1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I think I’ve reached the point once again that I am thoroughly sick of my life. I’m trying to reach 34, but it seems so long away. I think of the end of my life right now, but I think of things that I want to do before I leave. It’s a contradiction. Which is closer to real? Neither. Leaving is closer to real in respect to attachment to being here, but “leaving” is already an attachment. These are the contradictory paradigms that comprise my life.

No one gets me. I had a talk with Josefa this past week which made it clear that no one gets me; she certainly doesn’t. She couldn’t emphasize more that I am different. I’m incomprehensible. And it makes it hard for the people around me. And she’s right.

I’m taking a few days off for vacation. I’m heading down to Southern California for the first time and I’m visiting Rosalie, taking in some sites – Joshua Tree, Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Park, maybe Manzanar, maybe Yosemite. I doubt I’ll hit them all.

I’m filled with anxiety about this trip. I don’t know why, I just have been on edge all day because of this trip. I hate my life, I hate living it, I hate being here, I hate existing. I don’t know how I’m going to survive. But why am I distressed? Why do I care? Why can’t I break through? This is so maddening and I’m so confused. I want to leave but...I’m not.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

My laptop died at the end of June. I didn’t permanently lose a lot; it was mostly an inconvenience. I lost whatever I wrote in the month of June. I think the only thing of significance in June was realizing that entries from like 1996 already articulated what I feel now. Writing in here about my “feelings” is stupid; I’ve already written it down sometime before.

So what’s going on in my life? I don't care about the band. There is just no passion, no connection, and no chemistry. I don't care about these people, I don't care what happens. I auditioned for another band today. I don’t think I’ll get it, and I’m not sure I want it, but I’ve taken the crucial step of starting to audition again.

I’m looking more closely at my cutting. I’m reading a book on the subject, Bright Red Scream, by Marilee Strong. I tried going to therapy, but it was just stupid. The doctor was an idiot, but the experience, for some reason, made me focus on cutting. At first I couldn’t even identify that as a problem to focus on.

Why am I still doing it? I don’t fit the profile of people doing it anymore. Or at least I don’t think I do. The book I’m reading accurately describes what was going on when I was doing it before, but things have changed and it has just become habit. It doesn’t give me the relief that it may have before. Now I just do it for the hell of it. It’s not because of feelings, it’s not a way of dealing or coping, it’s not an expression of pain that I can’t express another way. I just do it because I’ve always done it. I guess I’ve grown out of it, but the act is still there. Most of the time it’s no big deal, I can cut or not cut, I just decide to cut rather than not cut.

I know it connects me to my past, it provides proof of what happened before, but the scars are there, they aren’t going away, why create more? Perhaps a similar question is why am I still hoping to kill myself eventually and soon. And why I still abuse alcohol. It’s all related.

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 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

January was a bad rehearsal month. We missed a bunch of rehearsals, at one point not playing as a full band for two weeks. So when it looked like it was happening again this month, I was getting seriously frustrated. With two months in a row, I start wondering if this is going to be the pattern.

Not that the reasons for not having full rehearsals were bad, Josh got a lung infection as a reaction to quitting smoking, and Lisa left town to visit her girlfriend in Vermont. It was just the situation I was whining about, mostly to Chris. Missing rehearsals was really hard on me because it doesn’t allow me to get comfortable playing with them and familiar with their styles. It prevents the material from sinking in and postpones my readiness to play out. It certainly doesn’t help my confidence about how I’m playing.

Overall, it just feels like the band isn’t doing anything or going anywhere. Chris and I went to see a bunch of bands last weekend and it was pretty depressing seeing bands that were really tight and who obviously were putting more than 100% into it. We’re not even close to that. We still kick ass, but that’s not the point. If we easily could be better, then it sucks if we aren’t.

We had our rehearsal tonight, and unlike the rehearsal after the two week hiatus last month, it was good. There were lots of mistakes, but the energy was pretty electric. Josh and Chris were on fire and Lisa sounded great. It totally boosted my spirits. The energy was there, the talent is there, but on the other hand, we were also sloppy and we didn’t feel like a band that has been playing a lot, there wasn’t that connection. We weren’t as tight as we could be and we didn’t groove as tightly as we need to.

I need to learn from this situation and frustration. I have to keep looking hard at how I’m feeling and keeping perspective in light of all of the signs I’ve been figuring out in the past few months. Things to keep in mind: I’m the new member in the band, I don’t “demand” anything. I’m committed to this band as a member and as a part of my life. Their significance in my life is not strictly professional, they mean something to me, they are my friends and support group and I care about them.

Patience is a necessity, but I also have to watch how I’m interacting with them and make sure I don’t overstep my bounds while not keeping my feelings repressed. Like when I’m frustrated, there are things I shouldn’t do and things I should. I shouldn’t be passive-aggressive and be pissy at rehearsals. I should tell them my needs and gauge them so that they are acceptable. So if I’m getting frustrated at the amount of time we’re spending on covers or writing new songs, I need to realize that they need to be working on new stuff and that they’ve been doing this material for several years now. I need to go along with whatever new things they want to do, but ask them to go through a set list at every rehearsal. Tonight we went through a tentative set list for a gig next month, so that was taken care of.

I spoke with Angie Chen today. I haven’t talked to her in fifteen years. She stayed with Rob and Lizzie in Philly last week and got my number from them. I barely knew her in high school. I was a first year and she was in Rob and Lizzie’s class but dropped out. Which is why I thought she was in Tom’s class. I knew her from Jazz/Rock; she sang ‘She’s Not There’, ‘Let It Be’, and she played a song she wrote which I thought was so totally cool.

It was great talking to her. I think we have a lot in common and a lot to talk about. We could have been friends had we been closer in age, but fortunately we weren’t because if we were friends in high school, we wouldn’t be friends now. Not even Shiho has lasted until now. Shiho gave a ten year run for her money. And as unstable as both Angie and I were, there’s no way that we could have remained 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.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I re-arranged my room today. It was a minor re-arrangement, but a necessary one that changed everything. It’s part of my personality really. In high school, when I lived in New Jersey, I had to re-arrange my room on the average every six months or I would feel like I was stagnating, and that would affect all aspects of my life and how I saw it. I continued the pattern in college to a lesser extent, where the longest I lived in one situation was a semester and a half. Something had to change almost every semester.

And then to an even lesser extent it has continued here in the Bay Area where I’ve been moving every year until I moved here, and the only reason why I’ve been here over two years and haven’t moved is because the rental market in San Francisco is the pits. I can’t even say that I’ve settled here, first chance I get, I’ll move.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

Things have been going pretty well with Josephine, I’m not sure if it’s because she has been changing or if it’s because we are living apart. If it’s because we are living apart, that may be a problem in the future when we do have to live together. If we are going to live together in the future, we can’t let the problems that arose when we were living together come up again.

My issues are mostly freedom issues, feeling free to do what I want and to do my own thing and not be concerned about what she’s doing, or that I need to spend time with her or that I need to be giving attention to her all the time. That’s something in me that I have to correct. When I don’t want to get together with her, or if I just want to be alone, I have to be able to come out and tell her and not feel guilty about it or that she’s going to hold it against me.

Guilt is my own problem. Her holding it against me is her problem and we are in the time period to prove these things to ourselves. If she’s going to hold it against me, well, I have to push the point. To see if she will and not assume that she will. My opinion at this point is that it’s hit or miss; it depends on the mood in which I catch her. Most of the time she won’t hold it against me, but at certain times, she would. But I can’t be running to her at every moment to prove that I love her. Sometimes if I want to stay put, I should stay put.

198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco

I’m in limbo. During the past year, I sacrificed music for relationship. Stupid move. Over the summer in Bangkok, all I had was my Takamine and it was there that I started feeling more comfortable on guitar and with singing and being less self-conscious about it.

That’s a pretty major difference between who I was and who I am. At this point, I can sing in front of people and be pretty comfortable. Whereas at some point before, I’m not sure when, it could be May it could be last October, certainly last summer, I wasn’t confident about singing in front of other people at all. Last summer in Bangkok, I still did everything I could to make sure people couldn’t hear me outside my hotel room.

I’m at an impasse with songwriting. I can’t believe that I ever did it before and now I can see that what I used to write sucked. Well, not sucked, but certainly was not of quality. Songwriting is fucking hard. You need something to write about, or you need a way with words so that you can make the ordinary sound interesting. I simply do not have a reservoir of words or images or observations. I don’t have words flowing out of me. I don’t know what I want to say.

Josephine and I almost had an argument, but she pulled us out of any tension quite nicely. She’s been doing a superb job on our relationship. I hope that I’m doing all I can to make this relationship worthwhile and satisfying to her. We had tension building up over the past few days. I thought it was because we were seeing too much of each other and becoming ordinary and common to each other. But we do have a love and a commitment that I think we both recognize and that certainly is helping.

She acknowledged her continuing construction. I’m doing that, too. I still need to find myself and my own life without her. I have to be able to do my own thing and not feel guilty that I’m not spending time with her. And that is contingent on her not being bothered by my doing my own thing. She used to get jealous when I did my own thing, or so I perceived, but I don’t think she’s like that now.

email - Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Dear josephine

I'm back in the U.S. I did some shopping in the U.N. gift shop on my last day in Geneva and I thought I deserved a special memento of my ten minutes of U.N. spotlight, so I bought myself a Universal Declaration on Human Rights 50th anniversary commemorative Swatch!! I won't wear it, but I'll keep it as a collector's item.

After the U.N. I decided to walk down the Rhone River and explore and it was the best time exploring I had in Geneva. I should have done it my first day there. For me, it's just natural to gravitate towards water, so if there was a river, I'm surprised I didn't explore it. The Rhone is a beautiful fast moving river that drains Lake Geneva, but never succeeds. People swim in the Rhone, so it's clean and I was surprised that I could see past the surface. it was a beautiful blue-green color. Several hundred years ago, people probably took it for granted that they could see all the way to the bottom of the river it was so clear, now it's a surprise to be able to see past the surface.

The Rhone isn't the only river flowing through Geneva, the L'Arve also flows through Geneva and joins the Rhone not very far from Lake Geneva. The L'Arve is very different. It is slow, brown, muddy, and ugly. So I was very curious to see what happens when the two rivers meet. So that's where I went exploring and it was fascinating!!

I was able to get to the piece of land right where the two rivers join. From there, I saw that there was a bridge that looked down right over that point. So I explored some more to find the bridge. Eventually I made it to the bridge, which had train tracks running on it, but also had a walkway for pedestrians.

It was really neat looking down and seeing the two rivers interact. The Rhone is the dominant river with its clear blue water. It overpowers the slow, muddy brown water of the L’Arve, but right where they meet it was really beautiful. The fast blue water of the Rhone would flow into and mix with the brown water of the L'Arve and there would be these feathery swirls and whirlpools of brown and blue water. I would never have been able to imagine such a beautiful sight.

An annoying thing happened to me while I was in Geneva. I felt myself lapsing back into the old personality. I guess it was being in a foreign country and a foreign language and my overpowering impulse to be polite and not come across as a typical rude American. But my personality overdoes it, and I get so polite that I become dysfunctional and paranoid and worried about every little detail of what everyone MIGHT be thinking about me. The way I want to be is not afraid to make mistakes, not afraid to take risks and look like an idiot, and not care what people think.

So, on my last night here I was in line at the McDonald's, and I had already caught on that people don't order meals by asking for a "number one". I did that once and the person had to look at the menu to see what that was. So I was standing in line and I heard the person behind me say MAcSalsa, and I noticed the long MAc, rather than the short "Mic" that Americans say. And instead of Big Mac meal, the menu said "Big Mac menu", and I remembered how Thais say "menu" differently and thought about how the French would say it. So when I got to the counter I very confidently said "Beeg MAc Menyuuu", and it worked!! She says, "Beeg MAc Menyuuuu" back to me and then says something in French that stuns me in my shoes. So I just go "oui", and that worked, too!!!

email - Geneva, Switzerland

dear josephine,
so intervention finished, I need something to do for today and tomorrow. I think I'm done observing for today; too boring. Yesterday I went to a cemetery but that wasn't too exciting. Tomorrow I'll come to the UN again although I've met everyone I'm likely to meet and I've handed out everything I have to hand out except one more copy of my paper, which I'd better keep as my personal copy. I had like five or six copies of my intervention left and I left them on a table and when I came back, they were all gone. So that was great! Unless security came and threw them out. Maybe the representative from Myanmar threw them out!!! That would be so cool. But he wasn't there when I made the intervention, so he wouldn't have known anything about it. Not that he knows anything about anything. Jerk.

So I'm off, think I'll head out and go for a run. much much love.

email - Geneva, Switzerland

hez josephine,
I couldn't get a computer at the internet café last night, so I’m writing from the UN now. yesterday I woke up early to make sure I get to the UN on time. good boy that I am. responsible boy that I am. I dress casual. I get to the UN and it takes a little bit of effort to get my id badge, but I get it. ID badge, it's the kind that once you get it, you can go just about anywhere, that's the kind of badge that I like.

I find my way to the sub commission session room and I explore and eventually find a list of speakers. after someone arrives at the desk nearby, I ask how I can get on the list. he tells me all I have to do is tell him and he asks which agenda item. I tell him 7a. and he says, oh you have to do it today because it is closing today. no problem! he tells me I have to make 5 copies of the intervention for translation and for the next half hour I’m running around finding paper, finding a copier, making copies, and stapling them. I made 15 extra copies just in case. so then eventually I found out I have to sit at one of the tables with the microphones, so I finally find an empty place for ngo’s. so I sit there and listen for a long time. I get up a few times to stretch or go to the bathroom, and it happens that at the time I'm up seeing if I can find out when I have to speak, HRA is called and I don't answer because I’m not sitting at the table with that thing on my ear. no problem! I panic and run back to the person I talked to earlier and he tells me to go tell the secretary that I’m here. so fyi, I actually spoke to the secretary of the sub commission, "hey you, I’m from HRA and I’m here". he tells me to sit down and they go through the list again at the end for organizations that missed their first call. so I sit for a longer period of time. finally I’m called, the last one, and I make the intervention no problem. it was like being underwater for ten minutes. actually I don't know how long I spoke because since I was the last one and they were ahead of schedule (I guess), they didn't run the clock. which disturbed me at the time since I would look up to see how much time I had left and the clock wouldn't be going.

so I finish my intervention and turn around and there is this mob of people behind me and I go, "good lord". I quickly realize that they all want copies of my intervention. so I pull out the extra copies of my intervention and they're like vultures and all of them are gone in 20 seconds. agenda item 7 closed and the rest of my time here is cake. I’m still wondering what to do tomorrow. ok, I gotta go, there's a lunchtime meeting I want to attend. I’ll write more later. luv u, much,

email - Geneva, Switzerland

I got to Geneva no problem, it's a pretty boring city. How is Anita? She returned right? Let her know that her cousin will be put on trial soon in Burma, but it's all for show to treat the matter seriously and scare other people from trying to do the same thing. She will be released, I don't know when, but she won't be harmed. the Burmese military government is pretty stupid, but not stupid enough to harm U.S. citizens. I'll mention it to whoever I can meet at the U.N..

I haven't been to a U.N. session yet. I got to Geneva yesterday, changed money, wandered around the airport to get used to the atmosphere, and then grabbed a taxi to my hotel which wasn't far away but cost about $15!! My room is tiny but it's clean. But for $50 a night? Wow! After I checked in, I went out and walked down to the Rhone River which drains Lake Geneva. If I stayed at the hotel, I would have fallen asleep. It was dream-like. the sun set around 20:00 and I got back well after dark.

I went for a jog this morning and the U.N. is less than a mile away. I'll still take the bus there tomorrow to keep from getting tired. It already feels like I've been here a long time, or time is going by really slow. I took a boat ride out onto Lake Geneva which was relaxing and perfect because my energy was low and I wouldn't have any other time to do it. It would be nice if you were here. The weather is really, really nice. Europe in the summer, I guess. But their winters probably suck.

So that's all I've been doing, walking around. There are no interesting pictures to take and time is going by really slow. It's all dream-like, like I said.

U.N. stuff starts tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I won't make the intervention tomorrow. I think I have to hand in the written copy a day in advance, so I'm looking at Tuesday (so I'll only wear a suit on Tuesday). Otherwise I'll just be observing and trying to talk to people but I have no idea what to expect. Who knows? I might start my oral intervention and they'll stop me and say, "yea, yea, we know all about that...NEXT!!" I would probably crumple the pages into balls to throw at them.

I'll let you know how tomorrow goes. I'm thinking of you all the time and there are moments that my breath just stops when I think of how cute you are and the cute things you do. much much love,

Bangkok, Thailand

After getting to sleep at 3 a.m., I woke up at 7 to see Philip and Barbara off to the airport. Caroline had already left at about 5. After they left, I went to meet Madoka at 9 at the Robinson's Department store on Sukhumvit. We met at the McDonald's and we proceeded to the Burmese Lawyers Council office. They are lawyers advocating awareness of the political and military repression in Burma.

We stayed there most of the day and left because Madoka had to change money and she wanted to see some bookstores. She came with me back to the hotel because I had to pick up laundry, and then we went to Silom to look for videotape for her camera and to have dinner. We're leaving tomorrow to start our travels to northern Thailand and to the refugee camps. We'll be traveling for about a week and then we'll be back in Bangkok on the 27th. I'll have two days before leaving for Taipei to see Josephine again.

The summer program is over, but I was still having trouble adjusting into Madoka mode and I think I was a little distant. It was a delight to see her. She's just as fun and inspiring to be with and her friends, as usual, are really cool, but with Philip and Barbara's departure so fresh, it was still too close to the program and I resisted the idea of Madoka coming over to the hotel. Reality mixing - no good. No can do.

But Madoka has always been good at reading my feelings and thoughts, and when she didn't back down to my resistance, I realized that she must also have been in an odd frame of mind and really wanted something to occupy her evening. She's been hanging out with Okada-san, with whom she's not extremely close, and on whom she's probably been feeling that she's been imposing. And Madoka's also not the type to just go out and explore or re-acquaint herself with Bangkok. Nor would I want her to alone. So I conceded and snapped out of my resistance. Things will be much better once we're out of Bangkok and focused on each other and what we're here to do.

Bangkok, Thailand

As long as everyone else was away, Josephine and I went for an overnight trip to a former capital of Thailand, Ayuthaya. Apparently I'm the only one who was interested in seeing the ruins of centuries old temples and Josephine apparently is willing to go anywhere I want to go.

Things went smoothly from the start. I think the taxi driver that took us to the train station swindled us, but he double-timed it there, taking shortcuts that we were unaware of, and we just made it onto the 13:05 train. The train ride was precisely an hour and a half and that's how I decided when to get off the train, even though there were signs in English at the station as reassurance.

It was hot, but after a short stop at Dunkin' Donuts, we went straight to two famous ruins that were across the street from each other, Wat Mahathat and Wat Ratburan. For me, there was no mistake that this was the place to be, above and beyond another beach or island or wherever. It was exhilarating being in a place once so holy, the ruins were absolutely stunning in size and detail, and it was an internal shock to see rows upon rows of headless Buddhas that had been vandalized by Burmese in raids centuries ago.

After making a round of ruins, we went to find a place for the night. The ones in the guidebook turned out to be dives, but we made the most of it and it was simply bliss to be with Josephine. We made do with the dank quarters and the strange showers and the mosquitoes. We had dinner at a nearby night-market.

We checked out this morning and hired a boat to take us to see more temples. The old city of Ayuthaya is actually an island, ringed by rivers. Going by boat was expensive by Thai standards, but we got to see more ruins than we would have been able to on foot.

Josephine lost her shades at the second temple, but the boat driver was nice enough to take us back and I ran off to find them. I had no idea where she might have lost them, so I just backtracked to wherever we had been, and I found them by some statues where we had taken pictures. Josephine was so happy when she saw that I found them. They were rather expensive, but I think she was more touched that I went to such an effort for her. Her happiness and smile are worth so much.

The boat driver then dropped us off across the river from that temple, and from there we walked. We went in search of an art museum that Josephine wanted to see, but unfortunately it wasn't the type of art Josephine was interested in. We found a pleasant park in which we sat in the shade before moving on. After the museum, we were hot and tired, so we took a tuk-tuk back to the train station and headed back to Bangkok. Again, everything went smoothly.

Our relationship is smoothing out. We still have some wrinkles, but I'm committed to her and I think of our relationship as permanent, and I will do whatever I can to keep us together.

Bangkok, Thailand

Well. Josephine and I have problems. Two problems in the span of four days, that’s a pretty bad record; it’s a bad sign. I don’t want to fight anymore, I don’t want to play games or struggle to figure out the person I’m supposed to love. No, I don’t love her to the point that I can’t walk away from this unharmed. She’s just not familiar enough, not ingrained enough for that.

I don’t even know what the problem was. We were fine all day, then she started getting distant in class where she was sitting right behind me. Then immediately after class she left to go to the bathroom, and when she came back she just stayed away from me. Then she stayed away from me for the rest of the evening and didn’t even look at me at dinner.

I thought maybe she just had something on her mind and I decided to leave her alone. Later she said that there was nothing on her mind, which means my perceptions were dead wrong. Regardless of the lack of any fault in the distance, I tend to react to it. I do have problems with abandonment and alienation. When I feel someone distancing, I tend to just withdraw and want to be alone and distrust that person; even more distrust when that person won’t even corroborate a reason for the distance.

Maybe it’s best for her. All I can do is drag her down in the isolation of my world. She belongs out there doing stuff and having fun with the group of people, that’s the point of the program. Not deal with the backlashes of my distorted and scarred psyche. She’s better off without me.

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

August 1996

Listen, Em, as far as I’m concerned, the message you were trying to convey was very clear. I’m not an idiot, I quite well know what you were going to say before you felt you had to say it. So unless there is any doubt or ambiguity in yourself as to the message you were trying to convey, I assure you that there is no need for you to feel that you have to clarify anything.

(And what was the message I was trying to clarify?)

You felt that our friendship was developing too fast, you may have felt that I was becoming “interested” in you, and that was simply not what you wanted. That’s fine. As a result, we understand that we will be seeing much less of each other. I, on my hand, accommodating character as I may be, am more than willing to oblige. I’m not here to bring conflict upon you, and it’s just as well and as easy for me to walk away from you, Cat, or anyone.

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

I walked away from the one person I can say to have loved in any enduring manner. I don’t think that is such a bad thing. I think it drove home the first lesson that was ever introduced to me: to not be fooled by appearances. Amina was an appearance. The love was not. The point of relevance here is that if I can walk away from Amina, I can walk away from anyone; especially at the request of the person I’m walking away from.

My friendships with both Cat and Emily are finished. It seems like the simultaneous demise of both friendships indicates that there was a connection between the two. I don’t think so. They were separate. Cat and I stopped being friends before I left for New Jersey, and Emily immediately after. If either hadn’t happened, it was entirely possible that my friendship with the other may have continued.

When I was going out with Shiho, Amina became nothing. But once Shiho was out, it became apparent, that all things equal, Amina is the one I love first, and the one I love most. The immediacy of Shiho simply distracted from the fact. Cat’s friendship outlived Nobuko, but I never stopped thinking that Nobuko was special. Cat didn’t sink in as much as Nobuko, and in the end, Nobuko was much more valuable to me than Cat ever was. What was special about Nobuko didn’t disappear once we stopped being friends.

I don’t feel sorry at all that Cat is gone, I don’t regret it. Cat kept her distance well enough and offended me enough times so that I don’t feel anything about our friendship ending. Nobuko, I really enjoyed and loved her company. Emily really was nothing and is hardly worth this mention.

1347 La Loma, Berkeley

April 1996

I've decided that Amina's birthday will do just fine.

I've reached the end of my rope. No hope left for anything. There are things that I guess I should sum up. There are probably things that are impossible to get other people to understand; I don't care about those things anymore, they don't matter.

Half of my trust left with Amina, the rest of it went with Shiho. I have no trust left. How can I live without trust? I can't imagine getting close to anyone, letting anyone get close to me, or being intimate with anyone in any way. Any defenses, precautions, or safeguards I can imagine to determine who I can trust or get close to, Amina and Shiho went right through them. I've gotten so desensitized that even if someone with potential appeared in my life, that wouldn't stop me. I won't keep living for hope, hoping that potential might be something substantive.

My life has no special value to me or anyone. My dying will pass like clouds and that is just the way I want it to be. I imagine how I would feel if certain people died, and I feel nothing. That's the kind of person I am - cold and unfeeling. Why should people extend feelings towards me that I wouldn't extend to them.

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

I auditioned for a band. An Asian American band. What the fuck is wrong with me? They would be the perfect vehicle for me. I liked their vibe, the writing immediately caught my ear, I liked what they were doing and how they sounded and I thought I could add to their sound. But when they mentioned they want complete dedication, that they rehearse three or four times a week and are thinking in the long term of recording, marketing, and touring, what did I do? I balked.

Why did I hesitate? Am I dead? Am I real? If they want me to join, shouldn't they make me want to drop law school in a second if demanded? Yes! What is wrong with me? I'm too scared to deserve to live; too scared to go for life and living; too scared to chase dreams and therefore live. If I don't jump at an opportunity like this, then I'm not cut out for music. And if I'm not cut out for music, what am I doing alive?

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

I told Vikki that I was going to kill myself and like an idiot, she went and told everybody. Fucking idiot. What incredible lows she has reached. It says so much of her character - like she has none. Fortunately, it was easy to use Vikki's own lack of credibility to cover my tracks.

What did she think she was doing? Did she think she was going up against me? Has she no conception that she doesn't stand a chance? That I will rip her to shreds? I can diffuse a suicide scare far more easily than she can drum one up and I can ravage her credibility in the process. Pitiful idiot.

I don't have to fuck with her mind anymore, the bare facts of this situation will fuck with it enough. I tell her I'm going to kill myself, she panics and tells everyone, I diffuse the situation and make her look like an idiot, and then I go do it anyway. That's pretty harsh.

Nobuko's reaction was actually pretty funny. She's been absent from my life for some months, and then all of a sudden she appears at my door dripping with concern. Then once I convince her that Vikki was twisting my words with her own neuroticism, she goes 'OK' and promptly disappears. I'm exaggerating, though. It wasn't quite like that and I appreciate Nobuko's concern. We're just not that close anymore. We're not close enough to care.

Actually, Vikki did me a big favor. She put everyone on notice that something is up. Even if I did diffuse the scare, the idea was pressed into peoples' minds. So when it does happen, it won't be a total surprise. The idea had been there. She has unwittingly turned this into an opportunity that I shouldn't pass up.

I can't wait to do it; to leave this existence behind; to find out what's next. I've tried. I've tried to be good, I've tried to find the truth, I've tried to live with integrity and be true to myself. I don't know if I've been successful, but I've tried. I've just come to the end of my rope and gone as far as I can with the limited tools I have.

Not that I think any future life is going to be any easier. By nature, it's going to be more difficult following a lifetime that ended in suicide. All I need is a lifetime in which every card in the deck isn't so perfectly stacked against me. I just need one fault in the challenges I will face to let my strength pull me through and not kill myself.

What could have happened to make me change my mind? So many things. None of them happened. No, things won't be any easier. But I need to clean this slate. I need to clear my mind and find a way to start over. I need help. I hope I can get it.

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

I love Amina. I loved her from the moment I saw her and cherish all the memories I still have of us when we were together. If only she could have loved me back. But that love is gone. I still have it, the feelings are still here, but it's not alive anymore. I'm not void of love or unable to love, but Amina took a lot with her, more than she knows.

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

Another piece of the puzzle emerged today. Well, first of all, these pieces aren't necessarily facts. I see them as signs, but I do not rule out the possibility that they are arbitrary factors that I'm reading into because I'm looking for them. Such as my parents pushing me to be a lawyer when lawyers have the highest rate of suicide among the professions. And my inexplicable attraction to Japan; a country that historically has been socially tolerant of suicide.

I was thinking back to eight years ago when I got stuck into a mental hospital because people thought I was suicidal. I wanted to do it back then, it's true. Through the years I haven't thought about it because after I got sent to the hospitals, my main goal was to get out. To get out, I had to convince people I wasn't suicidal. To convince people that I wasn't suicidal, I had to convince myself that I wasn't suicidal and argue my case. So I did. I talked and spun and made it perfectly logical how absurd it was to think I was truly suicidal. I covered my tracks and I covered my ass and it worked. I was convinced.

So what happened that cold night in February 1988 when they took me away? I had already cut my face open a few days prior, and I was already on notice that any expression of suicide would get me suspended. When I ran out of the dorm that night, it was my full intention to do it, I had reached, briefly, 100% commitment. The problem was that there was a time lapse between hitting 100% commitment and being able to execute my plan. The nature of the plan demanded that there be a time lapse.

I ran out of the dorm and set off north on Route 58 towards Lake Erie. Lake Erie, a several hours walk away is my guess. I don't know how long I walked, but eventually I stopped, turned around, and returned to Oberlin hours later; I couldn't go through with it. I vaguely remember the point where I turned around. The sky above me was pinkish-orange because the sky is always light when there is snow on the ground and clouds in the sky to reflect any light there may be. There were very few street lights, so the light was reflected from neighboring towns. I remember an empty house silhouetted, the sky wide and open reaching to all horizons. Ohio is flat.

I don't remember the walk back. I only remember that when I got back to Oberlin, I didn't go to the dorm, I went to Dascomb and called Darcy from the campus phone there. She told me it was safe to come back to the dorm. When I got there, they were waiting for me. I had been betrayed. They packed a few necessities and a few hours later I was driven by campus security to St. Joseph's hospital in Lorain, and admitted to Psychiatric Ward 4-D.

The piece of the puzzle? The piece of the puzzle is that I was heading towards Lake Erie. I don't remember ever really planning it in detail, that is just where I was headed - to the water. Today I have everything planned in detail, and it's still water, of course it's water! But the connection to that past time is something I'm reading into. Cat somehow knows that it will have something to do with the beach. I don't know where she got that from, but it was amazing.

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

People don't seem to realize that my life or death is not up for discussion. If I want to discuss it, I don't want to in order to find a reason not to do it. I don't want anyone to talk me out of it. I just want to discuss it intelligently, to make sure I know what I'm doing. To make sure I've thought of everything I need to and be given the credit that I have. In the end, it's still my decision.

If there was a time to discuss it, it was eight years ago. I don't want to talk anymore. I don't want therapy, I don't want people to assume that it's wrong and I shouldn't do it. My reality in this life has been formed the way it has and I don't make the same assumptions about life that everyone else makes. Especially about life.

It was smooth how I covered my tracks when Vikki shot her mouth off. It was a lot easier than it was eight years ago, when I was able to convince all the nurses in the hospital that the best thing for me was to go back to school. It was only because of Dean Cooper who, to the best of my figuring, made it clear to my doctor that I was not to come back that semester.

I learned early how to cover my tracks. Like in the ninth grade when I cut my arm so deep that I couldn't hide it and was suspended for a few days. A few weeks later, the family got a big laugh over the whole incident when I pointed out that if I was trying to kill myself, I would have cut along my veins and not across. Little did they know that I had just heard that day that the proper way to slash wrists was along the vein, and not across. I had no idea.

But I don't even know what was going through my mind that morning. It wasn't my first cut, I had been at it for several months at least. It was supposed to be a casual cut, but I didn't know that the knife I was using had been sharpened beyond what I had expected. It was before school. I remember my shock when I dropped the blade down on my arm and my skin split wide open and it took a moment for the blood to start flowing out. I still have the same reaction when I cut particularly deep: a moment of shock, a gasp, relax. I had to go to school, though, so I slapped a paper bandage on my arm and ran off to school.

It bled all day, then finally someone told the school nurse that someone was bleeding really bad. I got caught and was hauled off to the nurse's office. The 'rents were informed, I was suspended until a psychiatrist would sign off that I wasn't suicidal. Whatever.

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

I've been so anti-social. I just have nothing to say to anyone anymore and conversations always run down because I don't feel like talking anymore. I'm just not good company to anyone these days. What I have to express, I don't want to or don't know how to, and otherwise I have nothing to express. I'm not special to anyone. I don't think I would even believe it if someone came across as convincing that I am.

A year ago I thought Nobuko was a really special friend, and I thought that if problems arose, we could confront and discuss them to an end. Now I don't care enough about our friendship to put the effort into a confrontation and discussion. Cat is special now.

It was less than a year ago that I was ready to kill myself and fully planning on it. Everything was winding down at the same time, the semester ended, I finished my demo, did Bay to Breakers, broke up with joy, and SHAG completed its performances. The timing was perfect, it would have been a clean break if I left at that point. But then I was offered to move into this house, and that was the only reason why I didn't go through with it. But being offered to move in with Lisa and Nobuko had its own symbolism - renewal, re-start.

There is no such convergence of events now, but the feeling is stronger than ever before. I desperately don't want to be here anymore, I want to leave and move on and find what's next. I've exhausted all my options. Family is not going to change. I've given family so many chances that I've officially attained idiot status. People are a major disappointment; Amina, Shiho, friends, nothing special, nothing real. And music? The band I auditioned for showed me what I'm made of. I'm not hungry enough.

What else is there that would keep me alive, that I should live for? Remove family, relationships, friends, and music, and all I'm left with is an ordinary life, not worth living. Nothing here. No one home.

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

If I get into that band, I'll give it a shot and it will become priority over everything else, including law school. I will even move back to San Francisco to give it a chance. So I don't feel as disturbed at my balking at an opportunity. I'm not afraid about facing life and taking risks. What does this mean regarding killing myself? All this would have to assume I won't, but I don't know that I won't. It's just that I don't know that I will.

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

The band asked me to join. I don't know if that's enough for me to say I want to live, I hope not, but I'll give this a try. I'll still do it someday, maybe sooner, maybe later, but it's not imminent. It's suspended. No more dates set, no more waiting periods.

There was something compelling about getting into the band. They sounded enthusiastic about having me aboard, and talked about gigging and doing tours and recording, and they are even willing to accommodate my schedule. I'm giving it a chance and if it doesn't work, I can still leave. If it does work, I'm willing to take a leave of absence or quit school altogether. I'm willing.

I look to the future and I'm thinking that I should move back to San Francisco after our lease is up at this house. The rehearsal space is in Bayview-Hunter's Point, and the commute from Berkeley is hell. I'll move in wherever I can, since I won't have to worry about noise since all my equipment will go into the rehearsal space. I can move in with other people. And my car, I can return it to New Jersey. I don't need it. If they want it, they can have it. They can come get it. As long as they are out of my life.

As for friends, I don't know about Cat, but once I move out of here, it's the end of my acquaintances with Nobuko and Vikki. When we stop being housemates, we won't go back to being friends. That's just the way it is.

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

The band has rehearsed several times and I don't feel any better about my decision. I haven't lived a day that made me glad that I'm still alive. I'm not sure I'm fitting in with the band that well. They are a different culture. After my initial audition, they haven't been easily satisfied with what I've been playing, and neither have they been clear on what they want. So it's kind of frustrating. I'm over-trained for them. I'm more music, and they're more attitude. But what are we doing? Are we doing music, or are we posing? Good question.

As for killing myself, I'm still looking at the Summer, July or August. No more date-setting, though. Next time I decide that my life is over, I'm just going to do it without a waiting period. I still don't feel like getting out of bed every morning. It's not that I'm depressed about life, I just affirmatively want to leave it.

If my life actually does start getting better and I feel good about it overall, then that is a clear indication that I should go ahead and do it. Then I'll know for sure I'm not doing it out of depression and that I'm doing it as objectively as possible, because it is against my interest. It's just what I want to do.

1347 La Loma, Berkeley

I was trying to fall asleep but my mind was too active. For a while, I freely let images flash through my mind. I've always had certain images of myself which I felt reflected how I felt about myself or my situation, such as lying in a snow-covered field, or my body being pulled out of the Hudson. I wonder if people normally have these distinct images that reflect and correlate to how they feel or feel about themselves.

In my half-sleep, the image kept repeating. It is in Shiho's apartment in Japan and the sun is shining brightly, illuminating the room through the closed drapes. I am facing the door, away from the window, either walking or just standing. Shiho comes up from behind, places one hand on my shoulder, and as I turn around, I can see what she is about to do. I don't resist or react as I see the arc of her other hand come up. It is either her hand or something in her hand that slashes at my neck, cutting my head cleanly off.

I don't know why the image is at all freaky, after all I believe that anything she does is out of love. I hope that there will never be any hate between us. In all the years we've known each other, there may have been tensions, some questions, but never animosity. There has always been some degree of love, and that seems to be what has shaped my feelings towards her now. Each time I've seen her, I've loved her even more.

In one permutation of the image, she stabs me in the back, and as I turn around, she pulls the knife out and hands it to me. I plunge it into her and grasp her to me as I feel her feeling the pain. I press my lips to hers as we fall and die together.

The image stopped repeating and continued linearly. Somehow, we both die together. We are in stillness, no light, no darkness, just nothingness. I feel my existence and I feel Shiho there. We are able to communicate, we can hear each other's thoughts. I reflect upon death, how I am now dead; my body has been left behind and is in the world that I have left. My existence continues and I find it supremely fascinating.

Shiho and I reflect upon our situation and decide that we had better go and figure out what comes next. We are very happy about the fact that we are together, that we've taken a huge step in our path, our journey, and we are traveling it together as it was meant to be. She and I were meant to be together.

As we continue in a direction with only instinct guiding us, I reflect on how surreal the situation is and randomly think, "why can't I be in Tower Records". Suddenly I find myself in Tower Records. I get really excited and tell Shiho about this and she says, "What?!" I told her what I did and told her to just imagine herself in Tower Records, and she tried it and it worked, only she couldn't see me. I could see her looking around for me and she could still hear me, but she couldn't see me.

So I said, "Go look for me in the classical section," and I found that my movement wasn't at all restricted by gravity or what used to be physical objects and boundaries, and I was able to bounce over to the classical section in a flash.

It took her just a bit longer and when she turned into the aisle of the classical section, she saw me. We ran to each other and hugged and kissed and realized that we were the only ones in the store. That's when I woke up.

Nobuko and I went shooting today. She let me use her camera and film to just take pictures, kill the roll to see what came out doing what. It was fun. Afterwards, I pulled out the camera I took from Rob's room the last time I was in New Jersey, and for the first time an SLR camera wasn't a complete mystery to me.