Just for the Record: January 1997

January 1997

So I made it to 1997. Just like I didn’t want to do. So much for a symmetrical tombstone bearing the dates 1969-1996.

Do I regret not having killed myself before the year was through? Now, nothing has changed except...I don’t particularly feel like dying. I feel stuck in the misery of existence.

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I was in Taiwan for a week and a half. I went to visit Audrey and it was to my surprise and disappointment that she was not only unwilling to make time for me, but she didn’t even spend the free time she did have with me. I wouldn’t have gone there to inconvenience her brother and father, I went for her.

So it was a blow off, and I thought that was certainly the end of our acquaintance. I wasn’t going to let it show while I was there, but that would be it after I left. There was nothing more between us. But it turns out there was something between us and the reason for her avoiding me was acceptable.

Why do we meet the people we meet? Why are the people who enter our lives in our lives? In how many lifetimes have I met Audrey and in how many different relationships? How many types of relationships could we have been in to have gotten to where we are and become who we are now? What promises have we made to meet each other again and again? Maybe we’ve only met once before and have been searching for each other for god knows how long. Maybe our cycle of re-births are closer and we find each other every few lifetimes, maybe every lifetime. Attraction, gravity, extending to karma, pulling one another along with the other.

In this lifetime, we’re cousins, and for some reason, that is perfect. As cousins, we’re family, we always have that connection and can’t get away from it, but we also have distance, we can’t get too close. Maybe that dynamic is necessary because of something that happened in a previous lifetime. Maybe we need to heal something.

I thought it was Amina, she was central to this formulation. But what do I have with Amina now? Nothing. What do I want with her in any future lifetime? Nothing. Little. Nothing. Amina is nothing in the big picture.

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Amina. I came across some pictures of her that I still have. I’m glad that I didn’t throw away every picture I have of her. Every time I come across her image, I’m struck. Something hits me, something stops. Who is this in this image that I loved so dearly? That’s the effect she still has on me; that’s what she meant to me.

I stare long and hard at the image, taking in her face, her hair, her eyes; this woman, that moment. It was real, that moment existed and it was frozen in time by a camera from a single vantage point. Time stretches before that moment and after. I keep staring at the image until it starts to become surreal and unfamiliar; the way I sometimes stare into a mirror until I start becoming unfamiliar.

Certainly she has changed, certainly she is no longer the same person I loved. I don’t even know what I loved anymore. So. I love an illusion. My love is something that got frozen in time like a photograph. It is something that no longer exists, is no longer real. What I love now has nothing to do with the physical reality of Amina that exists somewhere now. What I love is something in myself which preserves the memory of her that I loved. But it is not currently real. I don’t love something that is real. I love something that is no longer real except in myself. What I love about Amina now only has to do with myself.

So I can let go of Amina now, can’t I? Even if I meet her again, it would be different, she would be a different person. I wouldn’t react in the same way as I reacted when we were at Oberlin. I could meet her now as a stranger and not have lingering memories interfere with what is before my eyes. The Amina I loved is gone from reality and only exists in my heart; whatever it and she was, I’ve internalized. She won’t last beyond this lifetime. When I die, she and everything she was before to me will be gone.

I have to teach my heart to let go of Amina. But I’m always wondering whether she will enter my life again somehow.

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Do I have promises with people to meet in subsequent lifetimes? To look for one another? If I do, do I have the right to unilaterally rescind them? If promises were made, they must have been based on something strong, something that transcends anything we might do in a single lifetime.

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I have this memory to haunt me. The 70's is an odd decade to reminisce about when they were your formative years, but maybe any decade is.

I remember the family had a brown Dodge. I remember it in Winter more vividly. I remember Winters more vividly in general, maybe because I was born in the Winter. Cold, transient, but with something to look forward to.

I remember driving out on Rte. 4, the entire family, brothers and me as children, still in need of decisions made for us, in the back seat, me in the middle being the youngest. We would be going out to dinner.

Our parents had found a restaurant with a Western motif in Garden State Plaza, before they covered it. They weren’t too much into experimenting. Once they found a place or had it recommended to them by some friend, they would patronize it. They’re still like that, and I do that now out of instinct, though I do try to resist it. I remember the name of the restaurant being, “Bonanza”. The price was right and the food was good as I recall. I don’t remember how often we went, but we went repeatedly, and when they came home or called ahead from the office and announced we were going to “Bonanza”, we knew precisely what to expect.

What did we look like to the casual observer? Family of five; young couple, three young boys. I remember there was often a line, sometimes short, sometimes long. I remember taking trays and silverware and telling our mother what we wanted, which for what must have been years was the same thing. We’d slide the trays along past desserts, soup, and whatever else, until getting to the service area, hot off the grill, and to the cashier. Parents paid; I don’t remember once paying attention to the price. Then we’d go look for seats for the five of us. What did we look like this memory?

So now, in some food joint, maybe I see a family, parents with children, maybe just parent and child. I imagine I’m watching a memory in creation. Where will they be in 20 years? Will this scene be remembered by either of them? Will that father recognize or admit what he’s done? Will he know what he has done to her, what she has gone through? What he could have prevented if he’d been more of a father or continued to be a father as she grew up? 20 years from now.

What is it like to forgive someone who doesn’t even know he or she has done something wrong, someone who has been the source of...such things that parents can be a source of?

All they have on their behalf is a memory like a dream. A memory of a family scene, of detached tenderness and cloudy kindnesses, of sacrifices parents make. A memory with which I can compare them against how they are now. Same person, the sameness manifested only by a continuity of physical matter.

From then to now, from there to here, I’ve grown older than they have and in ways, I dare say that I am older. But then I must always have been older.

When was the last time they received a gift from their children? My brothers must have bought them stuff through the years. I never did. In 1980, returning from our first trip to Taiwan, we bought them a lot of stuff. They told us that we didn’t have to buy them gifts, save the money. They always told us that. On birthdays, mother’s day, father’s day, Christmas. So I never bought them anything since.

Would it hurt now, the next time I go to New Jersey, to bring a little something, nicely wrapped for each of them?

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Normative matrixes. We are formed and informed only by our knowledge. Our knowledge is the extent and the limit to which reality exists. Our knowledge is the extent of our realities. A table isn’t hard because of the condensed matter that reality tells us it is, giving it density making it hard. A table is hard because that is the extent and end of our knowledge concerning it. It is an overriding belief and knowledge that pervades our existence from the moment we’re born. If it were possible to override that knowledge, to have a requisite doubt to question that knowledge, then a table might no longer be hard. My hand could go right through it, or it could be soft, or liquid.

It’s all Illusions. All normative matrixes, realities, are illusions except the normative matrix that recognizes and transcends the illusions. Then it wouldn’t be normative anymore. It wouldn’t be a matrix.

I can’t talk to people anymore. I can’t carry conversations anymore without getting bored. All my thoughts, the culmination of my experience and knowledge, has made my normative matrix, my reality, too different from other people. People make assumptions because of their normative way of perceiving the world. They make assumptions that I don’t make about my world, and it’s hard to talk to them because we’re not even starting with the same background experience and information.

Different normative realities. How many people can’t carry a conversation; who are anti-social? How many people are in mental hospitals because of their inability to accept and adjust to society and the normative matrix that the majority generally share?

I bought a book of suicide notes and the person commentating on the notes makes these very specific assumptions about what is the norm. It bugs me how he’ll comment on something, but how does he know what they know or don’t know or think or don’t think. The assumptions get tedious after a while. What arrogance to state that the writers of certain notes are not aware of the permanency and finality of death. What arrogance to state that death is permanent and final.

Most people live on this planet to live on this plane; to do stuff which entails living on this planet. I’m not here to live on this planet. I’m alive, but my purpose isn’t to do the things that entail “living a life”. That itself is a normative matrix. I’m not sure why I’m here. I’m just window shopping. I’m just an observer. When I’ve done what I’ve come here to do, I’ll go. If I’m still here, that means I haven’t done it yet.

I’m not living on this planet the way other people are living on it.

Oh my god. It just struck me that I’ve never held a job before because that is the way I want it to be. It has less to do with the ‘rents themselves. It probably has more to do with why I have the parents I have. The reason why I’ve never held a job may be because I do not want to occupy myself with some mundane occupation just to live from day to day.

My life is perfect the way it is. If I had a job, if I was earning my own money, I’d be completely different. I wouldn’t have this tension, this anger, this misery, this insecurity, all the things that identify this particular me that I’m attached to. If things were different, other things would identify me, but it wouldn’t be me. Maybe a different me, but that’s not me.

That’s so funny. The idea that my parents are perfect, and have been all along, is funny. It’s perfect that this realization comes as it is getting easier to tolerate them, to let go of everything that happened in the past. Last summer it happened that I felt free from their influence, no longer threatened. It just felt right to let it go and be civil towards them. I really should be grateful to them. Now I have a much better understanding why.

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So I talk to the ‘rents and there is communication, there is subject matter, there is dialogue. Whereas before I contributed nothing and made them struggle for any piece of information. Many uncomfortable silences. How do I feel about it now?

Something else in me is backlashing against this newfound familial harmony. Once the source of the problem is identified and neutralized, then there is nothing to blame the problem on. Then it becomes necessary to deal with the actual problem itself. The source is gone, the blame is gone, the problem still exists. The problem I have with existence. I still have to deal with this ocean around me. What would I be like if I wasn’t like this?

Someday I’m going to leave on my own terms. Sometimes I feel a touch of regret when I realize the ‘rents will be clueless as to why. It’s a little sad, but they have so much to learn. I think my regret partly comes from what I don’t know about them. I don’t know how hard their lives have been, I don’t know what impact my actions will have on them.

I was leafing through a book of photographs and there was a picture of a daughter at her mother’s funeral and she was in such grief. That is so out of my experience, I just don’t understand why death should evoke such a strong reaction of grief. I have so much to learn, too. Hopefully not.

I don’t know. This gets complicated. My reaction to death is pretty accepting, but what if I had married Amina and then she died. Then I can start to imagine such grief. Where would I plant her garden? So what happened between Amina and me was perfect, too?

Series IV, Roll 8 (Pentax K2, Ilford XP2) - Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Frame 26 - Grandfather died in 1993. This was my first visit to his grave. He was very well known in Kaohsiung because he founded and was president of one of the city's bus companies. His funeral was apparently quite large, and his gravesite looked kind of exclusive, quite out of the way on a hillside with a nice view.

Frame 27 - Cousin Audrey was cold to me the whole time I was in Taiwan, even though I went there to visit her. Only for little peeks did she acknowledge my presence.

Frame 28 - the main gravesite

Frame 29 - I don't remember if this was part of grandfather's grave, or if I was just going around shooting. This is still right around that area.

Frame 30 - Candid

Frame 31 - Candid portrait of my cousin Audrey.

Frame 32 - Once she saw that I was shooting her, she shot me this nasty look. I know, it doesn't look nasty, but in context the look says, "I don't like you, stop taking pictures of me". We've discussed all this since then, and it still isn't really clear what was going on or why she was being cold to me. Neither of us really knows anymore.