresses and workplaces. I went from having four roommates constantly around me to having five family members within arm’s reach. I went through three bosses at work before ending up with the one I work under now. It’s a lot to consider when it’s laid out like this.

When I forget about people and places that were close to me, it’s not that I’m a terrible person — I don’t think, at least — but that I have a terrible memory.

by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution: I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#5: Specific Gravity

I like to describe that epiphany that comes when you realize that someone has been doing something for your benefit as a “moment of gravity.” It’s that moment when you begin to understand just how important someone is to you and how important you are to them. It can come in many different relationships and it is a wonderful thing when it does pop up.

Most often gravity is something that parents have to look forward to in they later years. More so it’s something that they can hope for when their children are no longer little. Adolescence is the point in a person’s life when gravity is the furthest and most foreign thing in the world. For most teenagers humanism and hedonism are the only two lines of thought worth any heeding. Mom and Dad, as well as a select group of other adults, are opposed to anything and everything that could and ever will be fun, so it’s okay to hate them openly and loudly. They are the murderers of love.

Gravity strikes like barbed lightning upon the old melon and can leave quite the mark. A tiny bit of guilt will form around the affected brain, but this is typically over-shadowed by the gross amount of appreciation that flows out from the wound.

When you are the person at the source of the gravity, it can be a wonderful feeling to simply be thanked. There were a couple of times that I found myself being thanked for things that I had no intention of receiving such gratitude for. Once, I stayed behind to help clean up a friend’s house for a party they were going to throw while everyone else went out to the fair. About a month later a friend who had gone to the fair realized what I had done and thanked me for it. Another, more serious instance came when a good friend realized how lucky he was that I didn’t react negatively when he, for all intents and purposes, stabbed me in the back. I have in no way forgotten what he did to me, nor will I ever, but I have forgiven him.

One of the greatest things I ever learned in my years of college is the idea that “forgive and forget” is wrong. When you forget something, your act of forgiveness is worthless because it doesn’t take any effort to forgive someone for something you no longer bother to remember. When it is something that you cannot forget, that is always at your recall, that is when forgiveness is important. Forgiveness isn’t just loving certain aspects of someone and disregarding the rest of them. Forgiveness is loving someone despite everything else, not simply overlooking a few details.

“Warts and all.”

by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution: I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#4: You’re older now than you’ve ever been before and only getting older

As a society we seem to place a lot of value on the amount of time we’ve been on this rock in the middle of pan-galactic nowhere. We shoot from the hip based on the perceived age of those we have to deal with in tertiary manners. And yet, past a point it doesn’t make that big of a difference whether one person is one more step closer to the age of Methuselah than another.

Developmentally we treat children in a way that we feel is conducive to them eventually learning to operate as adults. To one extreme there is coddling which can result in a child becoming so codependent on those who take care of them that the only change between infancy and adulthood is their physical size. The other extreme is to unfairly treat children like adults without any leeway for the fact that they don’t yet have all the necessary references that are acquired over time.

I try to be even when I deal with people, whatever age they happen to appear. At work, my co-workers are given to calling folks “sir” or “ma’am” even if that person may not be more than a year or two removed from their own tally of time. I just talk to people like I would anyone else, with very little pretense.

Actually trying to figure out the age of someone nowadays is made no easier by the effect that our modern diets have had on the growing body. There are grade-schoolers walking around in the bodies of teenagers and teenagers walking around in the bodies of full-grown adults. To paraphrase Chris Rock, “If she looks eighteen, she’ll probably get you in jail.”

I like to think about the alien race that Kurt Vonnegut created and featured in his novel “Slaughter House Five.” Similar to Dr. Manhattan from “The Watchmen” they see all moments in time at once. People to them look like infinite-legged centipedes coiling around themselves and one another. They don’t feel much in the way of remorse when someone dies because they are still living in all the moments prior to that one unfortunate one. The concept might seem daunting, just like omnipotence which I’ve discussed elsewhen, but I figure you could probably not go insane if you just learn to focus on the moments that you need to. Then again, most humans don’t really need help focusing on specific moments; humans need some help learning how to look at everything else around those exact points in time.

by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution:  I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#3:  Turbo Teen was the ultimate life form

Earlier I listened to the beating heart of my girlfriend as she drew in one breath after the next.  It was an amazing thing just thinking that we’re all assembled from similar parts that function in more or less the same way, yet there’s still so much variety among us.  I can’t help but marvel at the amazing thing that is the human body.  It is a miracle first and foremost, truly and without a doubt, but ultimately it is a machine.

Most machines are comprised of refined ores and collected oils, while the human body is made of squishier things and assorted humors.  The materials involved do not change the fact that we are all machines comprised of many moving parts.

The more I think about it, the metaphor of the human body being a car is spot-on.  Some of us process fuel better and efficiently.  Some are created larger while others are designed to be smaller.  You can modify or neglect the exterior as much as you like but it doesn’t affect how the engine runs.

Before she went to bed, my girlfriend marveled at an app on the human brain she downloaded to her iPod Touch.  She showed me how you could view a 3-D model of the old noodle from any angle, and all the different parts were labeled.  She also mentioned how the program included case studies showing how if one or more parts aren’t working properly it can throw the entire body off.

The brain does so much that we aren’t even aware of.  Many of the functions, if left up to us consciously, would likely result in death by forgetfulness.  Breathing and the beating of our hearts are simply the most obvious ones, but there are so many more.  I don’t know how to repair a wound to my finger outside of a bandage, but really that bandage is just an aid to whatever my brain and body need to do.  Somehow my brain is able to coordinate all the systems in my body to fix what I broke.

Apparently, and this is simply a rumor I’ve heard, scientists may have accidentally found a way to tap into the true potential healing ability innate to almost all human beings.  It supposedly happened while some folks were testing an immune system-inhibiting drug.  Now, I don’t know the practical applications or general need for such a drug but we do live in a time where there is a need for a drug to stop one from shaking their legs.  The drug was tested on lab mice, as is commonly done, and each mouse that was administered the drug was marked by having a hole punched into one of their ears.  After a few hours the researchers returned to check on the mice only to find that the punches had regrown and healed over.  Somehow, without the limits of their immune system the mice were able to regrow what normally can’t be — that is cartilage — and also heal at a faster rate.  The potential application in humans would mean things like amputees regaining lost limbs or perhaps, given the proper conditions, someone regrowing an organ.  The major problem, though, would be the risk of infection while undergoing such a treatment.

Back to my point, the human body is an amazing machine with an incredible piece of software running it, and is capable of feats that we have yet to fully understand or comprehend.  We’d do well to take care of our equipment and maintain it.  Not to mention we should be sure to keep our software up to date, too.

by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution:  I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#2:  This is what happens when you lie down

It comes over you with very little in the way of warning. Occasionally you might get yawn or a drooping of the eyelids, but that’s only if you’re lucky. Sometimes all it takes is a blink and suddenly it’s a few hours later or the next day completely.

This process can definitely cause problems both subtle and obvious.

For one thing, if you happen to wear some sort of corrective lenses, there are bound to be some issues after falling asleep with them on. If you wear glasses you’ll either have lenses that are nothing but smudges, or worst-case scenario you’ll have two separate lenses entirely. Granted, if you wear contacts the risks escalate to urban-legend status. Your contacts might become dislodged from your eyes and get stuck in your ocular cavities.

I’ve learned that it’s a pretty good idea to take off your watch before going to sleep, especially if your watch is made mostly of metal or is unnecessarily ostentatious. Not removing your watch can result in either interesting pillow wrinkles or mysterious scratches on your face.

By far the worst possible problems caused by a random act of sleep is the rest of the world you left awake. Dates are missed, papers are unwritten and showers are skipped, among other things.

It takes a lot to force your body to take the sleep it needs from you. If this happens you must’ve been doing something other than sleep for a while. Whatever it is that was so busy or important that you avoided the sleep the first time around, your body will get what it needs eventually, one way or another.

Unless you’re an insomniac …  in which case I’ve lost your interest and understanding back at the first sentence.

by Chad Fujihara

My New Year’s Resolution:  I will write something every single day and post it for everyone to see.

#1:  “It’s not tomorrow until I close my eyes tonight”

How long have I tried to stretch the waking hours that I’m allowed?  Exactly how long have I been trying to stretch those hours is the better question.

I don’t like sleeping before anyone else because I’m afraid I’ll miss something important.  It’s a silly line of thought that goes along with a few old patterns I had stuck in my brain when I was younger.  These ideas were very silly and for the most part unfounded.

For example, at one point I was convinced that if I couldn’t see two people right in front of me, who were not related but were of corresponding sexual orientations, they had to be “doing it.”  Like some sort of lovemaking metaphysics I was utterly convinced this was true from the moment I hit puberty.  It may not really be true, but it’s definitely one of those things that is not entirely untrue.

Newer lines of thought that persist these days I can’t really encapsulate in quite the same way as that previous wackiness.  Give me 10 years and I’ll tell you what a fool I was now.

Back to the matter at hand, that is the one involving me staying up late and trying my damndest to wake up early.  There is so much that I want to do, so much I need to do, and other things that flit from need to want as often as an eyelash bats.  As for now, I’ll steal the time where I can and use it just as wastefully as a newborn baby.

I’ll learn my lesson soon I hope, whatever it is.

Chad Fujihara is the Editor in Chief of Ka Lamakua.  How he managed to convince anyone to let him run an online arts and culture magazine is a question, if answered, will surely result in either a headache or a visit to a practicing demonologist and as such best left unasked.  Any other questions or comments, please send to chadf@hawaii.edu