1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I just don’t want to be here anymore. How many times and for how many years have I been saying that? I just don’t want to be here anymore. My physical existence is flesh and blood. I sat in a movie theater yesterday and I felt myself breathe, my muscles, my lungs, what do they do? They give me oxygen, who the hell cares? What the fuck ever. I can’t be doing this.

The frustrations are huge and they grow and grow. Doing something that I don’t know why I’m doing it. To make money? Not knowing who I am or where I came from or what I’m about? To have this past but not being able to make sense of it or to have any concrete meaning attached to it? How many times and for how many more years do I have to ask what is the point?

I rearranged my drums again. I think I really like it this time. It sounds really good. Non-drummers don’t know that the arrangement of drums affect how they resonate and how they sound. I’ve never been happy with the sound of the 12" tom as it was set up as rack tom. Positioned as a floor tom, not interacting with the bass drum, has changed the way it resonates.

How’s that for fodder for some psychiatrist? Write about how my existence is unbearable and then go right into something as mundane as the arrangement of my drums.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I have no connection with my past. There is no continuity. From less than five years ago, I’m completely disconnected from my feelings and my being. That was real. This is real. But they are incongruent. I was volatile and self-destructive then, and I was something. I’m passive and floating now, and I am nothing. Is this any way to survive? This is getting so stupid, I’ve been sucked into what I’ve always wanted to avoid. Another reason to once again leave, but it’s harder to leave because this is so hypnotically comfortable, I can do this. But that is all.

I’m about to quit my job, and this is another reason to do it. I need to get back to the place that’s dangerous; no safety net. I can’t quit when I know I necessarily have something else lined up. I need to quit and have that doubt that I’ll be able to get another job. I need to be in that free fall of doubt and uncertainty about what’s immediately in my future.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Mimi and I got together this evening for dinner and discussed the website. We had a great talk and she contributed a lot of great ideas. It’s funny how when something hits close to home, people can come up with great ideas off the top of their heads.

The problems in implementing this are not minor, though. More than half the family don't speak English, and I don't speak their language. I don't know how to build a webpage. Who's going to do it? I'm not qualified to be a central person in this. Besides, how much of this idea is "Western"? Is this something I can sell to the Taiwanese members of the family?

Mimi asked point blank about cutting. I answered. I don’t care if she knows. She knew anyway, she’s not an idiot. Whoever doesn’t know is an idiot. Anyone who can’t tell within five minutes of meeting me that there is something wrong with this picture must be an idiot. Besides, I've found that everyone I tell conveniently forgets in time, so why not just tell them?

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I got in touch with Audrey on Wednesday for the first time in over a year, and as coincidence would have it, she was just about to fly to the Bay Area. We don’t know why we haven’t been in contact, I think it was her, she thinks it was me, so it must have been both neither of us and both of us. We got together this morning and I hatched my idea to her about creating a family website.

The idea is for a story-driven website, not just historical and biographical facts, aimed at a descendent 200 years from now who might be interested in his or her ancestors. The stories will be by other family members, and they would try to convey some essence about the person through the story; what they were really about. It is partly archival - a family tree - so the facts will be there, as well as pictures.

It will start with grandfather and any information Audrey and I can find on his family, parents, siblings, etc., and from there it will document the various families and the members, and each person will have a page if they want. The main website will have basic information and the individual pages will be personalized.

I saw a film tonight at the Asian American film festival called “Love/Juice”. When you really, really love someone, you can’t live without them. I couldn’t live without Amina, and I haven’t lived since we broke up, except during the times I was alive with Josephine. I’ve just been existing. I’ve been numb since Amina. I really touched love. I appreciate that. And I feel the continuing pain of losing the one I love the most. That is life and that is still good. Bad, too. Depends.