1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Ritu did make it in yesterday afternoon. Apparently Tina refuses to talk about what happened and refused to talk to Anita. She made it in yesterday, but she didn't last long. I think they kicked her out today. I was supposed to have a case meeting with Angela today, but we ended up dealing with Ritu and her cousin and brother, Neeta and Rahul, who were flying in. Neeta and Rahul came first to the office to be briefed by Angela and me, while apparently Ritu was sitting outside her apartment since she didn't have her keys.

We gave our opinions and recommendations. We believed that the most favorable course of action was for them to get Ritu and fly her back to New York immediately. We warned that Ritu might resist, and if she did, we recommended that Neeta's father fly out to get her. We strongly advised that her father not come out. Neeta and Rahul concurred with just about everything. They've known her for much longer.

Ritu is totally spiraling down. I recognize it. I even reflected upon my own experience to inform my recommendations on how Ritu should be handled. I even had some benign flashbacks of memories that I had forgotten. She's no where near rock bottom yet. Through these manic, psychotic weeks, the breakdowns, the drinking, the whimpering and whining, the thoughts of suicide, she was on the way down, but no where near.

That wasn't rock bottom. Trying to commit suicide is not rock bottom. She was resisting on Monday morning and delaying going to rehab. When she got there she was asking questions about whether she had her own room and the food and the cleanliness of the bathrooms. In her well-kempt psychotic state, I imagine. But you don't think of those things when you've hit rock bottom. You can think of those things when you're still on the way down.

Rock bottom is when you've survived suicide and realize that it isn't the solution that it had provided. Rock bottom is when you've had your freedom stripped away from you and suicide has faded as an option. Rock bottom is when you have to start looking up because there is no further to look down. Rock bottom is when you realize you have to start crawling back up out of the hole you've dug for yourself. And Ritu is no where near.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I can't write in here without the feeling that I need to be wrapping things up. I have a lot of questions concerning what I'm doing here and what I should be doing. Not the big questions, the little specifics. I've established how I should go about my day to day life, the accomplishment of which will in itself be no easy task. Now it's a matter of considering how that affects the other elements that make up human life and deciding where I stand on them.

Relationships should be a no-brainer, but they are an embarrassingly prominent issue. Relationships should be 100% out for me. What relationships are to each of us is different, so I'm not saying that all people with pursuits similar to mine, pursuits to get a little bit of clarity on life and existence beyond material appearances, should avoid relationships. But for what relationships are to me, they should be avoided. They don't support my pursuits, they only distract.

But I struggle with desire and feeling. I still recognize the strength and allure of emotional intimacy. It's difficult to get past entertaining the possibility of getting into a relationship. It's difficult to up-front declare that I will no longer participate in the relationship culture.

I guess at the core of my being are echoes of a lot of pain and suffering and inability to cope. At the core, I'm still hurting from whatever and hoping for some miracle that will make me feel all better. There is still a lot that I want. There are things in my past that are long gone, but I long to recover and I haven't resolved that.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I’m getting OK. I think I’m coming to a point of clarity, although I don’t discount that it may be weather-related; two days of 80 degree weather has me blissed out.

I had some break-throughs today. A band confrontation with Josh highlighted that I am different from other people and that I’m comfortable with my approach to life and conflicts. Some things have been reaffirmed such as my comfort and security in my sense of self and not having those things dependent or overly-influenced by what others think.

I recognize that there is a core of pain inside me that makes me somewhat unstable. That is, in fact, a part of me. I don’t have a desire to live a long life and I don’t mind dying. It’s possible that is a manifestation of unresolved issues, but that’s not absolute and I’m not convinced of that. I don’t feel any sense in being so attached to living when you understand the Buddhist principle that physical existence is fleeting and that it’s not all that there is. I appreciate and enjoy life as I’m living it, as it’s here, but the greatest bliss I’ve felt has never made me fear or wish to avoid death. The core of pain inside me is part of my appreciation of life.

I’ve figured out why I’m still a cutter. Cutting is the connection between me in the present and my own past. I don’t have any real reason or need to continue cutting, I do it just because I did it. It isn’t an indicator of lingering issues and problems, it isn’t even hurting me. But what I went through that led me to start and continue cutting is part of me and my identity. However, I’ve changed so much from who I was back then that it’s really important to me to not bury and lose that part of me. Cutting allows me to retain a present connection to my past.

It also serves as a notice to people around me that what they see is not all that there is. That’s actually an important point on why I still cut. It’s not good enough that I have the very noticeable scars on my arms and legs. Healed scars are a record of the past, but don’t say anything about the present and how the past has affected my present and how the present is a continuation of the past.

I was talking to Angie Chen, and we talked about our screwed up pasts and about being screwed up. I dived right into it like someone who knew what he was talking about. And I did know what I was talking about, but it wasn’t who I am now. In discussing those things, I was basically playing the part of what I used to be. And that was strange because that past is so much a part of who I am. There’s a big risk in losing touch with how I got to be who I am, cutting maintains the connection.

So the band is going through a crisis centering on Josh. He’s got some serious issues going on and he’s taking them out on us. He claims he’s unhappy and frustrated with the band’s direction, but all he does is criticize, and contributes nothing constructive. He’s convinced that we need to have a package to sell, but he roadblocks any plans to go into the studio soon. He says he doesn’t want to rush into something when we’re not ready. Who’s not ready? They’ve been together for two years, I’m ready to record. Readiness is not the issue. I’m predicting he’ll be out of the band by the end of May.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

198 Shakespeare Street, S.F.

February 1997

OK, I’m starting to get back the feeling that I really don’t want to be here anymore and that I’m willing to do something about it. But typically, I’m thinking that I should hold out for another month so I can visit Madoka in Japan during Spring Break. Is that just another excuse to put it off? Probably, but it doesn’t matter, Madoka is the exception to any rules anyway.

I’ve been trying to be more positive about my life and to be less hostile to the people in the world around me. It wears thin sometimes. I get wrapped up in the nightmare of my own existence, and I just don’t want to be here. I don’t feel like I am here. Physical existence is only one level of existence and it’s frustrating as hell when it’s the only one we can recognize in our human form.

When I do focus on my undeniable physical existence, it’s pretty miserable. I have problems with my skin, of being in my skin; I hate this well-defined border of my physical existence. It does not reflect the feeling that my non-physical existence tapers off asymptotically, disappearing into infinity.

But I have skin, this flesh-bag that can be the source of pleasure or pain. Pain, which I’ve already negated as most people understand it. Pain for me is just another sensation, there is no qualitative value to place on it. It is not something to avoid or something bad. So when people ask if it hurts to cut myself - no. Of course I’ve never had smoldering slivers forced under my fingernails, so it’s not like I’ve experienced the outer limits of my pain threshold. As for pleasure, in regard to physical intimacy, I’m just not interested anymore. I can’t imagine that in my physical reality anymore.

I don’t like breathing. I don’t like air. I don’t like moving. I don’t like being. I don’t like the ground below my feet, the light and color of the world around me. I don’t like the physical world around me. I don’t like anything about my existence. Is there anything I do like?

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

I was in the law library the other day and I experienced a very strange sensation. I don’t think I’d quite call it an epiphany. No, it wasn’t an epiphany. It was just a sensation.

I had this feeling that it was possible to convince myself that it is totally possible to transform the world around me and go back into my past; to use and focus imagination and it would actually transform reality. I imagined with all my might it possible to go back to my first year of college, knowing that I just switched dimensions and realities. Not being constrained by time and space. Not just a game of imagining what I would do different, but to actually make that leap. It wasn’t a hypothetical, it was completely transcendental.

Maybe I’m just crazy. Maybe this is all just pathological. When I kill myself, it will all be within the normativeness of this reality. They, whoever, will explain my death or disappearance according to only what they know, put pieces together as they logically fit. Can’t be helped.

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

I need to get serious about dying again. All this putting it off is making it a joke. I just want to do it. There are no more considerations. It’s a personal given that I’m going to do it sooner or later. I don’t really feel the “bad” days too intensely, and the “good” days make me really uncomfortable. The discomfort is because they just don’t feel like they fit. They don’t feel real or concrete, I know that they are impermanent and transient.

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.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

October flew by. Joy helped the time by. How different it all is from last year. How muddy last year was; through fish-eyed lens, under bell jar, in a fish bowl. I left Japan two years ago in October. Recollections are still so vivid, and whenever a specific memory comes to my mind, it comes back to haunt. The trains, the river, the people, the air, the land. I want to be there, I belong there, I just feel it in my bones.

Joy has been so much, more than a comfort, more than a friend. Slowly, very slowly, she's making her way into my life. But nothing endearing, nothing that has truly pierced my heart. Everything is so cerebral, the passionate is completely outweighed, almost absent. I love her and wouldn't leave her, but if we did separate, it would be mutual, a decision. She wouldn't even get the benefit of the passion of a pain. No yelling, no drama, no scene, no wrestling over emotions and feelings. We would have thought it through. She wouldn't have felt it through. We wouldn't be friends afterwards either.

The benefit of the passion of a pain. The benefit of the passion of a pain, I say, as I hunger for revenge against or restitution from Amina. For once, I've gotten the "benefit" of the "passion" of the pain.

I love Joy in my life at this point. My life is so much better than it was a year ago. I'm clearer now, I can handle my work, I can deal with myself. Why am I not happy? Why can't I get on the topic of Joy and stay on it? Why am I not at least somewhat satisfied? Where has the passion in my life gone? I've lost something and Joy isn't making up for it. She's not offering anything new.

Was I more passionate with and about my friends at Oberlin? Or am I doing my usual psychological step of making the past look so much better just because it's safe in the past? Did I really love Diem and Luyen and Madoka so much? And love Amina so much that I can hate her so much now? I'm probably comparing Joy unfairly to something against which she can't possibly compete; memories and a denial.

Things weren't so hot with Hiromi. If they were, we would have stayed together and Luyen wouldn't have tugged at me. Things weren't so hot with Luyen. If they were . . . they weren't. And if we were together now . . . they definitely wouldn't be. Things weren't so hot with Diem. If they were, why didn't we get any closer? Things weren't so hot with Amina. But I loved her anyway. Why can't I get on the topic of Joy and stay on it?

Are things so hot with Joy?

My only problems are the problems I have with myself, my inability to deal with being inside my skin, of still having the 'rents pulling my strings, of still not being able to find a musical community. My issues are about me, not her, they only affect my relationship with her. I have to learn to be happy with what I've got. And I still can't get on the topic of Joy and stay on it.

Joy and I got together downtown for a short bit last night. She was going to a comedy show and meeting up with someone, so I held off coming home so I could meet up with her. It was wonderful seeing her face and seeing her for the first time noticeably healthier than she had been in the past four weeks. Both of us have been pretty sick. She gave me her flu at my insistence. I can't say I minded how I got it.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

Why did I tell Joy about cutting? What purpose did that serve? The drinking was different. If Joy wanted me to stop drinking, I could stop. At least I have a defensible explanation about drinking, I have my argument. No one could take away my feelings and understanding about it, even if they disagreed or didn't see it. But cutting? I can't explain it, I just do it. I don't know why I do it or why I don't feel pain. I can take a knife right now and . . . I don't know why I simply don't do it. Why did I introduce this part of me to Joy when I can't explain it to myself?

She came to San Francisco. We met at school because I had to register for classes, and then we came to my place for lunch. The long intimate hug was an extension from last night. We were still close, caressing, half holding, looking, loving, and then she asked about the scar on my arm. I knew the topic would come up, how could it not? Even though most people have an easy time ignoring or avoiding it.

It wasn't until we were on the sand at Ocean Beach, after having walked along the entire Sea Cliff trail, that I started talking about it. From that point on, I was winging it. It was difficult for me, often I felt my heart hurt, I realized the degree to which parts of me have been numbed insensitive. I hated having to tell Joy, but I couldn't imagine not telling her, either. I trust her and she means enough to me that I refuse to not disclose anything important about me.

I had told Amina. She seemed uncomfortable and she detached herself pretty quickly. Then it never came up again. Why even bother? She may have noticed scars on my chest at some point and run her fingers over them, I forget, but she never asked to understand. Much less that she was the inspiration for several due to the unfortunate period of my life in which she decided to get involved with me.

It hurt to tell Joy; to look at her face, her eyes, knowing that here was someone I was beginning to care for. Why did I tell her? I'm angry at myself for having told her. I had no business exposing this side of me to her so blatantly. I'm getting together with her again tomorrow, the last time on a regular basis. I won't panic, it won't be any different than if I hadn't told her anything. We have plenty of other things to discuss and share.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Some things are still so painful. They've invaded my dreams. I can get them out of my life, I can't get them out of my sleep. So I try to sleep less and less to avoid dreaming. Every once in a while I will sleep late to catch up.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I called Amina this evening. It was about 1:30 in Ohio. I woke her up. She sounded tired. I told her I’d let her go back to sleep. She said she’d call me tomorrow. We’ve talked once in almost two weeks, and that was a lame conversation that we cut short.

I got angry, but why? I don’t want to be angry over petty things. I guess I do want to be actively wanted, I want someone coming after me, and I’m not getting that from Amina. So what? Forget Amina? She has too much of her own life to give me enough of what I need. I’m angry because I’m hurt, and I’m hurt because she’s supposed to be one thing and she is totally not. Great expectations.

I feel helpless and unwanted by her. I know it’s not true. I’m angry because I don’t have the maturity not to be. This is a weak point, a personality fault. I never developed the maturity to take love and accept it as it is given. I still want love and attention as a child demands love and attention.

Now I’m older and mature in other ways. I have more of a consciousness about my anger and I react to it with the means of someone my age. I feel anger, I feel hate, I want to break up with Amina, I want to get away, I want to drink, I want to die. Take the anger of a neglected child and put it in an adult and I am what you get.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

What happened between Amina and me is still here with me. I haven’t felt anything resolve. I don’t know what to think or what to feel. It has been hard not writing to Amina since she left, but that is because it has been impossible to write.

I haven’t been able to get past the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness in having believed in something that was not there between us. I believed we were one thing and we were nothing like that at all. My life without Amina would feel helpless and hopeless.

We are nothing special. We are just a couple. This is just a relationship. Just like millions of other couples in a relationship. I had thought that our relationship transcended time and being. I thought that we were special beyond any other love I could ever know. But no, we are not destined to be with each other, we are nothing special. There is no magic that is going to keep us together just because it is simply truth that we are supposed to be together. There is no glowing thread between us, always pulling us together, that had always pulled us together. It’s overwhelming.

It is not a pure love. We have separate needs. We are just two people giving and taking, compromising, searching for common ground, settling, relying on past love to build a future. I don’t know where I want to stand in such a relationship. Maybe I should stop saying “we”.

We had a petty little spat last night. Not even a spat. We were just being ultra-sensitive. She wasn’t even listening to me. Then I realized that I haven’t been anything that she needed me to be during the recent crisis at Oberlin that affected her significantly. She must have been so disappointed in me that I wasn’t there for her. She needed support and all I had to offer was cold analysis and a skeptical general assessment. Not very supportive. Empathy completely failed me.

I thought being in a relationship with Amina would be so wonderful. All of a sudden there are all these expectations, all of a sudden there’s something lacking and I’m deficient. All of a sudden I realize I’m failing, I’m not coming up with something I should. All of a sudden she needs something I can’t give.

Whatever happened to us being perfect for each other and belonging together? Now we’re failing each other miserably. Now I find that we weren’t together at the top of a mountain. She was down one side. She perceived me as being down another side of it. For all I realized, I was. It’s true. The perception of perfection makes our failings seem even worse. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying “we”.

That scathing letter that she wrote to me when she was here, it was totally valid. She later said she didn’t mean any of it, but I didn’t believe that. Her points were too specific and detailed to be spontaneous creations resulting from an isolated incident. They had to have been building up for a while. I marked the letter up with red pen, totally disrespecting her perspective and invalidating her opinion. Incredibly childish and proof that I don’t deserve her. Now I feel the things she had been feeling that led up to that letter. Feelings that I had totally missed. I lived in a haze, thinking everything between us was fine. They weren’t.

224 College St., Oberlin

Luyen reminds me so much of myself and how I used to create my own hell. And like her, I was unable to get out of it. I couldn’t even recognize it. It was a long, slow, painful process to recognize it, decide I wanted to get out of it, and then create a reality in which I could. I still don’t know if I’ve succeeded. I do know that I don’t create hells for myself. Not unless I want to.

But this hell that she creates for herself is also hell for me. But I recognize that I allow it. I recognize now that I could have ended it with a word, and it might have helped her, too. Instead I ended up perpetuating it. But no one could have helped me through mine, I doubt I could have helped her through hers. Perhaps perpetuating it was the only way to help her see it.

224 College St., Oberlin

Yesterday, the moment I opened my front door, the phone rang and it was Amina. Then just after we hung up, there was a knock on the door and it was Luyen. We’ve been having problems, but we’re starting to be willing to work on them and we communicated silently via the computer. We took turns writing things to each other that were too hard to say out loud. It was good, but there’s still more healing to be done.

Today we broke some ground. It didn’t start off well and we yelled at each other for a while but at least she was communicating and finally she let me know exactly what about her father’s death was still bothering her and only then was I able to focus on her pain and find words to say to her. We needed that breakthrough and I hope she’ll have the confidence to tell me things without me having to wring it out of her.

Third World House, Oberlin

Patience. God is with those who have patience. I take care of my body in the way I choose, I take care of those who are around me to the best of my ability. Conceptions of good and bad are not necessarily as they seem, good or bad. What I do to myself is good, and that might be different from what it seems. And happiness I derive from the happiness of others. Other people’s misery makes me miserable. Fuck me. My pain is my only form of positive expression.

the rest of this disappeared when the disk I was using crashed in April 1992. Also gone are all entries from December, January, and most of February

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

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

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

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

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

84 S. Park St, Oberlin

Winter Term
For Winter Term, Ken and I are arranging and recording a bunch of his songs on my four-track. I finally accepted how good his songs are and I approached him last semester about recording them. When I first heard his songs I was able to admit they were clever, but I condescendingly brushed them off as being lightweight because they were humorous. I think it was a blow to my pride to admit that he was a much better songwriter than I am.

But the more I heard and the more he played them at coffeehouses, there was no denying that he is an exceptional songwriter. He writes a lot of songs with Asian American issues and themes and what he invokes with his lyrics are stunning. The more I get to know the songs, I’m realizing that this is quality material in every aspect. The lyrics are amazing, the melodies are catchy, the music is simple but solid, the stories are developed, and the subject matter relevant.

My doubts are now about whether I can rise to the occasion and contribute to them without taking anything away from them. My own stuff is pretty inaccessible and I think my arrangements are also overly complicated and equally inaccessible. So my approach in recording Ken’s songs will have to emphasize simplicity and taste.

Aside from recording Ken's songs and rehearsing with the steel drum band, which I just rejoined after they were kind enough to let me back in (after I quit for a semester because I didn't like being the only person of color in an all white band playing black music), I’m re-recording the vocals of the "One After Another" set of songs I recorded in 1989. My voice back then was so bad that I can hardly bring myself to listen to those songs. But it’s bad, that collection was done, why can’t I just let it rest? That’s what I did back then, why can’t I just accept them the way they are? I hope this isn’t the pattern of my life where I’m constantly going back to re-do things that I should just let go of. Two steps forward, one step back. I’ll make an exception for this project because I think re-recording these vocals will be a significant improvement over what’s on tape now.

Future insertion: Songs with vocals/guitar re-recorded during this time period:

You Don't Have To

I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself

But who am I to say it's a problem?

After all, you're happy

There are some things you'll never do

Some things you'll never say

Some things put off for another day

Any time now, any time

Why not tomorrow?

Why not today?

Right now, right, right now

If it's really right

I guess you got a problem if you got a goal no one can agree with

I guess you got a problem if you're stuck on labels of the human myth

I guess you got a problem if you're caught between expectations and images

I guess you got a problem with communication

I guess you got a problem with relationships

I guess you got a problem if your only wish is to be someone like yourself

Hey there, over there, are you waiting for something?

Something you know may never come

Something you're sure has already begun

And you tell me you'll never see the stars the same way again

In each one lies a memory, but in each one also lies a destiny to choose

And you choose 'cos you have nothing to lose

So you lose it and you can't decide on how you're gonna prove it's alright

Your vision's still in sight or so you think once or twice every day

So you know it as a fact but is that all there may be

To keep your ideals intact and what about your sanity?

A string of indecision may be all you may need

To find yourself off the track, are you scared you won't see?

The crossing up ahead is not for safety

It's not gonna make your crossing risk-free

You may be free of care, but still not carefree

Instead you're gonna have to realize

How many people survive to keep you alive

Some people tell you to be more serious

Some tell you to stop thinking so much

Some people tell you to be more social

Some tell you to stop drinking so much

Some people tell you to not burn yourself out

Some tell you you're not doing enough

Some people tell you you're much too blatant

Some tell you you're not open enough

Some people know that they know it all

You think you know nothing at all

Some people kill to get up that ladder

You're willing to let yourself fall

Because they tell you keep it on the inside

Don't let it out, don't let anyone know

And don't care that you don't want them to cry

'Cause believe me, they'll cry

Though you may keep on asking them why

So where do you draw the line?

They don't want your kind around here

Don't bring your suicides around here

Can you only draw the line?

Will you ever realize?

I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself

The Flow of Water, part II

That razor's gonna fall

That razor's gonna fall

Someone is gonna stand at the top

Of the Empire State Building and drop

The contents of a telephone box

All the words that were were complex verses

Poetry in motion, Times Square in a clock

Unusual habits of usual plots

Unusual habits of usual plots

I've been told many times before

To not play games I can't afford

I'm ashamed pathetic and I'm terribly bored

Of this rat race where everybody wants more

That's one game for which I'm totally broke

For which my engines are throwing up smoke

The one thing certain can't stand to debate

But it's a losing endeavor to change a fate

So I throw the rubber ball

To anyone at all interested

In some genuine moonshine

Revealing contrails against the sky

The paths of maximum resistance

Leads to lesser known planes without assistance

It's a tricky charade to a better existence

Oh I know, do I know?

How would I know?

That day is gonna come

That day is gonna come

That day is when you're shocked by the truth

That you never knew you let go of your youth

And the world from which you thought you were safe

Is here in your hometown throwing guilt in your face

And you can't ignore it and you can't escape

The social Frankenstein we all create

Oh, I can see America at night

And I can see it without any life

I'm scared plenty by the armies of ants

And the giants who crush them with their chemical plants

Oh, one more schoolgirl out on parade

In a fashion show with an image they made

With a conscience overloading heavy in red

With a load of coal for a heart that's dead

Oh, I know, dropping spit on birds

Catching venomous words, flash of light

Retrieving manuals from the Western land

To form the expose of demands

In the house of our ideal

We hear heads against walls, cooking chickens for meals

And the creaking of the stairs to the kitchen revealed

Oh sunshine, the sun shines

Some still shine

So what do we do now after all we have done?

Do we settle and feed the ending we have begun?

It isn't right, it can't be right

To prove the instance of our worth

Crawling on the edge of the railing

At the crux of our birth

This isn't what technology's about

To make us lazy and not care throughout

The process made to detach our doubts

That we may be crashing on our way out

It takes one moment in infinite time

To finally reveal we're in the firing line

To acknowledge our role in accepting our crime

To impersonalize our human kind

It's our loss if we just shake our hands

And tie knots with rubber bands

To weave our tongues within the rotting frame

Seeking someone else to take the blame

In the image of our peers

We know nothing to hear or remove the stains

So we drag the years through finger paints

So we cover our balls to conceal our pain

And we flash our smiles to pretend we're saints

Are we saints? To re-paint or remain?

A Living Room

You and I we sit

Our living room is lit by moonlight

Inside our retreat from the rest of the world

We can see the outside through closed eyes

The traffic goes by

The Hudson seems still out our cold living room window

Ripples shatter reflections of the glow of the city on the other shore

The glow is like a solid dome keeping warm the children safe at home

Streetlamps and windows make patterns of the nightlife's flesh and bones

Points of lights rise into the night from airstrips that stretch and moan

Thousands of crawlers we watch make our gazes towards each other freeze like stone

You and I, we sit

The dawn filters through the trees and we kiss

The sun never shines in the daytime or keeps us warm in this soul abyss

Trapped in mist

We'll stay on these cliffs

The chill air of autumn is a Saturday review of Monday

We close our eyes and ears and hear the cars on the parkway on their winding trip

Seasons twist their romantic shows and leave their marks by the side of the road

Reaching like vines spiraling, it's everything they'll ever know

Caught between the earth and sky confused by which way to go

Traveling through gravid space, it's a hand over hand searching for some room to grow

You and I, we sit

We don't know where to turn, but we know we just can't quit

To leave this sacred ground just leads us to the same perspective shift

In your mercury-lit heaven do you find your dreams so dimly lit?

But how do you just live off bits destined to drift?

And how do you just defy the mould you comfortably fit?

And how do you justify when you can't even admit something's wrong?

How do you?

How do you do?

You and I, we sit

The world is eerily lit by sunlight

Growing up in a way to find that growing up is growing apart and on your guard

Playing so many parts

Each moment is a lifetime

Each sight makes me tremble

My mind assembles fantasies

That send me to the precipice of this towering cliff

  
I’m also recording three new songs. I’m getting the feeling that I want to stop doing my own music after this. It’s just too painful. It’s hard to write and writing makes me look too closely at my source of inspiration, and everything I write is borne out of pain. Every feeling I have is borne out of pain. It’s my very nature, the result of my life experience. When I laugh and make jokes, it’s all out of pain. There’s nothing I feel or am that doesn’t relate back to being in pain. If that’s all that’s in me, if that’s all that I have to express, why bother? Everyone has their own problems.

The three "new" songs from that period:

Hype Money (Not Far Enough)

Here I am, wondering what goes on

At home now I'm on my own

Out here on my own

After so many years of neglect

I wonder if it's had an effect on

Do they worry about me?

Do they know what they have done?

Do they feel any responsibility?

How do they see just what went on?

God, what went on?

Here I am, but what went on in their minds?

When their lives were gripped in distilled expectancy?

Here I am now, here I may be

But what about the time before my memory?

When I could have been anyone

Anyone I could have become

A lump of clay in trusted hands

Trusting hearts for trust in any...

It could have been anyone

Looking for questions to answers I know

And thinking of things I never would show

Rearing and raising, nurturing and aiding

What's the point if you never let them grow?

Should I tell them how they are mistaken?

Cause nothing's given when nothing's taken

Don't tell me I'm one of you

It doesn't feel like I'm one of you

What do I have to prove?

Here I am, but tell me where I should stand

Here among the distant people I call friends

Funny how they try to look like me

Seeing how they never even look at me

Should I try to be somebody?

Should I try to see what they see?

On the edge of the far periphery

Counting time in the skyline by the riverside

Counting time in the skyline by the riverside

By the riverside I touched the water

I touched the water and somebody called my name

Somebody called my name and I came alive

It's so hard to tell what to think of us

Of you, of me, of we, community

Tell me something wrong with what's in common

Between you and me, between you and me

Between you and me

I won't compromise my lifestyle

By refusing to compromise my lifestyle

Open doors after open doors

So many options on as many piles

Just because thoughts are on ink and pages

Don't think they're there for ages on ages

Though you've bled no one knows

What you meant or what you said

Here I am, but I can't figure it out

Trying to see what you're about

Means so much to me

Indigo and Grey

I've got nothing to say

And no one wants to listen to the nothing I've got to say

So I keep my mouth closed, I keep my eyes shut tight

I keep my ears plugged, and my hands out of the daylight

I don't think I wanna know the candy from home

Where the people only judge your pain by their own

They could've sent a life jacket, a cradle or a cousin

I thought it was a girlfriend, when I kissed it I found it wasn't

It could've been a maniac by the way it groveled and moaned

And the way that it asked me, "what is so important about all this flesh and bone?"

He said, "that's the way that we speak"

My attention was drawn and I turned to look

God, how I wanted to be

Be part of that scene, part of something going on

Part of someone else, part of somewhere I'd belong

Maybe I'm half dreaming, half wanting only a fantasy

But it's not enough, it's not enough, not enough

Everything keeps looking blue, but is it exactly blue?

Or is it one of the thousands of shades between indigo and grey?

Is it my imagination that leads the parade?

Like a funeral procession to its final deception

That there really is no blue, and there really is no grey

And there's really no today, tomorrow or yesterday

How can I think what I say?

It's a trick, it's a loss, it's a double-cross

It's when people ask me to stay

When I can't stand them, I stay there anyway

When I wanna kill them, they tell me it's a beautiful day

I'd really like to see them, but why can't they see me first?

They always seem to give up

So I take my .44 to prove I can make it worse

How do you learn to see the sickness?

When it always seems so absurd

This is how we speak, this is how we speak

How do we learn to be heard?

Well I see something lacking in me 'cos I'm not what I'm supposed to be

It's something to hide, and realize and brutalize and never come to terms inside

And Hollywood never had a chance it could've in a second glance

See that it wasn't good, for me, for you, and still it comes in simple words

I guess I finally blew my cover

I guess I let myself get scared

I guess with what I found, should I let myself drown?

I guess I couldn't face another round

God forbid, treating me this way is just to much in such a little space

And alcohol is something not addressed tho' I can see that I'm a mess

This isn't personal, I'm much too busy running from whatever I see coming

And it's near again to me, to you, and still it comes in simple words

I pulled my hands out of my pocket

And rolled the cuffs up on my jacket

I felt the chill of the wind

I wondered where I had been

And turned to looked for where to begin

My Room

I've got four walls and a door

Music for two and a picture of you

Sunlight and spring with winter melting

Shade from trees, a distant bell rings

2 o'clock in the early afternoon

Two plus five is being alive

When we can do whatever we want to

I want to love you the way you love me

If only these dreams could be reality

Future come faster, I'm tired of waiting

It's so cold when you're not here

And I can't hear you whisper in my ear

That there's no more to fear

Take and touch a little and not too much

Be careful with your concrete

It's only where your feet touch the ground

Be careful with your concrete

A soul poured into a shell of a man

That's all you see, that's all that I am

Do you love me for my clever company

With conversations that always seem to be

No more than a kiss in the afternoon?

Who can you trust when you near the end

And all your friends are so uncertain you have to hide?

Their friendly smiles try to conceal

Their prying eyes all in disguise

Best to stay alone

Somewhere to lay down your load

With you within my home

I've got four walls and a door

Music for two and a song for you

Sunlight and spring with winter melting

Shade from trees, a distant bell rings

A kiss from you in the early afternoon

Future addendum (recording notes):

All of these songs were recorded on a first generation Tascam PortaOne Ministudio 4-track cassette tape recorder.

The big difference for me between the tracks of the vocal re-recordings and the new recordings at the time was that for the new recordings the drums were recorded in the Oberlin Can Consortium steel drum band's panyard on our drummer's Yamaha kit with Paiste cymbals (I later turn out to be an adherent of Yamaha drums, and Paiste cymbals are also my favorite, but I don't use them because they break too easily for my style of playing).

The older "One After Another" collection drums were recorded on a cheap Remo Pre-Tuned Head Series set with ridiculously bad cymbals.

A key reason for the re-recordings was that Boss came out with a reverb stomp box that previously didn't exist. Reverb effect boxes otherwise were prohibitively expensive. The original vocals from 2 years prior didn't have any reverb, which was part of the reason they were unlistenable. As bad as the vocals are here, they were originally even worse, believe it or not. 

The guitars were an Ovation that I later sold when I was trying to quit music and I think some tracks used a Guild 12-string acoustic guitar that was later irreparably broken during a "make out" session with some woman named Hiromi.

My bass guitar was a Kramer Duke headless bass that I bought during high school and it also got ruined not long after I graduated from college.

The keyboard was a Roland Juno-106 analog synthesizer that I sold years later after I went to California, which is something I regret since it is now considered a vintage synthesizer.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Life is devoid of meaning. Life is suffering. This is despair. How things have changed since last Summer. What is making this Summer so far bad? Is it that I have to deal with people this Summer? Is it the being alone last year that gave me confidence and if so, isn’t that confidence false?

Last Summer was extraordinary. I didn’t have to deal with people, I only had to think of them on a distant, abstract level. People as concepts; how they ought to be considered. I was untouchable. Now I’m in New Jersey with no one here I particularly like. I’m going to be in Providence with my brothers, and we’ve never been buddy-buddy close, so I don’t know how comfortable that will be.

And what am I now? I’m not feeling so hot. I’m just here. Not being anybody, doing nothing for nobody. Physically I’m shot. I feel weak and uncoordinated. Spiritually I’m dead, morally I’m dead. I’m just wasting my life. I hate people. I hate myself.