224 College St., Oberlin

My life has become one big drag, boring and tedious. There’s nothing I can think of to do about the hectic mess I’ve made. Who are these people I’ve brought into my life? What are they doing here? Why am I stuck with them and why do they do the awful things they do? Is this love?

224 College St., Oberlin

All my relationships have stagnated. Amina and I have fallen into a comfortable groove with little hope of change. We just are what we are now. Just friends, that’s all we are and that’s all we’ll ever be. We’ve been friends too long and that friendship has found its own intimacy. She is so much to me, I couldn’t ask for any more; any more would be trivial. Most of all, she keeps her distance.

Luyen is not what I thought she was last semester. Not at all. I’m finding myself explaining myself more than I’d ever thought I’d have to. The understanding between us has stopped and has become forced. Too much negativity has gone between us to bring us back to anywhere we were before. It died in its sleep.

So I mull over existence and grapple with god. Life and existence are just pictures, and the pictures are just fabric. Canvasses with senses that make them alive. Alive, not real. You can live to be alive, or you can live for the Real. I’m getting a lot of good ideas from the Islam seminar I’m taking and the ideas get mixed in with my past learnings. I read into the material a lot of crossover between Zen and Islam and Sufism.

I ran into a wall with Zen. I felt like I couldn’t get anymore without entering a monastery. Zen essentially presents ideas in abstractions and either you intuit meanings or it’s all bullshit. Sufism, particularly as expressed in the writings of Ibn al-‘Arabi, is exactly what Zen tries to teach, except the ideas are explained in metaphysical detail. There is more process involved, rather than either getting it or not. There is nothing wrong with either way, it’s just that I had run into a wall with Zen. With the readings now, I feeling like I’m getting an explanation for many Zen concepts.

But I can’t imagine progressing on this journey. I’m so inadequate and so many people don’t even know this voyage even exists. I’m certainly no better than any one else. So many people think they’re on the path and are making progress, but they’re just jaded. Spiritual seekers because they can afford it. They never quite live it and it’s not at all real. They bask in how much they know and how advanced they are. But what do I know about another person’s soul, feelings and thoughts, and what makes me any different from them? How to distinguish one person’s truth from another?

224 College St., Oberlin

Luyen came by this evening after several days of us ignoring each other. She’s having trouble dealing and I have trouble dealing with her. She’s become so confrontational and I’m not even sure she’s aware of it. In any case, communication is almost impossible. We can’t have conversations. Her responses always just run the topic into the ground. She doesn’t give anything to work with. She just doesn’t give.

She was here when I came back tonight; I never lock the back door. I took that as a positive sign that she wanted to get something across. I kept myself safe and tried to draw her out and say what she wanted to say. And she did. And I still have no idea about the nature of what’s going on with her now. Well, I haven’t stressed at her negativity or hostility, I won’t stress at her ambiguity. This good relation between us is temporary, but I hope she knows she can count on me - but she has to approach me.

224 College St., Oberlin

People wouldn’t annoy me if it weren’t for ego. Without ego, Luyen wouldn’t cause so much stress and neither would Amina. Love wouldn’t be such a nuisance. I wouldn’t have the pain of striving for excellence in music. It’s all ego. I wouldn’t want, I wouldn’t hate. Ego is a problem. Not a simple one.

224 College St., Oberlin

Ground rule: when Amina really, really wants me around, get the fuck away. When she shows that she wants me around that much, it can only be bad. It's getting to be a pattern that when she wants me around, she eventually starts ripping on me.

I find both Amina and Luyen gravely lacking in respect these days.

224 College St., Oberlin

If Luyen and I were going out, we’ve broken up. I immediately regretted letting it happen. Now I find little solace in anything or anyone except alcohol. I like to think that I can stop any day. The problem with saying that, though, is that it assumes it’s a problem. If I don’t see it as a problem, it isn’t; even if it killed me.

I don’t mind drinking all the time, I like drinking all the time. I think people should find ways to explore the limits of reality. Who was it that proclaimed having both feet on solid ground to be the best state of mind in which to be? If you accept certain assumptions about reality, if you accept the material given reality, then perhaps sobriety is best. But argue for you limitations and, lo, they’re yours.

I question it, and it’s not a matter of being inebriated, but rather a defiance of norms and what is acceptable. I don’t know where I want to head, but I’d might as well start trying to let go of the illusion given to me. The illusion given to me is limiting. It’s safe, but it’s limiting. People want safe, so concrete is hard, pillows are soft, candy is sweet, not particularly challenging. Things that we take as given, that is exactly what they are - given, so they’re easy to understand and easy to accept.

I doubt these things which are given. Although I admit I’m not very responsible in my methods. If I kill myself, that phenomena would be misunderstood and any reaction would undoubtedly be counter-productive. My method isn’t for anyone since it is very self-destructive. It only works with people who understand the nature of their self-destruction and remove any conception of good or bad in self-destruction.

So why did I do it? Why do I keep coming up with these bad things about Luyen when it’s my problem and a problem with me? I know those “bad” things I attribute to her aren’t true or characteristic of her. I let Luyen walk right out of my life. It had gotten to be too much for me. There was so much tension and so little communication and I didn’t know how to deal with it or her.

We occasionally broke ground, but then she would lapse and I just couldn’t deal with it. I’m not that strong. Her problems are so similar to what mine were and in ways still are. I didn’t know how to handle it, I demanded progress and she wasn’t progressing. It all got to be too much. I felt neglected, I felt taken for granted, too vulnerable, used.

I didn’t see her at all on my birthday except in the morning and it was pretty ambiguous whether she knew it was my birthday or not. She didn’t indicate that she knew. Later, when I wasn’t here, she left a flower and a card on my bed. I think she was trying to avoid me. We broke up late that night, in darkness. We spoke for hours before she left, trying to qualify things and get things out.

Lord, who am I that I can’t put away my problems in her time of need? It makes me selfish and uncaring. Maybe all this will do her good and in the end it will be my loss.

224 College St., Oberlin

Practicing was bad today. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the panyard trying to get better, but Art was there today since he's in the EXCO steel drum class. He is simply a much better musician. Anything he touches sounds great, while I have to struggle to even sound musical. I have to keep reminding myself that he does what he does, and I do what I do and they are not the same thing. There is an objective standard of musicianship and he will kick my ass any time it is used, but that objective standard of musicianship is not all that music is. It’s sometimes hard to tell in an environment like Oberlin, and it’s not necessarily a good thing.

My feelings are all about ego. I’m letting my ego get out of hand, letting them influence my feelings. I need to keep practicing and at the point I put heart and soul into music, I’ll start improving. At this point I don’t have the confidence to be fully uninhibited. My ego will be the death of me. Got to get rid of the ego. Ego is attached to pride, and pride prevents humility, and that enhances inhibitions when talent is absent.

At dinner, I found out that “Hook” was showing at the Apollo. I went to the 7:10 showing. I got much more out of it than the first time I saw it in January. That movie would fit so perfectly into the film syllabus of the Religion 103 class I took last semester. Life, flying, it’s all about magic - Maggie and Jack, Peter Pan’s happy thoughts. Maggie+Jack=magic. Happy thoughts, miracles, and ordinary life. The role of belief and believing. Imagination to create. Imagination the key to creating our lives, the key to “flying”.

When religions speak of “following the Way”, they aren’t referring to a path to walk on or roads taken or not taken. I think it’s more of the manner or attitude towards living life or perceiving the world. It’s less of something linear, like a direction or something chosen. Maybe everyone already gets that and I’m only finding it out now. I don’t know anyone else’s nature. What I know of them is only what I know of them in myself. What I think about other people is only a reflection of myself and doesn’t reflect what they really are. It sounds so basic when articulated.

224 College St., Oberlin

Yesterday, the moment I opened my front door, the phone rang and it was Amina. Then just after we hung up, there was a knock on the door and it was Luyen. We’ve been having problems, but we’re starting to be willing to work on them and we communicated silently via the computer. We took turns writing things to each other that were too hard to say out loud. It was good, but there’s still more healing to be done.

Today we broke some ground. It didn’t start off well and we yelled at each other for a while but at least she was communicating and finally she let me know exactly what about her father’s death was still bothering her and only then was I able to focus on her pain and find words to say to her. We needed that breakthrough and I hope she’ll have the confidence to tell me things without me having to wring it out of her.

224 College St., Oberlin

(All entries from December and January, as well as most entries from February, were lost due to a crashed disk. The events of this time period, which included breaking up with Hiromi, the return of Amina from Dublin and moving out of Third World House because of racial tensions, were dominated by a stormy relationship with Luyen which still continues. All of that has been erased. It was meant to be. Someone decided that these events and my reflections on them were not to be remembered and that decision was manifested in the disk crash. It has, in fact, been trying times. The surviving February and March entries were salvaged from a class assignment to keep a journal on spiritual happenings. Another Professor Morris seminar.)


Amina, January 1992, fresh back from Dublin.

My thoughts are a jumble and my emotions have been on a total roller-coaster. My life has been limited to just a few people. Every aspect of life manages to be elusive. I don’t understand a thing that’s been going on. My feelings are characterized by the season, this Winter that has been the harshest I’ve ever experienced. It’s cold and bleak, and this apartment I’ve moved into is drafty with windows like sieves.


Luyen, already looking troubled, the day I moved into my new place.

Last night was the first in a week that Luyen didn’t sleep over and it was peaceful waking up alone. I was dreading the thought of being alone, but the change was pleasant. I took my time getting up, left at my leisure, and since Amina had told me she had run out of coffee, I brought a package of my stock to her in Mudd. She is easy to find since she always studies on the second floor.

I found her on my way to my 11:00 class. She hadn't had coffee and was falling asleep on her books, so I offered her the cup I was bringing to class. At first she refused, which I expected, but then she changed her mind and accepted it. It made me so happy that she accepted it. I don't know why. It just made all the difference. You can take anything you want from me. The friendship we have, we give and take freely, no debts. It was trivial, just a cup of coffee, then I left and she gave me the sweetest smile. Just a smile and I walked away dripping.

I got my bass back from the shop with a new EMG pickup and the neck fixed as much as it’ll fix. I’m so happy to have it back, I love the feel and the sound of bass notes; rich, solid and big. I love plugging it in and feeling it boom - like the sound of the cosmos. So much to learn, so much to practice. How many years have I wasted? I first picked up a bass when I was thirteen, and not until almost ten years later am I starting to take it seriously. How much could I have learned in that time?

I’m not going to be discouraged. The last ten years weren’t a waste. I think I’ve internalized a lot in terms of bass aesthetics, and for the type of music I want to do I don’t need to be a virtuoso. I need to polish up what I know, develop technique and gain other basic knowledge. If I really buckle down now and practice my ass off, I could be reasonably competitive.