1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Am I true to myself?

That has been the litmus test of my spirituality since I formulated the connection. If god is part of us, within us, a reflection of us, then being true to oneself is the foremost duty to god, above and beyond materialistic morality and devotion to a god that is other than us – a means of avoiding responsibility by placing judgment in the hands of a higher authority rather than in ourselves. It is a paradigm that breeds hypocrisy.

The realization strikes in full colors of glory and irony that, no, I do not. In fact, could I live my life farther from my true self? It is a deluded life I lead, keeping myself hidden, avoiding the truth, not letting people see me.

But it gets complicated if I separate me in respect to the world around me and me to myself. Me in respect to the world around me is a complete lie, and no one in the world around me has any idea what I’m about. On the other hand, me to myself isn’t quite that bad. I don’t lie to myself. Even when my own mind is playing games with me, I admit it even if I can’t figure the game out.

But is there really that separation between me to the world around me and me to myself? Or is that something I’m creating so that I can isolate the me to myself and say that I am true to myself, and the me to the world around me is insignificant?

I don’t have an answer to that, but as long as the doubt is there, I assume that there is no separation. If I’m not true to myself in respect to the world around me, then I’m also not being true to myself to me. So now what? How do I approach this so late in my life? Do I need to? No, that’s not my style. I’ll keep the question in my mind and go about my daily life.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Existence itself is meditation. That is a new paradigm. My biggest trouble with living has always been existing. My salvation has been meditation; sitting. But very existence itself is meditation, every moment. That is the new paradigm. No distractions, just focus on existing and existence, that is meditation.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

All my life I thought there was a spirit that followed me around and protected me. I thought that in some way I was special. Then it hit me today that it’s the total opposite. I go about my life like I’m holy, but the truth is I am one among the damned. My life is a total mess, I’m a wreck, I want to die, I can’t stand being here anymore. If I’m so holy, then what is this all about? This is about being damned and going through a stage of hell, and not one of the upper layers, either. The paradigm with which I view my life needs to completely change.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

It’s only three days into the new year/century/millennium. The new paradigm for how I should be living my life is that I ought to live my life like a person deaf, dumb, and blind, but with my eyes, ears, and mouth open. Now I have to figure out what that means.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

A better day. I think the problem with my mood has a lot to do with the weather and work. All day I’m in a corner cube that I like because of the privacy, but I get no sun during the day. When I get off work, the sun is already gone and that may be the cause of the feeling of emptiness when I get out. At least when I’m working, I’m productive. I’m doing something. When I stop working, I just don’t feel like doing anything.

I’ve gotten some of my perspective back and that helped a lot this evening. I can’t let myself get sucked into life. I can’t get confused about the difference between life and existence. Life, I don’t know what that is. Existence is what all appearances are. Everyone may be living, but to me they are just existing. My surroundings are not real, they are just pictures, images. Physical reality is just as intangible as thoughts.

If I remember what I’m doing here, I’ll be alright. If I remember that I’m just here to observe and question reality and investigate the fabric that makes it up, I’ll be alright emotionally. Emotions are such an inconvenience.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I consider myself Buddhist. That’s the closest thing “outside” of me with which I can identify. The language of Buddhism has helped me in coming to an understanding of reality. Or maybe it’s my being. The language of Buddhism has helped me along in coming to an understanding about my being. But my reading of the big picture has made life an abstraction. It’s a thing that can be removed and examined. Re-incarnation certainly makes Self in the big picture abstract, at least for me.

Thought based on Western traditions is concrete: you live one life and then you’re dead until Judgment Day and then you’re raised, judged, and sent to Heaven or Hell. This is the only shot you got and what you do with your life means a whole lot more. My treatment of life as abstract keeps me removed from it, keeps me from really getting involved with it. I’m too busy working through what came before, and I’m not too concerned with what I’m doing with this life because I’m too busy projecting on future ones.

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

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.

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.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Everyday should have some value, something special no matter how small. Everyday should have at least one thing worth writing about or mentioning, so that upon re-reading it, what was special about that day will immediately come to mind.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I’m out of school with no job prospects. I’m slacking along day to day making no real use of myself. My newest personal philosophy is that I have to appreciate the moment I’m in and what I’m doing in it. Whatever I’m doing is what I’m doing and I ought to be satisfied with its value. I can’t be living my life fretting over what I should be doing, or if I’m wasting my time, or if I could be doing something better. Whatever I’m doing, I am doing because it was my decision and it must have some value.

My relationship with Josephine is feeling more secure, but it’s strange how much things have changed in the past few months. I feel that I’ve re-invented myself and I’m a completely different person than I was several months ago.

I was in the law library and I just closed my eyes and thought about the alternate reality I was in over the summer in Bangkok. I was a completely different person there. The reality of the hotel is so distanced now; the air of Bangkok, the feel of Bangkok. I was not who I think of myself being when I was in Bangkok.

I close my eyes and imagine the space I occupied while in Bangkok: the hotel room, the furniture, the air conditioner problems, the windows, the view, the heat and humidity, all the places I went, all the spaces I filled. My second time there, all of it vivid, but still so far from me, so detached. And it is so easy to forget that at the beginning, when I went to Bangkok, Josephine and I had called it quits. So even though our relationship was on the road to recovery and reconciliation, the word was that we were over and any future relationship had to be earned, and our growing process had to be continuous. Any complacency would be the death again.

The death of our relationship as it was. I guess that was the major change, because our relationship occupied my entire last year and it became who I was. When we killed the relationship, we killed my entire past year, and the summer was the time when I was recovering and readjusting to having an entire year lost. When I finally landed on my feet, I was starting anew, the nearest thing to what I “was” was over a year prior.

The destructiveness of the relationship was so subtle that I feel that I was re-invented without a crisis, but the whole relationship was a crisis of sorts. But it wasn’t a personal crisis, and that’s what’s missing from my life; what I need to break through to something different or new, something that is not predictable and constrained in my old patterns.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Looking at new stages in life and growing up and older and the meaning of it all. Maturity inevitably comes and world views change. In many ways, Kurt Cobain is to be envied by those of us who don’t subscribe to the inevitable maturation which is synonymous with conformity.

To me, “conformity” is even worse. It means accepting the normative matrix of the material world around me. It is not just learning to go with the flow and entering the cycles of regular human lives, it means throwing away my whole understanding of my place in the world.

It means changing from an observer, which I feel much more comfortable with, to being a participant, becoming insignificant in the bustle of human intercourse. No, I don’t want to live that long, no I don’t want to live a long life, no I don’t want to be a part of these nothing lives that don’t see past the surfaces of things.

It is so easy to get caught up in things and lose sight of what’s important to me. And not getting caught up into an average nothing life is important to me. Vacation is almost up. Bangkok is done, Geneva is done, New Jersey is done, time to work on Sompong’s final exam and finish up my thesis, plenty of research coming up in the next few months.

The only thing I have to look forward to is Josephine and our new relationship. Everything has been just fine since I got back from Bangkok, and better than any time before. It’s easing into a new comfort and confidence, and as distressing as it is to know that living together will be a major problem in the future, it’s nice to have a functional relationship.

198 Shakespeare St., S.F.

December 1996

There is nothing keeping me alive. There hasn’t been anything keeping me alive for two weeks. I’m still alive. I feel that I’ve entered a new period in my life where there is nothing to keep me alive, I can die at any time, but I won’t.

Opportunities have been many, I just haven’t taken any of them and I’m not sure why. I’m afraid that I may have chickened out, which is the last reason I thought would prevent me. I know I still can. I just have to figure out why not.

Maybe I should start accepting myself as an ordinary human being. What happened was that I reached a point of desperation, beyond which was the point of no return. Instead of plowing right through like I thought I would, I grabbed onto something - desperate lunge for the dead branch to keep me falling off the cliff. I started looking at the bright side of life, thinking that there might be something to live for, thinking that there is a way for me to make it through if I just tried.

How pathetic.

So.

There is no reason why I should be alive now and there is no reason keeping me alive. Yet I’m still here.

Why?

It looks like my problems and my life weren’t as simple as I had thought. It isn’t so easy to die after all. But I still can’t commit to living. It’s still in my mind that I can do it today, tomorrow, any time in the near future. But something is stopping me. I don’t know what. There is much more surging under the surface than I had ever imagined. What’s going on in this little mind of mine?

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

I’ve started to be nice to the ‘rents. I’ve stopped harboring negative feelings towards everyone I encounter on the street. A long time ago Diem told me I was arrogant. Only now have I been able to accept that and begin dealing with that. I don’t like the idea of being arrogant and I don’t want to be. I guess I can’t deny that I’ve always been pretty condescending. It’s only a natural step to admit that I’m arrogant. How to deal with that?

I don’t even know where to begin to figure out what’s wrong with me. I don’t know how to reach out. I don’t know how to accept help. I don’t know how to be vulnerable without having a complete breakdown. No one has ever been responsive to my problems, not even professionals. Look what happened then - got tossed into mental institutions. Psychiatrists patted themselves on the back for coming up with some diagnosis or explanation but didn’t do anything to treat it.

It has gotten harder and harder to reach out and speak out. I couldn’t tell my feelings to another person anymore. It has become second nature to take my feelings and quickly bury them under the surface. Anything I want to express about myself I do it with a blade.

I want to smash things, destroy my room, hurt myself, let go, cry, scream, drink myself stupid, throw shit out the window, but then I always step back into this world, this reality, with composure, with frankness, arrogance.

I can still enjoy things, there are things that still make me feel good, but do they outweigh the problems I’m having with existing, of simply being here?

Earlier this month, for the first time in a long while, I actually felt the air against my skin, not even wind, and appreciated it. It felt good. Life as a good thing. Being alive is a good thing, but it’s not so good when my insides have rotted through to nothingness.

I felt the air as I breathed it in and it felt good. It felt life; alive. And still I want to stop doing it. I’ve had asthma, I know what it’s like to not be able to breathe. I’m not taking it for granted.

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

I am guided by God, totally open to definition, in whatever I choose to do. That’s not arrogance, I think it’s just fact. God’s presence makes itself apparent every once in a while. A sign is sent.

I was typing what could have easily been my last entry. I had a flash of inspiration and I was writing the whole truth about my existence, my understanding of myself and my role in the world around me. It became so obvious, and what I was writing was exactly how I wanted to express it.

Then Microsoft Word suddenly quit. It didn’t even try saving something like it usually does. It usually fails to save anything when it crashes, but at least there is something in the trash to indicate it tried to save something. This time, nothing.

And usually everything cuts out and the computer jams and I have to restart it. This time, it was just Word - I got a message box saying the program had unexpectedly quit. I clicked OK and cleared the desktop, but it was still active. Except for remnants of the dead Word screen, it was like the computer wasn’t even registering that the program had been running at all. I booted up Word again with no problem, like nothing had happened.

No indication that what I wrote about my existence existed at all. It was like I hit it right on the nose and that information, the way I put it, was too precious for me to keep. Yoink. There was no question about whether I should try to re-write it - it would be impossible. The best I can do now is re-visit the ideas doing my best not to butcher them.

Basically, I don’t know anything about myself anymore. I don’t know who I am or what comprises my identity. I have nothing grounding my being to which I can definitively say, “I am this”.

The world exists as the limit of our knowledge and the world exists only to the extent that we know. My world doesn’t exist because I have no idea what I am or what my knowledge is. I don’t have any knowledge that is concrete enough to say, “Yes, this is my world”. It’s like my friends and the people I meet, in and out of whose lives I pass with hardly any impact at all.

There are times when I walk down the street and no one gets out of my way, no matter how aggressively I’m walking. I’m always getting out of everyone else’s way. It’s as if I didn’t exist at all, and there are times I want to turn around and shout, “What?! I don’t exist?!” It’s crazy.

Then part of me is thinking, no, maybe I don’t exist. Not to them. Maybe I’m not there and they really don’t see me. It’s as if I’m a ghost or practicing to be one of my own conceptualized angels. Theoretically, if I didn’t get out of the way, they should be able to pass right through me, but that would never happen because of the limitations of my belief and knowledge. At the last split second, right at the contact point, at the point when they should pass right through me, I have a doubt, and with that one bit of doubt comes down a torrent of my firm belief in my physical existence here on earth and that gives me substance. The person will bump into me accidentally and he or she will say “sorry”.

Conversely, at the last split second, right at the contact point, I do not have the requisite doubt about my physical existence to experience the truth of my existence. I always say I doubt my physical existence, but at that moment of contact, the test, I don’t have the requisite doubt to pass through.

I’m stuck between those doubts. Because I doubt my existence being able to exceed my knowledge, my existence has substance in this world and I’m confined by it. But because I don’t have the requisite doubt to stop knowing the world as I see and feel it, I can’t escape the suggestion of my physical existence into which I’m confined. I’m in that twilight region between the daylight, where light illuminates the physical world and we don’t doubt what we see, and the nighttime where we can’t see what is there because it’s not illuminated. I can see the world, but I’m not really there, but I’m too much there to be in pure nighttime.

I have no identity in either daylight or nighttime. I don’t know what I am or where I stand in either. I have no knowledge of myself to project onto the world to give it or me substance. I don’t exist to people because of me, and they don’t exist to me because of me.

Reality depends on our subjective knowledge. Without that knowledge, there is no existence. There is more to existence than this three dimensional physical reality. There is a lot more going on. How do I know? Because this, what we’re living, is so insubstantial, it is nothing, we are just Plato’s shadows. If this is all there is, I’d really might as well be dead. So another paradox, either I don’t exist or else I may as well be dead. I’d rather be alive and not exist, than be not real and just as well be dead.

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

If someone came up to me with a gun and told me to give up my wallet or else he or she was going to shoot me, I would say, “why should I do you a favor and give you my wallet? Shoot me and take it yourself”. That’s a reflection of my existence. If there was anything in this world onto which I could find a projection of myself, I might feel some concern when faced with someone about to blow my head off. I don’t exist enough to have any considerable concern about my forced demise. I don’t exist because I don’t care.

I have no idea what is going on in my mind. I’m not honest with myself. This is what my rumination started with, the one that disappeared. Nobody knows who I am because I haven’t painted an accurate picture of myself to anybody, and I don’t know who I am because I haven’t painted an accurate picture of myself to me, either. I don’t know what I feel, I don’t know what’s going on in my head. I obviously can’t know what is real. All I know is that I have nothing in this world to ground myself or my existence.

There is nothing in the world that I can look at and identify some part of me. People can look at their friends and say, yes, this person or these people are a part of my existence; they are a part of affirming who I am. Families are classic examples; families that don’t get along, but stick to each other because they can’t do without each other.

Maybe that was what was behind that assignment in Professor Morris’s seminar in 1992, when he asked us to bring in an object that made us feel close to God. Stupid assignment, I thought. I didn’t bring anything in. I couldn’t bring myself to distill my relationship with God into some object. So I just mentioned a tree outside Spanish House that I passed every day, frequently wondering to myself what my relationship to that tree was. Tree. Me. Why?

There is no object on earth in which I feel some sort of my identity, something to affirm my existence, some relationship to God, the Real, the omnipresent and omniscient, God who is everything and who cannot not be anything. Nothing, as if I didn’t exist. I don’t exist and never will. If I was supposed to, I would already. That’s good enough proof for me. I have to live my life for right now, not for future possibilities. If someone protested and told me that I exist to them, that just means that they exist, not me.

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

Is reincarnation linear through time, one lifetime succeeding another after another? You live a lifetime and you die and you get re-born in the chronological future - a few days later, a few months later, a few years later? Once I think about it, it doesn’t make sense anymore; why should linear time be universal law? I think any idea that reincarnation is linear through time is only a projection of our knowledge of our own linear lives and linear experience onto something much larger.

So if reincarnation isn’t linear through time, one can be re-born into the relative past or future. Hm, but this is problematic. If one is born into the relative past, is the future already written or can it be changed? Being born into the relative future doesn’t pose that big of a problem, but being born into the relative past is sticky because theoretically the “future” has already been done. Actually being born into the relative future can also be problematic because any point in the future is already history to some other point in the future.

OK, conundrum; rewind.

Why can’t the future, i.e. a relative history, be changed once a person is re-born into the chronological past? Actually, that could help explain the transmission of knowledge and human development. Isn’t it possible that the automobile was developed in this timeline because someone from the future with the technical knowledge to develop the components of the automobile was re-born into this timeline? In other timelines, perhaps the automobile wasn’t developed, perhaps something else was.

It’s all possible. Isn’t there some theory in physics that states all timelines that could possibly occur actually do occur. If so, then it works that any timeline can be affected by the knowledge/karmic transfer of someone from the future being re-born into the past. Likewise, someone from the past can be re-born into the future. Even more tricky, someone from the past from a different timeline can be re-born into the future into any timeline. That’s too tricky for me, I don’t even want to go there. The idea of being re-born into a world with a history vastly different from what I know is beyond my conception.

Rewind again, avoid the conundrum.

Perhaps Martin Luther King, Jr. was a ‘past’ re-incarnation of someone from the future, someone who already lived a different ‘history’ in which the Civil Rights Movement either didn’t happen at all or happened in a vastly different way. It could have been anybody at any time, but in this particular timeline, Martin Luther King, Jr. was born with seeds from his experience in some other future, completely unbeknownst to him, that affected what he did in this lifetime.

This history of the Civil Rights Movement, or any historical event for that matter, is not written in stone. Furthermore, the outcome of the Civil Rights Movement isn’t necessarily satisfactory. It did a lot, but it never achieved the equality it strove for. So it’s possible for someone from this timeline, at any point in the future, to be re-born into that time period and affect things differently. In some timeline, America got it right.

I’ve thought this before that it is possible to be re-born into the past, but not in a way as to be able to change history. I thought the major events of history are pretty much fixed, and any reincarnation into the past is restricted by those historical frameworks. You can be re-born into the Holocaust, perhaps as punishment in some level of hell, but you can’t do anything that changes history. I don’t think so. I think history can be changed by an individual’s reincarnation into the relative past.

Considering how many people there are, this theory is mind-boggling to the point of irrelevance. But it’s possible. And possibly relevant if you don’t look at it in the big picture.

How about a twist: say I’m driving along and there are two possible routes I can take to where I want to go. I arbitrarily choose one for whatever reason and I get into an accident and I’m killed. If I had taken the other route, I would have avoided the accident and would have survived. In an alternative reality, another branch of reality, I did take that route and continued to live a long productive life.

So when I died in the car crash, that ‘me’ got re-born somewhere. If reincarnation can cross alternate realities, can I be re-born into the timeline in which the other ‘me’ survived? It’s another conundrum, because considering the multiplicity of alternative realities in which I could have and therefore did die, is it possible for all of those ‘me’s to be re-born in the same timeline as different people, but who have a bizarre affinity for each other? Assuming they even meet. What a mess!

Forget it. It’s all useless theory. It doesn’t mean a thing.

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.

1347 La Loma, Berkeley

The goal of my life is to not commit suicide. Over the past few lifetimes, I've been dying by suicide, and for my path, suicide is wrong. It is arbitrary that our society also says that suicide is wrong. It could have been anything, it could have been eating pork or mushrooms, or foot fetishes. And every time I've committed suicide, I've put more distance between God and me. "God", as usual, being fully open to interpretation.

The elements and pieces of my life fit into place. My lifelong affinity with Japan. Even before meeting anyone from Japan, I remember back in the '70’s, making lists of Japanese vocabulary with my grandmother and trying to memorize them. I wonder if this attraction has anything to do with Japan historically accepting suicide as a societal expectation in certain situations. It wasn't outright condemned. As if I'm trying to get closer to a societal shelter to try to justify what has been metaphysically identified as something I should not do.

But my desire to commit suicide is also directly linked to the 'rents. If they died, I think my motivation to die would be gone. Suicide is part of my life, it is part of my identity, it is not merely something that is done; there is a philosophy about it. Then how can it be at all linked to the 'rents?

One link: the irony that they're pushing me into the field of law. I heard that lawyers have the highest suicide rate among the professions. It's like they're giving alcohol to a recovering alcoholic thinking that they're giving lemonade.

Hmm, all I have to do is not kill myself for however many years. How hard can that be? We go about our lives, day by day, and whatever comes gets us through to the next day. How hard can it be to just keep doing that? It's what I've been doing thus far. But some times it is really hard to not, because thinking of doing it is so easy and so natural. And looking at the span of years before me and living through them is daunting and discouraging. What a miserable life it would be to just resign myself to living just for the sake of living, for the sake of not committing suicide.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

I had a love so solid and so definite and it dissolved into nothingness. Did the love and care even exist in the first place? Were they just appearances, a front for something I can't touch or realize. What about the illusion of Shiho that I hold so dear? Can't that love just as easily be discarded? Do I trust Shiho? Could I? How can I trust anything anymore. I don't. Not even my own existence. My existence is hardly a solid and definite thing anymore and it hardly has any significance or reliable substance.

What is so important about our existences? We float in, we float out. People go on vacations, they go home after the party, they leave the stage after the act. They move to other states, they move to other countries, they die. It all boils down to absence and the future access. But what's the big deal? People who die are like people who move away and you never hear from again. Why should my feelings toward Amina be any different if she were dead? Dead only means dead to this existence, it's only absence. People who are true friends will always find each other in different lifetimes.

If Amina and I never meet again, eventually I wouldn't be saddened by her absence. There would always be the possibility of running into her, regardless of how unlikely that is. But if she died, I would be saddened by her death, despite the realization that we probably never would have met each other anyway.

I don't trust in anything anymore because that's the way it should be. I don't feel or believe in the importance of my life because that is the way it should be. Care doesn't exist for me anymore. Care is just another word for awareness. I care about people, but I don't think my caring makes any difference at all to anybody. It's mine alone, all I can do is be aware of other people's situations and be concerned to that limited extent.

No one "cares" about me. No one can have an effect on me or the way I live my life, so no one can care about me. No one can care about me in a way I can believe or accept. I must accept myself for who I am. I can't deal with my problems because I never learned to deal with problems. I never witnessed problems effectively dealt with. I grew up in a family that covered up and ignored problems and always pretended that everything was rosy.

I have huge problems looming over me, inside me, eating and rotting me away, creating pressure around every cell from every direction and there is nothing I can do about it. I can't approach the problems, I can't face them, much less do anything about them, much less tell anyone about them.

Is it low self-image? I know I have an immense self-hatred and I know that these things are a result of my upbringing and intensify now due to the loss of a support group and other external factors that have worked to counterbalance my disadvantages. I know that my feelings about my inadequacies and failures and failings are merely perceptions. I know that from another point of view, I'm doing better than fine. That is not the way I feel, and knowing it doesn't do a thing to help cope with it.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

School starts in two months. I might as well stop looking for a job. Life frozen static. My frustration with my life and living isn't my state of mind, it isn't my whole life. It's just the getting from day to day, the breathing, the eating, the surviving.

My life as a whole is still what it always has been and I'm fine with that. I like having nothing to live for and not minding dying at any point. That's how I want to live my life, not looking for far off goals with desire as my motivation. That doesn't make much sense. If that's so, then what's the problem with getting from day to day?



Frances visited last week. We had a pretty good time. We went to St. Helena and got drunk, climbed rocks and cliffs along the coast, went up into the Marin Headlands. There was no real spark of friendship though, she felt only like a guest. Just a guest.

I've become so desensitized towards people and friends. With Frances there is still fallout from the frustration of her past two incredibly unhealthy relationships. Truth to tell, it would have made no difference if she didn't visit or hadn't gotten back in touch with me in the first place. It's good that she did and I'm glad for it, but it wouldn't have been for the worse if she hadn't.

Tria is a little different. I've been liking our friendship. I might even trust her. She's a lot of fun to be with and has kept my mind off how my life is going nowhere. I noticed while Frances was here that the only reason why I still have any sense of humor left is because of Tria.

Tria is great, but it is only a friendship. I would like to start going out with someone again. Frances and I talked about factors that would contribute to the ideal life or living. For me, finding that one special person is the most important thing. Not much else would make life worth living than finding that person that makes me feel comfortable in my skin.

I believe that Amina and I have met before in previous lifetimes. I think we go back a long way and every once in a while, in terms of lifetimes, our circumstances allow us to find each other. We have met each other in previous lifetimes in perhaps many different relationships. Maybe we've been lovers before, maybe parent-child, maybe siblings, maybe lifelong friends, maybe sworn enemies, maybe student-teacher, maybe rapist-victim, maybe Romeo and Juliet, maybe in some lifetimes we've left each other in the deepest of love, maybe in some our relationship was never resolved.

What happened to us in this lifetime may be so trivial. Our forms in Amina and Koji may seem so all-important, but we are just an episode. We knew each other for the whole of three years, how many years had passed before we met, how many more will pass now without each other. This is just one lifetime that failed. Many others we had been happy together, or happy in our separation with a love so strong. Maybe unhappy together or apart. This is just one lifetime.

It's not that important. We will live again and we will be brought together again. The child grew in the mother only to be born dead. Things look so promising only to be cut down unexpectedly. Our civilization grew only to be snuffed out by nuclear war. But other planets, other star systems, other dimensions, life and imagination goes on because that is the stuff of God.

I am here in this lifetime to learn to not be deceived or disturbed by appearances, they are only illusions. To be unaffected and unsaddened by them, they are only facts. The real life is in the learning and the growing. Amina is only an appearance of a soul that I know infinitely well. What she did is nothing. It was done by a woman I know as Amina. And that woman is just a single manifestation of a soul that is so much larger than either of us can ever imagine. I must cut through the appearance of Amina and see her true self so that I may recognize it in the future. But in the future, she will be the one who looks for me and teaches me how to forgive.

But maybe this isn't an end, just a beginning. That heart of Amina came and went and may never be a part of my life again. But maybe she opened something up for someone else to come in and teach me; someone I haven't recognized yet. Maybe Amina has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

I did my second function with the catering company and it was actually enjoyable, even without Tria there on the job. It's about people, I guess. Even though they were all white, the rest of the crew is what made it enjoyable. They had a rapport and camaraderie that made working with them cool. I was glad to find that I could adapt to doing that sort of thing, with that sort of people, for that sort of people.

The job was up in Marin, and as long as I was up there, I managed to catch up with Tria and we hung out for several hours. It was pleasant being with her. She really is quite fun, and occasionally, only occasionally, we can engage in a conversation of a more serious nature.

Just before I reached her house, I hit and killed a rabbit with my car. That really shook me up and threw my reality into disarray. I had felt that I would never kill an animal with my car. I felt that was just a given, it wouldn't happen. I felt that I was special because of that. I barely even saw the rabbit. Just a flash in the corner of my eye, an unexpected movement in the headlights, I automatically swerved and I could have sworn that I didn't hit it. But then I decided to stop and go back to just to make sure, and when I saw the rabbit's body, I was shocked. I was stunned and pulled the car over immediately. I felt empty and drained in disbelief. I felt betrayed. I've always felt protected by an angel or a spirit, and part of that protection entailed my not harming innocent animals with my car. I got out to look for a stick to at least push the rabbit to the side of the road, but just then another came by and hit the rabbit again with a sickening sound.

So much for faith in certain things. Can I be so sure now that I will never attend any funeral of anyone close to me? Can I be sure that I will die before anyone I know? That is another given.

Of all animals, why did it have to be a rabbit?

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

I want to blow my brains out.

Kurt Cobain's suicide awakened something in me that has never went away.

This isn't life, this is not all that there is, and I'm sick of it. I want to get to whatever's next, move on instead of slogging around in this illusion. None of this is real, nothing I get from my senses is real and not a single thought that goes through my mind is real. No one is real. If I kill myself and come back not having the knowledge I have now, at least I won't be tortured by this minimal knowledge.

I will know all of nothing rather than a little of an overwhelming lot, blissful in my ignorance, normal and happy to just make money and raise a family. I will suffer as a sentient, but at least I can be blissful. And if it's time for me to get to the next level, the sooner the better. Listen to myself: if I kill myself and come back. What am I talking about, there is no self to kill.

It would be so easy to die. It would be so easy to live. It would be so hard to die. It would be so hard to live.

Kurt Cobain's suicide, for some reason, is real. I don't know why. I want to scream. I want to break out of this. I want to let go. I want to remember everything. I can't go on denying things in my past. I hate my parents, I want to rip their throats out with my bare hands for all they don't know and all they don't realize.

I want to admit all the things I've done wrong and all my faults. I want to face humiliation and be embarrassed to death. I don't want to hide anymore. I want the truth to come out and to show and face the truth. I want the wall torn down and all my anomalies and contradictions exposed. And only by becoming public can I make those things not mine, not me.

Was there anything enlightened about Kurt Cobain? Anything spiritual? He had such an impact on so many people. But he also had no impact on so many people. How to look at it? He was just a pop star? He wrote brilliant songs, he was honest to himself. He was true to his nature and lived what he was and what he wrote. What he wrote was what he was.

What bullshit text states that enlightenment means you’re happy and blissful? What idiot says that being one with the universe means you smile and walk on flowers, yogi painted priest dog asshole. White people sure eat that shit up.

I hate Amina. I hate Amina with every morsel in me. I hate her as much as I hate the 'rents. I hate the thought of her and the thought of her makes me sick. I regret not having the chance to make her burn.

The funny thing is that I was never into Nirvana. Whatever I heard on the radio was really good, but their popularity was a flag to me that they were just a passing trend. My natural reaction is to stay away from trends until the hoopla dies down, and only then can I find out what substance is really there. But something about Cobain killing himself made it real, made it sincere.

224 College St., Oberlin

Luyen and I finally had a long anticipated talk. How did she change so much from last semester? I think she sees a break in the clouds, but that’s all she sees; nothing concrete. And if what she’s going through is anything like what I went through, then I don’t think the storm is anywhere near passing.

Luyen is not the ultimate end. Neither is having perfect communication or being in the perfect relationship or being the dopest bass player in town. This entire lifetime is a drop. It’s just one in a whole series of lifetimes. Ultimate end? How arrogant to think I’m anywhere near it. This lifetime, identified as Koji, is not going to reach the end. There are many more of these to come, attempting to get on that final path, the final Way of looking at life and existence. Many changes to come, too. Many lifetimes from now, after much learning, developing, progressing, and possibly incorporating elements of what I’ve learned in this lifetime, maybe I’ll be on the final leg of the journey. And of course I have no idea what that person would be like. If “I” were to meet him or her, it’s possible that I wouldn’t be able to stand the jerk.

One lifetime is just a joke, and I realize how attached and how material I am. How trivial it all is and I still can’t give it up right now. If I could, I would. I haven’t, so I can’t. But suicide won’t make things go quicker. It may make things worse if I end up in a lifetime where spiritual doors aren’t as accessible as they are for me now. But I wonder if it’s possible for some people to have suicide as a spiritual achievement. Maybe I’m referring to some of the people who are actually able to go through with it. I wonder if maybe it’s in their nature that suicide will get them placed in a more spiritually accessible lifetime.

That doesn’t go against ideas of karma. You have to take a leap of faith and remove human ethics and judgments commonly applied to the idea of karma. You have to know that the time people die is probably the time when they’re supposed to die. It may sound like I’m taking a result and making a reason to fit it, but who can claim to know?