"Dear Madoka,
I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have you around after so much time. Maybe it's the time and distance that set it up to be so precious, but it was just what I needed at this point. I love you dearly and I'm glad I've been consistent in your life and you in mine. To me, it means I can really trust you, not that there has been any real doubt about that. Any question (doubt?) of trust simply doesn't exist any more. I feel like I've been getting through a pretty dark period of my life and your visit finalized the end of it. It's a good feeling knowing you're out there and on my side.
love always, koji"
Madoka. Am I in love with Madoka?
Madoka visited this past weekend. I hadn’t seen her in over two years. Last year was the only calendar year since we’ve met that we didn’t see each other. I had started feeling that we were losing touch with each other’s lives and realities; and it’s true, we aren’t really compatible, our lives are very different. But that wouldn’t stop me from being in love with her.
If I’m not in love with her, why can’t I get her out of my mind? If I’m in love with her, why don’t I want to be with her for the rest of my life? That I love her is more than clear, but am I in love with her? I’m not sure. The love I have for her is so great that it obscures things, and my love for her is so deep that it evades the classification of being in love with her. It’s just an assumption that she’s arms-length away. Even if we did love each other independently, or if we did fall in love, nothing would ever come out of it. Neither of us would ever act on it because our lives are too different.
Madoka’s visit has changed things. For the first time in over two years, someone has entered my private space; forced me to accept someone in it. I was very anxious last week, I was apprehensive about her coming and being in my space. I think I needed her to come. Now I feel a little more open to having someone in my life, of physical intimacy – we slept in close quarters on a camping trip with Nobuko and Kate and held hands one night, and again on her last night here in my room, we were openly affectionate, holding hands, making physical contact. We could very easily have kissed.
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2001
Sunday, March 11, 2001
1557 Noe Street, San Francisco
I got in touch with Audrey on Wednesday for the first time in over a year, and as coincidence would have it, she was just about to fly to the Bay Area. We don’t know why we haven’t been in contact, I think it was her, she thinks it was me, so it must have been both neither of us and both of us. We got together this morning and I hatched my idea to her about creating a family website.
The idea is for a story-driven website, not just historical and biographical facts, aimed at a descendent 200 years from now who might be interested in his or her ancestors. The stories will be by other family members, and they would try to convey some essence about the person through the story; what they were really about. It is partly archival - a family tree - so the facts will be there, as well as pictures.
It will start with grandfather and any information Audrey and I can find on his family, parents, siblings, etc., and from there it will document the various families and the members, and each person will have a page if they want. The main website will have basic information and the individual pages will be personalized.
I saw a film tonight at the Asian American film festival called “Love/Juice”. When you really, really love someone, you can’t live without them. I couldn’t live without Amina, and I haven’t lived since we broke up, except during the times I was alive with Josephine. I’ve just been existing. I’ve been numb since Amina. I really touched love. I appreciate that. And I feel the continuing pain of losing the one I love the most. That is life and that is still good. Bad, too. Depends.
The idea is for a story-driven website, not just historical and biographical facts, aimed at a descendent 200 years from now who might be interested in his or her ancestors. The stories will be by other family members, and they would try to convey some essence about the person through the story; what they were really about. It is partly archival - a family tree - so the facts will be there, as well as pictures.
It will start with grandfather and any information Audrey and I can find on his family, parents, siblings, etc., and from there it will document the various families and the members, and each person will have a page if they want. The main website will have basic information and the individual pages will be personalized.
I saw a film tonight at the Asian American film festival called “Love/Juice”. When you really, really love someone, you can’t live without them. I couldn’t live without Amina, and I haven’t lived since we broke up, except during the times I was alive with Josephine. I’ve just been existing. I’ve been numb since Amina. I really touched love. I appreciate that. And I feel the continuing pain of losing the one I love the most. That is life and that is still good. Bad, too. Depends.
Tuesday, February 27, 2001
1557 Noe Street, San Francisco
Being let down, being hurt, being betrayed are not considerations when you truly fall in love. That’s what it means to have no defenses up. It didn’t matter that I was let down, hurt, and betrayed by Amina. I still loved her.
I struggle with existence, I try to detach, I try to realize that I cannot take anything as I sense it. I am not here. But then what are these senses? What are these feelings? Why do I do what I do - confined in a body and reality that I know is not real. I know it, but I do not feel it. It is not true knowledge. I am an arrow and I have missed the target before I even have been shot. I’m still too much of this world. I’m still far, far from my goal.
I struggle with existence, I try to detach, I try to realize that I cannot take anything as I sense it. I am not here. But then what are these senses? What are these feelings? Why do I do what I do - confined in a body and reality that I know is not real. I know it, but I do not feel it. It is not true knowledge. I am an arrow and I have missed the target before I even have been shot. I’m still too much of this world. I’m still far, far from my goal.
Tuesday, February 20, 2001
1557 Noe Street, San Francisco
I don’t even know what it means to fall in love anymore. After Amina, after Shiho, after Josephine, I have no idea what the feeling is anymore. I don’t think I can fall in love anymore. It’s a practice in futility. Any approach to loving someone would solely be an intellectual exercise. I will never just fall in love with anyone ever again. Because of Amina, because of Shiho, because of Josephine, I will always have my defenses up, I will always be looking to protect myself, and with defenses and protections up, I will never be able to love again. I will always be gauging the other person’s behavior to determine whether to fall in love and how I fall in love. That’s not love. Love is not a response, it is an affirmative act. Otherwise, it’s not love. How do I absorb the fact that I will never fall in love again? I need to think deeply about that. If my feeling is a response to another person’s behaviors, it is not love.
Monday, July 03, 2000
1557 Noe St., San Francisco
I had another dream with Josephine, and this time it was clearly my idealized Josephine. The dream was a re-enactment of one of our typical mornings when I used to be up before her and then wake her up later. Those were always endearing times as they happened, but my feeling now about our entire relationship is that there was always tension and I was always self-conscious of my actions and trying not to set her off, basically walking on eggshells all the time. In the dream, there was none of that, it was just that pure feeling of endearment.
God, how I loved that woman. Why do I not think of her as one of the loves of my life? No, I don't, because she wasn't. The love of my life was Amina. Shiho also may have been a love of my life. But not Josephine. I'm not sure why, I'm sure it has nothing to do with anything that any of them were or are. Amina was a total creation, when I really dig down and look at the facts, Amina was nothing special. I have no idea why she holds such a special place in my heart. My only conclusion is that it has nothing to do with the person Amina, but my conception of her. Same with Shiho. But putting it that way, why not Josephine? I have retained more delightful, endearing memories of Josephine than Shiho and Amina combined.
God, how I loved that woman. Why do I not think of her as one of the loves of my life? No, I don't, because she wasn't. The love of my life was Amina. Shiho also may have been a love of my life. But not Josephine. I'm not sure why, I'm sure it has nothing to do with anything that any of them were or are. Amina was a total creation, when I really dig down and look at the facts, Amina was nothing special. I have no idea why she holds such a special place in my heart. My only conclusion is that it has nothing to do with the person Amina, but my conception of her. Same with Shiho. But putting it that way, why not Josephine? I have retained more delightful, endearing memories of Josephine than Shiho and Amina combined.
Wednesday, June 28, 2000
1557 Noe St., San Francisco
I had a dream several weeks ago that I was in love with someone. Really, truly, deep down in love with someone. It didn't make enough of an impression back then to reflect on it, but when I think about it, the significance is pretty big. I remember what it is like to really be in love with someone and fall into that sea of love that has no shores and the rest of the world falls away. For someone else to have such an impact and evoke such wonderment in how I can feel about another human being.
I don't remember a lot about the dream. I remember being inside a nice, elegant building, kind of country club-ish (as if I knew what country clubs are like), with a dark wood interior. It could have been a house, but it felt public so it could have been an old house converted into something else, could have been a nice hotel lobby. There were probably chandeliers. It was daytime and lit by natural light. I remember there being a small crowd of people, like a tour group, and the person I loved being there and she was my only focus. I wanted to be alone with her, she wanted to be alone with me, we wanted to get out of there. But we couldn't for some reason. Maybe it was a family thing.
The woman was Josephine-esque, but I don't think it was Josephine. There was a lot of Josephine in her though. I think the woman was the person I wanted Josephine to be.
It brought me a lot of closure with Josephine. I loved her dearly and her impact and her memories are deep, but in no way would I ever want to be with her again, and in no way can I idealize our relationship and look at it fondly. All I loved about her was her, not us.
There was always tension in the relationship, and there always was a distance. I know she never trusted me and that prevented us from ever really getting close and emotionally intimate. I was always trying to prove something to her, I was never just me.
I totally missed her birthday earlier this month. A week later, I realized I missed it and it took me a few minutes to remember exactly what date it was. That's extremely telling. Who else's birthday do I not remember? Shiho, November 7, 1968; Amina, April 17, 1972; Luyen, June 14, 1973; Hiromi, January 30 (I think), 1969; Joy, sometime in March, I think; Josephine, after some thought, June 8, 1970.
I need to get out of the Bay Area. It's passionless, that's part of why I don't remember Josephine's birthday. No relationship I've had that was based in the Bay Area had any deep impact. I hate the weather here, I can't stand the weather. The weather in the Bay Area simply sucks.
I don't remember a lot about the dream. I remember being inside a nice, elegant building, kind of country club-ish (as if I knew what country clubs are like), with a dark wood interior. It could have been a house, but it felt public so it could have been an old house converted into something else, could have been a nice hotel lobby. There were probably chandeliers. It was daytime and lit by natural light. I remember there being a small crowd of people, like a tour group, and the person I loved being there and she was my only focus. I wanted to be alone with her, she wanted to be alone with me, we wanted to get out of there. But we couldn't for some reason. Maybe it was a family thing.
The woman was Josephine-esque, but I don't think it was Josephine. There was a lot of Josephine in her though. I think the woman was the person I wanted Josephine to be.
It brought me a lot of closure with Josephine. I loved her dearly and her impact and her memories are deep, but in no way would I ever want to be with her again, and in no way can I idealize our relationship and look at it fondly. All I loved about her was her, not us.
There was always tension in the relationship, and there always was a distance. I know she never trusted me and that prevented us from ever really getting close and emotionally intimate. I was always trying to prove something to her, I was never just me.
I totally missed her birthday earlier this month. A week later, I realized I missed it and it took me a few minutes to remember exactly what date it was. That's extremely telling. Who else's birthday do I not remember? Shiho, November 7, 1968; Amina, April 17, 1972; Luyen, June 14, 1973; Hiromi, January 30 (I think), 1969; Joy, sometime in March, I think; Josephine, after some thought, June 8, 1970.
I need to get out of the Bay Area. It's passionless, that's part of why I don't remember Josephine's birthday. No relationship I've had that was based in the Bay Area had any deep impact. I hate the weather here, I can't stand the weather. The weather in the Bay Area simply sucks.
Monday, September 20, 1999
1557 Noe St., San Francisco
Still the reminders of how much Josephine means to me. An earthquake hit Taiwan today and the images of destruction and that Josephine is there struck me on a sublime level. I didn’t know exactly what it was I felt, much less how to express it. On the outside, of course, I can’t do anything about it and so worrying would be pointless.
But when I headed out on my bike, I could feel tremors inside me. I felt the potential for panic and the possibility that Josephine isn’t alright. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to Josephine. I still love her, she still is so much a part of me.
I still think of Amina and Shiho being the women I’ve loved the most, but “getting over” them was relatively easy. Or maybe letting them go was easy. Which makes more sense since if you truly love someone, you need to be willing to let them go. The earthly love for Josephine is greater, which makes it harder to let go of her. But the spiritual love was greater for Amina and Shiho. Which has greater value is subjective.
But when I headed out on my bike, I could feel tremors inside me. I felt the potential for panic and the possibility that Josephine isn’t alright. I don’t know what I would do if something happened to Josephine. I still love her, she still is so much a part of me.
I still think of Amina and Shiho being the women I’ve loved the most, but “getting over” them was relatively easy. Or maybe letting them go was easy. Which makes more sense since if you truly love someone, you need to be willing to let them go. The earthly love for Josephine is greater, which makes it harder to let go of her. But the spiritual love was greater for Amina and Shiho. Which has greater value is subjective.
Tuesday, August 11, 1998
Dear Josephine, you are the light of my life. your smile, your laugh. you are so funny. you make my days shine! I love you. never forget this.
Dear Koji: I feel that things are different than before. I feel much more relaxed when I am with you now. I can see how good our relationship will be by just being myself. See, the world is so big that we have to explore by ourselves. Sometimes, we have to go far away physically or mentally but we will always have each other to come back. We are each other's kite. "Go farther." (never forget this too.) I love you, Josephine ka
Dear Koji: I feel that things are different than before. I feel much more relaxed when I am with you now. I can see how good our relationship will be by just being myself. See, the world is so big that we have to explore by ourselves. Sometimes, we have to go far away physically or mentally but we will always have each other to come back. We are each other's kite. "Go farther." (never forget this too.) I love you, Josephine ka
Saturday, February 28, 1998
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
February 1998
Aquarius: "Figure out what three experiences you want more than anything else in this life. Write it all down. And be very specific in describing the exact kind of love you really, really want."
1) to experience a spiritual realization that will be the zenith of my present life on earth; the culmination of all that I've been learning; have it all wrap up like a good movie plot. Not enlightenment, obviously, but a mini-enlightenment for this lifetime. The big Buddha E is for all of reality, all lifetimes, all existences; what leads to the end of the cycle of re-births and into bodhisattva/angel existence. I just want a little e for the small things I've been learning and that I'm meant to learn in this life as this person.
2) to be in a rock band with people I like and connect with creatively. Bandmates who are friends I can rely on and have fun with. And I want the experience of that band being reasonably popular and have at least a strong local following.
3) I want to find a love that is a metaphor for God or a relationship with/to/for God. I want someone who will just let me be myself without trying to second guess my thoughts and feelings. I want someone who can take me at face value because she knows what's underneath. I want someone who I can just let be, and trust, relax, and stop with. I want someone that waking up with is a daily affirmation of love and life. I want someone who puts stuff into me, as well as takes stuff out of me, and with whom doing so is comfortable and natural. I want someone who is the songs I will write, the photographs I will print, and the reason why I run and keep on running, which is living.
And realize, Koji, right now that Josephine is not it. This relationship will run its course and it will come to an end. Do not erase this, she believes the exact same thing. Once she grows and learns to let go, she will; and she is growing.
**********************************
I can still hate myself and direct that hate against myself. I can take any situation that evokes a feeling I can't deal with and turn it into hate against myself. That's what I learned from my parents, that is my mortal trump card. Depression, frustration, desperation; I can turn them all into anger and hate, and direct it at myself. That's what I've learned to do and it's a lesson I can't unlearn.
**********************************
I saw Wim Wender's "Far Away, So Close"; another study in angel theory, á là "Wings of Desire", but more geared to a commercial audience. Nevertheless, there was a lot there.
Angels as intermediaries between humans and God. But not just messengers that treat God and humans as separate, distinct realities. The angels whisper our thoughts to us, whisper our conflicts, our dilemmas, the problems and issues of our behavior that we ultimately decide. They whisper responses, imparting to those who are open to their input; contributing to those who listen with their hearts and not their ears.
Angels as intermediaries between God and humans. But to an extent there is no distinction between God and humans. God is a part of all humans and humans contribute to the nature of God. So angels are only intermediaries between us and ourselves, our Buddha-nature. Angels only connect us to ourselves; that part of us which is the nature of God, inspired by God.
Aquarius: "Figure out what three experiences you want more than anything else in this life. Write it all down. And be very specific in describing the exact kind of love you really, really want."
1) to experience a spiritual realization that will be the zenith of my present life on earth; the culmination of all that I've been learning; have it all wrap up like a good movie plot. Not enlightenment, obviously, but a mini-enlightenment for this lifetime. The big Buddha E is for all of reality, all lifetimes, all existences; what leads to the end of the cycle of re-births and into bodhisattva/angel existence. I just want a little e for the small things I've been learning and that I'm meant to learn in this life as this person.
2) to be in a rock band with people I like and connect with creatively. Bandmates who are friends I can rely on and have fun with. And I want the experience of that band being reasonably popular and have at least a strong local following.
3) I want to find a love that is a metaphor for God or a relationship with/to/for God. I want someone who will just let me be myself without trying to second guess my thoughts and feelings. I want someone who can take me at face value because she knows what's underneath. I want someone who I can just let be, and trust, relax, and stop with. I want someone that waking up with is a daily affirmation of love and life. I want someone who puts stuff into me, as well as takes stuff out of me, and with whom doing so is comfortable and natural. I want someone who is the songs I will write, the photographs I will print, and the reason why I run and keep on running, which is living.
And realize, Koji, right now that Josephine is not it. This relationship will run its course and it will come to an end. Do not erase this, she believes the exact same thing. Once she grows and learns to let go, she will; and she is growing.
**********************************
I can still hate myself and direct that hate against myself. I can take any situation that evokes a feeling I can't deal with and turn it into hate against myself. That's what I learned from my parents, that is my mortal trump card. Depression, frustration, desperation; I can turn them all into anger and hate, and direct it at myself. That's what I've learned to do and it's a lesson I can't unlearn.
**********************************
I saw Wim Wender's "Far Away, So Close"; another study in angel theory, á là "Wings of Desire", but more geared to a commercial audience. Nevertheless, there was a lot there.
Angels as intermediaries between humans and God. But not just messengers that treat God and humans as separate, distinct realities. The angels whisper our thoughts to us, whisper our conflicts, our dilemmas, the problems and issues of our behavior that we ultimately decide. They whisper responses, imparting to those who are open to their input; contributing to those who listen with their hearts and not their ears.
Angels as intermediaries between God and humans. But to an extent there is no distinction between God and humans. God is a part of all humans and humans contribute to the nature of God. So angels are only intermediaries between us and ourselves, our Buddha-nature. Angels only connect us to ourselves; that part of us which is the nature of God, inspired by God.
Wednesday, June 18, 1997
Bangkok, Thailand
Well, it happened, we said it. And you know what? I do. She is the Little Prince. I think it’s alright to fall in love with her. There is nothing forewarning problems or anything to be worried about. I’m not on a rebound and my thoughts and feelings are in general clear. Parents are no more an influence screwing up my life. We aren’t going to be separated for an extended period any time soon. She’s also a sad person and knows what it’s like to just hurt.
Please give me the strength to never hurt her in any way. I know I’m not a jerk, but I know what my mind is capable of. And even without the ‘rents influencing my life, I’m still dealing with the fallout. Josephine has something there. I don’t think she’s as messed up as me, but there’s something there.
Josephine and I overslept and got out of bed about noon. I had Regional Organizations at 2:30. We got back together right away, avoiding the crowd that we usually plod along in, trying to make decisions on what we all should do. We had dinner at A&W after looking at camera bags and getting guitar strings.
Please give me the strength to never hurt her in any way. I know I’m not a jerk, but I know what my mind is capable of. And even without the ‘rents influencing my life, I’m still dealing with the fallout. Josephine has something there. I don’t think she’s as messed up as me, but there’s something there.
Josephine and I overslept and got out of bed about noon. I had Regional Organizations at 2:30. We got back together right away, avoiding the crowd that we usually plod along in, trying to make decisions on what we all should do. We had dinner at A&W after looking at camera bags and getting guitar strings.
Tuesday, June 17, 1997
Bangkok, Thailand
Well, it’s official, Josephine and I kissed. Do I love her? Getting there - definitely an early stage of love. There’s definitely feeling there. Did I really meet her just two weeks ago? I guess it started with a long talk in her room and an empathy between us that extended into daytime.
The attraction manifested itself into flirting which eventually led to sincerity and expectations. That led to an understanding that we were interested in each other. Interested? Was I interested in her? If she didn’t become interested in me, would I have remained interested in her? Probably not. So is this real love?
Another indication of adulthood - you don’t wait until you love someone to go out with her. You go out first and then see if you love that person. I don’t like it, but I guess that’s the reality. I certainly love Josephine to some extent, endeared, attracted, fond of, care for, many other descriptives. But love? I didn’t tell Josephine that I love her. It might be really easy, though.
I dehydrated really bad today. Worse than in a long time. I felt it coming on and let it. I was dry-heaving, but no big headache or dizziness. It felt like I was moving in slow motion and I had to concentrate on every moment to get to one point to the next.
The attraction manifested itself into flirting which eventually led to sincerity and expectations. That led to an understanding that we were interested in each other. Interested? Was I interested in her? If she didn’t become interested in me, would I have remained interested in her? Probably not. So is this real love?
Another indication of adulthood - you don’t wait until you love someone to go out with her. You go out first and then see if you love that person. I don’t like it, but I guess that’s the reality. I certainly love Josephine to some extent, endeared, attracted, fond of, care for, many other descriptives. But love? I didn’t tell Josephine that I love her. It might be really easy, though.
I dehydrated really bad today. Worse than in a long time. I felt it coming on and let it. I was dry-heaving, but no big headache or dizziness. It felt like I was moving in slow motion and I had to concentrate on every moment to get to one point to the next.
Saturday, June 14, 1997
Bangkok, Thailand
Brenda, Philip, Josephine, and I took a taxi to the Weekend Market this morning. The Weekend Market is something like a flea market, but 10 times larger than any I’ve seen. It was very hot and felt quite adventurous having none of the Thais with us. But the trips there and back were flawless with minimal traffic, and neither of the taxi drivers trying to rip us off.
Josephine and I stuck close again and after we got back to the hotel we hung out in her room and then went for a nice walk. Her laugh is like what the Little Prince’s must have sounded like; tinkling of glass, sunny and joyful. I’m beyond attracted to her. Beyond fond of her. Nearing being endeared to her.
Josephine and I stuck close again and after we got back to the hotel we hung out in her room and then went for a nice walk. Her laugh is like what the Little Prince’s must have sounded like; tinkling of glass, sunny and joyful. I’m beyond attracted to her. Beyond fond of her. Nearing being endeared to her.
Thursday, June 12, 1997
Bangkok, Thailand
Current Legal Problems class has a moot court type thing next Tuesday. I was worried that many of the Thai and international students might have trouble with the English in the problem, and so I organized a study session and crammed to understand the reading to be able to answer any questions they might have.
It was tiring, but kind of fun. It turned into a sort of zoo. I hope it helped them. I just want to make sure they aren’t disadvantaged by the language barrier. We’re in Thailand and the Thai students have been helping us through every bit of our lives, but the English speaking students have the clear advantage in the classroom. Most of the Thai students can’t understand the lectures when the professors speak too fast or with too many colloquialisms. I imagine it must be odd to be in Thailand and going to class and not understanding the lectures. That’s what it must have been like in the States.
Josephine and I had a slight problem today, but we worked it out by night and ended up talking for several hours again late night. I don’t know if this is developing into anything. She’s sweet and all, and has a really good heart. I love her laugh and she has a sense of humor. I like her enough, but I don’t know if it’s creating a great stir in my heart. It’s pleasant, sweet, some attraction, some chemistry. There isn’t the staunch loyalty and adoration I have for Madoka, or the infatuation and drowning I had for Amina. But what do I expect? I just met her!
While Josephine and I were talking, I recalled studying for Moons for Goons in Amina’s room in Third World House. It got later and later and I asked whether I should get going, and Amina responded so sweetly, “no...”. We drifted the night away and nodded off. She had left for class by the time I woke up in the morning. Our friendship had grown through the semester and I was quite in love with her by then. Will I ever touch that kind of love again?
I don’t know why the thought occurred to me while talking to Josephine. Maybe part of me is still regretting losing Amina and is reluctant to fall in love again. Maybe I feel guilty about something. Maybe I’m just wishing, hopeless romantic that I can’t help being.
It was tiring, but kind of fun. It turned into a sort of zoo. I hope it helped them. I just want to make sure they aren’t disadvantaged by the language barrier. We’re in Thailand and the Thai students have been helping us through every bit of our lives, but the English speaking students have the clear advantage in the classroom. Most of the Thai students can’t understand the lectures when the professors speak too fast or with too many colloquialisms. I imagine it must be odd to be in Thailand and going to class and not understanding the lectures. That’s what it must have been like in the States.
Josephine and I had a slight problem today, but we worked it out by night and ended up talking for several hours again late night. I don’t know if this is developing into anything. She’s sweet and all, and has a really good heart. I love her laugh and she has a sense of humor. I like her enough, but I don’t know if it’s creating a great stir in my heart. It’s pleasant, sweet, some attraction, some chemistry. There isn’t the staunch loyalty and adoration I have for Madoka, or the infatuation and drowning I had for Amina. But what do I expect? I just met her!
While Josephine and I were talking, I recalled studying for Moons for Goons in Amina’s room in Third World House. It got later and later and I asked whether I should get going, and Amina responded so sweetly, “no...”. We drifted the night away and nodded off. She had left for class by the time I woke up in the morning. Our friendship had grown through the semester and I was quite in love with her by then. Will I ever touch that kind of love again?
I don’t know why the thought occurred to me while talking to Josephine. Maybe part of me is still regretting losing Amina and is reluctant to fall in love again. Maybe I feel guilty about something. Maybe I’m just wishing, hopeless romantic that I can’t help being.
Monday, March 31, 1997
198 Shakespeare Street, S.F.
March 1997
If I’m not in love with Madoka, I’m not in love with anyone and never will be again. I’m not in love with Madoka, and I should be.
I look at Madoka and I see the most wonderful, glowing, beautiful person in the world. I look at her with love, with devotion and adoration, knowing I love her, but I just don’t feel the love. I’m not in love.
I look at her and I can’t understand what is wrong with me. How can I know I love her without feeling it? I can say I love her over and over again and know that I mean it. I just don’t feel it. Is it that kind of love? Different from the respect, trust, and adoration I’ve felt all these years of knowing her? Yes, it is that kind of love. And I know it, I just don’t feel it.
My definition of love has changed from what it was before. Love for me ended with Amina. Joy is completely inexplicable now. I’m hard pressed to call it love, although it was something that I could have called love while it was happening.
Ana Claire blew open doors of alternative types of intimacy. It was impersonal intimacy. It was going through some motions with perhaps an occasional charade of substance, but knowing full well there was none. It’s very disturbing, although quite fitting, that she was the last person I slept with. Yuck.
That was mean. I take it back.
And then this thing with Madoka; knowing I love her without feeling it. I understand it. But looking at the words, I wonder how many other people would understand it. And other people I find myself attracted to? It’s take it or leave it. Makes no difference. People are all eventually disappointments.
If I’m not in love with Madoka, I’m not in love with anyone and never will be again. I’m not in love with Madoka, and I should be.
I look at Madoka and I see the most wonderful, glowing, beautiful person in the world. I look at her with love, with devotion and adoration, knowing I love her, but I just don’t feel the love. I’m not in love.
I look at her and I can’t understand what is wrong with me. How can I know I love her without feeling it? I can say I love her over and over again and know that I mean it. I just don’t feel it. Is it that kind of love? Different from the respect, trust, and adoration I’ve felt all these years of knowing her? Yes, it is that kind of love. And I know it, I just don’t feel it.
My definition of love has changed from what it was before. Love for me ended with Amina. Joy is completely inexplicable now. I’m hard pressed to call it love, although it was something that I could have called love while it was happening.
Ana Claire blew open doors of alternative types of intimacy. It was impersonal intimacy. It was going through some motions with perhaps an occasional charade of substance, but knowing full well there was none. It’s very disturbing, although quite fitting, that she was the last person I slept with. Yuck.
That was mean. I take it back.
And then this thing with Madoka; knowing I love her without feeling it. I understand it. But looking at the words, I wonder how many other people would understand it. And other people I find myself attracted to? It’s take it or leave it. Makes no difference. People are all eventually disappointments.
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.
***********************************
Forget it. I’m conceding. My life is not going to get any better, and even if it did I can’t bring myself to convince myself that I would care. Everything is wrong and I’m just simply sick of it. Everything went wrong, every path I’ve taken has been wrong, the road that I’m on is wrong. I don’t like anything about me and my life, and any reason I can think of for staying is bullshit. Fear of death, fear of what comes next, fear of missing something? Enjoyment, music, living, breathing, seeing, photographing? This is pathetic.
My life is pathetic and living it is pathetic. I’ve been waiting so long for something to change. Not even something in my life, just me. I’ve been waiting for me to change and it just isn’t happening. I still don’t like myself. I don’t like how I am in this world. I don’t like anything I do. I don’t like being in this skin. I don’t like thinking my thoughts or seeing through my eyes. I don’t like eating, sleeping, showering, shitting, peeing, thinking, being. I don’t like this world. Everything I like about life and this world is ruined by human beings. I hate people, I hate my relations with people, I hate my interactions with people. That’s why I keep disappearing from people’s lives.
I used to worry about what’s going to happen to my stuff, what people around me are going to do, how they’re going to react, and what they’re going to have to go through. Fuck it. Why should I care? What about what I have to go through? Do they think suicide is fucking easy? Let them deal with it. It happens. Shit happens. Let them throw all of my shit away, send it back to the ‘rents. Whatever. That last barrier that has kept me alive is finally down. There is nothing to stop me now. Nothing that will change.
Tomorrow, why not?
***********************************
Damn! The feeling didn’t last. I hate missing a moment. I don’t think I’ll set these dates anymore. All they are anyway are time outs; buffer time to allow me to cool off. When I decide to die, it’ll be in one of those moments, but it will be real with no waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If I can’t do it right at the moment, then I’m obviously not going to do it. What I do know for sure is that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a day worth living.
It was Pete’s birthday, and I thought it would be a nice gesture to go out with them after rehearsal. After rehearsal, I told them I had to deliver an amp to a friend, so I had to meet them at the bar later.
So I went to Jen’s to deliver her amp, she came along with me to the bar, and afterwards I drove her home and she asked me to come in. So I ended up at her place and was slightly drunk so I crashed at her place. But by then I pretty much knew what I thought of Jen and then left first thing in the morning.
I’ll stay in touch with Jen for a little while longer. She is fun and social. But I can’t say I’m impressed by much else about her. I can see her getting annoying after a while. But the main thing that sets things in stone between us is that she voted yes on Prop. 209, to ban affirmative action:
Paper for Jurisprudence class which I handed in the day after Election Day after it was known that 209 had passed:
“Recently, in two separate Southern cities, race riots were ignited when white police officers shot and killed black motorists. In the St. Petersburg, Florida incident, the mayor said that he was surprised that it had occurred and that he did not believe that St. Petersburg had a problem with racial tensions. Race riots, however, rarely are the result of a single, isolated, anomalous incident. They are usually catalyzed by a single event that serves as a flashpoint after years of racial tension, discrimination, and neglect. It is far more likely that the mayor’s lack of awareness of racial tensions is an example of precisely why the riot occurred at all.
“In her essay, “The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay on Formal Equal Opportunity,” Patricia Williams discusses the rhetorical ways that race is (not) dealt with in the law and society. Although equal treatment is the proclaimed goal and ideal for society, the law uses the concept and language of ‘equality’ to either maintain or ignore the reality of continuing inequality. Liberalism, which may claim to be an instrument of equal opportunity and equal treatment through positive law and personal rights, fails to perform those functions in a dynamic where past racial inequality and its continuing repercussions are inadequately redressed.
“The effectuation of the principles of liberalism is necessarily biased and curtailed, even when the word of law is remedied, when a society was based and then developed on principles of racial inequality. Williams argues that racial omission was a literal part of the original intent of the Founding Fathers (Williams, p. 10). The Constitutional omission of other races was not based on mere ignorance or oversight, but was assumed and incorporated into the structure of law. There was no question that “all men created equal” meant white men. The American consciousness of race was defined by the assumed inferiority and underclass status of blacks.
“Through most of this country’s history and development, blacks had little, if any, effective recourse to the law. It was not until the 1950's and 1960's that the Supreme Court realized the slippery nature of the word “equality” when it found Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine, which had been enforced for over fifty years, untenable. By that time, the U.S. had completed its westward expansion, underwent the industrial revolution, and was well into modernization.
“Affirmative action plans were an attempt to affirmatively re-place blacks, women, and other minorities into the law and to uplift and equalize their position in society. Affirmative action was also an affirmation of historical inequality and a recognition that true equality under the function of liberalism was only possible if those inequalities were remedied and redressed. “Action” meant that something had to actively be done. Equality was not possible through passive, indirect action; by merely altering the rules and to start treating people equally.
“Yet less than fifty years later, affirmative action is under attack and the Supreme Court has once again revealed the elusive nature of equality and the shifting dynamic of race analysis. Williams discusses the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson, 109 S.Ct. 706 (1989) to demonstrate the Supreme Court’s manipulation of language and logic to accomplish a holding which is no less than astonishing and has the potential of undermining affirmative action in its entirety.
“Very simply, the Court found that there was no evidence of racial discrimination just because a city has a population of more the 50% African Americans and awards less than 1% of municipal contracts to minority-owned businesses. The Court accomplished this holding by using a host of adjectives to diminish the relevance of facts and statistical data and “conjured mythic dangers” to diminish the Court’s role and ability to deal with racial issues in general (Williams, p. 1-2).
“The Court used the narrowest possible interpretation of “equality” to guide their decision. It referred to the Constitutional ideal of “equality” where race is “irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement” (Croson at 727). The Court’s interpretation of the Constitutional ideal of “equality” is now correct, regardless of the intent of the Framers, but it conveniently forgets that the intent of the Framers had a direct social and historical impact that was maintained for almost 200 years. The fallacy of the Court is in its faith that the effects of almost 200 years of injustice and inequality can be reversed and remedied in thirty years of affirmative action and the subsequent removal of race from the consideration of the law.
“Equality, even with thirty years of affirmative action, has never been reached. It has only revealed how pervasive and ingrained racism is into the fabric of the U.S. social structure. The Supreme Court has held that the government and the courts are not responsible for remedying societal discrimination; only for governmental discrimination. Unfortunately, the effects of the original Constitutional omission of African Americans has directly contributed to societal discrimination. Instead of taking responsibility for the effects of past discrimination by upholding affirmative action as a way of acknowledging the continuing existence of racism and inequality while continuing to proclaim the Constitutional goal of true equality, the Court has chosen to adhere to the Constitutional proclamation of equality and ignore any effects from the past.
“The position that the Court has chosen in the Croson opinion is a positivist one. They interpreted the word “equality” strictly and narrowly and decided that any program based on race which is not remedial of actual, provable, intended discrimination is contrary to the Constitution proclamation of equality. The disparity in a group comprising half the population of Richmond getting less than 1% of municipal contracts, absent proof of intent to discriminate, means absolutely nothing in the eyes of the law.
“The Court chose to emphasize what was not there (proof of intent to discriminate), rather than what was there (a statistic that Justice O’Connor once might have called ‘prima facie evidence of discrimination’). Williams compares this technique with the Parol Evidence Rule which seeks to exclude, as “extrinsic”, evidence that is not probative of the meaning of a document or the intent of the writers.
“The Croson Court’s analysis used what would be the first level of the Parol Evidence Rule, the “fully integrated” document which limits the document to its plain meaning. However, the Court uses a negative as the basic document: the lack of hard proof in the Constitution that there was an intent to discriminate. The Court excluded all other evidence which changes the meaning of that lack of intent to discriminate and concluded that there was no intent to discriminate.
“What the Court effectively excluded was the experience of African Americans in Richmond. There was no racism in the awarding of municipal contracts in the city of Richmond, Virginia. The Court treats race as it always has been treated in the United States. It subordinates it and then uses that subordination as a reason for ignoring it. As Williams puts it, “when segregation was eradicated from the American lexicon, its omission led many to actually believe that racism therefore no longer existed” (Williams, p. 9). That is precisely the position the Supreme Court takes in prescribing its narrow view of equality. It is a flawed view, however, that affirmative action has already delivered the equal treatment that it promised.
“The rules may be color-blind, but people are not” (Williams, p. 10). Societal discrimination is directly related to how the government and courts have treated race and how they continue to treat race. It is not enough to change the rules and proclaim equality has been achieved. In any human race where white males are given a substantial lead of generations of advantage over and at the expense of women and people of color, there cannot be equality. Attainment of the liberalist notion of equality is not fully possible until the generations of societal discrimination has been adequately addressed and redressed.
“Race needs to be recognized by the law so long as society recognizes race. It is the law’s responsibility to recognize race because it is the law that has made women and people of color to “compose and literally define both this society’s underclass and its most underserved population” (Williams, p. 1). If the law chooses to ignore race under the Constitutional proclamation of equality, equality may eventually be achieved, but it will take a considerably much longer time, and an even longer time for the law to figure out why race riots occur.”
Jen’s smart, but she’s offensively clueless as to the issues. Or she’s a Republican.
***********************************
I must say. As much as I care to emphasize the similarities in various religions and spiritual beliefs and reconcile them in unifying way, I must reject the proposition that each person has only one lifetime - one period of responsible moral choice - which is irrevocably decisive in determining a person’s eternal fate without appeal. I reject the belief that our time on earth, from birth to death, is all there is and all that matters on Judgment Day, however that concept is interpreted.
It is exorbitantly egotistical to put that much importance on each of our individual lives. That is more of an expression of human psychology, the need for self-affirmation. I don’t think God, however that is interpreted, has a vested interest in the good or evil of each individual soul that ever experienced the random accident of birth on this planet.
I doubt that "God" is so vain as to handpick which people, freshly raised from the dead, will go to heaven and which will go to hell. I won’t even entertain the idea of God as being anthropomorphic, as a being that makes rational, logical moral decisions, in the manner of human beings, as to where a soul goes. Those are human projections of themselves onto the concept of God. Humans are limited by their knowledge and being to understand the nature of God, so they naturally project human attributes onto God. Such projections are suspect.
What lifetimes are subject to judgment? Only human lifetimes? Who lived the first human lifetime? Was it the first soul that could be said to have evolved out from being considered ape? Or after Neanderthal? Or after human morality developed the concepts of good and evil? Morality is really quite arbitrary when God is couched in such simplistic terms.
At the time of any given formulation of what is good and what is evil, there has been limits on human knowledge. Morality has only been able to be informed by the knowledge and information available at the time. There are now things that we don’t know and haven’t even considered. What happens to morality when we have a better understanding of metaphysics and multiple dimensions. Time goes on, discoveries are made and new knowledge is added. Concepts of good and evil, as far as human beings can define them, are malleable and the standards change.
Delineating a single human lifetime as the moral basis to judge that soul seems arbitrary. It doesn’t make sense. Human character is shaped by circumstance, so once we start asking “what if...” and “what about...”, we start seeing that it is not only arbitrary, but wholly unfair. People are born into advantages and disadvantages, they vary and their experience differs. So how can there be only one moral yardstick to judge their character?
It assumes that everyone is given equal moral choice. People are not given equal moral choice because the advantages or disadvantages people are born into defines what moral choices are available. The delineation of a single human lifetime as the basis for judgment was probably just a projection of a dominant hegemony that didn’t realize that the life of a soul transcends any single lifetime.
The counter-argument to this would be that none of this is relevant and each one of us is alive, and to the extent that we are aware, we are responsible for our own moral behavior. Any complaint as to the definition of a human lifetime or to the uncharted boundaries of human epistemology is irrelevant. Fair enough. But then I would then hold that a “single human lifetime” means any series of human lifetimes, cycles of rebirths, occupied by the “same person”. I don’t know what the “same person” means, but it has something to do with what gets carried over from lifetime to lifetime. The soul.
***********************************
God is not a being who will be making the big decision of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. Rather, Judgment is a process that involves the nature of “God” that is within us all. God is that process. God as a part of each one of us, that which gets passed on from lifetime to lifetime. Anyone who believes God is an external agent is afraid of being accountable for oneself. Judgment Day involves a deep introspection and realization of our own natures and the “big decision” is an inherent part of that.
I’m not aware of the concept of a Judgment Day anywhere in Buddhism. At least not termed or conceptualized as it is in Western traditions. It may be incorporated, but not explicitly. Anyway, borrowing the term, I do believe in it to some extent. I haven’t quite finished formulating the mechanics of it.
I mentioned already that I don’t believe in the one lifetime theory upon which all human action is to be morally judged. So I don’t believe that you live your life, get buried or burned, and are kept in stasis until Judgment Day comes when all people will be resurrected and returned to life for judgment. That’s a little sadistic. I do, however, view the concept of resurrection as the Buddhist analog of remembering all of one’s past lifetime; a critical component of enlightenment.
I think resurrection means the returning to life of all past lives through remembrance of those lives, and it is on the moral behavior of all those lives that a soul, born and reborn through many lifetimes, will be “judged”. The mechanics part that I’m still not sure about yet is that in Buddhism, the remembrance of all past lives is a precursor to enlightenment, but according to Western eschatology, bad people go to Hell, i.e., they don’t attain enlightenment. How can you get to the threshold of enlightenment and then be judged as not attaining it. If it’s a given that once you reach the threshold of enlightenment, the remembrance and judgment, you will be enlightened, then what’s the point of judgment? The judgment already occurred.
Further, those who have reached enlightenment have supposedly remembered their past lives. Does that mean they have already experienced Judgment Day; i.e., their past lives have been resurrected? That necessarily changes the very nature of the Western eschaton. That would be seriously impairing the Western doctrine in favor of Buddhism.
It’s the God-nature within us that does the judging. Upon remembrance of past lives, the individual can recognize and distinguish between good and bad. I think by the nature of Judgment Day, there is no chance of deception or subjective biasing. There is an objective measure of “good” and “evil” that is beyond any of us. Truth is truth on Judgment Day and each individual can see for him and herself whether they go to “heaven” or “hell”.
I have no idea on what basis judgment will be dispensed, but I do think it is the individual that does his or her own judging and to the extent that the judgment is based on their God-nature, God is “sitting in judgment”. That’s all.
I haven’t done much figuring the different levels of heaven and hell. That comes to mind when I remember that living on earth is one level of hell. The “life is suffering” maxim represents that.
***********************************
I have no more justifications or rationales for dying. There never were any. I don’t need any. I simply do not want to live this life anymore. I don’t want to be here. The unbearableness of being. It has nothing to do with parents or family, or life, or what I’m doing, or what I have to do, or being human. In some ways I don’t feel like I’ve ever been here, I don’t feel that I belong here. I don’t want anyone to understand and don’t care if anyone does or doesn’t.
I’ve got another day set, even though I said I wouldn’t set them anymore. Force of habit. It’s how I get by day to day, week to week. It gives me something to look forward to, something immediate to strive for, even if my feelings have shown a pattern of changing before I actually do anything. Setting dates by which I want to die gives me a reason not to do it today, right now. I need to know that my current feelings can have a foreseeable end.
Am I prepared to kill myself right now? Most moments are pretty bad, but occasionally a not-so-bad one surfaces. Or at least a neutral one. It rained this past weekend, and I could have done it at any time. If that mood persists next weekend, I would think I’m ready to go through with it. After all, what is my life anymore? What has it come to? What is it made of anymore? Certainly not living material.
People kill themselves when something happens or changes that finally makes them snap. I’m the opposite. I’m going to kill myself because nothing is happening or changing. It’s a little frustrating knowing the feeling probably won’t last. But of course all I need is one time when it does. And I should note that every time I survive, there’s no real release, everything is still building up as it always has.
I know a lot of this feeling has to do with school stress. I have a 20 page paper on Islamic Law due at the beginning of December on the same day that I have a 5 page paper due in Jurisprudence. In the meantime I have to facilitate a discussion on post-modernism in Jurisprudence class on the same day that I have to present one of the essays on Law and Literature.
And I think to myself that I can get by. In the pinch, I can make it through all the presentations and papers and then exams on top of that. I can get the work done. But then I look beyond that and look for what’s there. So what if I can get through this month of concentrated stress and achieve yet another catharsis in my education? So what? Look at next February, what’s there? I’ll be getting through all this just for the sake of getting through all this. Nothing’s going to change, nothing’s going to be accomplished. It’s not about survival. It’s about what I really want. It’s about whether I really want to be playing this wretched game anymore.
Then there’s bullshit going on with the band, and finding the one person I liked in law school voted yes on 209 and that she really isn’t all that cool. It’s been so hard to meet people, I meet someone, look what I get. I get Jen. It’s been so hard to get into a band, I get into one, look what I get. I get these bozos. Great life. I’m wasting four years of my life, I still don’t have any marketable skills, and I’m 27 and I still have never held down a real job. Wish I had family, wish I had friends, wish I had someplace warm to spend.
I have to justify nothing. I don’t need to make anyone understand. The presumption will be that I was a nut that cracked under pressure, a basket case, emotionally depressed and disturbed, history of mental problems. That’s what people will look for first and read into whatever I write. Fine. Patterns of psychosis and delusional behavior, fits of depression and paranoia. Anti-social, a loner, suicidal. Troubled family background, poor upbringing, neglect, possible emotional abuse.
Preconceptions of what was wrong with me will be read into whatever rationale or justification I come up with. He concealed a dark double-life that he never showed and no one knew about. Good grief. The psychological mechanisms he employed to justify his suicide and to conceal or displace his psychosis were very complex. Here we have an example of an individual who may have been emotionally neglected, obviously depressed and suicidal, but complex and self-aware enough to detach himself in order to analyze his feelings from an almost objective voice. Of course, that objective voice was a perpetuation of his psychosis and may even be symptomatic of schizophrenia. Good grief. Fine, let them say what they must.
***********************************
In the sea of love, there are no shores, and there is nothing to do but drown. Rumi. When you fall in love with someone, you just know it. At each step, you fall in love again and again, more and more. You can never lie. If at any point you lie, you are not in the sea. If both are true to themselves and fall in love and let it be known, then there is no escape, and all you can do is drown. And if you resist, worse - if you succeed in resisting, you will die.
***********************************
Now it’s just getting curious. Why am I still alive? I tell myself I can kill myself at any moment, but then why not right now? What’s stopping me right now? I haven’t the slightest and I find that very, very curious.
I can’t imagine a better time and better circumstances in which to go ahead and do it. I have no pending obligations, I’m not in a moment of high stress, which allows me to clearer about it, and I want to do it. I’m calm and I’m in a moment of relative peace. The night is clear and the moon is close to full.
I still feel that my existence is a joke and it won’t make any difference however much longer I live. Nothing is going to change and my existence is not going to get any more bearable. What will next Spring bring? Only more of the same. There is an amorphous possibility of some change, but that’s not why I’m alive, it’s not good enough of a reason, it’s no reason at all, it’s just a lame excuse - to live just for the possibility change? That’s not living. To stay alive to strive for creature comforts which I know are fleeting? No thanks.
I know that theoretically suicide is not the only option. I could find and join an appropriate religious community. I doubt I’ll find anything perfect to match my beliefs, at least in this country, but it may be the proper environment in which I can live with my conscience and accept my existence. Do I not have the strength? Do I have the desire but not the commitment? What am I? What am I doing here? On the other hand, said community might also end up annoying the hell out of me.
There is a part of me that tells me that suicide is the proper path for me in this life, or that it’s at least an acceptable component in a series of lifetimes. If I don’t kill myself, I’m going against something, the way it’s supposed to be, something primeval.
I have not lived my life in a worthy manner. I leave no legacy or last words. When I die I will die alone, and unknown. I will have no ritual except to the sea and the stars, the wind, the sand, and the four directions. I will die never having touched another person, never having known another person’s heart. I hope that I have been good and that I have lived true to myself, and that I may be forgiven for the harms I’ve caused others.
Jen approached me during class break during a night class. I was sitting out on a table in the hall and she came up to me and we just started chatting. She’s originally from Long Island and she started going to law school in New York, but then she transferred out here.
She intrigues me. I’m still not sure what I think of her or whether I like her or not. I’m leaning towards the not, but she is a character. She plays bass. I don’t expect our acquaintance to last very long, she’s just not my type.
***********************************
Forget it. I’m conceding. My life is not going to get any better, and even if it did I can’t bring myself to convince myself that I would care. Everything is wrong and I’m just simply sick of it. Everything went wrong, every path I’ve taken has been wrong, the road that I’m on is wrong. I don’t like anything about me and my life, and any reason I can think of for staying is bullshit. Fear of death, fear of what comes next, fear of missing something? Enjoyment, music, living, breathing, seeing, photographing? This is pathetic.
My life is pathetic and living it is pathetic. I’ve been waiting so long for something to change. Not even something in my life, just me. I’ve been waiting for me to change and it just isn’t happening. I still don’t like myself. I don’t like how I am in this world. I don’t like anything I do. I don’t like being in this skin. I don’t like thinking my thoughts or seeing through my eyes. I don’t like eating, sleeping, showering, shitting, peeing, thinking, being. I don’t like this world. Everything I like about life and this world is ruined by human beings. I hate people, I hate my relations with people, I hate my interactions with people. That’s why I keep disappearing from people’s lives.
I used to worry about what’s going to happen to my stuff, what people around me are going to do, how they’re going to react, and what they’re going to have to go through. Fuck it. Why should I care? What about what I have to go through? Do they think suicide is fucking easy? Let them deal with it. It happens. Shit happens. Let them throw all of my shit away, send it back to the ‘rents. Whatever. That last barrier that has kept me alive is finally down. There is nothing to stop me now. Nothing that will change.
Tomorrow, why not?
***********************************
Damn! The feeling didn’t last. I hate missing a moment. I don’t think I’ll set these dates anymore. All they are anyway are time outs; buffer time to allow me to cool off. When I decide to die, it’ll be in one of those moments, but it will be real with no waiting for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. If I can’t do it right at the moment, then I’m obviously not going to do it. What I do know for sure is that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a day worth living.
It was Pete’s birthday, and I thought it would be a nice gesture to go out with them after rehearsal. After rehearsal, I told them I had to deliver an amp to a friend, so I had to meet them at the bar later.
So I went to Jen’s to deliver her amp, she came along with me to the bar, and afterwards I drove her home and she asked me to come in. So I ended up at her place and was slightly drunk so I crashed at her place. But by then I pretty much knew what I thought of Jen and then left first thing in the morning.
I’ll stay in touch with Jen for a little while longer. She is fun and social. But I can’t say I’m impressed by much else about her. I can see her getting annoying after a while. But the main thing that sets things in stone between us is that she voted yes on Prop. 209, to ban affirmative action:
Paper for Jurisprudence class which I handed in the day after Election Day after it was known that 209 had passed:
“Recently, in two separate Southern cities, race riots were ignited when white police officers shot and killed black motorists. In the St. Petersburg, Florida incident, the mayor said that he was surprised that it had occurred and that he did not believe that St. Petersburg had a problem with racial tensions. Race riots, however, rarely are the result of a single, isolated, anomalous incident. They are usually catalyzed by a single event that serves as a flashpoint after years of racial tension, discrimination, and neglect. It is far more likely that the mayor’s lack of awareness of racial tensions is an example of precisely why the riot occurred at all.
“In her essay, “The Obliging Shell: An Informal Essay on Formal Equal Opportunity,” Patricia Williams discusses the rhetorical ways that race is (not) dealt with in the law and society. Although equal treatment is the proclaimed goal and ideal for society, the law uses the concept and language of ‘equality’ to either maintain or ignore the reality of continuing inequality. Liberalism, which may claim to be an instrument of equal opportunity and equal treatment through positive law and personal rights, fails to perform those functions in a dynamic where past racial inequality and its continuing repercussions are inadequately redressed.
“The effectuation of the principles of liberalism is necessarily biased and curtailed, even when the word of law is remedied, when a society was based and then developed on principles of racial inequality. Williams argues that racial omission was a literal part of the original intent of the Founding Fathers (Williams, p. 10). The Constitutional omission of other races was not based on mere ignorance or oversight, but was assumed and incorporated into the structure of law. There was no question that “all men created equal” meant white men. The American consciousness of race was defined by the assumed inferiority and underclass status of blacks.
“Through most of this country’s history and development, blacks had little, if any, effective recourse to the law. It was not until the 1950's and 1960's that the Supreme Court realized the slippery nature of the word “equality” when it found Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine, which had been enforced for over fifty years, untenable. By that time, the U.S. had completed its westward expansion, underwent the industrial revolution, and was well into modernization.
“Affirmative action plans were an attempt to affirmatively re-place blacks, women, and other minorities into the law and to uplift and equalize their position in society. Affirmative action was also an affirmation of historical inequality and a recognition that true equality under the function of liberalism was only possible if those inequalities were remedied and redressed. “Action” meant that something had to actively be done. Equality was not possible through passive, indirect action; by merely altering the rules and to start treating people equally.
“Yet less than fifty years later, affirmative action is under attack and the Supreme Court has once again revealed the elusive nature of equality and the shifting dynamic of race analysis. Williams discusses the Supreme Court’s decision in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson, 109 S.Ct. 706 (1989) to demonstrate the Supreme Court’s manipulation of language and logic to accomplish a holding which is no less than astonishing and has the potential of undermining affirmative action in its entirety.
“Very simply, the Court found that there was no evidence of racial discrimination just because a city has a population of more the 50% African Americans and awards less than 1% of municipal contracts to minority-owned businesses. The Court accomplished this holding by using a host of adjectives to diminish the relevance of facts and statistical data and “conjured mythic dangers” to diminish the Court’s role and ability to deal with racial issues in general (Williams, p. 1-2).
“The Court used the narrowest possible interpretation of “equality” to guide their decision. It referred to the Constitutional ideal of “equality” where race is “irrelevant to personal opportunity and achievement” (Croson at 727). The Court’s interpretation of the Constitutional ideal of “equality” is now correct, regardless of the intent of the Framers, but it conveniently forgets that the intent of the Framers had a direct social and historical impact that was maintained for almost 200 years. The fallacy of the Court is in its faith that the effects of almost 200 years of injustice and inequality can be reversed and remedied in thirty years of affirmative action and the subsequent removal of race from the consideration of the law.
“Equality, even with thirty years of affirmative action, has never been reached. It has only revealed how pervasive and ingrained racism is into the fabric of the U.S. social structure. The Supreme Court has held that the government and the courts are not responsible for remedying societal discrimination; only for governmental discrimination. Unfortunately, the effects of the original Constitutional omission of African Americans has directly contributed to societal discrimination. Instead of taking responsibility for the effects of past discrimination by upholding affirmative action as a way of acknowledging the continuing existence of racism and inequality while continuing to proclaim the Constitutional goal of true equality, the Court has chosen to adhere to the Constitutional proclamation of equality and ignore any effects from the past.
“The position that the Court has chosen in the Croson opinion is a positivist one. They interpreted the word “equality” strictly and narrowly and decided that any program based on race which is not remedial of actual, provable, intended discrimination is contrary to the Constitution proclamation of equality. The disparity in a group comprising half the population of Richmond getting less than 1% of municipal contracts, absent proof of intent to discriminate, means absolutely nothing in the eyes of the law.
“The Court chose to emphasize what was not there (proof of intent to discriminate), rather than what was there (a statistic that Justice O’Connor once might have called ‘prima facie evidence of discrimination’). Williams compares this technique with the Parol Evidence Rule which seeks to exclude, as “extrinsic”, evidence that is not probative of the meaning of a document or the intent of the writers.
“The Croson Court’s analysis used what would be the first level of the Parol Evidence Rule, the “fully integrated” document which limits the document to its plain meaning. However, the Court uses a negative as the basic document: the lack of hard proof in the Constitution that there was an intent to discriminate. The Court excluded all other evidence which changes the meaning of that lack of intent to discriminate and concluded that there was no intent to discriminate.
“What the Court effectively excluded was the experience of African Americans in Richmond. There was no racism in the awarding of municipal contracts in the city of Richmond, Virginia. The Court treats race as it always has been treated in the United States. It subordinates it and then uses that subordination as a reason for ignoring it. As Williams puts it, “when segregation was eradicated from the American lexicon, its omission led many to actually believe that racism therefore no longer existed” (Williams, p. 9). That is precisely the position the Supreme Court takes in prescribing its narrow view of equality. It is a flawed view, however, that affirmative action has already delivered the equal treatment that it promised.
“The rules may be color-blind, but people are not” (Williams, p. 10). Societal discrimination is directly related to how the government and courts have treated race and how they continue to treat race. It is not enough to change the rules and proclaim equality has been achieved. In any human race where white males are given a substantial lead of generations of advantage over and at the expense of women and people of color, there cannot be equality. Attainment of the liberalist notion of equality is not fully possible until the generations of societal discrimination has been adequately addressed and redressed.
“Race needs to be recognized by the law so long as society recognizes race. It is the law’s responsibility to recognize race because it is the law that has made women and people of color to “compose and literally define both this society’s underclass and its most underserved population” (Williams, p. 1). If the law chooses to ignore race under the Constitutional proclamation of equality, equality may eventually be achieved, but it will take a considerably much longer time, and an even longer time for the law to figure out why race riots occur.”
Jen’s smart, but she’s offensively clueless as to the issues. Or she’s a Republican.
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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.
Sunday, September 15, 1996
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
September 1996
So this is what it feels like knowing that I will never fall in love again. Attraction is just a game. Falling in love is not in my range of emotions anymore. It feels empty. Numb. Interesting. Love is so important.
Turns out that Susan was interested in me way back last Winter. She didn’t think the feeling was reciprocated and it never went anywhere. I actually did have a crush on her. All for the better; we weren’t exactly compatible. I never quite knew where she was coming from. Apparently neither of us were any good at showing our feelings or letting them be known.
I don’t think I can love anymore. Even hearing about Susan, it was just a fanciful thing. A tickling. There’s no way that I could have ever really fallen in love with Susan. We are too different. Just as I could never have fallen in love with Ana Claire.
Maybe I do know what love is. It’s not anything about a person. I still love Amina two and a half years after the fact and our last contact, and considering what happened between us, that’s an incredible statement. I can’t make a list of things about a person that would make me fall in love with her. Anything I can place on a list, I’ve already found and have been disappointed or betrayed by already. There are things I could like about a person, things that would attract me, interest me, but nothing that would necessarily make me fall in love with that person.
Love just happens. When it’s there, you know it. I just know I won’t ever love anyone again. I’m too damaged in myself, much too uncomfortable with who I am to trust myself or like myself being with someone else.
***********************************
Yukiko moved in at the beginning of the month. We get along alright even though she’s kind of conservative and hangs out with mostly white people. She’s one of those Asians.
If we didn’t have to live with each other, we wouldn’t even associate. She’s a lot better to live with than Jeff, who owns this house. He’s also conservative, but in addition he’s also a typical male. He's a male stereotype. He also has a good side, generous, but he's definitely not the type I would hang out with. Yukiko is clean, considerate, open and amiable. Personal feelings aside, she’s a good housemate.
***********************************
I’ve stopped cutting since I’ve moved back to San Francisco. I also haven’t had the drive to set any dates. Since August. The desire to set a date just hasn’t crossed my mind. As part of my personality, however, it’s always there.
Things have been changing. I feel that I have to kill myself, it’s part of my destiny and responsibility. It is what I’m supposed to do, not what I’m supposed to avoid. It’s not a test, but what is supposed to happen.
Sometimes I feel that suicide is not so attractive an option, but in those times I feel even more strongly that it is something I have to do. Those are the times, strangely enough, that I’m most certain that I should kill myself; when I really feel that I don’t want to. Suicide is not a desire that I should succumb to, but an end that I have to learn to accept.
I cannot die in peace. My soul is too tormented for that. I don’t want to. I think that when I die, I’ll spend some amount of time as a ghost of who I am now. Released, with no judgments. But present, damned, chained. But I think I will be reborn. I think I’ve been “good” enough and true enough to myself that I won’t be reborn in a worse position. But I hurt too much and I’m too attached to that hurt that I can’t advance. I have to settle and understand these issues before that happens. I can’t even rest and take a break from the cycle.
Maybe my role as a ghost will be to teach my parents something. They are the ones I’m to “haunt”. I think that my soul will only start to heal once I’ve expanded their minds beyond their narrow conception of life. If I can change them in some way, set them on some sort of path of realization, instead of the smug complacency in the comfort of their materialism, then I can go forward. The longer I live, the less time I’ll have to accomplish it. I need to heal. I’m a long ways from becoming what I want to become.
I want to kill myself for that reason. Because it is my destiny and it may put me in a position where I can do something that would give my life some meaning. Even though it is very unattractive that I care about my parents enough that I’m trying to set them on the right path.
So this is what it feels like knowing that I will never fall in love again. Attraction is just a game. Falling in love is not in my range of emotions anymore. It feels empty. Numb. Interesting. Love is so important.
Turns out that Susan was interested in me way back last Winter. She didn’t think the feeling was reciprocated and it never went anywhere. I actually did have a crush on her. All for the better; we weren’t exactly compatible. I never quite knew where she was coming from. Apparently neither of us were any good at showing our feelings or letting them be known.
I don’t think I can love anymore. Even hearing about Susan, it was just a fanciful thing. A tickling. There’s no way that I could have ever really fallen in love with Susan. We are too different. Just as I could never have fallen in love with Ana Claire.
Maybe I do know what love is. It’s not anything about a person. I still love Amina two and a half years after the fact and our last contact, and considering what happened between us, that’s an incredible statement. I can’t make a list of things about a person that would make me fall in love with her. Anything I can place on a list, I’ve already found and have been disappointed or betrayed by already. There are things I could like about a person, things that would attract me, interest me, but nothing that would necessarily make me fall in love with that person.
Love just happens. When it’s there, you know it. I just know I won’t ever love anyone again. I’m too damaged in myself, much too uncomfortable with who I am to trust myself or like myself being with someone else.
***********************************
Yukiko moved in at the beginning of the month. We get along alright even though she’s kind of conservative and hangs out with mostly white people. She’s one of those Asians.
If we didn’t have to live with each other, we wouldn’t even associate. She’s a lot better to live with than Jeff, who owns this house. He’s also conservative, but in addition he’s also a typical male. He's a male stereotype. He also has a good side, generous, but he's definitely not the type I would hang out with. Yukiko is clean, considerate, open and amiable. Personal feelings aside, she’s a good housemate.
***********************************
I’ve stopped cutting since I’ve moved back to San Francisco. I also haven’t had the drive to set any dates. Since August. The desire to set a date just hasn’t crossed my mind. As part of my personality, however, it’s always there.
Things have been changing. I feel that I have to kill myself, it’s part of my destiny and responsibility. It is what I’m supposed to do, not what I’m supposed to avoid. It’s not a test, but what is supposed to happen.
Sometimes I feel that suicide is not so attractive an option, but in those times I feel even more strongly that it is something I have to do. Those are the times, strangely enough, that I’m most certain that I should kill myself; when I really feel that I don’t want to. Suicide is not a desire that I should succumb to, but an end that I have to learn to accept.
I cannot die in peace. My soul is too tormented for that. I don’t want to. I think that when I die, I’ll spend some amount of time as a ghost of who I am now. Released, with no judgments. But present, damned, chained. But I think I will be reborn. I think I’ve been “good” enough and true enough to myself that I won’t be reborn in a worse position. But I hurt too much and I’m too attached to that hurt that I can’t advance. I have to settle and understand these issues before that happens. I can’t even rest and take a break from the cycle.
Maybe my role as a ghost will be to teach my parents something. They are the ones I’m to “haunt”. I think that my soul will only start to heal once I’ve expanded their minds beyond their narrow conception of life. If I can change them in some way, set them on some sort of path of realization, instead of the smug complacency in the comfort of their materialism, then I can go forward. The longer I live, the less time I’ll have to accomplish it. I need to heal. I’m a long ways from becoming what I want to become.
I want to kill myself for that reason. Because it is my destiny and it may put me in a position where I can do something that would give my life some meaning. Even though it is very unattractive that I care about my parents enough that I’m trying to set them on the right path.
Saturday, August 31, 1996
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
August 1996
Listen, Em, as far as I’m concerned, the message you were trying to convey was very clear. I’m not an idiot, I quite well know what you were going to say before you felt you had to say it. So unless there is any doubt or ambiguity in yourself as to the message you were trying to convey, I assure you that there is no need for you to feel that you have to clarify anything.
(And what was the message I was trying to clarify?)
You felt that our friendship was developing too fast, you may have felt that I was becoming “interested” in you, and that was simply not what you wanted. That’s fine. As a result, we understand that we will be seeing much less of each other. I, on my hand, accommodating character as I may be, am more than willing to oblige. I’m not here to bring conflict upon you, and it’s just as well and as easy for me to walk away from you, Cat, or anyone.
***********************************
I walked away from the one person I can say to have loved in any enduring manner. I don’t think that is such a bad thing. I think it drove home the first lesson that was ever introduced to me: to not be fooled by appearances. Amina was an appearance. The love was not. The point of relevance here is that if I can walk away from Amina, I can walk away from anyone; especially at the request of the person I’m walking away from.
My friendships with both Cat and Emily are finished. It seems like the simultaneous demise of both friendships indicates that there was a connection between the two. I don’t think so. They were separate. Cat and I stopped being friends before I left for New Jersey, and Emily immediately after. If either hadn’t happened, it was entirely possible that my friendship with the other may have continued.
When I was going out with Shiho, Amina became nothing. But once Shiho was out, it became apparent, that all things equal, Amina is the one I love first, and the one I love most. The immediacy of Shiho simply distracted from the fact. Cat’s friendship outlived Nobuko, but I never stopped thinking that Nobuko was special. Cat didn’t sink in as much as Nobuko, and in the end, Nobuko was much more valuable to me than Cat ever was. What was special about Nobuko didn’t disappear once we stopped being friends.
I don’t feel sorry at all that Cat is gone, I don’t regret it. Cat kept her distance well enough and offended me enough times so that I don’t feel anything about our friendship ending. Nobuko, I really enjoyed and loved her company. Emily really was nothing and is hardly worth this mention.
Listen, Em, as far as I’m concerned, the message you were trying to convey was very clear. I’m not an idiot, I quite well know what you were going to say before you felt you had to say it. So unless there is any doubt or ambiguity in yourself as to the message you were trying to convey, I assure you that there is no need for you to feel that you have to clarify anything.
(And what was the message I was trying to clarify?)
You felt that our friendship was developing too fast, you may have felt that I was becoming “interested” in you, and that was simply not what you wanted. That’s fine. As a result, we understand that we will be seeing much less of each other. I, on my hand, accommodating character as I may be, am more than willing to oblige. I’m not here to bring conflict upon you, and it’s just as well and as easy for me to walk away from you, Cat, or anyone.
***********************************
I walked away from the one person I can say to have loved in any enduring manner. I don’t think that is such a bad thing. I think it drove home the first lesson that was ever introduced to me: to not be fooled by appearances. Amina was an appearance. The love was not. The point of relevance here is that if I can walk away from Amina, I can walk away from anyone; especially at the request of the person I’m walking away from.
My friendships with both Cat and Emily are finished. It seems like the simultaneous demise of both friendships indicates that there was a connection between the two. I don’t think so. They were separate. Cat and I stopped being friends before I left for New Jersey, and Emily immediately after. If either hadn’t happened, it was entirely possible that my friendship with the other may have continued.
When I was going out with Shiho, Amina became nothing. But once Shiho was out, it became apparent, that all things equal, Amina is the one I love first, and the one I love most. The immediacy of Shiho simply distracted from the fact. Cat’s friendship outlived Nobuko, but I never stopped thinking that Nobuko was special. Cat didn’t sink in as much as Nobuko, and in the end, Nobuko was much more valuable to me than Cat ever was. What was special about Nobuko didn’t disappear once we stopped being friends.
I don’t feel sorry at all that Cat is gone, I don’t regret it. Cat kept her distance well enough and offended me enough times so that I don’t feel anything about our friendship ending. Nobuko, I really enjoyed and loved her company. Emily really was nothing and is hardly worth this mention.
Sunday, December 31, 1995
1347 La Loma, Berkeley
December 1995
Ana Claire and I have been fucking. We're not in a relationship, we don't want to be. We just fuck. That's all it is - fucking. It's something I've never done before, I've never just fucked someone, so I'm savoring the word, its vulgarity and its brutal honesty. It's not completely cold, we're not completely unknown to each other so it's not purely carnal. She's a friend and we talk a lot, we just happen to fuck after we talk.
In some ways, it's a very twisted situation, but it's also perfect and probably what I need. When we first did it, I felt a wave of intimacy that just didn't feel right in the situation. It didn't last long; neither of us wanted this to become a relationship. It felt much more comfortable knowing that it was just fucking. We would get together, we would do something, then I would fuck her, she would fuck me. Amina, Shiho, I fuck Ana Claire, Ana Claire fucks me.
I wonder if I'm being naive through this. If anything, this is a rebound. I think she's on a rebound, too. From the start, all she wanted to do was fuck me to see what it was like to fuck me. That's totally fine with me. I’m in no position to make any emotional investment or outlay. This situation can't get messy. If things start going awry, it's thanks for the fuck, good-night. Wham-bam, thank you, ma'am. All the emotions in this are simply ambiguous.
Ana Claire has taken my relationships to another level. Her intelligence and raw ability are not to be questioned. There is an air of snobbishness to her. She doesn't give much credit to men as a gender and she makes no exception of me, so she makes plenty of assumptions about me which I wouldn't otherwise tolerate in a relationship. She looks down on me and doesn't know me at all. But she thinks she does. She'll never be able to appreciate me.
She balances her strength and her vulnerability pretty well. She's got problems and issues, but she's not neurotic or fucked up like so many other people I know. She's not scared or paranoid about anything I can see. She faces up to life and is therefore a breath of fresh air to me.
"Where did you get your name 'Ana Claire'?"
"From my grandmothers."
"They were both named 'Ana Claire'?"
"No, you fucking idiot," she laughed.
Ana Claire is a hormonal nightmare. She's very sexual and she knows what she likes. I find that intimidating, but I'm going along with it for whatever I can get. I don't know if I 'satisfy' her; I just do what I can and if she wants more, she can fuck around with other people to her heart's content.
It's funny that my motivation for getting to know Ana Claire is that she has a bass and has been interested in learning how to play it. I was interested in her learning how to play it so that I would know another Asian American person who plays an instrument.
But when I tried to teach her a part and get her to play it, it was like pulling teeth. I couldn't get her to pluck a note in my presence. She sent me out to get ice cream so she could work on the part alone. It's very telling. In our relationship and fucking thus far, she has been clearly dominant. She likes being dominant, or she wants to maintain dominance over any man. So then here I bring music, and music requires a degree of mutuality, and she can't do it.
Not even mutual, she's not dominant anymore, I'm the teacher, she's the learner. When she picks up a bass, she's not dominant anymore. She can't even pluck a string in my presence because doing so would be an admission that she's not dominant. So she sends me away to stake her territory to make it clear that she wants to feel like she's doing it herself without anyone else's help. It could just be me. Maybe she could take lessons from a man she's not fucking or from a woman. But the dynamic between us is that she's the dominant one, I'm the fuck-toy; I'm never in the dominant position and never can be.
Ana Claire is a perfectionist. She has very high standards for herself. She also has the ability to meet those standards. Which makes me feel odd since my standards are quite low. Not that I care, I kinda find it amusing; like what is this woman doing with me?
I have no idea where or how far this friendship is going to go. She does make me feel uncomfortable most of the time. I don't trust her. I have trouble talking to her and our conversations don't feel quite natural. But with the dynamics we've set ourselves into, I think eventually we're going to have to get closer, as friends, or we're going to drift apart. Either way.
It doesn't help that I'm going through a pretty difficult period in my life. I don't feel very social these days, I don't feel like reaching out at all to anyone, and no one is reaching in. I keep to myself. That doesn't help conversations.
*****************************
The betrayals. The callousness of Amina’s, the idiocy of Shiho's. Diem is also in that category of someone who has left my life with no good explanation. She doesn't write anymore and even when she wrote, she didn't communicate. She was once an intimate, now barely a pen-pal.
Truth to tell, I don't really care. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that a close friendship disappeared with no explanation; the fact that someone out there sees no value in me. Diem as a person, as someone who used to be a close friend, doesn't matter anymore. Amina, Shiho, Diem; it's all the same.
I'm not completely anti-social. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about people I've recently met, such as Ana Claire and Susan, but with people I've known for a while things are fine. Cat is just about my best friend now, I guess along with Nobuko, although it's hard to gauge a friendship when you're living with that person.
Things were great with Liz when I was back in New Jersey. I consider Liz my first real girlfriend since she was the first person I can say without a doubt that I slept with. Prior to her, I can only say it was experimentation. It was nice being with Liz. With Shiho gone, Liz is now the person I've known the longest. So different from Ana Claire. I probably could have fucked her if she wanted to.
It was so easy to let go of Amina when I was going out with Shiho. But now that they are in the same place, it is so clear that I loved Amina so much more than I ever loved Shiho. I told Amina that I would always love her first and most. It's still true.
I had a dream about Amina almost a week ago which is still affecting me. Amina and I were talking, I was asking her hard questions about what happened to us, not being warm at all. I have no idea what the questions were or what her answers were. The only thing I remember clearly is that at some point she moved behind me and put an arm over my shoulder and around my neck. I first reached up and held her arm against me, and then as I stood and turned, still holding her arm, I saw that she was crying and I started crying, too. And we both knew that we were crying for the same reason, because we once had something beautiful and we both let it go and it would never come back, and letting it go was the biggest mistake either of us could have made. I don't know if it's reality, it was the dream.
So yes, I still love Amina first and most and I probably always will. She can always have my heart and soul. I would never go out with her again, I'm not even sure I would let her back into my life as a friend, but I will always love her and she will always be all the wonderful things I saw in the three years I knew and loved her.
Ana Claire and I have been fucking. We're not in a relationship, we don't want to be. We just fuck. That's all it is - fucking. It's something I've never done before, I've never just fucked someone, so I'm savoring the word, its vulgarity and its brutal honesty. It's not completely cold, we're not completely unknown to each other so it's not purely carnal. She's a friend and we talk a lot, we just happen to fuck after we talk.
In some ways, it's a very twisted situation, but it's also perfect and probably what I need. When we first did it, I felt a wave of intimacy that just didn't feel right in the situation. It didn't last long; neither of us wanted this to become a relationship. It felt much more comfortable knowing that it was just fucking. We would get together, we would do something, then I would fuck her, she would fuck me. Amina, Shiho, I fuck Ana Claire, Ana Claire fucks me.
I wonder if I'm being naive through this. If anything, this is a rebound. I think she's on a rebound, too. From the start, all she wanted to do was fuck me to see what it was like to fuck me. That's totally fine with me. I’m in no position to make any emotional investment or outlay. This situation can't get messy. If things start going awry, it's thanks for the fuck, good-night. Wham-bam, thank you, ma'am. All the emotions in this are simply ambiguous.
Ana Claire has taken my relationships to another level. Her intelligence and raw ability are not to be questioned. There is an air of snobbishness to her. She doesn't give much credit to men as a gender and she makes no exception of me, so she makes plenty of assumptions about me which I wouldn't otherwise tolerate in a relationship. She looks down on me and doesn't know me at all. But she thinks she does. She'll never be able to appreciate me.
She balances her strength and her vulnerability pretty well. She's got problems and issues, but she's not neurotic or fucked up like so many other people I know. She's not scared or paranoid about anything I can see. She faces up to life and is therefore a breath of fresh air to me.
"Where did you get your name 'Ana Claire'?"
"From my grandmothers."
"They were both named 'Ana Claire'?"
"No, you fucking idiot," she laughed.
Ana Claire is a hormonal nightmare. She's very sexual and she knows what she likes. I find that intimidating, but I'm going along with it for whatever I can get. I don't know if I 'satisfy' her; I just do what I can and if she wants more, she can fuck around with other people to her heart's content.
It's funny that my motivation for getting to know Ana Claire is that she has a bass and has been interested in learning how to play it. I was interested in her learning how to play it so that I would know another Asian American person who plays an instrument.
But when I tried to teach her a part and get her to play it, it was like pulling teeth. I couldn't get her to pluck a note in my presence. She sent me out to get ice cream so she could work on the part alone. It's very telling. In our relationship and fucking thus far, she has been clearly dominant. She likes being dominant, or she wants to maintain dominance over any man. So then here I bring music, and music requires a degree of mutuality, and she can't do it.
Not even mutual, she's not dominant anymore, I'm the teacher, she's the learner. When she picks up a bass, she's not dominant anymore. She can't even pluck a string in my presence because doing so would be an admission that she's not dominant. So she sends me away to stake her territory to make it clear that she wants to feel like she's doing it herself without anyone else's help. It could just be me. Maybe she could take lessons from a man she's not fucking or from a woman. But the dynamic between us is that she's the dominant one, I'm the fuck-toy; I'm never in the dominant position and never can be.
Ana Claire is a perfectionist. She has very high standards for herself. She also has the ability to meet those standards. Which makes me feel odd since my standards are quite low. Not that I care, I kinda find it amusing; like what is this woman doing with me?
I have no idea where or how far this friendship is going to go. She does make me feel uncomfortable most of the time. I don't trust her. I have trouble talking to her and our conversations don't feel quite natural. But with the dynamics we've set ourselves into, I think eventually we're going to have to get closer, as friends, or we're going to drift apart. Either way.
It doesn't help that I'm going through a pretty difficult period in my life. I don't feel very social these days, I don't feel like reaching out at all to anyone, and no one is reaching in. I keep to myself. That doesn't help conversations.
*****************************
The betrayals. The callousness of Amina’s, the idiocy of Shiho's. Diem is also in that category of someone who has left my life with no good explanation. She doesn't write anymore and even when she wrote, she didn't communicate. She was once an intimate, now barely a pen-pal.
Truth to tell, I don't really care. The only thing that bothers me is the fact that a close friendship disappeared with no explanation; the fact that someone out there sees no value in me. Diem as a person, as someone who used to be a close friend, doesn't matter anymore. Amina, Shiho, Diem; it's all the same.
I'm not completely anti-social. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about people I've recently met, such as Ana Claire and Susan, but with people I've known for a while things are fine. Cat is just about my best friend now, I guess along with Nobuko, although it's hard to gauge a friendship when you're living with that person.
Things were great with Liz when I was back in New Jersey. I consider Liz my first real girlfriend since she was the first person I can say without a doubt that I slept with. Prior to her, I can only say it was experimentation. It was nice being with Liz. With Shiho gone, Liz is now the person I've known the longest. So different from Ana Claire. I probably could have fucked her if she wanted to.
It was so easy to let go of Amina when I was going out with Shiho. But now that they are in the same place, it is so clear that I loved Amina so much more than I ever loved Shiho. I told Amina that I would always love her first and most. It's still true.
I had a dream about Amina almost a week ago which is still affecting me. Amina and I were talking, I was asking her hard questions about what happened to us, not being warm at all. I have no idea what the questions were or what her answers were. The only thing I remember clearly is that at some point she moved behind me and put an arm over my shoulder and around my neck. I first reached up and held her arm against me, and then as I stood and turned, still holding her arm, I saw that she was crying and I started crying, too. And we both knew that we were crying for the same reason, because we once had something beautiful and we both let it go and it would never come back, and letting it go was the biggest mistake either of us could have made. I don't know if it's reality, it was the dream.
So yes, I still love Amina first and most and I probably always will. She can always have my heart and soul. I would never go out with her again, I'm not even sure I would let her back into my life as a friend, but I will always love her and she will always be all the wonderful things I saw in the three years I knew and loved her.
Monday, September 25, 1995
1347 La Loma, Berkeley
Shiho's ex-boyfriend wants her back and she is considering it. This is the jerk who dumped her for another woman. Now that other woman doesn't want him, and he wants Shiho back. And Shiho is considering it! She, of course, waiting until the end of her visit to tell me this. That was the tactful calculated thing to do, and I appreciate it.
So what is the extent of my love? How do I balance love with dignity? Dignity trumps; I want to just forget it, let her go, let her go back to him, insist on it, I'm not about to compete with him. To be put against a jerk like him is beyond my dignity.
I'm still in love with her. Not only still in love, I realize I was wrong about not loving any of my previous girlfriends beyond a certain point. I'm not sure how I can say it yet, but I love Shiho more than I've loved anyone else. Something about the closeness, the intimacy, the mutuality, the security that never quite existed with anyone else. I never felt this way about anyone else before.
I appreciated Shiho's honesty, but feelings and dignity conflict. I believe her when she says she loves me, so I told her that I would support any decision she made. I told her I will always be her friend, and that I would always be here for her if she wants or needs me. Writing these words, I know I mean it. Precious and sweet, she is everything to me. So much so that I'm willing to just let her go.
We will break up soon. Even after she told me about this new development, we went on as if we were going out and that we were intending to continue this relationship. We kept talking about the next time, the next visit, about her coming again, about me going there. It was an act. It isn't going to happen. And what I told her about supporting whatever decision she made wasn't me being nice. I know what her decision will be, but I want her to stew in “her decision” for a while. I'm not going to make it easy for her. She has to tell me that she is breaking up with me to get back together with this jerk.
So what is the extent of my love? How do I balance love with dignity? Dignity trumps; I want to just forget it, let her go, let her go back to him, insist on it, I'm not about to compete with him. To be put against a jerk like him is beyond my dignity.
I'm still in love with her. Not only still in love, I realize I was wrong about not loving any of my previous girlfriends beyond a certain point. I'm not sure how I can say it yet, but I love Shiho more than I've loved anyone else. Something about the closeness, the intimacy, the mutuality, the security that never quite existed with anyone else. I never felt this way about anyone else before.
I appreciated Shiho's honesty, but feelings and dignity conflict. I believe her when she says she loves me, so I told her that I would support any decision she made. I told her I will always be her friend, and that I would always be here for her if she wants or needs me. Writing these words, I know I mean it. Precious and sweet, she is everything to me. So much so that I'm willing to just let her go.
We will break up soon. Even after she told me about this new development, we went on as if we were going out and that we were intending to continue this relationship. We kept talking about the next time, the next visit, about her coming again, about me going there. It was an act. It isn't going to happen. And what I told her about supporting whatever decision she made wasn't me being nice. I know what her decision will be, but I want her to stew in “her decision” for a while. I'm not going to make it easy for her. She has to tell me that she is breaking up with me to get back together with this jerk.
Friday, September 22, 1995
1347 La Loma, Berkeley
Shiho lies there sleeping. I think to myself how many people have I loved this much, this dearly. Perhaps just about all of them at some point. Why is this different? Why was Amina different? This is different. Shiho is different. But whenever I've loved anyone this much, I think my love has always reached this level. And the level reached has always been the same. Limited.
She lies there silent, so endeared to me. I wonder if she has any idea how much I love her. Does she know the capacity of my love? Do we love each other in the same way? Are our idea and conception of love the same? I think back to Osaka when she came to visit when she heard I was leaving. That afternoon we spent in each other's arms. I think back to a time in high school when there was a rehearsal going on in the basement, but I was so tired that I needed to take a nap. She came up to my room with me, I forget why, but then after I laid down and she was headed back downstairs, she quickly kissed me on the cheek before going. I ignored it, I wasn't in love with her at that time. Idiot.
I watch her sleeping and I just know this won't last, it is unrealistic. It is unreal. She's here for three days. Two days of travel to be with me for three days.
This past summer. Her apartment was so comfortable. Being there was so comfortable. That one night we went out to the overpass to watch the trains go under and drink beer. What power does love have to keep us together?
How can I love anyone now when I have so many loves in my past that were never resolved, that never reached a proper end?
I never know what is going on in Shiho's heart in any given moment. I never know what is going on in her heart in any given moment. I don't know how her heart works.
I want her to express to me, to tell me that she loves me, to let me know how she feels, but that is not her style. How long will I be able to stand not getting those things? The second time we got together she was just starting to be able to express her feelings in a way I could feel and appreciate.
So much is lying on faith. I understand that it is not her style and I can accept that and adjust. I can only trust that she loves me.
But what indication do I have that I can trust her? Our past? We would get together when we were together, but once we were apart we would fall for other people. And isn't to want such a trust the equivalent of trying to capture her? Trying to make something permanent out of something that can't be permanent, that I know is not permanent, that I feel should not be permanent.
Trust her after Amina? I can't. It's not a vindictive thing against Amina, it's not trauma of being betrayed, it's not emotional. It's fact, it's reality. That sort of trust is not an option anymore. I couldn't trust her even if I were to allow myself to try.
She's beautiful, though. I love her face, her skin, her sex, her presence. I love her existence. If only she loved me back...
She lies there silent, so endeared to me. I wonder if she has any idea how much I love her. Does she know the capacity of my love? Do we love each other in the same way? Are our idea and conception of love the same? I think back to Osaka when she came to visit when she heard I was leaving. That afternoon we spent in each other's arms. I think back to a time in high school when there was a rehearsal going on in the basement, but I was so tired that I needed to take a nap. She came up to my room with me, I forget why, but then after I laid down and she was headed back downstairs, she quickly kissed me on the cheek before going. I ignored it, I wasn't in love with her at that time. Idiot.
I watch her sleeping and I just know this won't last, it is unrealistic. It is unreal. She's here for three days. Two days of travel to be with me for three days.
This past summer. Her apartment was so comfortable. Being there was so comfortable. That one night we went out to the overpass to watch the trains go under and drink beer. What power does love have to keep us together?
How can I love anyone now when I have so many loves in my past that were never resolved, that never reached a proper end?
I never know what is going on in Shiho's heart in any given moment. I never know what is going on in her heart in any given moment. I don't know how her heart works.
I want her to express to me, to tell me that she loves me, to let me know how she feels, but that is not her style. How long will I be able to stand not getting those things? The second time we got together she was just starting to be able to express her feelings in a way I could feel and appreciate.
So much is lying on faith. I understand that it is not her style and I can accept that and adjust. I can only trust that she loves me.
But what indication do I have that I can trust her? Our past? We would get together when we were together, but once we were apart we would fall for other people. And isn't to want such a trust the equivalent of trying to capture her? Trying to make something permanent out of something that can't be permanent, that I know is not permanent, that I feel should not be permanent.
Trust her after Amina? I can't. It's not a vindictive thing against Amina, it's not trauma of being betrayed, it's not emotional. It's fact, it's reality. That sort of trust is not an option anymore. I couldn't trust her even if I were to allow myself to try.
She's beautiful, though. I love her face, her skin, her sex, her presence. I love her existence. If only she loved me back...
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