1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I don’t have any friends. Friends are people who are there when the bottom drops out, and I realize that when my world starts to collapse, none of these people are going to be there. There is no one in my life that I can count on. I have co-workers, bandmates, and housemates. Would any of them be a friend if they weren’t a co-worker, bandmate, or housemate?

I am starting to burn out at work and it’s nothing like I thought it would be. I thought I’d approached burning out before, but it was different before, I was still able to function. That wasn’t burning out, that was frustration and tension; that was hating my job. Now I’m really burning out. There’s a point in the day after which I can’t function anymore, I’m just despondent. I can’t focus; I’ll have five different things on my desk and I can’t get any of them done. I start working on one thing, then I look over at another thing, get distracted and start working on that thing, and I end up getting nothing done. I’m going to call in sick on Friday. Maybe Monday, too.

I need to keep the end of my life in mind, too. I’m supposed to be in my twilight years, not languishing in a dead-end job, doing something I really don’t care for. I’m giving the band a chance, but for how long? Am I clear on what I want out of it in the remaining time I have left? Play gigs? Expression? I’m really not that sure.

I need to calm my mind and not be a part of this world. I need to sit and concentrate, focus on what’s important. I have to remember that dying can’t be a plan. It has to be something I just do, and I have to be completely clear leading up to that point. At this rate, I’m never going to have that clarity. My life is completely clouded and fogged in.

Josefa's Birthday

We tried to have as much fun as possible in those days. We were a good team back then, before the changes.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

What a shitty year.

In my heart, I think Ritu committed suicide. I didn't know for the longest time, but now I'm convinced that she killed herself. That's the only thing that makes sense.

I failed Ritu, a friend in need. If not a friend, someone, anyone, in need who was reaching out for help. There is no excuse for it, she was in pain and I brushed it off, tough love, she's got to get out of it by herself and that's what will make her stronger. Idiot! Where was my compassion, where was my patience, where was my empathy? Instead, I put up a wall, defenses, protected myself at her expense. I was a snob. I think of how Ritu was starting on August 1st, and I can only amaze myself at how callously I treated her.

I'm not a good person. I need to work on that. It's not like I'll never forgive myself, I have to, but I feel sad about how I treated Ritu and I need to always remember her. I don't think I could have stopped her from killing herself, I don't think I would have, but the very least I had to do was be there for her, to let her know that she wasn't alone and that someone feels for her. When someone is in that much pain, just be there for them. Don't write them off and hope for the best. It wasn't my burden to stop her from killing herself, but it was my responsibility to not abandon her. Ritu, I'm so sorry.

As this year ends, I name no one as special in my life. Madoka and I have drifted and we're trying to force our friendship to fit. Our first calendar year not having seen each other.

So what from this year do I take into the next? What continuity should there be?

Doubts about being here only grow. I don't want to grow old. I don't want to grow old, but each year is another year older. How long am I going to put up with this? The older I get, the more real it becomes that if I'm going to leave, I need to do it sooner, rather than later.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Well, nothing is happening in my life, I'd might as well look back at it and amaze myself at how I got here from there. I've been in California for more than six and a half years. How to quantify that six and a half years of experience and have it reach where I am now? How to draw the lines and connect the dots of who and where I am now with who and where I was then?

1993 was the hardest year of my life. It was the year that I was closest to the love of my life and made a mess of that relationship. I still read "Meatless Days" and think I'm hearing Amina. As far as I know, she's grown out of it and now hates the book. Like the two people I lent it to hated it. The way I see that, though, is that what Amina gave me is not transferable. Amina enriched my life but I can't pass what she gave to me on to anyone else. What she gave me was for me alone. But Amina herself doesn't even exist anymore. She exists no more than the me that existed then.

So from 1993, I drag myself around Lake Merritt and out of Oakland to a studio in San Francisco that used to be home to another Oberlin grad. From there to a house in the Berkeley Hills with more Oberlin grads. Lost a lot of friends and moved to another house in Daly City and it's been strangers since. From there to a flat in San Francisco.

I try, but it's not a continuous line. It's broken up too much. The fracture of Nobuko, the fracture of Cat. The incongruence of Josephine. The anti-matter of Joy. There is no connection between Amina and Anita. Kevin appeared out of nowhere and has just been there, outlasting all my Oberlin friends. And what the hell did Shiho have to do with anything? I don't know what I think of Madoka anymore, aside from "loving" her, whatever that means (but I do!).

And my now? Who the hell is Rosalie? Who the hell is Ritu? What the hell is Fiction? Where is home? That just about sums it up. Where is home? It sure ain't 1557 Noe Street between 29th and Valley. It sure ain't New Jersey or Taiwan. It sure ain't Amina or Shiho or Josephine. It sure ain't Fiction or Chris or Lisa. It ain't Rosalie, Ritu, or BAL. It's not so much about where home is anymore, it's where home isn't.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I knew that the high wouldn’t last. Everything was looking a little too perfect for a while. A new life, a new course, getting back in touch with old friends and stuff.

I’ve been getting back in touch with people this year. I got back in touch with Frances. I got back in touch with Vikki, and I’m regretting that already after one meeting. She can’t possibly be a positive element in my life. And on top of all that, Anita has been pissing me off and not returning messages and I’m at the point of letting go of that contact. People have been the biggest disappointment.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I got back in touch with Frances. It was all positive, all good memories, lots of old love. We’ve grown and matured. I’m glad I did it. I just got the urge to contact her and so I searched for her on the web, then dug out my old address books for her last known number and tracked her down. It was such a good feeling to talk to her; just someone from the past. We used to be really good friends and we shared lots of quality time. But then with her personal life there was always something detached and untouchable. I never understood her obsessions with people who treated her like shit and who I couldn’t stand. She casually mentioned Amina which indicated to me that she is unaware of how sensitive a topic that is. To my surprise I responded to her name bitterly. There really is no basis for my fixation on Amina.

Series IV, Roll 10 (Pentax K2, Ilford XP2):

Shooting with Anita: She was one of those great non-photographer photographers, who would shoot with ease and come up with great images. She shot with a Nikon 8008. She was like my best friend during this time period.


Frame 18 - in silhouette on a pier along Embarcadero.


Frame 23 - on the Embarcadero.

198 Shakespeare St., S.F.

November 1996

Jen approached me during class break during a night class. I was sitting out on a table in the hall and she came up to me and we just started chatting. She’s originally from Long Island and she started going to law school in New York, but then she transferred out here.

She intrigues me. I’m still not sure what I think of her or whether I like her or not. I’m leaning towards the not, but she is a character. She plays bass. I don’t expect our acquaintance to last very long, she’s just not my type.

***********************************

Forget it. I’m conceding. My life is not going to get any better, and even if it did I can’t bring myself to convince myself that I would care. Everything is wrong and I’m just simply sick of it. Everything went wrong, every path I’ve taken has been wrong, the road that I’m on is wrong. I don’t like anything about me and my life, and any reason I can think of for staying is bullshit. Fear of death, fear of what comes next, fear of missing something? Enjoyment, music, living, breathing, seeing, photographing? This is pathetic.

My life is pathetic and living it is pathetic. I’ve been waiting so long for something to change. Not even something in my life, just me. I’ve been waiting for me to change and it just isn’t happening. I still don’t like myself. I don’t like how I am in this world. I don’t like anything I do. I don’t like being in this skin. I don’t like thinking my thoughts or seeing through my eyes. I don’t like eating, sleeping, showering, shitting, peeing, thinking, being. I don’t like this world. Everything I like about life and this world is ruined by human beings. I hate people, I hate my relations with people, I hate my interactions with people. That’s why I keep disappearing from people’s lives.

I used to worry about what’s going to happen to my stuff, what people around me are going to do, how they’re going to react, and what they’re going to have to go through. Fuck it. Why should I care? What about what I have to go through? Do they think suicide is fucking easy? Let them deal with it. It happens. Shit happens. Let them throw all of my shit away, send it back to the ‘rents. Whatever. That last barrier that has kept me alive is finally down. There is nothing to stop me now. Nothing that will change.

Tomorrow, why not?

***********************************

Damn! The feeling didn’t last. I hate missing a moment. I don’t think I’ll set these dates anymore. All they are anyway are time outs; buffer time to allow me to cool off. When I decide to die, it’ll be in one of those moments, but it will be real with no waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If I can’t do it right at the moment, then I’m obviously not going to do it. What I do know for sure is that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a day worth living.

It was Pete’s birthday, and I thought it would be a nice gesture to go out with them after rehearsal. After rehearsal, I told them I had to deliver an amp to a friend, so I had to meet them at the bar later.

So I went to Jen’s to deliver her amp, she came along with me to the bar, and afterwards I drove her home and she asked me to come in. So I ended up at her place and was slightly drunk so I crashed at her place. But by then I pretty much knew what I thought of Jen and then left first thing in the morning.

I’ll stay in touch with Jen for a little while longer. She is fun and social. But I can’t say I’m impressed by much else about her. I can see her getting annoying after a while. But the main thing that sets things in stone between us is that she voted yes on Prop. 209, to ban affirmative action:

Paper for Jurisprudence class which I handed in the day after Election Day after it was known that 209 had passed:

“Recently, in two separate Southern cities, race riots were ignited when white police officers shot and killed black motorists. In the St. Petersburg, Florida incident, the mayor said that he was surprised that it had occurred and that he did not believe that St. Petersburg had a problem with racial tensions. Race riots, however, rarely are the result of a single, isolated, anomalous incident. They are usually catalyzed by a single event that serves as a flashpoint after years of racial tension, discrimination, and neglect. It is far more likely that the mayor’s lack of awareness of racial tensions is an example of precisely why the riot occurred at all.

“In her essay, “The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay on Formal Equal Opportunity,” Patricia Williams discusses the rhetorical ways that race is (not) dealt with in the law and society. Although equal treatment is the proclaimed goal and ideal for society, the law uses the concept and language of ‘equality’ to either maintain or ignore the reality of continuing inequality. Liberalism, which may claim to be an instrument of equal opportunity and equal treatment through positive law and personal rights, fails to perform those functions in a dynamic where past racial inequality and its continuing repercussions are inadequately redressed.

“The effectuation of the principles of liberalism is necessarily biased and curtailed, even when the word of law is remedied, when a society was based and then developed on principles of racial inequality. Williams argues that racial omission was a literal part of the original intent of the Founding Fathers (Williams, p. 10). The Constitutional omission of other races was not based on mere ignorance or oversight, but was assumed and incorporated into the structure of law. There was no question that “all men created equal” meant white men. The American consciousness of race was defined by the assumed inferiority and underclass status of blacks.

“Through most of this country’s history and development, blacks had little, if any, effective recourse to the law. It was not until the 1950's and 1960's that the Supreme Court realized the slippery nature of the word “equality” when it found Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine, which had been enforced for over fifty years, untenable. By that time, the U.S. had completed its westward expansion, underwent the industrial revolution, and was well into modernization.

“Affirmative action plans were an attempt to affirmatively re-place blacks, women, and other minorities into the law and to uplift and equalize their position in society. Affirmative action was also an affirmation of historical inequality and a recognition that true equality under the function of liberalism was only possible if those inequalities were remedied and redressed. “Action” meant that something had to actively be done. Equality was not possible through passive, indirect action; by merely altering the rules and to start treating people equally.

“Yet less than fifty years later, affirmative action is under attack and the Supreme Court has once again revealed the elusive nature of equality and the shifting dynamic of race analysis. Williams discusses the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson, 109 S.Ct. 706 (1989) to demonstrate the Supreme Court’s manipulation of language and logic to accomplish a holding which is no less than astonishing and has the potential of undermining affirmative action in its entirety.

“Very simply, the Court found that there was no evidence of racial discrimination just because a city has a population of more the 50% African Americans and awards less than 1% of municipal contracts to minority-owned businesses. The Court accomplished this holding by using a host of adjectives to diminish the relevance of facts and statistical data and “conjured mythic dangers” to diminish the Court’s role and ability to deal with racial issues in general (Williams, p. 1-2).

“The Court used the narrowest possible interpretation of “equality” to guide their decision. It referred to the Constitutional ideal of “equality” where race is “irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement” (Croson at 727). The Court’s interpretation of the Constitutional ideal of “equality” is now correct, regardless of the intent of the Framers, but it conveniently forgets that the intent of the Framers had a direct social and historical impact that was maintained for almost 200 years. The fallacy of the Court is in its faith that the effects of almost 200 years of injustice and inequality can be reversed and remedied in thirty years of affirmative action and the subsequent removal of race from the consideration of the law.

“Equality, even with thirty years of affirmative action, has never been reached. It has only revealed how pervasive and ingrained racism is into the fabric of the U.S. social structure. The Supreme Court has held that the government and the courts are not responsible for remedying societal discrimination; only for governmental discrimination. Unfortunately, the effects of the original Constitutional omission of African Americans has directly contributed to societal discrimination. Instead of taking responsibility for the effects of past discrimination by upholding affirmative action as a way of acknowledging the continuing existence of racism and inequality while continuing to proclaim the Constitutional goal of true equality, the Court has chosen to adhere to the Constitutional proclamation of equality and ignore any effects from the past.

“The position that the Court has chosen in the Croson opinion is a positivist one. They interpreted the word “equality” strictly and narrowly and decided that any program based on race which is not remedial of actual, provable, intended discrimination is contrary to the Constitution proclamation of equality. The disparity in a group comprising half the population of Richmond getting less than 1% of municipal contracts, absent proof of intent to discriminate, means absolutely nothing in the eyes of the law.

“The Court chose to emphasize what was not there (proof of intent to discriminate), rather than what was there (a statistic that Justice O’Connor once might have called ‘prima facie evidence of discrimination’). Williams compares this technique with the Parol Evidence Rule which seeks to exclude, as “extrinsic”, evidence that is not probative of the meaning of a document or the intent of the writers.

“The Croson Court’s analysis used what would be the first level of the Parol Evidence Rule, the “fully integrated” document which limits the document to its plain meaning. However, the Court uses a negative as the basic document: the lack of hard proof in the Constitution that there was an intent to discriminate. The Court excluded all other evidence which changes the meaning of that lack of intent to discriminate and concluded that there was no intent to discriminate.

“What the Court effectively excluded was the experience of African Americans in Richmond. There was no racism in the awarding of municipal contracts in the city of Richmond, Virginia. The Court treats race as it always has been treated in the United States. It subordinates it and then uses that subordination as a reason for ignoring it. As Williams puts it, “when segregation was eradicated from the American lexicon, its omission led many to actually believe that racism therefore no longer existed” (Williams, p. 9). That is precisely the position the Supreme Court takes in prescribing its narrow view of equality. It is a flawed view, however, that affirmative action has already delivered the equal treatment that it promised.

“The rules may be color-blind, but people are not” (Williams, p. 10). Societal discrimination is directly related to how the government and courts have treated race and how they continue to treat race. It is not enough to change the rules and proclaim equality has been achieved. In any human race where white males are given a substantial lead of generations of advantage over and at the expense of women and people of color, there cannot be equality. Attainment of the liberalist notion of equality is not fully possible until the generations of societal discrimination has been adequately addressed and redressed.

“Race needs to be recognized by the law so long as society recognizes race. It is the law’s responsibility to recognize race because it is the law that has made women and people of color to “compose and literally define both this society’s underclass and its most underserved population” (Williams, p. 1). If the law chooses to ignore race under the Constitutional proclamation of equality, equality may eventually be achieved, but it will take a considerably much longer time, and an even longer time for the law to figure out why race riots occur.”

Jen’s smart, but she’s offensively clueless as to the issues. Or she’s a Republican.

***********************************

I must say. As much as I care to emphasize the similarities in various religions and spiritual beliefs and reconcile them in unifying way, I must reject the proposition that each person has only one lifetime - one period of responsible moral choice - which is irrevocably decisive in determining a person’s eternal fate without appeal. I reject the belief that our time on earth, from birth to death, is all there is and all that matters on Judgment Day, however that concept is interpreted.

It is exorbitantly egotistical to put that much importance on each of our individual lives. That is more of an expression of human psychology, the need for self-affirmation. I don’t think God, however that is interpreted, has a vested interest in the good or evil of each individual soul that ever experienced the random accident of birth on this planet.

I doubt that "God" is so vain as to handpick which people, freshly raised from the dead, will go to heaven and which will go to hell. I won’t even entertain the idea of God as being anthropomorphic, as a being that makes rational, logical moral decisions, in the manner of human beings, as to where a soul goes. Those are human projections of themselves onto the concept of God. Humans are limited by their knowledge and being to understand the nature of God, so they naturally project human attributes onto God. Such projections are suspect.

What lifetimes are subject to judgment? Only human lifetimes? Who lived the first human lifetime? Was it the first soul that could be said to have evolved out from being considered ape? Or after Neanderthal? Or after human morality developed the concepts of good and evil? Morality is really quite arbitrary when God is couched in such simplistic terms.

At the time of any given formulation of what is good and what is evil, there has been limits on human knowledge. Morality has only been able to be informed by the knowledge and information available at the time. There are now things that we don’t know and haven’t even considered. What happens to morality when we have a better understanding of metaphysics and multiple dimensions. Time goes on, discoveries are made and new knowledge is added. Concepts of good and evil, as far as human beings can define them, are malleable and the standards change.

Delineating a single human lifetime as the moral basis to judge that soul seems arbitrary. It doesn’t make sense. Human character is shaped by circumstance, so once we start asking “what if...” and “what about...”, we start seeing that it is not only arbitrary, but wholly unfair. People are born into advantages and disadvantages, they vary and their experience differs. So how can there be only one moral yardstick to judge their character?

It assumes that everyone is given equal moral choice. People are not given equal moral choice because the advantages or disadvantages people are born into defines what moral choices are available. The delineation of a single human lifetime as the basis for judgment was probably just a projection of a dominant hegemony that didn’t realize that the life of a soul transcends any single lifetime.

The counter-argument to this would be that none of this is relevant and each one of us is alive, and to the extent that we are aware, we are responsible for our own moral behavior. Any complaint as to the definition of a human lifetime or to the uncharted boundaries of human epistemology is irrelevant. Fair enough. But then I would then hold that a “single human lifetime” means any series of human lifetimes, cycles of rebirths, occupied by the “same person”. I don’t know what the “same person” means, but it has something to do with what gets carried over from lifetime to lifetime. The soul.

***********************************

God is not a being who will be making the big decision of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Rather, Judgment is a process that involves the nature of “God” that is within us all. God is that process. God as a part of each one of us, that which gets passed on from lifetime to lifetime. Anyone who believes God is an external agent is afraid of being accountable for oneself. Judgment Day involves a deep introspection and realization of our own natures and the “big decision” is an inherent part of that.

I’m not aware of the concept of a Judgment Day anywhere in Buddhism. At least not termed or conceptualized as it is in Western traditions. It may be incorporated, but not explicitly. Anyway, borrowing the term, I do believe in it to some extent. I haven’t quite finished formulating the mechanics of it.

I mentioned already that I don’t believe in the one lifetime theory upon which all human action is to be morally judged. So I don’t believe that you live your life, get buried or burned, and are kept in stasis until Judgment Day comes when all people will be resurrected and returned to life for judgment. That’s a little sadistic. I do, however, view the concept of resurrection as the Buddhist analog of remembering all of one’s past lifetime; a critical component of enlightenment.

I think resurrection means the returning to life of all past lives through remembrance of those lives, and it is on the moral behavior of all those lives that a soul, born and reborn through many lifetimes, will be “judged”. The mechanics part that I’m still not sure about yet is that in Buddhism, the remembrance of all past lives is a precursor to enlightenment, but according to Western eschatology, bad people go to Hell, i.e., they don’t attain enlightenment. How can you get to the threshold of enlightenment and then be judged as not attaining it. If it’s a given that once you reach the threshold of enlightenment, the remembrance and judgment, you will be enlightened, then what’s the point of judgment? The judgment already occurred.

Further, those who have reached enlightenment have supposedly remembered their past lives. Does that mean they have already experienced Judgment Day; i.e., their past lives have been resurrected? That necessarily changes the very nature of the Western eschaton. That would be seriously impairing the Western doctrine in favor of Buddhism.

It’s the God-nature within us that does the judging. Upon remembrance of past lives, the individual can recognize and distinguish between good and bad. I think by the nature of Judgment Day, there is no chance of deception or subjective biasing. There is an objective measure of “good” and “evil” that is beyond any of us. Truth is truth on Judgment Day and each individual can see for him and herself whether they go to “heaven” or “hell”.

I have no idea on what basis judgment will be dispensed, but I do think it is the individual that does his or her own judging and to the extent that the judgment is based on their God-nature, God is “sitting in judgment”. That’s all.

I haven’t done much figuring the different levels of heaven and hell. That comes to mind when I remember that living on earth is one level of hell. The “life is suffering” maxim represents that.

***********************************

I have no more justifications or rationales for dying. There never were any. I don’t need any. I simply do not want to live this life anymore. I don’t want to be here. The unbearableness of being. It has nothing to do with parents or family, or life, or what I’m doing, or what I have to do, or being human. In some ways I don’t feel like I’ve ever been here, I don’t feel that I belong here. I don’t want anyone to understand and don’t care if anyone does or doesn’t.

I’ve got another day set, even though I said I wouldn’t set them anymore. Force of habit. It’s how I get by day to day, week to week. It gives me something to look forward to, something immediate to strive for, even if my feelings have shown a pattern of changing before I actually do anything. Setting dates by which I want to die gives me a reason not to do it today, right now. I need to know that my current feelings can have a foreseeable end.

Am I prepared to kill myself right now? Most moments are pretty bad, but occasionally a not-so-bad one surfaces. Or at least a neutral one. It rained this past weekend, and I could have done it at any time. If that mood persists next weekend, I would think I’m ready to go through with it. After all, what is my life anymore? What has it come to? What is it made of anymore? Certainly not living material.

People kill themselves when something happens or changes that finally makes them snap. I’m the opposite. I’m going to kill myself because nothing is happening or changing. It’s a little frustrating knowing the feeling probably won’t last. But of course all I need is one time when it does. And I should note that every time I survive, there’s no real release, everything is still building up as it always has.

I know a lot of this feeling has to do with school stress. I have a 20 page paper on Islamic Law due at the beginning of December on the same day that I have a 5 page paper due in Jurisprudence. In the meantime I have to facilitate a discussion on post-modernism in Jurisprudence class on the same day that I have to present one of the essays on Law and Literature.

And I think to myself that I can get by. In the pinch, I can make it through all the presentations and papers and then exams on top of that. I can get the work done. But then I look beyond that and look for what’s there. So what if I can get through this month of concentrated stress and achieve yet another catharsis in my education? So what? Look at next February, what’s there? I’ll be getting through all this just for the sake of getting through all this. Nothing’s going to change, nothing’s going to be accomplished. It’s not about survival. It’s about what I really want. It’s about whether I really want to be playing this wretched game anymore.

Then there’s bullshit going on with the band, and finding the one person I liked in law school voted yes on 209 and that she really isn’t all that cool. It’s been so hard to meet people, I meet someone, look what I get. I get Jen. It’s been so hard to get into a band, I get into one, look what I get. I get these bozos. Great life. I’m wasting four years of my life, I still don’t have any marketable skills, and I’m 27 and I still have never held down a real job. Wish I had family, wish I had friends, wish I had someplace warm to spend.

I have to justify nothing. I don’t need to make anyone understand. The presumption will be that I was a nut that cracked under pressure, a basket case, emotionally depressed and disturbed, history of mental problems. That’s what people will look for first and read into whatever I write. Fine. Patterns of psychosis and delusional behavior, fits of depression and paranoia. Anti-social, a loner, suicidal. Troubled family background, poor upbringing, neglect, possible emotional abuse.

Preconceptions of what was wrong with me will be read into whatever rationale or justification I come up with. He concealed a dark double-life that he never showed and no one knew about. Good grief. The psychological mechanisms he employed to justify his suicide and to conceal or displace his psychosis were very complex. Here we have an example of an individual who may have been emotionally neglected, obviously depressed and suicidal, but complex and self-aware enough to detach himself in order to analyze his feelings from an almost objective voice. Of course, that objective voice was a perpetuation of his psychosis and may even be symptomatic of schizophrenia. Good grief. Fine, let them say what they must.

***********************************

In the sea of love, there are no shores, and there is nothing to do but drown. Rumi. When you fall in love with someone, you just know it. At each step, you fall in love again and again, more and more. You can never lie. If at any point you lie, you are not in the sea. If both are true to themselves and fall in love and let it be known, then there is no escape, and all you can do is drown. And if you resist, worse - if you succeed in resisting, you will die.

***********************************

Now it’s just getting curious. Why am I still alive? I tell myself I can kill myself at any moment, but then why not right now? What’s stopping me right now? I haven’t the slightest and I find that very, very curious.

I can’t imagine a better time and better circumstances in which to go ahead and do it. I have no pending obligations, I’m not in a moment of high stress, which allows me to clearer about it, and I want to do it. I’m calm and I’m in a moment of relative peace. The night is clear and the moon is close to full.

I still feel that my existence is a joke and it won’t make any difference however much longer I live. Nothing is going to change and my existence is not going to get any more bearable. What will next Spring bring? Only more of the same. There is an amorphous possibility of some change, but that’s not why I’m alive, it’s not good enough of a reason, it’s no reason at all, it’s just a lame excuse - to live just for the possibility change? That’s not living. To stay alive to strive for creature comforts which I know are fleeting? No thanks.

I know that theoretically suicide is not the only option. I could find and join an appropriate religious community. I doubt I’ll find anything perfect to match my beliefs, at least in this country, but it may be the proper environment in which I can live with my conscience and accept my existence. Do I not have the strength? Do I have the desire but not the commitment? What am I? What am I doing here? On the other hand, said community might also end up annoying the hell out of me.

There is a part of me that tells me that suicide is the proper path for me in this life, or that it’s at least an acceptable component in a series of lifetimes. If I don’t kill myself, I’m going against something, the way it’s supposed to be, something primeval.

I have not lived my life in a worthy manner. I leave no legacy or last words. When I die I will die alone, and unknown. I will have no ritual except to the sea and the stars, the wind, the sand, and the four directions. I will die never having touched another person, never having known another person’s heart. I hope that I have been good and that I have lived true to myself, and that I may be forgiven for the harms I’ve caused others.

1347 La Loma, Berkeley

March 1996

Diem had been getting my postcards. I wasn't sure whether she had or not. I don't know how many had to be forwarded to her since I don't know when she moved from Oberlin to Cleveland. She didn't feel that it was important to tell me I suppose.

For the past year she hasn't been saying anything in her very brief and sketchy letters, which never gave details and never told what she felt. And when she did mention her feelings, they felt glossed over as if to make everything seem fine.

So I wrote to her and told her our friendship was over. I told her where my life was and where I was in my life. I told her that I thought she had a lot of issues and hoped that she was dealing with them. I told her that I found life sad and people disappointing. I told her I loved her and called it quits because I wanted to end the friendship before it deteriorated into nothingness, with nothing good to remember.

I cited how I felt Shiho and I had become pen-pals in 1991 and how I wanted to break off all communications. Shiho meant so much to me that becoming pen-pals was too degrading to the meaning she had to me. But we didn't cut communications because Shiho didn't want to and we ultimately lost everything. Including the friendship and whatever meaning we had to our few memories. I didn't want that to happen with Diem.

I never found out what it was like between Diem and Amina after we broke up.

Ana Claire was just as easy. She called and got a cold response from me, and when she asked if I didn't want to talk to her, I told her not particularly. But that wasn't sad, and Ana Claire wasn't a disappointment. She was everything I thought she was and hoped she’d be, and in the end, that's all she was.

Feelings don't matter anymore. Neither does trust.

***********************************

Diem out, Ana Claire out, Luyen out. Luyen visited for five days because she's thinking of transferring to a college in the area. It did not go well. On her second night here, we got into a big discussion about “us” and “our” communication, and that discussion should never have happened. The assumptions, the gall, it was offensive and presumptuous. For someone who I hadn't seen for however long, she certainly took liberties about the things she felt she could say.

I can't even go into it, it was so appalling. I don't care about whatever she thought was a problem. It didn't deserve any discussion at all. If she has a problem with me, she can get the hell out, we're not that close anymore. What, is she living in a time warp? No one is going to have a problem with me and stay in my life anymore. I don't care about anyone's complaints about me. I am who I am and I'm not going to subject myself to criticism regarding who I am anymore. If anyone has a complaint, I'm the last person to whom they'd want to bring it.

It's almost laughable. I'm getting rid of people right and left, and she comes waltzing in accusing me of whatever and complaining about what is between us. Accusations? Get out. Complaints? Get out.

***********************************

I hate all this. I hate my life and I hate myself. I hate people and dealing with them. I hate walking down the street and seeing them. I try my best to keep my line of sight above everyone's heads so I don't have to look at people. I haven't done anything with my life and I have absolutely nothing to show for it except a lot of material possessions.

I don't care about anything. No more deep or in-depth discussions about anything with anyone. I'm just not interested. Politics, race, religion, injustice, inequality, civil rights, international relations; it's all talk and the world goes on the way it goes, and I can't even pay attention to my own needs. I'm not even listening to myself.

It's not better to burn out than fade away. I kind of like fading, slowly disappearing from peoples' lives, then remove any significance or presence I may have to them, then remove myself physically from their reality.

I told myself that I never want to feel this way again, that I wouldn't let myself. Well, here I am feeling this way again and I resolutely do not want to continue, to wait until things change. But what am I doing about it? Waiting until I'm 34? I don't like people or dealing with them, I can't communicate with anyone and no one knows what I'm about or where I'm coming from or where I am. It's as if I don't exist.

***********************************

I'm living week by week. I'm only living if there is something direct in the next week to live for. It started in February when I put an ad in the Express looking for musicians. Pathetic as it is, I only got one response - a Japanese-Filipino American drummer who's an ex-con. That's what I get? Is someone trying to tell me something? If someone's trying to tell me something, the message isn't being wasted. It's not even pathetic, it's genuinely funny!

That ad ran for three weeks, three weeks to endure. Then Luyen visited and I had to be here for that, then Madoka visited and that was another week. Then I put an ad in the Guardian to run three weeks, another three weeks bought. After that, let's see what keeps me here for another week. That will be the middle of April. On April 15, there will be a photo exhibit at school and I'm going to enter some photos. I can wait for that, too.

Mid-April? Amina's birthday? It's funny finally having a concrete plan. How long has this been coming? More than ten years?

As far back as I learned of a thing called suicide, it has meant something to me, a calling, a destiny. I've been suicidal all my life and never has it been completely gone. This isn't a recurring impulse that comes and goes, it is something that has always been here constantly as far back as I can remember.

***********************************

I wonder to myself what I would do if Amina called. I'd have an easier time if she sounded cheerful than if she sounded tentative or careful. I think I could tell her of the two loves I have for her. The human one, which is only a memory, which removed a good half of my trust. And the one that is beyond human, the one that would make it easy to be friends with her and to feel love towards her in that form. I don't know if I would decide to not kill myself if she called. I think it would depend on the circumstances. I would like to think that I would go right ahead with it regardless; having closed that gaping emotional wound she helped inflict.

***********************************

I can't begin to express how frustrating it is being human, being alive. Alive? I don't even know what that means. A study appeared in today's paper that tea and fruits have something in them which encourages the production of some kind of blood cell which is beneficial in preventing strokes.

I don't think I understand that impulse to control what our bodies do by controlling what goes into them. I understand a healthy diet to feel good, but to consume something so that certain chemical reactions happen which affects that which in turn helps prevent something as attenuated as strokes? That's just way too high maintenance. That's not being alive. If it takes too much thought to be alive, it isn't being alive.

I hate having to eat. I hate having to shower. I hate dealing with whatever is wrong with my skin which gives me a rash nightly. I hate body functions. I hate anything I need to do. I hate being contained in this skin; these defined borders of my existence which in reality is leaking away. I hate things I enjoy. I hate living. Not because it's miserable being alive, I can see how it doesn't have to be, I just don't like it.

I hate humanity and what it has done to this planet, to its people and cultures. I hate its values and what it emphasizes as important.

***********************************

I made contact sheets of two rolls of film that I shot from the end of February into March, and was discouraged by the results. None of the images grabbed me. It was all crap. I wondered if I should give up photography for a while, but I didn't want to join the line of people I've met who "used to do" photography. I don't want to feel like it's something I'm dabbling in and giving it up because it isn't making me feel good.

I only started doing photography a few months ago, what am I expecting of myself? That's no way to learn and grow if it's truly a way I want to express myself. There's so much more to photography than coming up with good prints. This was so basic when I started and was humble enough to not presume I could come up with good prints at all. I just need to go with these shots, pick the images I can remember why I shot them, and print those as best as I can.

1347 La Loma, Berkeley

November 1995

How exactly should I feel about making it to the oral argument semi-finals for Appellate Advocacy? Crap! Big fucking deal, but my stress level has shot up double because of it. I was so much looking forward to getting oral arguments done with and having Madoka's boyfriend visit and go so that I could spend time catching up in all my other courses I've been neglecting for the oral argument for App Ad.

It has only been several months, but my patience has been wearing thin at home and I now consider Nobuko and Vikki just as detached housemates. Our friendships end at the front door. Lisa was out of the loop pretty much from day one, she just changed so much and she wasn't cooperating with any of us. You know a friendship is at an end when jokes aren't funny anymore and they become interpreted as attacks.

Ana Claire
It was beyond weird that while I was visiting Shiho in Japan this Summer, I ran into Ana Claire in Harajuku. We had just done a SHAG performance right before I went to Japan and neither of us knew the other was going to be there. Then on Sunday, Shiho took me to Harajuku, a park where a bunch of bands and performance artists just set up and play. A hip young scene, and we were walking down the sidewalk and watching the people doing their thing, and my eye catches this woman who is vaguely familiar. Then we make eye contact and I think, "Wow, looks just like Ana Claire". It took about three seconds to realize it was Ana Claire.

Then earlier this month, I drove Tetsuya, Madoka's boyfriend, to San Francisco airport to go back to Japan. That worked out for me because I was going to see Belly at the Fillmore and I wanted to have my car in the city. So after the airport, I needed to park where I wouldn't get a ticket during the day but could get to BART to go to school. I tried parking around the 16th St. BART vicinity, but after I parked, I realized there was a 2 hour limit. So I got back into the car and drove up to 24th St. and found parking and proceeded to the 24th St. BART.

While walking to the BART station, I arbitrarily decided to cross the street. I was going to cross at some point, but it was totally arbitrary where I crossed, not even at an intersection. So there is no wonder about my surprise when I crossed the street and Ana Claire was right there. There must be some meaning attached to Ana Claire. These "coincidences" can't be just coincidences. There is supposed to be something there; if not her, then some connection of hers. But if I'm reading the signs correctly, Ana Claire must be in my life at this point for some reason.

If I hadn't crossed the street at that arbitrary point, Ana Claire would have been on one side of the street and I would have been on the other and we would have totally missed each other. Has that happened before? What if we had not met through SHAG? Would the non-existence of SHAG in either of our lives altered our lives so much that either of us would not have been in Harajuku on that Sunday, or on 24th St. that morning? If we had never met, would we not have been in Harajuku in Tokyo in Japan on that day? That's possible, maybe SHAG changed our schedules. But if it didn't, we would have passed each other right by, maybe making eye contact, assuming each other was Japanese.

How about if we never met and both of those events occurred? We would have passed each other in Harajuku and then on 24th St. On what level would we have recognized each other? At all? Probably not. If we had never met, we would have been two random people who randomly ran into each other at two random places in two different countries at two random times and didn't recognize each other.

Shiho
Shiho was predictable to the last; it was pathetic. I didn't need to use half the tact that I ended up using, and I didn't use much. She didn't offer a single objection to breaking up. I handed it to her on a silver platter and she probably feels like the luckiest girl in the world. She didn't have to do anything, she just went right along with it. I made it clear that she had no say in it, though. Why did I do that? Because she had nothing to say about it.

It hurts, but I'm so glad to be out of that relationship. It was twisted and staying in it...I found out something about her character; I'm glad I got out. I knew nothing about her and she told me nothing. She didn't communicate anything to me. I put in so much and she gave nothing. We were substanceless in the end, and that's what hurts the most. The best sex, though, too bad the relationship was nothing.

I didn't show any of the resentment that has grown towards her. Maybe that's a good thing. It shows what this relationship was - she had no clue what I was feeling; never tried to participate or figure out the other side. It shouldn't be hard getting her out of my life. I just have to remember she was never really in it.

I was hoping that my trust would somehow survive all this. The thought occurred to me that maybe the reason why I've been so quick to trust people I've been interested in is because of good experiences with people in past lives. I was hoping not to taint my trust in future lives, but if it happens, it can't be helped.

At least one ancient, nagging question got answered. If I had tried to hold on to Shiho the second time we started going out, could I have? I didn't try because of Amina. The answer, I know now, is no. I know that when Amina and I started going out, she was also at the very least interested in someone else. I have no proof of it, but I know it. She would have been in a similar situation as we were just in, and she would have chosen the other person then, too.

I will never be anyone's second choice. Once there is anyone else in the picture, I'm gone.

Beginning Photography Roll 4 (Fujica ST605n, Tri-X)

Frame 10 - Nobuko. Blurry, but I think she would have wanted it that way.

Susan, Frames 12, 13. I got better darkroom prints of both of these shots. Couldn't anything with them digitally:




Frame 22 - Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA.


Frame 27 - Berkeley Marina at sunset.

Muir Woods

Beginning Photography Roll 1 (Fujica ST605n, Tri-X)


Frame 19 - Bay Bridge


Frame 20 - Nobuko and Vikki


Frame 21 - Dipsea Trail, Muir Woods

Nobuko and Susan, Pinnacles National Monument

Beginning Photography Roll 1, frame 13 (Tri-X)