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.
Friday, January 29, 1999
Sunday, January 24, 1999
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.
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.
Sunday, January 17, 1999
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.
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.
Thursday, January 14, 1999
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.
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.
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