1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

"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.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

These people around me, what are they doing here? Do I have anything to learn from them? Maybe they’re giving me a hint as to what I think is special in a person? Not even for a relationship, just an intimate; a connection.

As for a relationship, at the first mention of other people they’re interested in, it’s automatic - any interest I may have had is gone. I learned from Amina and Shiho never to be someone’s second choice. I’m much too good for that. Even I know that.

I want someone who is passionate about something; motivated and driven and has the clarity to pursue it and is not encumbered by their own fucked up past. I want someone who has struggled and grappled with something but has risen above it.

Hmm, Josephine actually fits that criteria. I don’t know what she was passionate about, but she was about something. I could tell it was there when she laughed; the way she got excited about things. I don’t want someone who is cynical and bored. Too many people around me are cynical and/or bored. Including me.

I don’t want someone with whom I can’t reach any depth in conversations. Recognition and appreciation of one another’s depth is necessary. I can’t even remember the last time I had a conversation that had any depth to it.

I don’t want someone with defenses up. I want someone who sets their sight on me and goes for it and wants to figure out what I’m about. That’s actually really hard because there isn’t a lot attractive about me on the surface to make anyone want to delve further. She has to not be afraid of what I really am.

Politics aren’t too, too important. I’m actually willing to give lots of leeway in regards to politics, but to the extent that they help shape perspectives in general, they have a baseline significance. And the lack of any political awareness in regards to race is intolerable.

I don’t want someone with a lot of anger bottled up inside.

Obviously, this is all to say, I don't want anyone.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I have no room in my life for relationships and no desire to be in one. I don't want to be caged and trapped or attached to someone. I don't want anyone to know me or find out about me or learn about me. What I want is to die. And I can't very well hold to that if I'm going out with someone. I'm living to give music a run for the money. If that doesn't work, what's the point of living. I’m done, I'm through. I’m not going to live a meaningless life just to live it, and I can't find any meaningful reason to continue living my life. A relationship, attaching myself to another person, is not meaning. It does not make a life meaningful.

Oh God, the last time there was color in my life was with Amina. Am I still slogging through that? It's so old, but it's true, my life hasn't been the same without Amina. This has nothing to do with Amina anymore, I think it's pretty safe to say that she's pretty much completely gone from my life and my heart, but nothing has come to my life that compares to what she was to me. It's not about her, but what she symbolized, what she meant, and nothing has come close to that. I still want to die and I will die and I will keep reminding me of that fact until I achieve it and hope it keeps me out of relationships at the same time!

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

There is a certain dynamic in the interaction between Josefa and me, and it's a dynamic that is suitable for co-workers, maybe a superficial friendship, but nothing more. In practice, it's actually more of a harmless, low-level lust. Hey, I'm a guy, she's hot. End of story.

Josefa and I were just crutches for each other to get through Ritu's death, but Ritu is gone and we have to go on with our lives. Our own lives, and we weren't in each other's lives before Ritu died, there's no reason that we should be in each other's lives now.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

"Hi friends,

You might decide to not read this or save it until after hours or an appropriate time.

Saturday was the one month mark of Ritu’s passing. When Ritu died, I was jealous of her, and the next day I got a horoscope telling me not to be jealous of other people's accomplishments and to write thank you notes instead. So this is the note I wrote to her. I took it to Land's End on Saturday with the candle container of the candle I'd been burning for her for the last month and burned the letter in the candle container and set it off into the ocean.

Dear Ritu,
This is a thank you note, the intentions of which I hope will reach you in some form wherever you are.

I want to thank you for being who you were, as you were, and for entering my life. That is all. That is all that is needed for me to thank you and to be thankful to you.

I didn't know you that long or that well or that deeply, nevertheless your presence through your absence is deeply felt. And that, perhaps, is the value of having been alive, having lived.

Having touched my life by having been in it, I miss you. I miss your presence, I miss knowing that you are somewhere out there in a form I would recognise, a form in which I could say, "Ritu?" and you could say, "what?"

I will remember your face, your love of orchids, your love of orange, of Eddie Vedder's voice, your passion for the music that touched you, your tactile appreciation; you loved life more than I ever will and you touched it more deeply than I ever will.

I will also remember your pain and your struggle for compassion. I had very little good to say about you in the last month, but now that you're gone, it has all been placed into perspective. We all have our pain, we all have our struggle, and we all deal with and express them in our own individual ways that may be perceived differently by other people. I didn't understand your struggle, but now I recognise it for what it was, and that it was just yours, not for me to understand or solve or resolve or cure.

So thank you and godspeed. Go on your journey and always come as you are. In whatever time or place I meet you again, if I recognise you on some level, know that I will welcome you.

On behalf of Josefa, Barb, Cass, Wayne, Angela, Lorena, Zenaida, Jeptha, and anyone else who shares the sentiment but I don't know about, thank you. Take this burned candle, this incense, and this song for you and go. If we are to meet again, insha'allah, in this I believe."

Today was the month anniversary of Ritu's death. The day after we got the news, I drove Josefa home to Vallejo and there was a candle in a glass cylinder in the kitchen. I mentioned that I wanted to get one of those and burn it constantly for Ritu. On Monday, Josefa brought the candle in and said her mother gave it to me. I haven't been burning it constantly for obvious fire hazard reasons, but I've been burning it all day at work for the past month, which is in itself still a fire code violation, I shouldn't wonder. It finally burned out this past Thursday just before I left work.

So tonight, I wrote a thank you note to Ritu, took the glass cylinder and incense and went to Sea Cliff to burn the letter and the incense and throw the cylinder and the ashes into the ocean.

It took a long time to burn the letter because it wasn't catching and the long-tip lighter I was using was just about exhausted. I didn't burn the letter completely, there was a piece of it that I finally gave up on, and I shoved the lighter into the cylinder and chucked it all into the ocean. If Ritu wants to read it, she can burn the rest of it herself. Of course, it doesn't work that way and she probably won't get the part that didn't burn. I played a tune on shakuhachi until the incense burned out and left.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

It's been just over two weeks since we got the news of Ritu's death, and my whole life feels different now. Work is completely different with Theresa and Josefa and having moved to the 18th floor. No more 13th floor.

In these past two weeks, Fiction hired a new guitarist and got a gig booked. Anita and I have cut communications. Our friendship was at its end, Ritu's death finalized it.

These past two weeks have been trying times; Ritu's death was just an undercurrent. The impact was considerable, but with everything else going on, her death now feels like it is far in the past.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Last weekend I went to Lake Tahoe for the first time. I was just tagging along with some folks I had met who were going there for a wedding.

On Saturday when they went to the wedding, I decided to rent a bike and ride around the Lake. I figured it couldn't be that hard. The shoreline measured about 71 miles, but since it's around a lake, it must be flat, right? Right?! And 71 miles was just a little more than twice the length of the Tour de Peninsula. No problem, right? Right?!

I started in South Lake Tahoe and started going counter-clockwise around the Lake on Route 50. It wasn't easy, it was very, very hard.

The shoreline of Lake Tahoe being mostly private property, the only way around is to stay on the paved roads, minor highways really, certainly not flat. For some reason, this discovery did not deter my original justification for why it shouldn't be a problem riding around the Lake.

I encountered a considerable hill after not long, but I was pretty fresh so it wasn't too bad. I was actually psyched going up it, like I was conquering it. Il Pirata eat your heart out (not!).

The hill peaked at the intersection of Rte 50 and Rte 28, and I went down the hill of Rte 28, and as I was going down I started questioning whether I could make it all the way around. Hill descended, I stopped to rest at a place called Sand Harbor which was at Lake level. It had taken me two hours to get there and it was only one third the way around. If I wanted to turn around and go back, I would have to tackle that hill again, not an attractive prospect. Maybe the rest of the way around the lake was fairly flat. I decided to push on, relying on that unfounded belief, and accepting the fact that this was not going to be an easy ride.

An easy ride it was not - I continued but I realized that I was losing my legs. I stopped to get something to eat at a bagel shop, but it didn't help much. Eventually, even small upgrades became a challenge and slowed me down. I started getting cramps in my legs and had to stop and stretch every once in a while. At least I was right about it being fairly flat. Well, mostly right. After a while, I had no legs left, but I pushed on by sheer will. I gained some energy as I made it to the two-thirds mark and had a feeling I could really accomplish this.

The last third started off OK; bike lanes and paths made for a less harrowing ride. And then I hit what I feared – a large hill. I had no legs, I had no water and was dehydrating, but all I could do was put the bike in lowest gear and crawl up the hill. But the hill went on and on, it seemed like it would never end. I put my mind in a zone and just kept the gears cranking, but it was too much. As the hill continued with no end in sight, I cursed and yelled. I was cursing at God. I couldn't believe that there was this huge hill at the very end of the ride. This was surely some cruel joke God was having fun with.

Finally I reached the top. My legs were wasted and I just coasted on the downhill. And then I couldn't believe it, another hill looking even longer! I was cracking, I wasn't psychologically prepared for it, but I kept pushing up the hill. My mind was racing and I was trying to calm it. Why a hill at the very end of the ride? The end is where I needed it to be flat and be able to take it easy to the finish. Anywhere else a huge hill would have been better. When I reached the top, I didn't trust it. I coasted down the hills actively relaxing my legs waiting for the next hill.

The downhill didn't feel nearly as long as the uphill, but it finally leveled out without another uphill, but it still wasn't easy. I was crawling along until I finally saw the sign for South Lake Tahoe. It was an experience, and an accomplishment; an accomplishment I'd like to forget.

Seven hours on the saddle. Something NOT in my ability to do.

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

I thought I had wrecked my knees on the ride, but on Monday morning they felt fine, so I decided to ride into work. When I got to work, my back was starting to get sore.

The soreness continued through Tuesday, and on Wednesday morning, I woke up and I could barely move. It took all the effort I could muster to simply turn over. Then I had to climb down off my loft bed, and get ready for work. It took me forever to get to work because I had to walk slow step by slow, painful step. I took Muni because there was no way I could ride.

When I got to work, walking like a zombie, I immediately asked Zenaida, a co-worker, to get me a phone book and I called my chiropractor, Dr. Wonson, and got an appointment for 10:00. Aside from falling in love with her, her treatment got me through the rest of the day, but I was in pretty bad shape by the end of it. I made it to rehearsal that night, though. Sitting and playing drums wasn't too bad.

On Thursday morning, my back was just as bad. I had an appointment with Dr. Wonson at 2:15, so I had to get through the day until then. Afterwards, I was well enough to stay late at work. I hadn't been able to get much work done and I was falling way behind and I'm going on vacation next week.

Friday morning was a little better. It wasn't as hard getting out of bed, and I had an appointment for 9:30, so I went to work, turned on my computer and then went to see Dr. Wonson. It was still hard getting through the day, I was pretty stiff, but I could definitely feel I was getting better.

Dr. Wonson showed me my X-rays and showed me how bad it was. My spine was distinctly bent to the left. Barb, one of my co-workers who once was studying to go into physical therapy, reasoned that the 72 mile ride around Tahoe with monster hills, on a bike that was several inches too big, tweaked my muscles so hard that now they were wrenching my spine off center. Dr. Wonson was working to get my muscles and bones back to normal. The first thing she noted when she examined me was that my back muscles were really cold, indicating that my circulation was really bad.

Although I was much better on Friday, Dr. Wonson wasn't really satisfied with my progress. She had been heating my back muscles and adjusting me and I was still pretty bad off. She ran me through some acupressure exercises and decided she wanted to start me on acupuncture on Monday. After one exercise she asked me if I was going through any stress.

Was I going through stress?!! Let me tell you stress!

I didn't say that, but I told her about Ritu and work. Somehow, from the exercise, she felt there was some other external factors contributing to the problem.

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

My back really overshadowed my transition at work. The new attorney, Theresa, came in on Monday and she's learning the ropes at the firm, so we haven't had much interaction aside from introduction, but my cases are gradually going to be transferred to her. Angela apparently is not pleased that she didn't get me on her team, but there is no way that I can work for Angela.

This morning I had the easiest time getting out of bed since Wednesday. I had no problem turning over. I'm still stiff, but I'm much more mobile than I have been. It still hurts to stand up, but I'm feeling positive about recovering.

What a month it has been. Everything had been going so well until August 1st when Ritu hit the wall. That was the day I took off from work to take care of the psychic convergence that occurred at the end of July, when everything ran down. Somehow I must have sensed what was going to happen. If it hadn't happened? It had to have happened. It couldn't have gone on the way it was going. But if it didn't happen, things would have gone on normally.

Theresa would have joined the firm without affecting me at all, I wouldn't have had to deal with Angela and Stacey concerning my new assignment. But the cases I had that were floundering would still be floundering under Ritu. I had cases that had huge problems and Ritu wasn't doing anything to help me fix them. Would I have gone to Tahoe? I don't know, I may not have felt the need to get out of town. Considering the aftermath of going to Tahoe, I would bet that I wouldn't have gone.

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

We all have to die some time. I was thinking hard about that today on my way home from doing overtime at work. Passing all the people out on a Saturday night, old people who were walking like me, like they were in pain. I never thought that they might be in pain, I just thought of them as old. Young people searching for something to do, having fun, healthy, lives in front of them, going through their own dramas, taking for granted that they could walk. Homeless people, disfigured people, babies in strollers, tourists from out of town, taxi drivers at their jobs.

We all have to die some time. I thought really hard about that fact. We all have to die some time. We are all going to die some time. We will die as plainly as we are living. But we have no problem dealing with the issue that we are alive. We do have a problem, as a society, dealing with the fact that we will die, of our mortality. If we are so unhealthy about the way we treat and deal with death. We can't be very healthy about the way we treat and deal with life. Ain’t that the truth?

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I took today off from work. Last Tuesday Ritu was committed by her boyfriend because he thought she was trying to kill herself. By law, apparently, she could only be committed for 72 hours. She wasn't even in for that long. Her friend Somini, a reporter for the New York Times, flew out and took her out of the hospital and placed Ritu on 24-hour watch.

Apparently Somini got her share of abuse, including being assaulted by her on the street and eventually being kicked out of the apartment, which led to her departure. The watch, however, continued with various friends and associates, including Angela who took a 14-hour watch Saturday into Sunday morning. No one was able to keep Ritu from drinking.

Anita took over watch on Sunday and she wanted me to help her out at some point. She was scared and knew that she couldn't handle her alone. I understood, I sure couldn't. I went over in the evening and we spent the evening drinking and smoking. We weren't going to fight her, knowing the futility. So we placated her to numbness. I knew when to stop smoking, then when to stop drinking, and then when to leave. Anita was to stay over all night and Ritu's friend, Tina, was to take her into rehab on Monday morning.

She didn't make it. She finished off a bottle of Jack Daniel's in the morning and the rehab center refused to admit her. Tina gave Anita a big lecture about enabling Ritu, but then Tina was going to watch her until today. That made me laugh, knowing what Tina was in for. I don't know if she made it in. I can't wait to hear what Tina went through.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Ritu quit and she's going to check herself into a psychiatric ward. She called me in the morning asking me to drive her to work. No fucking way. Then after I got to work, she wanted me to take a cab to get her. I refused. I told her if she needed me to escort her to work, she shouldn't come in at all. She hung up on me.

She did make it in. She then announced that she was quitting. Good for her. Good riddance.

She is the most fucked up, manipulative, controlling, unrepentant, unremorseful, selfish, shameless, spineless, immature, undeveloped, unappreciative person I've ever met. All she does is put out bad energy. She has no substance. Her boyfriend moved out and so her entire personality is melting down? She has completely built a facade, a wall of delusion and deception around her. She has no soul, she has no self. I can't believe Anita has been friends with her for this long.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Ritu called me at 10 in the morning to whine some more. Fortunately, I had rehearsal at 11, which was why I even answered the phone at all, so I got her off my back.

Later in the afternoon, she managed to catch me again. It was weird. Someone said she might call me to do something later, but I told her that I was avoiding Ritu, so I told her to use a code: ring once and then call again. So later in the afternoon, the phone rings once, stops, and then starts ringing again. I assume it's her. It's not, it's fucking Ritu! I was getting frustrated with her idiocy and started playing hardball with her and moralizing and she hung up on me. She tried calling back twice in the next 20 minutes, but I ignored it.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Ritu is totally crumbling. She's really pathetic. She is so tough and hard on the outside, who would have guessed that she has absolutely no substance on the inside. Once her supports are kicked out from under her, she turns into a shameless, whining, babbling, pathetic, manipulative child. She keeps asking what to do, but she doesn't want to do anything, she wants comfort and ease handed to her on a silver platter. She's a spoiled brat.

Peter moved out to a friend's house. His friend is out of town for a while and let Peter stay at his place. Ritu wanted me to drive her over there. Pathetic. She couldn't walk, she couldn't take Muni, she claimed cabs don't come to her neighborhood at night. Whatever. I dragged it out as long as possible and then I took her there. I wasn't going to be her chauffeur. I made her prepare herself and know exactly why she was going and what she was going to do and not going to do when she got there. I didn’t want to take her there just to fuck things up. After I dropped her off, I knew she was going to fuck things up. Tomorrow I certainly won’t be in any rush to get to work.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Chris quit Fiction tonight. I think he came into rehearsal with his mind not made up, but once we started discussing it, it sounded more and more that Fiction wasn't his thing anymore, and as friends have to support friends no matter how painful, Lisa and I supported him to leave and pursue the music he really wants to play. With Lisa on bass and me on drums, our sound has become much more "indie", and Chris is a hard rock/metal guitarist and he's finding himself more and more at a loss in coming up with satisfying parts.

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.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

My friendship with Anita is now headed South. She put something on me. She put something on me based on indirect, circumstantial innuendo. She held me to an expectation. She made an assumption about me and lashed out at me when I didn’t live up to it. She put me in a position where I had to explain myself. No one puts anything on me. It is a sore spot which might be traceable to my relationship with Josephine.

The very reason why she is one of my closest friends is that she doesn't put anything on me. I don't have to explain myself to her. I'm taken as I am. But what it is, is distance and it says a lot. My closest friends are all arms distance away. They are not allowed to get close enough to me to put anything on me. They are not allowed to put me in a position where I have to explain myself. They are not allowed to impose their false impressions of me on me and make me explain them. If their impressions are supportable and verifiable, that's fine, but they can't pull a Josephine on me.

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

Does anyone mean anything to me anymore? I don’t think so, I’m numb to feeling that there is any deep meaning to my friendships and acquaintances. Even Josephine, as attached as I am to her, and as fondly as I remember her, I’m pressed to find the meaning in that relationship that compares to the friendships and relationships that I had in my 20's. Even my re-acquaintances with Vikki and Frances lack what they used to have.

I struggle to think what it means to have someone mean something to me. I can’t imagine meeting someone or getting into a relationship and touching that feeling again. Maybe I’m done with it, like I’m done with relationships and falling in love. Just part of the series of plateaus that indicate I’m in the twilight of my life.

I had a conversation with Lisa earlier this week down at the studio. We went down even though Chris is out of town. We talked about personal stuff, but there was no bonding. It didn’t have any meaning, there were no meaningful connections made.

I have a considerable doubt about my thinking and feeling these days. Hmm, when I put it that way it doesn’t sound so bad; that’s the way it should be. I don’t want to be definite about anything, but I think having a job kinda makes me take the world a little bit more literally and my role in it a little bit more seriously.

There’s a tension in my life now between knowing and not knowing and belonging and not belonging. Actually, all opposites regarding reality and existence are coming into tensions with each other.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in my life. This is the start of stage II. All that has passed is stage I, and that all ended in April with ten years of journal entries written in this format. This format appears to be the most ideal, so nothing new here.

I’m not about to attempt to explain the significance of stage II. Suffice it to say that stage I was development and learning, a ten year period of personal growth; stage II I’m hoping will be more clarification and application, a continuation of personal growth, but more on a plateau than on an incline.

So first, a bit of recap.

Fiction is floundering and I need to find another project or another band. We haven’t rehearsed for two months because Josh supposedly hurt himself, but I don't think that's the whole story. He's been stonewalling any progress. Josh, as far as I’m concerned, is out of the band. No steps have been taken to get a new drummer.

I’ve wasted the entire summer pretending to look for a job. I’ve just been incredibly lazy and I’ve really gotten nothing done. I did apply for a few but didn’t get any of them. All summer I’ve been telling myself that I have to go to a temp agency, but it just never happened. I’m a big loser in the work department.

The situation with my housemates is satisfactory for most part. Rosalie and I get along really well when we spend time together. She is moody, though, and if she’s in a bad mood, the best policy is to just stay away. Otherwise, she’s totally sweet and funny. Mina has gotten increasingly annoying. All I’ll say is that her whining is overpowering, and I believe her now when she says she’s a total klutz.

As for me...

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in life, unemployment notwithstanding. I look at myself and compare myself with people around me and I’m comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. Unemployment notwithstanding.

I think I’m doing a fairly good job trying to keep true to my nature. I think I’m doing alright as a Buddhist, not that “doing” has any meaning or significance, much less “doing alright”.

It’s so hard to convey because language immediately limits what I feel I’m experiencing. I’d like to say I’m making progress, but progress is not a goal. I’d like to say that it makes me feel good that I’m sitting everyday and my sitting is productive, but feeling good isn’t important, nor is being “productive”.

I like to think that I just do it because I do it, but even “I like to think...” is off the mark. It should be, “I just do it”. If it’s real, then that’s the reason one should do it; no thinking. I don’t think it’s the only reason I do it. There still is too much ego in my sitting.

I feel like I’m in the tail end of my life and I think that puts me one up on people around me; people who are at this age now and are dissatisfied with where they are in life because they feel that they should be at the prime of their life or at least on their way up, but are still struggling to get things started. Me, I’m at the end of my life, I have nothing to accomplish or prove. All I need is to be comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. I hope to be able to explain it better.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

Gone the first month of this arbitrary last year of a decade, century, and millennium. Arbitrary numbers. I’m starting to worry about finances and that has been keeping me down lately. I have to really start cutting back because when it comes time for me to get a job, to maintain my current expenditure, I have to be making 30k, and I don’t have the work experience to warrant that high a salary.

Papers are going slow but I have to get them done soon and get on with my life. It’s difficult only because of the lack of deadlines, supervision, or support. But I’m just being lazy.

No Fiction gigs in sight until March and that’s still a maybe. No movement yet in the band to get sooner gigs, and rehearsals are moth-bitten affairs at best. They haven’t been steady or solid and that has been frustrating. At least Chris and Lisa have recruited me for their acoustic gigs, so although not the level of Fiction, it’s something. And perhaps it will be good warm-up.

On the other hand, Madoka is done with her job in Tokyo and is now in Chiang Mai, Thailand, doing more grassroots activist work. And she has reverted much more to the person I loved and held so dear. It’s good to have friends you can count on. Madoka, Kevin, Anita, maybe Frances, maybe May Oo, probably Fiction - more time is needed to be sure. Valuable friends. Value, very interesting. How much self-worth do we attribute to our friends? I keep forgetting that no self-worth should depend on the value of friends.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I lost my keys last Tuesday. I’m so tight-fisted when it comes to my keys, so losing my keys is pretty major, it’s almost unthinkable. The circumstances make the fact even more incredible.

I had just gotten a drink at Jamba Juice on New Montgomery Street. I unlocked my bike and proceeded to walk it to school a block and a half away. I got to school, placed my drink on top of a newspaper vending machine and realized that my keys were gone. It was less than five minutes since I had unlocked my bike and I set out to find them.

The keys must have fallen out of my pocket, and that in itself is incredible, but I also didn’t hear them, which just blows my mind. (one of my housemates doubted my perceptions and questioned my certainty that I should have heard them. In contrast, Anita pointed out without any prompt that I should have heard them fall since I’m very aural).

I don’t know how many times I walked back and forth between the point where I last had the keys and the point where I realized they were gone. I was obsessing and it stayed in my mind that I would find them. I searched for the keys on this block and a half stretch for no less than 45 minutes.

A flood of thoughts has resulted from the lost keys. Maybe they relate to what I mentioned in the previous entry, involving people in my life and relationships. There also may be some relevance in understanding the break-up with Josephine and her importance to me.

Losing the keys are having quite an effect on my psyche. Losing them was so unthinkable that I’ve been really neurotic and paranoid about closing doors that will lock; going through thresholds that I might not be able to get back through. I’ve always had a problem with losing things. My reaction to losing things ties into why I’m afraid of heights, which I’ve identified as really being a fear of losing things irrevocably. So my logic in connecting it, and it may be a stretch, is that we also lose friends, people, relationships, friendships.

“Losing” people? My friends knew that I was notorious for exiting peoples’ lives in a seemingly callous, sometimes arbitrary manner. I would just disappear, fall off the radar screen as Frances put it. “Meaningful” relationships that I would just decide to drop. So now I pause and ask myself how meaningful they could have been if I could drop them just because I felt like it. Was I really losing those friendships? You can’t lose something that you never had. Those “meaningful” relationships haven’t exactly been enthusiastically welcoming the return of my company.

Keys unlock doors, they are access, security. In friends we find access and security. Friendships are keys. The failure of the re-acquaintancing has pointed out to me that perhaps the meaning of those friendships wasn’t really reciprocated because they sensed that I was keeping them at an arms distance. I didn’t value them as much as I should have. The value of keys becomes very prominent when you lose them.

Friends, I kept them at an arms distance because of my fear of losing them. My fear of losing them caused me to make sure they were disposable to me and I to them. They never were the access and security I thought they were, the people I thought I loved were never key(s) to me.

The more I talk about it, the more of a stretch it sounds. I need to consider the nature of the relationships I have and how I need to be treating them and the nature of “loss”. The message is clearer with the band: when you find people in your tribe, the relationships that are meaningful, I can’t be afraid of losing them and keeping them at an arms distance. I have to give them my all and consider them permanent fixtures in my life.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

With a little space; a little settling, I try to assess aspects of my life.

In my life, I currently have housemates, band, and people with whom I’ve been getting back in touch and dubiously re-acquainted. The housemates, from what I can figure, live their lives based on what they know and can know. They take this reality on its face, and as granted. Reality is granted, lives are made.

I try to live my life guided by what I don’t know and can’t know. I try to take this reality as something that can be created and symbolic. Lives are granted, reality is made. The housemates are completely alien to me. They live in an alternate reality that I haven’t touched in ages.

The band, as far as I can tell at this point, I can relate to much more. Whereas the housemates don’t understand the words that come out of my mouth unless the subject matter is something mundane and within the normative framework of their functional reality (or I have to explain more details than I care to), the band members better intuit the meaning of the words I choose. I don’t need to constantly explain and defend myself.

As for the meaning behind having these two diametrically opposed groups of people in my life, I’ve yet to find out. It’s just too uncanny for there not to be meaning. The housemates wouldn’t think there was any meaning at all.

The third group is comprised of Cat, Frances, Vikki, and Luyen. I’ve had meaningful friendships with all of them and distanced from them all, and now I’ve come upon them again. Cat and Luyen are duds, Vikki might be a dud, but Frances might be something, she’s the only one really enthusiastic about getting in touch with me and has welcomed me back into her life.

But maybe they’ll all be duds. Maybe I’m to learn that the “importance” of people has a shelf life and a context, and when they’re gone, let them go. What significance their memories hold has all to do with me, and nothing to do with the present reality of them.

I’ve already speculated about this concerning Amina. What I love about her most likely does not even exist anymore. What I love about her is only in me now and has nothing to do with the reality of her physical presence somewhere in the world, inshah’allah.

The re-acquaintancing has been somewhat disappointing and shallow. And maybe that’s the fact I’m to learn. It’s all appearance. What meaning their beings brought into my life was magic, they were just the messengers. They are just people now and if I met them now as strangers, they would just be people.