1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Amina went through crunch period and I was no where in sight. How presumptuous of me to think that I could have given emotional support to her. I’ve been fading from her life and I’m now waiting for her to have some time to consider where and whether I have a place in her future life. Pathetic.

I went to Oberlin as planned, but she treated me like I didn’t belong, like she had her own life now and I had no place in it. We used to have in-jokes between us. She still has in-jokes, but I’m not part of the “in”. I cut the trip short. It was wretched. I was totally wrong about her, my perceptions were totally off. I thought she was going through hard times and I thought maybe I could help. The truth was I was the hard time and she was fading me out.

We had long conversations before I left, that led me to leave. She wanted me to leave. I don’t know what I left behind. I tried to leave something, but I don’t think it was any use. I think her decision was made soon after I got there. Check out the crap that I wrote her:

Dear Amina,
Our understanding when I left was the final understanding between us. I don’t know why I’m even writing this, I just want to leave something for you. I’m writing this as an attempt to get down the gist of what we discussed, and hope I can get enough down so that you remind yourself when you have to consider my future role in your life.

You called yourself selfish. Perhaps you are, but I don’t hold that negatively. I call it “divinely selfish”. We are all divinely selfish to be true to ourselves and our own natures. So I understand if what you’re doing is selfish. You can’t be anything to anyone unless you approach yourself like that first. The concept of being divinely selfish is from Illusions. Someday you will read that book. Not for the content, but to see where I come from.

I was afraid of your being misguided in your efforts. I see potential of being misguided because what you’re doing is very important and very intense. It will be easy to get lost. It worries me that you say that you are numb. That is a source of misguidance. If I were to advise you, I would encourage you to get your feeling back before you embark on your endeavors. For myself I won’t embark on an endeavor like yours unless I’m secure with myself and know that I have a full deck. That is how I would know that I’m sincere and not being self-destructive. Of course you don’t share the history of self-destructiveness that I have.

I worry about the possibility of being careless or going about what you have to in a careless manner. I don’t want to insult you, though, by suggesting you would be careless about something that is so important. This is a mentioning of carefulness so that you will be careful. I remember when I was going through my troubles I realized the power of words and so I reminded myself of certain words like “god”, “justice”, “compassion”, etc.. Words that I would want you to keep in mind are “emotion”, “life”, “hearts”, “justice”, “truth”.

I will step into the background for you to find and resolve what you need to, and I give you whatever encouragement I can and I have faith in your abilities. Maybe you will find the same thing that I did in my period of soul-searching, that it’s not very fun doing it alone, even if it is personally satisfying. But you have to find out for yourself. But be honest with yourself, don’t torture yourself to prove something to yourself.

I hope you will remember our conversations and find truth and strength in them. I understand your need, but I can’t get rid of the hope that you will find that you need me and accept it and let me back into your heart so that you aren’t resisting whatever influence I have on you.

We did end up making a few promises, promises that aren’t written in stone and the breaking of which will not be construed as a breach of trust. The promises we made, any promises we make, I will perceive as hope. Not as binding.

Above all, be true to yourself and always do the right thing. You can’t get away from your nature. I ultimately want you to get what you really want, what is best for you, and what is you. If it’s me, then great, I hope you will be willing to inconvenience yourself to accommodate me. If it’s not me, then good luck in whatever you do. It will be none of my business.

If you decide that we can’t be together, you will probably remember how good I was to you and it will probably make you a little sad. All I have to say about that is what I said before. There is a lot of love flowing between and around us, let us not be foolish in trying to nail it down and set it in concrete. If you take love away from this, spread it to other people. If you think of the goodness I’ve shown you, it is your place to take that goodness and show it to other people and give to them.

Find your way to be happy and satisfied with yourself and your life. I’ll always be somewhere with you in my heart in some capacity. I love you dearly. I will always be your friend, I will always love you first and most, and I will always think of you, probably every day, even if we can’t bear being with each other due to circumstances that keep us apart.

God, what a load of crap! Painful. End of story.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Problems surface and resolve with Amina, but I see cracks in the masonry. I love her so much, but I don't like how I am in this relationship, I don't feel I'm handling it very well. I'm not handling the distance very well at all. She went on a trip to D.C. for a huge Pride march and she didn't even mention that she was going. I don't know why, but I felt betrayed by that. I felt unconsidered and unimportant. I wrote a long letter to her working through my feelings and by god I hope I never send it.

I'm thinking too much. There is too much thinking going on, too much analysis and nit-picking at our differences and delineating our personalities and straining our compatibility. I run scenarios through my head. Too much looking at what she does and comparing what I would do and what everything means to me. I hold up a mirror to her and talk about what I see in the mirror. I don't communicate most of it to her, but it's bad enough that it's happening. Is there any benefit in differentiating what is her and what she did, and what is me and what I would have done?

The issues for me are closeness and participation in each other's lives. I feel distanced from her and she is maintaining her distance. The source of my feelings is an ideal of being so attached to someone, being a part of someone else, to work in synchronous harmony with someone else. But then why do I keep talking about religion and spiritual paths and monasteries and not wanting to live past 34, 40 at most? I have a history of abandoning. Who am I to think I could ever be that close to someone else? To feel 'unconsidered' in Amina's life is ludicrous.

A lot of the problem is my being here in New Jersey and doing nothing. Amina is just going on with her life, a life that I also had to go on with when I was a student. Now I'm just doing nothing and it's affecting our relationship. I think of the future and that we will have a time to work it all out, but I don't know how to handle right now. I don't know how to get to that comfortable future.

224 College St., Oberlin

People wouldn’t annoy me if it weren’t for ego. Without ego, Luyen wouldn’t cause so much stress and neither would Amina. Love wouldn’t be such a nuisance. I wouldn’t have the pain of striving for excellence in music. It’s all ego. I wouldn’t want, I wouldn’t hate. Ego is a problem. Not a simple one.

224 College St., Oberlin

Practicing was bad today. I’ve been spending a lot of time in the panyard trying to get better, but Art was there today since he's in the EXCO steel drum class. He is simply a much better musician. Anything he touches sounds great, while I have to struggle to even sound musical. I have to keep reminding myself that he does what he does, and I do what I do and they are not the same thing. There is an objective standard of musicianship and he will kick my ass any time it is used, but that objective standard of musicianship is not all that music is. It’s sometimes hard to tell in an environment like Oberlin, and it’s not necessarily a good thing.

My feelings are all about ego. I’m letting my ego get out of hand, letting them influence my feelings. I need to keep practicing and at the point I put heart and soul into music, I’ll start improving. At this point I don’t have the confidence to be fully uninhibited. My ego will be the death of me. Got to get rid of the ego. Ego is attached to pride, and pride prevents humility, and that enhances inhibitions when talent is absent.

At dinner, I found out that “Hook” was showing at the Apollo. I went to the 7:10 showing. I got much more out of it than the first time I saw it in January. That movie would fit so perfectly into the film syllabus of the Religion 103 class I took last semester. Life, flying, it’s all about magic - Maggie and Jack, Peter Pan’s happy thoughts. Maggie+Jack=magic. Happy thoughts, miracles, and ordinary life. The role of belief and believing. Imagination to create. Imagination the key to creating our lives, the key to “flying”.

When religions speak of “following the Way”, they aren’t referring to a path to walk on or roads taken or not taken. I think it’s more of the manner or attitude towards living life or perceiving the world. It’s less of something linear, like a direction or something chosen. Maybe everyone already gets that and I’m only finding it out now. I don’t know anyone else’s nature. What I know of them is only what I know of them in myself. What I think about other people is only a reflection of myself and doesn’t reflect what they really are. It sounds so basic when articulated.

Fort Lee, NJ

I’ve been stupid enough to let my defenses down. The ‘rents are very predictably taking advantage of it. I give them an inch and they blitz for every bit of ground they can get. It’s like a war. They get a foothold and secure a position, then attack again, advance and secure another position, taking advantage of any weakness shown.

The tension is all here, but I have been trying to be polite and cordial, reducing the friction. It’s only an experiment, a front and I feel the lying in my face, but it reduces negative interaction, which is good because I don’t need it. But without the coldness I usually present, they seem to feel free to push for more, gain leverage in controlling my life.

It isn’t all bad. They make me care about my “self” less. If I can care about my self less, maybe I can stop putting so much emphasis on it. The first step in really developing is to stop caring about myself and what happens to me.

For me to graduate in December, I would need to take 17 credits this Fall. I just barely got by this past semester with 14. I could do 17 credits if I could convince myself to not care about grades at all, let my GPA plunge and simply not care about it.

College is a privilege. My being there is made possible by the ‘rents and their money. It would be an abuse of privilege if I started demanding how I go about getting educated. If the ‘rents decide that grades don’t matter, then grades don’t matter. Anything about money, I can’t fight it.

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

What sort of person am I to be?
Upon what should my life be based?
What do I want from other people and from relationships with them?
What is it that will get me through day to day?
Everything is based on pain. Life is suffering. Nothing is permanent. So nothing is permanent, what does that mean?

I want to be remembered. Not because of ego, not for legacy’s sake, but for the sake of fascination. Sometimes I wonder about my ancestors, what were they like? Were any of them like me? Maybe some family member in the future might wonder something similar and I might provide an answer. Even though it doesn’t mean a thing to me.

But how can I be remembered when I can’t stand people. I can’t stand my role in the world. I would like to entirely close up and shut myself in. I would like to disappear without a trace. But then I’m scared that I’m going to miss something.

Maybe I should just face it and realize that there’s nothing I can be that is satisfactory. Everything I do is borne out of pain, I create that pain, I bring it to me and encircle myself in it. Everything I am, everything I do is borne out of pain and everything I am and everything I do is designed to create more pain for myself. This intolerable existence is getting more and more understandable.