1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

These people around me, what are they doing here? Do I have anything to learn from them? Maybe they’re giving me a hint as to what I think is special in a person? Not even for a relationship, just an intimate; a connection.

As for a relationship, at the first mention of other people they’re interested in, it’s automatic - any interest I may have had is gone. I learned from Amina and Shiho never to be someone’s second choice. I’m much too good for that. Even I know that.

I want someone who is passionate about something; motivated and driven and has the clarity to pursue it and is not encumbered by their own fucked up past. I want someone who has struggled and grappled with something but has risen above it.

Hmm, Josephine actually fits that criteria. I don’t know what she was passionate about, but she was about something. I could tell it was there when she laughed; the way she got excited about things. I don’t want someone who is cynical and bored. Too many people around me are cynical and/or bored. Including me.

I don’t want someone with whom I can’t reach any depth in conversations. Recognition and appreciation of one another’s depth is necessary. I can’t even remember the last time I had a conversation that had any depth to it.

I don’t want someone with defenses up. I want someone who sets their sight on me and goes for it and wants to figure out what I’m about. That’s actually really hard because there isn’t a lot attractive about me on the surface to make anyone want to delve further. She has to not be afraid of what I really am.

Politics aren’t too, too important. I’m actually willing to give lots of leeway in regards to politics, but to the extent that they help shape perspectives in general, they have a baseline significance. And the lack of any political awareness in regards to race is intolerable.

I don’t want someone with a lot of anger bottled up inside.

Obviously, this is all to say, I don't want anyone.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Back in the Bay Area, welcome to September. My back is pretty much up to 100%. I’m trying to be careful with it. I started riding to work on Friday and so far, so good. I'm striving to get some normalcy at work. Theresa is in a flurry trying to get up to speed. Josefa and I are hanging out more, and it's hard not to be attracted to her. We've been training a temp that we're hoping to hire, Joyce, and she seems cool, too. I hope she takes the job. Auditions continue for a new guitarist for Fiction.

So everything is just fine, right? Peachy keen, faboo, right? And then boom, Josephine e-mailed me yesterday. She was just checking to see if my address was still active. I haven't responded yet. Why now? What does she want?

Why can’t Josephine just stay away? It has been almost exactly one year since our last communication. It was right after the earthquake in Taiwan, and letting me know that she was alright was the last thing on her mind. Another earthquake just hit Taiwan, almost one year later. This one wasn't as big, so it wasn't as big news. Was she e-mailing me to let me know that she's alright? Doubtful.

Why doesn't she just stay away? I wouldn't go out with her again, our relationship was too hard and there are too many bad memories. I'm still madly attracted to her which would make it hard for me to keep my hands off of her. And if she wants me back, she wouldn't resist. I just don't have time for her in my life.

Josephine. Josefa? It’s totally stupid. Josephine and Josefa are miles apart. They are nothing alike and what attracts me to Josefa is completely different from what attracted me to Josephine. Josephine was a lot of fun and I truly loved her. Josefa, I just want to fuck her brains out.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had another dream with Josephine, and this time it was clearly my idealized Josephine. The dream was a re-enactment of one of our typical mornings when I used to be up before her and then wake her up later. Those were always endearing times as they happened, but my feeling now about our entire relationship is that there was always tension and I was always self-conscious of my actions and trying not to set her off, basically walking on eggshells all the time. In the dream, there was none of that, it was just that pure feeling of endearment.

God, how I loved that woman. Why do I not think of her as one of the loves of my life? No, I don't, because she wasn't. The love of my life was Amina. Shiho also may have been a love of my life. But not Josephine. I'm not sure why, I'm sure it has nothing to do with anything that any of them were or are. Amina was a total creation, when I really dig down and look at the facts, Amina was nothing special. I have no idea why she holds such a special place in my heart. My only conclusion is that it has nothing to do with the person Amina, but my conception of her. Same with Shiho. But putting it that way, why not Josephine? I have retained more delightful, endearing memories of Josephine than Shiho and Amina combined.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had a dream several weeks ago that I was in love with someone. Really, truly, deep down in love with someone. It didn't make enough of an impression back then to reflect on it, but when I think about it, the significance is pretty big. I remember what it is like to really be in love with someone and fall into that sea of love that has no shores and the rest of the world falls away. For someone else to have such an impact and evoke such wonderment in how I can feel about another human being.

I don't remember a lot about the dream. I remember being inside a nice, elegant building, kind of country club-ish (as if I knew what country clubs are like), with a dark wood interior. It could have been a house, but it felt public so it could have been an old house converted into something else, could have been a nice hotel lobby. There were probably chandeliers. It was daytime and lit by natural light. I remember there being a small crowd of people, like a tour group, and the person I loved being there and she was my only focus. I wanted to be alone with her, she wanted to be alone with me, we wanted to get out of there. But we couldn't for some reason. Maybe it was a family thing.

The woman was Josephine-esque, but I don't think it was Josephine. There was a lot of Josephine in her though. I think the woman was the person I wanted Josephine to be.

It brought me a lot of closure with Josephine. I loved her dearly and her impact and her memories are deep, but in no way would I ever want to be with her again, and in no way can I idealize our relationship and look at it fondly. All I loved about her was her, not us.

There was always tension in the relationship, and there always was a distance. I know she never trusted me and that prevented us from ever really getting close and emotionally intimate. I was always trying to prove something to her, I was never just me.

I totally missed her birthday earlier this month. A week later, I realized I missed it and it took me a few minutes to remember exactly what date it was. That's extremely telling. Who else's birthday do I not remember? Shiho, November 7, 1968; Amina, April 17, 1972; Luyen, June 14, 1973; Hiromi, January 30 (I think), 1969; Joy, sometime in March, I think; Josephine, after some thought, June 8, 1970.

I need to get out of the Bay Area. It's passionless, that's part of why I don't remember Josephine's birthday. No relationship I've had that was based in the Bay Area had any deep impact. I hate the weather here, I can't stand the weather. The weather in the Bay Area simply sucks.

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

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

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 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

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.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I was able to go back into Josephine’s room for the first time since last May and the memories of Josephine screamed out their ghosts. Josephine was a very bad chapter in my life, all those fights. It’s too bad she never learned what a vivid impression violence makes. The sound of doors slamming or objects being thrown and broken; she never realized that those memories are deeply etched scars. She always thought that I should be able to just forget and let those things go. I’m glad she’s out of my life and should endeavor to get over her as soon as possible.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

The Breakup: It has only been three weeks, I can’t expect myself to recover in that short a period. It’s still painful and my heart breaks every time I think of Josephine. There’s a nice balance between these journal entries and my actual memories of her. These journal entries chronicle our problems, but my memories of her are mostly fond ones.

I responded to an email and re-iterated my conviction that we stay away from each other. She responded saying that only then did she realize that we were finished. Once again I felt my heart shatter. But I guess that proves that the Relationship couldn't go on. For me, we broke up when she called to say goodbye forever. I heard “forever” and attached immediate meaning to it. She thought she could heap such abuse on me and we'd still get back together in a few days.

The Band: I like Fiction. They are good people. There’s a lot of sincerity and talent in the group. We play together fine, but I feel something missing. Sounding together isn’t enough to establish a groove. It’s fine that we’re playing together, but eventually something needs to be done to tighten it up.

The Apartment: I’m finally moving out of here. My current housemate got a flat in San Francisco with another woman named Rosalie and she asked me to fill the third room. I have no idea what the near future holds, but that’s OK. I’m hoping this will be a settling move. I want to move in with the feeling that this is my home, I’m settling there. I’m buying furniture and making the space comfortable for me and make me think that this is where I’m staying, I want to make it a place where I’m staying. I’ve never done that before. I’ve always assumed that I’d be moving on eventually. And this move to Noe Valley may not be permanent, but moving in, I want to treat it like a permanent move.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Everything is a mess, my existence, my life, my well-being, my awareness, my perception are all crashing down around me and I don’t feel a thing. I can’t touch it. I have consciousness, that’s about it. Everything is so shaky. I’m not doing anything and I’m totally unmotivated and I’m finding little satisfaction in anything. Another cycle of self-destruction.

I love Josephine, but there is no doubt that the relationship was not working and would continue not working. And that’s what is hardest. The temptation is so great to get back in touch with her, the desire is fully there, but I have to resist, restrain, discipline.

But now I don’t think I could go back to the relationship even if I succumbed to the temptation. Upon her decision to end it once and for all, my life has completely jumped tracks. I’m on a completely different set of tracks, headed in a new direction, and the idea of getting back on the tracks I was on when I was with her is almost impossible now, it’s unthinkable.

But yea, that was it. That was the final decision and there is no going back on it. That was the point. The fights were the proof. The distrust was huge. The relationship was at its critical juncture, and we chose to end it instead of finding out a plan how to make it better and then executing it. Neither of us had any idea what sort of plan might have worked. Neither of us had the will to execute it, too much shit between us, too much distrust.

So maybe it isn’t my life that is a mess. Maybe this is what it feels like to be devastated over a relationship. Maybe all this is just about breaking up with Josephine and how that feels. And once I recover from the breakup, my life and feelings won’t be so tortured. So I’m growing. And I really love her and miss her. And the thought of the day that she leaves for Taiwan is unthinkable. Who will take her to the airport, who will be there to see her off? My heart will shatter when she leaves. Darling sweet Josephine. But that’s the way it has to be.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I’m preparing for the next few weeks in which I will be recovering from the breakup. The breaking up is right and easy, the acceptance and recovery is not. I expect the next few weeks to be difficult, the wrenching separation, the pangs of love and sweet memories, the things we planned that will never happen. I have to find a way to strike a balance between the highs and lows and find some comfort, some reconciliation, of her presence in my life and her impact. I don’t want her to be a bad memory, I want to remember the good things, not just the stuff I’ve been typing in here, and to find peace in the pain of breaking up with her. There was no choice, we had to break up. But there is no doubt how deeply I loved her. We just weren’t right for each other or it wasn’t the time for us.

I don’t want to be numb anymore. That is the basic core of what I am now. That’s why I can’t write songs; if I’m numb, do I have anything to write about? That’s why I don’t have any close friends. I’m numb and I keep myself at arms distance, I don’t get involved in the emotional content of other people and more importantly, I don’t let them get involved in mine. Can’t have one without the other. I’m numb to other peoples’ suffering and that is why I’m miserable and not growing.

I don’t know how to feel pain. The numbness is debilitating. People need pain, people need suffering for their humanity. Life is suffering. The first noble truth of Buddhism. It's not some cosmic downer or horrible world perspective that's supposed to push us down the path of Buddhism. It's just a fact, a recognition we need on a path to enlightenment.

Existence itself is suffering and people who don’t even know that are the worst off. I’ve numbed myself off to a lot of it. I know life is suffering and it is inherent in existence, I know that well. The unbearable lightness of being. But I’ve turned it into something else so that I miss the point of the suffering.

Cutting is a way for me to create what I don’t have. But it’s artificial and contrived. It transforms it and channels it, so instead of torrents of unpredictable raging rapids, I have dams, water control, and nicely irrigated fields. Cutting is harming me because it is part of the numbing. I control the pain, I do. True pain is something that can’t be controlled.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Horoscopes are just for fun, they are written ambiguously to fit many different situations. Still, don't we love it when they seem to speak directly to us and our situations?

Aquarius: Either you or your partner is likely to force a relationship issue in the next few days. You may need to privately fix what has been publicly broken. An argument might be more about what something is called than about what it is. Look back one last time before moving ahead. You may have made the best decision, but you won’t know for sure until you commit to it. Restraint will play a starring role in your winning strategy. Call in a third party to mediate if reaching common ground seems like an impossible dream. Hang onto the option of taking your business elsewhere!

And here are our final break-up horoscopes from the Guardian and SF Weekly:

Aquarius: It’s not the size of your delusions; it’s how you use them. Still, competition over the immensity and number of delusions is an important feature of this week, as several of the people around you are determined to prove that their fantasy life is the most interesting one of all. Reality really hasn’t got much of a chance.

Gemini: Unconditional acceptance is for five-year olds. Anybody older than that generally has to prove themselves first. And you’ll spend a fair amount of time this week being challenged, and proving your worth, and earning acceptance from others. Blame it on the Mercury opposition.

Aquarius: I’ve got to be frank: You Aquarians no longer have the luxury of holding on to your adolescence, let alone your childhood. The same goes for your amateur status and Mickey Mouse approaches. In my astrological opinion, it’s time to take a step toward being on the verge of tiptoeing to the brink of preparing to accept mature professionalism into your heart with unconditional welcome. You could make the process less harrowing by hanging out with those rare wise guys and wise gals who’ve survived the transition to adulthood with their irreverence and curiosity intact.

Gemini: I recently had a serious disagreement with a friend. The fix we were in seemed intractable. Unable to concentrate on anything else, I decided to clean house. After a manic hour of scrubbing and straightening, I picked up the headphone of my pocket radio and worked on disentangling the snarled wires. Miraculously, my head began to clear. It was as if what I was doing with my hands was accomplishing a similar action in my brain circuits. By the time I’d finished the unscrambling, I knew exactly what I had to say to my friend to make things right again. This is the exact meditation I’d like to recommend to you, Gemini, as you confront your own mess. Find a gnarled mass of cords or wires, and undo it.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

If only I will be able to remember this day and be able to always come back to it and remember why things ended up the way they did. I have no faith in this relationship. I have so little faith in the relationship that I don’t even have faith that it’s over, when it is, in fact, over and has been for quite some time.

Even if I could write down a bottom line about why this relationship should be over, in a week, two weeks, who knows, I will just read over it, ignore it, justify it, amend it, clarify it. What’s the use? What are the things I should be remembering? Do the times of love outweigh the times of hate? Tonight we had them both, and there’s no denying it, times of hate ruled the day. Time of hate outweighed the time of love hands down.

What can I say about the fight we had that will make me remember it? And I certainly do want to remember it, because if I don’t remember it, etch it into my memory with every thought I have of her, any future contact doomed to failure, then we will certainly just repeat it. “I don’t ever want to feel like I did that day”. How many more days will end with me saying that to myself.

Maybe all I need to remember is her final, “Can you go home now,” after I had been trying so hard to stay. It was so easy. I was out of there like a slingshot without a hesitant step back.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Aquarius: Fight against the urge to stir things up. Sometimes it’s better to give up than to drown in futility. Spend your resources on battles that you know you can win, and don’t buy more trouble than you can afford. Guard against feelings of pride and arrogance. They could become your tragic flaws if you let them have free reign. Even a well-intentioned prank can turn into something uglier. Channel your efforts to where they will do the most good. This is not a good time to exhibit your weaknesses. Predators have no sympathy.

A pretty good day. I got almost eight hours of sleep last night and I think that has a lot to do with it. I’m getting old, I have to face it, and need more sleep. Just this year I extended my sleeping needs to seven hours, but lately I haven’t even been able to do that.

I had a dream, but I don’t remember it all. What I do remember is that an acquaintance from law school was in love with me and always has been. There was a gentleness and tenderness about the dream, which took place at night in a city. A quaint city that conjured perhaps a residential area of Bangkok, or New Orleans. I remember the distinct youthful feeling of being loved and being in love, so different from what I have with Josephine.

We were just about to reconcile when she told me that she burned the bracelet that I gave her over the summer when she stopped over in Bangkok on her way to India. That bracelet symbolized our second chance, and she burned it.

Last Summer, when we went to Ayuthaya, we bought bracelets to symbolize our togetherness. But in the tumult of our relationship that followed, we both got rid of them. Then I went to Bangkok this Summer and when she came to Bangkok, I presented her with two bracelets, one that I was going to put on her, and the other she put on me. I said, “let’s give this another try”.

It was the symbol of our second chance and she burned it. Symbols are important. And her burning the bracelet told me more about her than all our struggling to reconcile over the phone tonight, more than all our unwillingness to verbally put the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. That act told me that the relationship, for our own good, is over. Irregardless of how many times we get back together.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

If I stay away from Josephine long enough, she will fade. It can be over right now and it would make no difference to how I’m living my life and how I see the near future. This fight will be extremely difficult to reconcile and I question whether I really want to. I’ve always felt this relationship has been an “all or none” deal, and that is the result of how our relationship was a year ago. When it was young, when we moved in together, she monopolized my life and demanded more than I should ever give. And even though she has changed and doesn’t demand all or none, the echoes are still here. And no more am I in the “all” camp, and so I am feeling “none”.

Today was another beautiful day, warm and sunny. I finished recording a David Bowie song for fun, and had Japanese noodles for lunch. On the way to school, well way out of the way, I rode to the beach at sunset. It’s been a while since I’ve done that. I don’t know if that was it, or whether it was because I got nothing done on my exam, but I was just tired, depressed, and introspective afterwards.

Drinking has also been wiping me out lately. I wonder how my liver is doing. Diem told me her uncle died when he was 34 and he had drinking habits like mine. But I wonder if he ever tried to overdose on sleeping pills, which must wreak havoc on the liver. I haven’t done it in a year, but it is in my history.

I don’t mind dying. On the threshold of turning 30, any time will do now and I don’t plan on changing anything in reaction to the threat of dying. Fine I’ll drink myself to death, or get smashed on my bike in traffic at night because I don’t use lights or a helmet. I welcome dying. It’s almost time.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Not a week has passed since we made up after the last big blowout and here we are again. The same old pattern has re-emerged: things are great for about a month after a major breakup and then we enter a cycle of smaller fights that increase in frequency. I was trying to write an immediately conciliatory e-mail, but something just stopped me. Part of it probably due to her message during our previous fight not to e-mail her anymore. Fuck you. Fine, I won’t.

I feel this huge resentment towards her building up in me. It’s here and shouldn’t be ignored. I remember long ago in previous relationships how I thought in order to find the perfect partner, I had to mark a relationship doomed immediately upon recognizing any incompatibility. Anything otherwise would be forcing something unnatural. I don’t think that’s true anymore; it was a mark of immaturity, but I think there are elements in the sentiment that hold.

Part of me tells me to begin the process of disassociation which will eventually lead to an inevitable breakup. Beginning that process effectually ends the Relationship right now, because it makes it inevitable. Anything that happens between us from here on in will be superficial and a product of only a moment; nothing that will last.

But then there is another part of me that wonders. Haven’t I changed? Aren’t things different? What if I decided to not get stuck in my past persona and recognized the possibilities inherent in my flexibility and ability to change and erase conflict when I so desire and choose?

Instead of viewing fights as another brick in a wall, the completion of which will be marked by a fight followed by absolutely no desire to get back into the Relationship, perhaps fights can be viewed as opportunities. The relationship has come a long way, and there is a whole world of possibilities if I chose to see it that way. Fights indicate that there still are problems of one sort or another, but each problem is a challenge, an obstacle course of negative sentiments, misunderstandings, and poor communications that need to be navigated to the goal of being together.

So being together is the reward? That’s the bottom line, the nagging question that underlies the entire Relationship is whether this is the person I want to be with. And the biggest problem will be the time when the question is answered in the negative. But for now, this time, I will call her because that is what I want to do. I don’t want this to linger any longer than it has to.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Well, that’s it. As far as I’m concerned, Josephine and I are broken up. Anytime we can’t reconcile a problem upon either of us making the attempt, the olive branch posture, then it’s over. Certainly we’ll get together again in the next week or the week after. But at this moment, we’re finished and anything that comes through the floodgates will not be inhibited by any loyalty to a Relationship. We didn’t make it two months. Finished.

I’m not going to “save my time” with friends. Fuck you, she has no idea of who I am or what I do or how I work. My time and energy are going into music and looking for direction.