Gone the first month of this arbitrary last year of a decade, century, and millennium. Arbitrary numbers. I’m starting to worry about finances and that has been keeping me down lately. I have to really start cutting back because when it comes time for me to get a job, to maintain my current expenditure, I have to be making 30k, and I don’t have the work experience to warrant that high a salary.
Papers are going slow but I have to get them done soon and get on with my life. It’s difficult only because of the lack of deadlines, supervision, or support. But I’m just being lazy.
No Fiction gigs in sight until March and that’s still a maybe. No movement yet in the band to get sooner gigs, and rehearsals are moth-bitten affairs at best. They haven’t been steady or solid and that has been frustrating. At least Chris and Lisa have recruited me for their acoustic gigs, so although not the level of Fiction, it’s something. And perhaps it will be good warm-up.
On the other hand, Madoka is done with her job in Tokyo and is now in Chiang Mai, Thailand, doing more grassroots activist work. And she has reverted much more to the person I loved and held so dear. It’s good to have friends you can count on. Madoka, Kevin, Anita, maybe Frances, maybe May Oo, probably Fiction - more time is needed to be sure. Valuable friends. Value, very interesting. How much self-worth do we attribute to our friends? I keep forgetting that no self-worth should depend on the value of friends.
Showing posts with label law school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law school. Show all posts
Friday, January 29, 1999
Thursday, October 15, 1998
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
I gave a talk to today on the ethnic groups of Burma. It felt so good to talk and then be surrounded by people with whom I could actually talk with about human rights and Burma. I’ve been totally deprived of that interaction in the entire time I’ve been involved with Burma issues. I’ve never even discussed the issues with Madoka. That’s a curiosity in itself. Madoka and I used to be able to talk about anything, but now the most obvious thing we’d discuss has never crossed our lips.
So I spent last night and most of today preparing for the talk and rehearsing what I was going to say. In the end, I talked without the script and just tried to let it flow. There were Burmese at the talk and one of the speakers was Burmese, Ko Ko Lay, who talked about his experiences in the 1988 military crackdown and his time on the border and then getting to the U.S.. There was also a Karen woman there, and that was exciting since my talk was on the ethnic groups. I exchanged information with some people and I hope to stay in contact with them.
So I spent last night and most of today preparing for the talk and rehearsing what I was going to say. In the end, I talked without the script and just tried to let it flow. There were Burmese at the talk and one of the speakers was Burmese, Ko Ko Lay, who talked about his experiences in the 1988 military crackdown and his time on the border and then getting to the U.S.. There was also a Karen woman there, and that was exciting since my talk was on the ethnic groups. I exchanged information with some people and I hope to stay in contact with them.
Friday, September 25, 1998
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
I have my first “speaking engagement”. Boy does that sound weird; me, featured speaker. I’m so important now. HRA has scheduled an event where I discuss my recent experience at the U.N. and my research on the ethnic groups of Burma. Wow, this is resumé material! I better read my paper again and look up some law.
Just in case I totally flop, I’m also going to use this opportunity to exhibit my photos from the refugee camps last year. So if all else fails, I can at least use my photos to prove that I have some redeeming quality. Can’t speak for shit, but he’s into photography; very interesting.
The Relationship is on the rocks today. I was moody today because it was cloudy. Rain is a depressant. But truth to tell, I wasn’t feeling terrible when I left the house to pick her up at 4:00 at school. But then there was traffic going there, then she didn’t show up and I waited until 4:30 and then left and then there was traffic on the way back, and then she left a message on my machine and she sounded pissed at me. So I canceled plans to go to Palo Alto and drank and shut off from her. And it was the strangest thing, I ended up trying to console her. And stranger still, I wasn’t succeeding! What is it when I have a bad day or I’m moody and in need of comfort and understanding and I end up having to comfort her? That’s fucking lame. A babysitter I am not.
But in the end, no hard feelings. It’s nbd and it’ll pass. What I’m more concerned about is that not having sex is becoming the norm between us. We had several opportunities and each time, one of us thwarted it, maybe in reaction to the previous non-occurrence, which is even worse, but the bottom line is the same, it’s not happening. What if it gets to the point where any time we do have sex it feels forced and contrived? Bad sex will bring this relationship down.
Just in case I totally flop, I’m also going to use this opportunity to exhibit my photos from the refugee camps last year. So if all else fails, I can at least use my photos to prove that I have some redeeming quality. Can’t speak for shit, but he’s into photography; very interesting.
The Relationship is on the rocks today. I was moody today because it was cloudy. Rain is a depressant. But truth to tell, I wasn’t feeling terrible when I left the house to pick her up at 4:00 at school. But then there was traffic going there, then she didn’t show up and I waited until 4:30 and then left and then there was traffic on the way back, and then she left a message on my machine and she sounded pissed at me. So I canceled plans to go to Palo Alto and drank and shut off from her. And it was the strangest thing, I ended up trying to console her. And stranger still, I wasn’t succeeding! What is it when I have a bad day or I’m moody and in need of comfort and understanding and I end up having to comfort her? That’s fucking lame. A babysitter I am not.
But in the end, no hard feelings. It’s nbd and it’ll pass. What I’m more concerned about is that not having sex is becoming the norm between us. We had several opportunities and each time, one of us thwarted it, maybe in reaction to the previous non-occurrence, which is even worse, but the bottom line is the same, it’s not happening. What if it gets to the point where any time we do have sex it feels forced and contrived? Bad sex will bring this relationship down.
Sunday, August 16, 1998
email - Geneva, Switzerland
I got to Geneva no problem, it's a pretty boring city. How is Anita? She returned right? Let her know that her cousin will be put on trial soon in Burma, but it's all for show to treat the matter seriously and scare other people from trying to do the same thing. She will be released, I don't know when, but she won't be harmed. the Burmese military government is pretty stupid, but not stupid enough to harm U.S. citizens. I'll mention it to whoever I can meet at the U.N..
I haven't been to a U.N. session yet. I got to Geneva yesterday, changed money, wandered around the airport to get used to the atmosphere, and then grabbed a taxi to my hotel which wasn't far away but cost about $15!! My room is tiny but it's clean. But for $50 a night? Wow! After I checked in, I went out and walked down to the Rhone River which drains Lake Geneva. If I stayed at the hotel, I would have fallen asleep. It was dream-like. the sun set around 20:00 and I got back well after dark.
I went for a jog this morning and the U.N. is less than a mile away. I'll still take the bus there tomorrow to keep from getting tired. It already feels like I've been here a long time, or time is going by really slow. I took a boat ride out onto Lake Geneva which was relaxing and perfect because my energy was low and I wouldn't have any other time to do it. It would be nice if you were here. The weather is really, really nice. Europe in the summer, I guess. But their winters probably suck.
So that's all I've been doing, walking around. There are no interesting pictures to take and time is going by really slow. It's all dream-like, like I said.
U.N. stuff starts tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I won't make the intervention tomorrow. I think I have to hand in the written copy a day in advance, so I'm looking at Tuesday (so I'll only wear a suit on Tuesday). Otherwise I'll just be observing and trying to talk to people but I have no idea what to expect. Who knows? I might start my oral intervention and they'll stop me and say, "yea, yea, we know all about that...NEXT!!" I would probably crumple the pages into balls to throw at them.
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes. I'm thinking of you all the time and there are moments that my breath just stops when I think of how cute you are and the cute things you do. much much love,
I haven't been to a U.N. session yet. I got to Geneva yesterday, changed money, wandered around the airport to get used to the atmosphere, and then grabbed a taxi to my hotel which wasn't far away but cost about $15!! My room is tiny but it's clean. But for $50 a night? Wow! After I checked in, I went out and walked down to the Rhone River which drains Lake Geneva. If I stayed at the hotel, I would have fallen asleep. It was dream-like. the sun set around 20:00 and I got back well after dark.
I went for a jog this morning and the U.N. is less than a mile away. I'll still take the bus there tomorrow to keep from getting tired. It already feels like I've been here a long time, or time is going by really slow. I took a boat ride out onto Lake Geneva which was relaxing and perfect because my energy was low and I wouldn't have any other time to do it. It would be nice if you were here. The weather is really, really nice. Europe in the summer, I guess. But their winters probably suck.
So that's all I've been doing, walking around. There are no interesting pictures to take and time is going by really slow. It's all dream-like, like I said.
U.N. stuff starts tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I won't make the intervention tomorrow. I think I have to hand in the written copy a day in advance, so I'm looking at Tuesday (so I'll only wear a suit on Tuesday). Otherwise I'll just be observing and trying to talk to people but I have no idea what to expect. Who knows? I might start my oral intervention and they'll stop me and say, "yea, yea, we know all about that...NEXT!!" I would probably crumple the pages into balls to throw at them.
I'll let you know how tomorrow goes. I'm thinking of you all the time and there are moments that my breath just stops when I think of how cute you are and the cute things you do. much much love,
Friday, May 15, 1998
Graduation Robe Day
Series VII, Roll 17 (Pentax ZX-5n, Tri-X): Not graduation, just the day we picked up our robes.
Frame 20 - I only remember Jiu's name, on the left.
Frame 22 - Meng was pretty memorable, he was kinda nuts. He may be the only person who wasn't on the 1997 Summer program whose name I remember.
Frame 25 - pi-Ped.
Frame 26 - I forget her name, but I think she was pi-Ped's love interest. I think in the end it was a successful endeavor.
Frame 27 - Thai friends. I only remember Ped, on the left. The other two weren't on the Bangkok Summer program in 1997, so I don't remember them that well.
Frame 28
Frame 31 - pi-Yui on the right. The woman on the left is in so many frames, I must think she's attractive.
Frame 32 - group shot.
Frame 33 - Golden Gate University. Lounging in the lower level plaza area after trying on the robes.
Here's an interesting shot I think is from the same day. It's not my shot. I think Josephine took it, but I don't remember her being there (she's not in any of my shots). We may have been fighting and she may have come by after I left, or for some other reason we weren't there at the same time. I somehow ended up with the negatives. I'm thinking she was using my Fujica and when we broke up again for good, her negatives were still in the camera.
I don't know how the background got completely washed out, but it's a neat effect.
Frame 20 - I only remember Jiu's name, on the left.
Frame 22 - Meng was pretty memorable, he was kinda nuts. He may be the only person who wasn't on the 1997 Summer program whose name I remember.
Frame 25 - pi-Ped.
Frame 26 - I forget her name, but I think she was pi-Ped's love interest. I think in the end it was a successful endeavor.
Frame 27 - Thai friends. I only remember Ped, on the left. The other two weren't on the Bangkok Summer program in 1997, so I don't remember them that well.
Frame 28
Frame 31 - pi-Yui on the right. The woman on the left is in so many frames, I must think she's attractive.
Frame 32 - group shot.
Frame 33 - Golden Gate University. Lounging in the lower level plaza area after trying on the robes.
Here's an interesting shot I think is from the same day. It's not my shot. I think Josephine took it, but I don't remember her being there (she's not in any of my shots). We may have been fighting and she may have come by after I left, or for some other reason we weren't there at the same time. I somehow ended up with the negatives. I'm thinking she was using my Fujica and when we broke up again for good, her negatives were still in the camera.
I don't know how the background got completely washed out, but it's a neat effect.
Saturday, January 31, 1998
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
The first month of a new year. What monument marks this passing? What events are worthy of mention? What happened? What was happening? Did anything change? What was important? What was meaningful? Who was I? You know life is getting boring when the questions are more interesting than the answers.
1997 ended and 1998 began; I was in New Jersey. I drove to New Jersey alone after Josephine and I permanently ended our relationship as it was and as it had been. We didn't even make it six months, we fell short by about three days. But we started re-envisioning the relationship again in near-epiphany and she started serious work and progress on her personality that she wants and needs.
We started officially going out for the second time on January 5. No relationships in between the first and second. All I'll say at this point is that her changes appear to be working. We've had some problems, but they weren't her fault entirely, and we were able to work through them. It looks like our relationship will be able to have problems that don't lead to a complete break down. Inshah'allah.
What else? Not much else. I don't have a whole lot to say. I don't feel a whole lot anymore. Mellow from age perhaps.
What am I doing with my life?
I'm not taking any classes this semester. I have nine credits left to graduate. I'm registered for a six credit thesis for which I have to write 60 pages by the end of the summer. The thesis is going to be something about obstacles and practical considerations in realizing a regional human rights organization in Southeast Asia.
As for the last three credits, I might go to Bangkok again and take the Regional Organizations class I signed up for and dropped last summer. In the alternative, I'm doing research for a Bay Area human rights organization that sponsors interns to go to Geneva to make interventions to agenda items. I can probably get credit for that work whether or not I go to Geneva.
It is difficult not having any classes, it's hard to focus, it's hard to discipline. I waste a lot of time, I'm spending far too much time on music and photography. I need to clamp down and work out some sort of schedule or I'm going to be in big trouble. Sixty pages is daunting.
1997 ended and 1998 began; I was in New Jersey. I drove to New Jersey alone after Josephine and I permanently ended our relationship as it was and as it had been. We didn't even make it six months, we fell short by about three days. But we started re-envisioning the relationship again in near-epiphany and she started serious work and progress on her personality that she wants and needs.
We started officially going out for the second time on January 5. No relationships in between the first and second. All I'll say at this point is that her changes appear to be working. We've had some problems, but they weren't her fault entirely, and we were able to work through them. It looks like our relationship will be able to have problems that don't lead to a complete break down. Inshah'allah.
What else? Not much else. I don't have a whole lot to say. I don't feel a whole lot anymore. Mellow from age perhaps.
What am I doing with my life?
I'm not taking any classes this semester. I have nine credits left to graduate. I'm registered for a six credit thesis for which I have to write 60 pages by the end of the summer. The thesis is going to be something about obstacles and practical considerations in realizing a regional human rights organization in Southeast Asia.
As for the last three credits, I might go to Bangkok again and take the Regional Organizations class I signed up for and dropped last summer. In the alternative, I'm doing research for a Bay Area human rights organization that sponsors interns to go to Geneva to make interventions to agenda items. I can probably get credit for that work whether or not I go to Geneva.
It is difficult not having any classes, it's hard to focus, it's hard to discipline. I waste a lot of time, I'm spending far too much time on music and photography. I need to clamp down and work out some sort of schedule or I'm going to be in big trouble. Sixty pages is daunting.
Saturday, November 30, 1996
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Saturday, September 28, 1996
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
Second day in a row I dreamed of Amina. I can’t describe the dream at all. The moods and scenery were too elusive and abstract. Amina was on a stage and she was being made an example of a woman who had transgressed something cultural. She hadn’t really, she was just playing the part. The punishment entailed having all of her hair shaved off. All of it. However, when her head was done, she looked like she did when she got her hair cut short in the Summer of 1993. When she was getting another part of her body shaved, I could see that she was pregnant. Very pregnant.
I’m going to drop my “Jurisprudence” class. I thought it would be about the philosophy of law as traced through the historical development of the U.S. legal system. I thought we’d be studying patterns and developments in the law as reflected through actual decisions and what they meant and what historical events affected them.
Instead we’re reading esoteric, pseudo-academic, ivory tower essays which have no discernable relation to reality or practical law. Useless. Instead of studying and learning the philosophy behind our legal system, I sit in class thinking, “who cares?!”.
I’m not going to put up with this anymore. My masochistic days are over. I’m not going to suffer through this class just to prove I’m not a quitter. Dropping the class won’t mean that I’m a quitter, it means I’m smart and know what’s good for me, and I’m much more reasonable about what I’m willing to put with.
Besides, I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m thinking I don’t want to kill myself. Or rather I’m realizing that I simply won’t, no matter how I feel about it. I don’t need this class to push me towards it again and tempt me to want to do it. I still hope I will do it, but I want to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons.
I wonder if this is really being healthy or if all this is a continuing manifestation of my suicidal psychosis. I wonder if I’m ill and this is all just a delusional part of the illness. I can’t go second guessing myself, though. I’m hurting and I’m aware of my past, but I’ve always been certain of my rationality and I recognize that what I call rational is different from everyone else’s. That doesn’t make me ill. Different doesn’t mean ill in this day and age.
I’m going to drop my “Jurisprudence” class. I thought it would be about the philosophy of law as traced through the historical development of the U.S. legal system. I thought we’d be studying patterns and developments in the law as reflected through actual decisions and what they meant and what historical events affected them.
Instead we’re reading esoteric, pseudo-academic, ivory tower essays which have no discernable relation to reality or practical law. Useless. Instead of studying and learning the philosophy behind our legal system, I sit in class thinking, “who cares?!”.
I’m not going to put up with this anymore. My masochistic days are over. I’m not going to suffer through this class just to prove I’m not a quitter. Dropping the class won’t mean that I’m a quitter, it means I’m smart and know what’s good for me, and I’m much more reasonable about what I’m willing to put with.
Besides, I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m thinking I don’t want to kill myself. Or rather I’m realizing that I simply won’t, no matter how I feel about it. I don’t need this class to push me towards it again and tempt me to want to do it. I still hope I will do it, but I want to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons.
I wonder if this is really being healthy or if all this is a continuing manifestation of my suicidal psychosis. I wonder if I’m ill and this is all just a delusional part of the illness. I can’t go second guessing myself, though. I’m hurting and I’m aware of my past, but I’ve always been certain of my rationality and I recognize that what I call rational is different from everyone else’s. That doesn’t make me ill. Different doesn’t mean ill in this day and age.
Thursday, November 30, 1995
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.
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.
Friday, November 10, 1995
Golden Gate University
Beginning Photography Roll 2, frame 9 (Tri-X) - shooting from the second floor balcony, down at the lower level open air lounge area.
Monday, August 28, 1995
1347 La Loma, Berkeley
What a waste of time. What a waste of my life. What kind of job am I going to be able to get after law school? I have no experience. So what have you been doing with your life? I dunno. Why did you go to law school? Or if I end up in Japan and meet a friend of Shiho's, "oh, you graduated from law school? What are you doing now?", "Teaching English", "Oh". Pathetic. I don't even want to think about dealing with the 'rents about taking the bar. In that case, I'm not sure I want to deal with Shiho. In fact, I doubt that I will want to deal with myself when the time comes.
Monday, June 19, 1995
247 19th Ave., #2 San Francisco
Less than two weeks left of this agonizingly boring Environmental Crimes class. The professor must be either the second or third worst professor I've ever had.
Nobuko came back from Hawaii and it was pleasant to see her again. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be for Cat, Nobuko, and I to get together. They currently live around the corner from each other. Cat is cool, she really intrigues me.
Amina shattered my trust in friendships, relationships, and people. I won't go out with anyone unless I've been friends with her for some given amount of time, and for the duration of that time, I must remain in love with her. But I was friends with Amina for two years before we went out, and I was madly in love with her the whole time, and she loved me back, so she claimed. It ultimately made no difference in terms of forming trust or a lasting bond. All it did was make me a lot more vulnerable. I like Cat and it feels similar to how I felt towards Amina as a friend. The difference being that I loved Amina.
Joy was the complete opposite. We didn't even know each other very long before we plunged into a relationship, much less have time to become friends. I couldn't have reasonably believed in the time we were getting acquainted that we would have a lasting friendship. If I had looked forward a year to try to see what sort of friendship would exist, I think I would have been hard pressed to see anything. But I fixated upon getting into a relationship that I ignored a lot. She was a rebound.
Nobuko came back from Hawaii and it was pleasant to see her again. It wasn't as cool as I thought it would be for Cat, Nobuko, and I to get together. They currently live around the corner from each other. Cat is cool, she really intrigues me.
Amina shattered my trust in friendships, relationships, and people. I won't go out with anyone unless I've been friends with her for some given amount of time, and for the duration of that time, I must remain in love with her. But I was friends with Amina for two years before we went out, and I was madly in love with her the whole time, and she loved me back, so she claimed. It ultimately made no difference in terms of forming trust or a lasting bond. All it did was make me a lot more vulnerable. I like Cat and it feels similar to how I felt towards Amina as a friend. The difference being that I loved Amina.
Joy was the complete opposite. We didn't even know each other very long before we plunged into a relationship, much less have time to become friends. I couldn't have reasonably believed in the time we were getting acquainted that we would have a lasting friendship. If I had looked forward a year to try to see what sort of friendship would exist, I think I would have been hard pressed to see anything. But I fixated upon getting into a relationship that I ignored a lot. She was a rebound.
Wednesday, June 07, 1995
247 19th Ave., #2 San Francisco
Spring semester ended peacefully enough. In retrospect, at least. It's hard to look back at exam period objectively. Catharsis - it lends well to a rose-tinted recollection.
I went through two all-nighters before morning exams. At 4:36 a.m. before my Property exam, if I had a gun in the apartment I would have shot myself. But I finished all my exams and used all of the available time. I ended up really liking three of my professors and respecting the fourth. I think I did alright this semester and I'm in Summer session now without having received any indication that I've failed out. No "Dear John" from the Dean.
Summer session. Revealing to me once again how I'm swimming upstream. I can force myself to read the material with a fervor, I can generally follow court decisions and rationales, I even find myself forming strong opinions from case to case; but this is not stuff I would independently think about. This is not stuff I want to put any effort into.
Everything ended in May. My last exam was on May 18. SHAG then had its performances which ended on May 21. May 21 was also the Bay to Breakers, which is always an event. The best ad for it was: "Spain has the Running of the Bulls. We have the Running of the Giant Boxes of Macaroni & Cheese". I came in 744th place, which isn't bad in a field of 75,000. Joy and I broke up on May 22. I finished my demo on May 24 and had a master copy on the next day, May 25. Law school, music, running, and a relationship all winding down to an end.
SHAG 1995
Things have also started. Summer session, some new song material. I've gotten back in touch with Madoka, and I'll be moving to Berkeley at the end of the month. Nobuko and Lisa were looking for housing, and they ended up only finding a house for four people. So they asked me and since then, we've gotten Vikki into this. I felt honored at having been asked into what they were hoping would be a women's space.
Berkeley. I'm moving away from the ocean. The ocean and its solace, peaceful in its vastness; its expanse and the mystery of what it hides; forbidding and its constant invitation. I take a gun and put it in a ziplock bag and hang it around my neck. One night I swim out into the ocean on a boogie board as far as I can go. When I get tired and I'm so far out that I can't even think of trying to swim back, I remove the gun and shoot myself in the mouth. The gunshot muffled and dull, no echoes, silence comes quick.
I'm pretty happy about the tape I made. I got a lot out regarding Amina. It's cathartic, it's an expression of my feelings towards her. I feel much better now it's done and can move on without hating her. I'm moving out of hatred and into the true opposite of love - indifference.
I went through two all-nighters before morning exams. At 4:36 a.m. before my Property exam, if I had a gun in the apartment I would have shot myself. But I finished all my exams and used all of the available time. I ended up really liking three of my professors and respecting the fourth. I think I did alright this semester and I'm in Summer session now without having received any indication that I've failed out. No "Dear John" from the Dean.
Summer session. Revealing to me once again how I'm swimming upstream. I can force myself to read the material with a fervor, I can generally follow court decisions and rationales, I even find myself forming strong opinions from case to case; but this is not stuff I would independently think about. This is not stuff I want to put any effort into.
Everything ended in May. My last exam was on May 18. SHAG then had its performances which ended on May 21. May 21 was also the Bay to Breakers, which is always an event. The best ad for it was: "Spain has the Running of the Bulls. We have the Running of the Giant Boxes of Macaroni & Cheese". I came in 744th place, which isn't bad in a field of 75,000. Joy and I broke up on May 22. I finished my demo on May 24 and had a master copy on the next day, May 25. Law school, music, running, and a relationship all winding down to an end.
SHAG 1995
Things have also started. Summer session, some new song material. I've gotten back in touch with Madoka, and I'll be moving to Berkeley at the end of the month. Nobuko and Lisa were looking for housing, and they ended up only finding a house for four people. So they asked me and since then, we've gotten Vikki into this. I felt honored at having been asked into what they were hoping would be a women's space.
Berkeley. I'm moving away from the ocean. The ocean and its solace, peaceful in its vastness; its expanse and the mystery of what it hides; forbidding and its constant invitation. I take a gun and put it in a ziplock bag and hang it around my neck. One night I swim out into the ocean on a boogie board as far as I can go. When I get tired and I'm so far out that I can't even think of trying to swim back, I remove the gun and shoot myself in the mouth. The gunshot muffled and dull, no echoes, silence comes quick.
I'm pretty happy about the tape I made. I got a lot out regarding Amina. It's cathartic, it's an expression of my feelings towards her. I feel much better now it's done and can move on without hating her. I'm moving out of hatred and into the true opposite of love - indifference.
Wednesday, November 30, 1994
247 19th Ave, #2, San Francisco
Today was the last day of classes for this Fall 1994 semester. How am I doing? Angry and frustrated as ever. More angry. A low-key, subtle, seething anger. That's what I felt as I walked away from school to catch the first 1AX bus of the commute hours.
I called to check in for a catering job I have on Saturday, I paid my rent, finished off one bottle of whisky and bought another, received a utility bill twice what I usually pay because I've been using the heater a lot. I bought a plane ticket to go to New Jersey at the end of December.
For the first time in a while I felt genuinely close to Joy. Like there was something connecting, something worth placing worth in. Not that it's a worthless relationship, per se, it's just that it's a very low-key relationship with not a lot of risk, not a lot of challenge, not a lot of change.
It wasn't overwhelming. She told me of a problem she's having, how she's not satisfied with her life, that it's out of control in a downward spiral. I don't know why, but it was a relief to hear that she was in that position. To hear that she isn't so impenetrable and sequestered in her superiority. To hear her vulnerable and that she isn't complacent about her life. She is striving for something and so maybe her happiness in our relationship isn't some complacent abandon and satisfaction in what I consider the severely mediocre.
On the other hand, she went through the peak of the crisis yesterday. She didn't mention it at all when we spoke yesterday. She said that she wasn't ready to deal with it then, she was still in shock of it and couldn't talk about it then. OK. She brought it up today and told me about it, but only after she talked to her parents about it.
There is a lack of passion in this relationship. It's very cold and calculated. It is complacent. It doesn't bother me. I'm kind of numb to it. It probably doesn't bother her that she couldn't come to me about the problem. That says a lot about the relationship.
I realize I can’t get sucked into her problems because my position in my life is still so fragile. I don’t know if I could have effectively dealt with her problems even if she had brought them to me. So it’s best that I keep a distance. If that’s a problem for her, then it’s her problem, not mine. Eventually this relationship won’t be able to go on if this philosophy is maintained. She will need more from someone than I can give, and she will realize how unsatisfying it is being with someone so different and who makes such completely different assumptions about life and living. So will I.
I called to check in for a catering job I have on Saturday, I paid my rent, finished off one bottle of whisky and bought another, received a utility bill twice what I usually pay because I've been using the heater a lot. I bought a plane ticket to go to New Jersey at the end of December.
For the first time in a while I felt genuinely close to Joy. Like there was something connecting, something worth placing worth in. Not that it's a worthless relationship, per se, it's just that it's a very low-key relationship with not a lot of risk, not a lot of challenge, not a lot of change.
It wasn't overwhelming. She told me of a problem she's having, how she's not satisfied with her life, that it's out of control in a downward spiral. I don't know why, but it was a relief to hear that she was in that position. To hear that she isn't so impenetrable and sequestered in her superiority. To hear her vulnerable and that she isn't complacent about her life. She is striving for something and so maybe her happiness in our relationship isn't some complacent abandon and satisfaction in what I consider the severely mediocre.
On the other hand, she went through the peak of the crisis yesterday. She didn't mention it at all when we spoke yesterday. She said that she wasn't ready to deal with it then, she was still in shock of it and couldn't talk about it then. OK. She brought it up today and told me about it, but only after she talked to her parents about it.
There is a lack of passion in this relationship. It's very cold and calculated. It is complacent. It doesn't bother me. I'm kind of numb to it. It probably doesn't bother her that she couldn't come to me about the problem. That says a lot about the relationship.
I realize I can’t get sucked into her problems because my position in my life is still so fragile. I don’t know if I could have effectively dealt with her problems even if she had brought them to me. So it’s best that I keep a distance. If that’s a problem for her, then it’s her problem, not mine. Eventually this relationship won’t be able to go on if this philosophy is maintained. She will need more from someone than I can give, and she will realize how unsatisfying it is being with someone so different and who makes such completely different assumptions about life and living. So will I.
Tuesday, August 16, 1994
247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco
My last day of freedom before falling into the turmoil and surreality of law school; the constant grind of constant pressure and the annoying people. Evidence, Criminal Procedure, and Contracts.
Joy and I met in front of my school and we walked over to Yerba Buena Gardens to laze away the afternoon on a spot of grass. The breeze was warm and the grass was soft and thick. Other people were lying about, but we had a reasonable amount of privacy. It was really Joy, I amazed myself and impressed upon myself the short time in which we've known each other. And here she was, amazing me.
I am happy. I told Joy that I didn't think I could ever be fully and truly happy. So much of my life has been based on and motivated by struggle and anger that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I were ever happy. Happiness is simply not something I desire out of life, it is not necessary, it is not something to actively pursue as a goal.
I am happy. What does it mean to be happy? What gauge am I using to make so bold a statement. It's hardly worth mentioning superficial, material things just to cynically illustrate what should not be major contributing factors to my happiness.
I'm content with who I am. I'm happy with the dynamics in my life and there's more than meets the senses about my drinking, my cutting, my low-points, my discomfort with myself, and my occasional difficulty dealing with myself and reality.
On some scale of happiness, I'm there. I'm somewhere some people will never know exists. I have a well-being and self-realization, I feel, that is beyond my immediate, surrounding situations. There are some seriously unhappy people out there who don't even know it.
I straightened things out with Joy at Yerba Buena. I tackled the cutting some more and I'm comfortable with what I told her. I don't know if she understands or can accept it, but at least she feels comfortable with and appreciates my struggle to explain it to the fullest extent.
Some things still scare me about getting close to Joy. I still have self-esteem/confidence issues. I don't see what Joy sees in me, and I still think that things could get complacent and boring for her.
There are still hurdles in my trust that I can't seem to get over. There is still residue from Amina. Trust is a lot more complicated than love. There was to some degree an automatic trust in getting to know Joy and falling in love with her. It grew to a degree that I thought impossible after Amina. Amina is now a symbol of betrayal.
I trust Joy despite Amina, but I certainly don't trust her as completely as I can. I can only work on it and try to move closer to Joy; intimate space mixing and the love being gradually exposed.
Joy and I met in front of my school and we walked over to Yerba Buena Gardens to laze away the afternoon on a spot of grass. The breeze was warm and the grass was soft and thick. Other people were lying about, but we had a reasonable amount of privacy. It was really Joy, I amazed myself and impressed upon myself the short time in which we've known each other. And here she was, amazing me.
I am happy. I told Joy that I didn't think I could ever be fully and truly happy. So much of my life has been based on and motivated by struggle and anger that I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I were ever happy. Happiness is simply not something I desire out of life, it is not necessary, it is not something to actively pursue as a goal.
I am happy. What does it mean to be happy? What gauge am I using to make so bold a statement. It's hardly worth mentioning superficial, material things just to cynically illustrate what should not be major contributing factors to my happiness.
I'm content with who I am. I'm happy with the dynamics in my life and there's more than meets the senses about my drinking, my cutting, my low-points, my discomfort with myself, and my occasional difficulty dealing with myself and reality.
On some scale of happiness, I'm there. I'm somewhere some people will never know exists. I have a well-being and self-realization, I feel, that is beyond my immediate, surrounding situations. There are some seriously unhappy people out there who don't even know it.
I straightened things out with Joy at Yerba Buena. I tackled the cutting some more and I'm comfortable with what I told her. I don't know if she understands or can accept it, but at least she feels comfortable with and appreciates my struggle to explain it to the fullest extent.
Some things still scare me about getting close to Joy. I still have self-esteem/confidence issues. I don't see what Joy sees in me, and I still think that things could get complacent and boring for her.
There are still hurdles in my trust that I can't seem to get over. There is still residue from Amina. Trust is a lot more complicated than love. There was to some degree an automatic trust in getting to know Joy and falling in love with her. It grew to a degree that I thought impossible after Amina. Amina is now a symbol of betrayal.
I trust Joy despite Amina, but I certainly don't trust her as completely as I can. I can only work on it and try to move closer to Joy; intimate space mixing and the love being gradually exposed.
Sunday, February 06, 1994
Day twenty six
It's finally raining. Finally. It felt like a pleasant Spring rain when I left this morning for downtown Oakland on foot with my green raincoat that I had bought in Kyoto and an umbrella. Clouds greyed the skies from horizon to horizon as I walked along the lakeside.
Not much traffic out on a Sunday morning. Not many people in the law library either. I was only going to photocopy the new legislation on diversion programs that Antonio wanted to know about. I just needed to find it.
I had little to go on. I didn't even know what diversion was when he first mentioned it. All he gave me was the name of the person who sponsored the bill, the fact that it was passed very recently, and it has something to do with diversion programs and might affect programs like ManAIive.
I had to learn about diversion and what the current law was. I dug into my memory for where to start legal research. I went to West's Annotated Codes and looked for "diversion". Nothing. I looked for "parole" and "probation". Nothing. Wait, in the assignment, we started in the CalJur's. I went there and looked. Nothing.
Wonderful. I know what I want, I know what I'm looking for, I don't know where it is or how to go about finding it, but I know that it's all in here. Somewhere amidst these volumes and stacks is what I want. All I have to do is walk down the right path, open the right books, and notice the right clues.
I wandered and pondered a bit and flipped through some more possible volumes and topics in the West's. Then something lying on top of a shelf in plain view caught my eye. Some digest of new legislation. I took it to a desk and started flipping through it and bingo! Diversion. Of course, see Penal Codes.
I went back to West's under Penal Codes and there it was. It felt so good finding it; knowing it was definitely there, searching for it, failing, searching more, hitting a bit of luck and finding it. It was satisfying, but not something I want to do for a living.
I still had to find the new legislation that Antonio was seeking. For that I had to ask the librarian. He pointed to the shelves, "The green volumes have everything the legislature just passed."
I searched through the green volumes, figuring out how they were formatted and how I might go about finding the exact legislation I was looking for. I went volume by volume, looking through the tables of contents and indexes, looking for a windfall. Then boom, I found it, confirmed by the name John Burton who sponsored the bill. Maybe I'm not a total loser.
Not much traffic out on a Sunday morning. Not many people in the law library either. I was only going to photocopy the new legislation on diversion programs that Antonio wanted to know about. I just needed to find it.
I had little to go on. I didn't even know what diversion was when he first mentioned it. All he gave me was the name of the person who sponsored the bill, the fact that it was passed very recently, and it has something to do with diversion programs and might affect programs like ManAIive.
I had to learn about diversion and what the current law was. I dug into my memory for where to start legal research. I went to West's Annotated Codes and looked for "diversion". Nothing. I looked for "parole" and "probation". Nothing. Wait, in the assignment, we started in the CalJur's. I went there and looked. Nothing.
Wonderful. I know what I want, I know what I'm looking for, I don't know where it is or how to go about finding it, but I know that it's all in here. Somewhere amidst these volumes and stacks is what I want. All I have to do is walk down the right path, open the right books, and notice the right clues.
I wandered and pondered a bit and flipped through some more possible volumes and topics in the West's. Then something lying on top of a shelf in plain view caught my eye. Some digest of new legislation. I took it to a desk and started flipping through it and bingo! Diversion. Of course, see Penal Codes.
I went back to West's under Penal Codes and there it was. It felt so good finding it; knowing it was definitely there, searching for it, failing, searching more, hitting a bit of luck and finding it. It was satisfying, but not something I want to do for a living.
I still had to find the new legislation that Antonio was seeking. For that I had to ask the librarian. He pointed to the shelves, "The green volumes have everything the legislature just passed."
I searched through the green volumes, figuring out how they were formatted and how I might go about finding the exact legislation I was looking for. I went volume by volume, looking through the tables of contents and indexes, looking for a windfall. Then boom, I found it, confirmed by the name John Burton who sponsored the bill. Maybe I'm not a total loser.
Thursday, January 13, 1994
Day two
As I hung up the phone, I thought I felt an angel blow across my temple and remove the weight and intensity of what had just happened. Everything would be alright. Something will guide me to my truth, as long as I remain sensitive to the guidance and not let myself be clouded by emotions and impulse. In the sea of love, there are no shores, all there is to do is drown.
The decision to withdraw from law school was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make about my life. I was making it final, setting it in stone. I was leaving law school, going completely against the 'rents, saying goodbye to my safety net, climbing out of a deeply cut family groove. As much as I hate the 'rents, I found the ties that bind to be chains.
I walked into Dean Hughes's office after waiting in the lobby for half an hour contemplating my resolve. She wasn't the hard-nosed bitch that l perceived her to be previously. She was down-right professional.
"How may I help you?" she asked as she closed the door.
"I would like to withdraw," I answered without sitting down. I could tell she was taken off-guard, leaning over to push the door shut. She regained her posture and hesitated to fully take in the meaning of what I said.
"You're a . . . first year student?" she asked, having an idea but not the fact.
"That's right," I replied. I had already broken from my script in which I was supposed to inform her of my name and year immediately. At least I made an impression walking into her office announcing that I wanted to withdraw.
"Well," she began as she moved behind her desk, "is there a reason, or is it something you want to discuss, or . . . have you made your final decision?".
My brain almost froze. I struggled to rise to the occasion. I run important encounters through my mind a zillion times beforehand because I'm never good at them when they happen. It never helps.
"Well, I...", I diverted my eyes to the right and recovered, "I'm going through some serious family problems," I said quietly, "and I'm also having a lot of trouble in a relationship. I just know that if I have to deal with those problems and to have school work on top of that, it would just be too distracting for me to do as well as I would...require of myself." Standards? Why did I bring standards into this? Idiot. "I just know that the stress of juggling and balancing everything would be too much to handle. I don't want to leave school, but..."
"Would you consider taking a leave of absence?" she asked. Bingo!
"Is that an option? Yea, I would definitely do that if possible." She reached over into a drawer and pulled out a form. From that point, I didn't care what she said. She was going to give me a leave of absence and she was going to process it herself on the spot. I figure in retrospect that if I went in asking for a leave of absence, she would have asked more questions and required more proof to justify it. But announcing that I wanted to withdraw, I guess, was all the justification she needed. Students are money, and if not this semester, there's always next.
I don't know what she may have thought about my reasons. What are the worst possible scenarios that she could have imagined to fit the descriptions of "family problems" and "troubled relationship"? I didn't lie, I feel the crises justified leaving school, but if she knew the actual details of what was going on, I doubt that she would have authorized a leave of absence. Who doesn't go through these problems? But if they were serious enough for me to want to withdraw, they were enough for her to give me a leave of absence.
She left the office several times while I filled out forms for a leave of absence and to drop all my classes. She signed all the forms to make them official and to have my tuition refunded, and she told me what I had to do to get back in next Fall.
"I hope you are able to work out all the problems and I hope to hear from you later," she said sincerely.
"Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I know the problems are resolvable, they just need time," I replied.
"I understand."
I left the building floating and in disbelief. I had a safety net under me. If nothing worked out, I could always return to law school in the Fall. Amina criticized me for always having a safety net, and said it was about time for me to not have it. Sometimes it's better not to have one. She may be right, but what the hell does she know about my life?
The decision to withdraw from law school was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make about my life. I was making it final, setting it in stone. I was leaving law school, going completely against the 'rents, saying goodbye to my safety net, climbing out of a deeply cut family groove. As much as I hate the 'rents, I found the ties that bind to be chains.
I walked into Dean Hughes's office after waiting in the lobby for half an hour contemplating my resolve. She wasn't the hard-nosed bitch that l perceived her to be previously. She was down-right professional.
"How may I help you?" she asked as she closed the door.
"I would like to withdraw," I answered without sitting down. I could tell she was taken off-guard, leaning over to push the door shut. She regained her posture and hesitated to fully take in the meaning of what I said.
"You're a . . . first year student?" she asked, having an idea but not the fact.
"That's right," I replied. I had already broken from my script in which I was supposed to inform her of my name and year immediately. At least I made an impression walking into her office announcing that I wanted to withdraw.
"Well," she began as she moved behind her desk, "is there a reason, or is it something you want to discuss, or . . . have you made your final decision?".
My brain almost froze. I struggled to rise to the occasion. I run important encounters through my mind a zillion times beforehand because I'm never good at them when they happen. It never helps.
"Well, I...", I diverted my eyes to the right and recovered, "I'm going through some serious family problems," I said quietly, "and I'm also having a lot of trouble in a relationship. I just know that if I have to deal with those problems and to have school work on top of that, it would just be too distracting for me to do as well as I would...require of myself." Standards? Why did I bring standards into this? Idiot. "I just know that the stress of juggling and balancing everything would be too much to handle. I don't want to leave school, but..."
"Would you consider taking a leave of absence?" she asked. Bingo!
"Is that an option? Yea, I would definitely do that if possible." She reached over into a drawer and pulled out a form. From that point, I didn't care what she said. She was going to give me a leave of absence and she was going to process it herself on the spot. I figure in retrospect that if I went in asking for a leave of absence, she would have asked more questions and required more proof to justify it. But announcing that I wanted to withdraw, I guess, was all the justification she needed. Students are money, and if not this semester, there's always next.
I don't know what she may have thought about my reasons. What are the worst possible scenarios that she could have imagined to fit the descriptions of "family problems" and "troubled relationship"? I didn't lie, I feel the crises justified leaving school, but if she knew the actual details of what was going on, I doubt that she would have authorized a leave of absence. Who doesn't go through these problems? But if they were serious enough for me to want to withdraw, they were enough for her to give me a leave of absence.
She left the office several times while I filled out forms for a leave of absence and to drop all my classes. She signed all the forms to make them official and to have my tuition refunded, and she told me what I had to do to get back in next Fall.
"I hope you are able to work out all the problems and I hope to hear from you later," she said sincerely.
"Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I know the problems are resolvable, they just need time," I replied.
"I understand."
I left the building floating and in disbelief. I had a safety net under me. If nothing worked out, I could always return to law school in the Fall. Amina criticized me for always having a safety net, and said it was about time for me to not have it. Sometimes it's better not to have one. She may be right, but what the hell does she know about my life?
Sunday, December 05, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
Classes ended on Thursday and I’ve been going through every case in the texts. I finished Civ. Pro. last night, it’s my first exam on Wednesday. I’m about halfway through Contracts. When I got to the last month of material for Civ. Pro. , I barely recognized the concepts and issues and I was clueless about the cases. I had no idea what the cases were about or the logic leading to the rules of law. Slow-going, reading the cases paragraph by paragraph, at times out loud.
On Friday, I tried to remove the temptation of practicing bass by taking it in for adjustment. He had it ready on Saturday. But it was worth it, the guy who worked on it was really nice and very knowledgeable. He knew that Riverheads were Japanese and asked where I got it since they aren’t available in the States. It’s a great bass, but has a lot of design flaws.
I went jogging today and it felt great. I can deal with Oakland. If I can go out in a short-sleeve shirt for a jog in December, I have no problem with the climate.
I’m thinking of staying in school next semester. It’s all been very confused and confusing, but factors have been making me lean in that direction. Also if I register before I leave to visit Amina in Oberlin, then I won’t have to be back until the day classes start, so I can be there for three full weeks instead of two and a half.
On Friday, I tried to remove the temptation of practicing bass by taking it in for adjustment. He had it ready on Saturday. But it was worth it, the guy who worked on it was really nice and very knowledgeable. He knew that Riverheads were Japanese and asked where I got it since they aren’t available in the States. It’s a great bass, but has a lot of design flaws.
I went jogging today and it felt great. I can deal with Oakland. If I can go out in a short-sleeve shirt for a jog in December, I have no problem with the climate.
I’m thinking of staying in school next semester. It’s all been very confused and confusing, but factors have been making me lean in that direction. Also if I register before I leave to visit Amina in Oberlin, then I won’t have to be back until the day classes start, so I can be there for three full weeks instead of two and a half.
Wednesday, November 24, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
Just one more week of classes and then two weeks of exams. It’s just the beginning and I’m considering it the end, but I can’t do this again, and I won’t. It sends my life into a tailspin, increasing the insecurity, deepening the losses.
How am I going to be living my life? No classes, no job. What right do I have to take that luxury? I clearly should be worried about my future and what I will do. I don’t know what I can do. I have no experience or skills.
It feels like Amina and I are breaking up. We’re distancing and it feels the same as breaking up. Our relationship took some serious blows and none of them have been worked out. She’s taking the line that the problem is distance, and everything would be fine if we were together. We were together over break and look what happened. Still, to hear her state any condition in which things could be fine is wonderful.
But as it is, it feels like we’re ignoring problems and it’s cold between us. I worry about how I’ll behave towards her the next time I see her. The way things have been going, it might be hard to be warm, to pretend nothing was wrong. I’m not really looking forward to our next meeting.
How am I going to be living my life? No classes, no job. What right do I have to take that luxury? I clearly should be worried about my future and what I will do. I don’t know what I can do. I have no experience or skills.
It feels like Amina and I are breaking up. We’re distancing and it feels the same as breaking up. Our relationship took some serious blows and none of them have been worked out. She’s taking the line that the problem is distance, and everything would be fine if we were together. We were together over break and look what happened. Still, to hear her state any condition in which things could be fine is wonderful.
But as it is, it feels like we’re ignoring problems and it’s cold between us. I worry about how I’ll behave towards her the next time I see her. The way things have been going, it might be hard to be warm, to pretend nothing was wrong. I’m not really looking forward to our next meeting.
Sunday, November 07, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
I don’t have to struggle too much to remember the feelings from less than a year ago. It’s no struggle at all realizing what has happened in the past year. Some memories are so striking and so unbefitting my life that I can’t believe it’s been real. How suddenly the floating dream of my life became a nasty reality.
Less than a year ago, I resolutely absolved any responsibility or feelings of guilt in how I might deal with law school. I will feel no guilt as I plan to withdraw and not tell them. I will feel no guilt as I sit on their money, trying to find new paths and new opportunities for myself. I will feel no guilt for doing what’s best for myself, when it is clear that I am the only one who can do what’s best for myself.
They bear the full responsibility for their own losses. The loss of their money is the result of their failure to foresee the futile results of their endeavors. Whatever intentions they had is no excuse for their short-sightedness and blatant disregard of . . . reality.
How can they have missed so much? How could they have missed what was right before their eyes? It’s so sad. They missed their children growing up. Times have changed and they are clueless, they are only interested in the one constant of making money. They who take life for granted. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve pity or mercy. They don’t deserve any concern or consideration.
My leaving law school will be no vindication for them. All they’ve done is try to keep me on a single narrow path and to be what they want me to be. I’ve always tried to run down my own path. That is what Japan was all about, yet they were still able to whisk me up like a child trying to run away and put me back on the path they wanted me to be on; a path in which they are interested only for themselves.
My life is a path. However I may try and however I may fail, I do have an idea of how I want to end up as a person. I know what I want to retain of my dreams and self-esteem and view of the world. Law school has nothing to do with any of that. I have to follow my heart and my dreams. Maybe I’ll never fulfill them, but if I don’t walk my own path, there is absolutely no chance and no worth to this life.
Less than a year ago, I resolutely absolved any responsibility or feelings of guilt in how I might deal with law school. I will feel no guilt as I plan to withdraw and not tell them. I will feel no guilt as I sit on their money, trying to find new paths and new opportunities for myself. I will feel no guilt for doing what’s best for myself, when it is clear that I am the only one who can do what’s best for myself.
They bear the full responsibility for their own losses. The loss of their money is the result of their failure to foresee the futile results of their endeavors. Whatever intentions they had is no excuse for their short-sightedness and blatant disregard of . . . reality.
How can they have missed so much? How could they have missed what was right before their eyes? It’s so sad. They missed their children growing up. Times have changed and they are clueless, they are only interested in the one constant of making money. They who take life for granted. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve pity or mercy. They don’t deserve any concern or consideration.
My leaving law school will be no vindication for them. All they’ve done is try to keep me on a single narrow path and to be what they want me to be. I’ve always tried to run down my own path. That is what Japan was all about, yet they were still able to whisk me up like a child trying to run away and put me back on the path they wanted me to be on; a path in which they are interested only for themselves.
My life is a path. However I may try and however I may fail, I do have an idea of how I want to end up as a person. I know what I want to retain of my dreams and self-esteem and view of the world. Law school has nothing to do with any of that. I have to follow my heart and my dreams. Maybe I’ll never fulfill them, but if I don’t walk my own path, there is absolutely no chance and no worth to this life.
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