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

Dear Mimi,
It's been a harrowing week that brought me to call my parents this past Sunday, a gesture that I think may have shocked my mom. I was walking around today at lunch, realizing that I still haven't come to terms with what happened in New York last week.

I'm still grappling with it; and even more of a revelation was that I was trying to come to terms with something and grappling with it. We are not just by-standers, witnesses to a historical event. This is an event that is affecting all Americans deeply; we can't just watch and then go on with our daily lives; we're trying, as a nation and as individuals, to absorb and understand what happened and all the ramifications of what happened.

As images continue to pour out of New York, they are getting etched in our collective memories and are demanding some kind of explanation or resolution that we may never be satisfied with. We did not just passively watch, given in horror, the images of the planes hitting the towers and of the Twin Towers collapsing, but we watch the images and replay the images and something in us, whether we are aware of it or not, I think, is trying to actively find some resolution.

The latest image that stuck in my mind is from a bystander with a video camera as the first tower came down. She was reluctantly pulled into a cafe as someone, maybe the owner of the cafe, forced her in and wouldn't let her out and blocked the door as she continued to shoot out the store window. As the debris rushed past the store, she finally obeyed the shouts to stay away from the window and as she continued to shoot, you can see how the dust and debris completely shrouds the daylight and it looks like they are in the cafe at night.

It's hard to come to terms with the reality that these things happened. That there were moments in the lives of the innocent people on board the planes when they realized that this was no ordinary hijacking that they had heard about in the news, happening to other people. Perhaps there were moments at the end of their lives when they realized they were on someone else's suicide mission, and this was the end of their lives. There would be no landing and negotiation of demands, no storming by commandoes to save them, no protracted ordeal. It's hard because their tragedy affects us so deeply, and we'll never know what they experienced.

But we do have go on, and ruminations do need to be kept in the background to whatever extent possible as they tend to be more philosophical than practical, even giving blood is difficult at this point. The foreground of our lives need to continue.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

People don't matter. They're not really here. Their reality is dependent on the value we subjectively give them. All existence is symbolic, illusion.

The emphasis that people place on their existence, calling it life, apportioning it such great importance, that's their subjective reality. This that surrounds us is the consistency of their lives. Their existence is all that they know. But the existence that each of us knows is just a speck of what makes up the Real.

Each and every thing that we think or say is testament of what we don't know, of our ignorance. Because with each and every thing that we say, an infinity is unsaid. Every word of expression stands in stark contrast of what is not expressed. With every consideration there is a world not considered. Yet with each and every thing we say, express, or consider, we think we are making some mark, are of some significance. Our physical existences are scratch marks on desert sands.

It's the divine male and female. What gets said is the tiny male, what is unsaid is the huge female. The known, visible male, the elusive, intangible female. The insignificant, material human male. The Real, unknowable, divine female.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

I had the greatest night tonight in years. I can hardly remember the last time I felt such wonderousness as I felt tonight. It was a rare reasonably warm day that melted into a rare reasonably warm night. I smelled Summer in the air, a scent that has occurred so rarely that I can’t even remember when I smelled it this Summer. Tonight was the full moon, the night that should be celebrated as the Moon Festival and being thankful for good fortunes. I felt I wanted to celebrate in my own way and find a way to be close to the moon.

I took off on my bike this evening for the Marin Headlands, doubting that I’d actually go all the way there, because whatever distance you go on a bike you have to be aware that you have to go that same distance to get home. I figured at some point I’d realize that if I went any further, the return trip would be too daunting to continue and I’d probably end up somewhere like Twin Peaks to watch the moon.

But I went, listening to the New Radicals CD that I recently got, and which turned out to be a perfect soundtrack for the ride. I headed down Church St., following the J Church tracks, did the zig-zag through the Duboce triangle area into the Haight and through the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park. I took the 10th Ave exit and cut all the way through the Richmond District to Lake Street, turned left and then right into the Presidio on 15th Ave.

It was absolutely gorgeous, but then it started becoming glorious. There was a section in the Presidio where there were no streetlights and tall redwoods overhanging and enclosing the road. I couldn’t see the road and I only knew where to go by the clearing up ahead lit up by moonlight. Not a soul in sight and I felt like I was flying through space.

I kept going, down Lincoln to the Golden Gate Bridge, to the catwalk where I had to go through a gate that they close after 9:00 except for bicycles. I crossed the bridge, pausing briefly to watch the moon and its reflection rippling on the bay and the San Francisco night skyline. Right when I got to Vista Point at the other end of the bridge, the CD ended. It was glorious.

I watched the moon from Vista Point for a short bit, but it wasn’t very satisfying. There were too many people, too many cars, too many cameras. It was too low, too far away from the moon. There was only one place to go from there, so I headed up into the darkness of the Headlands.

There were cars going up, but not many, not enough to be disturbing or distracting and my fears that it would be too dark to see the road were quickly allayed by the moon. All the roads were as clear as day and it was soothing to watch the shadow of my wheel spokes whizzing in the moonlight. Then at the final ascent, the road was closed to cars and from there I was completely alone. I got to the top of the Headlands, well, pretty darn close and the spread was unbelievable. And it was all mine and it was only me.

It was prayer and homage to the moon. It was being on the top of the world, it was being out of the world and looking at my life and what it has been. I used to live there and there and there. That’s Sutro Tower, I now live down the hill on the other side of it. There’s the entire stretch of Golden Gate Park; I ride that entire length to the ocean. Ocean Beach and the Seacliffs, stomping grounds? My whole life in the Bay Area was spread before my eyes.

The ride home was a little hard, but rewarding. I felt like I had touched something I hadn’t touched in a long time. It is a feeling that I love so much and it feels like I’m living my life for that feeling. It’s a feeling of vastness and being part of the entire universe. It’s almost always on Summer nights that I feel that. I wonder if it’s a feeling from a past life. Maybe like in the Japanese movie, “Afterlife”, you take one memory with you from this life into the afterlife.

Not a great movie, but I can take that basic concept and run with it. You can take a memory from this lifetime, but not into the “afterlife”, but into the next lifetime. Well, kinda the same thing. In the next lifetime, you’re always striving to touch that memory, that feeling, again. Perhaps it’s not the same stimulus that would trigger the feeling. But when you feel it, it resonates and you know it’s something much bigger than all that your life is.

That would also be a part of the “life is suffering” notion of Buddhism. Because the feeling is momentary, it’s like an intense deja vu that happens and then disappears without trace. When you have the feeling, you feel like you’ve attained something, but then it melts away into something you can’t even describe, much less share with other people. That to me is true suffering.

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., San Francisco

I ponder the Christian concept of original sin, that we are all sinners by our very existence, by the way we came about existing. Take away the Euro-moralistic tones inherent in the word "sin", and I think there is something also found in Buddhism.

Our being here on earth, our existence, is a "sin" - not to denote immorality, but rather imperfection. It's not because of being bad or doing wrong. But rather any stage of physical human existence is imperfect. Perfection being a state where physical being and attachments are transcended. It's not moral, it's an objective concept of perfection. Christians, due to whatever culture the concept was born in, called it "sin", but in Buddhism it merely denotes an imperfect state of being; and any state of physical being is "imperfect". That's not "bad", it's just fact.

If being in this world, conceiving this world, acting and interacting in this world, and affecting the world to be what it is on a micro and macro level, if all that is the result of our imperfection, then meditation and monks make a whole lot of sense.

Meditation, cessation of thought and emotion, concentration, discipline - it's all to some extent removal from our physical surroundings, trying to understand it for what it really is, rather than just accepting it and being a product of it and an actor within it; being pushed and pulled by the tides and eddies of human desire, impulse, and drive.

It moves us farther from the imperfection, and either literally or symbolically, actually or metaphorically, it moves us closer to "perfection" - the state that transcends this reality. And if nothing else, it will help us in our next life, for those who believe, to start off closer to perfection, or with a clearer idea of what perfection is.

Perfection is simply an objective fact, some condition found out there or within us, that is perfect only because we know it is perfect. It's not something that can be imposed on anyone else. It's not necessarily something that can be striven for (I'm not sure what I mean by that).

198 Shakespeare Street, S.F.

January 1997

So I made it to 1997. Just like I didn’t want to do. So much for a symmetrical tombstone bearing the dates 1969-1996.

Do I regret not having killed myself before the year was through? Now, nothing has changed except...I don’t particularly feel like dying. I feel stuck in the misery of existence.

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

I was in Taiwan for a week and a half. I went to visit Audrey and it was to my surprise and disappointment that she was not only unwilling to make time for me, but she didn’t even spend the free time she did have with me. I wouldn’t have gone there to inconvenience her brother and father, I went for her.

So it was a blow off, and I thought that was certainly the end of our acquaintance. I wasn’t going to let it show while I was there, but that would be it after I left. There was nothing more between us. But it turns out there was something between us and the reason for her avoiding me was acceptable.

Why do we meet the people we meet? Why are the people who enter our lives in our lives? In how many lifetimes have I met Audrey and in how many different relationships? How many types of relationships could we have been in to have gotten to where we are and become who we are now? What promises have we made to meet each other again and again? Maybe we’ve only met once before and have been searching for each other for god knows how long. Maybe our cycle of re-births are closer and we find each other every few lifetimes, maybe every lifetime. Attraction, gravity, extending to karma, pulling one another along with the other.

In this lifetime, we’re cousins, and for some reason, that is perfect. As cousins, we’re family, we always have that connection and can’t get away from it, but we also have distance, we can’t get too close. Maybe that dynamic is necessary because of something that happened in a previous lifetime. Maybe we need to heal something.

I thought it was Amina, she was central to this formulation. But what do I have with Amina now? Nothing. What do I want with her in any future lifetime? Nothing. Little. Nothing. Amina is nothing in the big picture.

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

Amina. I came across some pictures of her that I still have. I’m glad that I didn’t throw away every picture I have of her. Every time I come across her image, I’m struck. Something hits me, something stops. Who is this in this image that I loved so dearly? That’s the effect she still has on me; that’s what she meant to me.

I stare long and hard at the image, taking in her face, her hair, her eyes; this woman, that moment. It was real, that moment existed and it was frozen in time by a camera from a single vantage point. Time stretches before that moment and after. I keep staring at the image until it starts to become surreal and unfamiliar; the way I sometimes stare into a mirror until I start becoming unfamiliar.

Certainly she has changed, certainly she is no longer the same person I loved. I don’t even know what I loved anymore. So. I love an illusion. My love is something that got frozen in time like a photograph. It is something that no longer exists, is no longer real. What I love now has nothing to do with the physical reality of Amina that exists somewhere now. What I love is something in myself which preserves the memory of her that I loved. But it is not currently real. I don’t love something that is real. I love something that is no longer real except in myself. What I love about Amina now only has to do with myself.

So I can let go of Amina now, can’t I? Even if I meet her again, it would be different, she would be a different person. I wouldn’t react in the same way as I reacted when we were at Oberlin. I could meet her now as a stranger and not have lingering memories interfere with what is before my eyes. The Amina I loved is gone from reality and only exists in my heart; whatever it and she was, I’ve internalized. She won’t last beyond this lifetime. When I die, she and everything she was before to me will be gone.

I have to teach my heart to let go of Amina. But I’m always wondering whether she will enter my life again somehow.

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

Do I have promises with people to meet in subsequent lifetimes? To look for one another? If I do, do I have the right to unilaterally rescind them? If promises were made, they must have been based on something strong, something that transcends anything we might do in a single lifetime.

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

I have this memory to haunt me. The 70's is an odd decade to reminisce about when they were your formative years, but maybe any decade is.

I remember the family had a brown Dodge. I remember it in Winter more vividly. I remember Winters more vividly in general, maybe because I was born in the Winter. Cold, transient, but with something to look forward to.

I remember driving out on Rte. 4, the entire family, brothers and me as children, still in need of decisions made for us, in the back seat, me in the middle being the youngest. We would be going out to dinner.

Our parents had found a restaurant with a Western motif in Garden State Plaza, before they covered it. They weren’t too much into experimenting. Once they found a place or had it recommended to them by some friend, they would patronize it. They’re still like that, and I do that now out of instinct, though I do try to resist it. I remember the name of the restaurant being, “Bonanza”. The price was right and the food was good as I recall. I don’t remember how often we went, but we went repeatedly, and when they came home or called ahead from the office and announced we were going to “Bonanza”, we knew precisely what to expect.

What did we look like to the casual observer? Family of five; young couple, three young boys. I remember there was often a line, sometimes short, sometimes long. I remember taking trays and silverware and telling our mother what we wanted, which for what must have been years was the same thing. We’d slide the trays along past desserts, soup, and whatever else, until getting to the service area, hot off the grill, and to the cashier. Parents paid; I don’t remember once paying attention to the price. Then we’d go look for seats for the five of us. What did we look like this memory?

So now, in some food joint, maybe I see a family, parents with children, maybe just parent and child. I imagine I’m watching a memory in creation. Where will they be in 20 years? Will this scene be remembered by either of them? Will that father recognize or admit what he’s done? Will he know what he has done to her, what she has gone through? What he could have prevented if he’d been more of a father or continued to be a father as she grew up? 20 years from now.

What is it like to forgive someone who doesn’t even know he or she has done something wrong, someone who has been the source of...such things that parents can be a source of?

All they have on their behalf is a memory like a dream. A memory of a family scene, of detached tenderness and cloudy kindnesses, of sacrifices parents make. A memory with which I can compare them against how they are now. Same person, the sameness manifested only by a continuity of physical matter.

From then to now, from there to here, I’ve grown older than they have and in ways, I dare say that I am older. But then I must always have been older.

When was the last time they received a gift from their children? My brothers must have bought them stuff through the years. I never did. In 1980, returning from our first trip to Taiwan, we bought them a lot of stuff. They told us that we didn’t have to buy them gifts, save the money. They always told us that. On birthdays, mother’s day, father’s day, Christmas. So I never bought them anything since.

Would it hurt now, the next time I go to New Jersey, to bring a little something, nicely wrapped for each of them?

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

Normative matrixes. We are formed and informed only by our knowledge. Our knowledge is the extent and the limit to which reality exists. Our knowledge is the extent of our realities. A table isn’t hard because of the condensed matter that reality tells us it is, giving it density making it hard. A table is hard because that is the extent and end of our knowledge concerning it. It is an overriding belief and knowledge that pervades our existence from the moment we’re born. If it were possible to override that knowledge, to have a requisite doubt to question that knowledge, then a table might no longer be hard. My hand could go right through it, or it could be soft, or liquid.

It’s all Illusions. All normative matrixes, realities, are illusions except the normative matrix that recognizes and transcends the illusions. Then it wouldn’t be normative anymore. It wouldn’t be a matrix.

I can’t talk to people anymore. I can’t carry conversations anymore without getting bored. All my thoughts, the culmination of my experience and knowledge, has made my normative matrix, my reality, too different from other people. People make assumptions because of their normative way of perceiving the world. They make assumptions that I don’t make about my world, and it’s hard to talk to them because we’re not even starting with the same background experience and information.

Different normative realities. How many people can’t carry a conversation; who are anti-social? How many people are in mental hospitals because of their inability to accept and adjust to society and the normative matrix that the majority generally share?

I bought a book of suicide notes and the person commentating on the notes makes these very specific assumptions about what is the norm. It bugs me how he’ll comment on something, but how does he know what they know or don’t know or think or don’t think. The assumptions get tedious after a while. What arrogance to state that the writers of certain notes are not aware of the permanency and finality of death. What arrogance to state that death is permanent and final.

Most people live on this planet to live on this plane; to do stuff which entails living on this planet. I’m not here to live on this planet. I’m alive, but my purpose isn’t to do the things that entail “living a life”. That itself is a normative matrix. I’m not sure why I’m here. I’m just window shopping. I’m just an observer. When I’ve done what I’ve come here to do, I’ll go. If I’m still here, that means I haven’t done it yet.

I’m not living on this planet the way other people are living on it.

Oh my god. It just struck me that I’ve never held a job before because that is the way I want it to be. It has less to do with the ‘rents themselves. It probably has more to do with why I have the parents I have. The reason why I’ve never held a job may be because I do not want to occupy myself with some mundane occupation just to live from day to day.

My life is perfect the way it is. If I had a job, if I was earning my own money, I’d be completely different. I wouldn’t have this tension, this anger, this misery, this insecurity, all the things that identify this particular me that I’m attached to. If things were different, other things would identify me, but it wouldn’t be me. Maybe a different me, but that’s not me.

That’s so funny. The idea that my parents are perfect, and have been all along, is funny. It’s perfect that this realization comes as it is getting easier to tolerate them, to let go of everything that happened in the past. Last summer it happened that I felt free from their influence, no longer threatened. It just felt right to let it go and be civil towards them. I really should be grateful to them. Now I have a much better understanding why.

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

So I talk to the ‘rents and there is communication, there is subject matter, there is dialogue. Whereas before I contributed nothing and made them struggle for any piece of information. Many uncomfortable silences. How do I feel about it now?

Something else in me is backlashing against this newfound familial harmony. Once the source of the problem is identified and neutralized, then there is nothing to blame the problem on. Then it becomes necessary to deal with the actual problem itself. The source is gone, the blame is gone, the problem still exists. The problem I have with existence. I still have to deal with this ocean around me. What would I be like if I wasn’t like this?

Someday I’m going to leave on my own terms. Sometimes I feel a touch of regret when I realize the ‘rents will be clueless as to why. It’s a little sad, but they have so much to learn. I think my regret partly comes from what I don’t know about them. I don’t know how hard their lives have been, I don’t know what impact my actions will have on them.

I was leafing through a book of photographs and there was a picture of a daughter at her mother’s funeral and she was in such grief. That is so out of my experience, I just don’t understand why death should evoke such a strong reaction of grief. I have so much to learn, too. Hopefully not.

I don’t know. This gets complicated. My reaction to death is pretty accepting, but what if I had married Amina and then she died. Then I can start to imagine such grief. Where would I plant her garden? So what happened between Amina and me was perfect, too?

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

None of the actual scenery in the dream was from conscious memory. It was a sunny Winter day after a heavy snowfall in New Jersey or New York. I was driving with Liz in her car. I don’t remember any of the dialogue. We drove up a road that went up a hill with frozen lakes on either side. A skyline, which may have been New York, was behind us. At the top, we turned right and then right again into an area that was like a parking lot or a rest area. Lots of cars were there and people were milling about.

The dream shifted and there were metal stairs leading down from the parking area and it felt like New York City, still Winter. The next part I don’t remember so well. I lagged behind going down the stairs, I think I was doing something with my camera, so Liz had gone off. At the bottom of the stairs, there was a man about whom I don’t remember anything except that he was old and we struck up a conversation. In retrospect, he reminds me of Tony. Eventually he let me take pictures of him which I did. That’s all I remember along with having to change film, XP2, and taking pictures without a lens, just the body of the camera.

I went to New Jersey in August. Things have changed. I actually felt comfortable there. I walked around a lot. I went down Palisades Avenue to Dwight Englewood and then to Englewood. I went through Flat Rock Brook where I always used to go for solace and to get away. Everything seemed a lot smaller than I remember, starting with the sidewalks. Compared with hikes in California, Flat Rock Brook was puny. I went down to the Hudson River Boat Basin and walked along one of my old running paths on top of the Palisades. Not much of a run.

Everything was suddenly so detached. That is why it was so comfortable being there. It meant nothing that I grew up there and the familiarity of the landscape didn’t unnerve me or haunt me as it did in other times that I had returned. It felt like it was all behind me. Finally.

It was the same thing with being at the parents’ house. And strange about the parents, they really didn’t affect me much at all. Part of me just didn’t care anymore; most important, I felt that they couldn’t touch me anymore. They were no longer a threat. They didn’t have any control over my life anymore. Even their insidious suggestions, hints, and moralizing about my future had no affect over me. It was liberating.

Whereas before, I felt threatened by how they intended to control my life, now I could ignore it, laugh at it if I wanted to. The result was that I could tolerate them, even be civil and patient with them. As far as I’m concerned, I’m untouchable. They cannot touch my life anymore. They can do or say whatever they want, it’s my choice to ignore or walk away from them. I even allowed them to do nice things for me and I let myself appreciate it.

Even in phone calls since then, I don’t get irritated. If they talk about things I don’t care to listen to, I hold the phone away. In the same way as I often do, but without the annoyance, without the seething. I even contribute to the topic and try to explain when they don’t understand. Unlike before when I knew they wouldn’t understand what I would say and I would steamroll it by them anyway and let them ignore the fact that they had no idea what I had just said.

Apparently it’s making them happy. Good for them. Too bad they have no idea why it’s happening. It’s not because we’re getting along, it’s because they really, really do not matter to me anymore. Then they call and tell me if I want a new camera, I should just buy one and they would pay for it. Nice try, that’s them trying to gain control without even knowing it. That is how they used to assert their control. It doesn’t work anymore. Besides, I don’t have a job yet, they’d be paying for it anyway!

If I’m nice to them over the phone, I get rewarded. I jump through the hoops, I get a snack-treat, go buy yerself a camera. Nice try. I actually felt comfortable with it, too. I didn’t get off the phone with the usual antagonism. If they feel happy, that’s great. Truth in their reality is no longer my concern. When they try to lasso me with money or a new camera, it simply misses. Or rather, the lasso doesn’t exist anymore, it’s no longer part of my reality. They throw the lasso and I’m already in a different dimension. Maybe I always have been and I’m just starting to realize it.

I feel at peace about killing myself. I feel like I’ve released a load of bitterness and resentment. I feel now that I won’t kill myself filled with bitterness and hate. I can feel it as an attempt to accomplish something useful. I don’t feel that I need to because my life is unbearable. Now I can not want to, but still do it because it’s important.

My past is still here. My past is still a road that has led me to where I am now, the person I am now, and the damage is still here. It still needs to be healed. Becoming a ghost and addressing the source of my torment in that form is one way to do it. There may be a way to go about it while staying alive, but I’m not sure about it.

There is something very selfish about staying alive which would make me feel unsatisfied with my life. And I might have the chance to heal my soul, but it would leave the parents in their unenlightened, material delusion. It would be no benefit to them either. It would only reinforce their misconceptions and fool them into thinking that their lives were successful.

They are wrong. Their values and priorities are all wrong and it would be a disservice to them to give them the benefit of doubt to let them emphasize money and material gain. It would be wrong to passively allow them to be complacent with their position in society.

247 19th Ave., #2 San Francisco

My life is pulling me apart. I think and I keep running into red lights and dead ends. I feel more strongly that I'm in something similar to what I went through seven years ago. It's in the way I feel and the way I think. It's like I'm hearing voices. I hadn't noticed that before. It's not an actual voice talking to me, but I'm always thinking and something is always going on. I'm constantly distracted, like everything around me is communicating with me, but in an oppressive way. It's like a voice. That's how it was before and it wasn't like this when I was out of it.

The thoughts are the same. Situations run rampant in my head and run their course to their inevitable dead end. I hate my condition and I can't imagine any condition I would like better. Nothing changed even when I got clear, I just ignored it better. I don't want to die, but I don't want to live. I don't want to get old, but there is a twisted attraction to it. Forty years maybe. Shit.

I can't make decisions about my life. I weigh both sides of all issues and it leaves me no where and drives me batty. Over and over I think that I can't go through this again, and then for a glimmer I think, "why not?".

I think about civilization and all its accomplishments. I see all the people moving in society with their purposes and goals, each constantly taking a single step into a future which holds something unknown. Existence pushing at an outer envelope of time, of the unknown, of the future. Everything is so organized and so defined, but I see no purpose in it all. Why exist at all? Why exist like this? So many people take existence itself for granted, and why not? They exist, it's granted. I wonder what it would be like if people didn't think that way.

There is such a huge difference between the material and the spiritual. Both are here, most choose to live strictly within the material. Just a job to do. What an empty existence.

I hate myself and I hate my life. Life sucks. I can't deal with existence, I can't deal with being me, with being something, anything, anyone. I hate this brain, I hate these eyes, I hate this person. My hair drives me nuts, my kingdom for one good hair day.

247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco

What am I here to know?

From my experience, seeds of learning get planted at one point, and then traveling through the timeline of life, I reach another point where an experience helps the learnings germinate and grow. Other seeds don't have a catalyzing experience and they never develop significance.

Sometimes we're lucky enough to have an opportunity to have another experience that lets us see the original seeds; the source of the learning, because usually when we have an experience we learn from, we don't remember the source of the learning, why a particular experience has significance to learn from it. A lot of the seeds may be from early childhood or previous lives. This is just from my own experience.

I learned this from the PBS "Cosmos" series by Carl Sagan. That was just the metaphor for the learning. I had watched the series a long time ago. Subsequently through the years I learned stuff. And then I watched the series again and realized that the seeds for a lot of what I learned was sourced in the ideas from Cosmos.

I think I'm here to learn to not be affected or saddened by what I know are just appearances. Amina made it really difficult, but it was all just appearances. I can forgive it, I can let it go. I can try to love her despite my instinct to hate her. I know full well that deep down I do love her. What she did was shitty, I hate what she did, but someday I may learn to not even hate that. She is not characterized by just one of her actions.

Just appearances. A woman called Amina. A person called Amina. I will never get back together with Amina, I may never let her back into my life again. It's all appearances, what matters is what is not seen. Our souls and spirits. They transcend these bodies and this lifetime. If the magnetism between us, the gravity that attracted us into each others lives is what is real, then we will meet each other again. We may not remember this, but it will happen.

Our time together in this life. It was just a scratch on the surface. We only spent a minuscule amount of time with each other in this lifetime. It has been shattered. And in that time, I loved her so deeply.

Her name is vile in my mouth now. "Amina" is just an appearance. Remove the name, remember the heart, the images, the impact. Not the actions. I learned from her and if what we touched in each other transcends lifetimes, then there will always be other lifetimes. This lifetime is insignificant, just appearances. Just one time out of countless times we have met, known, and loved each other. This lifetime is pain, what has happened in this lifetime is what was meant to happen in this lifetime.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

I wondered aloud to Pasha recently how peculiar my life is. Why is it exactly the way it has ended up? It's so easy for it to have been so different. Small differences could have had such huge impacts. Things that were a given but could so easily have been different.

"Tender Mercies" was on TV. I had forgotten about that movie. It had been on the film syllabus for Prof. Morris's class. What a perfect title, so fitting to catch that on TV now.

Why couldn't the 'rents have been just a little bit different? How different would I be if they had just shown just a bit of concern, had a bit of presence, tried to be parents beyond providing the basic necessities? How different would my life be now?

Instead, the relationship is so specific, and I'm caught in a trap where I hate them, but I can't break away from them. They rule my life despite my personal rebellion, but I can't make things happen in my life. How would I be if they were open-minded, aware that another reality exists, knew more about the world around them? What if they weren't so greedy and attached to the rule of money?

Why Amina? What happened with her was so specific. She was the one. She is the person I've been looking for all my life and might have looked for through other lives. I've always believed that once I was in a relationship that I really wanted to be in, when I had found the one, I would be able to stay in it no matter what obstacles we faced. All I had to do was show my love and true emotions and be honest with them and her. Communicate and commit. It didn't work. None of it worked, I couldn't do it. She broke it off and I still don't understand it.

The 'rents and Amina, the two biggest influence on my life and they together have landed me so specifically where I am now, wallowing in my own self-destruction. Nothing left inside but alcohol and liking it that way. I could be a true alcoholic and drink myself into stupors, become emotionally unstable and numb at the same time, not be able to control it, become dysfunctional so that it could be pointed at and called a problem. That could be me.

Day eighteen

Reality kept shifting as I listened to Nobuko. A subtle phasing in and phasing out that no one else noticed.

The concept of three dimensions became arbitrary; one of many. Substance stopped being differentiated and the table, the coffee cups, the tea kettle, the wall behind Nobuko, the sculptures on the wall behind Nobuko, Nobuko, Elizabeth, and Linus, all the substance were the same thing, and I could have reached out and my hand would have gone right through Nobuko.

I hadn't seen Elizabeth for a year and half. We had dinner in the Richmond and ended up in a cafe near Nobuko's place.

I was thinking about Nobuko's life and her goals and Elizabeth starting a "real life" in a job that she wanted. Also Lisa trying to carve out her life direction.

People treat life so differently from how I treat life. I don't take these physical surroundings as reality. I exist in it and I am identifiable in it, but that identity has many contained, recognizable characteristics. I get into situations and react in a manner in accordance with those characteristics. That is me just for the moment.

Sometimes I get sucked in and treat my surroundings as real. I get wrapped up in negative things and the impact is so great that I have no choice but to involve myself into the fabric of the situation. But I never react in extremes to great fortunes or misfortunes. Things that should make me ecstatic or throw me into despair don't. The knowing that all things are impermanent is deeply ingrained in me for some reason.

I am at an age where people have goals, and people need a way to get to those goals - they have jobs. They go day to day inserting themselves into the wheels of society to make it turn. For their participation, they get paid. With the pay, they take care of sustenance, invest some for the future, and with the rest they do their best to keep themselves amused. Find friends, go to movies, go to dinners, have discussions. How mundane! Years go by, they age, soon enough they'll be thirty and looking at their lives against the scale of their expected lifetimes. And it all ends at some point. "Life" goes on.

I don't want to go through it. Not alone. Just for myself it would be a waste. Keep myself alive, amuse myself nightly. And now, I feel so alone. Death or monastery. I've learned all I need to in the material world and to continue living this life in this form would be fruitless.

The R&B band rehearsed this morning in a studio in San Francisco. I'm feeling less secure about my playing and my time, but I'm just doing what I can. I'm not thrilled about the bass player. She's not very good at leading a band, but it's her project and she's not going to relinquish control to anyone. I also feel no connection with the guitarist who is quiet and doesn't emote a whole lot.

Day eight

Out of school, out of work, out of luck. Days are lazy. No hope for a future in the material world, less and less desire to be in it. Society, life, and living, concepts that confound. All these images, all these symbols, all to be rejected from being considered real. It's a game to pretend that it's all real, and it all really ends at death. And if death really is the end, why hasten it? The game can stop being fun. The game can stop having meaning. It can stop having meaning that is brought on by living it.

Earning a salary, going day by day, doing what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life. No more exploration brought on by the time on my hands spent alone.

It confounds me so to live life accepting its symbols while walking on a path that only leads to the end of those symbols as I had come to accept them by just living life.

It confounds me so to be wrapped in this skin, having all the objects and people on the outside and me on the inside. To see, feel, sense, and have everything individualized with separate identities. Objects, the sound of rain, the brightness of light, the secrets of darkness.

I went with Nobuko this evening to check out a band called "Alphabet Soup" at a bar in San Francisco called "Café DuNord", on Market Street near Church. We got there about 8:30 and they didn't come on until 10:00, so we drank beer. I, of course, had been drinking all day with nothing else to do. We discussed our lives and apprehensions about the future. What we usually talk about, it seems.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

Rain drops form from water vapor in clouds. That’s creation.
They fall from the clouds when they become liquid. That’s birth.
The whole journey down, spiraling and falling, plummeting and screaming, that’s living.
That’s the exciting part. When the drop is an individual and experiences everything individually and is completely distinguishable from all the other drops falling in the storm. The storm is life itself.
It hurts to hit the ground from that height. That’s death, jarring, painful and conclusive.

SPLATT!! Wherever the raindrop meets the earth, it joins with other drops, it becomes one with the collective whole again. As water, it flows down gutters or into the earth or into streams and rivers. The drop doesn’t exist anymore as it did while it was falling. The substance is there, but the form is gone. As a body of water, everything flows easily and there are no problems, no distinguishing between this drop and that drop.

Time comes eventually and inevitably that the water evaporates. It loses all form and its substance becomes too thin to discern. In this amorphous state, all memory is erased. All memory of the collective mind is lost. All memory of the previous journey is lost. All memory of the previous storm is lost.

It’s still part of the collective mind, but without form and without substance. It’s a transformation period, unknown and indescribable. It’s an important part of the journey, the cycle to go back up into the sky, be created, born, live, and die again.

The storm is life. That much is known. Living is tears, that much is also known.

1844 7th Ave., Oakland

We never discussed what it means to really live. I guess it was all somewhere implied. The stuff of senses. The stuff of what reaches our senses. They are only symbols, signposts, indications for us to define our surroundings. What happens when you remove the meanings? To sense and not define.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I’ve started dabbling in martial arts again and I’ve re-discovered what a source of spiritual energy they are. I remember back at Oberlin how after sessions I would feel like I was just floating on air. They just put me in a completely different space. But that feeling must be understood in congruence with the Lotus Sutra. Even though I wasn't reading the Lotus Sutra back at Oberlin as intently as I am now, I remember the feeling and I have to bring it back to the Lotus Sutra.

So many of the things that are now so identified with Buddhism like Zen, meditation, and martial arts have become divorced from the original religious context. They can't have meaning unless they are brought back to an understanding of Buddhism as a religion, the doctrines as revelation, that which has been revealed. Not just insight, that which is within, but revelation, that from without. And the realization that it is all one and the same thing. What modern Western culture identifies as Buddhism is mostly bastardization. It's so shallow, it goes against the grain of Buddhism by needing to identify and pigeon-hole the symbols and the cultural context.

I don't know what I'm saying, there is just something so wrong about the way modern Western society views Buddhism. These are just thoughts and I wouldn't argue for them or try to convince anyone else of them. I have nothing to contribute to rectify what I criticize. I can't even communicate it. Bottom-line: what the hell do I know about anyone else's views and opinions and perceptions.

This past week has been pretty good. Only one minor fight with the 'rents. How do I convey how much I hate them, how do they instill in me such a complete disregard for my own life. They suck meaning out of life. How can they be so clueless and still have developed their manipulative technique to such a high level? Everything they do feels like tentacles winding their grip into my nerves and bones, climbing up my spine. They are like cancer, incessant and invading, and the only way to cure it is to cut them out. Or I can bombard them with radiation. Whichever works.

At the same time, I feel that they have no substance, no reality to me. They have their effect, but they themselves are insubstantial. No real significance, only a superficial impact, nothing that touches my core being. Even though it is a core being they helped shape.

I keep control over my spirit and my well-being. I have control over my body. Cutting reminds me that I do with it as I please and they can't do anything about it. Cutting gets me through the brief, intense flashes of hatred and helplessness and reaffirms my control. It is shallow empowerment, seemingly self-defeating, but it does the job.

I've told Amina about the cutting. It felt good, but it also helps that she doesn't sympathize. I've always dreaded people finding out and feeling sympathy or trying to feel the pain for themselves and not knowing what to do with it. Amina keeps her distance and doesn't have that natural reaction of sympathy. I appreciate that in her. But what does she do with the information?

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I dug out video tapes of the series "Cosmos" hosted by Carl Sagan that Tom recorded in the early '8O's. It's fascinating going back to that stuff because I watch it now and I don't listen to the science, I listen to the religion within what Carl Sagan presents as science. I'm involved in reading the Lotus Sutra and the ideas I get from that inform how I interpret what Carl Sagan is talking about.

When I first watched "Cosmos" years ago, it was like planting seeds of ideas. Then my education and experience informed how the seeds would germinate and grow. It's a nice circle. My education and experience determined how I would understand the seeds. But without the seeds, there would be no ideas to grow. It just so happened that my education and experience had a religious resonance. If my education and experience were different, I might be interpreting the ideas borne of the seeds differently.

The ideas in "Cosmos" fit in so well with what I've learned through religious ideas. In the first episode, the series is presented as a journey on the "ship of imagination, unfettered by our concepts of time and distance". I read spiritual release in that. It's a goal. It's God. God is the ship of imagination. God is the vehicle.

Carl Sagan presents the ship coming to Earth from deep, deep space that appears to be a conceptual exercise. We approach from billions of trillions of light years away. Mind-boggling numbers. Numbers so large that we brush them off because it's easier to do that than try to conceive of them. Numbers so large that they exceed the limits of our cognition so we resign ourselves to their enormity and avoid appreciating them. That's exactly what's in the Lotus Sutra. Eons and eons of lifetimes so lengthy as to be unable to be captured in words.

There is also the idea of the cycles of universes. This actually isn't from "Cosmos", but it's a scientific idea with a parallel in religion. They say the universe began with the Big Bang, when all the matter in the universe was contained in an infinitesimally small dot in a time and space we can't even conceive of, and it "exploded" and began it's expansion in time and space as we know it. The question that plagues astronomers now is whether there is so much mass in the universe that it will stop expanding and collapse upon itself in a cosmic Big Crunch, or if it doesn't and will continue to expand forever.

The universe, by astronomers' estimation is some 16 billion years old and still expanding. It has been expanding for an enormous amount of time and will continue to expand, and when it begins to contract, it will be contracting for an enormous amount of time.

To inject my religious understanding, I conclude that there is enough mass in the universe that it will eventually stop expanding and begin to contract. It's a cycle. These huge time frames fit right in with the Lotus Sutra and the time frames it marks for existences of major Buddhas. Reigns, if I must.

I must note, though, what Carl Sagan said in reference to Ptolemy. Ptolemy "proves that intellectual brilliance and genius is no guarantee from being dead wrong" (!) Carl Sagan comes through with the one-liner.