1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

It’s just getting harder and harder. I’m trying to keep light about it, but the feelings creep up and overwhelm. Then I think that it’s alright, I want my life over anyway, so just lighten up and feel good about these feelings that are leading to my inevitable demise. But the feelings themselves are hard in each moment.

I find myself questioning my motives. Why do I want to go to therapy? If I want to leave, just leave. If I want to get better and live, face up to it. I tell myself I want more information; I’ll leave but I want to know what a professional thinks of my situation; I want validation. Isn’t that a crock, a load of crap?

Everyday is hard, that is the character of my life as it is. It is hard just to be here, to exist, to live in this skin, to feel, to have sensation, to see with declining eyesight, to hear with deteriorating hearing, to know and think with a deteriorating mind and grasp on existence and reality. To be cognizant when I can’t believe any of this is true and real.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I’m suicidal but I’ve learned to live with it. What the hell does that mean? What is the bottom line of my existence? That I don’t want to be here? Am I going to tell that to anyone? How fast is that going to be misinterpreted?

We’re getting a new benefits package at work and they go into effect on June 1st. My first order of business is therapy (followed closely by new glasses and perhaps a dentist visit). What am I going to say? How am I going to approach it? Am I going to play games and make the therapist figure me out, or am I just going to let it all out and let him or her know what I think about my situation? It’s scary; I have no idea what I’m going to do. I scare myself.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is getting out of control. I don’t know how much longer I can hold this together. I read today that death is not an event, it’s a process. It is a process. When I die, it will not be an event, it will not be a moment. It will be the culmination of a process that began a long time ago. I’m starting to spiral out of control again.

Starting from June 1st, our benefits kick in and I will start going to therapy. I don’t want help. I don’t want to be “cured”. I just want to know what a professional thinks of me. I just want that opinion of what the medical establishment thinks of me.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I need to figure out why I’m here. I’m so bored with life and reality, I need to figure out who and what I am and how I fit into the scheme of things. I need meaning to all this. This is all so mundane and I know there’s more to it. That’s the most frustrating thing - knowing there is more to this, and living among people who think that what they see and sense is all that there is to it.

I started sitting again yesterday to consider the question of my existence and what I’m going to do about it. Things got worse in the long period of time that I stopped sitting. I don’t know if sitting will help me get my center back, but what have I got to lose. I want to leave, I want to die, I don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to be despondent when it happens. I want to have figured something out.

Fiction recorded drum tracks for a new CD this past weekend. I’m fronting a positive attitude despite my continued annoyance with the band.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I took two days off of work last Thursday and Friday to travel with the band to Chico to play at the Nowhere X Nowhere festival - a spoof on other popular music festival names, and making fun of the fact that Chico is out in the middle of nowhere.

It was a good trip and I had a lot of fun, but not because I’m into the band. There were bands booked at a bunch of venues that were really close to each other, and as "talent" we had passes to all the venues, so it was good fun just going from venue to venue checking out different bands. Especially since a lot of the bands were from San Francisco.

I stayed apart from the rest of the band for most part. I don't know what's wrong with me. My critical mind comes out and no one can do anything right. I don't express anything, since I know my thoughts and feelings are totally irrational and baseless, I just keep my distance and close off and drink. All the reasons why I don't have any friends.

I didn’t know that I would dig the NxN festival as much as I did. I was also apprehensive about the roadtrip and leaving town for any length of time. I guess I’ve become a bit of a homebody. I would have liked to have stayed longer in Chico, but I wanted to come back by Saturday because Bob was going to be in town for a conference in San Jose.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I just don’t want to be here anymore. How many times and for how many years have I been saying that? I just don’t want to be here anymore. My physical existence is flesh and blood. I sat in a movie theater yesterday and I felt myself breathe, my muscles, my lungs, what do they do? They give me oxygen, who the hell cares? What the fuck ever. I can’t be doing this.

The frustrations are huge and they grow and grow. Doing something that I don’t know why I’m doing it. To make money? Not knowing who I am or where I came from or what I’m about? To have this past but not being able to make sense of it or to have any concrete meaning attached to it? How many times and for how many more years do I have to ask what is the point?

I rearranged my drums again. I think I really like it this time. It sounds really good. Non-drummers don’t know that the arrangement of drums affect how they resonate and how they sound. I’ve never been happy with the sound of the 12" tom as it was set up as rack tom. Positioned as a floor tom, not interacting with the bass drum, has changed the way it resonates.

How’s that for fodder for some psychiatrist? Write about how my existence is unbearable and then go right into something as mundane as the arrangement of my drums.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I have no connection with my past. There is no continuity. From less than five years ago, I’m completely disconnected from my feelings and my being. That was real. This is real. But they are incongruent. I was volatile and self-destructive then, and I was something. I’m passive and floating now, and I am nothing. Is this any way to survive? This is getting so stupid, I’ve been sucked into what I’ve always wanted to avoid. Another reason to once again leave, but it’s harder to leave because this is so hypnotically comfortable, I can do this. But that is all.

I’m about to quit my job, and this is another reason to do it. I need to get back to the place that’s dangerous; no safety net. I can’t quit when I know I necessarily have something else lined up. I need to quit and have that doubt that I’ll be able to get another job. I need to be in that free fall of doubt and uncertainty about what’s immediately in my future.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Mimi and I got together this evening for dinner and discussed the website. We had a great talk and she contributed a lot of great ideas. It’s funny how when something hits close to home, people can come up with great ideas off the top of their heads.

The problems in implementing this are not minor, though. More than half the family don't speak English, and I don't speak their language. I don't know how to build a webpage. Who's going to do it? I'm not qualified to be a central person in this. Besides, how much of this idea is "Western"? Is this something I can sell to the Taiwanese members of the family?

Mimi asked point blank about cutting. I answered. I don’t care if she knows. She knew anyway, she’s not an idiot. Whoever doesn’t know is an idiot. Anyone who can’t tell within five minutes of meeting me that there is something wrong with this picture must be an idiot. Besides, I've found that everyone I tell conveniently forgets in time, so why not just tell them?

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I got in touch with Audrey on Wednesday for the first time in over a year, and as coincidence would have it, she was just about to fly to the Bay Area. We don’t know why we haven’t been in contact, I think it was her, she thinks it was me, so it must have been both neither of us and both of us. We got together this morning and I hatched my idea to her about creating a family website.

The idea is for a story-driven website, not just historical and biographical facts, aimed at a descendent 200 years from now who might be interested in his or her ancestors. The stories will be by other family members, and they would try to convey some essence about the person through the story; what they were really about. It is partly archival - a family tree - so the facts will be there, as well as pictures.

It will start with grandfather and any information Audrey and I can find on his family, parents, siblings, etc., and from there it will document the various families and the members, and each person will have a page if they want. The main website will have basic information and the individual pages will be personalized.

I saw a film tonight at the Asian American film festival called “Love/Juice”. When you really, really love someone, you can’t live without them. I couldn’t live without Amina, and I haven’t lived since we broke up, except during the times I was alive with Josephine. I’ve just been existing. I’ve been numb since Amina. I really touched love. I appreciate that. And I feel the continuing pain of losing the one I love the most. That is life and that is still good. Bad, too. Depends.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Being let down, being hurt, being betrayed are not considerations when you truly fall in love. That’s what it means to have no defenses up. It didn’t matter that I was let down, hurt, and betrayed by Amina. I still loved her.

I struggle with existence, I try to detach, I try to realize that I cannot take anything as I sense it. I am not here. But then what are these senses? What are these feelings? Why do I do what I do - confined in a body and reality that I know is not real. I know it, but I do not feel it. It is not true knowledge. I am an arrow and I have missed the target before I even have been shot. I’m still too much of this world. I’m still far, far from my goal.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

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

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I don’t even know what it means to fall in love anymore. After Amina, after Shiho, after Josephine, I have no idea what the feeling is anymore. I don’t think I can fall in love anymore. It’s a practice in futility. Any approach to loving someone would solely be an intellectual exercise. I will never just fall in love with anyone ever again. Because of Amina, because of Shiho, because of Josephine, I will always have my defenses up, I will always be looking to protect myself, and with defenses and protections up, I will never be able to love again. I will always be gauging the other person’s behavior to determine whether to fall in love and how I fall in love. That’s not love. Love is not a response, it is an affirmative act. Otherwise, it’s not love. How do I absorb the fact that I will never fall in love again? I need to think deeply about that. If my feeling is a response to another person’s behaviors, it is not love.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

Time for an assessment.

- I’ve been working at this job for about one year and four months. I now work on the 18th floor with a new boss and a new team.

- Most of the people around me are new faces. They know nothing about me.

- Rosalie is gone and I have moved to her room. Jen has moved in and I never see her because she’s a cook in an upscale restaurant and she is asleep when I leave and she gets in after midnight.

- Fiction is moving. I don’t know where, I don’t know how fast, but we’ve got something going. More than I’ve ever had going before.

- Spiritually I’m numb. Not dead. Just not in that space.

- Physically, I’m...who cares. Mentally, who cares. Emotionally, who cares. Who cares.

I have no friends, no one knows me and there is no one I can count on. I have people who would say that they care, but they have no idea how bad it can get. I have no past, I have no future. I’m just wallowing in my present nothingness. Lack of inspiration. But there must be a reason why I’m still here. I still enjoy things. I’m wallowing in the swamp of mediocrity that my life has slid into. Time to get angry again?

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

This has been the coldest Winter I’ve experienced in the Bay Area. It has been colder than even the Summers.

I look at my life since the beginning of this year, and nothing has changed. It has gotten even worse. I might as well accept that is how it's going to be, and get rid of any expectation that it’s going to be any different.

Stop looking. Stop striving. Stop desiring. Just be. Just go. Just float. Just observe. And learn. Look for something to learn; it’s there.

I decided to not drink alone for a week, and nothing hard at all for a week. I’m allowed to drink beer socially. I’ve started spending over a hundred dollars a month on alcohol. So far, no physical addiction. Only once last night I broke and had a single beer alone. I do have to tell myself not to drink, but that’s because it has pretty much become a habit. That’s all it is. Habits can be broken more easily than addictions.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

I don’t have any friends. Friends are people who are there when the bottom drops out, and I realize that when my world starts to collapse, none of these people are going to be there. There is no one in my life that I can count on. I have co-workers, bandmates, and housemates. Would any of them be a friend if they weren’t a co-worker, bandmate, or housemate?

I am starting to burn out at work and it’s nothing like I thought it would be. I thought I’d approached burning out before, but it was different before, I was still able to function. That wasn’t burning out, that was frustration and tension; that was hating my job. Now I’m really burning out. There’s a point in the day after which I can’t function anymore, I’m just despondent. I can’t focus; I’ll have five different things on my desk and I can’t get any of them done. I start working on one thing, then I look over at another thing, get distracted and start working on that thing, and I end up getting nothing done. I’m going to call in sick on Friday. Maybe Monday, too.

I need to keep the end of my life in mind, too. I’m supposed to be in my twilight years, not languishing in a dead-end job, doing something I really don’t care for. I’m giving the band a chance, but for how long? Am I clear on what I want out of it in the remaining time I have left? Play gigs? Expression? I’m really not that sure.

I need to calm my mind and not be a part of this world. I need to sit and concentrate, focus on what’s important. I have to remember that dying can’t be a plan. It has to be something I just do, and I have to be completely clear leading up to that point. At this rate, I’m never going to have that clarity. My life is completely clouded and fogged in.

Josefa's Birthday

We tried to have as much fun as possible in those days. We were a good team back then, before the changes.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Stork Club gig, Oakland, CA

By the time we played, it was after midnight.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

What a shitty year.

In my heart, I think Ritu committed suicide. I didn't know for the longest time, but now I'm convinced that she killed herself. That's the only thing that makes sense.

I failed Ritu, a friend in need. If not a friend, someone, anyone, in need who was reaching out for help. There is no excuse for it, she was in pain and I brushed it off, tough love, she's got to get out of it by herself and that's what will make her stronger. Idiot! Where was my compassion, where was my patience, where was my empathy? Instead, I put up a wall, defenses, protected myself at her expense. I was a snob. I think of how Ritu was starting on August 1st, and I can only amaze myself at how callously I treated her.

I'm not a good person. I need to work on that. It's not like I'll never forgive myself, I have to, but I feel sad about how I treated Ritu and I need to always remember her. I don't think I could have stopped her from killing herself, I don't think I would have, but the very least I had to do was be there for her, to let her know that she wasn't alone and that someone feels for her. When someone is in that much pain, just be there for them. Don't write them off and hope for the best. It wasn't my burden to stop her from killing herself, but it was my responsibility to not abandon her. Ritu, I'm so sorry.

As this year ends, I name no one as special in my life. Madoka and I have drifted and we're trying to force our friendship to fit. Our first calendar year not having seen each other.

So what from this year do I take into the next? What continuity should there be?

Doubts about being here only grow. I don't want to grow old. I don't want to grow old, but each year is another year older. How long am I going to put up with this? The older I get, the more real it becomes that if I'm going to leave, I need to do it sooner, rather than later.

1557 Noe Street, San Francisco

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