there is no 'i' in buddhism

2012-01-30T03:45:00.001+08:00

I need to get serious about this as things may be starting to come to a head.

A recent thought that has been playing in my head is the realization that my suicide is an integral part of my parents' journey. I know there is a psychological aspect of this suggesting these thoughts are a way of attaching meaning or responsibility of committing suicide to some fictional "higher" or external purpose, therefore I have to do this, and I'm not going to try to refute them.

I'm just acknowledging them as valid counterpoints. I'll just admit that there are parallel viewpoints. They may be even intertwining viewpoints.

One thing my personal cosmology and theory of everything has not been able to account for is why was I born to these spiritually bankrupt parents?

Previously I've chalked it up to a mistake. That my ability to navigate the death bardos was faulty from my previous life, and although I was accurately able to manage a target of Japan, where I was conceived, I wasn't able to discern appropriate parents.

Instead of being born Japanese, preferably to dharma-friendly parents as perhaps was my target, I was born to a spiritually bankrupt Taiwanese couple temporarily living in Japan, who then immigrated to the U.S. Fuck me.

But calling it a metaphysical mistake is an easy way out. And even though such an incident would not be beyond my karmic theory, I have to consider what is more likely in that same theory. And that is there is more to the bond of the parent-child relationship.

In reincarnation, karma not only draws us to a species of organism we're previously familiar with, but also to specific karmic matter, people, with whom we were acquainted. That's behind the metaphysical concept that we're drawn to certain people, or that certain people are in our lives for a reason.

So even though it's possible that my being born to my parents was a great metaphysical blunder on my part, I still have to examine the possibility of a substantive relationship, no matter how onerous that is to me.

As I said, they are spiritually bankrupt. I've documented before that I almost got my parents to admit that money is more important to them than family, and I backed off at the last moment because I realized I didn't want to hold that mirror to their faces.

That might be the extreme of it, but even in all other aspects of their lives, they are mere simple, primitive, unimaginative beings living normative lives just because they were born, and they question nothing about the reality that surrounds them. There is no mystery to the life cycle to them.

Even further, within the Tibetan Buddhist description of types of karmic existence, I describe my parents falling under the category of "hungry ghosts". Tibetan iconography depicts hungry ghosts as beings who have enormous stomachs but throats that are as thin as a coffee stirrer. Their desire is huge, but there is no way to satisfy it, so they constantly crave and strive for things in a meaningless, futile way.

How can I have been born to these people? From whoever I was in a previous life, did I guide myself to these people? In my grand scheme of things, informed by Tibetan Buddhist ideas, this is not impossible to do. And if I guided myself to them, then why? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew.

Perhaps from a Zoharic point of view, I may suggest that there isn't a direct meaning or connection, but that all beings are at their own spiritual energy level between the material and divine, and even if my parents are firmly mired in the lowest, material realm of malchut, they still are on their spiritual path.

Even if I have a hard time conceiving of any karmic connection with my parents, the Zohar suggests that spiritual energies are still affected by our relationship. We're worlds apart and they can't change me or even conceive of the reality I live in, and I sure can't change them, but their energy on their path is still there, and my energy on my path is still here.

And I seem to be firmly fixated that suicide is my path, even as that path keeps being distracted. And to compound that fixation, my parents (and everyone else around me for that matter) inadvertently keep pushing me towards suicide. "Do what your heart tells you to", "Do what makes you happy", "You're the only one to decide your own future". Suicide is my response to all of those well-intended platitudes.

I want to say my parents need this for their spiritual growth, and I've probably said that before already. And of course that's where the psychological conundrum comes in because you always have to look at psychology whenever someone feels compelled to do something.

Actually, no, I don't need to do this. It's my choice, whether I do it or not. But I am convinced that from a Zoharic point of view, they would be the better for it. They would have to face a challenge they are unequipped to face, and those are the best kinds of challenges for our spiritual states.

And recently they're trying to push me down a normative path that conforms to what they envision to be life. That's a path I've well-established for myself as death. But that pushing may just be the catalyst to actualize my goal of suicide, which is not death. I'm not going to go all out and call it life, knowing who I am it may or may not be, but it's more life than what my parents can envision.

I don't know what my parents would go through if I disappeared. Quite honestly, there might not be any of the emotional trauma that often accompanies people who lose a loved one.

Well, a child in this case, I don't think my parents are qualified to consider me a "loved one". To them, I consider myself an "acquired attachment". Aside from the accident of being born to them, there is nothing about me they could possibly reasonably love.

If they go through a period of some distress and then accept it and move on in the manner that they handled their own parents' death, then there was nothing I could do for them by living. But if they are challenged and really have to struggle, then I think there is benefit.

But god forbid our karmic energies are linked beyond this lifetime.

2012-01-29T03:18:00.001+08:00

I got through another Lunar New Years in Taiwan. It's something I dread from several months prior as something I really don't want to face. If you're alone and solitary in Taiwan, you'll really feel it during the Lunar New Year when families get together for gatherings and feasts.

The floor I live on has been just me for the entire week. I avoid contact with my neighbors at all costs, but there is a psychological effect when they're suddenly not there. This past week with no one else here, I've felt cabin fever creeping up and put in an extra effort into mindfulness and realizing these are just insubstantial mental formations.

I noticed more intense mental chatter in my head more intensely and put my index finger to my lips and go, "Shhh...." to the chatter. Shut the fuck up, brain.

For the first three days of the Lunar New Year, everyone gathers with family and just about everything closes. The only things open are the convenient stores and Western fast food joints, otherwise people like me would starve and be competing with cockroaches and rats for scraps on the floor.

More shops start opening during the next three days, but aside from travel hubs, it's still pretty quiet. I think the first three days are about family, then the next three days are about returning home and getting together with friends. Just observing, I don't know if that's true.

My family in Kaohsiung didn't bother calling to wonder if I was heading south for New Years. Maybe they learned from last year, when I mistook the date of the New Years and thought my uncle was calling me out of obligation as an afterthought and declined, when really he was calling me two days in advance.

More likely they just assumed I wouldn't go south as I didn't visit at all in 2011. Furthermore my parents were just in Taiwan for the presidential elections a few weeks ago, and I didn't accompany them to Kaohsiung. They'd always welcome me, but have no reason to believe I'd go.

And I got through yet another meeting with my parents. I met them at the airport and accompanied them while they were in Taipei, and then I met them when they took the High Speed Rail going to the airport to return to the U.S.

Man, this blog is starting to bore the hell out of me.

2012-01-22T01:49:00.000+08:00

Bah. I keep forgetting this is MY blog and I can say or geek out about anything I want. This is what's in my head coming out, it's not a conversation or discussion. It's not a free speech zone, comments are moderated. I'm not writing for a readership, nor in reality do I have a readership.

Furthermore, in light of my not posting much lately, I probably should be making more of an effort in shoving whatever's in my head onto these pages. It may be boring as hell (to both you and me), but I should treat it as my last will and testament.

I think there has been a reason why I've been posting less and less. I've been disappearing from all of my web presences because I've more and more come to realize there's no point.

I review my web presences and I understand why I created them, but after time I feel that those things aren't for anonymous public observation. I'm thinking of privatizing them and making them accessible only from this blog.

This blog should, to me, continue to have a point. It's the only portal that should have a point, and any other entry points to who I was shouldn't exist.

I haven't posted to my main fotolog since September because it got boring. Photography got boring. For me, digital is killing photography. Digital is killing seeing in photography. And my foray into digital with my brother's DSLR was boring.

Digital was fine and good for snapshots using point and shoot cameras as far as I was concerned, but DSLRs have leveled the playing field and while when I started learning about photography and using a darkroom, I was the only one I saw regularly walking around with a bulky SLR in hand.

Now you can't not see them with their full kits of lenses and tripods. When I started — and I was among the last generations that didn't have a digital choice I shouldn't wonder — if you saw someone else walking around with an SLR, you knew you were doing it for the art, for the seeing.

Now it's not about seeing. It's about technology and the camera and images that may look good but anyone could take them. People aren't really looking, and they're definitely not seeing. They take pretty photographs somehow thinking what they're capturing is better than the real thing. And we're all to blame for being impressed by that. I know there's another side to it . . .

And of course there are people who are seeing and are thinking and capturing worthwhile images and they know who they are. I'm not criticizing them, and when I come across their images I think, "Holy fucking shit, why can't I see like that?".

So I've been disappearing from the web. There's no point, no worth.

By no worth, it's not a psychological or an esteem issue. It's a realization of the vast machination of globalization through the internet that renders each of our anonymous voices only as significant as we think our egos are.

And as much as ego is a focal point of understanding in Buddhist practice, my decreased web presence has been an expression of recognizing that ego is illusory. It's not that I don't matter. I do matter, and if I wanted to, I could matter even more, but I don't want to.

2012-01-21T18:56:00.000+08:00

I saw most of the movie "The King's Speech" on HBO, and towards the end, two classical music pieces were played on the soundtrack. The first I immediately identified as Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement, because once you hear that somber and dramatic piece and identify it, you'll never forget it. It's as distinct as the 1st movement of the 5th.

The second piece was more elusive. I knew it was on my iPod, but I had trouble identifying it. I finally decided it was a Chopin Piano Concerto, either 1 or 2. Wrong. It turns out it was Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor).

The reason I note this is because what I said about not being able to identify K-pop girl groups just by their sound or voices and how that reflects on their artistic integrity or identity.

Truth to tell, my ability to name a composer to any piece of classical music in my iTunes collection is probably not that much better than my ability to name a K-pop girl group, and I've been listening to these classical pieces for a whole lot longer than I've gotten into K-pop.

I'm not seriously comparing K-pop to classical music or suggesting the artistic integrity of either is any more or less than it should be. I'm just admitting that whatever criteria of whatever in my mind is a load of crap. And I'll love members of various K-pop girl groups way more than any classical composer period. Seriously, where are the hot female classical composers?

(And why "The King's Speech" ended with two pieces by a quintessentially German composer, considering the film is a distinctly English perspective of the period leading to the start of World War II, is a bit baffling).

2012-01-20T01:26:00.000+08:00

Bah. Part of the purpose of the previous post was to make sure I post something else soon, since having a post gushing over K-pop girl groups as my lead post is . . . a little embarrassing? And if these are the last posts of my life, maybe I should be posting more often. Although as my personal history has shown, these likely are not the last posts of my life, despite my immediate plans.

To be clear, I don't consider K-pop as having "artistic integrity" as I've traditionally snobbishly defined it. I like the stuff I do given its artistic limitations as pop music, and I take it for what it is — fun, catchy; I would argue well-written. And K-pop fandom has a lot to do with their cults of personality over consistent musical excellence, which is not in their hands anyway since they aren't the creators of the music.

Some K-pop groups have some say in their artistic direction, even less play any part in the creative process of writing music or lyrics. Or even defining their own roles. Last year, SNSD gave an interview to MTV in New York, and the American interviewer asked how, with nine members, did they decide who would sing what part, and the answer was a no-brainer. They matter-of-factly blurted out that they didn't decide that, their agency did. So I realize that most of these acts are corporate puppets.

Corporate puppets? So are they the artists they think they are? Well, sure, why not? It's part of my taking it for what it is. They think they're artists, they are working hard at it. It's a different artistic standard. My contradicting myself comes up, though, in that I still can't stand pop music as a genre from anywhere else.

Recently I've been testing my ability to even distinguish the difference between the sounds of various girl groups, and the failure is pretty total. I've dumped a lot of K-pop into my iTunes and so when a song that wasn't immediately recognizable from TV promotions comes up on shuffle, for most part I don't know what the song is or who does it, so I try to guess.

More often than not, I come up with a list of who it might be, and rarely can I identify the group just by the music or the voices. Usually a group on the list is right, but not always. Many of them, truth to tell, sound the same, and songs are likely interchangeable among the groups.

This is in contrast with Western rock acts that I've acquired in the past five years with entire collections of albums given to me on an external hard drive. I can name very few songs by The Killers, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers, Wilco, etc., but once I hear the sound or the voice, I can at least identify the band.

So strictly speaking, individual K-pop groups don't have a musical identity, and to me that equals no artistic integrity. And even though I've come to love the cults of personality of various groups and it's a little hard to put them down and say I think they have no artistic integrity, that assessment at least squares with my opinion of pop music in general.

2012-01-13T04:39:00.000+08:00

Several months ago I gushed about K-pop girl groups' autumn comebacks. At that time, there were still several comebacks pending. At that time, I also wondered whether I'd be around to gush about them. Needless to say, I'm still around and not only did T-ara's comeback come and go, but they've launched into a second round of promotions starting at the beginning of this year.

T-ara is a 7-piece girl group (originally 6), and along with Secret, I have a particular fondness for them. They're alternately considered hugely popular or strangely maligned. They are one of Korea's top girl groups, but they can easily not be mentioned when talking about Korea's top girl groups.

Whereas Secret may fairly be considered underdogs of the top girl groups, I don't think that's a fair description for T-ara. They are queen-bees despite other girl groups indisputably being more popular.

And T-ara's autumn comeback may exemplify their status, because on one hand they're totally on their game. It's a good song with distinct choreography and they're hot as ever. On the other hand, it's only a good song, not a great, stand-out song and I'm not the only person who heard the Britney influence on K-pop in this song (and it's not the first time there have been overt Britney influences in T-ara's songs).

Also there always has been a lot of fan talk arguing about the statuses of the various members, and this song doesn't help with the lion's share of the main vocals being shared by the members who are acknowledged as the main vocalists for the group: Soyeon, Jiyeon and Hyomin.

I also worried that the minor role of the other members was a slight against them, even though as a cult of personality, T-ara is a 7-member group and each of them has die-hard fans.

And then right after they ended the "Cry Cry" promotions, they launched into promotions for "Lovey Dovey" which has more vocal participation of the other members and is a fun romp featuring T-ara's brand of the insipid shuffle dance. The shuffle dance craze annoys me, and maybe I'm slightly biased, but T-ara's take on it is fun.

Wonder Girls also had their comeback. I previously wondered whether they could maintain their top girl group status after a year and a half away from the Korean scene. I think they definitely suffered due to their absence and SNSD clearly got the advantage over them in Korea.

Their agency took a gamble to try to promote them in the U.S. and the results were mixed at best and the group underwent hardships and indignities that other Korean girl groups can't imagine, so I have to give Wonder Girls credit for enduring that.

Considering all that, along with a line-up change, I think Wonder Girls' comeback was very strong with a catchy song and choreography. If they had stayed in the Korean scene, I don't think they would necessarily be considered second to SNSD at this point.

I also like the line-up change. The member who dropped out was replaced by Hyelim, who takes the bridge verses in this song following Sohee singing the two main verses, and even though she had doubts about joining Wonder Girls (she had hoped to debut with Miss A), she's been completely embraced by fans and is really talented. Aside from her distinct looks, she's a wicked rapper (Yubin remains the main rapper, but on other songs on their album, Hyelim gives her a run for the money) and having been raised in Hong Kong, also speaks fluent English and Cantonese.

A final comeback this past autumn that surprisingly impressed me wasn't by a girl group but a solo singer, IU. She's a bit of a prodigy with an impressive vocal range, but she's really, really young, a senior in high school, so her voice still has a bit of maturation to go through(!).

She also impresses me because I think she aspires to be considered a real musician rather than just an idol singer. She contributes to some of the songwriting on her album and I know she also plays guitar pretty well.

I also like her because she's humble and doesn't like drawing attention to her own achievements. During an interview, when she was asked about the expected acclaim to her album, she responded, "I feel lucky because they gave me such good songs". She acknowledges that any of her success should be credited to others, the songwriters.

Another endearing thing about IU is that she's not a dancer, and she acknowledges that she's an awkward dancer. I think she goes through the same dance training as any other idol celebrity, it's just that ... she can't do it.

As a result, her choreographers keep her movements very simple, and it's clear that her back-up dancers are far superior to her. Still, I think the dance movements she's given fit her image.

I found her comeback song, You and I, strangely addictive after a few listens. It's an upbeat song with beautiful melodies, but with also a sadness I couldn't explain. This is success on the part of the songwriters, because that sadness comes through in the song, and as it turns out the lyrics are about yearning and hope for an unrequited love ... and time travel.

I'm not sure, but I think the gist of the song and the full video is of a younger girl who falls in love with an older guy, and builds a time machine to go into the future where they are closer in age and can have a relationship, but that jump into the future also renders her a different, more mature person, and that ideal she had as a younger person isn't the same anymore.

IU is also reputed to never lip-synch her performances. That's another common argument among fans of all girl groups about whether they are lip-synching various performances or not. T-ara claims to have only lip-synched once in their career out of necessity and fans got on their cases for it, but I don't believe it. I've seen more than one performance where the vocals are clearly the same as the recorded version.

I do believe that idol groups would rather not lip-synch and hate it when they have to. I think IU insists on performing her vocals live. The only time she lip-synchs is during the recording of videos, or when she's forced to perform in a rabbit costume (it's a Korean variety/reality show on which IU was voted to receive a "punishment" by her team through the logic that IU receiving punishment would boost viewer ratings (NB: "kiyeon" in Korean, I'm pretty confident, means "cute")).

2011-12-31T14:52:00.330+08:00

For some reason, I just didn't want to let December pass with only one entry posted. It shouldn't matter, and it doesn't. But this blog is the last connection I have with some existence outside of my head. It's the last place where I'm leaking into the material world, where there is any proof of my existence.

I'm not sure why any such proof is necessary. It's not for me, I know I'm still here. I'll know when I make a push to not be. It's like part of a contract with existence, having existed. It would be rude to existence, the privilege existence has given me, to not affirm it as long as I still exist.

I've continued to read interesting stuff that I've made strange connections with and between. Something about the Christmas season always has me ending up reflecting on Christianity, and this year I found and started reading Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity in a bookstore. I haven't finished it, and may not since the last time I was there, I couldn't find it. Maybe someone else was reading it at that time.

It's a scholarly work, so it examines and questions and looks at evidence and facts objectively, as much as possible, to come to theories or conclusions. Reading Judas looks at the development of the writing of what became the canonical New Testament gospels, set against what was going on socially at the time, which was a lot of turmoil and disagreement and distress.

Any uniformity or consensus Christians today believe existed in the early Jesus movement was a brainwashing fiction that started as early as Paul, even while he was an extremely controversial figure in the movement. Scholars believe that rifts were huge between different groups who were preaching diverse meanings about the stories circulating around this Jesus character.

What I get out of it is that The Gospel of Judas was written from a certain political stance within the disparate Jesus movement, critical of an opposing stance on particular issues that were being argued. But in the same way, the canonical gospels were also doing the same thing, and the book analyzes how the Jesus story develops and gets embellished from gospel to gospel to support the stance of a particular side of the disagreements.

In the end, one side won, and the other side lost. Roman Emperor Constantine became a Christian in the 4th century and formed the Nicene Council to come up with the canon. The Roman Empire became the Roman Catholic Church and an entire side of Christianity was suppressed and wiped from history and only recently recovered in the 20th century with the discovery of the library at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Judas and to some extent the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The emphasis is on the mess that was the Jesus movement in the first few centuries following Jesus's death. And because one side won and the other side lost, Christians today only know one side of the story and don't realize the diversity of belief into the meaning of Jesus's death that existed and was being argued. They've been brainwashed to completely reject those other works.

And I connect this to another book I read at the library, Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. In short, the book is a first person account of a disaster that occurred on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest in May 1996, when 12 people ultimately ended up losing their lives in relation to the incident.

The connection is that the description of events turned out to be very controversial with various parties claiming differing versions of events. Adding in the altitude that rendered rationality questionable at best, no one really knows what happened up there, just as no one can authoritatively define what was going on with the Jesus movement in those first few centuries.

The internet is rife with commentators taking sides and vehemently opining and pointing condemning fingers when . . . they weren't there. They don't even know what it's like to be in the Death Zone on Everest and exercise little imagination to try.

It was a mess on Everest. It was a tragedy and bad decisions were made, but I think every individual did his or her best at any given moment. Krakauer does point out bad decisions, but I don't think he was blaming anyone or pointing fingers, but that's how other parties took it and it became a very public feud (not part of the controversy is Krakauer's condemnation of the asshole South African team and the reckless and uncooperative Taiwanese team that were on the mountain at the time. I take it those are accepted facts).

It was very emotional. It was strangely emotional for me reading it. Part of it is the connection of Everest with Tibet. But more of it is the drive of some people to climb Mt. Everest. Are these people nuts?

Now I've did my share of doing dumb in my day, putting myself recklessly into situations that were potentially harmful or dangerous. I understand the drive to push oneself to one's limits or even beyond -- my limit being meager compared to anyone who even thinks of attempting Everest.

That's what cycling was all about. I cycled to climb. It was all about climbing relentless hills and hammering on through any hurt, and it never stopped being a thrill getting to the top of some challenge. And once I stopped being able to do hills because of age or alcoholism or diet, cycling became boring. Or at least something different.

I've mentioned my two San Francisco Marathons before, on the course before the organizers changed it because elite runners were threatening to boycott because the course was so hard. I admitted to myself after the second one that I wasn't emotionally prepared for it (not to put too fine a point on it, I wasn't emotionally prepared to run that second marathon).

It wasn't traumatic, but it haunted me for a whole month hence, and every day I spent 45 minutes to an hour obsessively going through the entire course in my head. I think I even got on my commuter road bike once and rode the entire course through. And it did effectively put an end to my running. I started cycling because my knees weren't recovering.

But to climb Mt. Everest? That's really rolling dice with your life. You sign up to climb Mt. Everest, there is no guarantee you're coming down alive. There's no guarantee you're coming down at all.

And I'm making this strange connection in my mind that suicide is my Everest. Pushing into unknown territory that may end in tragedy or a pay-off that no one else but a select few can hope to appreciate. Pushing towards suicide for a spiritual goal is . . . gambling with my life.

I would never think to climb Everest, I've felt altitude sickness at 18,000 feet in Tibet and there's no way I can imagine attempting 20,000, 24,000, 29,028 feet. That would be . . . suicide. But that's where I understand the drive of these people. That's why I felt emotionally involved in their attempt and why it felt personal when it became a tragedy.

Another book I just found at the bookstore that I want to start reading is The Essential Gnostic Gospels, a compilation which includes the Gospel of Judas. This is a collection of works and ideas that existed in the early Jesus movement that was suppressed by Constantine, the Roman Empire and the Nicene Council. They were the ideological losers.

This is the book that makes me separate Jesus from what Christianity became, because the Jesus portrayed in what are now known as the Gnostic Gospels is a character that makes me realize Jesus was really a big fucking deal in his time. The things these followers recorded make me feel he was on an elevated spiritual plane.

When exposed to canonical Christianity, I feel like I'm trying to be brainwashed. I should be impressed by walking on water or miracles . . . why? I'm more impressed when Thich Nhat Hanh, who has a deep respect for Jesus, said, "The miracle isn't walking on water, it's walking on land".

I should want heaven why? I should fear hell why? Such simple delineations which made me feel like they were trying to hoodwink me into something that didn't make any sense. Good? Evil? What the fuck?

And I shouldn't wonder the teachings in the Gnostic Gospels are also kabbalistic and buddhistic. The antithesis of the closed-minded exclusivity of what became Christianity -- you're either with us or against us.

So many ways that Jesus's effect on the world went wrong, but from my initial readings of some of the Gnostic Gospels, I'm more convinced of one thing Christians got right, which is that Jesus was a big fucking deal. If they got his true teachings embodied in the Gnostic Gospels, that would be even better.

2011-12-21T14:05:00.004+08:00

From the Zohar:
"'When you walk, it shall lead you; when you lie down it shall keep you and when you awake, it shall talk with you.' (Proverbs 6:22) 'When you walk, it shall lead you,' refers to the Torah that goes before a man when he dies. 'When you lie down, it shall keep you,' refers to the interval when the body lies in the grave, for at that time the body is judged and sentenced and the Torah acts in its defense. 'And when you awake, it shall talk with you,' refers to the time at which the dead rise from the dust.

"Rabbi Elazar quoted the verse: 'It shall talk with you' (Proverbs 6:22). Although the dead have just risen from the dust, they remember the Torah they studied before their death. They will know all they studied before departing the world. And everything shall be clearer than it was before death, for whatever he strove to understand yet did not successfully grasp, is now clear in his innermost parts. And the Torah speaks within him." p. 190-191, The Essential Zohar

What I found fascinating about this passage is that Christians probably interpret the quote from Proverbs as referring to faith. It's a very simple, direct interpretation. Often even more narrowly interpreted: faith in Jesus or an exclusive Christian, white male God. And that normative, bland Christian interpretation is fine and obvious regarding physical, material life, but nothing to go on and on about.

But the Zohar interprets it in a manner that I can re-interpret as squaring with the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Tibetan Buddhism describes the life and death cycle with three bardos of living (consciousness, sleep and meditation), and three death bardos (the point of death, the bardo of reality, and the bardo of becoming).

My reading of the death bardos and the guidance the Tibetan Book of the Dead counsels is that what we're striving for in the death bardos is the same as what we're striving for in the living bardos. Or striving for enlightenment in the living bardos is training for attaining enlightenment in the death bardos. Life and death are mirrored realities.

Actually, the three elements of the quote from Proverbs can apply both to the three living bardos and the three death bardos. But what's fascinating to me is that I can interpret what the Zohar says to the death bardos at all.

Tibetan Buddhism is very meticulous about the death process and what happens between one death and the next incarnation of a ... person, a soul, karmic energy. But there seems to be little in Judaism or Kabbalah about the mechanics of what happens after death. Just a far off resurrection and judgment that Christians took and ridiculously interpreted literally.

The book I've been reading, The Essential Zohar, doesn't explicitly state or endorse any theory of reincarnation, but the author seems pretty open-minded about the possibility of Buddhism-like multiple lifetimes and reincarnation.

The Zohar interprets Proverbs 6:22 not as some vague notion of faith leading us forth in life, but Torah, i.e., spiritual cultivation, leading us through the death experience. It doesn't explicitly say that the "when you awake"/"dead rise from the dust" is reincarnation, but that's how I read it, because it then fits in with Tibetan Buddhist ontology.

Torah is what we do with spiritual energy in our lifetimes, how we cultivate it or not cultivate it. It's also karma. When we die, we take nothing with us except our karma, the energy patterns that we've indelibly stamped on our manifestation of some primordial energy that is the basis of our consciousness through our behavior and thoughts.

We don't take our possessions, our body, or memories or anything that relies on brain matter for existence. Memories and thoughts rely on brain matter. Karma doesn't. Our karma has no relation to our identity as a person, because our identities also rely on thought and brain matter.

So when we die, it is only Torah that leads us. All else falls away and dissolves. Tibetan Buddhism describes the death-point bardo as being so subtle that only the highest levels of practitioners can achieve realization/enlightenment in it.

For ordinary beings, the dissolution of awareness of physical body elements and mental consciousness elements is so shocking and unfamiliar and disconcerting that it is impossible to maintain any stability to achieve realization, and it goes by like the snap of a finger.

The interval in the grave where the Torah acts as a defense can be likened to the bardo of reality where we are immersed in the primordial energy of the universe that is the substratum of what our human consciousness has become on this planet.

It is enlightenment, but we don't know it because of our conception of physical reality from having lived previous lives on this planet, karma. Even in the Tibetan description of the bardo of reality, a judgment takes place because that's what naturally emerges in this state as the wisps of karmic memory recall what occurred in our previous life and there is some recognition of "right" and "wrong". Enlightenment can occur in this bardo upon the realization that the judgment is itself mind, or created by "mind", and that right and wrong are manifestations of mind, and not concrete judgments.

What is Torah defending us against? Our spiritual cultivation defends us in the reality bardo against the notion created by the karma from physically having existed that worldly manifestation was some ultimate reality.

The final bardo of becoming in Tibetan Buddhism describes the process by which reincarnation takes place. At some point there is a crux between a prior life and future life, and if enlightenment isn't attained, our karmic energy moves towards a future life.

Torah shall talk to you when you rise from the dust. If you cultivated yourself spiritually, that survives the death process whereby you lose everything that depends on material existence. With rebirth, your karma still applies, and if you studied the Torah, the Torah will remain with you. You can continue to undertake the spiritual path you were on in a previous life, provided you studied the Torah.

2011-11-30T04:45:00.005+08:00

Abraham is a pure embodiment of kindness and generosity. In kabbalistic terminology, his connection is with the Sefirah of Chesed. The energy of judgment and severity associated with the Sefirah of Gvurah is foreign to him -- and that is precisely what the Adversary has revealed as an opening. As a foundation of the spiritual circuitry that must be flawlessly constructed if the redemption of humanity is ever to be realized, Abraham must be made a complete soul. That is the purpose of this last trial, as the Zohar makes clear.

"There was no judgment in Abraham previously. He had consisted entirely of kindness (Chesed). Now water was mixed with fire; kindness was mixed with judgment (Gvurah). Abraham did not achieve perfection until he prepared to execute judgment and establish it in its place." -- The Essential Zohar, p. 148

This passage is in regard to the story of Abraham whereby the Creator demands that he make a sacrifice of his son, Isaac. I think -- I'm no expert on biblical stories. I just have vague recollections of bits and pieces I've heard. And in "The Essential Zohar", the chapter name is "The Binding of Isaac".

The Sefirah (or Sephirot) mentioned are described differently by different sources, but I gather that they are energy states between the ultimate divine and material, human existence. They describe humanity's "distance from God", which is also a concept in Sufism. So they separate human from the divine.

There are about 10 Sephirot, and from the divine down, they each describe an energy state removed from the divine state. Or in reverse, they are like a ladder to be climbed towards the divine. Several of the Sephirot are directly associated with certain Jewish patriarchs, and here, Abraham is associated with Chesed, or mercy, sharing, loving-kindness.

Abraham is described as incomplete because he is purely Chesed, without a drop of Chesed's "negative" counterpart Sefirah, Gvurah, which is judgment or restriction.

The Adversary mentioned above is part of the divine mechanisms. Angels who are testing God's creation, partly out of spite for being told that Adam was closer to God than the angels. The Essential Zohar likens them to criminal defense attorneys, who might seem to be despicable, defending criminals and degenerates, but they serve a vital function in the justice system by creating balance. They ensure the legal process maintains the highest standards to protect citizens from possible abuses or over-zealous prosecution.

They see Abraham's perfect Chesed as a possible fault and request permission from the Creator to test his faith -- would he maintain his faith when asked to do the unthinkable? So the Creator commands this perfect believer to make the ultimate sacrifice of his own son, who was born after much difficulty.

Abraham passes the test with flying colors, but in doing so, his being is infused with Gvurah, which was necessary to offer Isaac as a sacrifice until the Creator stopped him at the last second. Having the energy states of Chesed and Gvurah, Abraham is described as having his soul complete.

I love the description of the Sefirah as divine circuitry to connect humanity with the divine, angling for the ultimate redemption of humankind in the Garden of Eden.

What I get out of these concepts is that the Jewish patriarchs created the circuit pathways up the ladder of Sephirot for all humanity; all following generations. Abraham completed that particular connection for all of us so that we don't have to by ourselves. All we have to do is acknowledge Abraham's accomplishment within ourselves.

For example, living in a major urban city, I witness a lot of behavior that can be described as unmindful or even stupid. If I were 100% compassionate, I would cow down to such behaviors and just let them be and not be critical or judgmental.

But that's not necessarily the best course of action. Sometimes it's better to act in a way that's rude to them or even threatening to try to bring to their attention that they need to be mindful, too. That's Gvurah.

The intention must be correct, i.e. balanced with Chesed. If it's just Gvurah, then it's aggression or spite or anger. If the intention is compassionate, then an aggressive act is balanced with Chesed.

Abraham completed that circuit for me, and to the extent that I have it, I am grateful to Abraham.

I think these ideas can be linked with karma. Regarding the theory of reincarnation and karma, we don't take anything with us from one life to a subsequent one except our karma. And the establishment and recognition of the sephirotic circuitry is karma. It's one more step up the tree of life.

2011-11-22T14:01:00.175+08:00

I had another lucid dream, but it was different from the previous time I was successful. This time I don't know if it was my dream. I'm pretty sure I wasn't me in it.

Also I don't remember whether the last time I came up into the lucid state from a lower dream state, but this time I felt I went down into it from a waking state. I was lying on my bed watching my breathing, aware of the constant chatter and internal conversation going on in my head, which gets more intense when you haven't had direct in-person social contact in months.

Then as I fell into a quasi-sleep state, I was aware of things in my mind becoming really vivid. I was only quasi-aware of this as well. I'm not sure what those things that were becoming vivid were, if it was my awareness, or my sense perceptions, or the thoughts.

But then I was in a dream state and still fully aware of myself, but the content of the dream suggested it wasn't me or my dream. I actually don't know how to describe it or what was going on. I was totally clueless in the dream.

All I can describe are the very basic impressions and those I'm really squeezing to interpret into physical words and are nothing like the experience.

There were two groups of people, one male and one female. The male portion came first and it was like some white boy institution, like a frat house or military academy. I did feel a basic fear being in that situation, but when I realized they weren't treating me differently or being racist, I just went along with the flow of the dream, the content of which I've completely forgotten.

I had no idea who I was and I don't think I said anything, I just played it cool, but at the same time I was fully aware I was dreaming and that as a dream it was completely unfamiliar territory.

Next I wandered "down the hall" or something to the female section of the dream, and when I walked in a door. A person behind the door closed the door and accosted me. At first I think it was a guy, but then it was clearly female and she was hostile and pinned me down, and I get the sense that it was some issue over a guy, and then I realized I must've been female.

I wasn't resisting or doing or saying anything. It wasn't my dream, I didn't know what to do so I just remained passive. But then I don't know if it was me consciously changing the tenor of the dream, but then the whole incident with this woman on top of me changed and started getting intimate. She was no longer pinning me down and there was a sexual energy beginning. This, no one should be surprised, I tried to encourage and maintain.

The way I came out of it was interesting, too, because the scene transitioned without me changing my position. Still on my back, I was suddenly in a room that had the atmosphere of maybe my uncle's house in Kaohsiung 30 years ago. I was lying on a bed trying to maintain the lucid dream and the feel of intimacy from the previous scene.

I think someone was there, maybe a cousin, bumping or making some noise on a bed next to mine and I was thinking, "darn, they're going to wake me up out of this", but I also thought that I was already awake and vainly trying to maintain the lucid dream.

But then I realized that no, this isn't my room. I tried to imagine my room but couldn't, so then I realized I was still in the dream. But trying to imagine my room was irresistible, and when I did, that's when I woke up.

I don't know if this has any significance, but right after I woke up, I started feeling a sharp pain in my gut, similar to several months ago, but then it resided. Then I felt I should go to the bathroom and surprisingly took the BIGGEST FUCKING DUMP EVER. It felt great, like all the pipes got cleaned out. If someone were to have told me I was full of shit, I would've replied, "you have no idea".

I've heard about people who practice lucid dreaming as a way to prepare for traveling through the death bardos. There's more than one source suggesting the closest to the Tibetan bardo experience we can come to while living is dreaming, and lucid dreaming is analogous to being in control through the bardos, rather than swept through like in a stormy current.

I did get the sense after this lucid dream that my reactions in the dream were the result of my practice and how I would ideally like to handle myself through the death bardos. However, my experience was still a duality, I still had a sense of me and everything else as other.

It is said that enlightenment comes when one realizes a non-dual oneness. If one can realize in the bardo that everything is a manifestation of oneself -- no separation between oneself and everything perceived around us -- that would be enlightenment. I didn't think of that in the lucid dream, but I did remain unattached to what was happening around me.

Short of enlightenment in the bardo, I think that's the best way to go through it: Not being pulled in by what you're perceiving, and not thinking it's real and reacting to it as if it were real, either positively or negatively, which is a function of one's basic karma, which is a function of one's experiences and actions during life.

If what I've been practicing and cultivating as I go about my daily life led to my reactions in this lucid dream, then I should have a good degree of confidence heading into the death bardos. It's not a cold detachment, which could lead to a lack of compassion, but a concerted effort to not be attached or feel aversion to my perceptions and experiences.

It's true that I'm not engaged in life going on around me, but I do think it's important to maintain a base attitude that's prepared to be engaged and to engage it with compassion. The fact that I'm not engaged is circumstantial. And I know it's a reality that I've created by myself.

2011-11-20T23:20:00.102+08:00

I saw the sun today!! I even sallied forth into it!!! I couldn't believe it when I craned my neck looking up from my window, which otherwise looks out into an alley, and saw evidence of blue skies. This entire past week was completely rainy or cloudy. I kept track.

I didn't know what I wanted to do out there. I was still too suspicious to try to get on my bike because it still could cloud over quickly and start raining. I thought of going up to Danshui where I've decided should be the site of my next attempt, or I could go to the library and re-read more of The Essential Zohar.

I went out realistically thinking that I would end up in the library, but for all the resistance in me towards going to Danshui, I rebelled and pushed myself towards that option and was finally on a bus towards the MRT that would take me to the northern-most station on the red line.

The MRT loosely follows the Danshui River northward and takes about 30 minutes to the terminal station. From there, it's still a bit of a hike to the mouth of the river where it empties into the Taiwan Strait -- open seas. I'm not sure I would call today's trek a dress rehearsal; more just scouting out coastline locations.

And I did stand on the sand of the shoreline. The surf was rough and I wondered if I could even make it far enough out so that I would be taken out to sea and not pushed back to shore by the waves. I felt I didn't want to do it. I felt I couldn't do it. But I have to do it.

And if I do it, I confirmed this was a good location. I walked along the beach towards the touristy Fisherman's Wharf area. The sun was setting in the west and it was a bit windy, but not chilly. I couldn't believe it wasn't raining.

The midrash teaches that when Moses stretched out his hand over the waters, nothing happened. It was only when one man actually walked out into the waves that the Red Sea parted -- but not until the water had reached his neck and he kept walking. Then and only then was certainty in the tools of Kabbalah really made manifest . . . Before we can live in this universe in a meaningful way, however, we should rid ourselves of the belief that we are helpless human beings about to drown in a stormy sea. -- p. 107, The Essential Zohar

I love how this scene contrasts Christian portrayals, whereby Moses dramatically stretches his noble hand outward and the waters of the Red Sea part and he leads his withered and weathered people across. Here he stretches out his hand and nothing happens. Um, Moses?

It's not even Moses that heads into the water, it's "one man".

I jest. One man can be interpreted as the unity of the chosen people, that it's when all the people believed and were certain in their belief enough to just head into the surf that the Creator's miracle was manifested.

It wasn't the prophet Moses leading his unenlightened followers, it was the entire nation that manifested the miracle. I think this chapter was written about certainty as a requisite energy or attitude in the pathways to the divine.

I think it was written that the Jews left Egypt with their "weapons", and the Zohar interprets "weapons" as miracles, but access to these miracles was contingent upon certainty that they were thus armed. They had to be confident and positive.

There was a very slight drizzle in my neighborhood after I got off the bus coming back from Danshui, but it didn't develop into a full-blown rain.

2011-11-18T14:06:00.026+08:00

In the study of Kabbalah and the Zohar, we begin to see that any activity that connects us with another dimension of consciousness -- be it drink, drugs, sex, meditation or prayer -- draws Light to us. Rarely, if ever, is abstention recommended by the Zohar in regard to any of these vehicles. Rather we are guided to recognize temperance as the appropriate approach. To deserve a greater amount of Light, we must work on and strengthen our spiritual Vessel. If we allow ourselves to "imbibe" large amounts of Light without having done that work, we will not be able to contain what we receive. We will become "drunk", incapacitated, and allow chaos free rein. Noah's sin was not in the physical act of drinking, but in drinking's metaphorical connotations. His drunkenness represented connection to a more intense level of Light than his spiritual Vessel could tolerate. - p. 104, The Essential Zohar

It was interesting coming across this passage after the last post (I'm re-reading the book at the library, copying parts). I think I had been flirting unintentionally with alcohol poisoning, leading to how I got to be feeling, but perhaps also exceeding my "spiritual" tolerance.

The passage reminded me that even through this downward spiral of maybe drinking myself to death, that I need to keep in mind what is important and try to keep certain "channels" clear. That's another thing I like about Kabbalah -- its explanation of channels to the divine; energy paths similar in Tibetan Buddhism.

The "amount of Light" we can handle is also a concept I learned about in college as "spiritual aptitude". Buddhism in general reflects this idea as "expedient means", whereby the Buddha -- also Jesus according to the gnostic teachings -- identified who was ready for what level of teachings, and taught selectively.

Don't even try to teach kabbalistic ideas of the first five books of the Old Testament to a white, conservative Republican in the U.S., among others, because their spiritual aptitude is so low that they can only be allowed the dimmest amount of Light through a literal interpretation of scripture. It's still Light, however, so just let them follow their path. At least they have some meager sense of spirituality in their karma. And all of us who believe in these ideas were once at that point.

At first, I thought the above passage was making an analogy between drinking and getting drunk with the amount of Light one has the spiritual aptitude for and taking too much, and that they were different things. I thought it meant my drinking should be seen as an analogy of what I'm doing spiritually.

But it's not an analogy, it's literal and interconnected. The passage prima facie states that drinking has a spiritual dimension and abstention is not the purpose of the teachings.

Even through my drinking, I have to maintain awareness of my spiritual energies and not fall into chaos, which my last post seems to hint at. "Wasting away in my apartment" is chaos. It's losing the meditation.

I recognize that nothing about Kabbalah justifies drinking myself to death. It's a risky path even for me, but it's one that I've tried to keep narrowly well-defined. The most important thing for me about moving towards death is to not let chaos take over.

2011-11-16T23:54:00.001+08:00

I'm wondering what I'm holding onto as my life unravels and falls apart. I put down my thoughts and ideas while realizing none of this has any meaning. I look at my life from all kinds of different angles and I can't see any meaning. I know my time on this planet hasn't been useless, I do think I have impacted some peoples' lives, but that doesn't mean it has meaning.

It's just plain ridiculous that I'm still here, letting things get bleaker and bleaker. I never would've guessed I would go out so pathetically, wasting away in my apartment.

My health may be taking a nosedive. My body feels like it's becoming unable to cope with my drinking (it's about time). I'm noticing more changes, but insomnia has also hit hard recently and isn't showing signs of relenting, and insomnia fucks you up real good.

The weather isn't helping, either. Relentless drear contributing to the decline.

Lots of nausea recently. Lots of feeling like throwing up, but having nothing to throw up as I don't have any appetite left, so there's not much in my stomach to throw up.

Not helping that matter is that I am forcing myself to continue drinking. My body is starting to resist. I don't know if it's psychological or physiological, but my body is trying to tell me to stop. It's getting hard to get shots down, and gagging has become part of the process as I force the poison down.

Generally feeling bad all the time. I'm not complaining, it's what I want, it's what I've caused. I just wish I can get it over with.

2011-11-06T03:55:00.018+08:00

This autumn has been a boon for K-pop girl groups with a plethora of comebacks by top acts. In Korean entertainment, "comeback" doesn't refer to a return from some fall from grace. It just means a new song from a group that has already debuted.

They're called "idol" groups, which I think has become a palatable term because of shows like "American Idol". In Korea it just refers to pop music celebrities, and it's a term borrowed from the Japanese pop music scene, "idoru", which of course is taken from "idol".

When I first heard the Japanese use of the word several decades back, I didn't like it because the idea of an "idol" or something that is idolized was an afront to respectable musicianship. An idol was something superficial and glossy; an image that could be manufactured. "Real" musicians and songwriters garnered respect.

For the Japanese, any singer or music group popular enough to appear on TV shows was considered an "idoru", including what I consider legitimate rock bands that aren't corporately manufactured, and who write their own music and play their own instruments.

From what I gather from the Korean music scene, there are very, very few of that latter group. Music is almost all corporate and manufactured with very few national artists who write and create their own product. And even though that's something that generally offends me, I've somehow accepted it as the way it is in Korea, because my bottom line feeling is that a lot of K-pop songwriting is, for me, really good.

I'm not sure where my change of heart occurred. It may be midlife crisis, watching these girls half my age strut their stuff, but I insist it's not prurient interest. I'm still listening for good music, and if the music isn't good, I'm not going to watch or follow them no matter how "sexy" they are. And I think I've mentioned before that I still can't stand Western, Japanese or Taiwanese pop music on the basis that the songwriting is still offensively bad.

So be warned, major K-pop girl group geeking out follows, stop reading if you're not middle aged and it's not a place to which you're willing to go:

So far, this autumn has seen four top acts make their comeback stages, with more to come. Kara was the first, followed by Brown Eyed Girls a few weeks later, and then finally Secret and Girls' Generation (SNSD) simultaneously began their new promotions head-to-head.

My personal tastes rate Brown Eyed Girls' "Sixth Sense" as the best quality of these comebacks. The lead track off their album was actually a song called "Hot Shot" which I initially liked better for its Latin groove, but their main promotion was for "Sixth Sense".

Brown Eyed Girls are a bit of an anomaly in the idol scene because three of the four members are considered advanced in age at 30. Only one member is 23 (Ga-in). But they are with a smaller agency and I gather they have a lot more creative and artistic control than younger idol groups on bigger labels. I also heard that Je-a and Miryo earn copyright royalties because Je-a writes and Miryo takes credit for her own raps.

And even though their stage performances have choreography, they are recognized for their vocal talents, and the media has covered their vocal skills during this comeback, highlighted towards the end of "Sixth Sense" after Miryo's rap section when first Je-a hits a big note, followed by Ga-in and Narsha hitting high falsetto notes.

(I would also note the subtle background vocals during those high notes which are pretty cool, but not necessarily noticeable unless paying attention to them.)

When top acts first make their comeback stages, they're usually allowed to perform two songs, one a truncated version of a second song before going into their main promotion:

But as good as "Sixth Sense" is, it took several listens for me to really appreciate its quality. For pop music, it's a pretty serious track in that it doesn't sound like it's about love or breaking up or stupid shit, and it's also musically more complex than the usual fare.

The comeback song that grabbed me immediately was Secret's "Move", so I would rate it as a very close second. Before the track was released, there were 30-second teasers that hooked me and had me convinced this should be a big song.

I thought the only thing that would prevent it from taking number one spots on TV programs is that it was directly going against SNSD's comeback, a Daniel and Goliath battle where Secret didn't have a chance. The thing is that SNSD's comeback was supposed to come a few weeks earlier, but then they changed their plans and ended up releasing simultaneously with Secret.

And I applaud Secret for not changing their plans as other groups did to avoid competition with SNSD. Secret and their management seemed confident about their product and even if they wouldn't get number ones on the TV programs, they weren't going to change their plans. That I respect.

When the promotions hit, I wasn't disappointed. It's just a rocking, bopping romp that's a lot of fun. Their look is sexy but there are a lot of cute elements in their choreography and the execution is . . . just fun.

Kara was the first autumn comeback, but I rate it third among these four groups. Unfortunately, the corporate masterminds have blocked their promotional videos, so I'll follow their lead and say no more about them. Too bad, as I grew to like the song, but if I can't share it, I'm not going to say anything more about it.

Behind SNSD, Kara and 2NE1 are fairly considered among the top girl groups. 2NE1 don't have a fall comeback scheduled because they've already promoted 2 or 3 new singles this year, including the following:

I didn't like 2NE1 when I first heard them. A lot of attitude, a lot of auto-tune, and I was struggling to find the substance. Finally, with this year's promotions, I've found myself sucked into their cult of personality as much as SNSD's, but I found their music, in general, better.

It's useless to compare 2NE1 with SNSD or Kara stylistically because they're totally different. There isn't a better or worse. But since I can't share Kara's promotion, I'll just argue with the evidence that 2NE1 is badass.

Finally, SNSD came out with their much-hyped comeback, but it was quite a disappointment for me, if not for SNSD fans. The song is still dominating, but to my ears it isn't great. Certainly not as catchy as their two previously promoted songs, the Japanese language Mr. Taxi and last year's Hoot.

The song was hyped as being created by Teddy Riley who was behind Michael Jackson's "Dangerous", but to me that's a big so what? and indicative of what I don't like about corporate pop music in general.

This track has some good qualities and has grown on me through the promotions, but I wouldn't go out of my way to listen to or watch this track. I'm not a big fan of the fact that there is no bass, and therefore lacks any visceral movement.

I can't fault SNSD's execution as they present their parts and choreography professionally and flawlessly. But in the end I think the success of this track lies in the fact that it's SNSD.

Autumn comebacks still pending are from Wonder Girls and T-ara. If there is any challenge to SNSD's crown, it would be Wonder Girls. They had some huge hits early on but then disappeared from the Korean scene to work and promote in the U.S., and they've barely been a blip in Korea for over a year and a half.

The Wonder Girls comeback is highly anticipated as a homecoming, but they have to come up with something pretty impressive to challenge SNSD, and I have my doubts. The scene may have passed them by.

Sometimes I try to trace how I got into K-pop at all, and I'm not sure if it was SNSD's Gee, or Wonder Girls' Tell Me that was the tipping point. I had already been primed by Hyun Ae's mix tape which had some good stuff, but that pre-dated either SNSD's or Wonder Girls' debuts.

I just remember seeing the "Gee" video on MTV, and I don't know what it was about it, but I was like, "What was that?" and searched them online. It was bright and upbeat and catchy, and the choreography was sharp and catchy. It was pop music and had a pop sheen but for some reason wasn't offensive.

The first I heard of "Tell Me" was an amateur dance cover on YouTube, and I found out the "Tell Me" dance was a huge hit on YouTube with dance covers by Korean military, police, flight attendants and any number of college and high school students, both male and female. And it's a groovy little piece with a catchy backing track.

2011-11-05T16:27:00.002+08:00

It is just a decision I just have to make now. Nothing's pushing me, nothing's pulling me.

I'm just here, just existing in a basic metabolizing human existence without any social function or meaning, waiting for myself to make a simple yes-no decision. Or rather a when decision, which will then determine the yes-no decision which I can't make until I'm at the brink again.

Then there's my fallback position of cowardly hoping that renal failure comes swiftly. "Cowardly"? Yea, I'll own up to that being cowardly, as it would be the result I've forced indirectly because of the failure of being proactive in this aspiration.

Letting go of this life in an affirmative act of deeply acknowledging the impermanence of any given human lifetime, with faith that it is an understanding and a step towards enlightenment and the belief that reincarnation is a natural cycle that has developed on this planet until enlightenment is attained to escape that cycle. Enlightenment possibly just a natural energy state of the universe.

That's a whole nother discussion, though, about why we live our lives, why we exist, why we suffer, why not, what's wrong with living life even if there's suffering, why should we try to escape, what's so great about enlightenment, etc., etc.

Me, I can barely get out of bed. When I get out of bed, I can barely get off the internet. When I get off the internet and don't go back to lying on my bed, I barely can get out of my apartment. I get out of my apartment to get something to eat and buy alcohol.

But I've more or less lost my appetite. When I do get something to eat, I feel bloated and nauseous afterwards. I'm thinking of trying an even unhealthier diet of just snacking out of convenient stores. Sandwiches, onigiri and salads.

My alcohol consumption has increased, and my general habit of buying a bottle of liquor every other day has slightly increased, whereby every few days I end up buying a bottle on a consecutive day. I'll determine I need to buy a new bottle while looking at a bottle that I just bought yesterday.

And I'm starting to feel the effects of alcohol more acutely. It's making me feel sicker. Sometimes it's hard to drink, sometimes the smell makes me nauseous. Sometimes I feel some sort of alcoholic lethargy in which I just crash and end up lying in bed drifting in and out of consciousness or sleep while the TV drones on in the background for hours until I recover and then get back on the internet and drink again. Woof, maybe a little too honest here.

I mentioned the constant cloudy and rainy weather here, but these past two days have been bright, sunny and warm, and even with constant self-entreaties to just get out into the sunlight, I've been unable to.

So all I have left is this one decision to make. The decision of when I'm going to go out to the brink and either do it or face up that I can't do it. And realize that if I don't do it, things get bleak. Nothing about living on looks in the least appealing. Going back to the U.S. would signal the start of some sort of nightmare. Yet, it's strangely possible.

2011-10-29T03:57:00.007+08:00

What I also loved about the book on Kaballah I just read is that the Zohar indicates that the scripture is all about symbols and metaphor that must be decoded to be correctly interpreted towards a divine understanding. It's not what it seems on its face.

That's the way I was taught to watch films in a religion class I took in college that had a film syllabus. Always look for the symbols (of course you have to know what the symbols are to spot them), and look for a subtext of what a director's message might be, expressed through metaphor.

Actually that second part I learned in law school in a class that also used a film syllabus making parallels between trends happening in law and society at the time certain films were made and how the films reflected those trends.

Basically those two classes taught me to view films broadly and look for subtle meaning that might not be obvious if just watching the film as entertainment. Looking for meaning in films is about the same as always being on the look out for learning in life. It's a metaphor. Bam.

If we're going through life without learning, but just to be entertained, it's sort of condemning ourselves to meaningless existence and ignorance. We can put on our tombstones, "He/She was entertained". Or as Roger Waters put it, "Amused to death".

It's like having and raising children without any thought that there's so much to learn from them. Easily equally as much as they have to learn from you.

I also like the idea of looking at our own lives and the lives of the people around us as metaphors or having a larger meaning than we might realize; a reason.

There was a funny story in "The Essential Zohar" about a deluge starting to come down looking like it could challenge the great flood of Noah fame. It rains so hard for several days that it starts to flood. The police send out a car to a pious old man in the country to evacuate him, but the old man refuses to leave, saying, "I have faith in God. God will protect me from harm".

Several days later, the water has risen up to the first floor ceiling and the police arrive in a boat to evacuate him, but he says, "I have faith in God". After a few more days, the old man's house is inundated and he's sitting on top of the chimney, and the authorities send a helicopter to airlift him, but he's adamant in his faith, "God will protect me".

Finally, the waters keep rising and the man drowns. When the man meets his maker, he implores the Creator, "I had such faith in you, why didn't you protect me?", to which the Creator replied, "What do you think the police car, the boat and the helicopter were?!!"

I dunno. Earlier this year, I read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist" and wasn't impressed. One of the main themes in that book is that when your heart truly desires something, the world conspires to help manifest it.

I sarcastically thought, "Oh great, I really want to commit suicide, so according to this book's insight, the world is conspiring for me to kill myself".

Well, actually it's true.

I myself have personally led my life to where I am now, and I've set up the conditions and situation that is perfect for me to go ahead and execute it. Not only all the conditions favor it, but all the people in my life are all complicit in encouraging it, without them even knowing it.

You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard the same message from everyone in recent memory: "Follow your heart", "Do what your heart tells you to do". I even asked, "What if what my heart tells me to do is something that other people would have a lot of trouble accepting?". The answer: "You're only accountable to yourself". And I can't argue with that.

The type of parents I have and my relationship with them, and the nature of all of my relationships all feature such a disconnect that they are of no consideration or impediment. I've wounded myself emotionally and fractured and shattered my reality to the extent that re-integration into any kind of living life would be traumatic.

Everyone wants me to be happy. Fulfilling this life's mission to kill myself would make me happy, because I believe it will advance me on the spiritual path. I'm too attached to a notion of self or ego to advance further, I've hit a wall, and the symbolic gesture of intentionally throwing a lifetime away would help impress upon my karma that any particular self, any particular incarnation, is impermanent and shouldn't be attached to.

It would be better if I could sacrifice myself for some cause, for the good of other people. The stories of the Buddha recount how he recalls his previous lives and in many of them he sacrificed his life for the benefit of others, but I'm doing this for starters. Just end this life, don't be attached to it.

It's also good to remember that I do believe that death is not an end. Death as an end is just a perception. Another interpretation is that it's a transformation or a passage. Jews don't overtly expound reincarnation, but "The Essential Zohar" repeatedly implies that reincarnation is a feature of how the world was created.

Once I get past this wall, I hope that I can develop more compassion, or bodhicitta, so that sacrificing myself for others will be a more stable concept. Bodhicitta is a concept in Kabbalah, too, but it's called "desire for the sake of sharing", as opposed to desire for the sake of oneself, which is the normative human attitude.

And in Buddhistic terms, Abraham was certainly a bodhisattva.

Me, I'm just here being attached to this selfish existence.

2011-10-26T03:08:00.007+08:00

I wonder if the La Nina phenomena is the reason for particularly rainy years in Taiwan. This year has been one of them, similar to my first two years here. The interim two years weren't rainy and I remember them being pretty nice.

This summer it rained just about every day in the afternoon like monsoon rains. And personally, I haven't seen much sunlight in quite a while. I suspect it has something to do with La Nina.

The past few weeks -- I haven't been counting -- but at least two weeks have been block cloudy or rainy. Yesterday was a rare sunny day and I decided to take my road bike out in the evening.

Even riding has become a bore to me, and I just rode casual out to the confluence where the Keelung River empties into the Danshui River, which then continues northward to empty into the Taiwan Strait.

The significance of going to the confluence of those rivers is that it feels like a large body of water there.

The Danshui is already pretty wide by then, being the end result of the Dahan, Xindian and Jingmei rivers; and where the Keelung River waters are finally added, it's quite a large basin and feels more oceanic than just sitting by a riverside.

Confusion. Conflict. Don't want. Must. Where I've led my life.

I stayed there for a while, taking in the vibe of being by the water, simulating the feeling of what I want to do. I was conflicted. I don't want to do this. I have to do this. It is where I've led my life. If I decide against it, all roads forward look bad. Really bad.

Not just difficult, not just challenging, but they put me in a bad place. They take me out of the light and into the darkness. It's not that I don't think I can handle the darkness with these years of mindfulness training, but I don't think I have the strength to maintain myself in this kind of darkness that can get worse and worse to the point where I can get lost in mental illness and lose all the training.

I'm reading a book I found in the public library on Kabbalah, the so-called mystical aspect of Judaism. The book is The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom and it's been a while since I've read a book that made me feel spiritual after reading it.

What's special about this book is that it explains the Zohar, the main book of Kabbalah, as applying outside the Jewish tradition, while still drawing on the Jewish references of the Torah. The difference between this book and other books on Kabbalah and Zohar is that it's not just Jewish. There isn't an insider-outsider aspect.

This book emphasizes that Kabbalah wisdom applies to anyone seeking divine truths. And with this kind of premise in the author's mind, I found from a Buddhistic perspective, this all fits in perfectly with my understanding of Buddhist understanding. It's a universal teaching of spiritual or divine wisdom.

An interesting aspect of this book is that the Zohar claims that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, the first part of which is the Torah, is coded wisdom. If you just read it straight, it's possible to get nothing out of it but ancient stories (the first five books of the Christian Old Testament is pretty much the Torah verbatim, distorting it out of its Jewish origins and re-claiming it in a Christian context).

The Zohar decodes the Tanakh and explains all the symbolism in terms of what the Creator intended. This book in a way is a decoding of Zohar to apply to spirituality in general so that it is inclusive of anyone on a spiritual path. As such, the decoded Tanakh, via the decoded Zohar fits in suitably well with a Tibetan Buddhistic understanding of the universe.

I wish I could go into some detail, but that might lead to a need for a deeper explication, and that would just be a burden, I shouldn't wonder. You have to take my word for it.

But a recent moment I had with the book is a passage where the author says that divine blessings will only come to anyone who sincerely studies the Torah (paraphrasing). I'm not Jewish, I don't study the Torah in any conventional sense, but I thought that if that statement were right, then I should consider myself as someone who studies the Torah.

And in the next sentence, the author confirms that by studying the Torah, it's not literally studying the pages of the Torah, but anyone seeking truth to the light of the divine (paraphrasing).

The Jewish scriptures are all code according to the Zohar. Which means when the Jews are "the chosen people", Jews are code for people on the spiritual path, no matter what faith. And Jews who aren't on the spiritual path, can't be considered of "the chosen people".

It's pretty radical stuff which rings very true to me, but then I remember that Kabbalah is described as "mystical", and as opposed to religious orthodoxies, mysticism has generally been looked down upon through the ages.

Sufism, the mystic sect of Islam is largely discarded and persecuted by Shiites and Sunnis. Christianity's Gnostic Gospels are ignored by the mainstreams, but I've read some of the Gnostic Gospels, including the recently discovered and published Gospel of Judas, and if they had taken hold or had been included in the canon, I'd have a different opinion about Christianity. The Gnostic Gospels describe the Jesus story in terms of the divine, rather than ... blind faith towards what facially just doesn't make any sense. For me, the Jesus story as described in the Gnostic Gospels makes divine sense.

2011-10-21T04:39:00.079+08:00

I woke up thinking, "man, that last post..."

...that last post may be indicative of why I still haven't done what I want to do, and also may be indicative that I ultimately won't do it. My head is still too filled up with things that I'm attached to. There's still just too much superficial stuff going on around and around in my head...

That's what I thought, but actually some of the worst thoughts about not wanting to pursue this aspiration come to me when I first wake up. Then as I gain more normative consciousness, a more rational mindset occurs, for better or worse. Worse, because I find myself confused or conflicted.

Regarding all this stuff in my head, I hold to the mantra that nothing whatsoever should be clung to. So even if I have certain mental preoccupations and tendencies that suggest that I'm still attached to certain things, I'm still constantly telling myself to not be attached to these things.

Experience them, but don't be attached. And I hope the mental karma of the tendency of telling myself not to be attached is stronger than the mental karma of the suggestion of attachment. By karma, I mean anything experienced through the senses which contributes to the unenlightened notion that I'm an independent, continuous, self-existing entity in the universe.

Furthermore, I'm still impressed from going way back into my archives and realizing my goal has been constant over years and years. OK, decades, I'm old! It's possible that a tendency towards suicide as a mental illness can persist across the span of time as it has for me, but in those cases, I think there are always signs of mental illness that manifest that other people can recognize.

I don't think I'm mentally ill, although I may exhibit behaviors that are symptomatic of mental illness. I even recognize them myself (which in an inverted Catch-22 confirms I'm not mentally ill). For me the symptoms are kind of a pathway to my unorthodox goal. Other people get there from being mentally ill, which I suppose is too bad and warrants sympathy.

There must be a peer group somewhere in the world for people like me. It would be a whole lot easier if I had a support group. Not just one willing to send me off, but also understands the reasons I'm doing this. I also wouldn't mind a ride if anyone has a car.

I'm sure I've said this before, but I know if I don't do this, it's not going to go away, and it will continually come up as an issue. I'd like it to be now. I'm trying for now. For the past several months I've kept it just a few days ahead. Walls, I'm thinking of calling them. And they've all been soft walls as I've just blown through them.

I'm starting to face hard walls now, meaning that if I continue to blow past the days without doing anything, it's getting more and more dire, ultimately ending in a decision to return to the States. By year's end at the latest.

Hard walls because if I don't go through with it, everything looks bad. From the simple logistics of moving back to the States to the long term realization that I'm not resolving anything and will end up back in this position again.

Hm, "not resolving". . . life is about solving problems and resolving issues. It's not that I'm trying to resolve anything. If I continue living, then resolution becomes an issue, a necessity. My paradigm is that it is not an issue. Or not supposed to be an issue. Or learning on the spiritual path that it's really not an issue.

My paradigm is that this just has to happen. This is what I need to do. I'm not supposed to need to resolve anything!

2011-10-19T06:45:00.010+08:00

If for some reason I'm able to achieve what I want, no one will know what the last months of my life were like. Which is actually all for the better. No one needs to know. Just trying to maintain practice while not actually practicing.

No real highs, aside from the regular highs of mindful awareness of being alive and breathing, and in particular positive emotions through human expression through media . . . specifically Korean media, which seems really superficial, but that's where I ended up. Emotional highs also in listening to music.

No real lows, aside from a growing ennui and difficulty of getting through each day to day and wondering how I got to this point, which inevitably leads me to remind myself that I got here by leading myself here. No mystery.

Pure geeking out:

The cast for a second season of Korean variety/reality show Invincible Youth that I've geeked out about before has been announced.

IY was one of the first Korean media programs I was exposed to, and I can gush on and on about it. I've found other Korean shows that I like, but I wouldn't push them on anyone and couldn't say much about their social value.

In a nutshell, I thought the first season of IY distinguished its social value because it brought together urbanites with a rural lifestyle. It brought together youth and the elderly and expressed the need to care for and respect the elderly. It was an eco-friendly show that brought attention to the environment and where our farm products come from. The show even won an award from Korea's agricultural department for their efforts.

Time and time again on the show, guests would participate and in the end express that they were surprised how real and unscripted the show really was; that they really put in a day's worth of backbreaking farmwork, along with the entertainment. When the cameras were turned off, they apparently continued working.

And as I mentioned before, the show has a lot of heart (even though many episodes got caught up in competition and forced entertainment), and it really showed a raw side of the celebrities that they couldn't hide because of the nature of the show; a side they can hide easily in their appearances on other shows.

As for the new season, which I'm telling myself I won't be around to gush about, I have a good feeling about it. I don't think it's going to be set in the same village as season one, but perhaps a coastal seaside village.

The biggest surprise is that not only did they get two members of SNSD again, but they also got Sunny to return. SNSD was already a big deal when season one started filming, and I thought they surely couldn't get a SNSD member to return because they're just too busy right now.

SNSD members Sunny and Yuri, I thought, were the real anchors of season one, but they had to leave the show halfway through because of their promotions in Japan. After they left, the replacement cast members just couldn't fill their shoes.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of SNSD's music. I do like their singles and the songs that get promoted, but their CDs are largely filler. I am a fan of their cult of personality and I understand their popularity. All nine members have been groomed to entertain, and I think that has been central to their success.

A lot of Korean celebrities can sing and dance just fine, per their training, but when they go on variety shows, it shows that there's a difference between their talent and celebrity, and being entertaining. Like Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood, who are terrific actors doing what they do, but they couldn't entertain a four year old just being themselves to save their lives.

So for IY to get Sunny back is already a strong basis for the show. But instead of Yuri, they got Hyoyeon, who the producers say was because of her international appeal and slightly exotic look. I also think Hyoyeon is a good choice because I've seen her on other shows and she's really down-to-earth and personable and funny, and I think she'll do great on the show. She did appear once as a guest in season one.

Also surprising in the new cast is that they got another member of Kara. Kara member Goo Hara was a lynchpin of season one, and after 3 original members left, I think Hara was instrumental in carrying the show onwards. She was continually hardworking and entertaining and fun to watch.

And personally I'm glad they got Kara's maknae (youngest member) Jiyoung, who did appear as a guest in season one. When I first got into Kara, Jiyoung was the member I liked least. I found nothing appealing about her, maybe because she was so young.

But in Kara's recent comeback, I was shocked to see that Jiyoung is really maturing and coming into her own (she's on the screen far left and is the first singer). As much as I've liked various aspects of other members, Jiyoung is one it's hard to take my eyes off of now.

Out of the girl groups that were represented in season one, I guess it would've been wishful thinking for another member of T-ara or Secret to appear. I can think of any number of T-ara or Secret members who would do well, but it makes sense that the producers don't want to just repeat season one.

When I heard season two was in development, I thought it would be amazing if they could get a member of Miss A, specifically Min, because she has a great personality and she's been hilarious on other shows. But when I saw Miss A's Suzy was confirmed for the show, I was glad that I at least got Miss A right. They're definitely a hot, up-and-coming group.

The last connection with season one is the casting of Amber of f(x). f(x)'s Victoria was one of the replacement cast members and she held her own. She didn't fill in the void after Sunny, Yuri and Hyuna left, but she had a distinct personality and was entertaining. She wasn't "deadweight" like the other replacements.

Amber might prove to be interesting. She's f(x)'s rapper and she's Taiwanese American and has an androgynous, tomboy look. But she's also a fan favorite. She disappeared from f(x) last year, purportedly because of an injury and she went back to the U.S. to recuperate. But when rumors circulated that she may be out of the group because f(x) held some performances without her, fans rebelled and came to her support. I just think that's awesome.

Among the remaining new cast members, I was pleased that Bora of Sistar is included. I'm not a huge fan of Sistar's music, but Bora appeared in season one and showed herself to be capable and amenable.

If I had to scout members of a new cast, of course I would need to include members of rookie groups, just as season one did. And there was a wide field of rookie girl groups this year to choose from, and I would have put Jewelry, Dal Shabet, A Pink and Girls Day among others on the short list.

I got Jewelry right, although technically they aren't a rookie group -- just this incarnation is, and I'm glad they chose Yewon because . . . she's really cute. And she does have a good voice. She's the one with the black ribbon hairpiece.

And I'm not surprised or disappointed that Rainbow's Woori was chosen. I'm not a fan of Rainbow, but they've been gaining notoriety. And for me, notably, I did see the group appear on another show that aired last year, and they were hilarious.

I'm a little worried about the MCs, though. I thought season one's Kim Taewoo had been tapped to return, but apparently not. I was also hoping that they might tap season one cast member, Narsha of Brown Eyed Girls, to come back as MC since she's older than most girl group members, but there was no basis for me thinking that would happen.

The only MC I'm familiar with by name is Boom, and he is funny and entertaining. I'm happy for him as he's just come out of his 2-year mandatory military service and getting back into the business. The thing I'm concerned about is that the MCs may lack the down-to-earth touch that the season one MCs had. They may try too hard just to entertain and be funny without imparting the values and ideals of country or seaside life.

2011-10-16T03:56:00.004+08:00

Is it too late for my other useless thoughts?

Thoughts like about the Occupy Wall St. protests. My heart is with them, but I don't think they'll bring about any change.

My feeling is that the fundamental flaw with modern Western capitalism is that it's driven by greed and a wealth incentive, and that the benchmark for success is perpetual growth. Only if an economy is constantly growing and growing is it considered to be healthy and successful.

On its face, that is not sustainable. It's not even taking sustainability into consideration; just growth, growth, growth. This kind of economic growth requires the population to continue growing to maintain a consumer and labor base, and the population is growing, but this constant population growth also means all these people need to be fed and nourished and the waste they create needs to be managed. I just don't see how it's sustainable.

And when I hear about the growing and looming economic crisis in Europe and the U.S. and the solutions being put forth to solve it, the solutions are just to maintain the unsustainable status quo. Very few people are thinking that the entire way of thinking needs to be re-thought.

Thoughts like how Obama really dropped the ball and it looks like he will be a one-term president. He hasn't been the agent for change he proclaimed to be and and at every turn he has just maintained the status quo.

I thought the bailouts of the auto and financial industries were mistakes. If they were businesses that were failing, there was a reason why they were failing, and as capitalism dictates, business that don't have the wherewithal to succeed, should be allowed to fail.

The whole idea of businesses that are "too big to fail" excuse for bailing them out was a betrayal of capitalism and it applied socialism, if not selective communism, to the big corporations who least deserved it.

The hard part about analyzing that is the auto industry looks like it's being responsible with the bailout and getting themselves back on their feet and paying back the loan.

The same can't be said about the finance industry who took the bailout money and treated themselves to lavish retreats, and I don't think they ever thought it necessary to pay the loan back. For them, it was "woohoo, money, let's spend it".

But in retrospect, those two different behaviors do make sense. The auto industry has a tangible product they're putting out, and the companies themselves are something the corporate heads are very much invested in. They cared about the survival of their companies and realized what they'd be losing if they failed.

The financial industry on the other hand, all they see is the money they are getting. They don't care about the companies or the industry, if they fail, they just go find a job somewhere else.

So what? Do I think those companies should have failed, bringing on the possible collapse of capitalism? Well, I don't think bailing those corporations out will prevent the fall of capitalism, and from the crisis happening in Europe and looming over the U.S., I don't think it's out of the question that capitalism may collapse.

When Soviet communism collapsed, I remember some short-sighted commentator declaring it was the "end of history". Capitalism triumphs. At the time, I thought that capitalism could also fall, but I had no idea what it would look like or what would replace it.

Now with the debt crisis looming, I can see what capitalism collapsing looks like. There's just no money there. Capitalism was a fairy tale that was maintained on a collective imagination that wealth will constantly grow and grow, sustainability be damned. But when everyone realizes there is no money, what can you do? Look at Greece and apply it to everywhere. There's just no where to go but in debt, and I don't know what opposite of growth there is other than in debt.

Thoughts about cosmology that I haven't written about in a long time, because I realized that there is a lot wanting in such a theoretical field where scientists push forward their findings as facts, but where many cosmological studies are based on observation and can't be subjected to the scientific method.

True, a lot can. Einstein's theory of relativity has been shown through space missions and predictions and observational confirmation. The Large Hadron Collider will also no doubt make inroads into the veracity of many areas of quantum mechanics.

But other fundamental theories that are generally conditionally accepted such as the Big Bang and Inflation theories, I don't know anymore. Cosmic acceleration has also been generally accepted just years after observational findings, but I want to question the observational methodology. Might we be misreading the data?

Five hundred years from now, the Big Bang, inflation, cosmic acceleration may all be disproven, just as many ideas from five hundred years ago have now been disproven. We can't go somewhere and test those theories scientifically. We can only read the observational data, and our readings may be chauvinistic and wrong.

At the core of our error might be our human chauvinism. As humans, we have our senses to observe the universe, but our human senses are limited. They are not the only way to view the universe. Our senses evolved for survival on this planet, in this environment.

In a universal environment -- the environment of the entire universe -- what is ultimately, objectively "perceivable", or what is there, is not necessarily what can be perceived by us. We need special instruments to observe things in different electromagnetic wavelenghts and that may just be the tip of the iceberg.

There are things beyond our senses that we can build instruments to detect, but there also may be things completely beyond our understanding. I've read theories about how there may be areas of the universe where the physics is completely different from ours in a multiverse within one "universe", and there's no way to prove or disprove these theories. And that's the point.

Science is currently unable to detect anything that may be considered "spiritual".

The scientific method is terrific for what can be subjected to it, but a lot of cosmology and astrophysics can't be subjected to it. We can't go to these far off places and observe the strange phenomena and definitively say it's scientific fact. We can only report what we observe from countless light years away and propose our best guess to explain what we observe.

There's always the possibility that we're misreading the data, and in centuries to come, a better understanding with better proof will emerge.

2011-10-09T04:57:00.000+08:00

Where I am may perhaps look bleak, but I keep reminding myself that this is where I've brought myself, and as such I can just accept it and keep looking at what I'm trying to do in the face.

I don't know when was the last time I saw someone I know.

I'm pretty sure it was my former Chinese teacher for a language exchange. I think that might have been in June. She asked about meeting up maybe a month or two ago, but I declined. I was already in my groove.

I don't owe anyone anything. Not even meeting up. And I've completely given up on even pretending to study Chinese. No matter what happens, there's just no point to it.

Tako, a former Taipei acquaintance, messaged me about meeting up about a month ago. She said she wanted to meet with me before she left for Australia. I had no idea that she was going to Australia. I think I last saw her in March. I declined. I told her I didn't want to meet up just to say goodbye.

That may have been just a dramatic way of covering up how I don't feel comfortable in any social situation anymore. I don't think I could keep a simple conversation, perhaps merely for the reason that I'd get too bored to even try to maintain one.

I've lost interest in my web presence. One by one, each of my sites have fallen by the wayside. There's just this one last blog here, and a very meager presence on Facebook. Photography is now totally gone. No interest, no seeing.

I keep my phone turned off for most part because I got sick of it reminding me to recharge it every few days. I turned it on today and found 2 text messages from cousins. I'll respond to one because all she wants to know is that everything is alright. I'll tell her everything is alright and that should be the end of that.

The other message isn't even worth consideration. It was an obligatory text that I'm guessing some other family member pushed him to send because he's in Taipei. I really don't know what these people are doing. If they wanted to be in contact with me, they should've contacted me before. Now I'm simply not interested.

Insomnia still occasionally visits, as do spells of drowning in sleep. The bottle-of-alcohol-every-other-day buying persists. Lying on my bed for long periods of time while unable to do anything else listening to music on my iPod sounds like depressive behavior, but music is still such a joy.

I'm still working on the illusion of music being a source of anything substantial. Certainly not something that should or could be clung to.

I still don't know why I'm balking at the next attempt. It's definitely the only thing what's next.

2011-10-06T03:29:00.006+08:00

I've completely stopped morning sitting under the realization that what usually goes on during morning sitting, now -- considering my day-to-day life -- occurs all day long.

Even at the monastery, morning sitting had its place to set a precedent for the day ahead, which was a mindset that still engaged the world and physical reality. There still was a separation there.

Since I'm so disengaged from the world now, my entire days are spent in the same mindset as sitting. To the extent that I get distracted throughout a day from general mindfulness, I also experienced those distractions during sitting.

I also continue to engage in the Tibetan teachings of the bardo and Dzogchen trainings. I'm not sure of the efficacy of reading about them without a teacher, but pursuing a teacher in this lifetime is something I've long rejected.

I didn't even realize I'd been exposed to Dzogchen trainings until I started picking through random books on Tibetan teachings and finding remarkably similar things being said. That's because they've all received the same training and are trying to convey the efficacy of that training, and it is the Dzogchen method, philosophy and teachings.

Am I a Dzogchen practitioner? Without a teacher, I'll err on the side of not. But still, I'm open to the idea that in past lives I've had a teacher and I've already been initiated in these practices, and that's why they resonate or are acceptable to me in this life.

And most recently, I've been attacking the concept of "I". "ME". Mindfulness training teaches to be aware of oneself -- what we're doing, what we're feeling -- at all times. Aware of external stimuli from all five senses and aware of the amalgam of the stimuli which renders our perception and consciousness.

And at each point of awareness, I tell myself to not be attached to it, not be attached to this, not to cling to any idea that this is "ME". It's all construct like in "The Matrix", but in reality there is no malevolent force or a war against artificial intelligence. It's just the nature of physical, manifested reality that has naturally developed on this planet.

It's a matter of focusing on my senses and abiding in how my perception of "I', myself, is falsely created by my senses. Is what I'm perceiving through sight me? Is it me? Is it my identity? Same with sound, smell, taste and touch.

I have these perceptions and they create my picture of reality, but what is the "I" they seem to be feeding? When these senses are destroyed, the perception is gone, and then what is reality?

It's not easy. I'm still here, so I'm still very attached to something.

I've also been attacking my attachment to music and the desire that emanates from listening to music -- the idea that music is a source of enjoyment. This is the hardest thing possible for me.

Other people may have trouble detaching from the concept of self and I, which most people consider absolute reality, but their trouble with that translates to me in my perception and reaction towards enjoyment of music.

One main thing that I have not been able to remove from my perception of SELF is that music is a source of great enjoyment. It may be this enjoyment that is my greatest failing, which is that I'm still here. But this enjoyment of music is not ultimate reality. It's subjective, it's constructed, it should be the easiest of things that can be taken apart under scrutiny of the nature of reality and mind.

I've been using the techniques to analyze other areas of attachment to and debunking of perceived, physical reality to music. What is it that I'm listening to? What is my reaction? Why am I reacting this way? Why do I find this pleasure in what I'm listening to?

I take music apart, focusing on the rhythm, the melody, the individual instruments and how they come together and there is nothing I can point to that I can attach with the feeling of "enjoyment". That enjoyment is just fact, separate from any deconstruction or analysis. Yet, I know it is not like that.

Enjoyment is fleeting. This kind of enjoyment is by its nature also suffering.

The intellectual answer is clear: there is no reason. Music and the pleasure I take from it isn't some objective phenomena that is able to be recreated and passed on and explained. My emotional response is something I need to take apart and understand for what it is. It doesn't mean not enjoying it, but rather not being attached to it.

2011-09-28T23:00:00.002+08:00

The draft of this post is from Sept. 4. I can't believe it's the end of September already. Summer's well over, even in Taiwan, and I totally missed it. It's almost October. October, November . . . December. Just the thought of moving into the winter months is encouragement to get on with it already.

I've been in a state of limbo. I'm not moving. I know what's next, what has to come next, but it's still up to me to make it happen. No one else is going to do it for me, no one's gonna help make it happen. As such, I'm biding my time, not rushing into it.

I think one of Morrie's quotes regarding his view on life and terminal illness was, "Hold on, but don't hold on for too long". I don't have a terminal illness, but I know what has to be next. As for holding on for too long, I think I already have. It's kinda moot at this point.

I'm fine with "not rushing into it". This isn't "neurotic dysfunction". Before, I used to deride myself when I'd make excuses not to move on, that my plan and aspiration were fake and that it wasn't going to happen, and something would always come up for me to carry on for a bit longer, and that would occur in perpetuity because that was my psychological makeup.

I do feel now that where I am is my final end state. I'm in limbo in this final end state, stewing in it, continuing the meditations and observations. I have nothing new to say or observe. Everything that I've thought of to say recently, I've already said before. And as much as I do tend to repeat myself, I'll avoid it if I can go back into my archives and easily find that I've expressed it already.

There's only one direction to move from this final end state, not because of constraints or inabilities, but because it's what I want and it's where I've led and directed my life.

Sometimes I get pangs of "how did it get to be like this?" with hints of despondency, and I poke myself back to realization that it's because I created it this way, I made it this way; there's no reason to be despondent. This is exactly how it's meant to be. And I can relax and smile to myself and encourage myself to keep moving forwards toward what I want.

There is just this path that I'm on. There's just this path that I've engineered. I'm sure I've said this already, but whenever I think of alternatives and possible paths, I realize I don't want them.

I have to admit that before, there was always a sliver of a possibility of a different path, but I'm pretty confident that they have all dissolved now. Bah, I know I've written about this before.

Now I'm just writing to encourage myself. If I don't write, I might fall into complacency and that will just lead to pushing myself into a corner, and I don't want to do anything just because I've been pushed into a corner.

When I had those excruciating abdominal pains, I entertained the idea that I might be dying and I resisted it. Not because I have a fundamental problem with dying, but I have a problem with it not being on my own terms.

2011-09-19T21:55:00.003+08:00

The Lost Bladesman 關雲長 (Guan Yun Chang) (Hong Kong/China, 2011)

After watching the first 20 minutes of this film, I had a deja vu. Despite what I thought was a decent introductory narrative exposition and a concerted effort on my part to keep track of the characters and the parties and the alliances and motivations, I was totally confused and decided to look up the plot online.

This also happened when I watched Red Cliff, part 1, which is interesting because it turns out I wasn't wrong in noticing that a lot of names in this film sounded distinctly familiar. Like names of the characters from Red Cliff!

And surprise, surprise, they are indeed the same characters. Apparently there was a historical novel called Romance of the Three Kingdoms that is the source material for many modern fictionalizations of what happened during the Warring States period, roughly the first few centuries of the Common Era.

This film is about one of the exploits of Guan Yun Chang, the title character of the Chinese title (the English title is horrible in the anonymity of this great general; that a) he is "lost", and b) he is merely a "bladesman").

I vaguely do remember the character from Red Cliff. He's not a main character there, but he's portrayed as a great general and has a very distinct look, befitting a historical personage. Such as if Abraham Lincoln were portrayed, there are certain stock images whereby all Americans can identify him.

In this film, Guan Yun is an enemy general held captive by his benevolent captor Cao Cao (who in Red Cliff is the arrogant and power-hungry villain). Guan Yun is portrayed as extremely capable and righteous, and Cao Cao, who isn't exactly wholesome, but not the villain he's portrayed as in Red Cliff, acknowledges these virtues and hopes to gain his allegiance.

It turns out Guan Yun is a willing captive to protect and be close to his sworn brother's concubine, also being held captive, who he secretly loves. Actually, Guan Yun is such a fierce warrior, he could fight his way out any time he pleases.

When his sworn brother, Liu Bei, sends a message calling for him, Guan Yun decides to leave captivity. Cao Cao knows he can't stop him, and wanting to stay on his good side orders that he be allowed to leave unmolested.

However, the emperor, who is Cao Cao's puppet (the same relationship is shown in Red Cliff), thinks releasing Guan Yun is a bad idea and boldly goes against Cao Cao and orders Guan Yun killed en route.

The basic story as told in the records is Guan Yun's escape journey, encountering the resistance set up by the emperor.

It's a competent martial arts film, but not a remarkable one. The fight scenes are competent, but they're not remarkable. Donnie Yen as the title character does a great job portraying a man of impeccable virtue, but he seems to be doing a lot of that recently. OK, anyway, he's very good.

I'll pass this film with a nominal 6 out of 10 fresh tomatoes. It's not a great film, but definitely watchable for fans of Chinese period pieces. I also found it a fascinating counterpoint to Red Cliff with its different portrayal of the characters.

Nowhere to Turn (South Korea, 2007)

With a title like "Nowhere to Turn", I imagine someone who falls into dire straits, someone who has done everything she can and tries hard, but fate keeps dealing her all bad cards, none of which are her fault. In this film, the main character elicits no sympathy for having "nowhere to turn".

The main character wants to be a musician, but it's soon clear that she's delusional and is nowhere near where she needs to be to make it as a musician. She's not only delusional but she thinks the world owes her something while doing nothing herself. She's arrogant, self-righteous, smug, self-absorbed, unapologetic, and overall pathetic.

She wants her mother to send her abroad to pursue a career in music and blames her for refusing, while she herself is too lazy to consider getting a job and figuring out what it means to be responsible.

She mooches off people she knows, not sure they can be called "friends", and takes advantage of all of them, even stabbing them in the back. Whenever she's given a chance, she turns out to be a major disappointment because of her own selfishness and arrogance, and she ultimately blames everyone else for her failures. All she does is take and never gives.

Actually, that's wrong. At one point she "gives" when she loses her virginity to the guy she's mooching off, but complains and whines about it hurting throughout the whole 15 second ordeal.

I was hoping for some sort of redemption, transformation or self-realization in the character, but she remains unlikable to the end. Even a hint of being emotionally tortured or having a mental disease or that she sniffed glue through most of her elementary and high school years would have made her character a little bit palatable (in many scenes she is slack-jawed and looks like she's been sniffing glue, but there's no explanation for this unappealing portrayal).

The supporting "boyfriend" character isn't very strong and has almost as bad manners as she does, even though he does occasionally express himself in moments of truth that are few and far between, calling her crazy or having no conscience, and finally calling her a bitch, which she is.

I don't recommend this film to anyone. Rotten 2 out 10 tomatoes. Maybe the only good thing about this film is that it's an unintentional homage to Korean films in the 90s, which were unspeakably awful. This film would have fit perfectly amongst some of those films that I saw, and reminds me how far Korean film has come.

2011-09-16T23:01:00.008+08:00

I guess I should've gone to the emergency room.

The thing is that I don't see doctors, I don't go to hospitals, much less emergency rooms. And it turns out the quote from Northern Exposure is really true that the human body is a wonderful healing machine, and the role of doctors is often just to give a patient peace of mind (or to administer drugs to alleviate pain in modern society). I forget if it was Leonard or Uncle Anku who said it.

I don't even know how to go about "going to an emergency room". In the worst of it, when I thought it might be necessary, I had stuffed a few things in a backpack to be ready to grab to run out into the pouring rain and catch a cab and tell them to take me to the nearest hospital. Is that even right? Or is that the point when you call 911?

The rain was actually a really interesting part of the whole incident, because it was a perfectly sunny day. I wasn't surprised when I started hearing rain outside, however, because that would still be normal for Taipei weather, but it was raining pretty hard and it was still sunny outside.

I kept walking out into the hallway where I can see outside, asking, "How is it raining?, it's totally sunny out there", and I looked for a rainbow and found it and assumed the rain would end shortly. But it didn't, and when the pain started it kept raining, and poured through the whole 4-5 hour ordeal.

That kind of rain was strange, and I wonder if it wasn't a factor in discouraging me from going to the hospital. But going to the hospital is simply unthinkable for me. Even when I was preparing for it just in case it got that bad, I didn't really think I would or could do it.

I started having sharp abdominal pains, and at first I didn't think anything of it. I thought it was intestinal, not uncommon in Taiwan. It's worse when it occurs when I'm out, but I was still home. I figured I'd feel some sharp pain, go to the bathroom, and it would clear up and I'd feel fine in short order.

It was just like the pain when that happens, but it didn't let up and started to increase. It was like someone was gripping and squeezing and twisting whatever internal organ -- stomach, intestines, liver -- and it also occurred to me it might be appendicitis, which if you don't take care of, your appendix ruptures and you die.

The pain increased as twilight turned to night outside my window. I'm not a screamer. I would probably scream under torture, but not internal bodily pain. I groan and I writhe.

And then I found it true that meditation techniques do help manage pain. It wasn't a conscious thought process of, "Oh, this hurts, I think I'll go into meditational equipoise to manage my pain with my mind".

It was more visceral. I was sweating so much from the pain that I had the air conditioner on, even though the cold air was uncomfortable. But I found myself in a position on my bed, and my palms were flat on the mattress, and I started visualizing the pain as energy and then directing the energy through my palms and into the mattress.

From a modern science point of view it's a distraction technique. You mentally occupy yourself in a way that makes you feel better by not thinking about the pain.

But when you actually try the method and even marginally think you're succeeding, there is a sense that qigong, or taichi, or even Tibetan descriptions of energy flow are real and are an important part of our being.

I was basically in that meditational state for a good 3-4 hours, focusing on mind and controlling the pain energy and directing it into the mattress.

It also occurred to me that before directing the pain energy into the mattress, I had to think of the energy positively since I didn't want to discharge negative energy anywhere, even into an inanimate object. So I reminded myself that pain is good, it tells us and warns us when we're in distress and we need to do something about it, so while discharging the pain energy into the mattress, I was also thanking it.

I don't know what I think of that now, that's just what was going through my mind at the time. It may be just an indication of my own subjective mind, rather than some objective reality. But then that's the way it would be for all of us.

It started to alleviate about 9 in the evening when there were clearer moments when the pain subsided. There were several trips to the bathroom through all this. I think the grand finale was vomiting when I hadn't eaten anything in almost 24 hours, and what came up didn't look like the only thing I had ingested, which was coffee with cream. A lot of blackness.

If that incident was an earthquake, I continued to feel aftershocks for over 24 hours and even into today, but now it seems to be completely gone. I'm not sure what to make of it, and since I didn't go to the emergency room like a normal person would have or if I lived with other people, I'll never know.

I don't know what triggered it. All through the 24 hour period of "aftershocks" when the pain would re-emerge and I'd get worried if it would get blown out of proportion again, I wondered if this was liver failure. I read that a stage of liver failure may include "pain on the liver", but it made no mention of "excruciating pain on the liver".

But now if it seems it's not continuing, then it's not liver failure. Actually, I'm not totally writing it off just yet. I'm not going to say that it's totally gone just yet. It just seems mostly gone at this point, but I still feel something.

That said, if it's not liver failure, then the only thing I can identify as being a trigger is what I ingested right before it started, which is a single cup of bottled iced coffee with an artificial liquid creamer.

Focusing on the creamer, there was a recent scare in Taiwan in the past few months of unscrupulous foodmakers putting something bad in their products that caused health problems in a bunch of people. Some plasticizer.

It was big news, but being a foreigner, I only get the translated news and I worked at an English-language newspaper, and I can tell you the most experienced Taiwanese writers of English-language news can only express at a level at least one step removed from a native English reporter.

I didn't think the news applied to me, and from the TV reports, it looked like it was mostly about bottled drinks, and the store where I buy bottled drinks is reputable and posted signs that ostensibly said that their products had been inspected and were safe.

I never saw non-dairy coffee creamer in those reports. However, I now can imagine what it was like for those victims, that if some toxic substance was added to a food product and wreaked havoc on their liver or kidneys upon ingestion, that their family members would have rushed them to the emergency room.

If I was living with family in Kaohsiung, I might have successfully resisted being sent to the emergency room because I'm not a screamer, I can keep it in in a way that other people wouldn't panic, but otherwise I imagine that they would have called 911.

Then there were my thoughts that I might die...

email to a friend

2011-09-16T02:47:00.001+08:00

Hey Madoka,
Thank me? I'm still thanking you for finally getting on the path. I always thought it was right for you, but it had to happen when you were ripe to start on it. I might say it's a little late, but actually it's not at all and I have a feeling you're going to be a formidable and nurturing teacher in years, hopefully decades, to come. Not me, though, that's not my path.

You're actually not lazy. Maybe you know what you're doing moment to moment and may think you're lazy, you feel you're lazy and that you're not doing enough, but the diligence is in the mind, and I can point right at your own message by your immediate reaction to the Kawasakis that your diligence is already there and deep within you. That's the diligence required and what they're talking about. It's the same diligence towards compassion that you felt when you saw "Schindler's List".

If you feel you need to connect your actions to it, that's fine and dandy to work on. But I'll take it a little farther and point out that actions aren't always necessary. With some people, their diligence comes out just from their very being, and you're one of them. If you can just accept that, get calm with it, keep practicing, and you will naturally offer the acts benefiting people on your path. Mind you, I'm not saying the path is easy, just be better at discerning the easy parts from the difficult. And who knows?, once you do that, you might find the difficult stuff a breeze!

And don't beat yourself up over bodhisattva "vows". In Thich Nhat Hanh's tradition, we don't call them vows, but rather "mindfulness trainings". A lot of people have hang-ups over the word "vow", and if you break them, you've failed or are a sinner, and that's not the point of them. If everyone who took the vows could keep the vows, there's no reason to take them.

That's why TNH changed them to mindfulness trainings, we keep trainings, not "vows". When we come across a situation where we think we're going against the training, we're mindful about it. And if we do it anyway, the training is still there and becomes stronger hopefully for the next time we encounter it. But we don't berate ourselves for breaking a vow whereby we lose it. I'm just suggesting there's no reason to be apprehensive about the word "vow". Some people need that strict discipline/punishment aspect of a vow, but others can be more flexible according to their position. You don't need the discipline/punishment aspect. For you the "vow" is an inspiration, perhaps, or a guide.

I don't know what the implication of "vow" is in Japan, but if you think there's value in this, maybe you can discuss it with other people and your teacher and see what they say and decide for yourself.

I've always considered you on the bodhisattva path. I think a book you may come across eventually is Shantideva's "Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life". It can be found online but I bought the Padmakara translation which was considered the best translation and commentary some years back. It's a daunting and elusive work, and I by no means get it, which just means I'm not ready for it and I should keep trying to go back to it. I guess it'll reach you if and when the time is right.

The bodhisattva path is a distinct "branch" or path of Buddhism, but I would argue it's not requisite to Buddhism. I think it is the right path for you because of your strong inclination to alleviate suffering. That's a hallmark of the bodhisattva path, I think. Call it karma, call it a calling. There may be aspects of the bodhisattva ideal that runs through all the other paths, but acting on the ideal is not requisite.

I think of myself as a "rogue" Buddhist, if I consider myself a Buddhist at all, and I've been getting some affirmation from writings by younger Tibetan lamas. One book I found was "Rebel Buddha", and that felt good because he was affirming that there isn't an orthodoxy. But that book is really basic and was telling something new to a general audience, but it wasn't all that new to me so I just skimmed it. Another book was "What Makes You NOT a Buddhist?" which was written by a Nepalese lama/filmmaker who did "The Cup" and "Travellers and Magicians", which I saw at the S.F. film festival, and just by being a filmmaker, he's a "rebel" Buddhist! That was a good book for me because he articulated some things in a new way for me that resonated.

A Thai friend I met in Taiwan also gave me a book that's more orthodox called "Heartwood from the Bo Tree" by a Theravadan Thai teacher, and I agree with him that the most basic idea to cultivate that is relevant to all paths of Buddhism that the Buddha directly taught is that "nothing whatsoever should be attached to". I agree that whatever path anyone is on, nothing whatsoever should be attached to and it's important to examine one's path to make sure you understand how it applies. The trick is that certain paths appeal to us and attract us because of who we are in the physical dimension, but it's still important not to be attached to them or anything about them on an ultimate level.

I'm going on and on like I have something to tell you, but like I said, I'm not saying anything like I think you don't already know, so if you want to go on and on about something, feel free.

love my teacher (um, that's you) always,
koji

email to my brother

2011-09-14T01:12:00.009+08:00

Hey,
Mom didn't really mention anything except that there was serious trouble between you and your wife because of another woman, in response to my prying about why you guys were moving. I think that's where the part about her being a bad parent slipped out.

As a parent, there are things that she should know or pry into or know when to get involved and how, and it just seemed par for the course that she couldn't answer any of the questions I was asking, so I finally told her I was going to email you, and she was surprised at that and reluctant because that would mean she talked about it to me, but said fine, and we got off the phone real fast, and needless to say, I don't expect her to be paying for anymore of my plane tickets.

Even if she knows more about what's going on, and for whatever reason felt she couldn't talk about it, that also goes to her inane parenting sense. Her idea of family dynamics is that you keep hush-hush about everything, and you don't help when that's the right thing to do. I don't think she has any conception of what it means to help out a family member, aside from sending over money. Wait, did she offer to send over money?

So I don't know any of the details or the dynamics.

It's good to hear that you're trying to work things out and are committed, there isn't a better starting point and it sounds like you're communicating, so that's excellent and keep it up. Obviously in a situation like this, repairing trust should also be number one on the agenda, so I encourage being vigilant and mindful about transparency. I don't mean you should divulge every little thing that's going on with you, I can see that getting annoying on her part, but if something needs to be said but you're not sure, lean towards saying it. Don't make assumptions about what she's thinking or feeling when you can clarify something on your part by just saying it or asking about it on her part.

It's good that it's foremost on your minds not to harm the kids. Mom's predictable mantra was that she hoped you guys would work things out for the sake of the kids, and that's fair. But I wouldn't make considering them a major part of the process. If you handle the process properly and well, the benefit to the kids will be automatic, you don't need to think or worry about them, aside from just raising and teaching them. If you can reach a place where you can look at yourself and say that you're alright, you fixed the marriage and Bonnie and the marriage is alright, then the kids will be fine. If you pay too much attention on not screwing up the kids, there's a risk that the process will be incomplete or flawed.

I think your focus should be on yourself and really look into yourself and why and how this happened. Go back through all of the stages that led up to this, and don't just focus on the drama after the shit hit the fan. You have to go back and ask what were your feelings and motivations, what was your analysis or lack of analysis. Locate that one moment when you did or felt or said something that should have tripped a wire indicating, "Oh shit, this is bad".

This idea isn't from the monastery but from a men's batterer program I trained in in San Francisco. We called that moment "fatal peril", it's the moment of decision where you reach the breaking point and you're going to do one thing or another. It's the danger point (peril) from where if you don't back down, there's no taking back what you do next. And it's going to be bad for everyone (fatal).

But it does relate to the monastic trainings in mindfulness and watching what our emotions are doing and what our thoughts are, and not just being caught up in the tide of emotions and other motivations.

I don't know if any of this is relevant, so I'm just going to throw out some ideas to consider, or to remind you if you've already considered them.

I think it's important to revisit the development of the events to understand yourself and what your motivations were. From my last visit there, you guys looked like you were doing great, I've gotten totally comfortable with Bonnie (and after seeing Brenda in action, I thought you totally won out of the 3 sisters; Tom, too, but that's a different story), the kids were great, although I thought it may be time to instill Chris with some assertiveness and leadership skills and to be able to analyze things through and come up with his own opinion and enjoyment. Sara at this point has no problem with that as she knew what song she liked and she wanted to hear it over and over. And over and over. (I actually remember a similar memory, which I think may have been the start of my love of music (it was some Disney song while we were visiting Uncle Aki on a plastic record player and I couldn't get enough of it. If you have any insight on that memory, let me know)).

But then hearing this, it becomes apparent there was an underlying problem and it needs to be understood and addressed, and not brushed aside. A lot of people looking from the outside might look at a family and think that everything is perfect and they must be really happy. But maybe they're not.

So I also encourage you to do a happiness analysis. The Dalai Lama once observed that everyone says they want to be happy, but they keep doing things that lead to more suffering. And it's because many peoples' emotions are out of control or taken for granted as just being what they are. Their emotions just roam freely and they don't have the mindfulness to consider their actions and the consequences and ask, "will this make me happy, or will it likely lead to suffering?".

Instead of asking about happiness, we tend to just follow desire. Desire is the culprit that keeps us chasing after things which don't necessarily bring happiness, or ultimately brings about unhappiness and suffering for others. I think he's also pointing out that we all have the potential to be happy just as we are, but desire convinces us we're not happy and act in ways that bring about more unhappiness.

At the monastic mindfulness training level, this happiness analysis is brought all the way down to the smallest decisions we make any day that affect our emotions. Even if someone is walking too slow on the sidewalk in front of us and we can't get by and start feeling annoyed or angry, the analysis kicks in: "Is being annoyed and angry making me happy? They're not doing anything wrong, it's me that's being annoyed and angry. Can't I just pause and take a breath and be patient and walk slowly until I get an opportunity to pass and be happy with that?"

It's not easy, and I'll attest that it's a long, committed process, but I think it's fact that we can learn to control our emotions.

I'm not making any assumptions of what we're like now, but I do think you, Tom and me all have anger issues that we inherited from dad. Mom frequently talks about Tom's anger issues at the office, even with patients. I know that I have anger/negativity issues and dealing with them is part of the mindfulness practice I took from the monastery. It's a part of me now to identify anger/negativity the very moment they come up and to adjust myself away from them. By constantly doing this, I know I still experience anger and negativity, I'm not getting rid of them yet, but I'm training myself to be more peaceful by taking control of the emotions.

In general, anger is an important emotion to learn to be mindful of and control during difficult times since it's probably the easiest emotion to blind us and make us do something we otherwise wouldn't do. I recommend a book that's on my bookshelf by the window in New Jersey called "Anger" by Thich Nhat Hanh. At times he goes a little simplistic, but he's writing on a very basic level for an introductory audience. And even though he incorporates Buddhist elements and language in some passages, it's because that's his background but he's not trying to push Buddhism on anyone. The book is also good because his discourse on anger also includes the basic ideas and methods behind mindfulness training.

If there are any issues you want to get out or bounce off someone else, you can totally let me know. If Bonnie's willing and you're comfortable with it, you can also let her know she can contact me to discuss what's on her mind. Obviously I'm not taking sides, the best interests of both of you are in my interest, so I'm only hoping to help keep lines of communication open.

I'm confident that both of you are smart enough and capable enough to achieve your goal since you're committed and working on it, but recognize that outside help may be necessary to keep things clear because it's easy to get myopic about these kinds of situations. Even if you can achieve your goal of staying together because you're being smart and capable, I still encourage identifying and dealing with all of the underlying issues. If you don't do that, there still may be problems with the foundation of your relationship here on in that might come up later.

I think by doing it in this way, you can strive to be confident of what you want and what are the most important things to you and neither of you will have doubts that things ended up alright for the wrong reasons. Ideally, I think the hope is that you'll end up in a situation where you can look around and realize this is not at all bad and certainly could be a lot worse, and you can put your efforts into making things better. What can I do for the kids? What can I do for Bonnie? What can I do for myself that will make me happy without bringing future suffering?

I recently read Ozzy Osbourne's biography because for someone brought up on rock music, his memoir is like reading history. And when asked about how he's been able to maintain his marriage to Sharon despite the long list of outrageous incidents to his name, he said, "I never stopped telling her I love her and I never stopped doing the little things for her". All the little things he constantly did ultimately likely meant a lot more than a grand gesture every once in a while would've meant. That's wisdom from a simple man.

If you come across difficult parts, I hope both of you avail yourself of the available network - her sisters and me and Tom - to figure out what's best for everyone. I think everyone cares and everyone is willing to help without judgment, even if not everyone has the ability and may be uncomfortable getting involved. I haven't emailed Tom in months so I don't know what he knows, but I hope you don't mind if I ask him as a means of sharing information and creating the best situation where we can come up with ideas or problem solve if any major issues come up. I'm not sure of Tom's current emotional availability, but during the course of his engagement and marriage, I've seen him shine and really come through on things I had doubts about, so I think he's also an important resource.

take care,

2011-09-08T00:55:00.006+08:00

Hansel and Gretel (South Korea, 2007)

I had seen this at Blockbusters, but it didn't appeal to me because of the creepy cover, but then decided to give it a go after I read that the main actor in Castaways on the Moon was in it, and that the movie had an interesting twist on the fairy tale idea.

Turns out it's in the dark fantasy/thriller/horror genre, of which I can't say I'm a huge fan, but my problem with the film was in the filmmaking and how poorly the visual narrative was handled. The story itself might actually work on paper, but the visual development of the story left a lot to be desired.

There are countless visual cues and clues that go no where. They're presented, suggesting something related will come out of it, and then nothing ever does. The film doesn't develop and build on what it presents, and relies just on what's provided on the screen at the moment, while just maintaining a basic, threadbare story arc.

It's not an intelligent film in that once you start thinking about all the narrative elements and try to put the parts together to figure the whole thing out, it makes absolutely no sense and thus wasn't satisfying. This film was made for fans of the genre who don't need the film to make narrative sense, and saying it that way, it's an effective enough film. I would recommend it to fans of the genre. It's creepy and suspenseful, but that's all. It just makes no overall sense, and to be intelligent, it needs to make sense. If it doesn't make sense, it's a waste of my time.

Rotten 4 out 10 tomatoes.

I Saw The Devil (South Korea, 2010)

As far as I'm concerned, this was a slasher film in the guise of a revenge-thriller. It's not an incompetent film, it was just not to my taste. I give it a thumbs down 4 out of 10 rotten tomato rating for misogyny and unnecessary and unrelenting violence.

It's about a serial killer who ostensibly kills one victim that launches a vengeance crusade by the victim's boyfriend/fiance. There's a lot of unmitigated evil portrayed in the film, which perhaps is hinted at in the title.

There may be a morality play suggesting that revenge is not an answer to a wrongdoing, but the message pales alongside the portrayals of evils why do we even want to imagine can possibly occur in this world.

Furthermore, the moral message is further diluted by the fact that the protagonist goes way beyond revenge. He doesn't know when to stop and just come to terms with his grief, and his actions create even more harm to people around him. And in his own sadism, he crosses the line over to evil himself.

Unlike most rental DVDs, I only needed to watch this once. It was not something I needed to experience twice, although I did review the final scenes before I returned it to remind myself how the vengeance played out.

For me, part of the value of a film is the ability or desire to watch it multiple times. There was nothing redeeming in this film that warranted a second viewing.

Like I said, it's not an incompetent film, and I would hypothetically recommend it to fans of the genre -- people who like gore, don't mind misogyny, or don't mind seeing the depths of human nature that can be reached.

2011-08-30T16:23:00.047+08:00

There are no words for how much I hate this laptop. And the reason why I have no words is because I'm not a computer person. I don't know the first thing about computers. Maybe a computer person could fix the things I have gripes about in 15 minutes, but I'm just an ordinary person who wants to be able to take a laptop out of the box and have the very basics work competently, if not flawlessly.

I used a Compaq laptop running Windows XP for 6 years, with a hard drive upgrade after 4.5 of those years. When it finally died, I bought this Asus K42J running Windows 7, and it isn't failing completely, it's just loaded to the rafters with annoyances and inconveniences that someone in the developed world, buying a brand new laptop shouldn't have to deal with.

Again, I can't really say anything since I don't know what the source of the problem is because I don't know computers. But if you also don't know computers and couldn't figure out a load of annoying behaviors if your computer displays them, then I would blanket stay away from Asus computers, if not Taiwanese computers.

Apparently they are good computer companies with good reputations, but if you don't know about computers and want to avoid frustration, look at other companies first. From one user's experience, I will be looking into getting rid of this in the long run, and Asus gets the big donkey shaft from me.

2011-08-30T15:26:00.003+08:00

I've been trying to email my brother for a while, but it's the same as here, I open the draft, and I got nothing. I just have nothing to say, nothing to express. That's not a negative statement.

I'm just stuck. I'm not moving forward. But moving forward requires one thing first -- next attempt. If the attempt fails, then I'll have to face whatever's next and presumably I'll have found whatever energy is required to go there.

I'm not sure "energy" is the right word there. The desperation maybe. And that is negative. But it's a numb desperation. Like when I left San Francisco after that attempt. I failed, plans to leave were already rolling, so I just had to do it.

Remembering that and the futility of everything since then points to how I really don't want to fail in the next attempt. It's what I hope to remind myself if I'm standing on the edge and having doubts whether this is going to happen or not.

My path has led me to this point, and everything is in place again for a good attempt, and what it boils down to is the only reason why I might balk is ego-attachment. This attachment to ME. I'M here. There is no 'no ME'. The universe is here because I'M here.

Intellectually, that's ridiculous, but perhaps here is where I'm really faced with my attachment to self, which is possibly the biggest obstacle towards true understanding, or liberation, or enlightenment.

It's all process. Maybe what I'm doing can be described as balking, but maybe I'm just waiting for this understanding to ripen.

I go back to what I've posted in the past few years, and I have no idea what all that was about. It was process. There were a lot of things I was uncomfortable about regarding negativity that I was processing, and I think there was some degree of success there in that I can't relate to those posts at all now. Even though the karmic imprint is still recognizable, it's not an issue anymore.

And I go back to posts from way long ago, and I feel that this entire blog is unnecessary and irrelevant. But it's so irrelevant that it's not even worth deleting or making private. It's just what it was.

I remember at one point in college, a few of my angsty and dramatic dormmates and I decided to ritually burn all our journals up to that point. But even in doing that there was a sense of self-importance. Even throwing our past thoughts and record into the fire place was a big statement to ourselves. It was something worth it to us to burn it.

The value of maintaining this blog, or discontinuing it, or deleting it, is just . . . not. Nothing. And even that is fierce ego-clinging.

2011-08-22T02:02:00.006+08:00

I've even gotten bored of blogging. Actually, a blog I was following and inspired by became private and blocked, and I think that may be a reason I haven't felt like writing anything here. That blog made me want to get more stuff out earlier this year, although that mostly meant a lot more random nothing posts.

I know I shouldn't take it personally, but I sorta do. It was a slap in the face after turning the other cheek after the last post before going private, which was a slap in the face to her readership. She sounded like she was starting to meltdown anyway, and so maybe it's all for the better.

Oh well, easy come, easy go; little high, little low. Any way the wind blows, doesn't really matter to me. Tooo meeee. I can stop pretending and get back to my next attempt, which isn't forthcoming, but I'm still convinced it's imminent.

My boredom of things I used to be passionate about has been systematic, and feels like it's a part of my dying process. I have been dying slowly all along, and this boredom may be a sign that it's seriously speeding up.

The big thing was a few months ago when I realized I could no longer consider myself a musician. Part of me really felt like it had died. It was something alive or a life energy for my identity or something and then it was gone. And it's not the technique, the being able to pick up an instrument and make a joyful noise. It's still in my hands, but it's gone out of my heart. I get bored quick every time I try now.

My bike hasn't left the apartment for months. Every time I think of it, I just feel a withering emptiness. Physical activity used to represent survival. My mantra to keep going when I was suffering while running was, "you don't stop", a la rap records from the late 80s/early 90s.

My appetite's gone, too. I can only eat one modest meal a day and sometimes I'm not even hungry when I do. Also a lot of things I used to like aren't all that appealing anymore.

A lot of this sounds like depression, and I'm not going to try to refute that. It may be so. It may be a necessary part of the dying process when the death is a projected suicide. It's a prognosis. Even though depression is not a reason for suicide for me, the symptoms of it may be a necessary part of getting to it. Anyone wanna study me yet?

Morrie was a dying man. Truth to tell, a lot of the insights he offered as he was dying I felt were old hat to me. I think maybe because my goal of suicide means facing my mortality as a dying person would. My life has been a prolonged dying process. At least a facsimile.

Truth to tell, I also thought that Morrie's insights would largely fall on deaf ears, despite maybe millions of people being touched by his story. He's right, but they're just pretty expressions about life that don't have any meaningful, long-term effect until you're finally in that position yourself. I hope I'm wrong about that.

Like a dying process, every day is pretty hard for me. Every day is a waste, and each wasted day makes it even harder. Aside from watching Korean TV shows, I've been doing a lot of catching up and cramming of Tibetan death theory not only to review, but to see if I can eke out one little bit morsel of insight into what I believe.

I'm actually pretty confident about my level of preparedness because when I think about the question of my confidence, there's no other way for me to be. I am what I am and I know what I know. I don't doubt, I'm not afraid.

I run through the trainings, visualizations and meditations and work on insight into the nature of mind and consciousness in a state when there are no physical senses to feed sensory perception for the mind to form concepts and no physical brain structure to organize the information into the cohesive, ordinary reality we experience every day.

I reject the idea that if there is anything after death, that our consciousness and perception is just like it is when we're alive. Once the physical structures are dead, whatever intangible essence of what we naturally are is unleashed in what I imagine to be a quite a storm. But it's a storm that can be prepared for a la the Tibetan teachings and theory.

And if I fail at the attempt? I said before that it looks bad, and it still looks bad. But I'll probably have to decide to head back to New Jersey. New Jersey where my parents will no doubt continue to test my mindfulness training.

And the optimist in me tells me that I can participate in raising my nephews and nieces and help avoid them from getting screwed up. It also sounds like both of my brothers are having issues now that I might be of use in intervening. So the sooner this next attempt, the better.

Maybe I should enter a doctoral program in psychiatry and study myself for my thesis.

2011-08-09T04:03:00.004+08:00

Not a dry eye in the house. The last section of the last episode, episode 58, of IY:

It was hard when three of the original members left in episode 32, but this was the end of the series, after only one season -- a little over a year, starting in autumn 2009 and ending in December 2010. The TV company has said that it wants to continue the series, but since then there hasn't been any news of a second season.

One of the reasons I love this show is because it shows transition and transformation. It shows growth that is part of the natural cycle in our lives. If we don't grow, if we don't learn, if we don't challenge ourselves, then what the hell are we doing? I don't think there are many variety/reality shows that express that.

And definitely not as down-to-earth. It's the nature of this show that allowed these celebrities to appear like they do in this clip. Otherwise their celebrity projects a completely different image of them: the first of the original members to give her final statement in the clip is Narsha of Brown Eyed Girls (she's the one with hair covering the right side of her face); the second is Hara Goo, who rarely can't keep her composure, of Kara (the butt dance was being promoted early in the series); the third is Sunghwa of Secret, which was a rookie girl group when the series started and their initial image was trying to be sexy, but by the end of the series, they were promoting a more wholesome, lively (and infectious) image that wasn't shown on the show; and the last original member speaks sixth and is Hyomin of T-ara, which was up-and-coming when the show started, but now are like queen bees, and Hyomin is the queen bee among queen bees, but you wouldn't guess it from this show.

It's no surprise the TV company hasn't been able to start a second season, ostensibly with a new group of 7 girl group members. This program was unique and special, and it demanded a lot from its participants. There aren't a lot of members of K-pop girl groups that can put this sort of commitment to a TV series now, despite the personal and emotional rewards.

It impresses me how hard celebrities have to work in the South Korean entertainment industry. If celebrities in the West can be viewed as pampered (being valued for their talent), South Korean celebrities might be viewed as slave labor (being valued for their dedication and training).

These girls and the hosts had to devote a day or more of hard labor and entertainment each week to the filming of this show, and still had to maintain their schedules of recording and promotion by their respective groups. And no matter how tired they were from this show, they still had to perform during their promotions.

I'm glad to have come across this show. It has a lot of heart and embodies many values that I also hold dear. It also pinpoints values that we should also value, such as organic farming and community, and that the survival of the human species depends on these things.

2011-07-31T15:23:00.020+08:00

I'm about halfway through watching the IY series I mentioned. I discovered I started watching the series on Taiwan TV with Chinese subs at around episode 10 and I watched until Taiwan stopped airing it one episode after 3 of the members left for overseas promotions, and their replacements were introduced in episode 33.

It's really great watching the series with English subs. I remember all of the episodes, and I was pretty good at guessing what was going on, maybe I'm underestimating my ability to catch on to the Chinese subs, but there is also a lot of dialogue that I totally missed.

I remember the final episode with those three members came suddenly, and even more so because it was the second half of an episode, the first half of which was fun and games as usual. The farewell scenes aren't representative of the show, but they do capture what I think is important about human connections.

I've spent my life burning bridges and cutting connections, so it's no wonder the state of my human relations is so negative. It's no wonder that I have no human relations that are playing any role in my wanting to leave.

But that's not to say I don't value human relations and promote good relations between people. If you love someone, tell them you love them. Ozzy said that about his long-lasting marriage with Sharon. He said that he never stopped telling her he loves her and buying her little gifts and doing small things for her. The value of those little things add up to more than big gestures only once in a while.

And yes I'm admitting my human relations are negative, despite my saying that I'm trying to keep a positive spin on everything. I am trying to keep my mindset and outlook positive, or at least not down, but I have to look around me at my life's landscape, and it would be denial for me to say it's not negative.

But despite the negativity of my experience with human relations, I don't want that to be part of my karma. I don't want to be carrying that around like luggage. So again, that's why I'm watching this series through, because it's an expression of what I think is important. It's OK to want such connection. If I can keep the feelings I get out of this show, it's certainly better than what I have now.

2011-07-28T02:12:00.035+08:00

Confession time, and more evidence that this next attempt is going to come to naught (even though it has to be a real attempt). Even though a window of opportunity has opened and any day now would be just fine and everyday now has been feeling right for a go, even compelling, I've been putting it off for . . . a TV show.

A Korean TV show.

A Korean variety/reality TV show.

It's called !nvinsible Youth. The premise of the show is 7 members of the top K-pop girl groups at the time (2009) are sent out to a rural farming village and experience and learn what life is like out there.

Roughly the first half of the show was aired in Taiwan and I got hooked on it, because, well, I'm into K-pop girl groups (Ozzy would not approve), but it was subtitled in Chinese so I couldn't understand it. I found someone posted all the episodes online with English subs, so now I'm going through them all.

The important thing for me in watching the show is that, although I might describe the appearance of my living life as having fallen apart, and that I'm not focusing on the negativity, the show has more of the emotional space I'm angling for.

Unlike other Korean variety shows which are solely about self-promotion and entertainment, this show has a lot of heart. On other shows, you don't get to know the celebrities because they're being celebrities on the show.

On this show, they have to be down-to-earth because it's unscripted and very loosely structured. They know they still have to self-promote and entertain and they're constantly poking fun about getting screen time and not being edited out, but their tasks, games and competitions are all impromptu so you get to the heart of their talent and personalities and short-comings. Even their celebrity pretense is presented without pretense.

There are a lot of the warm and fuzzies about the show, tearing up or grinning like an idiot from being touched is common -- it's not a show for the cynical and hardened-by-life -- but it's also killer funny and they don't hold back when they rip on one another.

The show also uses a still photographer to get the intended effect. Their crew is pretty large and I do think they have a still photographer and they're not just using screen captures because the perspectives are always slightly different.

At some points in the show and at the end, they show still photographs of moments in the shooting, and it's the amazing thing about photography that it captures a moment in time. A feeling is captured in a moment that is different from watching the video. AND they transition the photos between color and black and white so you get the feeling of a moment in black and white, which resonates for me because black and white is the essence of an image. Color is a distraction.

I love the show because of the values it presents. It's very resonant to me because it seems to suggest a lot of the meaning of life is about community. Our tribes. You find your tribe and you stick with them through thick and thin to get things done. You work together towards goals and you have fun with it. And winners win and losers lose and it's all good.

It's a lesson I haven't learned and that's why I'm alone in this cave with a plan to abort this life because whatever awaits in my next life, it's gotta be better than this. Ugh, I don't mean that in a negative way, I just don't have the words to express it in the positive way that it's meant. There are plenty of ways my life could be worse than what it is.

There's a lot of love on the show, and even though they were awkward in the beginning, and they're competing, and they rip on each other, you get the sense that lifelong friendships are being formed on the show.

Another aspect of the show that is important to me is the "future life resonance" thing I mentioned before. This recent infatuation with Korean culture is really unexpected and inexplicable. It's not like I've been ignorant about Korea prior, it just never resonated until recently, and now I'm convinced my next life will be in South Korea, inshah'allah.

So I'm filling what I hope will be my last days in this life with indications of where I'm going and what I might strive to learn in my next life.

2011-07-25T13:16:00.068+08:00

Again I'm back at the stage where I'm trying to start wrapping things up. I have to decide whether to go back to work or whatever, and before I make that decision, I have to see if I can even stand being here anymore. Perplexed. Not easy.

Again I'm back at this wall. Again I keep stepping back away. But a very loud voice inside me is telling me it's not a choice anymore. I must do this. I have to do this. There is no or. There is no delineating reasons, no justification. I've lived my life, I know my life, and I simply have to do this.

It's my duty, it's my responsibility, it's my sacrifice, it's my destiny, I have to do this, I have to let go, I have to not cling to this ego-perspective by making the ultimate sacrifice for my soul, my karma, and my future.

If I entered the monastery, I could be doing good, improving my karma, but I would still be clinging to this ego-perspective. I would because I would know it. When I was at the monastery before, I could talk the talk and walk the walk; I could fool anyone but myself that I was still clinging to this ego-perspective.

I am really facing it, often staring at the wall and realizing there's no reason why not right now. Right now, shut up, go! And I answer back, "Wait!"

And I know it might as well be right now. I could be making the decision right now. It's a wrap. Wrap up those last few things and go. Wait!

If I don't? Yea, it's bad. Really bad. Everything is bad if I don't do it. It'll be dire if I don't put in a good attempt. I'll have to do something absolutely crazy. If I don't do it, it has to get bad.

Now, or soon, because the time is perfect. It doesn't matter that I still have enough in my bank account to last a bit longer. Part of now is about the unbearable; part is about not wanting to continue languishing, lingering. Mostly it's because the time is perfect. Again. I know I've been here before.

The truly pathetic part of all this is that all of the above, I cut and paste from what I wrote exactly one year ago :p I haven't moved an inch. I'm in the exact same position as I was a year ago.

I'd like to say there is a difference, that even though the words are still fairly accurate, the feeling isn't. I'd like to say that although it sounds like I was still trying to convince myself, and I maybe still am, it's to a lesser extent. I'd like to say that there's a much more prevalent feeling of conflict back then that doesn't exist now.

But, no, since I can't place myself in the exact space I was in a year ago and make a comparison, it's very possible that everything is exactly the same. Even worse. And not.

This has been a difficulty about writing about these topics lately, because when I say things like "even worse", it sounds negative, but the negative aspect doesn't describe it accurately.

It may be because I've been training my mind to diffuse negativity once it occurs that I don't like describing my reality in negative terms, but the only words available to me to describe my reality are the ones that sound negative.

There must be a psychologist somewhere in the world that wants to study me.

Like, yes, "even worse", but I don't want that understood as being qualitatively worse, just descriptively worse. My view and assessment of reality that I've chosen precludes taking a negative view of it as something real.

However, I can describe aspects of my daily life now that describe "worse than a year ago". Such as back then, I was still able to maintain morning sitting and being active and going for long bike rides. My sitting routine fell apart a couple months ago, and I haven't taken my bike out in weeks. Photography bores me now. I pick up my guitar or bass and I get bored very quickly. No joy there anymore. I stopped going to the drum practice rooms sometime last fall.

My active participation in living life has fallen apart. I only go out once a day to eat, and I don't have much of an appetite anymore and even that one meal a day is sometimes too much. I go out for about 3 or 4 hours, often ending up in the library, and part of my going out is to make a neurotic show that I'm not stuck in my room all day. I usually head out just before my neighbors start coming home. I still routinely buy a bottle of liquor every 2 days, sometimes less.

My isolation is about the same, but now it's been another added year of this isolation. How much of this can I take? On the rare occasion I do meet up with someone, I get antsy very quickly and hastily bail.

It sounds bad, but I don't want negativity to be a part of my reality. I decide that, not my circumstances. Any sense that any of this is negative, I diffuse it, I deflect it. Denial? Maybe. Would I want things any other way?

See, that's another hard question. Why would I want it to be this way? But if I say I would want it different, then that's admitting dissatisfaction and negativity. There's also the point that I created and drove my current life to be this way. So actually, no, I don't want things to be any other way. I should accept it the way I created it.

I don't want things to be any other way, and a new window of opportunity just opened. I'm dying to know what's going to happen.

2011-07-23T23:33:00.003+08:00

In the library, before Ozzy, I found and read another book recommended to me, "Tuesdays With Morrie". It's a real-life account of a former-college student who learns his former-professor is dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease -- the very same disease with which Stephen Hawkings is afflicted).

The book is the account of the months the author would visit him every Tuesday and discuss various topics about life from the point of view of a dying man. The book has been the inspiration to many because of Morrie's positive attitude and affirmation of Life in the face of death.

The book mentions three interviews by Ted Koppel during this period that were aired on U.S. network TV's "Nightline", and Koppel was so impacted by these meetings that he apparently got permission from the network to compile the footage into a separate documentary about him, entitled Lessons on Living.

I guess the book was interesting to me because Morrie was an ordinary person, who lived an ordinary, normative life, and then had to confront his mortality. He was Jewish, but wasn't particularly spiritual.

So my point of view in reading the book was of someone who has taken Tibetan methodology to heart, where understanding, if not pursuit, of death is just as important as an understanding of life. Not "just as important", but central.

On one hand, many of Morrie's reflections and revelations are philosophically old hat. On the other hand, he was actually going through the process in real time, in this lifetime, in a way that I can't identify as having experienced.

With a belief in reincarnation, I can reflect that I've been through this many times before, studied it, processed it, played with it, but I don't know the feeling of actually facing it definitively beyond my own choice.

Hm, my own choice. Actually, that's my key point. I have absolutely no doubt that if faced with death that was not my own choice, I'd have absolutely no problem with it, I'd be happy as a proverbial clam. My own choice is the dilemma in this lifetime, not death itself.

Morrie deals with issues only a person facing mortality can process. The people his story has touched are the multitude of people who wonder and worry about death and mortality, but, I shouldn't wonder, are people who don't have the will or the means to affect change in their own lives based on what are essentially his teachings, but hopefully do.

And the issues Morrie deals with are the same ones I've touched on for myself, and I've come to my own conclusions and made my own peace, and also will not affect any change in my own life because he has actually affirmed my direction to also go there.

With my lifelong striving towards suicide, I've always felt like a dying person. This impulse saying I will commit suicide, I must commit suicide, is arguably not different from a disease. Ergo, I've dealt with the issues that Morrie also confronted. When suicide is your reality, you are confronting your mortality.

There was a time when suicide could be avoided. There was still the possibility of another path. And the analysis could have been broken down between positive (live) and negative (suicide), but it's not that way anymore, and hasn't been for quite some time.

That another path is the negative path now. Finding something to latch onto to continue living is not something positive because it's attachment. It's a fundamental lack of understanding of the foundation of being.

Morrie's story, in my opinion, is presented in a way that shouldn't evoke pity. Sympathy, perhaps. My story, I shouldn't wonder, wouldn't evoke pity or sympathy in anyone. And that's the way it should be in our attitudes about death if we really understand life and death as a part of life, not as an end.

Whether or not you believe in reincarnation, you live on by the impact you have on other people, and you don't impact other people by evoking pity in your passing. Suicide I'm hoping is the way I die, and in following this path, I definitely do not hope to have any impact on anyone else's life, which is why I've worked so hard on making myself a low impact soul.

No matter how I die, the impact will be very minimal, and if I died of renal failure because of alcoholism or got hit by a bus while riding my bike, the impact would still be more, and more than I would want, than if I simply disappeared in a suicide about which no one had any evidence.

2011-07-16T14:24:00.008+08:00

I go to the public library to study, but lately I've instead been reading Ozzy Osbourne's memoir "I Am Ozzy" off the shelves (I know, wtf?). It's perhaps a bit of a respite from the other stuff I've been reading . . .

I like Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of either. I have both in my collection, but hardly extensive collections.

I was introduced to Ozzy Osbourne before Black Sabbath. In sixth grade, our music teacher allowed on one day per week for a student to bring in music from his or her music collection to introduce to the class.

Even though she herself was a big fat opera singer wannabe, I think this was also her way of keeping in touch with what kids were listening to. In retrospect, that, to me, along with my respect for public school teachers, is awesome. She did not get a lot of respect from us as students, but in retrospect, she was awesome.

Anyway, one day a classmate brought in Ozzy Osbourne's first solo album after he was fired from Black Sabbath, "Blizzard of Ozz", and Randy Rhoads' guitar playing on I Don't Know fucking blew me away. Crazy Train did no less. I was a convert.

Mind you, this was the first shredding I ever heard. The term didn't even exist yet I shouldn't wonder, and it was still more or less a school year before I was exposed to Eddie Van Halen, who if not invented shredding, popularized it and redefined virtuosic lead guitar solos away from their blues roots.

I bought that LP as well as its follow-up "Diary of a Madman", but lost interest after Randy heart-breakingly died. Sounds like I was more of a Randy Rhoads fan, and maybe so. Ozzy never attracted me as a singer, per se, but had other qualities I liked from radio interviews, such as being passionate, anti-establishment and misunderstood by the mainstream.

Of the Ozzy years, I have Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" LP, and I did buy "Sabotage" on CD when it came out, recalling I liked the album when someone lent me the LP. Notably because that album has the epic Megalomania (a few of the lyrics are wrong, grr), which is a personal theme song for the more doomy side of my personality.

This memoir should be a lot funnier than it is, considering Ozzy's manic, ironic life. I'm sure the story as he told it would be hilarious, and it's too bad the co-writer wasn't someone who could translate the ridiculousness of the raw material Ozzy went through. I really do wish this blog were funnier. What the fuck happened to my sense of humor?

But it's still a good read to me, just because it's the whole rock 'n' roll thing that is a part of my bedrock. Things you obsess about during childhood and adolescence have a way of staying with you for the rest of your life in a way that other things don't. And when rock music is part of your history, reading stuff like this is like reading . . . history. Except interesting.

2011-07-15T02:22:00.000+08:00

07. Diving
The last song! Finally, I can get back to blogging about whatever it is I usually blog about. The entire collection fit on one side of a 60-minute tape. Do you even know what a tape is? Jesus.

And for the big ending, the song itself was a full-on, pants-down confessional. Very simply this song was my suicide note, describing why and how, more or less, and I think I even considered that as a title, but opted for subtlety instead, borrowing the title from Nirvana's song Dive.

The bass part and the guitar part in the intro started as two completely separate snippets. At some point, I think I was like, "Hmm, I wonder..." and tried playing them together and they happened to fit together really well, so I kept it like that.

I think both bass and guitar are going through the Super Phaser in the intro. I was also pleased with myself by how that intro bass motif became a vocal line later in the song, I think that worked rather well, flatter myself not.

The bass part in the verses is a full-on slap bass part and I think I ran it through both Auto-Wah and Super Phaser, which was risky because of the possibility of effects overload, but I think I was going for "bombastic" in regards to sound for this song.

I think the Compression effect also helped keeping those two effects from totally blowing up. I think Auto-Wah and Super Phaser are about frequency sweeps, and if certain frequencies come together and peak at the wrong point, it gets ugly. The Compression keeps everything contained.

The drum part in the B sections I want to comment on, but unfortunately I'm just geeking out and this will probably make no sense to anyone. It was actually a pretty technically tricky part, based on a 16th note hand pattern on the hi-hat with alternate strokes of both left and right hands hitting the ride (right hand) and crash bell (left hand) in a crazy pattern that I was only able to come up with due to practicing steel drum music grooves from my time with the steel drum band in college. The snare drum hits kinda, sorta reveal the latin influence of the pattern.

And oh, also in the B sections, I had trouble coming up with a bass line that I liked, and what I settled for was a direct, conscious rip-off of Paul McCartney's amazing bass line of Hey Bulldog. They're played a little differently and with different roots, but the relative tones and rhythm are directly from "Hey Bulldog".

I think the lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. As for the narration recitation in the background at the beginning and the end, it's taken from Jeanette Winterson's book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The full passage is as below, the bold sections are what I'm reciting underneath the song:

(excerpt from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, pp. 170-171)
". . . But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That's what I'll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can't measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear. One thing I am certain of; I do not want to be betrayed, but that's quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's."

Mind you, this passage I had posted elsewhere and had to dig for a while to find. I'm not that narcissistic that I dug this out for this post.

The file is over 5 and a half minutes long, but the song is less than five minutes. The tag at the end is the end of the recording of the Ode to a Sinkhole track. With songs that fade out, do you ever wonder what went on in the studio on the master tape? I think it's something like this. The recording goes on until it falls apart. And apparently there was a finger-snapping part in that song.

Clean the slate, try to clear my mind

Find a way to start over from the star...

The starting line

Leave behind what I've built thus far

Finally resolved to end this game of love charades

Back to the cave

And pull out the plug from the VCR and the TV screen

Leave my socks on the sand below the stars

And look around to see where the fires are

The sound of waves plead for me

The swim that never ends begins here on the beach

Clean the slate, clear my mind

Sound of waves, leave behind

Hold my breath, close my eyes

The shock of the first chill will only last until mourning

Opting out, cash in my dying deed

It's just a simple trade off between distinct realities

Body parts, functions and feelings

Everything reeling and fading out from here and now and I know how

To pull out the plug and watch the water go round and down the drain

Don't look back, don't think of crying now

With a ziplock bag around my neck to weigh me down

All I love is here with me

The stars, the sound, a gun and all my memories

Running start, take a dive

No one here gets out alive

Racing back, my whole life

Flashing before my eyes

For weeks it's been driving me crazy

I want to find some way to trust another lie

Nothing romantic that could be believed and I

Keep in the feeling that's rotting me from inside

She'll rest in peace with the newly deceased and cross my mind

Sometimes I think this is one big joke

And god knows that I've been at the end of my rope

For seven years it took to figure this out

She's laughing at my train of doubt about

Being found and being unidentified

Still concerned with all the details left behind

When I leave to find you

You'll know me when you see me, you'll see the signs

2011-07-14T01:38:00.000+08:00

06. Quicksand Box
I actually like this song. In fact, years and years after I completed this tape and had forgotten how the songs went, I was still able to easily figure out the guitar part and played it for a few friends because I like the sound of crickets. The sound of crickets is so much more prevalent after I play a song for people.

I had the chords for the A and B sections and the first verse kicking around for years before I finally decided to try to complete the song for this collection.

And it kinda shows, the first verse is existential angst (with theatrical and angel references) and tries to have some clever (sometimes called 'pretentious') turns of phrase or plays on words, characteristic of influences from Marillion and Genesis (I would maintain that the chameleon reference has nothing to do with the Marillion song "She Chameleon", because it doesn't).

The inspiration for the verse was from the idea that our lives are like plays on a stage, and dying is nothing more than walking off stage and then we change characters and that's reincarnation. Sometimes we're not thrilled by the roles we take.

Then the second A/B section is straight-forward about Amina :p (the "means lead to ends" was not-so-cleverly derived from the sound of her name, believe it or not. It's a hidden MEANing, hahaha! not).

The first of the break verses wasn't targeted at anyone but was supposed to, I suppose, characterize a dichotomy between Amina and me. It started with the "there was a death in the family" line that I think I also had been wanting to use for a long time and once I had the chords, the rest of the verse fell into place. The second break verse reverts to Amina. No mystery there.

The final B verse references an idea I had about reincarnation and how I may have been aiming to be reborn in Japan and ended up in a womb that would within 9 months be taken to the U.S., and also a reference to how my parents used to tell me that I wasn't theirs and they had found me on a rock in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a joke. I thought they were serious. I was very disappointed when I found out it was supposed to be a joke. I did not find it very funny.

The main rhythm guitar part was my Takamine run through the Small Clone and with a capo on the 2nd fret. I had a rough relationship with the bass line. The final bass line is the same or very similar to the initial one I came up with, but for a long time I didn't think it was right.

I dunno, it was too distinct? Distracting? After vacillating for a long time and trying other ideas, I decided I liked the original idea. Or I had just gotten used to hearing it like that. These are the pitfalls of working alone. I didn't have anyone else to give me an opinion either way.

The guitar solo was my Peavey run prominently through a Boss Super Phaser (I love that box), and I think was recorded pretty late in the process, and I wasn't trying for anything elaborate or sounding very "solo-ish", so it's a more textural solo with not a lot of notes.

No audition, typecast in doubt

In a strange role-reversal, costume inside-out

Red lights, dead ends, I try to forget my lines again

Step into wings to change what my character has been

Up to my knees, concrete conformity

Chameleon fit to what's surrounding me

And chameleon fit to what I would never dream

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

Let my guard down, let you too far in

Didn't know you didn't know me and means lead to ends

I could have laughed at how you tried to sound sincere

Using all the same excuses that I used for years

Your family, models of chemistry

Chameleon fit to what you're supposed to be

And chameleon fit to how people want to see

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

There was a death in the family that you never knew about

A crime of principle that you never cared about

A breach of confession that you never told about

A death that no one knew, no one cared, no one came to tell me

I couldn't do a thing that you ask

You ask too much of my limited past

I can't make much sense of what you made us to be

Or how you made it to depend on me

So me I'm faced with what I could never have been

Never have hoped and never could believe in

The ground dissolves, look to the clouds above

Chameleon dragged by its tail across the sea

And chameleon found on a rock right next to me

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

2011-07-13T05:05:00.002+08:00

05. Track 5
The reason why this song isn't titled is because at some point I thought of the perfect title for it and then forgot what it was. In self-protest, I refused to settle on some other title. Either I remembered that perfect title, or it would remain untitled. Guess what came to pass.

(Actually, there is a precedent for this. On the first collection of songs I recorded, there were two songs that were unrelated and lacking titles. Then I came up with a good title for one and realized it could be applied to the other and so I gave them both the same title, part one and part two. Then I forgot the title and refused to try to come up with alternate titles, but that time I eventually did remember the title I wanted).

It's also the song I like least among this collection. I don't know what I was doing with it or where I was going with it. The music started with the uninspired opening rhythm guitar part, upon which I formed the bass line, which I do like, and then the keyboard melody, which I don't. It's kinda sterile and contrived. The drums, I think, are OK except for the break which sounds awkward and is only there because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the main riff musically. Lame.

The song ostensibly is about memory and its reliability, but is a patchwork of sources and not very successful. A part of the concept was sourced in a coffee table book I had of black and white photos shot by Ansel Adams of the Manzanar Japanese American concentration camp during World War II.

And I'm pretty sure that part of the inspiration was my friend's song about the Japanese American experience in the early 20th century that I posted earlier. I wasn't trying to add anything, but his song was so good and I had these ideas from the Ansel Adams book, that it seemed OK to borrow his basic idea as a starting point.

In his song, the protagonist ends up stuck, unable to leave, perhaps metaphorically, in the desert heat of the concentration camp after being betrayed by his adopted country, after betraying himself and his original country. In my song, the idea is of a former Japanese American concentration camp prisoner decades later looking at pictures of the camps and thinking, "that's not what it was like".

Another source was a pile of 8mm home movies from my childhood that I had no idea existed and found by accident in my brother's room. And curiously, I have absolutely no recollection of when it was that I found them. With incidents such as this, I can usually place somewhere in the timeline of my life, but not this one. Selective memory clearly engaged.

Also curiously, I have no idea where those 8mm reels are now. I'm even doubting their existence or whether my finding them ever really happened, because not only was there the film, but also -- it wasn't a projector, but a machine that I watched them on where you set up the reels and spooled the film through a mechanism that lit the film onto a screen. Yea, sounds suspicious to me, too.

This is weird because the more I describe it, the more I'm doubting this ever happened. A machine like that just doesn't go missing. The film is real, actually. I do remember my father did have a projector, and when he got back a reel of film from being developed, the family would get together and watch it.

What I remember about finding and watching the film, whether that happened or not, is seeing my parents in a light that I never knew. They were acting as parents. There was footage of my oldest brother's kindergarten graduation. Seeing my parents acting like parents was very conflicting for me, and it was hard for me to reconcile that it happened like that. I think I even actually felt guilty for a while about hating them.

The film is fact, the pictures don't lie, but if our subjective memory and reality are in conflict with them, then what's the truth? Here was physical evidence of my parents acting like parents, but in my memory and reality, my parents were merely a bank. They provided funds, but were uninvolved and emotionally unavailable.

So what I was trying to get at was, whether it's historical or personal, does the documentary evidence contain actual truth. No, it contains a record, but the truth is subjective.

I used to be a pyromaniac when I was a kid and used to light fires in a small set of woods near my elementary school. Nothing major, but at one point the fire department was called. And shit, it seems harmless in retrospect and I never thought anything of it, but that's clear evidence that I was already one fucked up, sociopath of a kid. Or I was trying to get attention. But you have to get caught to get attention. I was 8 or 9 years old.

And then the lyrics get further muddy because I start reflecting on my relationship with Amina and start ranting on about her. Real mature. So many things to dislike about this song. And at 5 minutes long, it was a failure at the short and concise concept (most of the songs from my first collection were ridiculously long, most over 5 minutes).

Force a pause

Pass under lighted tracks of memories hung up in galleries

Desert sand still seems to fall from my hands

Black and white photographs, but it never looked like that

Lost in my thoughts

Lots to be guilty of when history haunts me in home movies

The pictures lie, they can't testify to facts

Childhood reality check, it didn't happen quite like that

Thirty years between being the same age

Through my eyes not much has changed

From the forest fire and the match I found

On the cold barren ground

To decide from a yes to a no

Have to stay, no way that I'm gonna go

Under desert rocks froze in snow

My confession, little forgiveness for the un- or underblessed

Trapped in the mess of burned barracks, government shacks

I recall a last night on the phone

Triggered something from a long time ago

Losing you was really no loss at all

It seemed so much better than it actually was

From a point of view it was nothing new

It should have come as no surprise

And as it goes around, it still comes around

I could have read between the lines

You, your glazed ceramic smile

Made of mud and blazed in fire so cold

The wrong shade of red lipstick

Little too brown, too bright

In the sun it made you look too white-eyed

Burned to brown like a native skin, tattooed Indian

Give me control over what I know

I only doubt what I found when I find none of it sound

I have no memory and no feelings and I'm free to leave

2011-07-12T01:49:00.003+08:00

04. Ode to a Sinkhole
I'm pretty sure this song started with the main 4-chord, descending rhythm guitar motif in the intro and verses, and I think I had those chords kicking around for quite a while.

Like years, maybe. I forget if the keyboard melody or the bass line came next, but if it was years in the making, it may well have been a snippet with the keyboard melody laying around for years.

I always had a "snippet" tape ready to go in the 4-track, on which I recorded ideas and then may have put other parts on top of to see if I thought there was any potential. I don't know if any of those snippet tapes are extant, but there can't be too many of them. I wasn't all that prolific. Not that I'm terribly interested in what's on them.

The acoustic rhythm guitar sounds like it's running through a Small Clone chorus box, one of the first stomp boxes I ever bought when I was in high school, and it's the same one Kurt Cobain uses on songs like "Come As You Are". And reverb.

Oh, and reverb! When Boss released its first reverb stomp box, that was a huge thing for me. Almost every vocal and guitar part is going through reverb. And compression. I neglect to mention these effects because they are more subtle; assumed even. All voice, guitar and bass parts are running through a Boss Compression/Sustain pedal.

With the first collection of songs I recorded during college, I remember I ended up re-recording all the vocal parts and some guitar parts one semester, and now I remember why: the reverb pedal came out. As bad as my vocals are, without reverb and compression, they were even more excruciating to listen to.

It may be hard to appreciate now because all these effects are readily available now, included with multi-track recording software, I shouldn't wonder. But back then 4-track tape recorders didn't have built-in effects, digital processors were unheard of, and pro reverb processors were expensive. So it was a godsend when Boss created their reverb stomp box, which I remember was still really expensive at US$300, but worth it.

I think this is the only song whose drum part wasn't recorded with the "Phil Collins" patch. It's similarly big sounding, but the patch I used had a mechanical tinge to it. I think there were multiple tracks for the TD-7 because there's a quica sound in there that I don't think was recorded with the main drum part.

This is also the only song that I didn't record the bass with my solid-body Riverhead, but a hollow-body Washburn AB-40 acoustic-electric. That was a great bass with a Fishman pre-amp/EQ and a piezo pickup mounted under the bridge which picked up the full sound of the wood body which is why it sounds so woof-y. It's going through a Boss Auto-wah in the instrumental sections. I gave that bass away to Meghan during one round of "I'm not gonna be around much longer anyway".

I think the keyboard sound was created with a keyboard controller and a sound module which I bought to replace a Roland Juno-106 analog synthesizer that I foolishly sold around this time. That was an amazing keyboard and one of the last of its kind before digital synthesizers became the rage with the Yamaha DX-7. They're considered vintage now. Part of me regrets selling it, but I also remember it was an exercise in non-attachment and that part of me doesn't regret it.

The song has three instrumental sections, the first being just the background rhythm track, the second time there's an added crunchy guitar part on top -- my Takamine run through distortion and no reverb -- and the third time has a guitar solo played on the Peavey electric to fade out the song.

I guess the theme behind the lyrics is isolation, sort of feeling like I was at the bottom of a well and the view of the world from there. The "feels like I'm in a well...-kept dungeon cell" is a cheap literary trick, attempting to be clever.

There's an element in the lyrics that's a reference to Plato's cave and how our lives are like shadows of a reality cast by a divine light coming from outside the cave that we have no concept of. And there's a reference to an analogy between Plato's cave and movie-making. Movies are just light and shadow manipulated upon a screen, but we often ascribe a certain reality to them and let ourselves be drawn into it.

I think this song is the second reference in this collection of the back of my eyes, and the imagery was supposed to evoke looking at the back of my eyeball -- my eyes being the view of the world and with eyes being the window to the soul for other people, the real me was actually one step further withdrawn, not engaging or interfacing with the world, but just contemplating what was falling on the back of my eyes.

More reference to angels with the "she with wings" line, and I guess I was getting out some feelings about a previous relationship in college, Luyen. She was from Florida, so I was obviously thinking about her for that line, but that's the extent of what I remember. We had discussed angels in a theoretical, conceptual sense, but she was no angel. And neither was I.

I was living in San Francisco at this point, going to law school in downtown S.F. everyday. I remember having existential problems being in an urban setting and all the concrete and all the people, and for a time I dealt with it by keeping my line of sight over people's heads trying to avoid acknowledging their existence. Pretty pathetic.

I'm scared of heights, or at least I used to be, and I was referencing that in opposition to the metaphor of digging my own grave. Dreamscapes, death states, I think they're fairly envisioned as being above, rather than below, and my lifescapes I was definitely feeling as below.

Actually, I think the concept for the opening line was digging my own grave and then by accident digging too deep and finding myself trapped. Story of my life. And then there are the obligatory references to death and choosing to die.

Dug this hole too deep to find sleep

Just a pinpoint shaft of light out of which I can see

Feels like I'm in a well-kept dungeon cell

Faint rose smell and the sky looks like the back of my eyes

Shadows move on rocks below me

Suspended here in the glare, in the glow of silver screens

I walk while she with wings tugs my puppet strings

Was she from Hollywood, moved to Florida?

With the camera focused far above the heads of the crowd

To avoid them now

From my height I'm deep in a dream

Don't know what they mean, or where they lead

Or where they have been

I'm scared of higher places where I can't see people's faces

No big deal to not know how I feel about my life

If there's something missed, choice to leave

Dismiss the world as it is

Dug this hole too deep under me

Drank myself to sleep, what I really need

Is time to rest in peace

I know that there can be no coincidences

Nothing happens that doesn't show through the cracks

2011-07-11T02:08:00.000+08:00

Re-re-post (with full lyrics)

2011-07-10T22:05:00.028+08:00

03. Withdrawal
Hm, I thought the title of this song was "Wishlist". Not sure how it got changed. It might be a mistake. Or not. I have no idea.

I'm pretty sure this song started with the opening lyric which then got slapped on top of the bass verse riff, which I'm pretty sure is the origin of the music. The guitar part was just what fit over the bass part and then used to develop the other portions.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that for this collection, the music writing and lyric writing were very separate processes. So while I was developing and recording the music over here, lyric ideas were being scrawled down over there, and the two were mashed together at a later point.

I'm a little embarrassed by both the confessional and meltdown nature of the lyrics. There is little hiding my preoccupation with various ways of dying and self-destruction and my inability to bring anything to fruition in that regard, story of my life. But I did try to have a little fun with it, too. I mean what's death and self-destruction if you're not having at least a little bit of fun? Just morbid. And I am not morbid.

At the time I had recently broken up with the purported "love of my life" Amina, and some reference to her crops up in a few of these songs, and they are immature, snide jabs at her. She's Pakistani and had a Caucasian nose that I always felt was poking me when we kissed. There's more in other songs.

The Simpsons impression in the repeated verse may be related via the South Asia connection, but her mother being English, she spoke with a British Indian accent, and not a full-on Apu Indian accent. It's indirect, but it was conscious.

I forget what all the different "voices" for the repeated verse were supposed to be. Aside from Apu, one of them was "Tom Waits". Another was "meltdown". I think one I wrote down as "about-to-crack". One sounds like it should've been labeled "constipated".

Other lyric elements came from various sources. "Four and twenty bishops" was an expression from my Contracts professor that I liked, used to emphasize the importance of evidence versus innuendo attested to by "four and twenty bishops".

There's a reference to angels which was a thing for me late in college. One of my favorite films at the time was Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" and I think I even wrote a paper on angels for a religion seminar. How flaky is that? (not as flaky as the field "angelology"). There's more in other songs.

The internet is an assumed part of modern life now, but back then it was just coming into wider use, being touted in the media with the catchphrase "information superhighway". I was being topical! Imagine how much lamer it would be if I had mentioned Infoseek or Lycos. Or Alta Vista. All pre-Google search engines. All had to be used to find the optimum result.

The line about being allergic to myself was about an elusive skin condition I have. It's nothing major, just an oddity as far as I can tell, and unlike other physical anomalies, this one has never gone away.

My skin is sensitive and if I scratch it even lightly it turns red and leads to more itching. If I scratch it because of itching, it leads to prominent, unsightly welts wherever I scratch it. So the reference was a joke about being allergic to just being myself.

The reference to being "discharged" was simply in my mind about being discharged from mental institutions, which I have been twice in my life, so this was referencing that deranged period of my life.

I don't want to be too harsh against the people who had me committed, nor about how they were just doing their jobs and had no clue what was going on. Looking at the scenes objectively, I think they were justified, but ultimately my case was beyond their psychiatric analysis, and kudos for them for realizing it. Something was clearly "wrong" (from their point of view), but it was beyond their purview of what they could understand, much less treat. So they let me go.

The guitar part was played on my acoustic Takamine running through an auto-wah and the bass line in the verses is slapped on my Riverhead. I'm not a slap bassist, but it's a lot of fun, and at the time I was experimenting with slapping without a lot of popping, or at least not popping in a higher register on a higher string. The electric drums are on the Phil Collins setting and there's also a second distorted guitar part that was done on the Takamine. Meaning this song was likely recorded before I bought the Peavey Predator.

I want to die a bloody, violent death

Smashed against the rocks below the cliffs, amidst the surf
But the hands around my neck keep stopping me

Surf to servant, lifted up by wings that never worked

And I owe my whole likeness to the kindness

Of the winds that blew me kisses from a lotus flower

Stood around me by some four and twenty bishops

Giving me the finger with a sneer they said, "You wish"

My number one priority

Is finding the only wish I had left

As I'm flipping through my filofax

For that wish I have left

I wish I could find a way to decide

I wish there was a way I could survive

I wish I could be buried alive

I wish everyone would leave me alone

Seems to me to be one more life decision

Every heartbeat murmurs secrets only time can tell me

Met Jesus on my path, nearly stepped on him

Searched for God on the information interstate

She crowned me in a romantic bravado

It's your classic fairy tale scenario we all know

Bring me to a better understanding

Bring me people who would never ever leave me

My number one priority

Is to not stand stupid in some idiot's pose

Kissing ass, distracted by your pointed nose

I don't think I would want to be that wise

I don't want to live just to survive

I don't want to find what's behind my eyes

I don't think I should be thinking these things

Someday I'll drown in my own sense of privacy

Where no one can help me to be who I want to be

Eggshell exiles scrambled in cups of tea

Porcelain lips kiss my grasp on reality

(repeat 5x)

Why am I allergic to myself?

I get a rash everytime I come down and try to be real

Ask me about my drinking problem

That's one way to get a prime example of denial

I smeared myself with 80 proof holy water

I'm a failure of religious guidance, social science

I'm next in line to be discharged and I feel better

On my way home gotta make it look like an accident

2011-07-09T03:23:00.002+08:00

02. Just for the Record (Marillion cover)
This song is on the last studio album that original singer Fish recorded with neo-prog rock band Marillion, "Clutching at Straws" (1987). It is one of my desert island discs -- I'll never get sick of listening to this album or stop being amazed at Fish's lyrics.

It's not my fave song on the album. In fact, if there were a song I like least, this would be a runner-up, not that there is a song I like least on the album. No, the reason I chose this song to record was that the chords were easy enough to figure out on guitar, and the song itself was short and concise, which is what I was going for on this collection of songs.

I also fancied doing a full-on cover, rather than just acoustic covers of songs I liked, since I hadn't done that since I first owned my first 4-track tape recorder and recorded covers to learn the process of 4-track recording.

The funnest part was coming up with a bass part that was my own. I did away with copying the guitar hook on the original track because I would've sucked trying to do that, and instead incorporated elements of that hook in the bass line.

The bass is the Riverhead run through a Boss Super Phaser and Bass EQ. All the other parts are pro forma, just doing what I could figure out to do. I even changed the meter in the verses from 7 to an even 8, more because it fit the bass line I wanted to play and not that I couldn't play in 7, mind you, but it did make recording the song track by track easier.

Aside from the bass, there's an acoustic rhythm guitar track, electronic drumset on the Phil Collins sound, two vocal tracks and I'm pretty sure the solo is recorded with the Peavey electric and not my acoustic run through distortion. Hehe, me playing a "solo". It just sounds funny (and it does sound funny, the first notes of the solo remind me of a baby deer trying to get its legs).

The lyrics, of course, I found very relevant, dealing with alcoholism and derangement. Fish's line "It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this" probably refers to only being able to make sense when drunk, but in my mind, "out of it" meant out of life, and I sang a future tense "I'll".

Fish obviously uses a pseudonym (you might too if your given name was Derek William Dick), as arguably do I. But I don't consider my name a pseudonym. It's the difference between my "real" name and my "legal" name, and as I consider it my real name, it can't be a pseudonym. But, no, it's not my legal name, which I hold in disdain. Look, I rhymed!

Where he says, "When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty", that resonated for me because in my first collection of songs, I had an opening line, "I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself/But who am I to say it's a problem, after all, you're happy". Always people telling us we got a problem.

And of course the classic alcoholic response, "Just for the record, I can stop any day". No, really, I can.

(D. Dick/S. Rothery/M. Kelly/P. Trewavas/I. Mosley)

Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways

But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze

I'm serving a sentence to write life sentences

It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym

Just a barroom dancer on my final fling

Just another writer paying off my dues

Just finding an inspiration, well, that's my excuse

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just another empty gesture with an empty glass

Just a comic actor behind a tragic mask

But I got no discipline, got no self-control

Just a little less painful here where my back's against the wall

It's too late, I found it's too hard

I'm in two minds, both of them are out of it at the bar

When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty

But I can put it all down to eccentricity

It's just for the record, it's just a passing phase

Just for the record, I can stop any day

And if I haven't geeked out enough, to go full-on maximus geek, the whole album is full of quotes that resonate for me, including the closing verse of the album:

And if you ever come across us, don't give us your sympathy

You can buy us a drink, and just shake our hands

And you'll recognize by the reflection in our eyes

That deep down inside, we're all one and the same:

We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning

Clutching at straws, we're still drowning

- The Last Straw

And just for the record, I'm so not impressed by Windows 7 as an improvement over XP.

2011-07-07T23:20:00.005+08:00

I've found a website that allows me to upload simple sound files, and I've had to decide whether to do what I always wondered whether I would do if given the opportunity: post my own songs from my past. And in what manner?

On one hand, from a music perspective, I don't think it's any good. I don't recall anyone to whom I gave the cassette giving more than a polite positive response. To be fair, I don't recall anyone having the same music tastes as me, either, go fig.

And even though the results sound like a final product, the purpose of the recording was to shop it around through my network of friends to find other musicians to play with. I finally accepted my writing process was too excruciating and results too poor to want to be a primary songwriter, but I was hoping to find people interested in the sound and forming a band. I just wanted to be the bass player.

On the other hand, I am trying to wrap things up and wind things down, and this is a significant part of my past, albeit small and very private and at times embarrassing. This is part of my history and past expression.

I've said before I'm glad I have these recordings because no matter how embarrassing, they are a record of what was going on at the time (actually that was about a previous collection I had recorded during college; this collection I'm personally not so embarrassed about).

It's not out of ego, it's not that I want anyone listening to the stuff, but it's fact, it's record. It's confessional, and that's part of what this blog is supposed to be doing. I keep myself completely hidden from people who know me, but this is the place where it all comes out. Anything anyone ever wondered about me can probably be found somewhere in here.

And I think I'll go full-on confessional here. When someone creates something, they don't know how other people will take it or interpret it. I'm removing that by saying what everything was about. I'm not pretending this is art for a listener to enjoy or interpret or figure out. This is an artifact of expression that I'm explaining for the record.

As for manner, the track order matters to me, so I think I'll post track by track in sequence, but then I'll see about combining it all into one ridiculously long post so it's all in sequence for the archives once I'm done.

01. Son of Solomon
So this first song is obviously inspired by my parents who I hated at the time, putting it mildly. Who woulda thunk?, I just admitted my parents were an inspiration to me. I don't think most individual lyrics meant anything specific. It was just general anger upon which lines were built. Suicide is, of course, alluded to in the song, and I think it's alluded to in every song.

The title doesn't mean anything either. I realized as an afterthought that I had to coax out titles for these songs. This phrase came to me in a quick little flash and stuck.

There is a line referencing when I went to Japan after college to find my way and stayed with a great aunt in Osaka for some months. My parents did arrange that, but beyond that I think every effort was made to discourage anything I was attempting to do, certainly not encouraging or supporting it. In the end, it worked and it was like they scooped a wandering child off its feet and put it back where they wanted it to be.

The song idea started with the bass line which then defined the guitar chords, and probably after I established what the guitar was doing in the verse, that led to the chorus and break sections written on guitar. The bass, a Japanese-made Riverhead Unicorn headless design, sounds like it's going through a Boss Auto-Wah pedal with the lows boosted with a Bass EQ pedal.

I only had an acoustic guitar up to this point since I never took guitar seriously, but I think at this point I decided I needed to include guitar solos and bought a first generation Peavey Predator which was a strat-copy. Later models were a totally different design, but I love the strat-copy version and still have it.

No solos on this song, but I think I used it to get used to playing electric guitar, with two tracks of electric guitar, one clean, one distorted. I think any guitarist will tell you that acoustic and electric are totally different beasts.

All the drums on this collection were played on what was then a state-of-the-art, 2nd generation consumer electronic drumset, a Roland TD-7. Being a huge Phil Collins fan, I gravitated towards the sound that was closest to his sound -- very big with lots of reverb.

I was doing the best I could on drums, having worked on keeping a groove while I was in a steel drum band in college. I had a horrible sense of rhythm until then and I spent hours on practicing "groove" with a metronome.

I didn't consider myself a drummer at this point. It wasn't until several years later when I heard Jimmy Chamberlin with the Smashing Pumpkins that I was really inspired about being able to express on drums. Bash the fuck out of those things, I mean.

(Can I ask you something personal?)

Mom and dad could never have a baby

Mom and dad they never had a chance

Though they only needed dope to save me

They traded the hope for circumstance

It was never my responsibility to live past 20

It was never my intention to live through them

The psycho path has been my way out of the halls of plenty

Took my hand to lead me back again

Being pushed was just my way of learning

Pushed to suicide don't make it a crime

Found the agents they were sent as earning

Made me hate and made me do the time, made me survive

It was never my intention to live past 30

It was never my responsibility to be fool-proof

And the only way to pave my grave was to make it dirty

Make it up and make it be the truth

In the guise of a friend she came as a complete surprise

Said there's no worse than the will to live, may it be your curse

In return I wished upon her a real long, long life . . .

Mom and dad were just imagination

Nothing they could do could make me real

Just as they could make their own creation

They could make their DNA congeal

The nightmare grows like ivy climbing up my body

Year by year I never even noticed it being there

It make me realize somewhere implied I should feel sorry

It's all been wrong and gotten me nowhere

2011-07-03T23:35:00.007+08:00

Castaway on the Moon (2009, South Korea):

I haven't rented any DVDs since I got back from the U.S. in early May, so now there are a bunch of South Korean DVDs with English subtitles at Blockbusters that I want to check out. I rented this one because I had seen it on the shelves before, so it's an "older" one.

The English title isn't bad. It seems abstract, but there is a reason for it, kinda sorta. It tries to be more descriptive than "Kim's Island" which I gather is the translation of the Korean title. The Chinese title is alright, I guess, roughly translatable as "Desert Island Love" (荒島之愛).

The Chinese title gives away that at the heart of the film is a romance, but really it's more a quirky, "indie"-style film with funny elements about urban isolation. One character who chooses her isolation and one who finds himself stuck in his situation of isolation, but then gets used to it. Both of them in the middle of the capital city of Seoul.

He's a Robinson Crusoe type character who finds himself stranded, seemingly impossibly, on an island in the middle of the Han River, which runs through the heart of Seoul. His early attempts to get off the island all fail in perhaps a comedy of errors, some predictable and dragged on a bit too long, and as he resigns himself to being stuck there, he finds himself adapting and liking his situation. It's still better than his life he left behind as part of society.

She is a recluse living with her parents, locked inside her room. She has no direct contact with them or the outside world, and lives her life online and with a daily routine that she describes with labels which perhaps allow her to think she's living a "normal" life.

I quite liked the film. It's charming and cute and funny, but these people are in kinda dire situations in their own way. Outcasts, castaways, recluses in the heart of modern society. Needless to say I had no trouble identifying and empathizing with them, maybe a bit too much.

The landscapes of the two characters' worlds may be metaphors for what many people might feel about their own urban lives. His landscape being a junk-laden wilderness that he learns to live off, while hers is a junk-laden urban womb. Many of our landscapes include elements of both.

These two characters, separated by the space between an apartment building window and an island in the middle of the river, find a way to connect, and in connection they find hope and desire. Where do hope and desire lead? It can lead to despair or it can lead to pursuit, which in turn can lead to failure or fulfillment. These things are subtly probed in the film.

The film has problems, it's in no way perfect, probably not meant to be, and plenty of holes can be poked into it. But I found it enjoyable if not compelling, and I do think it's a commentary on modern life and the attractiveness of abandon due to becoming an anonymous smear in it. Fresh 7.5 out of 10 tomatoes.

A Million (2009, South Korea):

Mind you, there's no real method in how I'm choosing these DVDs off Blockbusters shelves. I know nothing about them beforehand. I look at the cover, check for English subtitles, then try to gauge the genre, generally avoiding smarmy melodramas, goofy romantic comedies and horror -- although Korean horror films have a reputation for not being stupid like Western horror films, so I'm open to giving them a chance.

That said, I don't know what genres I'm looking for, just what I'm avoiding. This film I pegged as likely a thriller. Thriller and action films are borderline. There is a risk of stupidity in them. I rent them assuming the risk.

We learn with the first bits of dialogue in the film that a "contestant" is involved, and she's flown in on a 747 and is being rushed in an ambulance, and that an Interpol investigation is going on. I was impressed at how that much intriguing information is given us in such a concise fashion.

We then learn through flashback that contestants were recruited to participate in a reality game show with a winning prize of one million US dollars. No other information about the game is given or how the contestants would be chosen.

The eight chosen contestants are flown to Perth, Australia, then driven by the calmly creepy director and his cameraman way, way out into the outback for the games to begin.

Each day, footage of the competition is shot and uploaded to the internet, which is ostensibly why Interpol was already investigating when the final contestant is flown back to South Korea after the week-long competition. If the footage was real, an international criminal investigation was warranted.

The competition turns into a matter of survival, but the director continues to pull strings to keep the competition aspect going.

I'm going to give this film a fresh 7 out of 10 tomato rating. It's a pretty good thriller and kept my interest though the entire movie, but it also has many logic faults and situations that stretch credibility that need to be taken with a grain of salt, which I guess might be said about any thriller or action film, so I'm not sure what my criteria are.

For example when they pass out due to dehydration in the desert, they all pass out in the same area, at the same time, even though there is a wide disparity in physical fitness between the contestants. They're not major "oh, come on" moments, but they're there. And they never have to eat.

The pressing question of why the director does what he does and what is the connection between these people does get answered in the end as a nice twist, and from the viewers' point of view, perhaps there is a bit of satisfaction in finding out, although not justifying his actions. But from a plot point of view, within the story, it kinda sorta doesn't make sense.

Interestingly, the director in "A Million" describes the part of the Outback they're in as "a desert island on dry land", and all of the contestants are urbanites who become like castaways there. That may be the extent of the similarity between these two films, but it did make me wonder whether there may be themes in the Korean collective consciousness that the directors were channeling.

In "Castaway", the two main characters are both living what might be considered "failed" lives in modern society. Their practicality and usefulness to society have come to an end, and their absence from society is of little consequence.

In "A Million", one of the contestants might be similar to them, basically an anti-social shut-in whose internet service was even cut off months ago. The remainder are comfortably full members of modern society, but looking closely at the personality characteristics of the rest of the contestants, all except one have definable faults:

There's a hot-shot, young stock broker whose motivation is greed ("Who would say no to an extra million?"); an ex-navy hot head bad apple; a self-absorbed, emotionally absent videographer/internet reporter; there's an arrogant, overly-confident athlete; a vain and materialistic bar hostess; and a timid student struggling to pass her civil exams.

The only one I can't say anything bad about, not that I can say anything particularly good about her either, is the contestant who is flown back to Korea at the beginning of the film, a pizza delivery part-timer.

I know, I know, I'm probably looking WAAAAY too far into it and I'm exaggerating the bad qualities of the other contestants because they're not all that unlikable. It's probably just a coincidence. But I wonder how the screenwriters decided she would be the winner.

memory lane/poetry corner

2011-07-02T04:44:00.005+08:00

repost: now with sound (and full lyrics)

Back in college, I made the acquaintance of . . . well, several incredible songwriters, each of whom I can gush about, none of whom made it big despite what I consider their more than copious talent. The one brought to my mind now was a personal friend with whom I worked, and his writing struck a chord because he wrote about Asian American issues.

The last I heard, which is actually quite a while ago, he had entered the noble profession of elementary school teaching (I'm not being sarcastic), and has given up music and songwriting altogether, although I'm not sure I believe that 100%. I have a feeling, or I hope, that through the years he has written songs on the sly.

He wrote brilliant lyrics that I analyzed and explicated to the extent that I now wonder whether I scared him, making him question what he was putting out there that he hadn't intended.

He had written a song called "Yellow Yellow Woman" which had gotten some criticism from people who hadn't read the (hilarious and profound) lyrics and were just reacting to the title and the chorus (Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman and have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names), and he was doubting whether it should be included in the collection of songs we were recording.

09 Yellow Yellow Woman (lyrics/music/vocals by k. hung; I'm on all instruments including guitar, bass, drums, cowbell!, roto-toms, and an out of tune Eb on a cello steel drum pan belonging to the Oberlin Can Consortium steel drum band (of which I was a member and was able to record all the percussion in their panyard)).

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies and they all will look the same

I wanna find a woman, yea, I need to find a woman

But I gotta find a woman who is my species

So I'm gonna take some action, some affirmative action

'Cause this lovin' that I need ain't equal opporunity

My momma keeps on askin', keeps on askin' askin' askin'

When you gonna settle down with some nice Chinese

She had better be from Taiwan or maybe even Fukian

But if not I'll settle for Korean or a Japanese

So here I am at college, at this equal, equal college

With my equal opportunity life

But I never ever thought that at this equal, equal college

I'd be lookin', lookin', lookin' for a wife

So now I'm roaming through the dining halls, scouting out the mailroom

Trying to find my woman in the library

And I'm looking through the phonebook, flipping, marking with a pencil

Every girl whose last name is Wong, Chen, or Lee

And I go to Asian students meetings, take East Asian Studies classes

Hopin', hopin', hopin', hopin' that I'll find her there

And at the very last all-campus Chinese New Year's celebration

Why the hell do you think that I was everywhere

And then I go to campus parties and I hear that Two Live Crew song "Me So Horny"

Oh, me so horny!

And then I laugh at all the Asian women, all dancing to a song that's making fun of them

But then I think:

That same song's being sung by me!

Well my mom wants to keep her traditions, wants to keep her past

Don't want no oranges when there's lemons growing on the family tree

But it's not like I'm already foreign, I was born in North Dakota

When I try to speak Chinese it all sounds Greek to me

So I'll respect my mom's tradition, her need to keep her past

And if she wants to keep on dreaming, well I guess then that is fine

But I think that I'll respect tradition, all the while I break tradition

I will draw as well as keep the family line

So if someday I marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

It will kinda be ironic, 'cause it will not be intentional

'Cause yellow, yellow women, no, they don't all look the same

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, yellow yellow names

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, no they don't all look the same

(Well tell me who's to blame)

I had to argue him into including it because it was brilliant and we would make sure that everyone who received the tape would get a copy of the lyrics. I practically went verse by verse, line by line telling him how his song was friggin' brillig. I can see how that can be disturbing.

The lyrics below, ~~which since I can't offer an audio version, I'm offering as a poem,~~ he wrote in response to another brilliant song he wrote which is among my favorites of his.

That previous song was about a Japanese person who immigrated to America in the early 20th century to seek his fortune, only to face racist laws prohibiting him from owning land and then was sent to an internment camp during WWII while his son enlisted in the all Japanese American (and highly decorated) 442nd U.S. army regiment to fight against the Nazis, where he's killed in action. The significance in the title is that he changes his last name from Ohara to O'Hare to sound "more American".

08 The Ballad of Charlie Ohara (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; I played guitar and bass; synthesizer by a. hirahara)

I call myself Charlie O'Hare

Though I know that's not the way to pronounce it

'Cause the voices in the postcards and letters

Dating back, back from the time I renounced it

Whisper my name 'cross the sea

Through the barbed wire, the sage brush lashed 'round my memory

For forty odd acres of land

Made a deal, just so the law wouldn't find us

'Cause the laws in this land they assume

When we come, we leave our pride back behind us

So now I answer to this call

Even though I don't look one bit Irish at all

Our first born was named "Isamu"

"Uncle Sam", that was what everyone called him

He grew into a young man so strapling

Turned the head of even some giddy white woman

The day he became twenty-one

I signed him the deed and I looked toward the setting sun

Then the war came and, well, they lost our trust

So they sent us to a place where we choked in our dreams from the dust

Over a question of our loyalty

I said Look at my name, how much more American must I be?

Sam joined the 442nd

'Cause his actions spoke louder than my words did for him

They sent him to fight against the Nazis

Where he died taking the Gothic Line from them

Soon after that, they let some go

And sent 'em down to Chicago

On orders that we stay from our own

But I'm much too old to leave my home

So now I lie in the desert heat

Postcards and letters scattered at my feet

The voices there tell me of my shame

'Cause it's been so long since I've heard my name

My name

Heard my name

The message it came through the wire

"We regret to inform you of the death of Private Samuel O'Hare"

(Historical note: When the U.S. government started realizing that putting Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn't helping the war effort at all and wasting a lot of money, they started letting them go, but forbade them from settling back on the West Coast and forced them eastward in places like Chicago and told them not to form communities. Also, while in the concentration camps, loyalty tests were handed out to young men to determine whether they could be used in the war effort. While they were incarcerated without trial, solely due to their national origin, they were asked about their loyalty to the United States and willingness to fight for this government that incarcerated them and their families. Anyone who answered "No" to both question, whatever their reasons, were labeled "No-No Boys", and spent years in prison long after the war ended).

For this song he decided to try to write from a woman's perspective, and he chose the topic of an Asian war bride. I forget if we discussed it, but I think she's supposed to be Korean. That makes the most sense; he didn't want to repeat a Japanese character and I don't think it snows much in Vietnam. Also considering the U.S.'s hasty retreat out of Vietnam.

I do have a recorded version of the song, ~~but I'm far too un-tech savvy to figure out how to upload it somewhere~~. We even recorded it at a real recording studio at the Oberlin Conservatory for one of our members' final project (who I think actually has become a noted jazz pianist in the New York jazz scene). His final project was to record a live ensemble in one take, which is why the arrangement is so threadbare and since he was engineering, he couldn't contribute any keyboard parts.

On the recording, our guitarist, an Indian American, couldn't figure out a part for the song, so we swapped instruments with me on guitar (his incredibly sweet Stratocaster) and him on bass. I listen to the song now and think of all the things he's doing wrong on the bass, and I'm sure he'd think the same about my guitar playing.

13 Let It Snow (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; j. cotelingham: bass; me: guitar)

"Let It Snow"

In the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

Met him at a dance on the army installation
Where she hung out after work on the assembly row
Above the boiler's din, you can often hear her singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

So she came over here on the strength of his promise
She had heard it once on Armed Forces Radio
And his voice did sound a little bit like Frank Sinatra's singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

And after visiting Missouri to meet his parents
They moved on to the base where he was lieutenant
But the blur of America it soon got to her head
So she spent her first days there inside sick in bed

'Cos her English was bad, she spent her days in the apartment
In the evening he'd take her out to see a show
But then he'd come home late for all the work at the office
Piled like snow...

So she would wait for him with his dinner warm and ready
Growing impatient staring out of the window
And all the while the days were growing shorter and shorter
A sign of snow, a sign of snow...

But when the meal was all over and the dishes put away
They discovered that they didn't have much of anything to say
And from her window was all of America she could see
And the gleam in her eye became the glare of the TV

Then late one night around the holiday season
He came back from the bar staggering through the cold
Was so drunk that he slammed the backdoor wide open
And it snowed

He threw her to the floor screaming curses in English
Not once caring if they might be words that she'd know
And the punches came, first a flurry, then a blizzard
And it snowed

And in the midst of it all through the tears through the pain
Remembered hearing once that snow was just frozen rain
And though she knew in two days it would be Christmas Day
She realized that she didn't celebrate anyway

So in the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

conjecture

2011-06-20T17:10:00.003+08:00

For the past week, I've playing with this hypothetical idea that having suicide at the center of my existence was the result of having sent myself a message from my past life into this life, not unlike Data did in the Cause and Effect episode of Star Trek TNG.

I keep looking at my life and wondering how did I end up here?

Looking at the environment from whence I came, there are so many paths my life could've taken. It was one full of privilege and material opportunity.

The answer is, of course: I brought myself here. I squandered the privilege and opportunities and ran the whole damn thing into the ground. All by myself! This is actually nothing new, but I'm looking at it from the angle of that final temporal loop in which the Enterprise finds itself after Data sent himself the message.

Year-by-year, location-to-location, pursuit-to-pursuit, point A to point B to point C, I've lived my life in a way that would guarantee that I would be in my current position. And where suicide has always been an attracting, if not compelling, force in my life, I would of course create final conditions where suicide is logical and optimal, even while acting in a way that accords with living my life.

It was an experiment from the start, conditions controlled. Realizing the value of human life, I had to be responsible about affecting as few lives as possible. I've been constantly lowering my impact as much as possible, and now even my own memories won't be impacted. I've phased even my identity out. It's not important. It's not the point.

What might have I told myself at that moment of death when the Enterprise started shuddering and Captain Picard called to abandon ship, or in the final moment in the bardo of rebirth if I had learned to navigate it like lucid dreams, before all traces of what I was consciously aware of before in my past life dissolved because a sperm hit an egg and anything that could be said is me was created anew in the fresh and clean architecture of a new brain and body with just a splash of past karma vomited all over it? And perhaps a message.

A message that gave its first nudge in this life in an attraction to Japan of all places from a very young age. There may be other reasons for it. Such as when I was a kid, NHK would have a weekly broadcast on Saturday nights of Japanese programming out of New York.

UHF Channel 47 if I remember correctly -- oh, and not New York, but Linden, New Jersey, I remember it said so in station IDs between programs -- and my parents never missed a Saturday night since they couldn't understand American broadcasting and there was no Chinese language broadcasts either back then, I shouldn't wonder.

Me and my brothers' interest was in the weekly episodes of anime; three series that I recall watching were Raideen, Ikkyu-san (a monk!), and the original Space Battleship Yamato, as well as the live-action, original Go Ranger!

The reason for the Japanese programming was the same reason for the success of my father's office (a private medical clinic) at the time: Japanese companies were doing well and sending corporate slaves over to New York and settling them in New Jersey, and with so few Japanese speaking doctors, they were my father's primary business from the start.

That also created a sphere of Japanese names in my childhood as me and my brothers were recruited to comb through the white pages and collect addresses with Japanese names to whom my parents would send advertising. I remember a lot of folding and licking stamps and sealing envelopes.

I'm not sure of the time frames involved. Obviously the airing of the anime can be pegged to the late 70s, no surprise there. But another element was my grandparents' visits. I'm not sure what years they took place, or even if there were multiple visits, but in my memory, my mother's parents visited from Taiwan every summer. I would create lists of Japanese vocabulary, plying my grandmother for basic words in Japanese. Although I'm not sure how that worked since my grandparents sure didn't know English. I'm sure I was resourceful little monkey.

The point being I was interested in Japanese, and had absolutely no interest in whatever language my parents were speaking to each other, which I wouldn't know until decades later wasn't even Chinese, but Taiwanese.

And the point of all this is that many years later, there was something very comforting and familiar when I learned that in Japanese history, suicide was not only not condemned, but was even expected in certain situations (why the corporate head of the Daiichi Fukushima Nuclear Plant hasn't committed suicide yet is beyond me, and is probably indicative of some part of Japan dying).

Bah, this wasn't supposed to end up being a stroll down memory lane.

Be it as it may, the concept of suicide was then always there. Always. There was never a point in my life where I thought I never would or could commit suicide. I would even go so far as to say that even during relationships it didn't go away, and I likely had more of a sense that suicide was still more realistic than being with this person for the rest of my life and living happily ever after. Although I'm sure I was expert at blocking it out.

Committing suicide, or not committing suicide alternately, became my signposts in my life, marking directions to not go, or otherwise to generally half-heartedly strive towards. If the vine I was swinging on wasn't the one to let go of, it was always there several vines down. I even made it into my own inside joke to torment me that I never would.

There are any number of bad reasons to commit suicide. I've long discounted any reason as being a bad reason to commit suicide. But if I don't have a reason to do it, why this lifelong impulse? What might I have said to myself?

That perhaps in the pursuit of enlightenment, one must first be prepared and willing to give up one's own life, characterized by all our attachments and aversions, voluntarily, no matter what the circumstance?

It's counter-intuitive to life. To reach enlightenment in any lifetime, some future lifetime, one must have experienced the willingness to give up one's own life. That idea solidifies as more difficult than it sounds as I type it since accompanying the thought is "selflessly".

In the metaphorical tales of the Buddha's description of his past lives are ridiculous stories of self-sacrifice, such as coming across a dying tiger mother with her cubs, but she's too exhausted to kill him to feed herself, much less her cubs. Guess who comes to the rescue and does it all himself (whispered hint: it's not Jesus).

And even contemplating the extinction of this particular existence, try as I might, alive, I'm just not that selfless.

2011-06-16T02:50:00.002+08:00

The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a pretty intriguing text on the topic, but I do take it with a grain of salt. It's a template, a starting point, but it is a culturally-b(i)ased work. It should be liberally interpreted by others and the general concepts that can be gleaned from it are more important than the actual text, I think.

One thing from the "Old Souls" book that stood in contrast with the Tibetan Book of the Dead was the time scales involved, and I've never been comfortable with the time scales in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Too concrete, too normative, grounded in our subjective reality. I'm concluding that is one of the things that should be interpreted liberally.

I don't think time is an objective, normative phenomena of the universe. I agree with Einstein that time and space are inseparable, and once we don't exist physically in space, neither do we exist in time as we know it.

Time is our fishbowl. We don't have the mental architecture nor the imagination to envision the non-existence of time. If time was created by the Big Bang, when did the Big Bang occur? We can't even approach that concept since time is so hard-wired into our very existence.

So for people who read the Tibetan Book of the Dead and are intrigued and find some belief in reincarnation, we can formulate our own ideas of what happens and how and why, but not when. So when my cousin says that her infant daughter had mentioned she was her mother in her previous life, who had died some 15 years earlier and thus beyond the bounds of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, I have nothing to say about that. My cousin's instant acceptance of her daughter's statement is no longer completely outlandish.

Ghosts are another issue that have recently been brought to mind. I'm open to the possibility that just as in "Old Souls", a death can be so sudden and violent that actual memory can be transferred into a next life, but that a life and death could be so filled with anger and attachment and/or fear that the phenomena of what we call "ghosts" occur.

A ghost phenomena may occur when there's a death but the circumstances prevent the natural progression towards rebirth and the energy gets "stuck" in its previous existence and can't move on. And again, time is irrelevant. A ghost existence can last for quite a long period in our normative understanding of time, but for a ghost, time is not a concept.

As I continue to read "The Lovely Bones", the murdered girl continues to watch what happens for years and years after her death. I'm reading at the point where she's watching her younger sister's college graduation, and to me, it seems that it's not like she's sitting in heaven watching in real time what happens 2, 5, 8 years after her death; that in heaven, it is actually 8 years after she was murdered.

But in her death experience, she watches what happens after her death, far into the "future", but not occurring "in time" at all. So if I were to hypothetically plug her case into the template of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, she could witness all the things she reports as being far in the future, but it has no bearing on when her time in the bardo states ends and when the natural sequence of events pushes her into a reincarnated existence.

She narrates events years and years after her death, but in our normative time line, she may have already been reincarnated when those events actually occur.

2011-06-14T03:40:00.001+08:00

Again, strange space. Loosening the grasps and tendrils of this physical reality. A good portion of my days is spent experiencing the input of this physical reality, this life, and reminding myself not to be attached to any of it -- both negative and positive; it is ALL not much more different than a dream. It all passes and passes by whether we I ~~are~~ am here or not.

Again, meditating on all the random people I see around me throughout a day and wondering what's their motivation. Why are they doing this? Why do they do what they do? And no matter what I can imagine, my own response is that I certainly do not want whatever they have. I don't want their motivation or reason why they strive for whatever they do. I don't want to be them.

I don't want to leave a body. I don't want to leave a body that someone, I don't know who, might be asked to come identify. I don't want to leave any physical evidence of my gross bodily existence.

I don't want any identification with a body suggesting that was me, when it certainly wasn't. Whatever physical remains I may leave wasn't me nor anything anyone should identify as me. I desperately do not want to leave a body.

While I was in the U.S., I read the book Old Souls: Compelling Evidence From Children Who Remember Their Past Lives. I wish the author used the word "testimony" in the title instead of "evidence". As testimony, it is compelling. As evidence, it's easy or possible to discount. It doesn't prove anything.

The author of the book is a journalist who accompanies a professor, whose main body of work is focused on gathering testimony of children who claim they remember their previous life, on what may be his final rounds of gathering such testimony.

The approach is as scientific as it gets for the topic, with numerous checks to weed out "tainted" testimony. The criteria for credibility is pretty strict, and that's what makes the testimony compelling. If there's a risk of susceptibility to suggestion in a case, it's not given much weight.

That goes to my criticism of the film Unmistaken Child, where it's shown that a child remembers his past life as a high ranking lama, but it's not discounted that the memories were suggested by the people around him.

In fact, as Tibetan literature is replete with cases of past life remembrances, I liked that this book doesn't even have hint of mention of Tibet. It's such a part of Tibetan culture that it is all suspect and not even worth mentioning. That's how strict the criteria are in this book.

I liked that there is consistency in the cases: all of the children's testimony recall a violent or unnatural death.

To me, that suggests that if an experience is traumatic enough, the psychic or karmic imprint can survive the destruction of one physical construct of a person and can carry over despite a new physical brain is constructed in another body.

The theory might go that we generally don't remember past lives because the information is lost with the dissolution of: first, our physical bodies and brains at the death of our physical selves; and then second, our consciousness, our true selves, our enlightened selves, our selves that is the basic energy of the universe from whence we come, which generally is not part of the software that is naturally installed when sperm hits egg and a new biological being is created with a completely new brain architecture.

Actual memories are all erased. What generally does carry over is karma -- the deep-seated, ingrained habits and personality of what we've done and who we were that characterized our behavior and being. But we generally can't attribute those things to anything in our new life (unless we consider reincarnation). It's just who we are, but it's still pretty plastic and can be countered by our new environment and personality.

What this book suggests is that a violent death, or a death with a heavy impression, can carry over more readily because of that severe, psychic imprint. You tend to remember the shit that happens to you in death as well as life.

In general, perhaps suicides also fall into this category. Suicides are often accompanied by tragic circumstances or extreme negative emotions. Hm. I don't remember any of the cases in the book as being suicides, but that's not fatal. There are any number of reasons on this slippery topic why suicides weren't part of the sample.

If I commit suicide, it won't be tragic and I hope to have tamed my negativity. If I commit suicide, I imagine euphoria. The idea of dying still makes me happy in a way that I can't explain.

2011-06-04T12:57:00.005+08:00

Wow, I did it. I verify having lucid dreamed. It was a messy, disturbed dream with a lot of activity going around, possibly caused by the return of insomnia, so I was in a half-sleep. The key component in the dream was that I had my hardcover copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my lap.

But then I turned a certain way and ripped the paper covering of the hardcover by accident, and was shocked and annoyed because it is supposedly a sacred book, which doesn't mean anything in itself, but it's one that I try to be mindful about.

I had negative thoughts, thinking things like, "damn", and realized it was only the paper covering that I could simply discard, and then saw the back of the covering had also ripped, and more negative thinking, "total loss", and that I could now buy a new softcover version from Eslite. The dream itself was not location specific.

But then I thought, "This isn't right, I can't have ripped the cover of the book because the book is sitting on my bookshelf. All I have to do is get out of "here" and it'll be there as always. Then I started struggling up through layers of consciousness.

As I was pushing myself out of sleep, I imagined the book on a bookshelf in my room that doesn't exist, but then as I came closer to consciousness, I revised the image so that it was sitting where it should be on my night table/altar, and I had the feeling that I was right, the book was fine, I had been in a dream.

Then I broke the surface and woke up and the final position of the book on my table was a little different, I had imagined it as I had it last year on a book stand, and it's free-standing now, but that's not the point.

This was a classic description of lucid dreaming - realizing being in a dream triggered by an object or key in the dream. However, I didn't navigate my way in the dream, but forced myself out and then finding that even though I may have been in a half-sleep, it was a full on dream.

This was very different from the sleep/dream experiences I've had before, which I had wondered whether they were lucid dreams. This felt like a dream in every way, but in those prior experiences, I was more in some sort of lucid state in which I didn't have a conscious sense I could "get out of". I never consciously processed that it was a dream, but it was an actual experience, like in a dream.

And in those states, even though I could move around, I did have a continued sense or connection with my physical body, but that it was paralyzed. That was still part of the actual experience, with no external thought of it being a dream.

I also have to totally retract what I said yesterday. Drowning in sleep doesn't suck nearly as much as insomnia. Furthermore, there is a difference between the insomnia I've been having, whereby I could sleep for 2 or 3 hours before waking up and not being able to fall back to sleep, and the type where you can't get into a full sleep at all, like today.

That's worse. You don't even get the false comfort of being able to slip into a sleep state, not to mention the actual rest, which of course you can't appreciate until waking up hours later, and by then, you don't appreciate it because you're consumed with not being able to fall back to sleep.

I have no recollection what was actually going on in this dream.

After not being able to get to sleep, I got up for several hours and puttered around, then feeling some exhaustion lay back on my bed still not feeling like I would sleep.

The dream, like I said, was not location specific, some, if not all, of my family members were around and I think they were annoying me. It was in a public area, but I'm not sure if it was indoors or out. Just a lot of stuff going around, messy, but not all negative.

There was one situation that would have normally made me aggressive or combative, but I handled it calmly and wisely, the way I usually imagine handling a situation after an initial negative reaction and realizing that was wrong and would just make things worse.

This insomnia -- yesterday and today -- came as a total surprise after my last post and it's mucking my thoughts. I want to get out of the apartment either to ride or to shoot, it looks perfect outside for either -- cloudy but unlikely to rain. But I'm not rested and I've been able to ride 3 days in a row, so I probably shouldn't.

I've been enjoying my brother's Nikon D80, to my surprise. It can't shoot sky for shit, the gradients come out all pixelized and may be why people recommend shooting in color and then removing the color components one-by-one to get black and white.

I've just been shooting in black and white mode because I don't even like the idea of shooting with an SLR in color. Not sure what my hang up is. Feels like I'm cheating somehow.

I'm gonna make coffee now. And make my fucking bed.

2011-06-03T01:26:00.001+08:00

Bwahaha! I have no recollection typing the end of the last post. I think I was heading towards some point there. Or not.

Actually, almost every night lately I haven't been able to remember finally shutting everything off, brushing my teeth, washing my shot glass and coffee mug, turning out the lights and crawling into bed. Party animal. Although I think the time of the last played songs on iTunes gives me a general time of when it happened. One time it was 5:45 a.m., which I do remember because it was getting light out.

There was a time not long ago, when I was resolving to try to be awake by 9 a.m., and that's been a miserable failure. No insomnia, but drowning in sleep, which almost sucks as much. If it ain't one thing, it's a fucking nother. I pendulate between the two.

And after almost 2 weeks of sporadic computer use, I'm trying to spend less time online. I actually did start practicing bass more, and none since I got this laptop. I have a book "J.S. Bach for Bass", and I'm learning how to tap using it. And seriously, Bach on bass fingerstyle sounds like shite. Victor Wooten can get away with it because he's god (and he's usually tapping, slapping or double thumbing or a combination of all of these anyway), and the author of the book isn't terrible, but there's no way I could pull it off. Tapping works for me. And is fun. So there.

2011-06-01T16:17:00.108+08:00

I'm starting to feel whole again. I got a new laptop on Monday. It's nothing fancy, basically it's just an upgrade of my 6-year-old Compaq; no new whistles and bells, nothing that I can't believe I've been living without for all these years.

The big difference is Windows 7 and getting used to the new OS, which is basically figuring out how to do exactly what I was doing on my old computer on my new computer.

The biggest bitch of a problem was getting my iTunes library information over to the new laptop. I read a bunch of articles online on how to do it, but nothing worked until I hit a breakthrough last night. Per the articles, I'd been focusing on the XML file for my iTunes library.

After I had made a complete mess of my files and where they were between my new hard drive, my old hard drive, and my external hard drive, the final fix that worked was fortunately because I had both the old library XML file and .itl file (iTunes library database file) from the last time I used iTunes on my old computer saved in a location that wasn't affected by opening and closing iTunes, which automatically updates and changes those files.

The trick that worked for me was with iTunes closed, I replaced the active XML and .itl files in my new computer's iTunes folder in the My Music folder (which is iTunes' default location to put them) with the old ones and then opened iTunes and it opened with all the old information. Rejoicing was had and we ate cake. I ate cake. There was no cake. I was relieved.

The key was not only the XML file, but also the database file, you need both. Once I opened iTunes with the old information that was pretty much success. I'd been in that position before.

The only thing left was to direct iTunes to the new location of the files. To fix that, just try to play any song whose file you know exactly where it is in the new location, and you'll get a notice that it can't find the file and would you like to locate it.

Click yes and then just direct iTunes to the new location of the actual music files, and iTunes will do the rest and eventually figure out the new pathway to at least most of the files (NB: you still need to do the consolidation step whereby all your files are in one place, which is something I do anyway :p).

The online advice said you need to mess with the XML file to tell iTunes about the new file pathway, but I don't think you need to. I think all you need is iTunes to be reading the old .itl and XML library files and once you give it a clue about the actual music files' new location, it will search the new pathway itself.

Aside from that my bike is whole again, too. After several rides where the chain didn't "feel" right, my bike computer started also having problems, so I took my bike in. Long story short, they replaced the mount for my bike computer, replaced the chain with a good quality one, and replaced the rear gear cassette because 3 gear rings had signs of wearing and it's best to replace the whole cassette at the same time.

The results were immediate. I took the long way home along the bikeways and could feel the added power and torque in having some new components (and this is an entry level road bike). The chain still slipped if I put too much torque on it, but after I got home, I wiped off the chain with degreaser and lubed it and I just need to break in the chain a little more.

It's feeling like life is a constant effort to maintain some sort of status quo. Fixing things that break or righting things that go out of balance. And that's no way to live a life. Or at least not a good way to perceive it to be.

It's interesting that my iTunes library information was so critical and that my bike computer problem was the reason to definitively visit the bike shop.

There was a point where I had given up on retaining my iTunes information (play counts, ratings, last played, and playlists), and I was at a loss at how to start listening to my 17,500+ music collection again.

Usually I just have the entire collection on shuffle play. And I reload my iPod shuffle every 3 days using a system that is just way too geeky to not be embarrassed about. Should I just re-start that process? Should I just listen to music recently added or that I'm not as familiar with compared to albums that I've had on CD for decades?

In the end, I should just not care. I shouldn't be attached to these things. But as long as these things are here, I do. Or am.

The same with the bicycle computer. It's conceivable to go on bike rides without having the ephemeral information about distance, speed and averages, but I haven't seen a single cyclist that goes on "rides" who doesn't have a computer on the handlebars.

And a ride without the information is qualitatively different from with it. Without it, you're just kinda touring and enjoying the scenery. With it, I dunno. Well, you just know. You can challenge yourself with it. You can take some pride or achievement in it.

But even as ephemeral as the information is, it's a record. As ephemeral as our lives are, what we leave behind is a record. If it's not recorded, what was there? This all ties in somehow. Really. (<-- drunken blogging/lazy/whateva).

2011-05-29T04:02:00.000+08:00

I haven't been remembering dreaming much lately, and even if I remembered that I had been dreaming, I had no recollection of the content of the dream. This time I woke up from the dream, remembered the dream and it happened to be an Amina dream.

Was it because it was an Amina dream that I was unconsciously particularly inspired to remember it? Meaning nothing else in my subconscious has been worthy of being remembered? And the whole Amina thing -- hey, it's old. Or is it?

I was in the foyer area of a mansion, classic European-looking, perhaps Victorian? I'm not sure what that looks like. It was brightly lit by a large chandelier and had high ceilings. I was halfway up a curving staircase facing down towards the foyer area, and Amina was behind me, I couldn't see her, and I was shielding her because she was in some sort of state of undress. And I was being chivalrous.

I don't know who I was shielding her from, because down in the foyer were some completely naked, large and curvy women who were completely casual, didn't even take note of me there, and two of them separately walked by the staircase in all their glory into another unseen room.

My reaction was a bit of astonishment, but mindful of Amina behind me, we started to back our way up the stairs, where I knew on the next landing there was a bathroom that I could easily back her into and she could have her privacy. But when we got to the door, where I expected to stop and she could go in and close the door, we both continued in, and then she closed the door with both of us inside.

Calculating the situation and concluding my being there was consensual, I turned around and saw her for the first time in the dream. She was modestly dressed in a negligee and she was stunningly gorgeous, my reaction not being too far from the first time I saw her. Calculating some more, I concluded it was also consensual for me to approach her and start kissing her and then the camera of my perspective goes askew and I woke up.

So why did I remember this dream of all dreams? Was it because of Amina or because it dealt with romantic issues?

It's not because of Amina. Amina is most certainly now a fiction. So it probably had more to do with what Amina might still represent, which is romance, the human biological imperative, the crude human version of spiritual male/female union that represents a divine unity and oneness. Or not.

In the bright light of day, if I was in that same situation with Amina, I don't think my impulse now would be to kiss her. To love her. I don't think. Love is no longer a part of my equations anymore, I tell myself. Even if I could romantically love another person, which I doubt, my software then runs the program asking what next? What do I want from such a relationship? Well? What, punk?!

But then why the dream? Why it was Amina is clear; it was because she was some sort of pinnacle, the love of my life I called her; but if I had the chance to even meet her again in this lifetime, I would probably decline unless she had some reason that was compelling enough for me to accept. Some love of my life.

I made the mistake when I was in New Jersey to mention to my sister-in-law my last relationship and the year it occurred, and smart cookie as she is being a medical doctor and all, she calculated how long it had been since I'd been in a relationship and made an exclamation to that effect.

Needless to rehash details, I'm clearly so out of practice that I can't be considered being able to give an objective assessment of the situation. It's simply out of my reality for even consideration. From the empirical evidence, I'm not even interesting, much less attractive, much less a pursuit, much less a catch. That's just reality and I have considered it and accepted it. It's even perfect.

I think I'm just going to have to relegate Amina dreams such as these as inconveniences of the human condition. Just because we're human beings, we crave love, attention, and we lust. If we can achieve communion with another human being, great, good for you. It's still an instinct for me, but it's not reality.

2011-05-25T02:07:00.000+08:00

I've been drifting in a strange place. I actually looked over at my bed yesterday because of a quick wonder if I'd find my body there. That's what it felt like. And through the rest of the day I went about pinpointing incidents that verified I was really here and really alive, and not post-mortem imagining it out of habit.

Still no new laptop, but likely soon. My laptop might cut out at anytime now, and I'm trying to type with the thing balanced and wobbly on top a fan. I wonder if I'd be happy with my last post being my last one ever, and I think I am. Even though I'll likely keep typing as long as I can, I think I've said everything I need to.

I have a plan for my next attempt, and it's not based on 2-month cycles and doesn't involve a bike and is tied to nature, and I'll likely take a pass on the first window of opportunity since it's coming very suddenly. I expect at least 2 or 3 opportunities over the course of the summer. Two or three opportunities to get me to the autumn where I'll likely find myself still alive. :p fucker.

I'm still reading The Lovely Bones, but I'm simultaneously reading Sophie's World, which is just fabulous. Both books centered on 14-year-old girls, although Sophie turns 15 in hers. Both books are establishing my mindset these days.

The gimmick in Lovely Bones is just fascinating me. The girl is dead but she is in a position to reflect on how life continues after her, but she's also telling the story of her whole life and the lives around her and things she wouldn't know if she were alive because now that she's dead, she has more access or insight into other peoples' lives.

It's a variation of the cliche of seeing one's life flash before one's eyes when they face death. And even though there's a portrayal of "heaven" involved, it's not a hardwired heaven. It's suggested that her heaven is her own creation, and it's there because she herself is wondering about the vacuum created by her absence. It doesn't have to be that way. She chose it.

But it's the stories. What are our lives if not stories? She's telling her story and that's what's so compelling about the book, imagining that she may have been a real person, it could've been a real person. We live our lives and then we die, but what if we haven't left our stories? And in this book are the stories of a fictional life, but it should be all of us, we all should leave our stories, if we want to.

My father doesn't. His story will be forgotten. No one will care. Sad, but it's his choice. I have this blog. No one may care, but I wrote it for anyone who might wonder about the full life of a fictional 14-year-old who was raped and murdered, or a lost and wandering soul-searcher who knew that his life must end in a suicide or it wouldn't have been worth living.

2011-05-22T12:51:00.002+08:00

Now I'm reading "The Lovely Bones" at the bookstore. Needless to say, it is very different from the movie, which I now consider utter rot. How could Alice Sebold entrust a director like Peter Jackson with this kind of material. I guess someone who had read the book might read what they know about the book into the movie and find it palatable, but going the other way around, the movie is a total miss.

I'm walking around these days in devout contemplation of the world without me and it's beautiful. Strains of the unbearable flirt at the fringes of my existence again but there's a euphoria about it. I also saw "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" at the bookstore and read the first few pages and made a note to re-read it after I'm done with Lovely Bones.

The Lovely Bones is really good, but a lot of what's good is in the concept; it's kind of a gimmick, it's a cute story of a 14-year-old who is raped and murdered by a serial killer. Reading those first few pages of Unbearable Lightness of Being made me think of the difference between the two works, and that maybe Kundera's writing is what qualifies his book as literature.

But that's uncomfortable territory for me, I'm not the literary type. And why all this judging and judgmentalizing anyway? Where did I get that from? I did see the movie of Unbearable Lightness of Being before I read the book, and I loved the movie and I loved the book and the book didn't detract from the movie when I saw it again.

Which is different from one of my favorite books of all time, Catch-22, where I saw the movie first, loved the movie, read the book, loved the book, watched the movie again and didn't quite like it as much.

My laptop is on its last legs, so I'm not online much these days. It's 6 years old. Right now it's perched precariously on top of a portable fan pointing straight up, and with the battery removed, and I'm seeing how long it will last like this before it fitzes out again, which I'm expecting.

If it doesn't fitz out, I can replace the broken internal cooling fan, but I'm not sure a new battery will fix the (I'm guessing) voltage or electrical circuitry problem, which may have been initially caused by the broken fan and overheating. Anyway, it appears to be a compound problem and I'm thinking I just need to suck it up and buy a new laptop. Even though I can imagine the world without a new laptop and it's beautiful.

2011-05-16T13:57:00.004+08:00

Bah, I watched The Lovely Bones on HBO last night. It reminded me why I avoid Hollywood films.

Someone recommended the book to me a long time ago, something about my musings on death and dying (I think it was a guest while I was at Deer Park), and as lovely as the book sounded, at least its title, I never got around to it. I'm sure the book is much better than the movie and give the movie a rotten 4 out of 10 tomatoes.

I almost turned it off after a half hour for all the emotional manipulation and sentimentality, but decided to continue enduring to give it a fair shake. The Hollywood treatment of forcing situations to be all suspenseful and dramatic, even in red herrings and misleads in situations that you know aren't going to pan out, made me think this material would, from a narrative point of view, been much better handled by an indie filmmaker.

However, I was intrigued by the treatment of the death experience and give the director credit for the portrayals, although I'm not saying an indie filmmaker couldn't figure out a good way to make the portrayals even without the big budget special effects. And it wasn't the cheesy effects that impressed me anyway, but the ideas.

In short, it's about a 14-year-old girl who is murdered by a serial killer and finds herself in a between state, not completely unlike one suggested by the Tibetan Book of the Dead, whereby an aspect of her is still connected to the world she left behind. Her family, on the other hand, has to find away to cope with her disappearance and the inability of the police to find evidence to implicate the murderer.

The murder itself isn't actually shown, and she herself isn't even aware of it at first, and I thought that was intriguing, as I once imagined that was what death might be like in some cases. There's a difference between what we experience and what might be observed, which is curiously similar to a description of falling into a black hole I heard in a documentary last week.

I liked, among others, the portrayal of the state the main character finds herself in as one that is a product of her own imagination and takes on characteristics of her own mental state, which may be still connected to objects in the physical world. A lot of the symbols that are portrayed are taken from things reflecting her reality and mental state when she was alive. Pretty keen.

I'll say without giving anything away, even though I highly don't recommend anyone going out of their way to see this film, that the ending of the movie is what one might expect from a Hollywood ending (remember 2012? the world is destroyed, billions are killed and they still manage a happy ending!).

A bit of end narration that I think is lifted directly from the book suggests that the story was supposed to be about the relationships of the people who she left behind, and how she felt comfort in peoples' ability to go on without her and so she could let go, too. And that's the story an indie filmmaker would have likely done.

That's not what the movie is about. The movie doesn't suggest anything as thoughtful as that, and dwells on the tawdry murder mystery Hollywood-style. Except there is no mystery, just how is this going to develop. I was decidedly not impressed how it developed.

2011-05-15T01:25:00.005+08:00

The big surprise is how comfortable I was returning to Taiwan. I don't know how long it will last before things get routine and I get itchy again about my next bold move.

The first thing I noticed after lugging my luggage up the last steps and entering my apartment was the smell of mold. Annoying. But not unexpected. Humid and cold Taiwan winters apparently make mold a natural part of winters lingering into early spring. If I'm still around for another winter, I will buy a dehumidifier.

The first thing I noticed that was out of place was a little black piece of something under my bike, but it didn't look like anything major requiring attention. A little while later, my foot found a small piece of broken cylindrical plastic but I had no idea what it was or where it came from and put it aside to figure out later.

Later, upon scrutinizing my bike, I found the front gear shifter not working. It was the same feeling as when I went to New Jersey and found the shifters on my bike there not working. Move the shifter, nothing happens. That's when I looked at the black piece of plastic and the piece under the bike and figured they were related and something had spontaneously broken in my absence.

It was a kind of a feeling that someone was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't figure out what.

After getting my bike in New Jersey fixed, I went out on a single ride and it was out of commission again. Until then, the weather had it so that I was mostly rolling on a trainer in my parents' basement, which isn't much of a workout. So the first time I felt it was good to go to hit the road, I went up 9W, figuring my fitness level could take me comfortably up to Closter Dock Road and back.

View Larger Map
(I was on the other side of the road, and it's an untechnical but decent downhill)

But while racing obnoxious car traffic down the Closter Dock Road hill, I felt a sharp impact and I felt my rear tire go slack. I thought it was a blowout. I knew my brother was out taking his daughter to a "creative movement" class (she'll start ballet lessons next year or something), so even though I didn't have any money on me, and I didn't have a patch kit with me -- both signs of ridiculous unpreparedness -- I did have a cell phone on me, which I usually don't, and called him to pick me up.

It turned out that by the time he got me, I was in comfortable territory to have been able to jog all the way back to my parents' house with my bike; about half the distance. It would've taken some time, but I was never in a dire situation wondering what to do.

After I bought a new inner tube, I realized it wasn't just a blowout. The rim was damaged with an eye-widening dent. Upon installing the new tube, that's when I saw that the wheel was completely out of true and that there was also a gash in the tire which may have occurred in the incident.

I basically needed a new wheel built. That stopped riding in New Jersey cold. It wasn't worth having a new wheel built before I left.

That was one ride. The only ride. On a road well-ridden by cyclists and it totally disabled my Peugeot. I think I will take the Korean guy at Bike Masters' advice and get a new bike once I return to the States. I'll probably buy it from Bicycle Workshop, though, for their effort in keeping the Peugeot alive.

The damage to my bike here wasn't as dire. Aside from the mystery of something spontaneously breaking and US$20 and 15 minutes for a new front derailleur, everything's back to normal, heading back to routine.

If I continue riding this year, I am predicting I might have to replace the entire drive train by the end of the summer. At least I need to get an opinion on the chain, which I had replaced some years ago and I don't think the fuckers gave me a performance chain. I need to be more discerning about that.

Or something's telling me to stop riding. Riding is a distraction. It is a false sense of "doing something", when really I'm doing nothing. Either go back to work or stop riding, you idiot. Word.

New Jersey killed my fitness. All eating and no exercise. I've even had to work back up to the easy 20-mile sprints along the bikeways, and I'm not even thinking of hills or extended rides. I gained some 20 pounds while I was there, and I think I've lost most of that, but it sure doesn't feel good.

2011-05-14T22:36:00.042+08:00

May 3, 2011; 6:41 A.M. - My room at my parents' suburban house just before I left for the airport, tidied up for my departure -- those aren't my beddings and there are no guitars in sight. The thing I found that I miss most is my stereo system (pretty much unseen on the right; Bang & Olufsen turntable covered by a towel) which was put together in the days before digital files became the dominant aural medium. Back then, you picked and chose components to comprise a stereo system. The key components of my system is a kick-ass 100 watt Yamaha amplifier that I inherited from my brother -- it's so old that it doesn't even have a remote control -- and 20 year old Bose AM-5 speakers, which my cousin told me are still rated better than later versions and other 5.1 Bose systems. Seriously, CD sound quality through an audio system like this will always be better than any kind of digital file media played through a digital player.

May 14, 2011; 2:37 P.M. - My room in Taiwan. The bathroom is on the other side of that opaque glass = this is not a place to entertain guests. No stereo system, but I must say, I'm pretty happy with the Ozaki computer speakers that I found here. If I go back to the States, one of the few things I would want to take with me are those speakers.

2011-05-11T02:02:00.001+08:00

I guess the big surprise is how comfortable I was returning to Taiwan. Being in the U.S. started becoming just a haze of unreality and limbo; albeit comfortable like drowning in honey. I didn't want to leave and I didn't want to stay. My departure date came suddenly and too quick and I didn't feel ready to leave.

I didn't feel like I made any connection there nor accomplished anything. I gave up on setting up a blog for my father or any hope of possibly giving his life extended meaning by setting down in words what his life was. I sure don't know anything about his life. I'm not sure who does or whether it will all be forgotten once he's gone. In the end, that just may be his fate. That may just be what he wants.

The last two weeks, I barely had any interaction with my parents. It seemed like it was no matter that the time I was there visiting was limited. It came to seem like we were all waiting for it to come to an end so we could all go back to our regular lives and not have the nagging feeling in the back of our minds that my time visiting was limited.

My relationship with my brothers is just what it is. I guess I can't say expectations weren't met because we have no expectations. Things are fine between us, but. I guess we could've spent more time with each other, time to just mellow just be comfortable.

I'm thinking this is what Thich Nhat Hanh may mean when he relates that the greatest gift you can give is your presence. The best quality time you can have with other people is when it's not rushed, when the time you spent is just time you spend with them.

But the way it was, they were both busy and had other stuff to do, me too I suppose, and the time we did spend together was very conscious of itself and a conversation rarely just got comfortable to the point that we could just shoot the shit and let the conversation evolve and talk about our concerns and say what was really on our minds.

I spent the most time with my sister-in-law, and again I have no complaints about that, although she has 3 small children, and so of course that's where her priorities are, and accommodating that was also my focus. I didn't want to be a burden or draw her away from that, and I did want to be useful whenever possible.

The wild card connection was with my other brother's children in Philadelphia. Even though they call me by the wrong name, which is not cool on the part of my brother, I love those kids. My cousin's daughter Gracie will always hold a special place for me, but she will always be that much farther from me because of my now threadbare relationship with my cousin.

But it was very comfortable returning here. I'm not sure when was the moment when it became comfortable, whether it was immediately after I was dropped off at the airport and got a Jamba, Juice as a last taste of the U.S., or whether after I landed in Taipei and found it raining and plotting the best way to get home, or sometime else during the journey.

But I was definitely comfortable by the time I lugged my luggage up the last steps and found myself in the isolation of my room. Isolation is best alone. Isolation is not so satisfying when accompanied by family members, in-laws and family and nephews and nieces.

2011-05-07T22:45:00.014+08:00

Well, as long as I went and published the anonymous comment from the previous post, I should probably address it aside from just laughing at it (and just about every line made me laugh), because there actually are quite a few issues upon which the comment gives me the opportunity to clarify my personal perspective (read: super long post, not unlike my running commentary on the Craig's List suicide note from way back when).

I.
The biggest problem with the comment is this person, who I'll refer to as 'he', goes on and on without any knowledge of his target (me), and as a result he ends up imposing his view without having listened, and therefore what he says has no relevance in this particular forum and is not welcome. It also makes the overall tenor of the comment patronizing and condescending and arguably insulting (whether he was trying to be insulting, the jury (me) is still out).

When I was at Deer Park, I was a long-term guest, so sometimes short-term guests would open up to me because maybe they felt more parity with me as an ordinary Joe, whereas they may have felt more formal with the monks, and the most important thing for me to do was listen and understand their issue, and only respond if I really had something personal to say and an idea where they were coming from.

If there was something in my understanding or experience that I thought might help, I would offer it, but if not, I didn't pretend that I did and spew Buddhist doctrine. I also very, very rarely drew upon Buddhist doctrine in my responses because it was important for me to be personal.

If I went to a monastery and brought up the issues in this blog and got the answer this commenter posted, I would've turned around and walked out. And if someone came to me with an issue and I gave an answer, and that person turned around and walked out, I would have chalked that up as a big fail on my part.

So the first big thing to learn from this person is to listen deeply before offering your opinion. Even if this person's intentions were good, it was counter-productive. He may have been trying to help and offer some insight, but he instead ended up insulting me because he made assumptions and didn't bother to find out who he was commenting to.

II.
He writes: I really wonder why you take a fatalistic attitude towards life.

I'm not sure from where that assumption of fatalism comes. My best guess is that I used the word "inevitable" in my personal description, and maybe there's logic in that, but by inevitable, I wasn't implying fate or destiny. He didn't know that because he didn't bother finding out. Anyway, if I have a fatalistic attitude towards life, it's because it's my choice.

He writes: If you are really practising Buddhism you would know this is unacceptable and incorrect.

I don't make any distinction between practicing Buddhism and living life. So I don't accept the implication of his "if", nor that there is "really practicing Buddhism" as opposed to "not really practicing Buddhism".

If he believes that I'm not really practicing Buddhism, that's his issue, not mine. It doesn't change my view. I might say that making a statement of what's unacceptable and incorrect is not really practicing Buddhism either, and I don't expect that to change his view either. But once you start drawing these lines, you're basically creating intolerance and painting Buddhism as something dogmatic, rigid and absolute.

I can also just as easily respond, "OK, I'm not". It's not a constant concept in my mind that I'm practicing Buddhism. I have no attachment to a claim that I'm really practicing Buddhism. I don't do anything because Buddhism tells me not to do it against how I go about my life according to my flawed nature.

I don't think Buddhism should define its practitioners, and I try not to let Buddhism define me. I think it's much more fruitful to be open to Buddhism being defined by its practitioners, and I define Buddhism according to what makes sense to me.

So I don't accept his statement on what's unacceptable or incorrect, and from my understanding, I don't think Buddhism has any comment on it either. Second lesson: beware of absolutes. There are none. Or very few.

III.
He writes: All life is sacred and thus you have no right to contemplate doing away with yourself.

The "all life is sacred" mantra of Buddhism is one of the most mindlessly abused by practitioners because it so easily allows people to take the high road, but it can also lead to arrogance and hypocrisy when applied dogmatically.

When you say "all life is sacred", that's all you have to say. That's all you should say unless you want to run into pitfalls like in this person's comment. For him "all life is sacred" = "I have no right to contemplate doing away with myself".

For me "all life is sacred" requires me to contemplate doing away with myself to get to the essence of what is sacred about it. I not only have the right, but it's my responsibility. The sacredness of life includes the dissolution of life. Life is the totality of life, death and, for Buddhists, reincarnation over multiple lifetimes.

I'm not sure I want to get into the conundrum of quality of life vs. metabolic life, either. "All life is sacred" doesn't mean just mindlessly preserving all forms of life, but accepting and respecting death as part of it, however death may come. And it will come.

I note that he stops at my right to contemplate doing away with myself, implying that he doesn't even need to mention that I have no right to actually do away with myself. I note that because I think that any meaning to someone actually committing suicide is just way beyond him. That's fine, many people can't make such a leap, and from what he writes, there's no reason to expect him to.

So yes, all life is sacred, but it certainly does not strip me of any rights to contemplate anything I want.

IV.
He writes: That is definitely not the way of Buddhism.

Again, Buddhism to me is life, it's the journey. There are no absolutes, there is no dogma. There is no "not the way of Buddhism". Buddhism isn't some exclusive doctrine. To me, everything is Buddhism. It's not even a "religion". Christianity is part of Buddhism, Islam is part of Buddhism, terrorism is part of Buddhism, because Buddhism is a contemplation of human life in its totality here on this planet and about the entire universe in its impermanence in general.

He writes: From what I can tell, you are just stirring in your own selfish concerns.

Isn't basically everyone stirring in their own selfish concerns?

Or maybe he's referring to that old tired blame game that people who commit suicide are "selfish". From what I've heard about reactions to suicides, those people are not only just as selfish, but even sadistic in feeling the person who committed suicide should have endured what was obviously unendurable just so that he or she didn't have to experience the pain of someone they knew committing suicide.

He writes: The way out is to rise above the outer surface of things by use of method, wisdom, and compassion.

Not bad, but I would personally modify it to read, "The way is to use method, wisdom, and compassion". There is no purpose for the way, there is just the way. And maybe faith in it.

As for the "way out", I don't subscribe to the idea of a "way out". I'm certainly not looking for a "way out". I'm just trying to understand and learn, and this is where my inquiry has always led. Semantically, I'm not thrilled with rising "above the outer surface of things", "above" perhaps suggesting superiority. "Beyond" is perhaps a better word, and to see beyond the surface of things and into the nature of things is, I think, a legitimate Buddhist pursuit.

V.
He writes: It is a known fact that people are happier when they dedicate themselves to things larger than their personal interest or relationships, towards activities that have an impact on a larger scale.

It's not a "known fact". It's not even a fact. It's easy to imagine a profile of a person who dedicates himself to things larger than his personal interest or relationships towards activities that have an impact on a larger scale and still be miserable.

I'll revert to Buddhist doctrine now to offer that becoming happier in general comes from rooting out the causes of suffering, i.e. attachment and desire, and understanding them.

He writes: That is what Buddhism is about.

Not really. It's a method and practice of engaged Buddhism, but it certainly isn't what Buddhism is about.

He writes: You need to ask yourself why are you not being authentic in your beliefs.

He's right! I do need to ask myself why am I not being authentic in my beliefs. My belief is that I need to commit suicide, that is my path, that is the meaning of my journey. So why am I not committing suicide?!

Unfortunately, I think by "beliefs" he's referring to Buddhist doctrine and dogma.

The attractiveness about Buddhism should be that it deals with real life, real peoples' lives, not dogma, not doctrine, not what someone else says or dictates. Buddhism gives suggestions towards some truth but requires personal verification. Buddhist doctrine says something, but demands people to find the truth in the doctrine for themselves.

If someone doesn't find it, then Buddhist doctrine is not offended. If someone doesn't find it, then Buddhist doctrine was not for them. Anyone who insists that Buddhist doctrine is some monolithic dogma that anyone can find if they really look at it from some (usually their) perspective is no better than the born-again Christian I met in law school who beseeched me to be more open minded and see things her way.

VI.
He writes: It is useless to profess a philosophy that is counter to your own behavior and thoughts.

I'm really trying to take his comment seriously, but it is difficult because I can't stop laughing. As the level of his discourse degenerates, I have trouble maintaining mine. But I try.

I'm guessing that the philosophy he refers to is Buddhist dogma and doctrine that is monolithic and separate from the lives it purports to guide. I don't profess such a philosophy. I think it's useless to have a philosophy that is separate from one's own behavior and thoughts. A philosophy is one's own behavior and thoughts. If one's philosophy is counter to one's own behavior and thoughts, you're an idiot.

He writes: There is nothing to be so despondent about.

I'm not sure where he got that I'm despondent about anything. My only guess is that he hasn't read enough and just assumed it. Ass U Me. D.

Pick yourself up and get over this ego-based negativity.

Ego-based negativity . . . okay, there's something there, but it has nothing to do with what he knows, just what he's assumed. As for picking myself up and getting over it . . . *stifling laughter* Aw shit, I just spit all over my computer screen. Degenerating.

He writes: Think positively in a progressive manner (not that lipservice that many do about being positive).

That's good, absolutely right; not sure he's got it, though.

Take positive action. Use affirmations. Participate in selfless acts for community or strangers.

All good. Good advice. If he really thinks it would change anything in my case, well, that's just ignorant. It ain't cool to be an ignorant Buddhist, yo.

Evolve your philosophy.

OK, no problem, anyone's philosophy should evolve; good generic advice. I'd like to see it on a t-shirt.

Find the heart of compassion that leads to true individuality, that in itself releases you from bondage that pulls you down.

Oh shit, I really can't stop laughing at this one. He speaks of leading to true individuality when all I read from him is mainstream dogma and doctrine, not individuality. Listening to this guy would be the bondage that pulls me down. Mm, bondage...

Have an experience of oneness (through deep meditation, but maybe you might need entheogens like salvia divinorum to kick start it at some level).

Um, OK. I just ordered some salvia divinorum entheogens from Amazon.com. Oneness should be here in a few days. Continuing degeneration.

That oneness is always there. Enlightenment is right here, right now.

Yes, the oneness is always there. Enlightenment is right here, right now. Tell me more, enlightened one.

Alright, that's it, I have to stop. The comment degenerates into preachy drivel that would open the floodgates of snark and sarcasm, and there's nothing to offer in snark and sarcasm. Except maybe entertainment and I'm not trying to entertain.

I guess in conclusion, I'm going to have to go on the offensive.

This person is a poor authority on Buddhism and I feel sorry for anyone he tries to touch with Buddhism and believes what he's saying. He's a hypocrite and would do himself a favor to reflect more deeply on the dogma he's expounding and throw it away. He expounds without offering any real insight. He needs to get to the point where he's suicidal. If he gets to that point and still expounds the same things, people will see his truth and sincerity. All I get is arrogant self-righteousness.

I'm sure he disagrees 100% with me (and my descent into sarcasm) and is likewise horrified and offended by my liberalistic view. And the wonderful thing is that's Buddhism.

2011-05-01T22:07:00.001+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I've just been confounded as to what to make of this trip to New Jersey. It was completely unplanned and I even had to rush add pages to my passport days before my flight. I don't think it was even two weeks since it was suggested I return for a visit and the actual flight.

As such, I didn't put the time I spent here to any good use. I managed the trip to Philly, but I didn't get into New York once, and I never seriously considered going up to Blue Cliff Monastery for a visit. This was more or less an extension of the useless way I've been squandering my time in Taiwan.

And I think I'm going to declare this trip a total wash. It was useless. I was useless.

I have no relationship with my parents. There's no connection and it's basically just some twisted form of obligation. In Taiwan, sometimes I visit Kaohsiung and my cousin there has little to no contact with his father. He doesn't sit with them for meals, he takes what he wants, doesn't contribute if he doesn't want to, and that's fine because it's family and he's the child.

That's in contrast to my feeling that effort should always be made to have a connection, talk as much as possible, have a real feeling as family. With my parents here, I'm feeling I got it wrong, and my cousin got it right. They don't need to feel any connection, they don't need to sit down at meals and chat. They're satisfied just to provide the basics and that's it.

I gave up encouraging my father to write down his life stories, concluding that he probably doesn't have anything worth being remembered. Well, no. The worth he has to contribute is not worth pushing him to act when he doesn't want to and only puts up resistance.

And I'll say this as dispassionately as I possibly can: I have no love for them. I despise them. Deep down. It's not even an emotion anymore. It's fact, it's family history. Intellectually I can justify and tolerate them, but it's just responsibility. Behaviorally, for most part we get along just fine.

For their part, I don't think they feel much different. They have their own cultural bias and perspective, but their feelings toward me may be some equivalent of despising. Contempt maybe. They don't understand me, they don't respect me. They are confounded at how they perceive me.

As far as they will leave little legacy and will likely be forgotten in a generation or two, I think if I disappeared or if it came out that I committed suicide, I think they would actively try to erase any physical remnants or memories of my having been here. They'll make sure I don't leave anything for anyone, not because they don't want me to leave anything for anyone, but it's just their mindset to just get rid of all my stuff since it's useless and has no worth to them.

That's what I think. Or maybe I don't know if that's what I think or if that's the feeling I'm getting out of this visit.

I just know I don't feel good about this visit, and it may take me a while to figure out how it fits in with what I'm doing or not doing in Taiwan, and what it means for any future decision. And I am part dreading returning to Taiwan and falling into that same useless, worthless routine that I've been in for the last year plus.

2011-04-29T09:14:00.322+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I went to Philadelphia last weekend to visit my other brother's family. He's 2 years older than me. My oldest brother who lives in Englewood Cliffs is 3 years older. I actually went to Philly earlier this month for his 7 year old son's birthday, but that was with the rest of the family and it was just a day trip.

On that trip, I learned that my brother was introducing his son to plastic model kits. They were working on a model of the Titanic together, and he had a model kit of a B-17 (1/48 scale I think -- rather large) in the closet, waiting to be built after he gets a little older.

Me and my brothers all got into building plastic models when we were kids, but he was indisputably the best at it. My efforts often turned out as incomplete or inconsistently painted pieces of crap. I forget how good my oldest brother was at it -- we were bitter enemies when we were kids and many of my memories of him in that period have been wiped clean.

But my older brother seemed to have a natural talent for it, as he does with many things, and his assembly, painting and weathering were impressive for his age, which I'm guessing he was in the range of 9-12 when he was actively building these kits.

We were mostly into World War II warships and planes -- 1/700 scale Waterline Series Imperial Japanese Navy warships and 1/48 or 1/72 scale Japanese and U.S. warplanes. We had definitely stopped by high school, maybe even junior high, and the remnants of the collection ended up out of sight on some closet shelf, I shouldn't wonder.

The years took their toll and the vast majority eventually was lost or destroyed and discarded. At some point, I decided to pack the remaining pieces away in a single box filled with synthetic cotton for meager protection. I forget exactly when this took place, but certainly it was after my brother left for college and I still had 2 years of high school to finish, or on one of my trips back from college on vacation.

I don't think he knew what happened to collection, but I clearly remembered I had packed it away. So when I heard he was introducing his son to plastic models, I went searching for the box and found it without too much difficulty (aside from my mother filling my closet with clothes, after completely filling the closets in both of my brothers' rooms, the contents of my closet have remained untouched), and brought them down with me to Philly.

I was hoping to go to my brother's son's little league game, but it got rained out, so instead we excavated the box and pulled out the contents:

My nephew was pretty excited and impressed and asked a lot of questions. I was surprised at how many models were in the box. I knew the main aircraft carriers and battleships were there on top, but then there was an assortment of lesser ships, including heavy cruisers, light cruisers, a hospital ship, a seaplane tender, and an entire support fleet of destroyers and submarines.

I suspected there were some planes in there, but didn't know which ones, and there they were at the bottom of the box. Only one 1/48 scale plane survived, which is sad since we had a lot of them. I don't even know the name of the aircraft that survived (middle left of the photo), but we had maybe at least a couple dozen of 1/48 scale aircraft.

However, the piece that survived was a good representation of my brother's skill. The propeller and engine cowling are removable and he had painted the engine. He had also weathered the wings along the joints and around the guns for realism.

The other planes in the photo are smaller 1/72 scale models, and we had a lot of them, too. They are in various degrees of disrepair, and they make me think I may have made a decision over which planes to save, meaning the ones I didn't choose got chucked, which is sad if that's what happened.

The most damaged 1/72 scale plane is the light grey (white) A6M2 Zero with the diagonal blue line on the fuselage by the napkin holder, and it was saved despite the damage because the markings of the plane were supposed to be that of Saburo Sakai's plane or his flight group.

Sakai was Japan's leading fighter ace to survive the war, and he was a bit of a hero to us because his story was recorded in a book called Samurai! that may have been the first novel I ever read. He was among the best of the best and one of his stories was also featured on a Discovery Channel episode called Dogfight Over Guadalcanal.

As an adult, he remained an impressive figure to me because he became a man of peace, refusing to even kill a mosquito, and he went on reconciliation trips to meet and befriend the American pilots he had fought against during the war. When he died some 10 years ago, I read about it in the New York Times and printed out the article and tucked it into the copy of Samurai! that I still owned. It turns out my brother did the exact same thing.

The other 1/72 scale model of historical note is cut off on the left side, the B5N torpedo bomber with the yellow fuselage and brown and olive camouflage wings. That was the only plane with those markings ~~and was flown by a pilot I think was named Fujita who led the attack on Pearl Harbor (NB: these are anecdotes from childhood memory, for which I haven't confirmed historical accuracy)~~ (N even more B: after a cursory history wiki check, all of that information is wrong, aside from that a B5N, with standard olive green navy aircraft markings, led the first squadron in the attack on Pearl Harbor).

I'm glad how it all played out. It was a bit of atonement to have preserved these models and have my brother show them to his son 30 years down the line. It wasn't only with my oldest brother that I fought, me and my older brother also had our share of fights.

On one occasion when we still lived on Cambridge Place, we were in a heated fight, and it ended with me on a balcony on the upper floor of the house with a bunch of models threatening to send them crashing to the lower floor where my brother was. I remember him warning me not to do it, but then I started hurling them down.

I don't think they were his models. Even in our worst fights, I hope that it would have been unconscionable for me to destroy his work (my other brother would've been a different story, I'm sure). And since I'm not sure he would have cared whether I destroyed my own models, the most logical explanation is that they were my models that he had helped me complete, since I always ended up with a plastic ball of paint and glue when I made them on my own anyway.

I think that incident left deep scars on both of us for different reasons -- on my part it represents the environment of sheer rage and hate that I was up to my eyeballs in.

I don't think having preserved these other creations from his youth is necessary towards anything in our sibling relationship that we haven't dealt with in our own ways through the years. There hasn't been anything hanging over us that has prevented us from having a more fulfilled and complete relationship that we can finally let go of.

But there's still the full circle aspect from that incident to actually handling these models surviving from 30 years ago. There's a bit of finality or bringing it to a close, and realizing it's about his son and raising his children emotionally well now, and not any lingering aspects or memories from the past.

2011-04-26T22:45:00.069+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Counting down one week before I return to Taiwan. That's reality. As it happens, I've allowed myself to fall into the fantasy of being here and ignore everything I still have to face when I go back.

I don't think returning to the States is anywhere in my future plans. There's nothing for me here, and anyway I don't think I could live within a hundred mile radius of my parents. They have been pushing me dangerously close to my breaking point with them without even doing anything.

And that's exactly it. They haven't changed or transformed at all to warrant any changes in my intolerance level. Nevertheless, there's nothing for me here, and still unmotivated to do anything, it is simply not an option.

I'm at a loss how to sum up this past month. I'm not sure what this month is or what it means. Maybe it just is. Maybe I know that it means nothing in the long run and is a reflection of that and that's why I'm unable to express anything about it. But I hope to.

I've been hanging out a lot with my sister-in-law at my brother's house. They live in the same town as my parents, so she's in very familiar territory to me. She comes from a family of 4 sisters and we discuss a lot about family issues and history.

I also went down to Philadelphia and visited my other brother there. That's more stuff I'd like to express, but have no idea how to say it. While I was down there, I met up with an old college friend and we had a good talk over brunch.

Bored now.

2011-04-19T02:14:00.036+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

For the vast majority of my accessible childhood memory, my parents lived in this town. There are scraps of other places, but mostly places I've only heard about: West Orange, Jackson Heights, and ... that's about it. My childhood memory is a fragmented, threadbare affair, and my sister-in-law informs me my oldest brother is no different.

I've always assumed that the nieces and nephews I've interacted with these past several years wouldn't remember anything about me, because I don't remember anything from their ages. But apparently they are getting a substantively different upbringing with things worth remembering (oddly, me perhaps being one of them).

My parents used to live on the north side of town at 22 Cambridge Place. That house still exists, albeit completely remodeled -- no one has yet torn it down and erected a MacMansion as is happening all over town. I do have memories from that house intact. And not all bad ones, believe it or not.

I guess I've been fascinated by memory recently, plumbing the depths of what I remember about that house. It had, and still has, a pretty large backyard with a fence around it -- a common feature for older houses, but MacMansions are huge atrocities on relatively small plots of land that yards are largely being done away with.

That was where me and my brothers played and explored. Ample tree cover, an old but usable swing set, a shed for my father's gardening equipment, which horrified me because of the spider life that took a liking to the place.

And one infamous night when my brothers and some of their friends camped out in the backyard one night in a new tent that one of my brothers had gotten. I, the youngest, wasn't invited to the party. I remember this as fact, not as memory, but at some point I decided to go out and try to scare them.

I think I snuck up and created a shadow against the tent wall and that did the trick in scaring them. That lasted the whole of a few seconds before they realized it was me and they proceeded to chase me around the backyard in the dark. I headed for the gate, which was usually open, but they had closed it for the occasion. Hilarity did not ensue.

Again, most of this is fact memory, but when I impacted the wire fence, that's something I remember. It was just a flash, me running at top speed and brought to a sudden stop by the fence. I think I remember seeing red against white.

The aftermath memory reverts to facts. My parents, as usual, weren't around; I don't remember them involved in any of this. I vaguely recall one of my brothers, I think my second brother, taking me up to my parents bedroom where he called them to tell them what happened and field advice. I forget if I needed stitches, but I think the scar above my right eye is from that incident.

Fast forward to adult memories.

I was in 6th grade when we moved to my parents' current house, ending those formative memories. At my parents' current house, I finished elementary school, attended high school, left for college, visited during breaks, graduated, left for Japan, got dragged back from Japan, left for law school in San Francisco, set up a life in San Francisco, threw away my life in San Francisco, returned to my parents house, left for the monastery, returned to my parents house, and finally left for Taiwan.

And this time, visiting from Taiwan, I find remnants of stuff, relics, from my life in San Francisco. I got rid of a lot of stuff before I left, gave a lot of it away to friends (I had friends), but quite a few pieces made it back to New Jersey.

And this time, enough time has passed since I left San Francisco that these relics now have meaning. What was just a kitchen plate before now conjures meaning. Independence, living a life. My kitchen set was bought at a Bay Area flea market. Beer glasses that I snuck out of bars and clubs, because, Christ, for the price of beer, I should get something out of it. My collection of coffee mugs. Pots and pans that I used to conquer my complete lack of comprehension of how to cook.

Relics now. It's unthinkable now to return to the U.S. from Taiwan and set up that sort of life again. I tried it, it didn't work. And now I have these plates, bowls, cups and mugs still wrapped up in newspaper for shipping as evidence. And memory.

numbed silly

2011-04-16T22:18:00.027+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Being here has become a major numbing experience. In fact, my daily patterns aren't that much different from what they were in Taiwan in terms of isolation and avoidance, although I do have mandatory social exposure to my parents, and I see my brother and his family every several days.

The first week crawled by, but then the second week zipped by and slipped away before I even noticed. All I do really is putter around, falling into all the same old patterns and habits. It's just more luxurious here.

My parents have a nice, spacious house in quiet suburbia as opposed to my noisy, dark urban apartment in Taipei. I've pulled out my guitar (Takamine) and bass (Spector) and have my drums (Yamaha) set up in the basement, and playing them has been sweet -- much better quality instruments than I have access to in Taiwan.

My bike here is older, and almost failed as a result, but now that I have it working, I can feel how it is just a better quality bike than my Giant. It's a Peugeot that I bought in San Francisco 12 or 13 years ago and the gear shifters are outdated.

When I pulled the bike out, the shifters didn't work. Well, they worked one way, but not the other, so once the chain was on the largest ring in front, I couldn't downshift, and when the chain got to the lowest gear in back, I couldn't upshift.

The first place to which I took the Peugeot was Bike Masters in Englewood, where I've been going to since I was a kid. Ownership has changed, though, and the current owner is Korean. He took one look at the shifters and wouldn't give them a second glance, wouldn't even touch it. "Buy a new bike!", he said, not even making eye contact. I scoffed at his inability on the way out.

The second place I went to was Bicycle Workshop in Tenafly and they -- Spanish speakers, although I don't know where they are from -- were better with an explanation, maintaining there was no company support or parts for this kind of shifters, but they had one last ditch procedure they could try, but emphasized that they couldn't guarantee it would work.

It sounded like they'd seen this problem before since they prompted me with a question about how long it's been since I rode the bike -- they suspected it hadn't been ridden in a long time, and I confirmed that it had been years since I rode it.

I gleaned that because of the long period of inactivity, grease had built up in a certain part of the shifters preventing them from "grabbing". They were going to soak them for several days in a solution to clear away the grease. Almost a week later, they called and told me to pick it up, it was working.

The weather has been hit or miss, though, and I've mostly been riding on a trainer in the basement for 30-60 minutes. I went out once on a sunny day, but quickly discerned it was too chilly for my liking and just rode to the north end of town and back. Barely 5 miles there and back. Small town.

But what am I doing? What's the point? I'm even boring myself now.

2011-04-14T23:33:00.001+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

My practice is grateful for my parents. Truly so, I'm not being sarcastic. Things they insinuate, things they do, things they outright say, things they represent are all opportunities for me to watch my practice in action, and overall I think I've come along quite satisfactorily.

And on top of that is genuine, normative gratefulness, simply for what they've provided and for how much worse they could've been as parents and were not. And below all the gratitude is a recognizable indifference towards them that informs me that they should not in any way be a part of what I decide to do or not do. I don't owe them that, nor do they necessarily deserve such consideration.

My reactions of becoming a cold wall, or feeling a tightening ball of anger or annoyance gripping in my chest, to what so far has been the worst reaction of becoming outright sarcastic and snarky, are all being watched and minded.

The first two types of reaction are easy to handle; they are immediate and immediately recognizable, and easy for me to grab a hold of, acknowledge and relax and let go of. Stop it. Good practice *pats practice on the head*.

In general, try to do no harm, don't say anything harmful or creates negative tension, even in response to an offense.

I'm neither articulate nor observant enough to describe their perceived offenses, but suffice it to say they are family things. Things that only come from being family and just about anyone knows it when they encounter it with their own families.

The incident involving sarcasm and snark was a response to relentless, although likely unintended, condescension and insulting of my intelligence by my approaching senility father, and the breaking point led me to start repeating what he was saying in exaggerated, mock agreement. I don't regret my behavior as it was harmless and more defensive exasperation than an offensive cut at his cluelessness that I twisted after plunging it in.

I've also been learning suggestions that my father, in general, can't be claimed to be a good, well-intentioned, self-sacrificing figure towards other people in his life, both professionally and personally.

As a medical doctor, I have no reason to doubt he has always conducted his business to the highest professional standard, strictly speaking -- he has been sued for malpractice, but has won every time because his records are meticulous and logic and reasoning competent and defensible -- but he never went the extra inch to help someone, not much of a bedside manner, I shouldn't wonder.

Personally, I always look for the good, well-intentioned person and read that into the non-expressive, blank wall exterior of my father, but I realize that may just be my own projections. Whatever, really. In my experience, he has never gone beyond the call of duty except for acting as the family bank, and that's significant enough, so fine.

They off-handedly called me "spoiled" in response to my apathy and lack of interest towards my life. So much to say about that. The great irony of a parent calling a child "spoiled" is that, well, someone did the spoiling (hint: it was them). Another thing is that they were calling me "spoiled" when I was a teenager. They're still calling me that?! Come on, where's the progress?! Where's the imagination?

But where I understand how it might have made me angry before on multiple levels, it doesn't now and I was content to think to myself, "maybe so".

2011-04-06T13:57:00.078+08:00

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I've been in the U.S. for a week and I'm here for the entire month of April. Where exactly is this journey of mine taking me?

If I had succeeded in my first attempt last summer, shit would have hit the fan through the second half of the year. If I managed to not leave a body, the mystery may have lingered, but by now the impact would have died down. Someone would have disposed of my material possessions, daily lives would all have resumed.

And when I say "impact", that's a bit of an unwarranted conceit. I don't mean any substantial impact. There isn't anyone substantial in my life to really be impacted. It would only be an obligatory or superficial impact -- family, the result of the accident of having been born into their particular family; people who had a physical awareness of my existence.

I don't think anyone could be substantially impacted if they didn't know anything about me or my thoughts or thinking or ideas. If they didn't have any curiosity or inquiry, I feel justified in writing them off. They likely viewed me in a normative way, so they can deal with it in whatever normative way people do. It's not my concern.

Some people might puzzle, but no one knew me or the intricacies of the long-standing reasons that led me to finally do what I had always considered inevitable. Anyone who thought that I had linearly come to a decision for tangible reasons and then carried it out would miss the point entirely.

If not for this trip to the U.S. now, would I have made my second attempt when the window of opportunity opened in late March? Now with the second attempt in limbo, I'm at a loss at what to expect of myself.

This month in the U.S. already feels like it will be a month of great numbing. I'm not doing anything different or productive that's so different from anything I was doing in Taiwan. Just taking advantage of certain things available to me here. Value is still the same -- just about nil.

I haven't been drinking constantly, and a week into being here, the times I've allowed a beer, it was like, "why am I drinking this?". My tolerance has been unpleasantly low. That might change as the month goes on, though.

My first week here, I've been double-whammied with jetlag and insomnia. I would crash hard late in the evening for about an hour. Then later when I'd go to sleep, I haven't been able to get more than 3 hours of sleep before I'd put a DVD on in the wee hours of morning. It's starting to let up now and I'm getting more sleep, not that the lack of sleep had any effect on me, though.

It makes me wonder about a previous visit here where I remember having absolutely no jetlag, no insomnia for the duration I was here, and also sleeping pretty normal sleeping hours by an ordinary person's standard. Still haven't figure out what that might have been about.

I had a dream early on where the only thing I remember was having Shiho in my lap and kissing her. And another where there was someone "interested" in me and I was responding, but I have no idea who that was.

As long as I was back in the States and could call people here, I got back in touch with Sadie. Even though it looked like we had cut contact last year, it was as I thought. Either of us could make an overture at any time and we could go with it. And we'll go with it until the next minor falling out.

No major falling outs for us, I shouldn't wonder. I want to value Sadie enough that if we have a major falling out, I would make an effort to resolve any issues. Minor falling outs are fine. They may be the result of feelings we don't know what to do with, but they don't affect the friendship, who she is to me.

Not sure I trust myself on that one, though. And don't want to test it.