Supplemental entry: All December entries were lost in a disk crash. In their place, I'm placing my final exam for that incredible religion seminar:

Religion 103: Self and Community in Western Traditions
Professor J. Morris
December 20, 1991
Final Exam

Part one:

Religion is an integral part of modern societies, and exposure to religion, religious symbols, or religious teachings is almost unavoidable. There are, of course, varying definitions of “religion”. There are many people who are considered religious due to their involvement in their respective religious communities. There are still many other people who consider themselves religious, despite little involvement or interaction with established religious institutions. The emphasis in modern societies, perhaps due to their visibility and public presence, is on the institution of religion rather than its spirituality. Religion as the basis of spiritual or personal quests is overwhelmingly overshadowed by the normative and social character of religious institutions.

All through history there has existed a tension between dominant religious institutions against sub-cultures striving for a deeper spiritual commitment. Religious institutions regularly have involved themselves in extra-religious practices and activities, which reinforced their institutional legitimacy, but which arguably deviated from their spiritual mandate.

The readings of this past semester emphasized the personal and spiritual component of religion. Instead of an external force that is presented and given to people, religion is something found within individuals. Individuals are the source and vehicle of religion, rather than a vessel for religion. Individuals are established as the source of religion because people primarily listen to themselves. People are bombarded by external stimuli and when something has meaning or when an individual learns something, it is more that the individual realizes something from within, rather than taught something from the outside.

Three of the readings of the past semester which illuminated the spiritual path are the Ibn al-‘Arabi essays, particularly “What the Student Needs”, Bahya Ibn Pakuda’s Book of Guidance to the Duties of the Hearts, and The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar. All three works suggest that the ultimate form of human perfection is being on the spiritual path. The Conference of the Birds portrays the spiritual path through a journey parable, while the other two works are more direct and concrete discourses on the spiritual path.

In The Conference of the Birds, the spiritual path is portrayed as a journey that each individual must decide to take or not take. Each of the representative birds has an excuse not to undertake the journey, however the guide-bird, the hoopoe, has a response for each excuse. The collective excuses of the birds represent attachment to earthly desires, passions, and vanity. All of the birds have it within themselves to be on the path, and they understand that the spiritual path is the way to God, the Simorgh, their true king. However, the attachments to the pleasures of the material world are strong, and the ease of remaining within the material world overshadows the suffering involved in human existence. The hoopoe sheds light on their hypocrisy and encourages them to leave behind their petty attachments to material things.

The Ibn al-‘Arabi essays and the Bahya readings discuss the spiritual path in more concrete terms. They are moral works in that they present actual prescriptions for following the spiritual path, but they do not tell how people should act. Instead, the morality is expressed through an investigation of how people want to be and behave. By having people recognize how they want to be, they show people that they want to be on the spiritual path.

Upon self-reflection, humans find moral behavior within themselves, it is not something imposed on individuals. The realization of innate moral behavior and desire for it leads to spiritual discovery. Moral behavior, as one component of the spiritual path, leads to happiness and spiritual fulfillment.

A major difference in The Conference of the Birds and the other two works is the goal of the spiritual path that Attar presents. The journey’s end in The Conference of the Birds is a meeting with the Simorgh, who is a reflection of themselves. At the end of the journey, they find that they themselves are the Simorgh, they are their own true king. Unlike the Ibn al-‘Arabi and Bahya essays, Attar implies that God is not at all an entity outside of us, judging and being worshiped by us, but is an intimate part of our natures. Self-realization is a central component of the spiritual path and being nearer to God. If the spiritual path implies “service to God”, then “service to God” involves an intense introspection into the Self and the nature of the Self and its behavior.

All three works suggest that all people have what is needed to follow the path, and all people have the potential to want to be on the path. But in truth, not all people want to be on the path, and not all people who want to be on the path find their way onto it. There must be gradations to the path since it would not seem reasonable that the authors are presenting the spiritual path as an all or none option. Attar does not consider gradations, however the Bahya reading makes the different levels of the spiritual path most clear.

It would be too difficult to discuss why individuals end up on certain levels, but the Bahya makes it clear that there are many different levels of the spiritual path, ranging from simple moral action to the ascetic lifestyle, and that there are many levels of aptitude for realizing the desire to be on the spiritual path and approaching it. However, in the reading excerpts, the attainment of the purpose of the spiritual path only suggest the final stage of entering God’s presence. There is little discussion of what happens to individuals who have lower levels of aptitude and who are on lower levels of the spiritual path. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan deals with the issue in a cursory manner by stating that some people are turned away from the Gates even though they have spent their entire lives reaching them. It is unclear what is said about attaining merit and aptitude to reach higher levels.

If the ultimate state of human perfection is to attain the highest level of the spiritual path as aptitude allows, then whatever means is taken in pursuit of that path is religion. The spiritual path is an individual path, one that must be accomplished by oneself. No one else can attain aptitude for someone else and no one can find it for someone else. Religious leaders, prophets, teachers, etc. can only point the way and give clues.


Part two:

What is the role or meaning (if any) of human suffering in religion? What do your sources understand to be the source(s) of human suffering? Is that suffering “evil”, unjust, and something that can/should be eliminated from the world?

Without suffering, there would be no religion. Likewise, as a result of suffering, religion exists. From earliest times of human existence, humans have suffered through physical hardships of survival in hostile natural environments and death. Out of those two sources of suffering, two concepts essential to the development of “religious” thought can be derived. The concept of powers beyond human control, or “gods”, can be developed out of the first, and the concept of a “soul” or the “self” comes out of the latter. Furthermore, religious concepts naturally develop from suffering as a source of comfort to help explain the unknown and to offer the idea of a divine purpose to misfortune.

There are many definitions and perspectives on human suffering. There are obvious forms of suffering which occur intermittently and affect people directly. Then there is a general type of suffering which is the basis of Buddhist belief; the first of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism states that “life is suffering”. This concept that suffering is inherent in human existence is tied to the transient and impermanent nature of everything in the material world.

In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress and Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust, there is the idea of suffering as divine encouragement. Bunyan portrays it more simply in the form of Christian’s amorphous “burden”. Book One of The Pilgrim’s Progress starts with Christian’s recognition of his burden. Just as with the first Noble Truth, Bunyan is presenting the recognition of the need to transcend earthly suffering as the starting point of the spiritual path. The actual source of Christian’s recognition of his burden was the Bible. When Worldly-Wiseman asks how Christian first came across his burden, Christian replies, “By reading this book in my hand” (p. 61). Also in Christian’s exchange with Worldly-Wiseman, Christian states that the burden placed on him by reading the Bible is greater than any earthly burden or suffering possible. It is only because of the suffering caused by the recognition of his burden that Christian devotes his life to the spiritual path.

The suffering endured historically by the Jews is the direct kind of suffering which is manifested in actual occurrences, but a divine dimension is attributed to their experience and persecution. The stories in Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust detail the suffering inflicted on Jews merely because of their religion. The sentiment of divine purpose is frequently expressed in trying to find an explanation for their suffering. Their suffering is perceived to be all the more reason to have stronger faith in God. The idea being that it is only the truly faithful who can maintain faith in a God who can inflict such suffering and it is they who are the most deserving of His grace. In this case, human suffering is a test of faith and a reminder to be humble as a human being and before God.

To be religious is not necessarily to be humanitarian. In a religious cosmology, suffering is a part of human existence and a necessary encouragement to follow the religious path. A strict religious reading perceives suffering as positive. Unfortunately, though suffering is often requisite for religiosity, religiosity is not necessarily the result of suffering. It would be considered heartless to suggest to a homeless person that their condition is divinely sanctioned and that they should perceive their plight as positive and that following a spiritual path is the best alternative to alleviate their burdens. It is also heartless to suggest that their plight is their religious station in this life and they will gain merit in the eyes of God because of it. It is difficult to reconcile the utility of religion when those who most deserve it find themselves without the spiritual aptitude to embark on the spiritual path.

It is difficult to account for the mass suffering which renders daily life a misery for so many. It is only when social consciousness is suspended that religion can offer any explanation. Religion would suggest that the world is perfect just the way it is, and that there is a reason for all the suffering and imperfections.

The films “Tender Mercies” and “Bagdad Café” portray suffering as an integral part of human interaction and as part of the perfection of the world. Suffering is necessary for realizing the value of life and appreciating it. In “Tender Mercies”, it is after Mac’s daughter dies that he breaks down and questions why things happen the way they do. Suffering offers a contrast to complacency and drives people to search for intangibles. But suffering is a part of life and life itself goes on, Mac breaks down and rants and then goes and plays catch with his stepson in the final scene.

In “Bagdad Café” the suffering people cause one another is the background of much of the human interaction. Jasmene ends up in Bagdad only after fighting with her spouse. The fight itself, which begins the film, is incomprehensible (in German) and is complete with petty unkindness, violence and abandonment. The cuts within the scene are sharp and disjunct and the camera angles are askew. As for Brenda, her character is introduced as verbally and emotionally abusive, but she gets little reaction or recognition from the people around her. Her husband leaves, but practically shrugs while leaving. It is her vicious treatment of Jasmene, further into the film, that opens her eyes. Only after the self-realization of being abusive towards a person who at worst was only trying to help does a transformation begin. Humans inflict suffering upon other humans, and in the course of daily lives it is the lack of questioning one’s actions that perpetuates that suffering.

The human world may be perfect, but it is not the Garden of Eden where there is no suffering. To be in the Garden of Eden is to be within God’s grace and “religiosity” is built into the fabric of existence there. The human world is a classroom filled with suffering, and it is through suffering that we approach the intangibles that lead us to spiritual questioning and realization.




Are all human beings equally “alone” with God, or are there other spiritual “intermediaries” between them? If so, who/what are they and what is their religious importance for us?

The spiritual path must be traveled alone. The distance between any person and God is a personal distance and closing that distance is a personal endeavor and does not affect the distance between anyone else and God. However, any number of sources indicate that there are intermediaries between individuals and God who are closer to God and help point the way. The Western religious traditions generally accept the notion of saints, angels, and prophets of God who serve such a function, and they are generally presented as necessary for bringing people closer to God.

The Pilgrim’s Progress begins with Christian recognizing his burden, and in his anguish he implores heaven for help. The next step in putting Christian on the spiritual path, on the second page of the narrative, is the entrance of Evangelist. Evangelist acts as the intermediary between Christian and God. He is already closer to God and he knows of the path. However, he cannot bring Christian to God and he cannot travel the path for Christian. He can only point in the direction that the path leads. Without Evangelist, as is Bunyan’s suggestion, Christian wouldn’t have found the path or embarked on it.

In the story of Teresa of Lisieux, Teresa feels that many people have the potential of realizing the spiritual path, but they need help. She recognizes herself as an agent of that help and she wishes death upon herself in order to transcend her limited terrestrial existence in which she can only help people one person at a time. From a higher level of existence, she could help people en masse and without physical limitations.

One portrayal of that higher existence is in “Wings of Desire”. Although “Wings of Desire” is more of a metaphysical portrayal, rather than a religious one, the ideas can be translated into religious contexts. “Wings of Desire” portrays two levels of existence on the same physical plane, and they don’t physically interact. One level of existence is tangible, the other, on which the angels exist, is intangible. The angels on the intangible level of existence are there by virtue of their command and understanding of the nature of the tangible level of existence. They have transcended their physical existence. They can observe us, but we can’t see them. They can influence us, but they cannot command us.

An analogy to the different levels of existence is dimensional space. A being existing in two dimensional space simply cannot see anything in three dimensions. It can see an object in three dimensional space, but it can only see a two dimensional cross section of it; basically something very, very flat. In the same way, a three dimensional being cannot conceive of how something looks in four dimensions. We cannot point into the fourth dimension in the way we can point into the three dimensions of height, width and depth.

To follow through with the analogy, angels exist as if they were in the fourth dimension. We cannot even conceive of their existence, but it does not mean that they are not in the same physical space that we occupy. They understand our existence in the way beings in a higher dimension understand beings in a lower dimension. To keep with the analogy, the ability of angels to interact with us is limited in a similar way to a fourth dimensional being interacting with a three dimensional being. The interaction that we feel is intangible and incomprehensible.

The angels in “Wings of Desire” are intermediaries between humans and God. They can wish to guide us, but they are powerless to interact. The potency of their guidance relies on each person’s spiritual aptitude, their sensitivity or receptiveness to the angel’s wishes or guidance. They whisper and we hear, but we choose whether or not to listen. God is not portrayed explicitly in the film, but the role of the angels as intermediaries may be interpreted from one of the final scenes when the circus performer exhibits great depth and insight to the angel who has come down to earth. Just as the birds in The Conference of the Birds find the Simorgh and it is suggested that they are the Simorgh, the angel in “Wings of Desire” fulfills his role as intermediary by opening her heart and leading her to her own insight.

The concept of intermediaries is an integral part of all major religious systems. In Buddhism, the description and role of bodhisattvas are surprisingly congruent with “angels”. Bodhisattvas are enlightened beings who have transcended the physical world, however because of their boundless compassion, they will not enter nirvana until all beings can enter at once. There is much potential for the concepts of bodhisattvas and angels to inform one another.

There is no proof that there are intermediaries between humans and God, but their prevalence in religious belief systems and the popular psyche leaves no doubt about their importance. Evidence is not required, as with religion and God, the existence of intermediaries, whatever they may be called is a matter of faith.

Third World House, Oberlin

Patience. God is with those who have patience. I take care of my body in the way I choose, I take care of those who are around me to the best of my ability. Conceptions of good and bad are not necessarily as they seem, good or bad. What I do to myself is good, and that might be different from what it seems. And happiness I derive from the happiness of others. Other people’s misery makes me miserable. Fuck me. My pain is my only form of positive expression.

the rest of this disappeared when the disk I was using crashed in April 1992. Also gone are all entries from December, January, and most of February

Third World House, Oberlin

Strange emotional life I’m going through now. But it’s not time to talk about it. Amina in Dublin. Luyen. Hiromi.



I was discussing angels with Hiromi. I had never thought of angels much before because of the shallow Christian portrayals that pervade this culture. But I’m taking this religion class, “Self and Community in Western Tradition” (what does that have to do with religion?), and the class has a film syllabus. Every week we have to see a certain film and we discuss religious/spiritual portrayals and messages in the movie.

All the movies are incredible, especially after the professor starts explaining shit, but the one that really knocked me on my ass is “Wings of Desire” by Wim Wenders. It outlined so much of what I felt I understood or knew, but never articulated before or could articulate.

Angels are people, or souls, who have transcended the physical world but haven’t “gone to heaven”. The transcendence is the result of a true innate understanding of the physical world and the nature of reality. So angels exist on this physical plane, but not in a form that we understand or perceive.

They look over us, they observe, some follow specific people, some just wander. They are morally indifferent, but “morally indifferent” as perceived by us gets translated as “moral” or “good”, since we are pre-disposed to see angels as good and interpret their acts as being good. In fact, they are indifferent.

They try to guide us, but they are powerless to interact physically (although in extreme situations, some people would argue that they can, but that’s another discussion). They speak to us, they touch us, they guide us, but we can only hear or feel or be guided if we are sensitive and open to their guidance or their presence.

One scene that really made an impression on me is when there is this man who is jumping off a building. He sits at the ledge and one of the angels goes up to him and wraps an arm around him, a gesture to stop him. But then the man jumps, and the angel can do nothing but let him go and walk away. That blew my mind.

I still insist on moral indifference, but the angel knew that for this person, suicide was not the way, not the answer. So he made a gesture to try to stop him, guidance. But ultimately angels cannot physically interfere with the human world. When the man jumps, the angel can’t force him not to. If the man was sensitive to the guidance, maybe he would have thought that it wasn’t such a good idea and decided not to go through with it. But he can choose not to be sensitive to the guidance and go through with it.

And the concept of angels actually fits in really well with bodhisattvas in Buddhism. I actually never quite understood bodhisattvas. They are enlightened beings that have transcended the physical world, but refuse to enter nirvana, heaven, until all of humanity can enter at once. I’ve never been able to grasp that concept of what they were until now.

Fit angels and bodhisattvas together and they help explain each other. Angels, like bodhisattvas have transcended the physical world. They understand reality well enough so that they are no longer caught in the cycle of death and re-birth. They are no longer attached and encumbered by things human.

Angels are intermediaries between God and humans, they have the qualifications to help humans get closer to God. That’s what they do, that’s why they won’t enter heaven until all beings can do so at once. Why is that? Because there is no separation between anything in the universe. They understand that all is one. So it’s not that they won’t, but that’s not reality. To suggest they can enter nirvana separately from other sentient beings assumes duality, which they have by their very beings have transcended. Exciting stuff!

I’ve always felt there has been a presence following me around, I’ve always felt guided and damn lucky for it. It felt strange opening up with this to Hiromi, but she feels the same way, but instead of angels or bodhisattvas, she has always felt that it was a spirit of one of her ancestors. Close enough for me. There’s no reason why it’s not one of her ancestors.

Towards the end of this past summer, four cousins and me were sitting around a table at uncle Aki’s house. It was warm and the realization that we were all family made me warm and fuzzy. I wondered what an ancestor would think or feel witnessing that scene. It was the first time the five of us, from different branches of the family tree, were all together like that, passing pictures around. Some ancestor looking on at this group of strangers - their descendants.

Third World House, Oberlin

The Can Consortium had its first gig of the year at Denison University, which is about two hours away in the direction of Columbus. It was quite successful. Some songs reached their maturity during the gig and blew our minds. They just “happened”, and the audience really worked with us.


I'm almost positive this shot was really late at night when Hiromi came down for a visit after the Denison gig. I was doing laundry. She ate a squash.

The big news is that the Can Consortium has been invited to play at a competition style event at Lincoln Center! The last time we played there, I was thinking, “Remember to look out at the audience because this’ll never happen again”. I was also a novice back then, very bright-eyed and green. The gig is on Sunday Dec. 1st and we already have a gig scheduled for the night before. That means we’ll play a gig, load up, get last minute shit together and drive all night! I’m excited. I hope it happens.

Christine, Jean, Sylvia, and I were having fun with Sylvia’s psychic ability. Cards. She’s really good, there’s something about Sylvia, like she’s a locus for that kind of energy. What she gets out of the cards are shockingly congruent with peoples’ perceptions and claims. A lot of people say she’s almost always right.

So I chose four people, Amina, Diem, Neelam, and Lisa, and if I were to marry one of these people, it would be Lisa. So I chose the four people and could ask questions about them. Amina would be the first to be published. Diem would be the first to die. Neelam would live the longest and make the most money. No wonder. The cards gave “none or all” answers to both who would be the happiest with her life and whose dreams will come true. The same answer was given for which was the romantic. I thought if the cards were accurate, they would surely sniff out Amina as the romantic. But either all of them are or none.

In a relationship, Amina would get the most happiness out of me and there would be the most romance, average fights, and bad or less than average sex. Lisa collected a lot of the “sex” cards, which was a hoot and a holler to us, since none of us present thought of Lisa as being particularly sexual or sexually inclined.

What was funny was that I declared that if Lisa got married, wherever I was, I would go to her wedding. For no one else would I do that, not even my brothers, but if Lisa got married, I’m there. So at the end, when Sylvia turned over the card I had pulled out of the deck at the beginning, which represented who out of the four I would marry, and it was Lisa . . . a hoot and a holler. All very amusing. We were all very amused.

Tomorrow is Lisa’s birthday and we’re thinking of getting her a puppy. Christine is looking into it.

Third World House, Oberlin

I’ve become busy and three of my twelve credits haven’t even been implemented. Too much socializing, just the right amount of steel drumming, not enough physical activity. I ran a lot this summer and my muscles got accustomed to that. My classes contain a much needed overdose of religion. I wish I had been a religion major, I get such a charge from those classes, even though the people in some of them really annoy me. Sometimes it’s the professor.

I’m taking my first class in a “Western” religion. The Western orientation of the class is unfamiliar which makes it a trifle hostile, but I appreciate the challenge. And it’s quite strange how I got the class. Apparently it’s a really hard class to get into, especially for seniors since it’s a seminar intended for first years and sophomores who are considering being religion majors. And I hadn’t signed up for it. I had signed up for a class called “Life and Teachings of Jesus”, but when I got my registration card over the summer, it instead had “Self/Comm West Trad”, which I couldn’t even figure out what it was.

I looked it up in the course catalog and it turned out to be “Self and Community in Western Traditions”, and I read the description and was dubious. I was doubtful. But when it came time to fill out my schedule, no other class looked inviting and since it was already on my card, I figured I’d check it out.

It might do. My main reservation is that everyone else in the class seems somewhat familiar with the subject material, whereas my background is Buddhist. Well, I’m not sure I feel comfortable calling myself “Buddhist”, but it definitely speaks a language I have thus far understood and related to.

Third World House, Oberlin

The summer was uneventful and numb, but it was swift. I’m OK now. I think something’s been wrong, but I can’t tell. It feels like a rug has been pulled from under me and I didn’t notice. I’m back at Oberlin and I kind of hate the place. I feel old and everyone else seems so young. Four years is a good length for college life and I’m stretching it to five. Five years and my life isn’t pulling together at all. I still feel dysfunctional, directionless, useless, and without potential.

On the other hand, returning to Third World House has the advantages of familiarity and company. I feel like I fit in and belong here, so that’s comfortable. I’ve been unusually social. I miss Amina, she’s added so much to my life, even in her absence. It’s like nothing can go wrong with her in my life, even if we’re slated to just be friends. Someone I noticed last semester has moved into Third World House. Her name is Hiromi and I’d like to find a way to engineer meeting her. Maybe Japanese lessons.



Shiho and I got through my doubts this summer and there isn’t any bad blood between us. I don’t think she would hold things against me. She has a good heart and there’s so much I love and admire about her. If I got mad at her, she’d be very straight forward and tell me her side of the story and I’d be disarmed at her honesty. But I can’t say that I know her, so I don’t know. It’s been such a long time. We are going to have to see each other, meet up and find out what we’ve missed. Probably too much.

Fort Lee, NJ

I’ve been stupid enough to let my defenses down. The ‘rents are very predictably taking advantage of it. I give them an inch and they blitz for every bit of ground they can get. It’s like a war. They get a foothold and secure a position, then attack again, advance and secure another position, taking advantage of any weakness shown.

The tension is all here, but I have been trying to be polite and cordial, reducing the friction. It’s only an experiment, a front and I feel the lying in my face, but it reduces negative interaction, which is good because I don’t need it. But without the coldness I usually present, they seem to feel free to push for more, gain leverage in controlling my life.

It isn’t all bad. They make me care about my “self” less. If I can care about my self less, maybe I can stop putting so much emphasis on it. The first step in really developing is to stop caring about myself and what happens to me.

For me to graduate in December, I would need to take 17 credits this Fall. I just barely got by this past semester with 14. I could do 17 credits if I could convince myself to not care about grades at all, let my GPA plunge and simply not care about it.

College is a privilege. My being there is made possible by the ‘rents and their money. It would be an abuse of privilege if I started demanding how I go about getting educated. If the ‘rents decide that grades don’t matter, then grades don’t matter. Anything about money, I can’t fight it.

Fort Lee, NJ

I did something I shouldn’t have. I went through everything that Shiho ever sent to me. It took over three hours and it was very painful. I had nightmares afterwards, the guilt was so overwhelming. What I’ve put her through was an injustice. She did try, she wanted so much from me that I know I was able to give. She took in so much of what I wanted her to. She deserved so much more than I gave and in the end she was an innocent victim of all my personal difficulties. There’s a good reason why she’s so far away now and how I do deserve it.

Back in high school years, Shiho and I decided to go out with each other a few weeks right before she left for Japan. It wasn’t enough time to make much of an impression and when my mental stability declined after she left, she got more and more overshadowed. By the time I got sent to the hospitals after my first semester in college, I was totally numb. The letters she sent from six months preceding my admission into the hospitals are filled with subtle pain that I totally missed.

The hospitals started in February 1988 - the same month Shiho managed to return to the States for a visit, a year and half after she left. She actually visited me with Liz when I was in the second hospital and I think she was quite shocked at what was going on. Immediately after that, I don’t think she knew how to approach me. I don’t think she was even able to ask if I was alright because she might have been scared of my reaction. We considered ourselves broken-up soon after that. Nothing said, it just happened.

For another year I was numb and minimally functional. A year after that, March-April 1989, corresponding to my move into Third World House, I started getting better, developing a positive outlook with death as its ironic base. Shiho and I had kept in touch writing occasionally, but I guess by then we had pushed each other into the margins of each other’s lives that we were already on a pen pal type letter basis. We’d gone our different directions.

She got hurt, she was a victim of my self-destruction. It’s a self-destruction that isn’t designed to succeed and this time, the cost has been Shiho’s trust; a very high cost. I guess I shouldn’t see the tragedy of Shiho in tragic proportions, though. It’s all abstract, theoretical and emotional.

I imagine one day we’ll be sitting in a coffeeshop in Japan, sipping at $7 coffees and talking about the too many years we’ve missed. I’d look her straight in the eye and recollect this weekend to her and tell her how sorry I was. She wouldn’t give any indication that it meant anything to her and she’d tell me to forget it, there’s no need, perhaps because that’s exactly what I’d tell her if the roles were switched. The coffee would be my treat.

Fort Lee, NJ

Shiho sent me a letter that took a while to get to me since it had to be forwarded from Oberlin. I don’t know what the deal is anymore. We’ve become pen pals and that is disillusioning and frustrating. It doesn’t do the love between us any justice. I did love her. Maybe not with the romantic intensity that I have for Amina, but I thought Shiho would be a reliable, substantive emotional mainstay in my life. Now she’s just a pen pal.

Time to shelve the memories? I’d rather totally cut communication than to have our relationship downgraded to being pen pals. It feels like there’s no more heart. I told her all this and I have no idea how she’ll react, but I hope she tells me something to maintain the substance of what made things special between us.

Maybe there’s not supposed to be any emotions here. If I remember correctly, that’s one of the reasons I couldn’t love Shiho romantically. She was always so ambiguous when it came to expressing her emotions, almost deadpan. I felt that she was always following what I wanted. I didn’t like her not asserting what she wanted or what she felt. It always felt like I was in control and that I could call all the shots. Things get boring like that. All my relationships are being sent floating in ultimate impermanence.

I’ve known Shiho longer than anyone else I know. But she’s like a ghost. All our mutual friends have gone into oblivion or complacency, whichever was shorter for each, I’m sure. All those times are gone, but Shiho is still present hiding somewhere along the margins. A lot of love has been able to remain intact, perhaps due to the distance and its slow growth. I’d rather preserve the love laid to rest than to let it rot in the open air, constantly being subject to being pushed aside by the likes of Amina and Frances who are part of my now, and sad to say, more important to it.

Frances and Amina, please let them stay in my life and close to my heart. Please don’t let Frances get scared away by the way she can be hurt by me. Please don’t let Amina stop pouring love in my direction for fear that I might get tethered to a love for her, for fear that she’s feeding something she doesn’t want to. But things change. They always do.

Fort Lee, NJ

Summer school began at the beginning of the month. I stay in the apartment above the ‘rent’s office and commute to the Village three times a week. There’s nothing special about the class, “Sociology of the Family”, a Women’s Studies course. It’s not difficult, not ground-breaking stuff, but it offers useful information and fresh perspectives in a non-challenging fashion.

It has so far been a well-balanced, serene type of Summer. Almost numbing. The tone of the Summer has been set by my own thoughts and feelings, which I keep to myself. When just left to thought, it gets a bit serious and somber, but also serene.

I go running frequently, and I have my stereo and my computer and it’s Summer. I have no complaints about this, it’s easy living. Occasionally I get together with Liz or Myung, who is in New Jersey for the Summer to spend some time with his newly discovered mother.

I like going into New York three days a week. I enjoy the mindless hour commute and deadpan faces staring into oblivion. I like playing the part of a consumer on a regular basis, getting my poppy seed bagel with cream cheese and coffee, cream no sugar, before every class. I love being nocturnal again.

I love the feel and the smell of Summer nights. There’s something mysterious and vast about them. It’s as if they’re stirring something in my memory. I can’t tell what. They remind me of some other place, a different time and different place, but I have no idea when or where. Something about the breezes, cool and silent. There’s something yearning and inviting in the Summer night sky. Something about Summer nights make me feel that this world is very much a part of the entire cosmos. And a certain flavor is given to the feeling when you’re missing someone far, far away.

My feelings towards Amina have warmed to a comfortable understanding. Whatever gets assumed from now will be what is already known. I’m not going to push anything. I know I love her and probably always will and I’m just glad that she is permanently in my life. What I’ve felt for her is real and always has been and now we know our relationship to each other and our limitations. It doesn’t change how I feel, but at least I know.

It was brave of her to use the words “I love you”, but then turn around and say “yes I do, but I’m committed, I’m sorry”. It seems she has always been honest and sincere and I greatly appreciate that.

I can’t say she did anything wrong. She didn’t lead me along, she didn’t deceive me. She gave me credit. She made a mistake but she could have waffled over it for fear of my reaction and that would have been worse. Instead, she stayed straight on the line and didn’t play any games. I should learn that, it might help me handle something in the future.

I’m trying to develop a new attitude towards the ‘rent’s. I need to be more tactful in getting what I want with the least losses and the least risks. The hate here is just not worth the energy. I do owe them. Regardless of the sluggish economy of emotions, they have financially sacrificed and invested. As for the return on the investment, I have no idea at this point.

Fort Lee, NJ

I got the letter from Amina. What can I say? She’s the same wonderful person I knew all semester. She didn’t give me the word I asked for, but she managed to say the right things to give me a proper understanding of our . . . situation.

I understand this situation. A love that doesn’t get pursued, such a love. How can I be cynical? I thought that there was nothing that could prepare me for whatever news a letter could bring. I guess the anxiety of the anticipation made anything a relief. So I’m very much at ease with this, not to forget that no emotion will last.

I’m glad to have the air cleared and I’m no longer embarrassed about the mess of my feelings. She has totally endeared herself to me. What can I do? I’m just happy that she’s alive and that I know her. I’m not asking for any more.

This past semester is gone, it should sit back as happy memories. We will change as will our relationship. Fortunately, only three people know what she is to me, Frances, Amina and myself. It’s a lot of love flowing around and I won’t act like I can stop it and make it permanent. And I will always have the card she sent from the airport, and the most important words to me in her handwriting.

Fort Lee, NJ

I called their bluff and I’m in the apartment upstairs, not downstairs. There were probably some ulterior motives as well since their attitude changed so drastically. They are having their house re-painted and they’re buying some new furniture for what was my room, so they probably saw the benefit in my not being there. It also gave them an excuse to make me move the bed that was in that room to the office, so I even have a bed!

The walls of what was my room were all marked with oil spots where posters hung, and I had wall to wall, ceiling to floor posters on three walls which annoyed them to no end. Then sometime in 1984 I turned them all upside down, and that bothered them even more since it made me look abnormal. Then after I left for college I removed them all leaving oil blotches all over the walls. I removed them because I was de-personalizing the room, but as long as the stains were there, they were the reminder that it was my room. Not anymore.

Nasty reminders. It’s incredible how bad memories can get. It offends me to think of that house as sanctuary, where I did the main body of my growing.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Within twelve hours after arriving in New Jersey, I didn’t want to deal with anyone anymore. I just want to distance from everyone. What role do friends play in personal dramas? Do they really want to know what’s going on or do they have better things to do and worry about? They have their own problems and there’s nothing they can do about mine. So why would they want to hear about mine? Thus the distance, the trademark of my immaturity.

So the ‘rents told me there would be no problem in living in the apartment above their office so that commuting to NYU would be much easier. Suddenly they present me with the problems. Not problems, but rather what I have to do if I want to use the apartment. In the afternoons, patients sleep off anesthetics in that apartment, so I can’t be there in the afternoon. I wouldn’t have a bed. I’d have to put all my stuff in one room and get a lock for the door.

Or, in the alternative, I can use the basement apartment and they give me the key to it. No furniture, not much of a floor, they just put in a new floor but no carpeting, and this type of floor wasn’t made for the option of carpeting, it was made for carpeting. I forgot to check the plumbing, but from my overall sense of the apartment, high marks are not going to be scored there, either.

Well, if they see me fit for that apartment, fine, it’ll still beat living in their house. Which is probably exactly what they want. Keep their sphere of power and control tight. I’ll call their bluff and I’ll take the apartment.

84 S. Park, Oberlin

Well, I’m packed and set to go back to New Jersey, the lion's den. Things are just ready to explode under a polite veneer of carefully hidden provocations and tests. But we do try to sound oh so delightfully nice to each other. Where did I get this fucked up idea that parents are supposed to be concerned about their children’s lives and futures; that they look out for their best interests? It just doesn’t work that way.

I need to latch onto people who I care about and who care about me. When things start falling apart, keep in mind that there are people who matter. Usually when things go wrong I’m focused on the negative moment and only think about myself and my own destruction. It may be just an exercise, but it might be a good defense to run people like Amina and Frances through my mind when things get hot.

84 S. Park, Oberlin

I have Amina on my mind all the time now. She’s automatic. Every empty hole in my thinking is filled with Amina. Building up images and expectations. It’s dangerous. All I know about her is from one sparse semester of a really good friendship.

My hands keep going back to the card she sent from JFK and the words “I love you” that she wrote. So real and yet I keep on telling myself that it’s a misunderstanding. I do that to keep myself safe. But those words, and I remember sitting with her on the grass in Tappan Square and I remember walking back from Third World House with her arm in mine and I remember her kissing me on the cheek at the airport and I remember kissing her on the cheek at the airport, and I...

We weren’t meant to be together. She’s not in the scheme of my life. She is the tension in my life, or else what? Be happy? No fucking way. I will always reach for her, I might even touch her, but I’ll never have her and I’ll never keep her, nor would I want to. My feelings towards her are not to possess.

I wish I could get her off of my mind, though. Just forget her until I get her response. I am in love with her, though. Sometimes I think of her and my breath just goes.

84 S. Park, Oberlin

Still in front of the computer working on an outline for my second paper for Modern Japan. I hate this.

Hours inside, lit by incandescent light, lit by computer screen, contemplating gender stereotypes and the post-war psychology behind them in a country currently very much in daylight.

And then I walk out the front door and awestruck by the waning crescent moon. How rare to see it, usually being asleep when it’s lit on the left side. So thin and the sky already a deep indigo and only the brightest of stars visible, yellow and looking so fake so low over the horizon. Thought of Amina far over that horizon.

Take my breath away to save that image forever.

Breath taken, image saved, what about samurai values still being expressed through mass media? Any connection with worshiping women’s feet? Hey, I’m onto something now.

84 S. Park, Oberlin

I’m still trying to get words onto the computer screen for those incompletes. I’m so worthless. I’m changing sentences because they don’t fit right on the screen. Well, maybe I’m not that bad, but I think about it.

I hate my life with all the various expectations on me and all I’m trying to do is figure out what kind of person I’m to be. The ‘rents thwart that effort time and again. They’ve never recognized themselves as the problem nor do they realize that they still are. They’ve been the cause of some difficult situations. But as messily as I handled them, I think back and realize how much worse I could have handled them.

Something has to happen. Something has to change. But how do I change if they don’t? For a while I was thinking how little right I have to complain. They aren’t hitting me or being outright, intentionally malicious. They provide and pay for me in full. But what I’m doing is just swinging to the complete other side of the argument, the side in their favor. For every argument giving them the benefit of doubt, there’s a counter-argument that invalidates or overrides it.

The ways that they abuse their wealth and privilege and aren’t even aware of it. It’s disgusting, sad. I sit and wonder whether my life would have fallen apart without all the things they literally bought. Things that make it feel as if I’ve been bought.

That’s how they see it. Money means so much to them and that is how they express their love. But money is money and love is love, and if you think one is the other, you find that the receipts just don’t add up. People see their money surrounding me and see no reason why I shouldn’t be glad for what I’ve got. As if I owe them something.

People say they’re not bad. I sit and ponder what they’ve done to my life. Some things I can readily identify, many more I’m sure I won’t discover until later. Is it a coincidence that I’ve just given up on music and that is exactly what they’ve always wanted? It’s a strong position of power parents have, and they’ve put a psychological stranglehold on all my interests until there’s only one option left.

Clever. They don’t do anything. They don’t have to do anything in a mind-play. They never say, “No, you can’t”. But they know and they wait until the only option I have left is business school or law school and thank god I don’t have the merit for those options or I’d have a bullet in my head by the time I’m twenty-six.

Money works for them, so they think it’ll work on me. They’re counting on my greed and material comfort to get what they want. Bastards. But it’s my life and unlike them I can take or leave it as I please.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

I just erased all the May and June entries up to now. They were just too emotionally high strung from the stress; lots of bitching. I didn’t like how they described what I was going through. Those times are probably better reflected upon in retrospect.

Amina dominated the month of May. She actually dominated the entire semester in a more subtle way, but obviously I was in denial since I didn’t mention her until the end of April. It feels like Amina has been in my life a long time, and the time when she wasn’t in my life was a long, long time ago. It was just last semester that she wasn’t in my life.

Last semester, with Myung as my housemate, feels like ancient history. I do remember seeing Amina in Third World House early last semester. I’ll never forget it. It was in the foyer and she was walking through, I was hanging out or something. My first sight of her was her profile, she was wearing a brown coat, and I saw her and the words “most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen” flashed in my mind.

She started eating at Veggie at the end of the semester and I remember being excited about that, and I shamelessly put myself in her presence and was openly friendly so that she would be in the crowd I usually sat with. Of course I resisted any thought of being interested in her, I staved off any hope that we could be closer. I had no idea that I would grow to feel the way I feel about her now.

She was away in Chicago for Winter Term when Ken and I were recording. We didn’t write or anything and I don’t even remember when she came back. At that point we were only acquaintances, but we were friendly and the watercolors she did over Winter Term were an excuse to hang out with her. Shameless.

It all started with the “Moons for Goons” class we had together. I can’t believe I didn’t mention Amina at all through this. I didn’t notice that she was at the first class. It was when I was walking down to Veggie for lunch that she came up from behind, calling me. It was cold and overcast, and I was pleased as punch that she was in the class. We had class three times a week and always sat together and almost always walked down to Veggie together afterwards.

Dinners we ate together and I still can’t believe that wasn’t enough to warrant mentioning her in here. We were good friends by Spring Break. We didn’t have “Moons for Goons” the week before Break, so we didn’t have that time together. I know I was feeling something by then, but still trying to deny and repress it.

By her birthday in April, I know I was trying to get her to like me and endear myself to her. I gave her a Calvin & Hobbes book and wrote something in it about meeting in San Francisco after Oberlin. All in affectionate fun. But I knew she had a boyfriend by that time, too.

She went to visit her lifelong and best friend, Anjum, at Allegheny College on the first weekend of May. She left on Friday morning, so she missed “Moons for Goons” and I remember not being able to pay attention because I was missing her and couldn’t stop thinking about her.

She had gone by bus, and I couldn’t believe that her return trip was going to have her wait three hours in Cleveland at the slimy bus station there, and then it would arrive in Elyria so late that she would have to call a taxi to get back to Oberlin.

I wasn’t going to have that, so I told her to call me on Saturday to arrange for me to pick her up in Cleveland. The problem was that my car was dead. I tried to get it fixed in time, but they couldn’t do it, so I asked Kyung if I could borrow his car. I don’t know Kyung that well, just that he is one of Myung’s best friends here, and he said, “sure” in a way only Kyung can. An odd pigeon he.

I wasn’t home when she called on Saturday, but she left a message. When I heard her voice on the machine, my heart gave me a swift kick in the ass. It occurred to me at that moment how great much I was in love with her and had been all along. I was already there, but that message really woke me up to the fact.

I went to pick her up at 9:30 at night, the time she told me to go, and I only had to wait a few minutes before she got off the bus. At which point she apologized for having told me the wrong time, it was supposed to arrive at 9:00 but was delayed half an hour. “But you didn’t tell me the wrong time.” And it was perfect anyway.

To see her again after the big realization was a tad overwhelming, but still I knew she had a boyfriend and I wasn’t going to push anything or make anything uncomfortable by making my feelings known. I committed myself to keep it on the inside and not let her ever know.

The semester was winding down to its inevitable end, and very soon after that, I went over to Amina’s room in Third World House to study for one of the last quizzes for “Moons”. It was very friendly and almost intimate and we studied and chatted until it got late and later.

She looked tired, I was tired, it was late, we were comfortable, I asked her if she wanted to get some sleep, purposely avoiding asking her directly if she wanted me to leave. She said, “...no,” so cute and sweet my heart fluttered. So we kept on what we were doing, slowing down, several times I mentioned that I guess I should be going, but it never happened. In a half-daze the night turned into morning, it was just beautiful and peaceful and wonderful and I couldn’t believe it was happening.

I dropped off at about 6:00-ish, it was getting light outside, and I think she did, too. The lights were still on. Maybe it was earlier. She managed to get up and out for her morning classes. I woke up to an empty room at around 8:30 and decided to skip my first two classes.

I was stunned for the next two days, and that’s when discomfort and uncertainty crept into our relationship, after all she still had a boyfriend. It was the tension of an attraction, coupled with the fact she had a boyfriend and my resolution to not interfere with their relationship. I was constantly grappling with myself to detach. Perhaps that came across as coldness on my part, I don’t know.

But a distance set in and it started driving me crazy. I wanted to make things clear between us and save our friendship that had become so very precious. Unfortunately my attempts at clarity just made things muddier. I was trying to convey that I wanted to respect her relationship with her boyfriend because I respected her, but instead I said something about assuming a distance and . . . it just came out all wrong. I think it sounded like our closeness had been fake.

But the communication was for the better and our friendship wasn’t irreparably damaged. At least it still existed. She continued to be cold and distant through reading and exam period, and sometimes she was outright insensitive. We were going through exam stress, and her return to Karachi after exams was a looming fact.

But then she finished her assignments and exams and there were only four days until she left the country. Four days that have completely dominated my perception of our relationship and my feelings towards her. Four days overshadowed weeks, but that’s how it is in love. Four huge days where we spent so much time together. I don’t know why things changed so much in those four days. It never occurred to me that she was getting any closer, I thought that she just sensed my feelings regarding her departure and she was just being kind.

We picked up Anjum from the train station on Monday morning, the day before they were to leave together. Anjum hadn’t gotten any sleep, and so when we got back to Amina’s room, she went to sleep and Amina and I went into her roommate’s part of the room and talked more.

She needed to run some errands and I went to deliver Art and Amitabh to the airport. When I got back from the airport, I delivered Anjum and Amina to Neelam’s house since they had to leave the dorms and that’s where they were staying for the night. Afterwards I seem to recall a Can Consortium rehearsal and delivering Gil to the Inn to catch a bus.

I got back to my apartment to two incredibly cute messages from Amina on the machine. A bunch of us, Pasha, Amina, Anjum, Neelam, Ethan, and Tushu, were gonna cook and have dinner at my place that night. It was a delightful evening that passed into night, it almost felt like family and I was so in love with Amina.

Tushu wanted to listen to music, Pasha wanted to talk. Anjum took a nap in my room, and eventually people started dispersing. Amina had promised to visit Jenny before she left, so after walking Anjum and Neelam to Neelam’s house, Pasha, Amina, and I walked over to Third World House where Jenny was cleaning dorm rooms.

We weren’t there long. While walking home, Amina slipped her arm in mine and I pressed it close. Why am I reliving this? The details are so vivid. Pasha the third wheel among us. When we got back to my place, we convinced Pasha to stay while I walked Amina back to Neelam’s house. We walked very slowly.

Returning to my place alone, I felt like my world was falling apart. Walking on the moon. I stayed up a little while compiling songs for a mix tape for Amina, but then decided to get a little sleep, an hour and half.

I went over to Neelam’s at 5:00. The door was locked and so I just waited outside until she came downstairs which I knew she would. There was no hiding my sadness, I didn’t even try. She couldn’t find her jacket with her walkman in it. We left without them and I told her to take my walkman. I forced my energy up. No depression, no sadness, I didn’t want to go to the airport moping.

At the airport I dropped them off at the curb and went to park the car. I rushed to meet up with them and then it was a short walk to the gate, too short. The plane was already boarding. We hugged and I held her tight. Anjum was standing there waiting, so I said, “Anjum, I can’t let go of her”. But I did. We kissed each other on the cheek almost simultaneously as if it were the most natural thing for us to do, as if we had been doing it all along.

It was a long walk back to my car, leaving a trail of pieces of a broken heart and rushed because I was afraid of crying. I managed to hold back until I was on the highway.

I got home at about 6:45 and stayed awake because I knew Pasha would be waking soon and I had to take him and Tushu to get their work papers in Cleveland. Neelam came along, too. We dropped Pasha and Tushu off at the INS and Neelam and I went to the East Asian grocery stores.

Amina was all I could think about and I was mentioning her name right and left, even though no one knew or cared about what I felt about her. It’s not that I was trying to talk about her, she had just become so much a part of my semester that for every topic that came up, I had an association with Amina.

Tushu and Pasha got their papers and we decided to go to Coventry to look around and have lunch. They paid. That’s why they suddenly started talking in Bengali. We wandered for a bit and then headed back to Oberlin. We got back at about 14:30 and I went straight to sleep in the bed that Anjum had took a nap in, and Anjum was Amina’s best friend and was with her right now.

Pasha wasn’t home when I woke up several hours later when Amina called from JFK. God, I needed that, just to hear her voice. It put my feet back on the ground. Amina was real and I was very much in love with her. It really lifted my spirits, but then at 22:00 I crashed again because I remembered that was the time her flight was scheduled to leave New York.

I started a letter to her. I had to mention that I love her and I apologized for it and admitted that I appreciated her being kind to me in the last days; I was sure she was just being kind. I sent the letter the next day, Wednesday, and then on Thursday, as I half expected, I received something from her which she had sent from JFK.

She wrote something that totally knocked the wind out of me. She ended the card with, “Did I mention that I love you? I do.” I melted and tortured myself pondering the many ways that could be interpreted. There weren’t many ways. I discussed it all with Frances and she was a big help.

So then I wrote a letter which spilled all the beans. I clarified that thing about disrespecting her relationship with her boyfriend that I had flubbed weeks ago in Tappan Square. I also told her that I stand by it, I don’t know why I did that.

If she really does love me, she can tell me so. If she never meant it that way, then I gave her an out. I did the right thing, I guess. I’m still waiting for a reply. It takes three weeks for a correspondence to go one way to Pakistan. I’ve got a long wait. I’ve sent four letters in the last two and a half weeks. Things are going to cross.

I’m prepared for anything. I guess writing the letter the way I did was also preparation for me in case the news is bad. Amina’s not going to be at Oberlin in the Fall, she’ll be on the Dublin program. Ireland.

I’m still in Oberlin because I have two incompletes. I decided to drop one and I’m starting to doubt whether or not I can finish this remaining one. This summer is going to be a challenge. Things are pretty bad with the ‘rents and I can foresee things exploding. Very tense.

I’m taking summer school at NYU and I don’t want to stay at their house. They have an apartment above their office I can use, but they need it every day to let patients sleep off anesthesia. Lots and lots of problems. I don’t want to stick around after school is over, either, but I don’t have anywhere to go.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

I don’t love Amina. I am not falling in love with Amina. I am not falling in love with Amina. I don’t love Amina. I don’t love Amina. I don’t love Amina. I have no special feelings for Amina. Amina is not special. I don’t love Amina. I absolutely don’t love Amina. I don’t love Amina. I don’t love Amina. I don’t love Amina. I am not falling in love with Amina. I’m not falling in love with Amina.

The more I say it, the more I love Amina. A beautiful, impossible love. There’s no way that this love could be fulfilled. Our different backgrounds, our different types, I think she has a boyfriend.

I wouldn’t want anything to happen between us. But this love is nevertheless quite real, as is the pain of knowing that it will never be fulfilled. And it is just as beautiful. As beautiful as she is. It is all the more painful knowing the impossibility, but it’s also all the more beautiful because of it. It is totally impractical, totally unreasonable.

Amina makes me happy. I love being with her. I love how she speaks, I love how she communicates, I love how she receives me. And that is how it will always be and it will never change. I have been in love with her all this while and I’ve been trying to ignore it by not mentioning her at all in here and telling myself that I don’t love Amina.

I never wanted my being with her to seem like a come-on, but there’s no denying it anymore. Amina is a romantic, too, but I don’t know if we’re the same kind. Does she believe that the nature of being a romantic could be the realization of things being unfulfilled? Unrequited love. Essentially . . . suffering. What’s new? So what do I do?

I guess the best thing would be to fall in love with someone else. Next year perhaps, someone new. A new start, fresh beginnings. I’m afraid of my life becoming one that is characterized as one without Amina. Future come faster, I’m tired of waiting.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

Existence is unbearable. Form, existence, being and meaning are all unbearable. Everything is subjective and socialized. Different perspectives are the same thing as different realities. Five people witness a car accident, five different perspectives of it, five different realities informing what each one witnesses. And so you have five conflicting statements about what happened.

I cut my arm and that means nothing to me and other people think it’s awful. Why do they think it’s awful? I like my own blood. I think it’s fascinating and I love the color and its vitality. They’ve been socialized about certain norms and consider those norms universal realities. I don’t consider what I do disturbed or psychotic. Some people just have a big problem accepting other people’s realities.

We are all in samsara. The way I see it, every sentient being is suffering whether they know it or not. Sentience is the key to the suffering and also the great opportunity to get out of it. Existence is suffering. There is no gauge for suffering. Of course, we gauge everyone else’s suffering by our own; something we shouldn’t do. A Buddhist reality doesn’t apply to a non-Buddhist.

Atheists aren’t in samsara. When they die, they just die. Christians go to heaven or hell and then they get raised and judged at the apocalypse. So maybe we aren’t all in samsara and maybe non-Buddhists aren’t suffering. Our realities aren’t comparable. Christians aren’t reborn. They live one life and then they die. In fact, I have no idea what happens to Christians, I’m not one. I shouldn’t even be venturing into those waters. We believe in what happens and what happens depends on what we believe in.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

Each consecutive occurring moment is “reality”. What happens to it when it passes and becomes “memory”? What happens to the “reality” character of it? What is the difference in the character between the moment in which it was happening and the moment once it passed? Each moment is so vivid in the exact moment it happens, then it becomes abstract, a memory, a thought, a reflection.

This being, that’s what is on my mind. I consider my current situation. The stress of this semester, the ‘rents, the money, my future, and on the bottom of all of it is my being.

I hate being with people. I don’t hate the people. I hate how I behave around them. I hate myself afterwards for behaving the way I did. I hate interacting socially and being totally unaware of how little of myself I’m really communicating. I hate feeling like I’d been trying to communicate something. So why am I writing this? What do I hope to communicate? I’m writing this just for myself, no one else, and anyone who might read this isn’t doing it for me, they’re reading it only for themselves.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

It was a beautiful warm Spring night, and I was walking back to my apartment when I heard wind chimes ringing in the distance. I thought how beautiful it sounded on such a night and how perfect they were. There was a slight breeze and the sound of the chimes were so delicate and they captured the slight drizzle that was falling.

There was something lonely about the sound, something reminiscent and far away. It was the sound of displacement being declared through memories and the reminders of where they belong and where they don’t belong. I tried to locate the source of the chimes and to note who put them up, but I couldn’t pinpoint where they were coming from. Then I reached the driveway of the apartment complex and looked up to my window and was surprised to see that I had left my window open and that they were my wind chimes.

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

The Can Consortium got back from Spring Tour yesterday. It was really good, much better than last year. We had kick-ass gigs at Wesleyan, Hampshire College, and an “illegal” gig in Washington Square Park in NYC since we didn’t have a permit. It was probably the climax of the tour for the stress alone.

Our first gig was at a bar-restaurant in Ithaca called “The Nines”. I took a bus there from New York on the day the rest of the band traveled from Oberlin, and they picked me up at the bus station right before the gig. We didn’t play very well, but the audience liked us and the energy was enough to make it a near kick-ass gig.

We had a horrible gig at Tufts in Boston. The turnout was bad and the energy was low and I was pissed at the band. A lot of it was stress being smack in the middle of a bunch of white people playing black music and not feeling I fit in one way or another. We had a free day in Boston and I met up with Lisa, Linus and Art and we went out for dinner at an amazing Vietnamese vegetarian restaurant. It was such a breath of fresh air.


Tufts University, Boston. Myla Goldberg, future author of bestseller "Bee Season" on the left. Me with a bad attitude.

The band left Boston with a lot of negative energy and we were all kind of sick of each other by the time we got to Hampshire College. Getting lost several times didn’t help the situation. We arrived screaming rude and cocked full of attitude and went straight for the beer and alcohol. But the tension helped us when we had to play because we rocked our asses off and it was amazing. We were playing outside and it was cold and people were dancing and there was a balcony above and behind us where people were dancing and cheering.


Hampshire College, balcony view. Myla on the boogie down playing percussion.

After that gig, I slept in one of the cars because I found the “hosts”, the people who were putting us up for the night, particularly offensive, racially speaking. It was flurrying when I woke up, but I think I had a better sleep than most of them. Then we had to decide whether or not we wanted to play at Washington Square Park. We had discussed doing the gig back at Oberlin, but since it was in public and wasn’t booked, it wasn’t something we had to do.

It looked grim. We were split and under the gun since if we wanted to do the gig, we would have to leave immediately and about half of us were up for just chilling. It was also snowing and we were all pretty tired. We decided to head down to New York and left the decision up in the air.

When we got to New York, the weather was actually pretty nice. It was an ordeal getting all the vehicles into the Washington Square Park area and parked since we all got separated on the way down (apparently the Ryder truck carrying the instruments had a pretty harrowing experience going through one of the tunnels leading into Manhattan).

It was a quick decision to play, no real discussion, just a few adamant “let’s do it”s and anyone against didn’t have much say. There was particular urgency on the part of the person driving the truck. Once the Ryder was on the sidewalk, either we were playing or the truck was getting the hell out of there. So we schlepped and we schlepped and set up the pans faster than we ever did before. A huge crowd gathered on all sides and the excitement was electric and we ripped through our set. It was quite scary. The police were present but they didn’t bother us, they were content just to ticket the Ryder truck.



After playing for about 40 minutes, we broke down and packed up faster than we ever had before. At the end of the day, we got a $60 ticket for parking the truck on the sidewalk, but we managed to collect over $200 in merchandise and . . . pan-handling.

Our last gig was at a lower Manhattan church on Sunday morning since one of our member’s father was a priest or something. I went home to New Jersey after the Washington Square Park gig, and drove in for the gig. It was a pretty good gig, and afterwards I parted ways with the band, picked up Ching Ching who was staying in Harlem and we headed back to Oberlin.


Spontaneous band shot just after arriving in Middletown, CT, for our Wesleyan gig.


Wesleyan University

I felt really strange being back today. It felt as if something had changed; nothing permanent I’m sure. I really didn’t want to hang out with Asians and I didn’t even eat dinner at Third World House. I felt a distinction between personal identity and community identity and I didn’t feel like I wanted to attach myself to crowds, be them Asian or white.

It seems odd that it’s possible to separate community and personal identities, but it’s something about the Asian American community. The feeling is that it’s just a clique, or a bunch of cliques, bunches of people who have something in common but don’t feel it deep within. It’s superficial.

It’s so hard for us who have to identify ourselves through community, rather than have our identities define the community. I don’t find any support through the community per se, they’re just the friends that I have through default. I don’t like hanging out with white people. It would seem that community should be able to act as some sort of support structure and this one doesn’t.

I look at people in the Asian American community, both people I know well and people I hardly know, and something seems intangibly sad in them. So many are so fucked up it’s incredible. The politics exist and are valid, but psychologically a lot seems to be going ignored. The community here is characterized by some social pathology it seems.

I don’t feel like being a part anymore. There is something humiliating about it. Something humiliating on the same lines as living in this white society and with a white culture which erases you, ignores you, appropriates your people, their identities, and their culture at their convenience. It is humiliating trying to put yourself in any group of people when you really don’t belong. And it’s not the color of your skin or your roots or origins, it’s the people. And what kind of community is it when you didn’t even know it existed until college?

84 S. Park St., Oberlin

Buddhist truths are true for me because something in me intuits their truth, not because of what’s been taught or what’s in books - what someone else has said. Truth has to come from the inside. Otherwise they are just thoughts, ideas, facts, information. The problem with this formulation is when the outside sources, undoubtedly someone else's truth on the same topic, clashes with my own internal truths.

Samsara is the physical world, the suffering world in which we live as a result of our delusions. It’s a basic concept of Buddhism, not difficult to accept once you understand the first noble truth of Buddhism that life is suffering. And once you have the first noble truth, you get the three other noble truths: 2) suffering is caused by desire; 3) there is a way out of suffering; 4) the eightfold path is the way out of suffering. So the goal of embracing the Four Noble Truths is to escape suffering.

I recognize a conflict in my desire to die, since killing myself would supposedly just return me into samsara. And in my next life, I don’t know how much of the knowledge I’ll retain or have access to from this life. That’s the big risk. I don’t know if I’ll have the experiences that will lead me to the search that I hold so precious in this life. I’m dealing with something totally unknown to me. Without any personal revelations on the topic, maybe I should just listen to what the Buddhists say in case they’re right.

I may as well live out this life for whatever that’s worth, hoping at the very least that I might be better off than if I killed myself. The thing is that I’m not trying to be better off, which might be a faulty endeavor at best, and I’m not making getting out of samsara a goal of my life. Living my life to achieve that end doesn’t make any sense to me, that has less worth than killing myself and being true to my nature. Getting out of samsara isn’t a human desire I have, it’s just sort of a Buddhist fact that I can accept, like fish in a river. Just go where the river flows.

Previous karmic matter is added with this life’s karma and regroups and is reborn into another lifetime of suffering, another realm of samsara. Each lifetime resonates with reflections, ripples and repercussions of previous lifetimes.

I totally disagree with a white EAS professor who said there is no connection between a person in one lifetime who creates karma, and the reincarnated person in the next lifetime, born with the karma. Why would anyone care about karma if the results of their actions in their lifetime affects a future lifetime, but they themselves have nothing to do with that future lifetime?

What is so undesirable about samsara is knowing that the suffering will repeat, lifetime after lifetime, until you attain enough merit to transcend it. It’s a personal stake that makes it so undesirable. Without that personal stake, it’s OK to kill yourself because when your karmic matter regroups, it has nothing to do with the “you” that you know was suffering. And if the regrouped karmic matter doesn’t like it, it can kill itself, too.

The problem is that I’m arguing for a “self”, and “no-self” is also a lynchpin concept of Buddhism. But the “unidentified karmic matter” just doesn’t square. Maybe it all makes sense from an enlightened point of view, but it gets lost in translation when communicated to unenlighteneds.

But for people who are unenlightened, the self is necessary. Actually, I don’t think I’ll hear any argument against that, it sounds like ego-identification of the self and unenlightenment can be definitions for each other. But to argue for continuity, there are some things we just know, some things we just can do, some things we’re just not afraid of. I think that’s the result of continuity, karmic leakage from previous lifetimes. Continuity of karmic matter is a necessary part of the self. What happens to us in each lifetime is not the only result of previous lifetimes, but what we are is also affected by what we were in previous lifetimes. Each lifetime is informed by previous karmic matter and information.

So anyway, if I did kill myself or actively let myself be killed, I’d be reborn into samsara with more negative karmic matter. A simple, linear equation that probably isn’t right, but all I have to go on for now, and if I die now and am reborn, there’s no guarantee that I’ll be able to continue this path, much less continue the path with less torment and obstacles than I have now. So blah, blah, blah I should count my blessings and realize how lucky I am to have the karmic matter I have now. Now that’s good shit!!

This lifetime is a grand opportunity, I know what I know. Still, it’s so hard. I’ve been trying. I’ve been running so many options. And the option I’ve been taking is to just let my life run its own way. There are so many ways to practice, there shouldn’t be much room for discouragement.

Monastic life isn’t necessarily an answer, even monastic rites and rituals may be attachments and delusions. I have confidence that these daily frustrations of trying to find the right way to the Way will not be in vain and someday I will be able to realize what it is I must be to fall on that path.

Tomorrow Spring Break starts and I head east. I’ll be on tour with the Can Consortium (steel drum band). I’m driving to New Jersey first to take Ching Ching to New York, and then I’ll meet up with the band for our first gig in Ithaca.

Oh yeah, I sold my guitar.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

What is the truth I’m searching for? It has nothing to do with faith, belief, or desire. It’s just something known, it’s what I just know is true. Truth is in intuition, it is whatever clicks as truth when it is encountered. The truth isn’t in learnings, sutras, doctrines or discourse, although in those you can find directions and arrows pointing. Knowledge isn’t truth, it’s just a reservoir of information from which to excise truth.

Whatever is not truth is delusion. The physical world is not truth, it’s delusion. Unfortunately, I can’t tell when something isn’t delusion. Not even knowledge of the fact is any help. My realization that something is delusion doesn’t do anything to help me see beyond it. Being aware of delusions is not the key to get rid of them. It only means that delusions exist and are also real.

How can I even think about having a family and raising kids? I keep thinking about how sacred family is, but for most part, family members treat each other like shit, and I look at my family and there’s not much to look at. I would want any family that I’m responsible for to recognize the meaning of that bond and the gift of such a unit. But how do you reproduce and pass on those kindnesses and values concerning family? How can you make sure they’re reciprocated and then ultimately reproduced again? This is pointless; you can’t.

There’s always gonna be a bad egg in any family. There will always be a jerk who, even if kindnesses are extended, will use family as an excuse to take advantage of them. Family is such a gift, peace in the family is such a gift, how do you express that and pass it on? It’s such a gift to pass on joy and to make others smile.

I wonder where I got these values. Why did I reject the ‘rent’s shit-for-values? How did I know they opposed my nature? It definitely was a matter of survival. If I wasn’t true to myself, I don’t think I could have survived. So no matter how hard they pushed and how insidious their methods, I never lost sight of what the stakes were and I kept angry and used my anger as a shield against them. It was a reactionary response.

I’m not sure when the anger started. As far back as I had awareness of it, I hated their values and reacted against them. Where they neglected the value of family, I learned to appreciate it. Where they were inflexible, I learned to appreciate flexibility. Where they were closed-minded, I appreciated open-mindedness. Where they didn’t communicate, I learned to value communication. Where they raised us like it was their obligation, I learned courtesy. In a twisted way I appreciate that the ‘rents are such jerks. It allowed me to develop into the character I am now and I wouldn’t change it for most part.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

A student of Zen once approached Master Joshu. He said to Joshu, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?”. Joshu replied, “Fuck you”.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

What sort of person am I to be?
Upon what should my life be based?
What do I want from other people and from relationships with them?
What is it that will get me through day to day?
Everything is based on pain. Life is suffering. Nothing is permanent. So nothing is permanent, what does that mean?

I want to be remembered. Not because of ego, not for legacy’s sake, but for the sake of fascination. Sometimes I wonder about my ancestors, what were they like? Were any of them like me? Maybe some family member in the future might wonder something similar and I might provide an answer. Even though it doesn’t mean a thing to me.

But how can I be remembered when I can’t stand people. I can’t stand my role in the world. I would like to entirely close up and shut myself in. I would like to disappear without a trace. But then I’m scared that I’m going to miss something.

Maybe I should just face it and realize that there’s nothing I can be that is satisfactory. Everything I do is borne out of pain, I create that pain, I bring it to me and encircle myself in it. Everything I am, everything I do is borne out of pain and everything I am and everything I do is designed to create more pain for myself. This intolerable existence is getting more and more understandable.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

School business has started. I really regret being an EAS major, what a stupid major to be. I regret not having taken more substantive classes, things like Sociology, Women’s Studies, and Third World Studies. I simply didn’t come to college with that kind of focus. College was assumed to follow high school, no choice in the matter. What a waste.

Sakuko has started calling me, I wish she wouldn’t. Everything has changed and what’s in the past has passed. After we broke up, I wrote two nice letters to her and she didn’t respond. Her silence has set how I feel now and I don’t want to hear from her now. We can't resume something now. It’s too difficult.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

Time passes so quickly. Winter Term is running down to its last few days and I still have a lot to do with this recording project. Ken and I have run into tensions. He seems to have flip-flopped and instead of being stressed about getting it done, he’s not so concerned about it and tells me not to stress or worry about getting it done. He said something the other day which I think really puts it into perspective. He said the project is more mine than his. And that’s the main source of the tension because that one comment made us both look unfavorably on the project.

He does have a point, though. They are his songs, he did the writing and it’s his expression, but the recording is my production and more of me is going into these songs than he would ever intend. Maybe I’m diluting the songs by putting a dimension of me into them and so I think he thinks I’m trying to usurp the songs or the project. Which would explain why I’ve been losing sleep doing this project. But if he’s disassociating himself from the project because he thinks I’m taking control of it, that makes me disassociate from it because these aren’t my songs, they aren’t my expression, I’m not the talent involved here. The value of my work only exists if he sees value in it.

Today I worked for about five hours on “The Ballad of Charlie Ohara”, “The Damage is Done”, and “Seven Years”, getting them ready for Ken to put down vocals. I ran into the time that we had agreed to get together and I think he was pissed at having to wait. It pretty much summed up the tension between us. But when he put down some vocals and they turned out really well, I think he was happier about that because he could finally hear results of what we’ve been doing. But then I think I pissed him off again by cutting things short because I had to meet Pasha and Ann for dinner and I wasn’t about to cancel on time with Pasha.

Weekend had more babies. I’ve got thirteen gerbils in that ten gallon tank. There were eight new babies total, but two died. Such innocence. Such life, not knowing anything, just doing what it does - live. Then being crushed, having that life squeezed out and feeling pain, but not really since it didn’t know what pain is. Then being dead. Was that a soul right there, come and gone?

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

Today was a pretty bad day. My car broke down again and recording hasn’t been going optimally. I think I’m going to leave the car in New Jersey after this semester. I don’t know enough about cars to warrant having one. If the only solution to problems is shelling out money, I don’t want it. I don’t want to be like the ‘rents. So until I can get rid of it, I’ll just have to live with the stress and remember that the ‘rents are paying for it. It’s not my car, it’s not even my life yet. It’s their life, so what the fuck ever.

There is only a week until college stuff starts up and Ken has been stressed about getting the recording done. I can sort of understand his frustration. He doesn’t see what’s getting done because I like working alone. And there was also a load of prep work that needed to get done and no tangible results came out of that. Things like planning tracks, recording click tracks, deciding on orchestrations, learning the songs, etc.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

Winter Term
For Winter Term, Ken and I are arranging and recording a bunch of his songs on my four-track. I finally accepted how good his songs are and I approached him last semester about recording them. When I first heard his songs I was able to admit they were clever, but I condescendingly brushed them off as being lightweight because they were humorous. I think it was a blow to my pride to admit that he was a much better songwriter than I am.

But the more I heard and the more he played them at coffeehouses, there was no denying that he is an exceptional songwriter. He writes a lot of songs with Asian American issues and themes and what he invokes with his lyrics are stunning. The more I get to know the songs, I’m realizing that this is quality material in every aspect. The lyrics are amazing, the melodies are catchy, the music is simple but solid, the stories are developed, and the subject matter relevant.

My doubts are now about whether I can rise to the occasion and contribute to them without taking anything away from them. My own stuff is pretty inaccessible and I think my arrangements are also overly complicated and equally inaccessible. So my approach in recording Ken’s songs will have to emphasize simplicity and taste.

Aside from recording Ken's songs and rehearsing with the steel drum band, which I just rejoined after they were kind enough to let me back in (after I quit for a semester because I didn't like being the only person of color in an all white band playing black music), I’m re-recording the vocals of the "One After Another" set of songs I recorded in 1989. My voice back then was so bad that I can hardly bring myself to listen to those songs. But it’s bad, that collection was done, why can’t I just let it rest? That’s what I did back then, why can’t I just accept them the way they are? I hope this isn’t the pattern of my life where I’m constantly going back to re-do things that I should just let go of. Two steps forward, one step back. I’ll make an exception for this project because I think re-recording these vocals will be a significant improvement over what’s on tape now.

Future insertion: Songs with vocals/guitar re-recorded during this time period:

You Don't Have To

I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself

But who am I to say it's a problem?

After all, you're happy

There are some things you'll never do

Some things you'll never say

Some things put off for another day

Any time now, any time

Why not tomorrow?

Why not today?

Right now, right, right now

If it's really right

I guess you got a problem if you got a goal no one can agree with

I guess you got a problem if you're stuck on labels of the human myth

I guess you got a problem if you're caught between expectations and images

I guess you got a problem with communication

I guess you got a problem with relationships

I guess you got a problem if your only wish is to be someone like yourself

Hey there, over there, are you waiting for something?

Something you know may never come

Something you're sure has already begun

And you tell me you'll never see the stars the same way again

In each one lies a memory, but in each one also lies a destiny to choose

And you choose 'cos you have nothing to lose

So you lose it and you can't decide on how you're gonna prove it's alright

Your vision's still in sight or so you think once or twice every day

So you know it as a fact but is that all there may be

To keep your ideals intact and what about your sanity?

A string of indecision may be all you may need

To find yourself off the track, are you scared you won't see?

The crossing up ahead is not for safety

It's not gonna make your crossing risk-free

You may be free of care, but still not carefree

Instead you're gonna have to realize

How many people survive to keep you alive

Some people tell you to be more serious

Some tell you to stop thinking so much

Some people tell you to be more social

Some tell you to stop drinking so much

Some people tell you to not burn yourself out

Some tell you you're not doing enough

Some people tell you you're much too blatant

Some tell you you're not open enough

Some people know that they know it all

You think you know nothing at all

Some people kill to get up that ladder

You're willing to let yourself fall

Because they tell you keep it on the inside

Don't let it out, don't let anyone know

And don't care that you don't want them to cry

'Cause believe me, they'll cry

Though you may keep on asking them why

So where do you draw the line?

They don't want your kind around here

Don't bring your suicides around here

Can you only draw the line?

Will you ever realize?

I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself

The Flow of Water, part II

That razor's gonna fall

That razor's gonna fall

Someone is gonna stand at the top

Of the Empire State Building and drop

The contents of a telephone box

All the words that were were complex verses

Poetry in motion, Times Square in a clock

Unusual habits of usual plots

Unusual habits of usual plots

I've been told many times before

To not play games I can't afford

I'm ashamed pathetic and I'm terribly bored

Of this rat race where everybody wants more

That's one game for which I'm totally broke

For which my engines are throwing up smoke

The one thing certain can't stand to debate

But it's a losing endeavor to change a fate

So I throw the rubber ball

To anyone at all interested

In some genuine moonshine

Revealing contrails against the sky

The paths of maximum resistance

Leads to lesser known planes without assistance

It's a tricky charade to a better existence

Oh I know, do I know?

How would I know?

That day is gonna come

That day is gonna come

That day is when you're shocked by the truth

That you never knew you let go of your youth

And the world from which you thought you were safe

Is here in your hometown throwing guilt in your face

And you can't ignore it and you can't escape

The social Frankenstein we all create

Oh, I can see America at night

And I can see it without any life

I'm scared plenty by the armies of ants

And the giants who crush them with their chemical plants

Oh, one more schoolgirl out on parade

In a fashion show with an image they made

With a conscience overloading heavy in red

With a load of coal for a heart that's dead

Oh, I know, dropping spit on birds

Catching venomous words, flash of light

Retrieving manuals from the Western land

To form the expose of demands

In the house of our ideal

We hear heads against walls, cooking chickens for meals

And the creaking of the stairs to the kitchen revealed

Oh sunshine, the sun shines

Some still shine

So what do we do now after all we have done?

Do we settle and feed the ending we have begun?

It isn't right, it can't be right

To prove the instance of our worth

Crawling on the edge of the railing

At the crux of our birth

This isn't what technology's about

To make us lazy and not care throughout

The process made to detach our doubts

That we may be crashing on our way out

It takes one moment in infinite time

To finally reveal we're in the firing line

To acknowledge our role in accepting our crime

To impersonalize our human kind

It's our loss if we just shake our hands

And tie knots with rubber bands

To weave our tongues within the rotting frame

Seeking someone else to take the blame

In the image of our peers

We know nothing to hear or remove the stains

So we drag the years through finger paints

So we cover our balls to conceal our pain

And we flash our smiles to pretend we're saints

Are we saints? To re-paint or remain?

A Living Room

You and I we sit

Our living room is lit by moonlight

Inside our retreat from the rest of the world

We can see the outside through closed eyes

The traffic goes by

The Hudson seems still out our cold living room window

Ripples shatter reflections of the glow of the city on the other shore

The glow is like a solid dome keeping warm the children safe at home

Streetlamps and windows make patterns of the nightlife's flesh and bones

Points of lights rise into the night from airstrips that stretch and moan

Thousands of crawlers we watch make our gazes towards each other freeze like stone

You and I, we sit

The dawn filters through the trees and we kiss

The sun never shines in the daytime or keeps us warm in this soul abyss

Trapped in mist

We'll stay on these cliffs

The chill air of autumn is a Saturday review of Monday

We close our eyes and ears and hear the cars on the parkway on their winding trip

Seasons twist their romantic shows and leave their marks by the side of the road

Reaching like vines spiraling, it's everything they'll ever know

Caught between the earth and sky confused by which way to go

Traveling through gravid space, it's a hand over hand searching for some room to grow

You and I, we sit

We don't know where to turn, but we know we just can't quit

To leave this sacred ground just leads us to the same perspective shift

In your mercury-lit heaven do you find your dreams so dimly lit?

But how do you just live off bits destined to drift?

And how do you just defy the mould you comfortably fit?

And how do you justify when you can't even admit something's wrong?

How do you?

How do you do?

You and I, we sit

The world is eerily lit by sunlight

Growing up in a way to find that growing up is growing apart and on your guard

Playing so many parts

Each moment is a lifetime

Each sight makes me tremble

My mind assembles fantasies

That send me to the precipice of this towering cliff

  
I’m also recording three new songs. I’m getting the feeling that I want to stop doing my own music after this. It’s just too painful. It’s hard to write and writing makes me look too closely at my source of inspiration, and everything I write is borne out of pain. Every feeling I have is borne out of pain. It’s my very nature, the result of my life experience. When I laugh and make jokes, it’s all out of pain. There’s nothing I feel or am that doesn’t relate back to being in pain. If that’s all that’s in me, if that’s all that I have to express, why bother? Everyone has their own problems.

The three "new" songs from that period:

Hype Money (Not Far Enough)

Here I am, wondering what goes on

At home now I'm on my own

Out here on my own

After so many years of neglect

I wonder if it's had an effect on

Do they worry about me?

Do they know what they have done?

Do they feel any responsibility?

How do they see just what went on?

God, what went on?

Here I am, but what went on in their minds?

When their lives were gripped in distilled expectancy?

Here I am now, here I may be

But what about the time before my memory?

When I could have been anyone

Anyone I could have become

A lump of clay in trusted hands

Trusting hearts for trust in any...

It could have been anyone

Looking for questions to answers I know

And thinking of things I never would show

Rearing and raising, nurturing and aiding

What's the point if you never let them grow?

Should I tell them how they are mistaken?

Cause nothing's given when nothing's taken

Don't tell me I'm one of you

It doesn't feel like I'm one of you

What do I have to prove?

Here I am, but tell me where I should stand

Here among the distant people I call friends

Funny how they try to look like me

Seeing how they never even look at me

Should I try to be somebody?

Should I try to see what they see?

On the edge of the far periphery

Counting time in the skyline by the riverside

Counting time in the skyline by the riverside

By the riverside I touched the water

I touched the water and somebody called my name

Somebody called my name and I came alive

It's so hard to tell what to think of us

Of you, of me, of we, community

Tell me something wrong with what's in common

Between you and me, between you and me

Between you and me

I won't compromise my lifestyle

By refusing to compromise my lifestyle

Open doors after open doors

So many options on as many piles

Just because thoughts are on ink and pages

Don't think they're there for ages on ages

Though you've bled no one knows

What you meant or what you said

Here I am, but I can't figure it out

Trying to see what you're about

Means so much to me

Indigo and Grey

I've got nothing to say

And no one wants to listen to the nothing I've got to say

So I keep my mouth closed, I keep my eyes shut tight

I keep my ears plugged, and my hands out of the daylight

I don't think I wanna know the candy from home

Where the people only judge your pain by their own

They could've sent a life jacket, a cradle or a cousin

I thought it was a girlfriend, when I kissed it I found it wasn't

It could've been a maniac by the way it groveled and moaned

And the way that it asked me, "what is so important about all this flesh and bone?"

He said, "that's the way that we speak"

My attention was drawn and I turned to look

God, how I wanted to be

Be part of that scene, part of something going on

Part of someone else, part of somewhere I'd belong

Maybe I'm half dreaming, half wanting only a fantasy

But it's not enough, it's not enough, not enough

Everything keeps looking blue, but is it exactly blue?

Or is it one of the thousands of shades between indigo and grey?

Is it my imagination that leads the parade?

Like a funeral procession to its final deception

That there really is no blue, and there really is no grey

And there's really no today, tomorrow or yesterday

How can I think what I say?

It's a trick, it's a loss, it's a double-cross

It's when people ask me to stay

When I can't stand them, I stay there anyway

When I wanna kill them, they tell me it's a beautiful day

I'd really like to see them, but why can't they see me first?

They always seem to give up

So I take my .44 to prove I can make it worse

How do you learn to see the sickness?

When it always seems so absurd

This is how we speak, this is how we speak

How do we learn to be heard?

Well I see something lacking in me 'cos I'm not what I'm supposed to be

It's something to hide, and realize and brutalize and never come to terms inside

And Hollywood never had a chance it could've in a second glance

See that it wasn't good, for me, for you, and still it comes in simple words

I guess I finally blew my cover

I guess I let myself get scared

I guess with what I found, should I let myself drown?

I guess I couldn't face another round

God forbid, treating me this way is just to much in such a little space

And alcohol is something not addressed tho' I can see that I'm a mess

This isn't personal, I'm much too busy running from whatever I see coming

And it's near again to me, to you, and still it comes in simple words

I pulled my hands out of my pocket

And rolled the cuffs up on my jacket

I felt the chill of the wind

I wondered where I had been

And turned to looked for where to begin

My Room

I've got four walls and a door

Music for two and a picture of you

Sunlight and spring with winter melting

Shade from trees, a distant bell rings

2 o'clock in the early afternoon

Two plus five is being alive

When we can do whatever we want to

I want to love you the way you love me

If only these dreams could be reality

Future come faster, I'm tired of waiting

It's so cold when you're not here

And I can't hear you whisper in my ear

That there's no more to fear

Take and touch a little and not too much

Be careful with your concrete

It's only where your feet touch the ground

Be careful with your concrete

A soul poured into a shell of a man

That's all you see, that's all that I am

Do you love me for my clever company

With conversations that always seem to be

No more than a kiss in the afternoon?

Who can you trust when you near the end

And all your friends are so uncertain you have to hide?

Their friendly smiles try to conceal

Their prying eyes all in disguise

Best to stay alone

Somewhere to lay down your load

With you within my home

I've got four walls and a door

Music for two and a song for you

Sunlight and spring with winter melting

Shade from trees, a distant bell rings

A kiss from you in the early afternoon

Future addendum (recording notes):

All of these songs were recorded on a first generation Tascam PortaOne Ministudio 4-track cassette tape recorder.

The big difference for me between the tracks of the vocal re-recordings and the new recordings at the time was that for the new recordings the drums were recorded in the Oberlin Can Consortium steel drum band's panyard on our drummer's Yamaha kit with Paiste cymbals (I later turn out to be an adherent of Yamaha drums, and Paiste cymbals are also my favorite, but I don't use them because they break too easily for my style of playing).

The older "One After Another" collection drums were recorded on a cheap Remo Pre-Tuned Head Series set with ridiculously bad cymbals.

A key reason for the re-recordings was that Boss came out with a reverb stomp box that previously didn't exist. Reverb effect boxes otherwise were prohibitively expensive. The original vocals from 2 years prior didn't have any reverb, which was part of the reason they were unlistenable. As bad as the vocals are here, they were originally even worse, believe it or not. 

The guitars were an Ovation that I later sold when I was trying to quit music and I think some tracks used a Guild 12-string acoustic guitar that was later irreparably broken during a "make out" session with some woman named Hiromi.

My bass guitar was a Kramer Duke headless bass that I bought during high school and it also got ruined not long after I graduated from college.

The keyboard was a Roland Juno-106 analog synthesizer that I sold years later after I went to California, which is something I regret since it is now considered a vintage synthesizer.