In the end, when the 'rents are shoving cash into my face, it's hard to resist and refuse. But at least I made my principled stance that I don't need their money. The interesting thing is that Tom gave me money, too, and I consider that a gift. That's because Tom totally doesn't have to in order to maintain our relationship. He's showing love by giving me money because that's what he has learned, but giving me money or not has no bearing on our relationship. Nothing happens as a result of him giving me or not giving me money. I accept that expression of love from him.
But if the 'rents don't give me money, I don't visit them. I would put down my own money to visit Tom, but not the 'rents. The 'rents made it hard because they used, abused, manipulated, and controlled with money, and tried to call it love. I still don't accept their money as love, except on paper. The reality is that they've always wanted something back for all the money they've invested in me. Not entirely unreasonable if you think about it, but I'm not a business. I'm not an asset.
Showing posts with label the 'rents. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the 'rents. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
Saturday, September 02, 2000
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
We visited Bob in Philadelphia this evening. Waste of time. I had a bit of a breakthrough, though. I'm not accepting money from the 'rents anymore. They were getting on my nerves about what I should have done when I hurt my back. I just wanted them to shut up and made the point that they don't have to pay for it. They're not the ones paying for it, so shut up. The bitch responded, "No, we're not going to pay for it".
They give money as an expression of love, they admit it, they've said as much. So an issue about money is an issue about love. It's all or nothing, and if they're going to make an issue about it, fuck it, I don't want their love/money. I never wanted or needed their love in the true sense of the word, but if they decide to withhold what is their expression of it, fuck it. If they ran out of money, that means they run out of love. Conversely, if I don’t need their money, I don’t need their love.
I made the evening tense after that. Driving home they tried to make amends, inquiring about the price of my plane ticket. When they told me they would pay for the ticket, I told them no, don't bother, I could afford it. Right at that point, police lights start flashing behind us. They got a ticket for making an illegal left turn. Years ago I would have snidely told them that they need the money more than I do. And they do need the money more than I do. They make ten times more than I do and they need the money more than I do.
They give money as an expression of love, they admit it, they've said as much. So an issue about money is an issue about love. It's all or nothing, and if they're going to make an issue about it, fuck it, I don't want their love/money. I never wanted or needed their love in the true sense of the word, but if they decide to withhold what is their expression of it, fuck it. If they ran out of money, that means they run out of love. Conversely, if I don’t need their money, I don’t need their love.
I made the evening tense after that. Driving home they tried to make amends, inquiring about the price of my plane ticket. When they told me they would pay for the ticket, I told them no, don't bother, I could afford it. Right at that point, police lights start flashing behind us. They got a ticket for making an illegal left turn. Years ago I would have snidely told them that they need the money more than I do. And they do need the money more than I do. They make ten times more than I do and they need the money more than I do.
Tuesday, August 25, 1998
email - Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Dear yu-feng,
This is my last day here and I haven't done Sompong's exam yet. I've wasted the whole week here.
I visited my brother in Philadelphia on Sunday, but as I was getting into the car, I learned that my parents changed their plans and were also going. That really ruined my trip. Visiting my brother with my parents is completely different from just visiting him myself.
But family is just not worth getting mad or defensive about. With family, everything is set in stone and no one is going to change, so there's never a better way to handle problems. The only alternative to getting mad and defensive is ignoring it.
superficial lives they lead, empty, lifeless. They've spent their entire lives making money money money so that they can enjoy it now in their old age. NOW they're starting to have fun. They travel twice a year, they have their entertainment center at home, sing karaoke, do dancing, and it is just so pathetic. I don't know about the dancing, but the singing and the music is just so empty, no emotion, no heart. What you do your whole life is the center of your life. For them it was making money, and it shows in what they do now, it's all money centered. They have the disposable cash and what they do now for fun is an expression of spending it. Singing is not about singing, dancing is not about dancing, traveling is not about traveling, it's all about spending money that they've worked so hard to earn.
I feel like I was just an obligation, an expectation. They had to raise kids because that's what is expected of them. Do I love my parents? Hell no. I appreciate them and what they've done, I respect what they do and won't criticize them or show disapproval to their faces, but I certainly don't love them and won't cry when they die. I'll go to the funeral because it's an obligation and to pay respects and say thank you. But just because you're grateful, doesn't mean you love them.
All they've given was money. No knowledge, wisdom, or heart. They can't tell me what to do or pressure me. They can talk all they want, they can tell me what I should do, what they want me to do, where I should go, who I should be with, and it has no effect on me.
Series VIII, Roll 11 (Pentax ZX-5n, Tri-X): Walk along the Palisades, Englewood Cliffs
Allison Park, Englewood Cliffs:
Frame 3 - Not to be confused with Allison Park in Englewood, which is adjacent to the Flat Rock Brook Nature center.
Frame 4
Frame 5
Frame 6
Frame 7
Frame 9 - This fence borders Allison Park. For high school track, when we ran to the George Washington Bridge along the Palisades, we would run past the park and along this fence which led to the path that continues to the bridge.
The path to the bridge:
Frame 10
Frame 11
Frame 12 - the path goes by a gas station off the Palisades Parkway. People have fallen of the cliffs at this point and died when the restrooms at the gas station would be locked and they'd go looking for a place to go after dark.
Frame 13
Frame 15
Frame 18
Frame 19 - They developed that area on the Hudson for recreational use. I don't remember what was there before or if that large piece of land was even there. It may be landfill. Growing up in the area, I went down to the boat basin relatively often, and there is a path along the Hudson that leads to where that land is. I remember walking down that path, but I don't remember what was at the end.
Frame 20 - It's strange how after September 11, 2001, any image of the World Trade Center takes on new meaning.
Frame 21
This is my last day here and I haven't done Sompong's exam yet. I've wasted the whole week here.
I visited my brother in Philadelphia on Sunday, but as I was getting into the car, I learned that my parents changed their plans and were also going. That really ruined my trip. Visiting my brother with my parents is completely different from just visiting him myself.
But family is just not worth getting mad or defensive about. With family, everything is set in stone and no one is going to change, so there's never a better way to handle problems. The only alternative to getting mad and defensive is ignoring it.
superficial lives they lead, empty, lifeless. They've spent their entire lives making money money money so that they can enjoy it now in their old age. NOW they're starting to have fun. They travel twice a year, they have their entertainment center at home, sing karaoke, do dancing, and it is just so pathetic. I don't know about the dancing, but the singing and the music is just so empty, no emotion, no heart. What you do your whole life is the center of your life. For them it was making money, and it shows in what they do now, it's all money centered. They have the disposable cash and what they do now for fun is an expression of spending it. Singing is not about singing, dancing is not about dancing, traveling is not about traveling, it's all about spending money that they've worked so hard to earn.
I feel like I was just an obligation, an expectation. They had to raise kids because that's what is expected of them. Do I love my parents? Hell no. I appreciate them and what they've done, I respect what they do and won't criticize them or show disapproval to their faces, but I certainly don't love them and won't cry when they die. I'll go to the funeral because it's an obligation and to pay respects and say thank you. But just because you're grateful, doesn't mean you love them.
All they've given was money. No knowledge, wisdom, or heart. They can't tell me what to do or pressure me. They can talk all they want, they can tell me what I should do, what they want me to do, where I should go, who I should be with, and it has no effect on me.
Series VIII, Roll 11 (Pentax ZX-5n, Tri-X): Walk along the Palisades, Englewood Cliffs
Allison Park, Englewood Cliffs:
Frame 3 - Not to be confused with Allison Park in Englewood, which is adjacent to the Flat Rock Brook Nature center.
Frame 4
Frame 5
Frame 6
Frame 7
Frame 9 - This fence borders Allison Park. For high school track, when we ran to the George Washington Bridge along the Palisades, we would run past the park and along this fence which led to the path that continues to the bridge.
The path to the bridge:
Frame 10
Frame 11
Frame 12 - the path goes by a gas station off the Palisades Parkway. People have fallen of the cliffs at this point and died when the restrooms at the gas station would be locked and they'd go looking for a place to go after dark.
Frame 13
Frame 15
Frame 18
Frame 19 - They developed that area on the Hudson for recreational use. I don't remember what was there before or if that large piece of land was even there. It may be landfill. Growing up in the area, I went down to the boat basin relatively often, and there is a path along the Hudson that leads to where that land is. I remember walking down that path, but I don't remember what was at the end.
Frame 20 - It's strange how after September 11, 2001, any image of the World Trade Center takes on new meaning.
Frame 21
Friday, January 31, 1997
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?
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?
Sunday, December 29, 1996
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.
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.
Saturday, September 21, 1996
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.
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.
Sunday, September 15, 1996
198 Shakespeare St., San Francisco
September 1996
So this is what it feels like knowing that I will never fall in love again. Attraction is just a game. Falling in love is not in my range of emotions anymore. It feels empty. Numb. Interesting. Love is so important.
Turns out that Susan was interested in me way back last Winter. She didn’t think the feeling was reciprocated and it never went anywhere. I actually did have a crush on her. All for the better; we weren’t exactly compatible. I never quite knew where she was coming from. Apparently neither of us were any good at showing our feelings or letting them be known.
I don’t think I can love anymore. Even hearing about Susan, it was just a fanciful thing. A tickling. There’s no way that I could have ever really fallen in love with Susan. We are too different. Just as I could never have fallen in love with Ana Claire.
Maybe I do know what love is. It’s not anything about a person. I still love Amina two and a half years after the fact and our last contact, and considering what happened between us, that’s an incredible statement. I can’t make a list of things about a person that would make me fall in love with her. Anything I can place on a list, I’ve already found and have been disappointed or betrayed by already. There are things I could like about a person, things that would attract me, interest me, but nothing that would necessarily make me fall in love with that person.
Love just happens. When it’s there, you know it. I just know I won’t ever love anyone again. I’m too damaged in myself, much too uncomfortable with who I am to trust myself or like myself being with someone else.
***********************************
Yukiko moved in at the beginning of the month. We get along alright even though she’s kind of conservative and hangs out with mostly white people. She’s one of those Asians.
If we didn’t have to live with each other, we wouldn’t even associate. She’s a lot better to live with than Jeff, who owns this house. He’s also conservative, but in addition he’s also a typical male. He's a male stereotype. He also has a good side, generous, but he's definitely not the type I would hang out with. Yukiko is clean, considerate, open and amiable. Personal feelings aside, she’s a good housemate.
***********************************
I’ve stopped cutting since I’ve moved back to San Francisco. I also haven’t had the drive to set any dates. Since August. The desire to set a date just hasn’t crossed my mind. As part of my personality, however, it’s always there.
Things have been changing. I feel that I have to kill myself, it’s part of my destiny and responsibility. It is what I’m supposed to do, not what I’m supposed to avoid. It’s not a test, but what is supposed to happen.
Sometimes I feel that suicide is not so attractive an option, but in those times I feel even more strongly that it is something I have to do. Those are the times, strangely enough, that I’m most certain that I should kill myself; when I really feel that I don’t want to. Suicide is not a desire that I should succumb to, but an end that I have to learn to accept.
I cannot die in peace. My soul is too tormented for that. I don’t want to. I think that when I die, I’ll spend some amount of time as a ghost of who I am now. Released, with no judgments. But present, damned, chained. But I think I will be reborn. I think I’ve been “good” enough and true enough to myself that I won’t be reborn in a worse position. But I hurt too much and I’m too attached to that hurt that I can’t advance. I have to settle and understand these issues before that happens. I can’t even rest and take a break from the cycle.
Maybe my role as a ghost will be to teach my parents something. They are the ones I’m to “haunt”. I think that my soul will only start to heal once I’ve expanded their minds beyond their narrow conception of life. If I can change them in some way, set them on some sort of path of realization, instead of the smug complacency in the comfort of their materialism, then I can go forward. The longer I live, the less time I’ll have to accomplish it. I need to heal. I’m a long ways from becoming what I want to become.
I want to kill myself for that reason. Because it is my destiny and it may put me in a position where I can do something that would give my life some meaning. Even though it is very unattractive that I care about my parents enough that I’m trying to set them on the right path.
So this is what it feels like knowing that I will never fall in love again. Attraction is just a game. Falling in love is not in my range of emotions anymore. It feels empty. Numb. Interesting. Love is so important.
Turns out that Susan was interested in me way back last Winter. She didn’t think the feeling was reciprocated and it never went anywhere. I actually did have a crush on her. All for the better; we weren’t exactly compatible. I never quite knew where she was coming from. Apparently neither of us were any good at showing our feelings or letting them be known.
I don’t think I can love anymore. Even hearing about Susan, it was just a fanciful thing. A tickling. There’s no way that I could have ever really fallen in love with Susan. We are too different. Just as I could never have fallen in love with Ana Claire.
Maybe I do know what love is. It’s not anything about a person. I still love Amina two and a half years after the fact and our last contact, and considering what happened between us, that’s an incredible statement. I can’t make a list of things about a person that would make me fall in love with her. Anything I can place on a list, I’ve already found and have been disappointed or betrayed by already. There are things I could like about a person, things that would attract me, interest me, but nothing that would necessarily make me fall in love with that person.
Love just happens. When it’s there, you know it. I just know I won’t ever love anyone again. I’m too damaged in myself, much too uncomfortable with who I am to trust myself or like myself being with someone else.
***********************************
Yukiko moved in at the beginning of the month. We get along alright even though she’s kind of conservative and hangs out with mostly white people. She’s one of those Asians.
If we didn’t have to live with each other, we wouldn’t even associate. She’s a lot better to live with than Jeff, who owns this house. He’s also conservative, but in addition he’s also a typical male. He's a male stereotype. He also has a good side, generous, but he's definitely not the type I would hang out with. Yukiko is clean, considerate, open and amiable. Personal feelings aside, she’s a good housemate.
***********************************
I’ve stopped cutting since I’ve moved back to San Francisco. I also haven’t had the drive to set any dates. Since August. The desire to set a date just hasn’t crossed my mind. As part of my personality, however, it’s always there.
Things have been changing. I feel that I have to kill myself, it’s part of my destiny and responsibility. It is what I’m supposed to do, not what I’m supposed to avoid. It’s not a test, but what is supposed to happen.
Sometimes I feel that suicide is not so attractive an option, but in those times I feel even more strongly that it is something I have to do. Those are the times, strangely enough, that I’m most certain that I should kill myself; when I really feel that I don’t want to. Suicide is not a desire that I should succumb to, but an end that I have to learn to accept.
I cannot die in peace. My soul is too tormented for that. I don’t want to. I think that when I die, I’ll spend some amount of time as a ghost of who I am now. Released, with no judgments. But present, damned, chained. But I think I will be reborn. I think I’ve been “good” enough and true enough to myself that I won’t be reborn in a worse position. But I hurt too much and I’m too attached to that hurt that I can’t advance. I have to settle and understand these issues before that happens. I can’t even rest and take a break from the cycle.
Maybe my role as a ghost will be to teach my parents something. They are the ones I’m to “haunt”. I think that my soul will only start to heal once I’ve expanded their minds beyond their narrow conception of life. If I can change them in some way, set them on some sort of path of realization, instead of the smug complacency in the comfort of their materialism, then I can go forward. The longer I live, the less time I’ll have to accomplish it. I need to heal. I’m a long ways from becoming what I want to become.
I want to kill myself for that reason. Because it is my destiny and it may put me in a position where I can do something that would give my life some meaning. Even though it is very unattractive that I care about my parents enough that I’m trying to set them on the right path.
Wednesday, September 06, 1995
1347 La Loma, Berkeley
The goal of my life is to not commit suicide. Over the past few lifetimes, I've been dying by suicide, and for my path, suicide is wrong. It is arbitrary that our society also says that suicide is wrong. It could have been anything, it could have been eating pork or mushrooms, or foot fetishes. And every time I've committed suicide, I've put more distance between God and me. "God", as usual, being fully open to interpretation.
The elements and pieces of my life fit into place. My lifelong affinity with Japan. Even before meeting anyone from Japan, I remember back in the '70’s, making lists of Japanese vocabulary with my grandmother and trying to memorize them. I wonder if this attraction has anything to do with Japan historically accepting suicide as a societal expectation in certain situations. It wasn't outright condemned. As if I'm trying to get closer to a societal shelter to try to justify what has been metaphysically identified as something I should not do.
But my desire to commit suicide is also directly linked to the 'rents. If they died, I think my motivation to die would be gone. Suicide is part of my life, it is part of my identity, it is not merely something that is done; there is a philosophy about it. Then how can it be at all linked to the 'rents?
One link: the irony that they're pushing me into the field of law. I heard that lawyers have the highest suicide rate among the professions. It's like they're giving alcohol to a recovering alcoholic thinking that they're giving lemonade.
Hmm, all I have to do is not kill myself for however many years. How hard can that be? We go about our lives, day by day, and whatever comes gets us through to the next day. How hard can it be to just keep doing that? It's what I've been doing thus far. But some times it is really hard to not, because thinking of doing it is so easy and so natural. And looking at the span of years before me and living through them is daunting and discouraging. What a miserable life it would be to just resign myself to living just for the sake of living, for the sake of not committing suicide.
The elements and pieces of my life fit into place. My lifelong affinity with Japan. Even before meeting anyone from Japan, I remember back in the '70’s, making lists of Japanese vocabulary with my grandmother and trying to memorize them. I wonder if this attraction has anything to do with Japan historically accepting suicide as a societal expectation in certain situations. It wasn't outright condemned. As if I'm trying to get closer to a societal shelter to try to justify what has been metaphysically identified as something I should not do.
But my desire to commit suicide is also directly linked to the 'rents. If they died, I think my motivation to die would be gone. Suicide is part of my life, it is part of my identity, it is not merely something that is done; there is a philosophy about it. Then how can it be at all linked to the 'rents?
One link: the irony that they're pushing me into the field of law. I heard that lawyers have the highest suicide rate among the professions. It's like they're giving alcohol to a recovering alcoholic thinking that they're giving lemonade.
Hmm, all I have to do is not kill myself for however many years. How hard can that be? We go about our lives, day by day, and whatever comes gets us through to the next day. How hard can it be to just keep doing that? It's what I've been doing thus far. But some times it is really hard to not, because thinking of doing it is so easy and so natural. And looking at the span of years before me and living through them is daunting and discouraging. What a miserable life it would be to just resign myself to living just for the sake of living, for the sake of not committing suicide.
Sunday, March 19, 1995
247 19th Ave., #2, San Francisco
I'm confused. I'm not sure what's going on. This can't be another cycle of what I've gone through before. This is not 1987-88 over again, it can't even be an analogy of that point in my life. I've grown since then, my view of life is different, and apart from the problems, I'm not the same person now as I was then.
But I can't really assess the differences between then and now because I don't remember too clearly what it was like back then. Maybe years from now I might see them as identical, when I get out of this and see clearly again.
What kept me from dying back then? Being numb? Not a very good reason. I don't want to be numb this time around if I have to go through those problems again. But I am more mature now and I have knowledge that I didn't have back then. It's just different. On the other hand, I'm more confident now in acting on my abilities, and if I make a decision, I'm more likely to carry it out and not equivocate and wallow in my misery. I wouldn't let myself live through what I went through before. My being alive now is a result of my inability back then. I'm glad that I didn't die back then. I wouldn't regret it if I did, but...I'm just a little glad.
It crosses my mind that I'm not at a point that is analogous to 1987-88, but perhaps a point even earlier, 1985 and thereafter when a series of events led to a loss of my support group. My brother and his friends graduated and went to college, Shiho left for Japan, Mark left Dwight for another job. There was that stupid thing with Rebecca. The isolation began during my Junior year and was complete by the time I was a Senior.
I feel like I've lost my support group, those vital, life-giving relationships that seemed so solid and so important to my well-being; suddenly vanished. Graduating from Oberlin, breaking up with Amina, distancing from Diem, Vikki, Luyen and everyone else. But Amina is different from Rebecca. Rebecca didn't do anything but remain inaccessible. I never hated Rebecca and slowly she just became nothing.
It has been hard living with this hate towards Amina. It has been hard living with the hate I have towards the 'rents, but that has been a competitive hate, something necessary for me to be who I am and keep going. I trusted Amina. I never trusted the 'rents. They have always been the enemy. Amina was completely different. Amina was a betrayal. Ironically, the 'rents could never betray me.
It's moot whether this situation is analogous to 1985 or 1987. If this is a cycle repeating itself, no thanks, I have no desire to go through it again. If nothing redeeming happens soon, I'm leaving. The 'rents called and it's getting critical that they get out of my life.
I let a lot of things out to Joy last night. I can't say it felt good. More like a relief. At least she has a better idea where she stands in my life. She has a warning. If she ignores it and remains blind, then it's her fault and it shows how dysfunctional we really are.
I told her that since graduating, I've completely lost the friends who comprised my support group and that I have none now. I tried to imply that I derive no support from her and she is not a source of emotional, moral, or mental support. I don't think it's unreasonable for her to have gotten that. The spark is really gone, nothing really happens between us. It was bound to happen.
But I can't really assess the differences between then and now because I don't remember too clearly what it was like back then. Maybe years from now I might see them as identical, when I get out of this and see clearly again.
What kept me from dying back then? Being numb? Not a very good reason. I don't want to be numb this time around if I have to go through those problems again. But I am more mature now and I have knowledge that I didn't have back then. It's just different. On the other hand, I'm more confident now in acting on my abilities, and if I make a decision, I'm more likely to carry it out and not equivocate and wallow in my misery. I wouldn't let myself live through what I went through before. My being alive now is a result of my inability back then. I'm glad that I didn't die back then. I wouldn't regret it if I did, but...I'm just a little glad.
It crosses my mind that I'm not at a point that is analogous to 1987-88, but perhaps a point even earlier, 1985 and thereafter when a series of events led to a loss of my support group. My brother and his friends graduated and went to college, Shiho left for Japan, Mark left Dwight for another job. There was that stupid thing with Rebecca. The isolation began during my Junior year and was complete by the time I was a Senior.
I feel like I've lost my support group, those vital, life-giving relationships that seemed so solid and so important to my well-being; suddenly vanished. Graduating from Oberlin, breaking up with Amina, distancing from Diem, Vikki, Luyen and everyone else. But Amina is different from Rebecca. Rebecca didn't do anything but remain inaccessible. I never hated Rebecca and slowly she just became nothing.
It has been hard living with this hate towards Amina. It has been hard living with the hate I have towards the 'rents, but that has been a competitive hate, something necessary for me to be who I am and keep going. I trusted Amina. I never trusted the 'rents. They have always been the enemy. Amina was completely different. Amina was a betrayal. Ironically, the 'rents could never betray me.
It's moot whether this situation is analogous to 1985 or 1987. If this is a cycle repeating itself, no thanks, I have no desire to go through it again. If nothing redeeming happens soon, I'm leaving. The 'rents called and it's getting critical that they get out of my life.
I let a lot of things out to Joy last night. I can't say it felt good. More like a relief. At least she has a better idea where she stands in my life. She has a warning. If she ignores it and remains blind, then it's her fault and it shows how dysfunctional we really are.
I told her that since graduating, I've completely lost the friends who comprised my support group and that I have none now. I tried to imply that I derive no support from her and she is not a source of emotional, moral, or mental support. I don't think it's unreasonable for her to have gotten that. The spark is really gone, nothing really happens between us. It was bound to happen.
Thursday, August 04, 1994
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
It was a perfect week with Joy. I've never been good at expressing positive feelings or when I'm happy, so I won't try to describe how Joy makes me feel. Always the comfortable air. I have such clear images of her already. Her warmth, her smile, the empathy, and the communication.
We spent most of the past two weeks together. I'm glad for this New Jersey break to breathe and put it all into perspective. It was good to force a pause. I was concerned that it would get old for her, that she might get bored with over-exposure or would have to return to her responsibilities and priorities.
Not only to force a pause, but come to the East Coast. The sky and the air is so different here, not to mention the deeply embedded memories. It forced a reality check. There is my life there, but it is my past here. Being here where everything is so naturally and intensely familiar, while realizing that my reality, what Joy is a part of, is something completely different. The California sky and the California air. Not so intense, not so natural or familiar, but definitely real. It's mine, too. The 'rents have no idea about it. It's much more real than here.
Late afternoon, a sunny, hazy day, the sun still high in the western sky; the Berkeley marina, the calm waters of the Bay; the Bay Bridge stretching towards the San Francisco skyline. Rows of cars parked and people enjoying the marina. Joy and me. Sitting together on a rock, not saying much, not having to say much, sitting as close to her as I dare. I couldn't ask for anything more.
I visited Vikki in Boston and things were great. We have been developing our friendship into new grounds. More caring, more vulnerability. It's a little weird, but I like it this way a lot. It's hard to shake the form of friendship we've already carved with our teasing and tormenting, the joking which always ends up at her expense. She hitched a ride with me back down to New York since she got a call from her parents the day I was leaving, and she needed to come to New York.
Things have been satisfactory with the 'rents. I've barely spent any time with them. I haven't had to endure going out to dinner with them as I expected I'd have to. The one time we had set a time to go out, I couldn't get home in time from New York because of a fire in the 181st St. subway station. By the time I got to their house, they were all ready to scamper out to go dancing.
They pursue the usual questions and issues that bore me. My responses are always the same, but they still ask. To show they care? Whatever. Do I plan to move back East after school? I don't know (no fucking way). All you have to do is graduate and get certification. Yea, I know (right, fat chance).
I'll be glad to be going home tomorrow. It hasn't been so bad here. A little refreshing. A little disturbing at how familiar it all is; at how easy it was to adjust to being back here. It has been a nice little fantasy trip down memory lane. I can't wait to see Joy again. We're going to get together on Saturday morning for a couple of hours before I take her to the airport. She's going down to L.A. to visit her parents.
We spent most of the past two weeks together. I'm glad for this New Jersey break to breathe and put it all into perspective. It was good to force a pause. I was concerned that it would get old for her, that she might get bored with over-exposure or would have to return to her responsibilities and priorities.
Not only to force a pause, but come to the East Coast. The sky and the air is so different here, not to mention the deeply embedded memories. It forced a reality check. There is my life there, but it is my past here. Being here where everything is so naturally and intensely familiar, while realizing that my reality, what Joy is a part of, is something completely different. The California sky and the California air. Not so intense, not so natural or familiar, but definitely real. It's mine, too. The 'rents have no idea about it. It's much more real than here.
Late afternoon, a sunny, hazy day, the sun still high in the western sky; the Berkeley marina, the calm waters of the Bay; the Bay Bridge stretching towards the San Francisco skyline. Rows of cars parked and people enjoying the marina. Joy and me. Sitting together on a rock, not saying much, not having to say much, sitting as close to her as I dare. I couldn't ask for anything more.
I visited Vikki in Boston and things were great. We have been developing our friendship into new grounds. More caring, more vulnerability. It's a little weird, but I like it this way a lot. It's hard to shake the form of friendship we've already carved with our teasing and tormenting, the joking which always ends up at her expense. She hitched a ride with me back down to New York since she got a call from her parents the day I was leaving, and she needed to come to New York.
Things have been satisfactory with the 'rents. I've barely spent any time with them. I haven't had to endure going out to dinner with them as I expected I'd have to. The one time we had set a time to go out, I couldn't get home in time from New York because of a fire in the 181st St. subway station. By the time I got to their house, they were all ready to scamper out to go dancing.
They pursue the usual questions and issues that bore me. My responses are always the same, but they still ask. To show they care? Whatever. Do I plan to move back East after school? I don't know (no fucking way). All you have to do is graduate and get certification. Yea, I know (right, fat chance).
I'll be glad to be going home tomorrow. It hasn't been so bad here. A little refreshing. A little disturbing at how familiar it all is; at how easy it was to adjust to being back here. It has been a nice little fantasy trip down memory lane. I can't wait to see Joy again. We're going to get together on Saturday morning for a couple of hours before I take her to the airport. She's going down to L.A. to visit her parents.
Monday, February 28, 1994
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.
"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.
Thursday, January 13, 1994
Day two
As I hung up the phone, I thought I felt an angel blow across my temple and remove the weight and intensity of what had just happened. Everything would be alright. Something will guide me to my truth, as long as I remain sensitive to the guidance and not let myself be clouded by emotions and impulse. In the sea of love, there are no shores, all there is to do is drown.
The decision to withdraw from law school was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make about my life. I was making it final, setting it in stone. I was leaving law school, going completely against the 'rents, saying goodbye to my safety net, climbing out of a deeply cut family groove. As much as I hate the 'rents, I found the ties that bind to be chains.
I walked into Dean Hughes's office after waiting in the lobby for half an hour contemplating my resolve. She wasn't the hard-nosed bitch that l perceived her to be previously. She was down-right professional.
"How may I help you?" she asked as she closed the door.
"I would like to withdraw," I answered without sitting down. I could tell she was taken off-guard, leaning over to push the door shut. She regained her posture and hesitated to fully take in the meaning of what I said.
"You're a . . . first year student?" she asked, having an idea but not the fact.
"That's right," I replied. I had already broken from my script in which I was supposed to inform her of my name and year immediately. At least I made an impression walking into her office announcing that I wanted to withdraw.
"Well," she began as she moved behind her desk, "is there a reason, or is it something you want to discuss, or . . . have you made your final decision?".
My brain almost froze. I struggled to rise to the occasion. I run important encounters through my mind a zillion times beforehand because I'm never good at them when they happen. It never helps.
"Well, I...", I diverted my eyes to the right and recovered, "I'm going through some serious family problems," I said quietly, "and I'm also having a lot of trouble in a relationship. I just know that if I have to deal with those problems and to have school work on top of that, it would just be too distracting for me to do as well as I would...require of myself." Standards? Why did I bring standards into this? Idiot. "I just know that the stress of juggling and balancing everything would be too much to handle. I don't want to leave school, but..."
"Would you consider taking a leave of absence?" she asked. Bingo!
"Is that an option? Yea, I would definitely do that if possible." She reached over into a drawer and pulled out a form. From that point, I didn't care what she said. She was going to give me a leave of absence and she was going to process it herself on the spot. I figure in retrospect that if I went in asking for a leave of absence, she would have asked more questions and required more proof to justify it. But announcing that I wanted to withdraw, I guess, was all the justification she needed. Students are money, and if not this semester, there's always next.
I don't know what she may have thought about my reasons. What are the worst possible scenarios that she could have imagined to fit the descriptions of "family problems" and "troubled relationship"? I didn't lie, I feel the crises justified leaving school, but if she knew the actual details of what was going on, I doubt that she would have authorized a leave of absence. Who doesn't go through these problems? But if they were serious enough for me to want to withdraw, they were enough for her to give me a leave of absence.
She left the office several times while I filled out forms for a leave of absence and to drop all my classes. She signed all the forms to make them official and to have my tuition refunded, and she told me what I had to do to get back in next Fall.
"I hope you are able to work out all the problems and I hope to hear from you later," she said sincerely.
"Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I know the problems are resolvable, they just need time," I replied.
"I understand."
I left the building floating and in disbelief. I had a safety net under me. If nothing worked out, I could always return to law school in the Fall. Amina criticized me for always having a safety net, and said it was about time for me to not have it. Sometimes it's better not to have one. She may be right, but what the hell does she know about my life?
The decision to withdraw from law school was probably one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make about my life. I was making it final, setting it in stone. I was leaving law school, going completely against the 'rents, saying goodbye to my safety net, climbing out of a deeply cut family groove. As much as I hate the 'rents, I found the ties that bind to be chains.
I walked into Dean Hughes's office after waiting in the lobby for half an hour contemplating my resolve. She wasn't the hard-nosed bitch that l perceived her to be previously. She was down-right professional.
"How may I help you?" she asked as she closed the door.
"I would like to withdraw," I answered without sitting down. I could tell she was taken off-guard, leaning over to push the door shut. She regained her posture and hesitated to fully take in the meaning of what I said.
"You're a . . . first year student?" she asked, having an idea but not the fact.
"That's right," I replied. I had already broken from my script in which I was supposed to inform her of my name and year immediately. At least I made an impression walking into her office announcing that I wanted to withdraw.
"Well," she began as she moved behind her desk, "is there a reason, or is it something you want to discuss, or . . . have you made your final decision?".
My brain almost froze. I struggled to rise to the occasion. I run important encounters through my mind a zillion times beforehand because I'm never good at them when they happen. It never helps.
"Well, I...", I diverted my eyes to the right and recovered, "I'm going through some serious family problems," I said quietly, "and I'm also having a lot of trouble in a relationship. I just know that if I have to deal with those problems and to have school work on top of that, it would just be too distracting for me to do as well as I would...require of myself." Standards? Why did I bring standards into this? Idiot. "I just know that the stress of juggling and balancing everything would be too much to handle. I don't want to leave school, but..."
"Would you consider taking a leave of absence?" she asked. Bingo!
"Is that an option? Yea, I would definitely do that if possible." She reached over into a drawer and pulled out a form. From that point, I didn't care what she said. She was going to give me a leave of absence and she was going to process it herself on the spot. I figure in retrospect that if I went in asking for a leave of absence, she would have asked more questions and required more proof to justify it. But announcing that I wanted to withdraw, I guess, was all the justification she needed. Students are money, and if not this semester, there's always next.
I don't know what she may have thought about my reasons. What are the worst possible scenarios that she could have imagined to fit the descriptions of "family problems" and "troubled relationship"? I didn't lie, I feel the crises justified leaving school, but if she knew the actual details of what was going on, I doubt that she would have authorized a leave of absence. Who doesn't go through these problems? But if they were serious enough for me to want to withdraw, they were enough for her to give me a leave of absence.
She left the office several times while I filled out forms for a leave of absence and to drop all my classes. She signed all the forms to make them official and to have my tuition refunded, and she told me what I had to do to get back in next Fall.
"I hope you are able to work out all the problems and I hope to hear from you later," she said sincerely.
"Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. I know the problems are resolvable, they just need time," I replied.
"I understand."
I left the building floating and in disbelief. I had a safety net under me. If nothing worked out, I could always return to law school in the Fall. Amina criticized me for always having a safety net, and said it was about time for me to not have it. Sometimes it's better not to have one. She may be right, but what the hell does she know about my life?
Sunday, November 07, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
I don’t have to struggle too much to remember the feelings from less than a year ago. It’s no struggle at all realizing what has happened in the past year. Some memories are so striking and so unbefitting my life that I can’t believe it’s been real. How suddenly the floating dream of my life became a nasty reality.
Less than a year ago, I resolutely absolved any responsibility or feelings of guilt in how I might deal with law school. I will feel no guilt as I plan to withdraw and not tell them. I will feel no guilt as I sit on their money, trying to find new paths and new opportunities for myself. I will feel no guilt for doing what’s best for myself, when it is clear that I am the only one who can do what’s best for myself.
They bear the full responsibility for their own losses. The loss of their money is the result of their failure to foresee the futile results of their endeavors. Whatever intentions they had is no excuse for their short-sightedness and blatant disregard of . . . reality.
How can they have missed so much? How could they have missed what was right before their eyes? It’s so sad. They missed their children growing up. Times have changed and they are clueless, they are only interested in the one constant of making money. They who take life for granted. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve pity or mercy. They don’t deserve any concern or consideration.
My leaving law school will be no vindication for them. All they’ve done is try to keep me on a single narrow path and to be what they want me to be. I’ve always tried to run down my own path. That is what Japan was all about, yet they were still able to whisk me up like a child trying to run away and put me back on the path they wanted me to be on; a path in which they are interested only for themselves.
My life is a path. However I may try and however I may fail, I do have an idea of how I want to end up as a person. I know what I want to retain of my dreams and self-esteem and view of the world. Law school has nothing to do with any of that. I have to follow my heart and my dreams. Maybe I’ll never fulfill them, but if I don’t walk my own path, there is absolutely no chance and no worth to this life.
Less than a year ago, I resolutely absolved any responsibility or feelings of guilt in how I might deal with law school. I will feel no guilt as I plan to withdraw and not tell them. I will feel no guilt as I sit on their money, trying to find new paths and new opportunities for myself. I will feel no guilt for doing what’s best for myself, when it is clear that I am the only one who can do what’s best for myself.
They bear the full responsibility for their own losses. The loss of their money is the result of their failure to foresee the futile results of their endeavors. Whatever intentions they had is no excuse for their short-sightedness and blatant disregard of . . . reality.
How can they have missed so much? How could they have missed what was right before their eyes? It’s so sad. They missed their children growing up. Times have changed and they are clueless, they are only interested in the one constant of making money. They who take life for granted. They don’t deserve it. They don’t deserve pity or mercy. They don’t deserve any concern or consideration.
My leaving law school will be no vindication for them. All they’ve done is try to keep me on a single narrow path and to be what they want me to be. I’ve always tried to run down my own path. That is what Japan was all about, yet they were still able to whisk me up like a child trying to run away and put me back on the path they wanted me to be on; a path in which they are interested only for themselves.
My life is a path. However I may try and however I may fail, I do have an idea of how I want to end up as a person. I know what I want to retain of my dreams and self-esteem and view of the world. Law school has nothing to do with any of that. I have to follow my heart and my dreams. Maybe I’ll never fulfill them, but if I don’t walk my own path, there is absolutely no chance and no worth to this life.
Friday, October 29, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
I can’t do it. It’s not about stress, I just don’t have the type of aptitude or mindset to get me through the requirements of law school without suppressing essential elements of my personality.
I am going to withdraw after this semester. I won’t be attending law school next semester. I think I will still be able to feel good about myself, find a way to fill the days. I will take great satisfaction in knowing this is a manifestation of hatred towards the ‘rents. They are so fucked up and out of touch. It’s unbelievable.
I dream of the day I will drop out. Then I’ll tell the ‘rents. After Amina and I are together and have some idea what we can do. Find a place for the two of us. Find my way out of this grave I’ve dug for myself.
I am going to withdraw after this semester. I won’t be attending law school next semester. I think I will still be able to feel good about myself, find a way to fill the days. I will take great satisfaction in knowing this is a manifestation of hatred towards the ‘rents. They are so fucked up and out of touch. It’s unbelievable.
I dream of the day I will drop out. Then I’ll tell the ‘rents. After Amina and I are together and have some idea what we can do. Find a place for the two of us. Find my way out of this grave I’ve dug for myself.
Thursday, October 14, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
Amina is coming tomorrow! I’m so excited, things have been so discouraging these past two weeks, and Amina will make things all better. At least for a little while.
In my life, shades of things being good overlap with shades of things being awful and they somehow exist together. I view my surroundings through a filter of things being good or things being awful. Neither is dominant, but one is dominant at any one point.
I haven’t made any friends or acquaintances at school. It’s no wonder. I’m intrigued by the material, but that’s all. I’m fascinated by it and I’m curious about it, but unlike everyone else, I don’t view it as a tool or a skill that I’m developing to use in a career. I don’t worry about it, but I do feel the constant pressure of being there.
I exercise the thought of dropping out at the end of the semester, either before or after exams. I wouldn’t tell the ‘rents and I’d chill for the next half year just doing music and living off their precious money. I’d save the tuition money and send it back after I get a job. I’d wait to get a job until after Amina’s graduation so that I can go to it.
I don’t care about wasting the ‘rents’ money, it’s not a consideration anymore. I’ll drop out whenever the time is right and the thought of wasting money shouldn’t even cross my mind. But as long as I’m foreseeing dropping out after Amina graduates, I’d might as well pocket the $7000 tuition that would be going to waste.
For now, I wait for Amina. I can’t wait until she’s here again. The past two months since I saw her last have been grueling and unbearably slow. She stopped writing, and although it doesn’t play on my insecurities as it might have months ago, I wish she could find time to write.
Things will be just fine between us. I’ve finally reached a point of maturation that I think I can make this work. It was in my last year at Oberlin that I grew the most and the seeds of maturation were formed. I was immature then and I still was through this past Summer. The problems between Amina and me were what made the seeds open, and whatever I learned from senior year can start helping me work through problems with Amina now.
My memories still go back to that year. It’s still so vivid in my mind. It was the most meaningful year of my life in retrospect. It is significant that Amina wasn’t there for half of it. It was good that she wasn’t there. The memories of my room in Third World House, and Hiromi and coffee, and Luyen, cold, love, struggle, Tetris, Southern Comfort, the soles of my feet, Diem, skeletons, the language lab, communication. Oh God, the language lab.
I remember reading the Platform Sutra to Hiromi when she was sick. Sleeping in her bed when she went to Japan for break. Wearing her purple jacket. I remember how my desk was set up, how my room was set up, the broken window. And all that coffee. Hiromi sunk into me much more than I ever admitted or realized. Our times were so tender, but she just wasn’t there for me, she wasn’t what I needed. I never felt that she cared.
If I could go back and watch any point of my life, I think I’d go there, that semester. I was so wrong. I was so wrong about Hiromi and Luyen, that’s why it is so significant that Amina wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of the mess. She wasn’t a witness to my impropriety. But she was the one I loved first and most through it all. It was a tragic learning experience, and Amina had to be kept out of it.
But how could things have been different. Would I have broken up with Hiromi if it weren’t for Luyen? How far would it have gone with Hiromi? I can imagine staying with Hiromi. Eventually marrying her? Beautiful name, Hiromi.
It’s all gone now. I’m in California, where Amina and I had joked about going to when we first met. And Amina and I are now together and we are faced with realities. We are forced to face what we will do for the rest of our lives. If Amina and I can’t make it work, there’s always the monastery. Always the monastery. Another seed that was planted senior year.
Shiho and I officially broke up. Finally. During our last conversation before she went back to Japan from Chicago, she mentioned that her longtime friend and photo club chum was interested in her. I did what I hope I would have done if confronted with the same situation and Amina wasn’t in the picture. I hope I would have done the right thing. Let her go and give her the chance to pursue a relationship that is simply more feasible, acceptable, and realistic.
But if Amina wasn’t in the picture, maybe I could have paid more and enough attention to Shiho to prevent her from being swayed by anyone else. I really haven’t shown much interest in Shiho. And truth to tell, I think she has been going out with this guy for a while, possibly as long as I’ve been going out with Amina.
It all appears to have worked out too perfectly. How else would we have broken up? By letter? No. Phone from Japan is too expensive, and it wouldn’t have happened in an international phone call. It just so happened that Shiho’s grandmother wanted to visit her daughter in Chicago, Shiho’s aunt. Shiho’s mom made her go because she didn’t want the grandmother going alone, thus bringing Shiho to the States.
Furthermore, the aunt used to live in San Mateo, across the Bay. That wouldn’t have been good. I don’t know if we could have done it in person. But a phone call from somewhere in the States was the perfect set up. It allowed for time to let it happen, it allowed for direct communication, and it gave us the necessary distance. Window opened, window closed.
In my life, shades of things being good overlap with shades of things being awful and they somehow exist together. I view my surroundings through a filter of things being good or things being awful. Neither is dominant, but one is dominant at any one point.
I haven’t made any friends or acquaintances at school. It’s no wonder. I’m intrigued by the material, but that’s all. I’m fascinated by it and I’m curious about it, but unlike everyone else, I don’t view it as a tool or a skill that I’m developing to use in a career. I don’t worry about it, but I do feel the constant pressure of being there.
I exercise the thought of dropping out at the end of the semester, either before or after exams. I wouldn’t tell the ‘rents and I’d chill for the next half year just doing music and living off their precious money. I’d save the tuition money and send it back after I get a job. I’d wait to get a job until after Amina’s graduation so that I can go to it.
I don’t care about wasting the ‘rents’ money, it’s not a consideration anymore. I’ll drop out whenever the time is right and the thought of wasting money shouldn’t even cross my mind. But as long as I’m foreseeing dropping out after Amina graduates, I’d might as well pocket the $7000 tuition that would be going to waste.
For now, I wait for Amina. I can’t wait until she’s here again. The past two months since I saw her last have been grueling and unbearably slow. She stopped writing, and although it doesn’t play on my insecurities as it might have months ago, I wish she could find time to write.
Things will be just fine between us. I’ve finally reached a point of maturation that I think I can make this work. It was in my last year at Oberlin that I grew the most and the seeds of maturation were formed. I was immature then and I still was through this past Summer. The problems between Amina and me were what made the seeds open, and whatever I learned from senior year can start helping me work through problems with Amina now.
My memories still go back to that year. It’s still so vivid in my mind. It was the most meaningful year of my life in retrospect. It is significant that Amina wasn’t there for half of it. It was good that she wasn’t there. The memories of my room in Third World House, and Hiromi and coffee, and Luyen, cold, love, struggle, Tetris, Southern Comfort, the soles of my feet, Diem, skeletons, the language lab, communication. Oh God, the language lab.
I remember reading the Platform Sutra to Hiromi when she was sick. Sleeping in her bed when she went to Japan for break. Wearing her purple jacket. I remember how my desk was set up, how my room was set up, the broken window. And all that coffee. Hiromi sunk into me much more than I ever admitted or realized. Our times were so tender, but she just wasn’t there for me, she wasn’t what I needed. I never felt that she cared.
If I could go back and watch any point of my life, I think I’d go there, that semester. I was so wrong. I was so wrong about Hiromi and Luyen, that’s why it is so significant that Amina wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of the mess. She wasn’t a witness to my impropriety. But she was the one I loved first and most through it all. It was a tragic learning experience, and Amina had to be kept out of it.
But how could things have been different. Would I have broken up with Hiromi if it weren’t for Luyen? How far would it have gone with Hiromi? I can imagine staying with Hiromi. Eventually marrying her? Beautiful name, Hiromi.
It’s all gone now. I’m in California, where Amina and I had joked about going to when we first met. And Amina and I are now together and we are faced with realities. We are forced to face what we will do for the rest of our lives. If Amina and I can’t make it work, there’s always the monastery. Always the monastery. Another seed that was planted senior year.
Shiho and I officially broke up. Finally. During our last conversation before she went back to Japan from Chicago, she mentioned that her longtime friend and photo club chum was interested in her. I did what I hope I would have done if confronted with the same situation and Amina wasn’t in the picture. I hope I would have done the right thing. Let her go and give her the chance to pursue a relationship that is simply more feasible, acceptable, and realistic.
But if Amina wasn’t in the picture, maybe I could have paid more and enough attention to Shiho to prevent her from being swayed by anyone else. I really haven’t shown much interest in Shiho. And truth to tell, I think she has been going out with this guy for a while, possibly as long as I’ve been going out with Amina.
It all appears to have worked out too perfectly. How else would we have broken up? By letter? No. Phone from Japan is too expensive, and it wouldn’t have happened in an international phone call. It just so happened that Shiho’s grandmother wanted to visit her daughter in Chicago, Shiho’s aunt. Shiho’s mom made her go because she didn’t want the grandmother going alone, thus bringing Shiho to the States.
Furthermore, the aunt used to live in San Mateo, across the Bay. That wouldn’t have been good. I don’t know if we could have done it in person. But a phone call from somewhere in the States was the perfect set up. It allowed for time to let it happen, it allowed for direct communication, and it gave us the necessary distance. Window opened, window closed.
Monday, September 13, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
My anger grows with my disbelief that I’m in law school. The situation has been bleak. My hatred towards the ‘rents is hampered only by religious teachings which demand forgiveness. But as long as I’m a member of the earthly world, I hate them with every ounce of hate I can conjure.
It’s been a while since they’ve called. That’s a sure indication that something is going on in their minds. It could be cowardice or lack of concern. It’s something. Whatever it is, it makes me angry because I’m in this situation here because of and for them. If they make no gesture that there is something important about it, I have no motivation to stay. Hey, I made it out to California, what I decide now is all my decision and I have a right to it.
Not only do I not think in the way required to be an attorney, but I also hate the approach legal “thinking” is required to take: you start with your conclusion and then you do the research to come up with the argument to support that conclusion. It’s not truth, it’s not justice, it’s whoever can conjure the better argument by whatever means available.
I also find it offensive that to be an effective attorney, you have to thoroughly research and be able to argue the other side as if it were truth, and then reject it, dismiss it, rebut it for a client, for someone who is paying you to win. It makes absolutely no sense to me, it’s not logical, it destroys the credibility of the legal system. Truth is arbitrary in the legal system. It’s far from absolute.
I’ve started to feel that I’m not biding my time by going to law school, looking for other opportunities, I’m wasting my time. I look at the people in law school and these are people who have committed to a career in law. It’s what they want to do with their lives and they are putting their full effort into it. Not just floating through like I am. This has nothing to do with what I want to be doing with the rest of my life.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I may not make it to exams, I haven’t a clue about what’s going on or what I’m supposed to be learning. I can’t make the connections that everyone else seems to be able to make. So maybe I’ll drop out right before exams and start looking for a job immediately. When Amina comes, I’ll start bartending school and hope they place me in a job come January.
It’s been a while since they’ve called. That’s a sure indication that something is going on in their minds. It could be cowardice or lack of concern. It’s something. Whatever it is, it makes me angry because I’m in this situation here because of and for them. If they make no gesture that there is something important about it, I have no motivation to stay. Hey, I made it out to California, what I decide now is all my decision and I have a right to it.
Not only do I not think in the way required to be an attorney, but I also hate the approach legal “thinking” is required to take: you start with your conclusion and then you do the research to come up with the argument to support that conclusion. It’s not truth, it’s not justice, it’s whoever can conjure the better argument by whatever means available.
I also find it offensive that to be an effective attorney, you have to thoroughly research and be able to argue the other side as if it were truth, and then reject it, dismiss it, rebut it for a client, for someone who is paying you to win. It makes absolutely no sense to me, it’s not logical, it destroys the credibility of the legal system. Truth is arbitrary in the legal system. It’s far from absolute.
I’ve started to feel that I’m not biding my time by going to law school, looking for other opportunities, I’m wasting my time. I look at the people in law school and these are people who have committed to a career in law. It’s what they want to do with their lives and they are putting their full effort into it. Not just floating through like I am. This has nothing to do with what I want to be doing with the rest of my life.
I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I may not make it to exams, I haven’t a clue about what’s going on or what I’m supposed to be learning. I can’t make the connections that everyone else seems to be able to make. So maybe I’ll drop out right before exams and start looking for a job immediately. When Amina comes, I’ll start bartending school and hope they place me in a job come January.
Sunday, September 05, 1993
1844 7th Ave., Oakland
I hate living in the city. Dust, dirt, and grime everywhere. I hate feeling lonely. I hate the material world. I hate the world around me.
The ‘rents haven’t called much; you’d think that they’d be more interested in their investment. I wonder if the guilt is catching up to them. Yea, right. They have no idea, not a clue. When they did call, they asked about school and I gave them a frigid reaction. I didn’t tell them outright that I hated it, but I was evasive and tried to convey that I was not going to speak my true feelings on the matter. They didn’t press. They avoided the topic thereafter.
They know that my going to law school is for them. They don’t care about what I want to do or how I feel about what I’m doing. They don’t know anything about me. It would blow their minds if they had an inkling of what I was really about. I can’t even guess what their reaction might be to finding anything about me.
Avoiding the problem is the pattern for them. They don’t want to know so they hide their heads in the sand. They can’t face up to the truth. They can’t even find a simple way to be honest and make it sound good, “Life is hard, anything you do is hard, stay in law school or we stop sending you money”. Even that is better than glossing everything over and insisting that law school is really what I want to do, as if they know me and what I want to do.
The ‘rents haven’t called much; you’d think that they’d be more interested in their investment. I wonder if the guilt is catching up to them. Yea, right. They have no idea, not a clue. When they did call, they asked about school and I gave them a frigid reaction. I didn’t tell them outright that I hated it, but I was evasive and tried to convey that I was not going to speak my true feelings on the matter. They didn’t press. They avoided the topic thereafter.
They know that my going to law school is for them. They don’t care about what I want to do or how I feel about what I’m doing. They don’t know anything about me. It would blow their minds if they had an inkling of what I was really about. I can’t even guess what their reaction might be to finding anything about me.
Avoiding the problem is the pattern for them. They don’t want to know so they hide their heads in the sand. They can’t face up to the truth. They can’t even find a simple way to be honest and make it sound good, “Life is hard, anything you do is hard, stay in law school or we stop sending you money”. Even that is better than glossing everything over and insisting that law school is really what I want to do, as if they know me and what I want to do.
Wednesday, July 21, 1993
324 S. Main St., Oberlin
I had to change my plans for going back to New Jersey because the ‘rents are going to Taiwan on the days that I had planned to go back. I went this past weekend and now I’m back in Oberlin until I leave for California. Apparently, grandfather died on July 12, and the ‘rents are going to the cremation which is this week. The actual funeral will be much later and they will probably go for that as well.
They called me last week and told me they were going to Taiwan on the days I was planning to go to New Jersey. They were going to let it go right then and there and not expect to see me until I visited from California, but not being one to miss an opportunity to deceive, I told them I could change my plans so that I could see them before I left for California. More importantly, I needed to get some cash.
So I went to New Jersey, collected some serious G-money, and bid them good riddance. It was actually a touching farewell, full of good intent and concern and care. Some of it may have been genuine, but then I have to ask myself if it would have been the same if I wasn’t going to law school. Doubtful.
A few weeks ago, they were trying to press me to find a place with a roommate in California because it would be cheaper. Ah, money as love; it falls through every time when money is all you care about. But actually, they didn’t press it further, and it really is my choice, so their pressing may not have been much more than suggestion. Maybe there wasn’t an undercurrent of them trying to save money. Doubtful.
The ‘rents have been concerned about a decrease in their income. It’s laughable. They are worried about not having money! Gimme a break, there is no risk of their having no money, they’re concerned about not making enough to support the opulent lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. If they need money, they can always sell the Rolls. Maybe they’re concerned that they will run out of money with which to show their love. Doubtful.
The ‘rents visited Tom in Rochester a while back, and on the way back to New Jersey, their Mercedes got a flat. They made a big deal about their stroke of fortune in how uninhabited the highway was, but when they got the flat, there were houses nearby. So they went to one of the houses, knocked on the door and asked for help, and paid whoever helped them $20 to change the flat.
That must have been a really nice guy who helped them, but it’s the ‘rents’ attitude that really disgusts me. It epitomizes their philosophy, their approach to the world: Flash a $20 bill and you can turn any jack-ass sitting on a couch on a Sunday into a mechanic. But nothing to do with the ‘rents, I’m grateful that there are people like the person who helped them in the world. Even to help the ‘rents.
While I was back East, I caught up with Audrey in New York where she’s taking Summer school, making up classes for this past semester that she withdrew from. After grandmother died, she went to Taiwan and decided to stay there and spend time with and take care of grandfather. She was still there in June when grandfather had a heart attack. He continued to have complications, but she had to come back to the States. He died after she left.
She had stories to tell, she was the closest person to him in his last months. It sounds like he went out quite painfully. After the heart attack, he stayed in the hospital until he died. Her descriptions of what he went through are so different from my mental picture of him. Not that I have many mental pictures of him. I never knew him very well and vice versa.
My image of him dying would have been something peaceful and private, like dying in his sleep. It seems so undignified that he suffered a painful heart attack and was fussed and flocked over by doctors. A man in his ‘90's. It seems so undignified to be moved in and out of ICU, vomiting sickly dark colored liquid as if his old age had rotted his insides. There’s a lot about him I don’t know. Maybe the indignity of the way he died suited him. I don’t know.
It came as no surprise to me when he died, dying within six months of grandmother’s death. The ‘rents on the other hand hadn’t been concerned at all about grandfather after grandmother’s death. They just noted, probably more to themselves, that he was in perfect health. Life is all about health and money and they don’t want to face anything which negates health and money. Even when he had the heart attack, they believed the Taiwanese doctors who said they expected a full recovery. When I heard he had a heart attack, I knew the end was near and I couldn’t believe the ‘rents weren’t facing it.
I don’t know where the story ends. I don’t know where it began and I don’t know most of what happened in it. Grandparents were never a part of my life, they were just biological fact, they were a living part of family history. Now they really are family history and I don’t know how I should feel about it. The only effect their deaths are having on me is the knowledge that they were there somewhere all my life, and now they are, in fact, really dead. No longer here, gone beyond.
I don’t know how the ‘rents feel, I don’t know their experience with their parents. I know more about Audrey’s relationship with them. Audrey was a part of their lives and vice versa these past 20 years. As for the ‘rents, I have no idea what their relationship was these past 24 years or more.
Death has never hit close enough to me to ever really affect me. It’s not in my nature to be strongly affected by things that are not in my control, so I wonder what my reaction would be if someone close to me died. I don’t know if this is healthy or if I’m being really cold-hearted. I don’t think I know what it means to truly love. If you can’t truly love, can you truly lose?
But my attitude also fits in with my understanding of Buddhism. I know I’m “Buddhist”, despite the myriad meanings that may have, because with every step along the way, I first identified elements of my own being first and that they are part of my nature, and only later found that they are Buddhist elements. None of it was fed to me, it was here first. I was Buddhist before I knew what it is to be Buddhist. I’d be Buddhist even if there was no such thing as Buddhism. Being “Buddhist” has absolutely no meaning or significance except to help others identify “who I am”.
I don’t think I’ll ever attend the funeral of someone close to me. I think I’ll die first anyway.
They called me last week and told me they were going to Taiwan on the days I was planning to go to New Jersey. They were going to let it go right then and there and not expect to see me until I visited from California, but not being one to miss an opportunity to deceive, I told them I could change my plans so that I could see them before I left for California. More importantly, I needed to get some cash.
So I went to New Jersey, collected some serious G-money, and bid them good riddance. It was actually a touching farewell, full of good intent and concern and care. Some of it may have been genuine, but then I have to ask myself if it would have been the same if I wasn’t going to law school. Doubtful.
A few weeks ago, they were trying to press me to find a place with a roommate in California because it would be cheaper. Ah, money as love; it falls through every time when money is all you care about. But actually, they didn’t press it further, and it really is my choice, so their pressing may not have been much more than suggestion. Maybe there wasn’t an undercurrent of them trying to save money. Doubtful.
The ‘rents have been concerned about a decrease in their income. It’s laughable. They are worried about not having money! Gimme a break, there is no risk of their having no money, they’re concerned about not making enough to support the opulent lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. If they need money, they can always sell the Rolls. Maybe they’re concerned that they will run out of money with which to show their love. Doubtful.
The ‘rents visited Tom in Rochester a while back, and on the way back to New Jersey, their Mercedes got a flat. They made a big deal about their stroke of fortune in how uninhabited the highway was, but when they got the flat, there were houses nearby. So they went to one of the houses, knocked on the door and asked for help, and paid whoever helped them $20 to change the flat.
That must have been a really nice guy who helped them, but it’s the ‘rents’ attitude that really disgusts me. It epitomizes their philosophy, their approach to the world: Flash a $20 bill and you can turn any jack-ass sitting on a couch on a Sunday into a mechanic. But nothing to do with the ‘rents, I’m grateful that there are people like the person who helped them in the world. Even to help the ‘rents.
While I was back East, I caught up with Audrey in New York where she’s taking Summer school, making up classes for this past semester that she withdrew from. After grandmother died, she went to Taiwan and decided to stay there and spend time with and take care of grandfather. She was still there in June when grandfather had a heart attack. He continued to have complications, but she had to come back to the States. He died after she left.
She had stories to tell, she was the closest person to him in his last months. It sounds like he went out quite painfully. After the heart attack, he stayed in the hospital until he died. Her descriptions of what he went through are so different from my mental picture of him. Not that I have many mental pictures of him. I never knew him very well and vice versa.
My image of him dying would have been something peaceful and private, like dying in his sleep. It seems so undignified that he suffered a painful heart attack and was fussed and flocked over by doctors. A man in his ‘90's. It seems so undignified to be moved in and out of ICU, vomiting sickly dark colored liquid as if his old age had rotted his insides. There’s a lot about him I don’t know. Maybe the indignity of the way he died suited him. I don’t know.
It came as no surprise to me when he died, dying within six months of grandmother’s death. The ‘rents on the other hand hadn’t been concerned at all about grandfather after grandmother’s death. They just noted, probably more to themselves, that he was in perfect health. Life is all about health and money and they don’t want to face anything which negates health and money. Even when he had the heart attack, they believed the Taiwanese doctors who said they expected a full recovery. When I heard he had a heart attack, I knew the end was near and I couldn’t believe the ‘rents weren’t facing it.
I don’t know where the story ends. I don’t know where it began and I don’t know most of what happened in it. Grandparents were never a part of my life, they were just biological fact, they were a living part of family history. Now they really are family history and I don’t know how I should feel about it. The only effect their deaths are having on me is the knowledge that they were there somewhere all my life, and now they are, in fact, really dead. No longer here, gone beyond.
I don’t know how the ‘rents feel, I don’t know their experience with their parents. I know more about Audrey’s relationship with them. Audrey was a part of their lives and vice versa these past 20 years. As for the ‘rents, I have no idea what their relationship was these past 24 years or more.
Death has never hit close enough to me to ever really affect me. It’s not in my nature to be strongly affected by things that are not in my control, so I wonder what my reaction would be if someone close to me died. I don’t know if this is healthy or if I’m being really cold-hearted. I don’t think I know what it means to truly love. If you can’t truly love, can you truly lose?
But my attitude also fits in with my understanding of Buddhism. I know I’m “Buddhist”, despite the myriad meanings that may have, because with every step along the way, I first identified elements of my own being first and that they are part of my nature, and only later found that they are Buddhist elements. None of it was fed to me, it was here first. I was Buddhist before I knew what it is to be Buddhist. I’d be Buddhist even if there was no such thing as Buddhism. Being “Buddhist” has absolutely no meaning or significance except to help others identify “who I am”.
I don’t think I’ll ever attend the funeral of someone close to me. I think I’ll die first anyway.
Wednesday, June 23, 1993
324 S. Main St., Oberlin
I have absolutely zero enthusiasm about going to California in August. It hasn’t struck me at all that I’m going to be back in school this Fall. I don’t feel that at all. But once I get to California, I can start looking for a band and doing music steadily. I couldn’t do it in suburbia New Jersey and there certainly isn’t anything going on out here in rural Ohio.
I have to remember that law school is just a front, a safety net until I find something else. If I find nothing else, then after three years, I’ll have another degree and can still kick the fuckheads good-bye. Their continuous and consistent lying, coercion, bribing, and manipulating has been the de-humanizing and demeaning low point of my life.
I have to remember that law school is just a front, a safety net until I find something else. If I find nothing else, then after three years, I’ll have another degree and can still kick the fuckheads good-bye. Their continuous and consistent lying, coercion, bribing, and manipulating has been the de-humanizing and demeaning low point of my life.
Friday, May 21, 1993
Englewood Cliffs, NJ
Well, I’ve got my car. $20,000 for an Isuzu Rodeo and I’ll be putting a CD changer in soonly. With these great expenses, I’ve been mellowing out and I’ve even started feeling guilty. I looked into the future and imagined the feelings of betrayal after spending so much money. Not only stabbed in the back, but having the back-stabbing planned from the start. They asked for it. It’s their fault for not having the foresight or the awareness of what they were putting me through. What goes around comes around.
I’m going to help Bob move from Providence to New Haven this weekend. We discussed the move and we planned it so that I would arrive in Providence between ten and eleven tomorrow. That means I would have to leave between seven and eight. A short while after getting off the phone, one of the fuckheads told me to go to sleep early tonight. How the fuck did he know what time I was planning to leave? I am so fucking out of here. What goes around comes around.
I hope they were listening in to the conversation. Then they caught the part where I was talking about having to buy stereo equipment for their stupid karaoke parties. I don’t give a fuck anymore if they were listening in, I’ve got my drums, I got my car, I’m getting the CD changer, I’m going to San Francisco for law school, and I’m spending the Summer in Oberlin with Amina. What are they going to do if they overhear my honest opinion of them? Fuck ‘em.
I’m going to help Bob move from Providence to New Haven this weekend. We discussed the move and we planned it so that I would arrive in Providence between ten and eleven tomorrow. That means I would have to leave between seven and eight. A short while after getting off the phone, one of the fuckheads told me to go to sleep early tonight. How the fuck did he know what time I was planning to leave? I am so fucking out of here. What goes around comes around.
I hope they were listening in to the conversation. Then they caught the part where I was talking about having to buy stereo equipment for their stupid karaoke parties. I don’t give a fuck anymore if they were listening in, I’ve got my drums, I got my car, I’m getting the CD changer, I’m going to San Francisco for law school, and I’m spending the Summer in Oberlin with Amina. What are they going to do if they overhear my honest opinion of them? Fuck ‘em.
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