1557 Noe St., San Francisco

A better day. I think the problem with my mood has a lot to do with the weather and work. All day I’m in a corner cube that I like because of the privacy, but I get no sun during the day. When I get off work, the sun is already gone and that may be the cause of the feeling of emptiness when I get out. At least when I’m working, I’m productive. I’m doing something. When I stop working, I just don’t feel like doing anything.

I’ve gotten some of my perspective back and that helped a lot this evening. I can’t let myself get sucked into life. I can’t get confused about the difference between life and existence. Life, I don’t know what that is. Existence is what all appearances are. Everyone may be living, but to me they are just existing. My surroundings are not real, they are just pictures, images. Physical reality is just as intangible as thoughts.

If I remember what I’m doing here, I’ll be alright. If I remember that I’m just here to observe and question reality and investigate the fabric that makes it up, I’ll be alright emotionally. Emotions are such an inconvenience.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Things have gotten bad.

I don’t know what the feeling is exactly, but I know it isn’t good, it’s bad. I’m stuck. I’ve stagnated. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself. I don’t know what to do with myself.

Work is good, but it has created a lot of changes that I haven’t adjusted to. After a productive day’s work, I walk out and wonder what I’m doing with myself, what is my life.

Sometimes I’m depressed, sometimes I’m lonely, a lot of times it’s the weather, a lot of times it’s stress, and almost all the time it’s my old problem with reality and existence. Work has put my life out of balance, but I don’t know how to cut through to the next thing that gives life meaning. That’s what we’re all doing on some level, trying to give our lives meaning. So what gives my life meaning? And to whom?

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I consider myself Buddhist. That’s the closest thing “outside” of me with which I can identify. The language of Buddhism has helped me in coming to an understanding of reality. Or maybe it’s my being. The language of Buddhism has helped me along in coming to an understanding about my being. But my reading of the big picture has made life an abstraction. It’s a thing that can be removed and examined. Re-incarnation certainly makes Self in the big picture abstract, at least for me.

Thought based on Western traditions is concrete: you live one life and then you’re dead until Judgment Day and then you’re raised, judged, and sent to Heaven or Hell. This is the only shot you got and what you do with your life means a whole lot more. My treatment of life as abstract keeps me removed from it, keeps me from really getting involved with it. I’m too busy working through what came before, and I’m not too concerned with what I’m doing with this life because I’m too busy projecting on future ones.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I’m not sure what it is, but I feel this constant need to assess my life whenever I write in here. It could indicate that my life is stagnating and getting boring. It could mean that I’m not satisfied with it. I don’t really feel that, though.

The assessment of my life isn’t impressive. Job is just job, it’s rewarding getting paid for doing something. The years of not doing that has given me an appreciation for it. Band is just band, we’re working on it but not really moving forward with it. People are just people, none having special meaning to me, not even the special friends.

Why am I not complaining about any of this? Is it bad that things are only what they are, can’t be better, no improvement to pursue, nothing enriching? What am I doing with the practice of my life? The practice of my life is enriching, but it has only to do with me and what’s inside me. What I’m enriched by doesn’t touch anything in the physical world outside of me. What is this “outside of me”?

Interesting. It could be that “outside of me” represents affirmation. If the enrichment doesn’t touch the physical world, or seen by it, it’s not as valid. That’s not right. I made claims that my satisfaction in my being or sense of self is not dependent upon what people think of me. I need to doubt that and re-establish my connection with the physical world. How to do it, I haven’t the slightest. If I can do it, I haven’t the slightest.

Last night, Anita had a small party and I finally got to hang out with my boss, Ritu. At work, I haven’t gotten much of a chance to get to know her, but I think that if we can get past the work stuff, we might have the chemistry for a friendship. There was a little adjusting at first to stop thinking of each other as co-workers, but we were able to get socially comfortable.

The idea of a friendship is a cloudy one. I’m not sure what it means anymore. I’m not sure I’m close with any of my friends. Anita is the closest, and that’s not that close. No one really knows me, there’s no one who I want to know me, and there’s no one I can really confide in. Re-examination of my role and interaction with the world around me.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Does anyone mean anything to me anymore? I don’t think so, I’m numb to feeling that there is any deep meaning to my friendships and acquaintances. Even Josephine, as attached as I am to her, and as fondly as I remember her, I’m pressed to find the meaning in that relationship that compares to the friendships and relationships that I had in my 20's. Even my re-acquaintances with Vikki and Frances lack what they used to have.

I struggle to think what it means to have someone mean something to me. I can’t imagine meeting someone or getting into a relationship and touching that feeling again. Maybe I’m done with it, like I’m done with relationships and falling in love. Just part of the series of plateaus that indicate I’m in the twilight of my life.

I had a conversation with Lisa earlier this week down at the studio. We went down even though Chris is out of town. We talked about personal stuff, but there was no bonding. It didn’t have any meaning, there were no meaningful connections made.

I have a considerable doubt about my thinking and feeling these days. Hmm, when I put it that way it doesn’t sound so bad; that’s the way it should be. I don’t want to be definite about anything, but I think having a job kinda makes me take the world a little bit more literally and my role in it a little bit more seriously.

There’s a tension in my life now between knowing and not knowing and belonging and not belonging. Actually, all opposites regarding reality and existence are coming into tensions with each other.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Closing out the fourth week of work. Everything has changed, I’m changing. I’m losing myself.

I work on the 13th floor of a building in the Financial District. It’s a corporate law firm that takes the entire floor and also has space on other floors. Windows encircle the entire floor, fluorescent lights bright. I work in a cubicle with three other legal assistants in cubicles in my immediate area. Ritu’s office is pretty close.

It’s a pretty relaxed atmosphere and the people are cool for a corporate law firm. It’s not uptight at all. I bike to work and I bike during my lunch hour, which I usually spend away from office and fellow workers.

It’s more than bearable. It’s not my realm, it’s not what’s important, so I don’t have many feelings about it. It pays bills and I’m just glad for the job.

Fiction is auditioning drummers, but we’ve also started a side project which I’m kinda more into than Fiction. Lisa’s on bass and I play drums, and the idea is that it’s fun and anything goes. No mulling over trying to find perfect parts or over-analyzing and calculating what we’re doing. It’s about coming up with songs and just playing them how we want to. Chris is contributing and his songs are really good, very aggressive and energetic. Lisa’s a competent bass player and she comes up with parts that are perfect for this type of music. My drumming is primal and aggressive. It’s fun.

Halloween

Chris and his girlfriend as a frisky Austin Powers and Ivana Humpalot.


I was "Bitter Spice", the Asian Spice Girl who got kicked out right before they got famous, even though she did most of the singing on the record.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I got that job with Ritu’s firm, I’m employed! I start work on the 18th and I’m leaving for New Jersey this weekend for one last visit. I don’t know when I’ll be willing and able to visit next. Vacations now will be valuable time, not time that I’d want to spend in New Jersey. I’ve started getting up early and I rehearsed my commute once. It’s about 25 minutes on bike.

So everything theoretically changes from here. It’s a two year commitment, at least, although that’s not binding. Two years and I’ll be 32, still two years short of my ideal age to die. It makes me feel young at 30. In my mind, turning 30 could just as well have been 32 or 34, the feeling is still the same - old, but picking at the numbers, I’ll only be 32.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had the greatest night tonight in years. I can hardly remember the last time I felt such wonderousness as I felt tonight. It was a rare reasonably warm day that melted into a rare reasonably warm night. I smelled Summer in the air, a scent that has occurred so rarely that I can’t even remember when I smelled it this Summer. Tonight was the full moon, the night that should be celebrated as the Moon Festival and being thankful for good fortunes. I felt I wanted to celebrate in my own way and find a way to be close to the moon.

I took off on my bike this evening for the Marin Headlands, doubting that I’d actually go all the way there, because whatever distance you go on a bike you have to be aware that you have to go that same distance to get home. I figured at some point I’d realize that if I went any further, the return trip would be too daunting to continue and I’d probably end up somewhere like Twin Peaks to watch the moon.

But I went, listening to the New Radicals CD that I recently got, and which turned out to be a perfect soundtrack for the ride. I headed down Church St., following the J Church tracks, did the zig-zag through the Duboce triangle area into the Haight and through the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park. I took the 10th Ave exit and cut all the way through the Richmond District to Lake Street, turned left and then right into the Presidio on 15th Ave.

It was absolutely gorgeous, but then it started becoming glorious. There was a section in the Presidio where there were no streetlights and tall redwoods overhanging and enclosing the road. I couldn’t see the road and I only knew where to go by the clearing up ahead lit up by moonlight. Not a soul in sight and I felt like I was flying through space.

I kept going, down Lincoln to the Golden Gate Bridge, to the catwalk where I had to go through a gate that they close after 9:00 except for bicycles. I crossed the bridge, pausing briefly to watch the moon and its reflection rippling on the bay and the San Francisco night skyline. Right when I got to Vista Point at the other end of the bridge, the CD ended. It was glorious.

I watched the moon from Vista Point for a short bit, but it wasn’t very satisfying. There were too many people, too many cars, too many cameras. It was too low, too far away from the moon. There was only one place to go from there, so I headed up into the darkness of the Headlands.

There were cars going up, but not many, not enough to be disturbing or distracting and my fears that it would be too dark to see the road were quickly allayed by the moon. All the roads were as clear as day and it was soothing to watch the shadow of my wheel spokes whizzing in the moonlight. Then at the final ascent, the road was closed to cars and from there I was completely alone. I got to the top of the Headlands, well, pretty darn close and the spread was unbelievable. And it was all mine and it was only me.

It was prayer and homage to the moon. It was being on the top of the world, it was being out of the world and looking at my life and what it has been. I used to live there and there and there. That’s Sutro Tower, I now live down the hill on the other side of it. There’s the entire stretch of Golden Gate Park; I ride that entire length to the ocean. Ocean Beach and the Seacliffs, stomping grounds? My whole life in the Bay Area was spread before my eyes.

The ride home was a little hard, but rewarding. I felt like I had touched something I hadn’t touched in a long time. It is a feeling that I love so much and it feels like I’m living my life for that feeling. It’s a feeling of vastness and being part of the entire universe. It’s almost always on Summer nights that I feel that. I wonder if it’s a feeling from a past life. Maybe like in the Japanese movie, “Afterlife”, you take one memory with you from this life into the afterlife.

Not a great movie, but I can take that basic concept and run with it. You can take a memory from this lifetime, but not into the “afterlife”, but into the next lifetime. Well, kinda the same thing. In the next lifetime, you’re always striving to touch that memory, that feeling, again. Perhaps it’s not the same stimulus that would trigger the feeling. But when you feel it, it resonates and you know it’s something much bigger than all that your life is.

That would also be a part of the “life is suffering” notion of Buddhism. Because the feeling is momentary, it’s like an intense deja vu that happens and then disappears without trace. When you have the feeling, you feel like you’ve attained something, but then it melts away into something you can’t even describe, much less share with other people. That to me is true suffering.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Josephine is OK, I guess. I found her online, but she wouldn’t talk to me. All she wrote was “busy”, and that was it.

Everything is gone between us, I don’t even want anything to do with her anymore. The love between us was human love, base human love. There was nothing between us beyond human love and our recent communications and this earthquake is very indicative of that. If the earthquake happened here, the first thing I would have done was contact the people I love to let them know I was alright. All she could manage to address my concern was “busy” several days after the fact.

I have my job interview with Ritu’s firm tomorrow. I might have a job. The philosophical ramifications of having a job stagger me. Everything will change. Not having a job, life was one thing. Having a job, life will be a completely different thing. I haven’t quite figured it all out yet, but it feels like the end of my life, nothing more to strive for, overcoming the last obstacle to prove I wasn’t running away from failure.

Having a job means integrating into society and becoming nobody. You are now living to make money and money serves all the activities you want to do, and in that way you become a servant of money. It’s not life anymore. It’s making money. I’ll only know for sure what it is once I’m in it, and then I can decide whether I live or die, or die sooner or later.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Still the reminders of how much Josephine means to me. An earthquake hit Taiwan today and the images of destruction and that Josephine is there struck me on a sublime level. I didn’t know exactly what it was I felt, much less how to express it. On the outside, of course, I can’t do anything about it and so worrying would be pointless.

But when I headed out on my bike, I could feel tremors inside me. I felt the potential for panic and the possibility that Josephine isn’t alright. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to Josephine. I still love her, she still is so much a part of me.

I still think of Amina and Shiho being the women I’ve loved the most, but “getting over” them was relatively easy. Or maybe letting them go was easy. Which makes more sense since if you truly love someone, you need to be willing to let them go. The earthly love for Josephine is greater, which makes it harder to let go of her. But the spiritual love was greater for Amina and Shiho. Which has greater value is subjective.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Still no job, still playing lots of Nintendo. I got a job lead with a personal in - Anita’s friend, Ritu, is hiring legal assistants, but their friendship is on the rocks, and this thing has been dragging on for two weeks. I don’t know if that is normal.

I hit rock bottom a few days ago. The job frustration was exacerbated by a flare up of tendinitis caused by playing my hollow-body bass hard, competing against two acoustic guitars, and a bout of seasonal affective distortion, not quite a disorder.

It took me a whole day to get out of the funk. I think it’s been a while since I’ve been so low. Depression has a texture which is almost physical to me, as do good moods. They are mental textures, but they aren’t completely intangible and so I’m able to control them pretty well. I can feel the texture of depression and then I can use my mind to feel a good mood texture. The texture is like a blanket that surrounds me and I can feel it on my skin and in my bones and in tension of my muscles.

In general, I don’t distinguish between the reality of physical objects and intangible things that exist in the physical world like imagination, fantasy, ideas. They are all a part of the same symbolic reality and therefore have the same substance. The difference between them is just in the form of existence. An analogy is between the different forms of existence of water. Water can exist as an intangible gas, as a fluid liquid, or as a solid. But they all have their existence in the same reality – they are all basically water.

So the substantive reality of depression (and moods) is the same as a physical object that I can move from one room to another. Even though it’s intangible, it’s still part of the symbolic reality.

To get to what is not part of the symbolic reality, one must be able to lock onto all things perceivable by the senses as symbolic, rather than Real. Physical existence, anything that can be sensed is not Real. What is real is what the symbols stand for, the meaning, and only intuition can sense that.

When I sit, anything I consciously do or think during sitting is not real. Thoughts come and go, I can sense my mind working on another level or being in some other “place”, but none of it means anything, all of it can be let go as irrelevant. The “value” in sitting, not that value has anything to do with it, is in what is happening in my mind on a level that I can’t sense. It’s the intuition that is developing in my mind, or developing my mind on a level I can’t perceive, but has its expression in the symbolic world.

It didn’t automatically happen that moods and feelings are textures to me. It took a long time to realize they were textures, and then it took an even longer time to realize that because they are textures, they are as controllable as physical objects. But it all happened on a level that I wasn’t aware of, I didn’t do anything.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had a dream with Josephine in it this morning. I thought I was over her, but issues still linger. It doesn’t help that it touched on abandonment issues that I still have. It happened at a time that I normally would have been in a deeper sleep and wouldn’t have remembered it, but there was noise that brought me into a shallower sleep.

The dream was that I was in bed, on my loft, and I looked across the room at a calendar on the wall, where there isn’t one in reality, and noticed a post-it on a certain date, a post-it that I didn’t put up. Intuiting that it had something to do with Josephine, who was still in the country and staying in the house that I was in until she left, which changed from this apartment to a house, possibly my parent’s house, I jumped out of the loft taking blankets down with me and read the note. The note was from Josephine, it was a tender note saying that she was leaving on that date, the position of the post-it was probably August 31. The tenderness was in a quote from a musical that only existed in the dream and referred to an inside joke between us that also existed only in the dream, something about being a star. At that point I panicked and ran around the house looking for her, going to the rooms where I expected her to be sleeping. One was a couch and the sheet on the couch was undisturbed and neatly tucked in. I was trying to scream, “No!”, but my throat was thick and I could only manage a scratchy tone. The feeling of a loved one being gone was too much to bear.

All day today I was thinking of the tender moments between Josephine and me, the fun times, the way she laughed and was so full of life, and it hurt to try to reconcile that with the selfishness I sense from her now.

My recent thoughts on having abandonment issues, along with this dream, reminded me that the earliest dream I can remember was an abandonment dream. I’m not exactly sure when I had the dream, it was probably in the old house in Englewood Cliffs, and I’m not sure how old I was, but my arbitrary guess would be between seven and nine years old.

I mostly just remember the feeling of being abandoned. There are two actual images I remember. One is a God’s Eye view of a boat like a yacht sailing on the Hudson River on a sunny day and the feeling that I wasn’t on it and was supposed to be. The other image is me on the banks of the Hudson River, one foot upon a rock looking out over the water. The view is from the ground up at me, the George Washington Bridge may have been in the image. The feeling was that I was alone and that I had been left behind.

And this all led me to a real memory that may have contributed to these abandonment issues. I think my age was in the same range as the dream. Parents were visiting someone on Virginia Ct. in Englewood Cliffs, a few doors down from a classmate of mine. I was playing in the backyard, probably with Tom and Bob, and they all got in the car and started to leave without me. I think I remember running after the car for I don’t know how far until they noticed I wasn’t in the car. It may not have been too far, several houses. I was crying but they were all laughing about it. I don’t know if the memory is real, though.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

The most pressingly frustrating thing that is characterizing this period of my life, which I’m hoping means only this Summer, is that I don’t have a job and I don’t have a strategy for finding one. I did go to a job fair on Tuesday and I signed up at a temp agency and I’m hoping they will call me sometime next week. If they don’t, I have no idea what’s going on.

Actually, the weather qualifies as a close second to the most pressingly frustrating thing characterizing this period of my life. This Summer has been absolutely miserable cold and it has even drizzled several times. It’s been cold and windy, and frustrating is the only way to describe it. Of course this is the first Summer I’ve been in San Francisco in three years.

I like where I live now. It’s not ideal ideal, but it’s more than satisfactory so I should clock my appreciation for that. This end of Noe Street is quiet and sees a reasonable amount of sun. The ceiling of this apartment is really thin so we can hear just about everything going on upstairs and that could be annoying, but I think we might be just as noisy to them.

I’m a little uneasy describing the physical space as comfortable, because I’m uneasy with physical space overall. There are times when the physicality of my surroundings seems so very arbitrary, and I know that most people don’t question such things. Physical surroundings are indisputable facts, they are not up for discussion or debate. It is such a basic thing that I’m struggling with, it’s kinda pointless, but not to me.

And in stranger times I feel that intangible things like dreams and hopes have less abstract forms and they feel more like fabrics, but just in my mind. Well, that’s self-contradictory, but I’m questioning what anything means to be “in my mind” because theoretically, everything is in my mind, or everything is my mind. So I’m sorta re-defining tangibility for myself, too.

So a final bit of confusion is in questioning what it means to be inside me and what it means to be outside. I’m supposed to be looking “inside” me, but where is that? Not a question to be taken lightly, but often done so.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in my life. This is the start of stage II. All that has passed is stage I, and that all ended in April with ten years of journal entries written in this format. This format appears to be the most ideal, so nothing new here.

I’m not about to attempt to explain the significance of stage II. Suffice it to say that stage I was development and learning, a ten year period of personal growth; stage II I’m hoping will be more clarification and application, a continuation of personal growth, but more on a plateau than on an incline.

So first, a bit of recap.

Fiction is floundering and I need to find another project or another band. We haven’t rehearsed for two months because Josh supposedly hurt himself, but I don't think that's the whole story. He's been stonewalling any progress. Josh, as far as I’m concerned, is out of the band. No steps have been taken to get a new drummer.

I’ve wasted the entire summer pretending to look for a job. I’ve just been incredibly lazy and I’ve really gotten nothing done. I did apply for a few but didn’t get any of them. All summer I’ve been telling myself that I have to go to a temp agency, but it just never happened. I’m a big loser in the work department.

The situation with my housemates is satisfactory for most part. Rosalie and I get along really well when we spend time together. She is moody, though, and if she’s in a bad mood, the best policy is to just stay away. Otherwise, she’s totally sweet and funny. Mina has gotten increasingly annoying. All I’ll say is that her whining is overpowering, and I believe her now when she says she’s a total klutz.

As for me...

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in life, unemployment notwithstanding. I look at myself and compare myself with people around me and I’m comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. Unemployment notwithstanding.

I think I’m doing a fairly good job trying to keep true to my nature. I think I’m doing alright as a Buddhist, not that “doing” has any meaning or significance, much less “doing alright”.

It’s so hard to convey because language immediately limits what I feel I’m experiencing. I’d like to say I’m making progress, but progress is not a goal. I’d like to say that it makes me feel good that I’m sitting everyday and my sitting is productive, but feeling good isn’t important, nor is being “productive”.

I like to think that I just do it because I do it, but even “I like to think...” is off the mark. It should be, “I just do it”. If it’s real, then that’s the reason one should do it; no thinking. I don’t think it’s the only reason I do it. There still is too much ego in my sitting.

I feel like I’m in the tail end of my life and I think that puts me one up on people around me; people who are at this age now and are dissatisfied with where they are in life because they feel that they should be at the prime of their life or at least on their way up, but are still struggling to get things started. Me, I’m at the end of my life, I have nothing to accomplish or prove. All I need is to be comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. I hope to be able to explain it better.

Color archive, 1999-2000

Cousin Audrey, Civic Center, San Francisco:

Series VIII, Roll 16 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Japanese tall ship, sailing into San Francisco Bay: shot from the Golden Gate Bridge


Frame 33


Frame 35

Saratoga Gap Half Marathon

I was "training" to attempt my second San Francisco Marathon in July by doing this half marathon. Doing this half marathon was no problem, but my training was so poor and haphazard that I ended up with a knee injury running the marathon that I never fully recovered from. It was effectively the end of my running. I think I tried running a 10K after this and was dismayed that my knee wasn't getting better, since in the past it had always recovered.

Audrey was in town, staying with her brothers in Palo Alto. When I told her about the race, she said she wanted to come along to spend time with me, even though I'd be out running for over two hours.

Series VIII, Roll 16 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 17 - Pacific Ocean from Seacliffs.

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 32 - China Basin, San Francisco

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 25 - Construction site, maybe in SoMa.


Frame 26 - Mission Street, Mission District.

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Frame 18 - Rosalie at home plunking on her cello while watching probably baseball, as we often did.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

April 28-30, 1999

This journal is almost over, I started it on April 30, 1989 and I think ten years is a nice neat time period for it to cover. What comes next I have no idea. The decade of my 20's behind me, starting my 30's, still not wanting to live much longer than that, if that at all.

Behind me are Oberlin, Amina, Josephine, Shiho, Japan, law school, international travel, hatred of parents, and first stage spiritual growth. My whole past life is behind me. It feels like the things that were fleeting and impermanent have come and gone, and now whatever comes has to have some meaning, some tangibility and permanence. Do my 30's need to be more concrete? It feels that way, but really it never works out that way, but if things are exactly like they were in my 20's, what’s the point?

I had some closure with Amina. Oberlin has an “on-line community” for alumni now and once you register, you can look people up and find out their latest information, and I found out that she’s living in Chicago now and is still married to Waldo. Just seeing that concrete information settled some of whatever dust is still lingering. And there isn’t much, it’s just that the memory of her and loving her so dearly has become so much a part of me. As I’ve noted before, it has nothing to do with who she is or where she is now.

I remember tender moments of our friendship. At the end of the semester that we met, we were walking back to my apartment from Third World House where we had said goodbye to Jenny for the Summer. It was a warm May night and Amina slipped her arm in mine. At the airport the next day I hugged her at the gate and felt that I couldn’t let go of her, and I never did. That entire semester getting to know her was golden. The first time I saw her I remember thinking that she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Love at first sight in the lobby of Third World House, fluorescent lighting, Amina in profile as she walked by.

At the beginning of our acquaintance, in fact just a few days after I had engineered meeting her at Third World House dining hall, I remember her calling from behind as I was walking to Third World House after a class for lunch. I was so happy to see her, so happy that she had called out, so happy that she remembered me, so happy that she was taking the same class I was coming from, and so happy that we were going to lunch together.

I remember at the end of that semester we were studying for the final for that class in her dorm room. It was getting later and later and our concentration on the subject matter was waning. When she was falling asleep I said that I should probably get going, she said, “no.” It was so sweet, and we fell asleep where we were and when I woke up she had already left for class.

She went back to Pakistan that Summer and she did her Fall semester in Dublin. I borrowed Nobuko’s car to pick her up from the Amtrak station in Elyria when she returned for Winter Term in January, I remember how cold it was and the anticipation of seeing Amina again. I remember my heart skipping beats when she got off the train.

We had harder times that Spring semester because of tensions between us. I moved to an off-campus apartment at the end of Winter Term, I remember Amina coming over to help me clean it, it was her that made it feel like home. I remember her room in Old Barrows that she shared with Sunita and someone else. I remember that she had a place in Mudd Library, second floor I think, where she always went to study, where I would always look to find her, where she would be if she wanted me to find her.

The only extant photograph I have of Amina is from Mayfair, when the Can Consortium played in front of Finney Chapel. She and a bunch of friends came out to see the gig. I remember that day through that photograph.

After I graduated I was going to Japan and I stopped to see her in Chicago on my way there. What I remember is mostly from photographs that I remember. I don’t have them anymore, but I remember the images. And through them I remember some of the moments. The flour fight, irreverently lying on a kitchen counter, the red car with a phone that belonged to the family she was staying with – the woman of the house being Amina’s mother’s schoolmate way back when.

After I returned to the US, I drove out to Oberlin to visit her and then we went to Chicago together to visit Pasha. I remember a night that we were sleeping on Pasha’s floor, our heads were close, our hands touched. I remember back at Oberlin, we were staying at Madoka’s and Vikki’s house until the dorms opened, that’s when and where it happened. What I remember is waking up kissing her, and it crossed my mind that it was impossible and at any moment she was going to wake up and that would be the end of that. But she was awake and she was kissing me back.

Those weeks of Winter Term were the height of our romance and it was all downhill from there. Looking back it ended just as soon as it began. It was a long distance relationship through the semester and I was struggling with my home relationship and figuring out what I was supposed to do next. We spent the summer together and we had a rough time. It was enough for me to be with the woman I loved, but it wasn’t enough for her. After the summer I drove out to California alone, and we tried to revive our long distance relationship, but by year’s end it was over.

But if I were able to re-live one part or aspect of any relationship, it wouldn’t be any part of the relationship with Amina. It would be during the semester that Amina was away in Dublin when I went out briefly with Hiromi. I was forcing myself to accept that Amina had a boyfriend and we would only remain friends. So I certainly wasn’t disappointed when I learned that Hiromi was moving into Third World House. I remember having seen Hiromi on campus the semester before and being smitten by her.

I used Japanese lessons as a subtext to meet and get to know her better. I remember early attempts at lessons in my room. We just started hanging out together more and more, I think. I remember meeting her and hanging out with her in the language lab in King where she worked. I remember her coming to my room for coffee. Often. I remember an incredible sweetness and tenderness between us. I don’t remember when we first started going out, I do remember that she slept over but we never had sex. I remember her stopping by in my room late one night after I had gotten back from a Can gig that was down near Columbus. I had laundry to do and she ate an avocado or something. I remember she stopped by my room often when she was leaving or returning to the dorm because I kept my door open almost all the time that semester.

I remember the signs of the demise of our relationship. I remember the lack of communication, empathy, or connection. I remember one time we were making out in my room and my black Guild 12-string got knocked over and broke at the headstock. I adored her, but we just weren’t right for each other. We distanced from each other and we didn’t communicate what was happening, so we didn’t work it out.

Shiho was another girlfriend whose memories have left their mark. It’s been almost three years since our last contact. She’s probably married now and may have kids. But the memories I have are not from the past decade, but from our high school years together. She should have been my high school sweetheart, I was just too stupid to realize what a great person and woman she was.

All through high school I denied that she had feelings for me. Everyone else saw it, some tried to tell me. But there were things that bugged me about her and so I made sure we just stayed friends. I was carrying a torch for someone else. That’s right. I didn’t love Shiho in high school. It’s not that I was missing something amazing that was right before my eyes. What was right before my eyes I didn’t love and I had specific reasons for not wanting to go out with her.

But it’s not that I didn’t love her. Why did we start going out two weeks before she left for Japan? I don’t remember what my feelings were, what we were doing. I don’t remember our first kiss, but I think it came as a big, uncomfortable surprise to me, quickly followed by the grief and sadness realizing she was about to leave. Did we make the most of those last two weeks? I don’t remember. It was the beginning of a very dark period in my life. I still have the cassette recorded letters that she sent me after she returned to Japan. I like to think that she still has the ones I sent her.

When I saw her next after I graduated from Oberlin, that’s when the seeds for falling in love with her were planted. After going through so many changes, seeing her in the flesh, as a relic from before those changes, being amazed that she was sitting before me and we had these old, real memories, made her real to me; made me realize that she was a special person to me. But Amina prevented anything from being maintained.

Only the next time I saw her, after Amina was out of the picture, during law school, that my love for completely blew wide open. And it didn’t last long. I felt betrayed. I felt that she betrayed me. I shouldn’t wonder – maybe Shiho is the story of my life.

<fin>

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I think of my life as being almost over. Is it almost over? Where is my life going and what do I want to do with it? I don’t want to live life just to live it, but what would make life worth living? I can run with something happening with music for several years, but the only thing that’s really worth pursuing in life is what life really is and why anything and everything. What’s behind the veil? What’s beyond the veil?

Can I be healthy and still cut? Almost all cutters are dealing with issues, something is causing them to cut, and once they heal they stop cutting. I still do it without any direct reason, the reasons I do it are indirect and there are other ways of maintaining a connection to one’s past aside from continuing actual manifestations of the past, especially when they are so extreme.

My cuts range from superficial scratches to wounds that could use stitches but don’t require them. And all this time I’m aging, my body is changing, I already feel the changes on the inside, my metabolism is slowing down, I’m less resilient. And as I physically age, what will become of these scars, the tissue that had to form to connect two edges of skin that were once adjacent. I don’t intend to find out. Or when I find out, it certainly won’t matter anymore.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I’m getting OK. I think I’m coming to a point of clarity, although I don’t discount that it may be weather-related; two days of 80 degree weather has me blissed out.

I had some break-throughs today. A band confrontation with Josh highlighted that I am different from other people and that I’m comfortable with my approach to life and conflicts. Some things have been reaffirmed such as my comfort and security in my sense of self and not having those things dependent or overly-influenced by what others think.

I recognize that there is a core of pain inside me that makes me somewhat unstable. That is, in fact, a part of me. I don’t have a desire to live a long life and I don’t mind dying. It’s possible that is a manifestation of unresolved issues, but that’s not absolute and I’m not convinced of that. I don’t feel any sense in being so attached to living when you understand the Buddhist principle that physical existence is fleeting and that it’s not all that there is. I appreciate and enjoy life as I’m living it, as it’s here, but the greatest bliss I’ve felt has never made me fear or wish to avoid death. The core of pain inside me is part of my appreciation of life.

I’ve figured out why I’m still a cutter. Cutting is the connection between me in the present and my own past. I don’t have any real reason or need to continue cutting, I do it just because I did it. It isn’t an indicator of lingering issues and problems, it isn’t even hurting me. But what I went through that led me to start and continue cutting is part of me and my identity. However, I’ve changed so much from who I was back then that it’s really important to me to not bury and lose that part of me. Cutting allows me to retain a present connection to my past.

It also serves as a notice to people around me that what they see is not all that there is. That’s actually an important point on why I still cut. It’s not good enough that I have the very noticeable scars on my arms and legs. Healed scars are a record of the past, but don’t say anything about the present and how the past has affected my present and how the present is a continuation of the past.

I was talking to Angie Chen, and we talked about our screwed up pasts and about being screwed up. I dived right into it like someone who knew what he was talking about. And I did know what I was talking about, but it wasn’t who I am now. In discussing those things, I was basically playing the part of what I used to be. And that was strange because that past is so much a part of who I am. There’s a big risk in losing touch with how I got to be who I am, cutting maintains the connection.

So the band is going through a crisis centering on Josh. He’s got some serious issues going on and he’s taking them out on us. He claims he’s unhappy and frustrated with the band’s direction, but all he does is criticize, and contributes nothing constructive. He’s convinced that we need to have a package to sell, but he roadblocks any plans to go into the studio soon. He says he doesn’t want to rush into something when we’re not ready. Who’s not ready? They’ve been together for two years, I’m ready to record. Readiness is not the issue. I’m predicting he’ll be out of the band by the end of May.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Almost halfway through April - the hardest month to get through and this year is no exception. There’s a sense of my whole world crumbling around me and nothing being real and nothing having meaning or mattering. I’m getting closer to accepting that Josephine and I are through, but I’m still a far way from coming to terms with it and closing with her. I need to do something major to reach closure, I’m thinking of something with all the photographs I have of her, compiling them into one collection. Unlike with Amina, I’m not going to throw anything away. Josephine I want to keep with concrete memories.

I don’t know what the purpose of that is, it does feel empty, and the flood of memories is overwhelming. She was so full of life and she made me feel happy, she was a little ball of fun. But we had problems that we couldn’t get over and so it ended and it’s better that way. It’s hard to look to the future and think I might want to be with someone again, I just don’t see it. I’ll get over her, I know, but I will be just as sad thinking about her even when I do.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I’ve been anti-social and distanced from people and friends. Even the people closest to me, my housemates I’ve been keeping at arms distance. I’ve begun sitting again which is really good if I can keep it up. It may be a whole new phase of spiritual development. By spiritual, I mean the relationship between myself and the rest of the world and how it relates to existence in general, my existence, and my role as an individual as part of an interconnected whole. The first phase was mostly the learning phase, being exposed to new concepts and formulating my own ideas. The second phase is...whatever, I have no idea; whatever comes next. Now, that is. The second phase is getting over the feeling that I have answers and re-figuring out what the questions are.

It is a phase that also comes with age. Becoming thirty and having nothing under my belt to show for my twenties. I didn’t do anything for the whole of my twenties and there’s no going back. I’m trying not to regret it, I should take it as fate. But with my twenties in the past and nothing having been done, I look at my thirties before me, and whatever I do in my thirties, it’s only ten years until I hit forty. And I do not intend to live much longer beyond that unless I enter a monastery and renounce the world.

I’m still trying to let go of Josephine. I think we’re out of touch now. There’s nothing to hold onto anymore, all the meaning has been negated and rendered moot. Nothing left to even warrant a response to a call out. I am so adverse to getting intimate to anyone now. I’ll get over it, I’m sure, but whenever I think of the possibility of getting close to someone, I just react against it.

I need to work on my inability to feel and the layers and layers of repression that have buried my feelings. I am aware that there is something in me that I’m completely out of touch with. How to get in touch with it and what to do with it after I figure it out is my task.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

A lot happened in March, but there were no peaks, just flatline. Enumerating the events just wouldn’t convey what March 1999 was and wasn’t. There was a lot of pain and sadness left over from Josephine, I just can’t seem to neutralize the memories of our times together. And I haven’t yet found a way to honor what our relationship was and what it meant to me. And I don’t think I can bear to cut communications yet. I still need to know that she’s somewhere and where that generally is.

With that subtext, I guess my life just went on in March 1999 and I had my first gig with Fiction, I visited Bob and Lizzie in Philadelphia and helped them move, grappled with uncharacteristically cold and rainy weather, caught the flu, began my running season, and I continue the ongoing saga of my unfinished papers which is keeping me from going out and finding some sort of job. The job search looms.

There’s nothing here in my life. There’s potential, but nothing actually here now. Fiction is a good gig, but I worry whether the music is outdated, would generate a buzz, or would sell. I still think about trying to write and forming my own band. I wonder if I should buy a drumset and start auditioning for bands on drums. I don’t think I’d want another bass gig, but drums is another side of me, another thing I like to do.

In the meantime I also need to start looking into myself more and see if I can pick up what I thought was a spiritual journey I started long ago. It’s a lot harder now. My introduction to it was inspiring, but now it feels tedious and I don’t know if I can do it without a teacher. But it’s something I have to do, that’s the only thing that can possibly have meaning.

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Construction of the new Ferry Building plaza area on the Embarcadero:


Frame 11


Frame 12

Series VIII, Roll 15 (Pentax ZX-5n, T400CN):

Diamond Heights, San Francisco:


Frame 2 - Close to where I moved to in Noe Valley.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Things aren’t getting any better, it’s just getting clearer how bad things are, but that’s just the nature of these times.

I keep two separate worlds, two separate faces, and my public face lets nothing show of my private face. A nice surface veneer masking a rotted interior.

Going to New Jersey served its purpose, it got me away from here and helped me get a little clearer about how bad things are and where I need to go. There’s so much I want to be doing, things that I think I can do, but I’m not because I have no discipline and I’ve gotten weak with no personal constitution. I’ve changed so much from before and I’m not sure I like how I’ve become.

I’m also in an anti-social phase in my life and that has kept me from being comfortable getting in touch with people.

People only see my public face and they see that I’m alright. And I will be alright, it’s just a matter of how I get through this phase. I need a plan, I need some discipline, I need to get angry about something and act on it in a positive way. I need to sink lower and continue to destroy myself and laugh at the joke I’m playing on the world.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Life has been sucking lately. Nothing is wrong with it, it’s just sort of empty and surface-appearance like. Nothing around me has any substance. Ah, it’s March - the start of suicide season. March and April are always the hardest to get through, even knowing I won’t off myself anymore. There’s no connection in my life, and so in these times it feels like I try a little too hard to make a connection and I come across as being desperate. Maybe I need to let go a little more, loosen my grip on reality and feel a little more what’s behind the appearances and within me. That’s the hardest part.

I don’t feel anything anymore, I’ve repressed all my real feelings and they’re deep inside now. I couldn’t conjure them if I wanted to. I have no conception of what they are or what they are like. I don’t feel anymore and anyone who gets too close to those feelings are going to experience a lashing out. Maybe that’s why it was comfortable with Josephine, she never would get that close, she just didn’t have that empathy.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I spent a week this month working at a temp job doing data entry and discovered that working for someone else in a lowly job really does suck, regardless of how nice a boss is or co-workers are. I met up with Ed since the building where I was working was right next to the building where he works. It was great to see him; it was the first time in about three years.

I renewed my membership at the darkroom and started printing again. At the darkroom, I ran into Ansje and that was pretty cool. So in the same week, I ran into Ed and Ansje, two past acquaintances with whom I can’t say I lost touch because we were never so close that we were really in touch. But running into them has been very cool and much easier than the four people I got re-acquainted with last year.

And then there was Angie who also fits into that same category. Three people. I’m expecting a fourth if there is something to be learned in all this. Last year I got back into contact with four close people and learned something, and now it should be four people who weren’t close.

Madoka was just here for a few days. Her grandmother is dying and so she rushed to visit her and stopped by here to visit me. It was terrific being with her again without the pressure and strain that Josephine placed on our friendship. She was wonderful as always and I got to introduce her to May Oo since they both work on Burma stuff.

The weird thing is that when I took her to the airport to go back to Thailand, it turns out that Jiu was on the same flight. Yup, it just so happened that the day that Madoka left was the same day that Jiu was heading back to Thailand. And who was there to see her off? Of course, Josephine. How weird is that? Coincidence? Doubt it!!!

So Josephine saw me with Madoka. The old fears and resentments welled up inside of me. Josephine nearly ruined our relationship several times due to her unfounded jealousies of Madoka. All it did was torment me. Do I have any reason to believe that Josephine has changed? Absolutely none. So she saw me at the airport with Madoka, and I know that she thought that Madoka was here to visit me and that we are now going out.

I don’t give a shit what Josephine thinks, if that’s what she wants to believe, that’s not my problem. We are no longer a couple and I don’t have to live under that kind of fear anymore. Lots of bad memories there. If she can’t let go of it, well, Madoka’s friendship is far more valuable than Josephine’s jealousies and Josephine can just take a hike. I ain’t playing that anymore.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

January was a bad rehearsal month. We missed a bunch of rehearsals, at one point not playing as a full band for two weeks. So when it looked like it was happening again this month, I was getting seriously frustrated. With two months in a row, I start wondering if this is going to be the pattern.

Not that the reasons for not having full rehearsals were bad, Josh got a lung infection as a reaction to quitting smoking, and Lisa left town to visit her girlfriend in Vermont. It was just the situation I was whining about, mostly to Chris. Missing rehearsals was really hard on me because it doesn’t allow me to get comfortable playing with them and familiar with their styles. It prevents the material from sinking in and postpones my readiness to play out. It certainly doesn’t help my confidence about how I’m playing.

Overall, it just feels like the band isn’t doing anything or going anywhere. Chris and I went to see a bunch of bands last weekend and it was pretty depressing seeing bands that were really tight and who obviously were putting more than 100% into it. We’re not even close to that. We still kick ass, but that’s not the point. If we easily could be better, then it sucks if we aren’t.

We had our rehearsal tonight, and unlike the rehearsal after the two week hiatus last month, it was good. There were lots of mistakes, but the energy was pretty electric. Josh and Chris were on fire and Lisa sounded great. It totally boosted my spirits. The energy was there, the talent is there, but on the other hand, we were also sloppy and we didn’t feel like a band that has been playing a lot, there wasn’t that connection. We weren’t as tight as we could be and we didn’t groove as tightly as we need to.

I need to learn from this situation and frustration. I have to keep looking hard at how I’m feeling and keeping perspective in light of all of the signs I’ve been figuring out in the past few months. Things to keep in mind: I’m the new member in the band, I don’t “demand” anything. I’m committed to this band as a member and as a part of my life. Their significance in my life is not strictly professional, they mean something to me, they are my friends and support group and I care about them.

Patience is a necessity, but I also have to watch how I’m interacting with them and make sure I don’t overstep my bounds while not keeping my feelings repressed. Like when I’m frustrated, there are things I shouldn’t do and things I should. I shouldn’t be passive-aggressive and be pissy at rehearsals. I should tell them my needs and gauge them so that they are acceptable. So if I’m getting frustrated at the amount of time we’re spending on covers or writing new songs, I need to realize that they need to be working on new stuff and that they’ve been doing this material for several years now. I need to go along with whatever new things they want to do, but ask them to go through a set list at every rehearsal. Tonight we went through a tentative set list for a gig next month, so that was taken care of.

I spoke with Angie Chen today. I haven’t talked to her in fifteen years. She stayed with Rob and Lizzie in Philly last week and got my number from them. I barely knew her in high school. I was a first year and she was in Rob and Lizzie’s class but dropped out. Which is why I thought she was in Tom’s class. I knew her from Jazz/Rock; she sang ‘She’s Not There’, ‘Let It Be’, and she played a song she wrote which I thought was so totally cool.

It was great talking to her. I think we have a lot in common and a lot to talk about. We could have been friends had we been closer in age, but fortunately we weren’t because if we were friends in high school, we wouldn’t be friends now. Not even Shiho has lasted until now. Shiho gave a ten year run for her money. And as unstable as both Angie and I were, there’s no way that we could have remained friends.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Gone the first month of this arbitrary last year of a decade, century, and millennium. Arbitrary numbers. I’m starting to worry about finances and that has been keeping me down lately. I have to really start cutting back because when it comes time for me to get a job, to maintain my current expenditure, I have to be making 30k, and I don’t have the work experience to warrant that high a salary.

Papers are going slow but I have to get them done soon and get on with my life. It’s difficult only because of the lack of deadlines, supervision, or support. But I’m just being lazy.

No Fiction gigs in sight until March and that’s still a maybe. No movement yet in the band to get sooner gigs, and rehearsals are moth-bitten affairs at best. They haven’t been steady or solid and that has been frustrating. At least Chris and Lisa have recruited me for their acoustic gigs, so although not the level of Fiction, it’s something. And perhaps it will be good warm-up.

On the other hand, Madoka is done with her job in Tokyo and is now in Chiang Mai, Thailand, doing more grassroots activist work. And she has reverted much more to the person I loved and held so dear. It’s good to have friends you can count on. Madoka, Kevin, Anita, maybe Frances, maybe May Oo, probably Fiction - more time is needed to be sure. Valuable friends. Value, very interesting. How much self-worth do we attribute to our friends? I keep forgetting that no self-worth should depend on the value of friends.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Nothing obvious has come out of the key incident. They haven’t miraculously come back to me and I’ve had to go and replace them all. Neurotic as the incident has made me, I’m using a different system now where I keep all my keys separate so that if I lose any set, not all of them will be lost. But nothing life-altering, it’s actually been pretty anti-climatic and disappointing. I’m sure this has confirmed to my housemates that by their definitions I’m a complete idiot. Fuck ‘em.

I’ve run into Josephine in the law library lately since I’m spending more time there working on my paper and thesis, I’m really trying to clamp down on those and getting them done. It seems like it would be so easy for us to fall right back into the relationship and all the bad habits that characterized our relationship. It hurt realizing that under no condition did I want to get back into a relationship with her. Our relationship was just so miserable by the end that I have no desire to get back together. So does that make the attraction a base matter of lust? It’s a bit confusing.

Also our life paths have undoubtedly separated. I’ve declared San Francisco my home and there’s no way now that I’m going to leave it to go to Taiwan with her. And she’s returning to Taiwan after graduation no doubt about it. And that’s the story. We’re simply not going to be together after she leaves. The band is my priority over and above her, and I can only fear how she would react to that.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I lost my keys last Tuesday. I’m so tight-fisted when it comes to my keys, so losing my keys is pretty major, it’s almost unthinkable. The circumstances make the fact even more incredible.

I had just gotten a drink at Jamba Juice on New Montgomery Street. I unlocked my bike and proceeded to walk it to school a block and a half away. I got to school, placed my drink on top of a newspaper vending machine and realized that my keys were gone. It was less than five minutes since I had unlocked my bike and I set out to find them.

The keys must have fallen out of my pocket, and that in itself is incredible, but I also didn’t hear them, which just blows my mind. (one of my housemates doubted my perceptions and questioned my certainty that I should have heard them. In contrast, Anita pointed out without any prompt that I should have heard them fall since I’m very aural).

I don’t know how many times I walked back and forth between the point where I last had the keys and the point where I realized they were gone. I was obsessing and it stayed in my mind that I would find them. I searched for the keys on this block and a half stretch for no less than 45 minutes.

A flood of thoughts has resulted from the lost keys. Maybe they relate to what I mentioned in the previous entry, involving people in my life and relationships. There also may be some relevance in understanding the break-up with Josephine and her importance to me.

Losing the keys are having quite an effect on my psyche. Losing them was so unthinkable that I’ve been really neurotic and paranoid about closing doors that will lock; going through thresholds that I might not be able to get back through. I’ve always had a problem with losing things. My reaction to losing things ties into why I’m afraid of heights, which I’ve identified as really being a fear of losing things irrevocably. So my logic in connecting it, and it may be a stretch, is that we also lose friends, people, relationships, friendships.

“Losing” people? My friends knew that I was notorious for exiting peoples’ lives in a seemingly callous, sometimes arbitrary manner. I would just disappear, fall off the radar screen as Frances put it. “Meaningful” relationships that I would just decide to drop. So now I pause and ask myself how meaningful they could have been if I could drop them just because I felt like it. Was I really losing those friendships? You can’t lose something that you never had. Those “meaningful” relationships haven’t exactly been enthusiastically welcoming the return of my company.

Keys unlock doors, they are access, security. In friends we find access and security. Friendships are keys. The failure of the re-acquaintancing has pointed out to me that perhaps the meaning of those friendships wasn’t really reciprocated because they sensed that I was keeping them at an arms distance. I didn’t value them as much as I should have. The value of keys becomes very prominent when you lose them.

Friends, I kept them at an arms distance because of my fear of losing them. My fear of losing them caused me to make sure they were disposable to me and I to them. They never were the access and security I thought they were, the people I thought I loved were never key(s) to me.

The more I talk about it, the more of a stretch it sounds. I need to consider the nature of the relationships I have and how I need to be treating them and the nature of “loss”. The message is clearer with the band: when you find people in your tribe, the relationships that are meaningful, I can’t be afraid of losing them and keeping them at an arms distance. I have to give them my all and consider them permanent fixtures in my life.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

With a little space; a little settling, I try to assess aspects of my life.

In my life, I currently have housemates, band, and people with whom I’ve been getting back in touch and dubiously re-acquainted. The housemates, from what I can figure, live their lives based on what they know and can know. They take this reality on its face, and as granted. Reality is granted, lives are made.

I try to live my life guided by what I don’t know and can’t know. I try to take this reality as something that can be created and symbolic. Lives are granted, reality is made. The housemates are completely alien to me. They live in an alternate reality that I haven’t touched in ages.

The band, as far as I can tell at this point, I can relate to much more. Whereas the housemates don’t understand the words that come out of my mouth unless the subject matter is something mundane and within the normative framework of their functional reality (or I have to explain more details than I care to), the band members better intuit the meaning of the words I choose. I don’t need to constantly explain and defend myself.

As for the meaning behind having these two diametrically opposed groups of people in my life, I’ve yet to find out. It’s just too uncanny for there not to be meaning. The housemates wouldn’t think there was any meaning at all.

The third group is comprised of Cat, Frances, Vikki, and Luyen. I’ve had meaningful friendships with all of them and distanced from them all, and now I’ve come upon them again. Cat and Luyen are duds, Vikki might be a dud, but Frances might be something, she’s the only one really enthusiastic about getting in touch with me and has welcomed me back into her life.

But maybe they’ll all be duds. Maybe I’m to learn that the “importance” of people has a shelf life and a context, and when they’re gone, let them go. What significance their memories hold has all to do with me, and nothing to do with the present reality of them.

I’ve already speculated about this concerning Amina. What I love about her most likely does not even exist anymore. What I love about her is only in me now and has nothing to do with the reality of her physical presence somewhere in the world, inshah’allah.

The re-acquaintancing has been somewhat disappointing and shallow. And maybe that’s the fact I’m to learn. It’s all appearance. What meaning their beings brought into my life was magic, they were just the messengers. They are just people now and if I met them now as strangers, they would just be people.