Englewood Cliffs, NJ
I had a dream last night. It was a bright sunny day over the Hudson River on the George Washington Bridge. Season unknown, I don’t remember if there were any cars. I was walking across the Bridge from the New York side towards the New Jersey side. It was a long, long walk and the part on which I was walking wasn’t even the suspension part of the bridge.

But it wasn’t solid concrete below my feet, it was more like fragile sandstone or limestone formed into a chainlike configuration with holes where I could look all the way down to the river. Each step had to be carefully negotiated and there was no end to my anxiety about heights. Other people were also making the crossing but they played no major role in the dream.

Then my friend Dwight showed up. I don’t remember if he said anything but the feeling he exuded in his attitude was “don’t worry, everything’s cool, everything’s gonna be fine, relax”. At which point he jumped off the limestone catwalk, but his presence and its feelings remained. The dream goes on but only this part I’ve figured out.

The precarious catwalk is my outlook of my near future - the next eight months or so, not knowing what I’ll end up doing, being careful to make all the right decisions. Dwight is going to California. That’s definite, that’s why he was so secure on the catwalk, his jumping off was going to California, my option. Do I keep on my current precarious path or do I follow Dwight to California? The question has found its way to my unconsciousness. If I’m interpreting it right. I think later in the dream, I’m about to reach the other side and I totally forget what happens when I get there. I think the terminal on the other side looked like the 42nd Street Port Authority terminal.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

The semester has ended. A melancholy bit to look back to. Looking back a few years more and I can’t believe that I was in the woods for three years. The difference being out of them is so vivid. All my journals from that earlier time have been burned. We made a little event of it at the end of the semester in the Third World House lounge fireplace. Kim burned writings, I tossed in my story so far.

And here I am, in love and a little diverted from my struggles and goals but satisfied overall at my progress.

I’ll have a single next semester. I was supposed to have one this past semester but I gave it up, BIG mistake, to help out Ching Ching. Idiot. Sakuko is coming to Ohio in March. She’ll be studying for a year in Columbus. This is the longest relationship I’ve been in and there’s a good reason why - she’s in Japan, I’m in Ohio.

I can only wonder how things will work when we’re put together. I keep wondering what’s keeping it alive. I wonder whether I can really love. I have to try to make it work. I have to tolerate and absolutely not test her. If I do the test thing, forget it. My defenses are so perfected that they won’t allow anyone through. I have to prove this to myself that I’m not fucked up anymore.

Third World House, Oberlin OH

The heron that imitates the crane
Technique is not enough to master something, one must transcend ability to unconsciousness. I’m trying to transcend without having even the technique.
WorthbeliefsvaluesIholdworthy
What is my ? Am I of my ? Of the ? Am I just ?
Color, pomp, and ego
lack the meansthe abilitythe training
to properly set out and accomplish or at least pursue the ideal
I have seriously begun to doubt myself and my ability.
Enhancement of those thingsreform my perspective
leavethiscountryandtobecomearecluseandlivelifesimply
andpurposelesslyhavingnothingtodowithpeopleexceptaclose circleofcompanions
two optionscontrary to my intentions
The favorable one was to a final decision is in store. I think
that I write my second option to handle the sole concern
in regards to this option, there had been Sakuko into effect but now that out, how and values it is so that places and how I have wanted.

Third World House, Oberlin OH

I was visiting Cindy at Asia House and we were talking by candlelight. A huge moth came fluttering in, attracted to the light, and we watched it as it dove into the flames and fluttered to the tabletop with singed wings. It would bat its wings like it was writhing in pain and the moment it was able to get airborne, it would plunge into the flame again, sometimes splashing a drop of wax, sometimes falling to the tabletop, sometimes being able to keep flight only to make another pass. Cindy and I just watched. Eventually it burned itself to death and lay limp at the candle base. Suicide by blind attraction. What was its secret, the secret it was hiding?

We don’t care what the light does to us with our single-minded goal to be closer and ever so closer to the light. No attention to wings being seared and singed; we are moths, not wings. We know exactly what we do because we just do it; the purest of doings. Death throes of ultimate ecstasy. Purification. Or enlightenment. So to speak.

Third World House, Oberlin OH

What shambles my life has fallen into. I got a loving and endearing letter from Sakuko. We write to each other all the time, almost everyday I send something off to her and receive something from her. It’s really wonderful and it’s hard to believe I can put so much of my heart and soul into a person. The girl from all those songs.

If we hadn’t fallen in love, the rest of my life would be set. I don’t think she’s changed anything but she’s making it a lot more difficult. But I have to wonder if this is only working because it’s a long distance relationship and we don’t have to deal with the daily stresses of being together. I tend to get sick of people I get close to. Would this be any different?

What vow can I make to Sakuko that will last? I’ve gone through this before and have always proven fallible, false. Have I made all the vows I can and failed them all? I will make no vows. She isn’t life itself. She isn’t the sun, the moon, and stars. She isn’t the perfect woman or the girl from all those songs. Sakuko just is and we are just us and now we are together.

Third World House, Oberlin OH

So how did I get into this mess? Well, did anybody ask me what I wanted to do? Did anybody tell me that the only thing that matters is how you come across and not what or who you are? And so here I am perpetually picking up pieces of my own failures and inabilities. I’m so severely limited. I can’t do anything. No value here.

Third World House, Oberlin OH

I want to die more than ever. Being in love hasn’t changed that. It’s real. I think I want even more to die, but I’m not sure I can explain why. The question then is what do I think I’m doing? A relationship is responsibility and it is extremely remiss to love someone and have someone love me, knowing that I plan to leave. Sakuko may not be my proverbial “soul mate”, but I really do love her. It’s a love like I’ve never felt before, she definitely is triggering something in me.

Some kinds of pure love mean spending the rest of lives with each other. I don’t think I understand that kind of love. My kind of love is more like a spark for a second, still pure and beautiful, but brief, a flash. I just don’t like living and love doesn’t make me want to.

Asia House, Oberlin OH

It depends on what you call “living”.

Maybe the world isn’t in a decline, it’s just that the problems have grown more complex, more sophisticated, more widespread, less noticeable. It scares me to think that someday I would decide I want to live my life and betray my dissatisfaction and anger at mankind. To be one of the millions that say nothing and nobody hears, to be one of millions of just ordinary people. Living life just for the material pleasures. How revolting, and here I am in a relationship with Sakuko. Is it doomed because I am? It’s a matter of values, isn’t it? Would to be happy with Sakuko fulfill my criteria for really living? No idea.

Asia House, Oberlin OH

What? It’s been less than a month since I last wrote in here and how things change! It’s the third and last week of the Japan program and I’ve acquired a girlfriend. Best made plans having been laid waste. I need some perspective on this relationship. I know what my world is, it has shown itself quite clearly. My life is me, here and now. Everything in my life I’ve drawn to me for a reason and the result isn’t exactly positive. So where does Sakuko fit in? A positive element in a life spinning out of control and liking it that way. How can I be so very stupid?

Is she just a passing triviality? No one is until they’re gone, but comes a time when they are gone and anything I might write or think about the strength or enduring nature of a love is easily invalidated. I don’t want to feel that insecurity. How long is this going to last? I just want this love to be, no analysis, no investigating reactions, just let it be. A girlfriend now is the last thing I need but I can’t bear to just turn around and chuck it away.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

I watched the sunset for the first time in years. After a run, I was walking by the construction site between Asia House and Keep and I ran into Dilshan. I spoke with him for a bit and started going home and the sunset caught me off guard. I just stopped and watched. It’s hard to believe. Sunsets are such a part of me, they strike something deep inside me. It’s been so long.

Such memories, such sad happiness of the fleeting nature of beauty. Whatever. After the sun set, I continued home and walking by the green of Tappan Square, I felt what I used to call bitterness, but I thought of it differently this time. It was an object for contemplation, a passive bitterness. All is fleeting, why must we hold on to certain things like a child who doesn’t want his toy taken away.

Holding onto something that is being taken away by a stronger force, knowing full well it’s a stronger force, doesn’t make sense. Things pass their moment, even friendships. Friendship is a two way circular energy between two people. That’s how it was between Rebecca and me, then she stopped feeling it. At that point when the energy is gone, the friendship has passed its moment. Why hold on when it’s not complete anymore, when there’s nothing left to grasp?

I didn’t let go suddenly once I got a sign that she might not be feeling it anymore. I held on for a while to make sure. She stopped feeling it before last October some time. I only let go recently when I realized she had gotten to a point of lying to convince me that the feeling was gone. So I watched the sun go down and accepted it.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

Less than a week until the program starts and I can move back into a dorm. I’ve got to finish my recording. I’ve been working on a re-write of “mother’s suicide” and it has been exasperating. That song is stubborn when it comes to accepting lyrics. By the time the program starts, I should have six songs definitely finished. After the program, I’m going to pack and get the hell outta Dodge and head East.

mother's suicide
Mother my dear, it's funny looking back now at all those memories
How we always used to fight and were so hard to please
Mother my dear, did you ever imagine one day we would care
That one day we would find how much we had to share

That day almost never came
One more day and everything would've been the same
Without having your aging palm read and explained
As if you wondered who was to blame

Lord knows how great it is to see how we
Have finally found something on which we both agree
I guess it must run in the family
The blood doesn't tie it coagulates
The hit isn't home when it comes too late
You left the laundry on the line outside it's much too cold to stand and wait

Mother my dear, it's been such a pleasure to see you grow
You learn so quick, there was so much you needed to know
Mother my dear, I hope that you won't mind if I just stand and stare
It blows my mind to think how you got here from there

The price was very high
It was the least I could do to see what money could buy
It was one to grow up on, would I ever lie to you?
You just did, can't you see how you just did?

The cards are finally all down at last
But your trigger finger got there too fast
It was just a trick of some romantic tale
Some lines in a poem from the 1950's 
To recall and revise the years of pity
Who told you to accept the match and mix
That went and sent you overseas?

Mother these moments last forever
For whatever that might mean
For what? Could it possibly mean anything?
Given somethings never die
And given there's no real answer why
And given life is give and take
In a photographic family break
Where the  only thing that can remain
Is the way we are said to relate

Mother, it wasn't me
I was trying to miss
I guess somehow my hand just slipped
I didn't mean it, what can I do?
I'm really sorry, oh please come through
There's still so much I have to say to you
You wouldn't listen anyway
What the hell is the point?
The point wasn't very sharp
And it didn't go too far
Nothing ever got too deep to threaten either you or me
Nothing ever got too close, too close to any critical zone
I really don't know what led to this
I swear I was trying to miss
It really was a kiss

I'm here again
Standing on this cliff, looking down
Tell me, where does it end?
Nothing has changed
Step by step the circle comes around
Just to re-make the chain

Mother my dear, everyone says it'll be alright
Don't be afraid to heal
Take as long as you want as long as
You begin to feel
But you never read a bedtime story
That was based on something real

God knows how great it is to see that we
Have finally found something on which we both agree
One after another the lines are drawn
And once the message is completely gone
Who finds the people it was written on?
And some lines in a poem from the 1950's
Go back to where they all belong

Mother my dear, it scares me so that if you died today
I would want to live and forget yesterday
Mother my dear, peace and happiness...

People get on my nerves. I get sick of people. I thrive on communication and I get impatient real quick if there is none, and then I’ll usually give what I get. It’s something I’m demanding out of my friendships and relationships at this point and I’m highly critical when there’s something wrong with the communication.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

It’s beautiful outside. The wind is blowing something fierce and the clouds are getting dark and rushing across the sky. Brewing storms. I love Summer’s violent weather with its solitude and mystery and refreshing breezes. This house has a huge front porch where I can sit out and just vibe with it all.

I’m happy these days and I’m not sure why. I saw the movie “Field of Dreams” playing at the Apollo. It was about believing and dreams coming true in outrageous terms. Talk about resonating! It invoked such a huge feeling in me, I can’t describe it. After seeing the movie, I took off on my bike to the remote edge of Oberlin by the big reservoir and stared up at the sky for a while, feeling close to the stars and very refreshed. I love the stars so much. I was reading about the Apollo landings in “Astronomy”, the first one’s 20th anniversary is coming up in 10 days. I just imagine as each of them climbed up the ladder for the last time up to the lunar module and maybe they thought, take a good look, this is the last time you’ll be here.” No one’s been there for seventeen years.

I’ve started running again. I’m not sure why or how long it will last. Of all times, this is the most unusual to start. It’s so unnecessary, almost illogical. Again the memories of Summer running. It’s different here because Oberlin is so white and I’m always anxious and have my guard up.

Recording has been going pretty well. I hope I can finish on time. What I’ve been doing has been sounding satisfactory. In 12 days, the Meeting Japan at Oberlin program starts and I’ve been asked to be a counselor. A life saver, I’ve been going stir crazy and I don’t know how I would have filled the rest of the Summer.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

I had two horrible dreams. The first one was in the first house in which I lived in Englewood Cliffs and it took place in the master bedroom. Cindy was there as my wife and she was delirious with pneumonia. I started panicking thinking she might die and I fumbled for the phone, then I realized the first question the hospital would ask would be for her temperature and so I fumbled for a thermometer and nearly dropped it a couple of times. Then I had trouble getting it into her mouth because she kept on becoming invisible. Finally I felt for her mouth and got it in. I saw it floating there because she was invisible. I kissed her and woke up. The second dream was about Rebecca. She was back in Senior year, I was in the first year of college, a small nothing college in which I was proud to be. I don’t want to go into it.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

Gods. Who is to tell me what form my gods take? Gods to whom we pray and in whom we place devotion and faith, gods to whom we be?

No matter what denomination, beliefs vary between individuals, even in the slightest way. I think it’s true that we’re not born into a religion, we’re born into cultures which may have co-opted religious components, but true religion is about who we are and what we be. Basic beliefs cover the general ideas, but when you break it down further and further, everyone differs on some point or another.

I think all through our lives, our senses are bombarded with stimuli, we receive the information and options. We listen to ourselves to find our truth and that’s what we be and that determines what we worship. Otherwise we listen to someone else and are fed what we believe and go through life as slaves to someone else’s ideas.

I remember going to Sunday school, but it said nothing to me, nothing resonated. It didn’t inspire awe or devotion or the desire to live under Christian tenets. An anthropomorphic God, a white man with a flowing beard sitting on a throne just didn’t jive with the idea of an almighty force that is dominant in the universe.

The idea of Jesus dying for all humanity’s sins made absolutely no sense whatsoever and the meaning behind it made even less sense. Heaven and Hell also had no resonance as did the idea of standing in Judgment on the Last Day. When I learned about these things, there was no familiarity in me, no awakening. I’m sure that for many people, there is that sort of awakening. They are the Christians and I’m sure that someday they will stand in Judgment on the Last Day. Maybe I will, but not in the way they envision it.

The same goes with all other religions and beliefs, you’re born into it or you’re exposed to it and there’s an awakening or recognition. And if I’m wrong, which isn’t really a thought I entertain, it boils down to one thing. If that God didn’t resonate with me while alive, I doubt that He will resonate with me on Judgment Day and His teleporting me off to Hell was pretty much a given. His sending me to Hell won’t make me respect him or hold him in awe. I would most likely despise and disrespect Him and consider Him and His Bastard Son, Jesus, petty and personally insignificant.

A God with no forgiveness, a God with no understanding, a God who isn’t guided by absolute truth is an evil God. A God that hinges everything on whether or not I say I believe in Him or “place my faith”, even though I don’t know what that means, in Jesus Christ . . . isn’t God. If hell is to eternity, fine. My pain comes from knowing there’s something better. If I had no hope, that invokes a wholly different attitude. What is so awful that it can’t be overshadowed by Eternity? I don’t doubt the existence of the Christian God, it just has no say about the destiny or the condition of my soul.

My Gods are many, similar to Shinto kami. They manifest themselves in nature and nature’s beauty. Harmless Gods in that they only bring good, they have earned my devotion and inspire much awe. They also manifest themselves conceptually, impossible to describe accurately in words. Morality, Justice, Forgiveness, Discipline. Something along those lines. My devils are in the forms of Anger and Fear and so on.

My God, the main one, created me in His image. “His” because I’m a guy. I am the best corporeal interpretation of Him. My Individuality is the most sacred to me, because that is what defines God. That which is most sacred is the reason I exist, my Being. The landmarker, the body, is nothing, it’s just a vehicle that translates my being.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

I’m spending the summer alone in an off-campus house in Oberlin. I have a drum set, my synthesizer, my bass, my Ovation, my 4-track and accessories. The project is to get all my songs on tape as a final testament to my existence.

I don’t want much at this point. Personal honor has come up as an issue in me. Or at least it feels like honor. I feel like I’ve been living in disgrace and so much of my past makes me wince. I hate everything I was before and everything I’ve done, I want nothing to do with it. If I drove off a cliff four years ago, that would have been an honorable existence. Living in this ugly world poisoned by pride, self-seeking ego and corruption and apathy is a disgrace.

There are no absolutes. One event. Everyone has an explanation, everyone thinks they’re right. Psychologists interpret it one way and believe their belief is fact. Philosophers interpret it one way and see it under that light. Religious people explain it another way, a mystic, doctor, judge, whatever. One thing and so many right explanations, who is to say someone else is wrong? Everything breaks down to the individual and who is to say we live in a single world? We only live on the same planet, but worlds don’t coincide so easily. I need to reach a peace of mind about my world and my interpretation of reality and it has nothing to do with anyone else’s. I want to be released from this torture.

40 Locust St., Oberlin OH

Here I am alone again, alone with my thoughts. At least during school there are people to interact with. Now it’s just me. The summer of just my thoughts. Yep.

Writing this is last resort desperation. It means I have no where else and no one to whom I can turn. The pain of reality is overwhelming. So many battles I can’t fight alone. It’s so frustrating and exhausting. All those voices saying, “you can talk to me” without the ability to listen. I can’t believe this reality. Fuck it. I can’t believe I’m here. No one will know what this is about. This is no game. I have no justifications or any need for them. I’m just full of hate and I just want to burn. Well if I have to burn, I’ll burn. I want to feel it.

Oberlin, OH

Asthma is sent to certain people so they don’t take breathing for granted. If you can’t take breathing for granted, there’s not a lot you can take for granted. I’ve been having an attack and all I want to do is breathe, not much to ask for. It’s hard to lie down because the muscles I use to breathe while lying down are weaker than the ones I use while upright. But it’s hard to stay upright because that takes an effort and I lose my breath quickly.

I know two people for whom asthma is a part of their lives, unlike me - I only gets a major attack every once in a while. Everyday breathing isn’t a given for them, it’s a struggle. I wonder what that does to their perspective on life. Guess it depends on the person.

I wonder to what extent people control their own misery and to what extent they bring it upon themselves. I personally think that it is to a large extent, but I probably shouldn’t assume this applies to anyone else. It’s a pretty insensitive view. It’s my own personal explanation for my own perspective and understanding. OK?

I just think people bring misery upon themselves as personal challenges, to see how they survive against the worst they can do to themselves. People are born having already set the big challenges they will encounter in their lives. They already decided what they need to overcome and designed their lives so they would confront it and see if they could get through it.

Misery sucks, but it also feels so good to change a situation for the better. And for people who can’t rise up to their own challenge? This may be insensitive, but they live with their misery, even perpetuate it, and they steep in it, but I think they are learning something from it, or the experience and intimate knowledge of the misery helps them understand it better for the future. Another lifetime maybe.

Misery is personal and personalized, that’s why we always think we’re worse off than everyone else, because comparatively we are. Because our misery is our own and no one else’s. Maybe that’s what I mean by “bringing it upon ourselves”.

Besides the occasional asthma, disease isn’t a challenge for me in this life. Maybe it was before or maybe it will be. Poverty and money are also not a problem for me, maybe it was or will be, but it isn’t now. We pick and choose and life is Life no matter what the situation, it’s a constant. There is only one feeling of this physical reality and all the things in it, pleasure and pain, thought and existence in a space-time continuum, blood through our veins, air in our lungs, etc.

People drown in their misery and yet they insist on living for whatever good reason they may have. For me, that defies common sense, but who am I to say? It’s just me that can’t understand what is so valuable that you hold on even when things get so bad.

Sure suicide is escapist, it is an escape. That is why we have it, so that if things get too hot to handle, we hit the break-only-in-emergency glass, the abort switch, the eject button, the escape hatch. Otherwise people decide to live through their misery. The taboo against suicide exists as a cultural encouragement not to do it, it emphasizes that it really is the last resort. Whether there really are repercussions against suicide in the big picture, I have serious doubts. The truth is some of us challenge ourselves beyond our current capacity.

Me, I feel I’ve went too far this time. My problem is coping with myself and reality and other stuff I can’t grasp but is overloading every circuit in my board. But if I do get through this, it’s another step of progress in my series of lifetimes. Hooray for me.

Oberlin, OH

There’s a double-standard for death. If I died by accident, people would mourn, bury me, and get on with their lives. But if I killed myself, there are all these questions and there’s a horror to it. There may be feelings of anger, maybe regret . . . whatever. Why can’t people treat suicide just as they would if it was a death by some accident? Mourn the dead person, bury the dead person, get on with your lives. No questions asked, no haunting regrets. What? You couldn’t prevent the bus from running over him and his dog? Well, you probably couldn’t prevent her from slashing her wrists in the bathtub.

I hope no one mourns over me, they can mourn for themselves alright, but spare me. I wouldn’t have killed myself because I was depressed or giving up, I would have done it as the next logical step in my existence. Mourning that achievement doesn’t make sense, almost insulting. What makes me feel so important that I think people would mourn my death?

So why do I write about this? Am I being insensitive about the topic? Am I trying to convey that it’s just a fact, just another act? Maybe I’m writing about it because I couldn’t talk about it. If I talk about suicide, the natural reaction would be for someone to be concerned, whether they knew me or not, I don’t want anyone to be “concerned”.

The average person isn’t expected to be able to think away physical maladies, like cancer. In the same way, I don’t think the average person should be expected to be able to think away insanity or suicidal tendencies. Someone with a mental disease dies from it, but the form of death looks like a suicide. Mental leap. It looks like a choice to commit suicide, but dying from cancer is never seen as having been a choice.

Medical science isn’t established knowledge, it’s knowledge of the establishment, and its ubiquity and all-knowingness is self awarded. And the fault of medical science is in what it thinks is its strength. Something is fact because it can be proven, and if it can’t be proven, it isn’t fact. So if it can be proven that someone died of cancer, it’s fact. But if it can’t be proven that someone died of mental disease, that’s not fact, and so instead it’s suicide. And since society can’t handle that, they make it illegal.

Oberlin, OH

I’m sick. I told myself that if I couldn’t get these papers done by Friday, I would go talk with the professor and tell him that I really, really, simply just can’t do the papers. But then my efforts were scuttled by my body trying to sabotage my efforts. But I ain’t giving up yet, I’m going to put a noble effort into this. I got asthma pretty bad on Thursday and Friday, whenever I was able to get out and move about, I thought I would collapse or whatever.

I went to a Steel Drum Ensemble rehearsal because I was feeling a bit better and it really rocked. Our show is going to be on Friday at the Cat in the Cream and I feel pretty good about it. It’s been a long time since I’ve really performed in a group, and playing in a group is SO much more fun than playing alone.

The ‘rents are back from a trip to China. They called and it was barely bearable, they’re still talking out of two sides of their faces, they can’t be thinking I’m buying it. They just can’t. They sent money a few days ago, along with, for the first time, a LETTER! I couldn’t even read it, I read the first line of each paragraph to get the gist and then chucked it. It was too weird having them trying to communicate like that after all this time. If they ever wanted to communicate, they should have started a long time ago and it’s way too late now.

We’ve never talked or anything. Anything said between us has been for practical communication or small talk, never discussion for the sake of discussion and I think it’s bullshit if they think things can change just because they all of a sudden decide to. I couldn’t get used to it and since they established it, I don’t see any reason why I should let anything change. I’m used to non-communication and I like it that way.

I had a dream a couple of nights ago. A bunch of people I knew were playing team hide and seek in the cemetery. I was on the hiding team and I couldn’t be caught. I was being chased at the time I woke up, but I couldn’t be caught. The following day I dreamed a cat had gotten into my room and woke me up by sitting on my chest. I was afraid it was going to scratch me even though I love cats, and I had difficulty kicking it out since I’m allergic to cats. I got it outside of the room but it made moves to get back in and I woke up just as I was slamming the door on it. I think they’re both death dreams. There was something morbid and dark about the cat and that’s why I was uncharacteristically afraid of it. But I don’t see my death happening before two years from now, so I don’t know why I’m having dreams about it now.

Oberlin, OH

I wonder why I think what I think, what are the sources of ideas? What recognizes what’s real and what’s not?

I am looking for someone. I am looking for a person with whom I don’t have to try, where the basic, vital element of communication is automatically there.

Whose words were they? Who was it that told me that the pursuit of life is constant? That statement was so strong and it was given to me by a passing stranger who I’ll never see again. “The pursuit of life is constant”. Was that sent to me for a reason? Is it justifiable to abort one lifetime to continue that pursuit?

I wonder if we can’t imagine an infinite universe in time and space because our human nature is finite. Our perception of the universe is simply a projection of our perception of ourselves. I’ve always had trouble with the concept of nothing existing before the universe was formed. Everything is contained in the universe, so how can there ever be a time when the universe didn’t exist and how can the universe have boundaries, implying there is something else (“nothing”) beyond those boundaries?

Yet we have the Big Bang Theory telling us that is when the universe came into existence and they also tell us that the universe is expanding, implying that it is expanding into or in some other space. How can there be nothing and how can there be that “other space” if, by definition, the universe is the whole thing and everything?

Before time began, there was no time and before space began there was nothing. It’s easy to theorize, but can anyone really conceive it? Since we are something, can we really grasp “nothing”? To grasp nothing we’d have to negate the something that grasps it. Bleah.

Our lives have definite starts and have limited boundaries of existence, so we impose that upon the universe. The universe exists because of our projection of it. We can’t experience life without us, but we take it on faith that there was life went on before us and will go on after us. Easy to theorize, impossible to experience. So maybe once we leave this limited life and go back to our infinite forms, we’ll understand the infinite universe with sequences, the Big Bang being the start of only one of them.

Scientific studies that show “evidence” that the universe is “expanding” may be a misreading of data. An interpretation of observations using our limited language of science. When a complex language is translated into a simpler language, the faults of the translation extend to the faults and shortcomings of that language.

Oberlin, OH

I hate explaining myself. God forbid it ever comes to that.

What makes me think that I can possibly say something about myself and have someone else understand it? There are too many degrees of separation between what I am and how I come across to someone else.

It all starts in the primordial muck that is my being. I don’t even know what’s there. I’m trying to peer under the surface for something to express. The too many layers of trying to get something out of me. Once I grasp something, there is something about me reflected in my understanding of words I choose and language that I use. What I’m trying to show or express is already limited, tainted, and distorted by subjective language. Then whoever is hearing what I say is informed by their own understanding of words and language, and interpreted by their own experience. What are the chances that what they hear coming out of my mouth has anything to do with what I am or understanding who I am?

Of course, why this obsession over being understood? What the hell do I care? I know what I know and I know what I feel, and if I can’t articulate it effectively, it’s not my problem.

So why should I even try to explain why at the age of twenty I can decide that what I want to do with the rest of my life is not to live it. There’s too much emphasis on living life, life is just as fun as a spectator sport. Me, I like TV, watching life on TV. Not as much as some, but I accept it as a fact of life.

It’s not about giving up and it’s not about not going on. It’s not even about killing myself, even though that always seems to be there somewhere in the mix. It’s...nothing works and nothing gets any better. The world sucks and people in general suck.

It’s about value of life and how living it doesn’t necessarily do credit to the wonders that it involves and entails. Living shouldn’t be a matter of surviving and not living it shouldn’t be considered giving up. Everything is out of touch and out of synch and nothing makes sense and that’s exactly how it should be. I imagine being inside the shell that’s me and whacking away at the inner lining with a plank of wood. Surviving is different than living, and all I’m doing is surviving. I’d rather watch TV.

So what does it mean for me to be a functional member of society? And why would I want to be one? What value is there in being a functional member of society? Is music enough? Well, I know that I’ve wanted to do it since I was like eight or nine, but . . . it’s not going to happen. And the more it doesn’t happen, the more I don’t care and the more I don’t even want to do it. Now I just don’t even want to do it, I can’t imagine getting any peace or satisfaction from it.

Living under a bridge or becoming a monk is always an option. Nice fallback. I just wish I could disappear from people’s realities without them getting hurt, that would be ideal. If I could I would in a second. But sometimes I think people shouldn’t be a factor. People disappear from other people’s realities all the time and of course someone gets hurt. They die or leave or move on and the people who happen to be there at the time get hurt. Can’t be helped. It’s pretty arbitrary who’s around.

I’m mildly content, I’m not unhappy. I’m not full of bubbles and beans, but that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy, not even venturing to figure out what that means. And I’m certainly not depressed and I wouldn’t do anything rash as a result of being depressed. That would go against whatever principles I have. I don’t know what I intend to do, I haven’t thought anything through concretely.

I do realize that I have to think about the things I’m asking for because I know I’m not accepting a lot as it is. Or maybe I’m asking for something and getting it but my eyes are too closed to realize it. Or I’m asking and expecting much more and disappointing myself. I don’t know what I think. So I wouldn’t worry about it. No, I won’t.