I don't want to be happy.

If I wanted to be happy, I would be doing what it takes to be happy. I would go back to my old job, not because it made me happy, but because it supported me and would be necessary for the things that make me happy. It wasn't an unbearable job, it wasn't killing me.

And with that sustenance, I would be happy by:
- going cycling on weekends or riding on my trainer in the evenings while watching music DVDs;
- renting or buying and watching music or anime DVDs;
- maintaining and nourishing friendships, even getting long-distance phone service to stay in contact;
- asking people to go to movies or shows with me, or dinner, or just hang out;
- finding a better apartment in a better part of town and being open-minded about "what I can afford";
- playing music and hanging around people who like playing music;
- continuing home practice and going to SF Zen Center twice a week for Dharma Talks;
- being frequently aware of my happiness or unhappiness, and stop doing what makes me unhappy, and do what makes me happy.

But I don't do these things because happiness, in itself or in material pursuits, is not one of my wants.

- I want to understand the fabric of existence.
- I want to know what this all is and why.
- I want to test it with my own suicide (not someone else's - important).

Don't tell yourself that you want to be happy and then not be. Let's be honest about our happiness and unhappiness.

- If you're unhappy because your job sucks, tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because your job sucks.
- If you're unhappy because you don't get along with your family, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because you don't get along with your family.
- If you're unhappy because your health is bad, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because your health is bad.
- If you're unhappy because you have a mortgage and a ton of debt you're eating your way out of, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because you have a mortgage and a ton of debt.
- If you're unhappy because the dog keeps peeing on the couch, tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because the dog keeps peeing on the couch.
- If you're unhappy because you can't make a relationship work, then tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because you can't make a relationship work.
- If you're unhappy because the weather sucks and puts you in a bad mood, then tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because the weather sucks and puts you in a bad mood.
- If you're unhappy because (fill in the blanks...)

And importantly, tell yourself that if you think you want to be happy despite this that makes you unhappy or that that makes you unhappy, then you're a fool.

Suicide is my prize possession.

Plotting the arc
I brought a book, Mountain Record of Zen Talks, back from New Jersey that I had bought way back when I was in college. I forget if I read it all the way through, but I'm pretty sure that this book was one of the reasons why I had to get away from my Zen studies of the time, and wandered and reconnoitered down a "Sufi path" for a bit.

The frustration I was having with Zen was that you start coming across a set set of terms that, once you think about it, don't mean anything. There are catchwords and concepts that you have to intuit, but who knows and who is to say if your intuition is really getting it or just falling into granola-crunchy, New Age crap? The Sufi and Islamic readings I came across helped explain the mechanics of the metaphysical concepts that I was stuck on in Zen.

I kinda think of Sufism as being to Islam what Zen is to Buddhism. Mind you, I don't think any of these identifiers and terms mean anything, and I don't care what they "really" are. I don't wear Buddhism on my arm. I don't like saying, "I'm Buddhist" – that's meaningless. That has to do with ego and identity, relative to the outside world, but nothing to do with what I really am. I borrow ideas and concepts to add to my experience and vocabulary for what I believe, and to supplement and fill in the many blanks where appropriate.

Anyway, this book is fairly kicking my ass now. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing particularly new, but this book is really good with its explanations. I understand why I was frustrated with it ten years ago, and I'm thinking this book isn't for beginners. I needed elements of these past ten years to understand this, or read it without getting frustrated.

For me, I'd even say that I needed my recent monastic glimpse to get this material, and that it's more geared towards monks than lay practitioners. But I think that's just me, because of my own background, preferences, and leanings. I wish I could have been more focused and gotten back to this sooner.

I won't feel bad about not contacting Madoka more while she's in the U.S. Once Madoka and I feel that we want to tell each other about ourselves and be more involved with each others' happenings, then we will resume our old type of communication. It may never happen again, it may never have gone away, but there's no point in forcing anything when I know there is trust and respect between us no matter what happens.

We've never forced anything before, I don't think, and right now it's just not clicking, so I won't feel bad about it.

So I kinda mentioned in passing that the historical Jesus's birth date was not on December 25; a risky bit, as hardcore Christians and Born Agains tend to get their panties and jocks all up in a bunch with any suggestion that anything about Christianity is less than historical, actual, and universal fact.

I mean, really, think about it – all these kids are raised believing that the holiday season is a special time of year, that the sentimentality and mood of the season is connected to this great historic chain of events that led to angels proclaiming the birth of our Saviour and King, and December 25 was the big day, away in a snow-covered manger somewhere out in rural New Jersey (or at least that's where it was in my memory). And now these revisionists are trying to revise the revisions that are the source of our most cherished childhood memories!

We won't have none of that.

But that's not my point.

I don't care for debunking Christianity. A) Other people do it better; B) it isn't going to change 2000 years of Christian history and its impact on the world (negative impact, that is, no one would be trying to debunk it if it weren't for the negative impact); and C) it's counter-productive in discrediting many great teachings in Christianity.

Well, for what it's worth, I found this, searching for something else, about the relationship between the Winter Solstice and Christmas. Of course, anyone can post anything on the internet, and that page includes no sources of corroborating information, so take it or leave it.

But that's basically what I heard, too, so when it comes to Christmas celebrating Jesus's birthday, I have trouble getting into it. I can celebrate friends celebrating the holiday, or Christian culture celebrating what they call Jesus's birthday, but I can't personally celebrate Christmas on the grounds it was the day Jesus was born.

My family doesn't celebrate Christmas. The way I imagine it, my parents immigrated to this country and someone had to explain to them why so many people didn't have to work (earn money) on this day. By the time I reached an age of consciousness/memory, the gift giving idea had sunk in.

My childhood memories include plastic Christmas trees with lights, ornaments, and a flashing star on top, and yes, presents under the tree to be opened on Christmas morning. I don't remember the gifts coming from parents. The extent that my parents gave us gifts was in the form of money, but at that young age, I doubt they were putting cold hard cash in our hands to any appreciable appreciation.

The vague fuzzy memories I do have are of me and my brothers buying gifts for each other. Family excursions to the malls (this was New Jersey, folks), getting money from "mom", and buying toys or games or whatever kids like for each other and trying to keep from seeing what we were getting each other.

We would wrap the gifts in wrapping paper or Sunday comics and put them under the tree. Yea, an inexplicably touching scene, considering that we fought like dogs the rest of the year round. No, we fought, but we had the seeds of tight sibling . . . appreciation.

These are childhood memories, so I'm sure they're not accurate, and I'm even more sure they would conflict with my brothers' memories. I'm thinking that Christmases were the primary source of our games and toys and I'm thinking my parents used Christmas as an excuse not to buy us games or toys for the rest of the year, after all, we knew better what we wanted, right?

So it was all there. My parents provided and we had the tree, we had the gifts, we had the anticipation, and we had the waking up early for the reward on Christmas morning. The only specific Christmas I remember was one when I was really sick, it may have been asthma, and my brother Bob doing something to take care of me, but I can't remember what.

I don't remember when it stopped. I don't think I've even been in New Jersey for Christmas for the past 10 years. I have no recollection what Christmas was about with family through high school and college. It was more about friends then. Again, I might be wrong.

And now?

I'm sorry, but Christmas for me is a day of reflection, mostly cynical about much of what's wrong with the world. A day to hunker down and silently endure. The rampant commercialization and hypocrisy is just sickening.

I appreciate the significance of Jesus's birth . . . except that no one has refuted to my satisfaction the assertion that the historical Jesus was born sometime during the late Summer, and that Jesus having been born on December 25 is a bit of revisionist history performed to correspond with mid-Winters festivals of northern latitude countries.

My understanding is that festivals and celebrations occured around the Winter Solstice to help people get through dark, depressing Winter months. Holiday depression and suicide? It has little to do with the holidays, but has everything to do with the weather.

I also appreciate the season of goodwill and harmony, but then I find myself disheartened by why that doesn't exist all year round. Goodwill and harmony? Have you been in the feeding frenzy of holiday shoppers recently?

I know my feelings are out of step with most people. It's probably why I don't have any friends. But it doesn't stop me from wishing well for all humankind. It doesn't stop certain Christmas melodies from getting to me (some brilliant songwriting there).

It doesn't stop me from looking out my window, my imagination taking me across the bleak, barren Winter landscapes on this silent night to homes of families, friends, and gatherings, through cities, suburbia, through country, through people being together and being happy, through children having the most precious memories of their lives created, and despite all that's wrong with the world, at least there is this one night that the Christian world shines with hope, peace, and love.

The more I talk about suicide, the less inclined I am to act or do anything. When I start talking about a future and living a long life and what I'm gonna be doing with my life, that's when people should start worrying.

You see what people have to put up with?

If my understanding is right, then I can kill myself, or I might as well kill myself. There's nothing wrong with it.

If my understanding is wrong, then my existence is a complete sham, my purpose for being here is completely misdirected, and I will never come to a proper understanding, and . . . I might as well kill myself.

You see what I have to put up with?!

Haha, well I hope this broke the funk I was in.

I did buy a bike used, but wasn't so happy with it, so I ended up "giving it away", within three days of acquiring it.

I'm really not one to regret decisions and I regretted buying this bike, and for things I acquire, I really have to love. Like my guitars, my A bike, my drums, and even my ex-car when it came right down to it, I'm not sure what I mean, but I "loved" those things.

I did regret buying this bike, and I didn't think I would ever grow to love it for one reason or another. I have nothing negative about the person who has it now, I hope he's happy with whatever he does with it. I feel lighter, so I thank him.

I read an interesting passage today on compassion and the Buddhist conception of the relationship between people, using an analogy of our hands.

When our left hand receives money, the right hand doesn't feel jealous, envious, or angry. If our left hand is on fire, the right hand doesn't hesitate to act to put it out, it doesn't think of the danger to itself, the left hand is itself.

It's a hard one, but I sort of get it. Even harder to put into practice since I have an aversion to physical contact with other people, but making physical contact with any other human being should be easy as holding one hand in the other. Depending on the circumstance, I'm sure I can overcome my aversion. Perhaps I wouldn't even think about it.

That was it; gone. Like a door opening and a door closing were my bookend visits to Deer Park Monastery. It was just a glimpse for me, just a glance, just a sample, something to strive for more concretely in a future life perhaps. But in this one? It was very real, and I won't forget it, but something just doesn't feel right. 

My mind is baffled trying to conceive dimensions it is physically uncapable of conceiving. It stretches and is torn apart falling into black holes. It floats in amorphous wisps at the edges of the universe. I envision the compact physicality of the grey matter of my brain in my skull and at the very center is an endless, dark abyss. Like a jelly donut, but more sinister. 

My physical reality flakes and distorts, parts of it crumble if I'm not careful. Strange being. Calm and collected facade, living a pretty easy physical life, but my psyche feels assaulted and brutalized by an alter ego in another dimension, just a thin membrain away. 

And this goes on for . . . how much longer?

I've been continuing my home practice, but it's been a struggle. The revitalizing energy I had between my Deer Park trips was gone after I got back from New Jersey, and I consider that a good thing, even if it puts entering the monastery in question and doubt. A good thing? What's a good thing?

I'm working with a dichotomy. I tell people I'm entering a monastery, and they say, 'great', and I find that a little patronizing, as they have little idea or interest in what's driving that decision, but that's OK since I have no desire to explain it to those people either.

I tell people I'm committing suicide, and they say, 'boo!', and that makes me feel a little defensive, and my life isn't about defending my decisions. They don't impact enough people to warrant defending (the few people it impacts deserve explanation, and I've done my best).

I don't know which path I'm on, or what I will find standing in front of me as the decision I made. Right now, I'm just walking down a path towards neither, but trying to find the middle of the false encouragement of entering Deer Park and the dark voices of condemnation over suicide.

As the negativity needs to be stripped away from suicide, so does the positivity of entering the monastery, with a recognition that none of it is "real". I can be sad about leaving or happy about arriving, but there can't be any attachments to either.

Delphine's birthday

December 13, 2003; 8:12 P.M. - I forget where, but I think it was an Italian restaurant in North Beach.

After three not-so-great days of pre-Deer Park thinking/mindset, thought upon thought progressed as I walked in the rain to the Lower Haight, until I got to: 

The sources of these negative thoughts aren't the problem. what I've done with my life and the directions I've taken to whatever inevitable conclusion are not the problem. the negative thoughts themselves are the problem. Things got better immediately after that. 

Or is that something I've known all along? 

But it's true, the thoughts and mindset I've been in have just been rehashing the same old crap I've gone over and over ad nauseum and leads no where: What I'm doing or not doing with my life; what expectations I'm not living up to; the little I've done in my life and the little worth it adds up to; feeling guilty about not having the problems everyone else is going through; feeling guilty about not feeling problems everyone has and not doing anything to help other people like Madoka and her friends do (actually they have the problems and do things that help other people, so fuck me even harder). Hm, maybe that's why I haven't called her back like I said I would. 

But really, I've run all that through my movie projector, and none of that matters. Not in a nihilistic way, but the negative weight of those thoughts aren't because of the substance of those thoughts. The negative weight is just from negativity – maybe it's S.A.D., maybe it's the holiday season, maybe it's the not being able to maintain friends, maybe it's the stress of shopping for a new bike, maybe it's the suicide chip in my head – but skim the fat of negativity off the surface and the thoughts turn out to be not-so-oppressive. 

A lot of people probably can't separate the negativity from the thoughts – if the thoughts are there and they are negative, then you can't have the thoughts without the negativity. Period. As long as I can, lucky me, might as well run that program.

OK, much better. I went to sleep in my own bed and woke up in my own bed.

I woke up feeling like I had left a trail of parts of me strewn down the block to the 18th and Potrero bus stop, on the MUNI back to 16th and Mission, on the BART back to the airport, on the plane back to New Jersey, up the New Jersey Turnpike in what is now my brother's car.

But I got out of bed after less than six hours of sleep and the moment I pulled off the warm covers (chilly San Francisco morn) and my foot touched the ground, I felt a wave of "real". And that's what I want to do, to find what's real to me, to find my personal truths.

The feelings of negativity slid away, the positive feelings also held in stasis; look at where I've taken my life (negativity), consider where my core beliefs lie (positive), and proceed on my path giving no automatic validity to either.

Madoka called this morning. Yes, I definitely love her, I wonder what better person I could be blessed with for 10 years of friendship, but the connection we used to have is definitely gone. Our minds and feelings aren't synched the way they used to be.

It's no tragedy, it might even have been natural, expected. We probably won't get a chance to meet up during her time in the U.S., and that's OK. We don't need to prove to each other that our paths have already vastly diverged. We don't need to prove that our paths may not ever even have crossed.

The day flying back to San Francisco from New Jersey was far more arduous than the week driving to New Jersey from San Francisco. The day was broken up into mini-ordeals to get through, each one in anticipation of the next one until I was finally walking that final block to my apartment. I took public transpo from the airport even though Sadie offered a ride. I realized I'm not the kind of friend who has someone pick them up from the airport, I decided.

A week in New Jersey was too long. I came back distracted and with more negative thoughts than I care for. As the plane landed, I just thought about how much I hated the San Francisco Bay Area. Tomorrow I need to focus and cleanse and filter out the negativity; figure out what and why they were. I need to re-align what I think of the monastery idea, too, as I've been accumulating doubts and need to consider if they are valid or not.

I've been having these intense pangs and impulses to leave, moments of revelatory clarity pointing to leaving as still the right thing to do, the proper path to take; it's right.

I don't know if it's my imagination, but I've also been having weird moments of intimacy with something that's clearly not here.

And no one has told me yet that life is not a movie, and all these disparate elements won't follow a dramatic arc and come together in some conclusion and resolution that will make sense as a whole.

Yay! It's snowing! I don't remember the last time I was in a snow storm or been in New Jersey when there was snow on the ground that was going to stay. This snow, so early in the season, probably won't stay, but it won't melt away before I leave on Sunday. Snow that stays for weeks or months doesn't happen until January.

It started flurrying around noon, but by 4 o'clock there was 3-4 inches accumulation. I went for a walk on the unplowed roads, walking in tire tracks, snow crunching beneath my feet. The hush, the cars creeping along slowly, carefully. Those small SUVs suck in this weather. Their center of gravity is so high and wheel base so close, I saw one (slowly) sliding down a hill, just barely able to stop at a stop sign.

I trudged around a bit, and getting back to my parents' house, stomped the snow from my shoes. The things we never do in San Francisco. There was snow on my hood and all in the creases of my coat. I have to stop thinking that moving to San Francisco was the worst decision I've made in my life, but it's hard to convince myself.

I set up my full drumset for the first time in almost two years, probably the last time for a long while. I'm rusty, but it felt and sounded so good. It made me wonder why I haven't been doing this, but, no, I suck, and San Francisco sucks, and I'm not going back to this.

I appreciate and feel blessed to have experienced the feeling I have when I play, but I don't have to do it. I took pictures of the set-up with my digi, and I'll leave the memory stick with the set just in case someone in the future (my brother and his wife are going to have a boy, they found out this week), needs to see how to set it up. Or to at least encourage anyone to set it up the way I set it up.

It's been nice being here, but it gets too comfortable. I forgot that's one of the reasons that I should keep my visits here short, 3-4 days max. This is not my reality, and I start to lose touch with what I need to be doing.

On the other hand, it makes me think that entering Deer Park will mostly be a change in environment, not my being. I start doing what I naturally do when I'm here (ADD around), which is different from what I "do" in San Francisco (try to keep to a schedule), but whether I'm here or in San Francisco or Deer Park, there are only slight variations in my "being". Or so I think. There is no basis why I think I know what it would be like at the monastery for a long period.

I was walking in downtown Englewood, and caught a snippet of a conversation between a mother and adult daughter. It crossed my mind, "Did she really need to say that in that tone of voice?" Among other things I thought of, like the upper middle class suburban cultural context, I thought, yes, she probably did.

We're trying to communicate and based on our background and knowledge of our family members, we take into consideration what we feel is the most effective way to get a point across. Antagonistic, patronizing, sarcastic, exasperated – whatever we feel will work. I use a matter-of-fact, glib, neutral tone of voice with my family for any number of reasons, the least not being that I don't show emotion to these people, as emotions are not a part of our family vocabulary.

Actually, my mother was getting naggy about something (probably about me needing warm clothes (I don't)), and I ended the discussion with a sentence with a slightly forceful tone, and my father and brother turned and noticed.

It's been a long, long time that I've expressed anything but neutral emotions here, even that slight bit of antagonism was a surprise. This family has made me a master of letting things slide.

I *heart* my Yamaha Beech Customs:

December 6, 2003; 12:06 A.M.

December 5, 2003; 1:26 P.M. - Out the front door (which no one uses) of my parents house at 361 Mauro Rd.

Being in New Jersey in December is bringing back memories; the cold, the darkness, the angle of the sun, the leafless trees, the brittle ground. I feel like a drug-addict trying to get clean, but once back into the ol' hood, it's hard not to revert.

What and who I am now in San Francisco is different from what and who I am now in New Jersey, which is permeated by what and who I was all those years ago. I'm not crazy or screwed up as I was and I don't hate my parents anymore, but there is a dampener over what and who I really am now, which is what and who I am now in San Francisco. That and those decisions are reality. Being here is a womb; not reality.

Exactly 20 years ago, I was a freshman in high school. We were on a trimester system, so now would have been towards the end of one trimester or the beginning of the next. Just a few months prior, I was on the X-Country team, but had to quit after "passing out" during a race in a park somewhere in the Bronx.

No one knows what really happened, but I think it was emotional strain. Also in that first trimester of high school, I had been suspended for a week for psychiatric evaluation, and a prominent gash on my forearm was healing.

I don't think I was dating a Hong Kong girl named Nancy yet, I'm pretty sure that came later, and I also don't think I had actually met Shiho Nakai yet, although I had seen her 7th or 8th grade picture in my older brother's yearbook.

10 years ago I was completing my first semester of law school in San Francisco. I was living in Oakland, CA, and was about to experience my first Bay Area rainy season. It was cloudy and rainy for three weeks straight in December. By the end of the month, I would have seen the purported "love of my life", Amina, for the last time.

And today, I got an email from Madoka, who is now in the U.S. for two months, first in L.A., then in Salt Lake City. Email communications between us have been spotty at best, but I will trust that all the heart is still there. We will try to meet up at some point, I shouldn't wonder, but it's not a sure thing now that I won't have a car.

I know I still love her, even though our communication and information between us is spotty. Maybe I love her more now after realizing our communication and information is spotty. Go fig. It's the classic push and the pull.

That was one hard discussion Meghan and I had on Saturday night, while at the same time I felt it was a sort of "exposition" of various ideas and thoughts that have been cropping up and bouncing around in my head recently.

I don't get many chances to glue the pieces together in front of another person, and that's what it felt like I was given an opportunity to try to do. Not for her necessarily, mind you, or at least not to convince her of anything. More for me to get my explanations and understandings straight, and if some residue rubs off on her, great. I couldn't ask for a better sounding-board than Meghan. But it's always hard, since my views are pretty unorthodox.

With this weblog, it feels like there was a sudden left turn from suicide to monastic possibility, but for me, the underlying motivations towards either are very closely aligned. If anything, they're complementary. It's with horror that I realize that they look contradictory!

The important thing is that both of those "options" have been inside me for quite a long time, but whereas suicide has been constant and recurring, the idea of entering a monastery went underground for long stretches, which is why it had to kick me in the butt this time around to realize its possibility.

And as the possibility has taken serious root, I'm giving it a lot of attention and energy to figure out if it's something I can consider "real", or if it's a cop-out. It's funny, though, how I never need to explain the monastery thing very much to people. Either they accept it or it's . . . quirky. People don't take me very seriously, and that's fine, great, faboo. But suicide, there's more chance that people take it seriously and demand my explanation.

An important linchpin in my explanation is that it's something that's always been around, something that's been mulled and contemplated, and turned around and inside out in every direction and dimension I can think of. Before this recent monasteric binge, I had already been saying that my reason was just my being, the way I am, that what I consider a "good reason" to go is having no reason at all. Once I have a reason, it's not a good enough reason to go. Fabulously zen! So suicide rolled into spiritual quite smoothly.

But then the reminder that I have been dealing with this for such a long time like a disease, like a mental illness, and that instantly blew away the calm veneer that I've been trying to cultivate under the banner of non-form/non-attachment, and yes, suicide has always been in me like a primal calling, but also yes, it has been maintained and reinforced through the years by actual events and experience, of failures and frustrations and fragility.

It doesn't change a thing. Not yet, at least. It's just a mix in the pot, and what a mix! But even mixing in actual events and experience, which might clearly put the whole shebang into the mental health field, which is precisely what I had been doing here by considering this, above all, a mental health blog, non-form/non-attachment trumps all of that. The Dharma is pretty powerful shit. Just an eye-dropper full dilutes an ocean of mental health attachment.

We talked until almost five in the morning. How did that happen?


November 30, 2003; 12:54 P.M. - Alexandria, VA.

November 25, 2003; 4:13 P.M. - A soul named Kristin. I was driving east, she was going west by bus and we met at Carlsbad Caverns, NM, and we spent the day together and talked about everything. In the end, I dropped her off somewhere and headed to Texas.

Organ Pipe National Monument

Super Geek:
I used to . . . try to guess exactly one minute when I used to take public transporation regularly. Mind you, I don't bore easily. Myself, at least. I would look at my watch, note when the second reached 0, 15, 30, or 45, and then I'd go back to staring off into space. Then I'd try to look at it again in one minute, +/- 5 seconds.

+ or - five seconds is what I considered successful. If I guessed a minute was more than 65 seconds, then I thought my mind's current sense of time was too slow. If I guessed a minute was less than 55 seconds, then I thought my mind's current sense of time was too fast. The idea was to keep doing it and compensate for my wrong sense until my mind's sense of time was properly "calibrated".

You have no idea how freaky it is when you hit the minute on the second five or six times in a row, which happened only once. You're not counting, you're just trying to "feel" this very specific length of time. It doesn't seem too hard, it's only one minute, but to hit it precisely certainly is not a given.

Sometimes I would think consciously about it, asking, "now? now? now?", but it was surprising, or maybe not so surprising, how many times I'd start thinking of something else and then spontaneously snap back and look and it would be on the exact second.

I'm still planning my road trip back to New Jersey next week. Last month my parents told me they needed to buy a new car for the Winter since my brother smashed up their regular Winter car, and I told them they could have my car since I don't use it that much, and they accepted. They paid for it anyway, so no biggie. I just have to drive it there for them.

I leave this Friday to spend the weekend at the monastery again, which the back of my mind hopes will serve the purpose of keeping me in their minds and letting them know I'm serious, and the plan is to arrive in New Jersey on December 1st, after visiting Meghan in Arlington on November 30th and spending that night in Philadelphia with my brother.

I thought I had an itinerary divvying up the drive by days, but I'm thinking I might spend more time in the American Southwest, Organ Pipe National Monument, Tucson and the Saguaro National Parks, and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico (I have a National Parks Pass that won't be of much use, I shouldn't wonder, once I get rid of my car). If those take up too many days, I might have to breeze through Austin and Nwalins and beeline towards Arlington to be there by the 30th.

As for getting rid of the car, I'm still filtering what it means to me and why it feels like it's a big thing to be letting go of, even though it's not. It's just a car, a big material hunk of metal that pollutes the environment. It may be just habit of my material-oriented mind to get all worked up about nothing, and once it's done, it passes like a cloud.

Today's a new day. Yesterday was the off day I've been needing since returning from the monastery to get a dose of what may be referred to as reality, ordinary being.

I was unplugged from whatever it was I plugged into while at the monastery. The highlight came early in the day, when I put the filter in the coffee-maker, ground the coffee beans, poured the grounds into the filter, poured water into the coffee maker, and turned it on. Without putting the coffee carafe into the coffee maker. Pure brillig. Yea.

Truth to tell, the rest of the day was pretty harmless, just unplugged, like a Borg separated from the Collective. Hm, that's a fairly poor metaphor – it's not a "resistance is futile" type thing or even being assimilated. How 'bout if Keanu took the blue pill? Mm, not even. But wouldn't it be great if life's profoundest metaphors could be made from Keanu films? (whoa!)

Anyway, it was a necessary day for me to make sure I'm not feeling brainwashed. Not that I was, but it's a matter of balance or reassurance. There was nothing to like or dislike, but it did remind me that I couldn't have done that in perpetuity for much longer.

Hehe, "in perpetuity for much longer". I crack myself up.

There is hope for my ability to give counsel!:

----- Original Message -----
From: S
To: me
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 4:48 PM

i did mean sitting practice, which i suck at to high heaven -- i'm already aware of the whole mindfulness thing and i keep trying to practice that regardless of what i'm doing.

----- Original Message -----
From: me
To: S
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 11:20 PM

that's great to be able to say you suck at something. In my experience, if you say you suck at something long enough, you find yourself not sucking at it at all! So keep at it, and keep sucking at it. I can even help if you fall into a lull and feel you're not sucking enough.

----- Original Message -----
From: S
To: me
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 12:47 AM

your sucking speach is the best most inspirational speach i've ever heard.

you rock. :)

s

The ground is joy and my steps are happy
Still, my feet dissolve in the mud

My conception of the Big Bang is that out of nothingness – no time, no space, just an infinitesimally small, quasi-dimensional speck that contained everything needed to form the universe as it is today – instantaneously exploded and expanded in a blink of the eye or the snap of the finger. Whatever size it obtained in that instant is anyone's guess.

I wonder if it may not have happened so fast, so instantaneously. The current theory is that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating, so why can't it be that at some point the universe was not expanding so fast, but quite slowly, relative to our current time frame?

Damn. Time is such a tricky little dimension. I vaguely remember reading an article about when exactly our three spatial dimensions and time were created, relative to the Big Bang, but I can't even remember the gist of it. It might be my imagination, but I also vaguely remember reading an article stating that time, at some point in the past, moved at a different speed, but I forget if it was faster or slower. How do you even measure that?

Perceiving our three dimensions is easy, look up, look down, look right, left, forward, do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around. Perceiving time going by may take a little concentration, but yes, there it is going by, and I suppose it is going by at a certain rate. But if time suddenly sped up or slowed down, how would we even notice it? I think that was covered in the article, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't my imagination.

So maybe the Big Bang at the time it occurred was observably slow, no less violent and dramatic, but time-wise – slow. Strange, since I think we equate a violent occurrence with speed or rapidity.

It's uncanny how well Buddhism and modern Cosmology go well together. Not specifics, but basic things. For example, a component of enlightenment is an understanding or realization of moments in time, what a moment is, how it arises, exists, changes, and decays.

Also, the Buddha spoke in inconceivably large numbers, such as numbers as great as the grains of sand that line the holy river Ganges. Or if each grain of sand along the holy river Ganges was a Ganges itself, and numbers as great as all the grains of sand of all of those rivers Ganges.

I heard an astronomer state that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the planet earth. Take a handful of sand and watch it filter through your fingers and it's mind-boggling how many stars there are in the universe.

There are a bunch of things, through the years, that while reading some Buddhist tract, I'd equate it to some astronomical/cosmological concept, and vice versa. I like it even better when I think of the dichotomy of the Buddha coming to these realizations with just insight, and modern astronomy coming to them with a bevy of scientific instruments and observations. The two extremes just fitting so well together.

I recently watched the Pink Floyd "Dark Side of the Moon" DVD, and Roger Waters said something that I've always agreed with, that our basic personalities are formed in the formative years of our lives, and not much of that basic personality changes for the rest of our lives.

I bank a lot on what a child takes in prior to learning what "mommy" or "ball" or "doll" is. From the point our memory kicks in, what I consider the proverbial beginning of the end, we start discriminating the world around us. We receive stimuli and experience things, we learn and grow and develop, but our reactions and what we learn and how we grow are all informed by that basic personality; what our infantile minds soaked in unconsciously without discrimination.

This means two things to me, variations on a theme, really: 1) we should live true to our nature; and 2) we can't change ourselves into being what we aren't. But I don't want to give the impression that I'm making a huge sweeping theory that I think applies to everyone.

It comes down to: 1) I have always tried to live true to myself (that was a very conscious thought when I was a teenager); and 2) there are limits to how much I can change or stray from my basic core personality.

I think of this because of the seeming changes since spending a week at the monastery, but nothing has changed. We experience things that make it look like we've changed, but it's more blossoming of different realizations.

The idea of renouncing material living resonated in me a long time ago. It has never completely gone away, although it has never solidly taken root. The same goes with suicide (which is a form of renouncing material living if you think about it), it's something that resonated early and it has never gone away, and has never pushed itself as an issue over the edge. So to speak.

I'm not saying that renunciation or suicide was specifically planted in my subconscious infant mind, but something was that when I came across the idea of suicide in my life, a realization blossomed, something resonated. Same thing with the attraction to monastic life.

In Buddhism, they say physical manifestation occurs with causality and conditions. So looking at a barren hillside, it is not accurate to say that there are no flowers there, because come Spring and the cause and conditions presented by the sun, rain, and seeds, then will there be flowers.

Or here's a more modern-day example I thought while standing outside the SF Zen Center: when you have a date with someone, you don't immediately go into the bedroom and hit the sack. You prepare, get dressed to look and smell nice, you chit chat and charm, you have dinner, some drinks, maybe a movie, and then when the conversation winds down and the attraction is there, then all the causes and conditions are in place to head into the room with the bed to do the nasty. I can't wait until I can give Dharma Talks.

Anyway, maybe that's what's happening now for me with a decision to be made towards one form of renunciation or the other. The core impulse towards renunciation has always been here, never went away. But now the conditions have arisen in this life, informed by my entire history of karmic causality, whereby one of these two things must happen.

Living a normative life has never been a primary focus in life; job, career, family, growing old. I had a job and quit it because I find it meaningless to be caught in the cycle of making money to spend it; endure 9 to 5 in order to entertain and sustain myself from 5 to 9.

I haven't been in a relationship for five years, and now as a practical matter, considering my values, it would be pointless to get into one. My desire to obtain the benefits of being in a relationship is outweighed by my lack of desire to be caught up in that whole relationship thang.

Finally, playing music has been a motivating factor for continuing on with material life all these years, but even the desire for that gratification is completely gone.

To me, it all makes sense, and I don't feel trapped by feeling these are my only choices. It feels right and true to myself, although I can see how that kind of choice might be horrific to most folk. Hm, I hadn't thought about how other folk may react being in my shoes. Interesting. But then I read other folks' weblogs and I feel that if I were in their shoes, I would feel trapped and horrified at the choices I would have to make.

I'm still waiting for the effects of the monastery to wear off. 

It was overall a great experience; like a fish in water was I, and the possibility that I might enter the monastery, rather than a cemetery, has increased greatly. But I'm still getting my bearings. 

The overall experience has left me very happy, but not as in "happy happy joy joy" happy. Happy as in appreciative happy, as in glad to be able to feel alive happy, as in I can still kill myself and be happy happy. That is to say maybe it's more an objective happy than a subjective happy, although there is some overlap. 

This week since I've been back has gone quickly, though, and I'm not sure what the changes are yet. I went to Beale Street and that was fine, but to the extent that I had been considering them my last social group, that's not entirely accurate, as if they meant something. We go to play NTN trivia, not to be chummy. 

I've also gotten together with Sadie, and that was fine, too. I was willing to let everything go, but not letting everything go is also fine. I did feel sensitive to the hard times she's going through these days, and I did my best to respond positively, but I'm not really qualified to counsel or give advice. I gave my responses, but I felt they suffered from what I criticized about the responses to that Craig's List suicide note, that I wasn't getting into her shoes and walking around; that I was speaking from some way out plane, removed from her suffering. 

I noted her language and negativity and the resounding, boldfaced word "can't" and the idea of "impossible", and I felt such violence in that. It's such a violent way of treating oneself, building unsurpassable brick walls of futility, but it's a genuine feeling that shouldn't be cavalierly negated. 

I've visited violence upon myself in many forms in the past, but I recognize that always, on some level, I wanted to. It served a purpose and I recognized it as such. That's probably why I can't really empathize with other people's suffering. 

I rarely did what I didn't want to do, and I think that's often the case with most us, but not realizing that, it's useless to be told that. Having lost control, desperate trying to gain control, it's useless to be told that maybe you want to be out of control or that there's something to learn from it, and you'll gain control when you deep down in your soul realize you want control. Even if it's because you need it. 

I came back from the monastery to find Sadie had gone through this weblog. I knew I should have told her what I was doing and I'd be gone for a week. She was actually the last thing I thought of as I left my apartment, and I mean that in the good way, but I was too lazy to turn the computer back on and send off the email, so I guess I was asking for it. But now I have to consider the conundrum of people you know having access to your inner thoughts. 

I gave her this URL when it was still public and generally light. But since then I chased my regulars away and this weblog went underground to be unself-conscious and uncensored. Basically, that comments from the peanut gallery were no longer welcome. 

I can't tell her not to come here anymore, although I expressed my extreme reservations about acquaintances having access to each others' inner thoughts. First of all, taking weblogs seriously as a form of personal expression, they are purely personal expression, i.e., not intended for anyone specific. When I talk to someone or send someone an email, that isn't purely personal expression, it's shared expression because I'm taking into account what I know about them, how I want to say something, and what I want them to know. So going to the weblog of uncensored inner thoughts of someone you know circumvents that. 

There's also the risk of being grossly misinterpreted and people holding you to something you wrote and thinking that was written in stone. I think that risk is heightened with personal acquaintances who might succumb to the temptation to imbue everything with unintended meaning. 

Bottom line, you just can't know someone through their weblog. You can only get impressions, which is fine for strangers, but for actual acquaintances it gets messy without having your own safeguard reservations when reading someone's weblog.

Apparently, Sadie has also started a weblog and she's given me the url. But I won't go there until I feel comfortable that I won't be putting anything on her from her writings, or that there is a reason to go there. I'm satisfied that she will tell me what she wants to tell me and I don't need to go to her weblog to get information or topics to grill her on. If I perceive her emotional well-being getting more complicated, that is also a reason to go there, because maybe there are things she wants to express that are easier to put into a weblog than telling someone face-to-face. Also if someone says "go to my weblog if you want to know more about it", then that's also obviously a reason to go. 

But this weblog is not for anyone present, which is not to say that I don't appreciate the people I tried to chase away who have come back (or never left) and remained tactful about it.

What I don't understand is that happiness has never been a part of my life equations.

Never after the =. Never before or after + or -. Never as quotient or denominator or numerator. Maybe as square root of something or the other, but that's theoretical and starts to deal with imaginary numbers.

And yet, at the monastery, something flipped the "happiness" switch on the back of my neck to the "on" position. And suddenly it's just here as easily as I can conjure the word "joy" or "serenity" in my mind in glowing block letters on a dark background.

I skeptically take a pinch of it and rub it between my fingers trying to figure what it is, what is the nature of it, and it's something that just forms out of a calmness rooted both in a hyper-realization of the material world around me, and in the voidness of form once you start breaking down moments of time and its passing, and the impermanence of these forms as they move through this time. Woof.

And mind you, nothing has changed. Nothing I was before has been negated.

I left the the monastery this morning at 9:00. They invited me to stay until today since the Escondido fire, north of San Diego, interrupted monastic functions for two days. Three days, really, but one of those days was "lazy day" with no schedule. I would've been perfectly happy to have left on Friday. I saw the events of the fire and evacuation as part of the experience; part of my experience there. Things happening for a reason.

But I left the monastery happy and giddy, emotionally sensitive and squishy and smiling, listening to Broadway musicals for more than half the drive back home, which I did in one seven hour and fifteen minute shot, with one quick stop to put $20 of gas in my car.

"What good is sitting alone in your room
Come hear the music play
Life is a Cabaret, old chum
Come to the Cabaret"
- Cabaret

"Someone to crowd you with love
Someone to force you to care
Someone to make you come through
Who'll always be there, as frightened as you
Of being alive"
- Company

"The sun today will be scrambled for my souffle
I don't know whether to float or to fly
First I'll find something I don't need to buy
Something sweet like
(A hat with a belt, a blue parakeet
Whistles to blow as I dance down the street)
Beautiful candy, too pretty to eat
Stop living for reason
Time to start living for rhyme
I'm on a spree and I'm
Gonna make sure it's a perfectly good waste of time"
- Carnival

"See that star, I just might
Fly up there and shine as bright
But for a while I will, stand completely still
My heart's trying to tell me something
Yes, my heart begin, speak or pound or spin
Tell me something"
- Carnival

"Sunrise, sunset, swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears"
- Fiddler on the Roof

"Just join the circus like you meant to do
When you were so high
Pitch your troubles under a tent
And you're bound to lose 'em by and by
Say so long to fair Schenectady
Greet sweet Santa Fe
Toss your hat and cane in a sack again
Shoulder your pack and then hitch up the shay
Kiss the cat and never look back again
When the circus comes your way"
- Barnum

Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA

October 26, 2003; 4:08 P.M. - Impromptu picnic after a first group of monastics evacuated the monastery because of the fire. We were all packed up and ready to go when the monks decided they didn't want to leave. That's the way it works at a monastery. We eventually did evacuate, but only for a day.

Well, I'm off to the monastery for a week. I highly doubt there will be any opportunity for monastic blogging, so just in case there is any interest *ahem*, here are the rest of the responses to the Craig’s List suicide note.

Response #25, heavily edited for syntax, grammar, formatting, and especially brevity:

Date: 2003-09-25, 3:23PM

Well sir, if nothing else you have provided this day on Rants & Raves with some interesting food for thought. It blows my mind the amount of people who shut-up about their whiney complaints and tried to extend help. It reaffirms my faith in the human race. Thank you for that! I am fascinated that suicide generates more responses than just about any other topic. Maybe down deep beneath all the bitching and moaning and groaning, we aren't that horrible as a people.

Have you noticed that Craig’s List actually makes you more depressed? After spending time in Rants and Raves, I find myself feeling more depressed due to the constant hate, bitterness, and fighting spewing out of everybody. After feeling completely drained by it all, it can leave you feeling like what is the point of even trying anymore. This board can actually be damaging to your emotional well-being. I am saddened and frustrated by the amount of ignorance and hate in the vast majority of people here. This site alone can lead someone “on the verge" to want to kill themselves!!

BUT (BIG BUT) . . . LOOK AT ALL THE GOOD you have generated here today!!!!!! You have accomplished something of great value. By all means stick around, we could use more of your input here! Send us a postcard from Tahiti or somewhere. Time to get out BUT NOT GIVE UP! Already, YOU HAVE HELPED MANY OF US HERE, just today. IMAGINE how much more you can do with your entire life ahead of you. Peace, Bro.

P.S., if you are a fake, thanks anyway. IT HAS been a good day on CL, AT LAST!

This response was considerably longer and really didn't say much more than this. It had more of a sarcastic edge, though. Overall it's positive and sympathetic, but affirms the negativity the suicide feels. I don't know. I just don't get a strong feeling out of this response, maybe I'm jaded after going through all these responses. Maybe it's just his style that isn't doing it for me. Maybe it's the irony and contradiction in how he's telling the suicide to not kill himself because of the positive effect he's had by posting on Craig's List that he was going to kill himself.

Response #26, lightly edited:

Date: 2003-09-25, 4:03PM

Wow. Before the suicide guy on CL RNR, I really never thought about all of the things that might make someone really try to do, well, you know, do that terrible thing that he is going to do.

Uh, are you serious? The suicide in cyberspace is the oldest happening around, because every single one of us has contemplated the world without us in it, and this kind of forum gives you the closest idea to it without actually doing anything. Please let the suicide guy rest in peace now for the next identity quick-change artist who decides to try on their fantastic cyber-role.

This is a jaded response that doesn't believe for a second that the suicide is real, which is fair. Why should we believe anything online is real? That's why I find this response fascinating, it's more a comment on cyberspace and virtual reality, including weblogs. The vast majority of people allowed themselves to take the suicide note as real, others were skeptical but also allowed for the possibility.

This person knows exactly what's really going on and knows it isn't a suicide note. And that's totally fair, no one can prove otherwise. But it could also be that she spends way too much time online and her primary form of human contact is in geek chatrooms and message boards. After all, as her first paragraph states, she has never put any thought into the issue. It makes sense that dealing with it or responding to it is not even in her reality.

Response #27, edited for syntax and grammar and brevity:

Date: 2003-09-25, 4:14PM

I agree with a couple of seemingly opposing "sides" to the argument.

1) For/to me, in principle, suicide is my choice - my body, my life. The idea that it's actually a crime to take one's life is absurd in so many ways.

2) For/to me, being physically disabled and in chronic physical pain (with the attendant psychological pain), and believing in the right to end one's life based on the pain being too much to bear, I can easily transfer this belief over to mental/emotional/spiritual pain.

We all suffer physical pain, yes? Some of us only moments here and there - and way at the other end, some of us all the time. If you believe in "assisted suicide" for physical illness, where do YOU draw the line? How do YOU decide, "This person isn't in ENOUGH pain to be allowed to go, but maybe that person is” or “This physical condition doesn't merit the choice, but that one does." It's a complex issue, but ultimately it comes down to the choice of the person in pain.

Some people experience the "usual/norm", the "human condition" kind of suffering in their minds/hearts/spirits. Some suffer on and off, here and there, to greater or lesser degrees. Some folks, for whatEVER reason(s), suffer a lot, chronically. And this seemingly never-ending, overwhelming, beyond any therapeutic measures physical pain, can seem/be unbearable. I believe that if I am at that threshold, I have the right to step on over.

3) I also concur that suicide is "the ultimate form of liberation". But I, too, in my lifelong struggle with depression, have often veered AWAY from taking my life BECAUSE I felt I had the right/freedom to move on if I wanted to! That belief reassured me that I wasn't trapped, imprisoned by anyone else's controls. That consoled me, relaxed, relieved me. And that's cool.

4) Life is precious. I don't actually want to lose it. Wanting to go (FOR ME) ISN'T because I do not appreciate the gift/blessing of life - it's because I can't bear some kind of pain - not because I don't want to be here, but actually because I can't bear being here with such ACUTE sensitivity to life AND such pain.

I don't have a primal taboo against suicide because I believe that THIS life/planet/timespacecontinuum isn't the ONLY one there is or ever will be! It's all energy changing from one form to another, on and on. I can relax, there will be many other "lives" to live, "I" (my soul/spirit/energy) won't ultimately cease to exist.

But yes, I'd rather stay - AND I'd rather be relatively free of excruciating pain while here! It's a hard balance.

5) I also think of the pain that would be generated by my departure - yes, that too keeps me here at times when I'd rather not be. However, I don't believe the choice of suicide is in and of itself a totally "selfish" thing (selfish in that there is no concern for others) - because I DO believe that we are all connected. No matter how seemingly few people are in my life, how seemingly little effect my presence may have, I realize my absence would create ripples.

And I shudder at the thought of leaving loved ones with the grief, anger, despair, misunderstanding etc. that my departure might cause. I would never want to move on with that legacy left behind me ... ending my pain leading to the perpetuation of others'.

For me, some things in life are simple, but not easy. This topic is neither. And this brings me to an enormous respect for the desire to take one's life. People confronted with suicide, on whatever "sides", deserve a lot more than absolutes, goading, fury, self-righteousness, dismissiveness, condemnation, rejection, other's own ego'ed motivations, from us.

Truth to tell, I didn’t read this whole response through until I had to comment on it because it was just too verbose and convoluted to get through. I think this person is extremely complicated and intelligent, and is therefore very specific about the language he uses, but hasn’t learned to self-edit and be concise, and in the end that just mucks it up. I know because I suffer from that a lot, and I strive to always simplify. So in editing this response, it was my aim to make it readable since I agree with his points. FOR/TO ME, this response is worth reading carefully to take it in.

And the final one I deemed worthy to copy, response #28:

Date: 2003-09-25, 7:04PM

If you've decided to kill yourself, I doubt that a bunch of strangers could change your mind. But I'd like to argue against your statement that you have not made a difference in the world.

Although it is easy to get frustrated with yourself for not being able make any big changes in the world, it is unreasonable to expect to be able to make such changes. It is a VERY rare person that can facilitate such drastic change.

Simply being a good person, setting an example for others, and being around to dilute the evil in the world is enough to make your life worthwhile. The difference it makes is subtle, but definite.

So if you're gonna kill yourself out of exasperation, fine. But if you're gonna kill yourself out of guilt, then keep in mind that you'd be doing society a disservice by lowering the good/evil ratio.

Terrific insight at the beginning of this response that a bunch of strangers couldn't change his mind once his decision was made. It's true, but I'm also glad that so many people responded like they might change his mind.

But I'm not sure where this response got the idea that the suicide wanted to effect big changes in the world. He mentioned big things that he thought was wrong with the world, but didn't source his reasons in not being able to effect change in the big picture. What he said he couldn't change was his own life, and really he is the only person who can gauge that.

To the extent that he addressed the big picture, he was talking to us. He wasn't inviting a response to him. He made his decision, but we still have our decision to make this world a better place by what we do, by what we're considerate of, and what we complain about or act to change. But by "giving up" himself, he's not likely to convince anybody.

I like the point in this response about the value of just being a "good" person in this world. I appreciate that. But ultimately I don’t think that would stop a suicide. We are all selfish, and this response is arguing that selflessness is a reason to live. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were so?

I appreciate the little differences I make in daily life, smiling to strangers, being respectful and courteous. It really might make a difference in a small way to people, especially in our modern society so full of cynicism, cruelty, and indifference. But again, it’s hardly enough to counter a decision to leave.

I wish I had someone to talk to. But I could only talk to someone I loved. And if I loved someone, I wouldn't need to talk. How typical.

I've been challenging myself lately on the suicide thing. Maybe it's a climate thing and this base desire to live will stop in a few weeks. In any case, I've succeeded in thoroughly . . . not confusing myself . . . just equivocating at a time when there is no motivation to equivocate.

I tell myself to keep steady, and the most important thing is to be confident and not be confused about my belief. I've always been open to what I believe in, and self-doubt is not a positive part of that process. If I decide against suicide, it has to be positive and affirming, not a result of self-doubt or fear.

When you lay a foundation for a house, you have to build a house. You can't change while it's going up and decide that you want to build a skyscraper or a ship. If you lay the keel, you're going to build a ship. You can't decide later that you want to build a statue without tearing everything down and starting from scratch.

Suicide isn't something that occurs to me in bad times as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. It's the foundation of the way I live my life. And I've been twisting and turning every possibility that could be built on that foundation without having to tear it all down and start from scratch.

That's why it's so hard when I get to the brink and find myself feeling like living indefinitely, without some sort of end date. It would be like trying to build an airplane out of the foundation of a house. A) It won't fly; B) airplanes don't need a basement.

So this is the point where my imaginary interventionists jump in like Craig's List Suicide Note Respondents and start spewing bunk about being strong and being able to turn my life around, change, and live, it's possible if I try. And this is when I give my blanket response to all those respondents: You just don't get it.

They're empty words in the end because they don't get it. Because they dismiss years and years, months and months, days and days, hours and hours of a psyche fragile built on a foundation that assumes its own dissolution, all with a quick stroke of uninformed idealism. Yet I'm still here. Granted, with no friends, no family, no job, no career, no talent, no prospects, but I'm here.

Done:
It's been 8 months since I quit my job and proceeded to float through 6 months of perceived nothingness.

That's OK, I'm OK with nothingness, it's nothing to beat myself up over. It's been 2 months since I hit that wall and realized I wasn't ready yet, but refused to go back to any status quo that is the normativity of our mundane living lives. I cut way back on drinking, I stopped cutting altogether, I packed away my guitars and basses, and I've been reading fairly diligently and sitting at least twice a day with occassional break days since then.

I don't know what's next, but I need to get moving, stop procrastinating, commit. Yea, this is flawed, but I needed a drink this afternoon for the first time in who knows when in order to commit to a week in a monastery, starting this Friday.

I don't think this stint in a monastery is going to accomplish anything. I just want the imprint of the experience on my psyche. If I really thought monastic life is for me in this lifetime, I would have signed up for the required two weeks as preliminary. If things go incredibly well, I'll ask if I can spend another week there beyond what I signed up for.

If I go for just one week, I'll come back on October 31st and leave for New Jersey to return the car between November 5th and November 8th, after elections. I'll take my time across the country and expect to get to New Jersey mid-month-ish. Then maybe I'll fly back here before Thanksgiving.

Once I'm back here, then final decisions will need to be made. But there are too many things between now and then to project on them now. Hopefully I'll just be closer to the goal.

twilight:
Autumn nights, autumn nights, even in the Bay Area they're so beautiful they make you want to die cry. I have to get out of the Bay Area. It isn't the general cold here that is killing me, as I'm craving that feeling of November and December, the melancholy, deep, quiet cold air, when nature has died and strange memories of your entire life come to haunt and are more vivid and alive than any other time of year.

Oh, the things I remember. It reminds me that I'm here and now. I'm here. And I'm now. The whole city is far away from me now. I don't know a soul here. I know that if I met a soul here, I wouldn't like them. I need community to live. I've rejected every community I've had. That is to say I've rejected what I need to live. At least food and water keeps me metabolizing.

The windows aren't double-paned, apartments aren't really insulated, I don't need my long coat, I may or may not need my thick sweatshirt. There won't be any anticipation of snow, there will be no snow to smother and mute the cityscape, no snow crunching beneath my feet, no snowtracks to let you know someone's been there. We'll get rain. Miserable rain. Weeks and weeks of rain. No snow.

One more week until Daylight Savings Time ends and my system goes into shock, shut down, gets buried for the winter, and my spine turns into a knife's edge. Another year of "I can't, I can't, I can't", and yet somehow April comes around and . . . I did. Maybe it'll be different this time.

Craig’s list suicide note, response #24, lightly edited:

Date: 2003-09-25, 3:12PM

I honestly don't think that this is real. I think it is just something to get all of you logged on tomorrow, waiting to see how it was done, waiting to see IF it was done. But that is just me. And if it is real, hey, that is his thing, more power to him. He is one of the weak (well-spoken weak, at least), and we all know that the world needs less of that. I personally believe that a person that would sit here and advertise the fact that he is going to kill himself, and let people have little flashbacks of their personal experiences with loved ones, is a fucking nut job and should rid the world of his/her presence. Good luck to you, man. Sleep well 6 feet under, or may your ashes float in the wind for a long time. Take it sleazy.

This response is so dispassionate and cynical that it’s a wonder why he even bothered to post a response. Posting on Craig’s List is pretty easy, but it isn’t exactly instant messaging, you have to jump through some hoops.

He states that he doesn’t think it’s a real suicide, and at first he doesn't seem to have a very strong opinion either way, but then he not only proceeds to respond as if it were real, but all he has to offer is misanthropy and disdain. It’s ironic because this is the kind of person that makes a suicide feel good about leaving. You might even hope that it would be this kind of person who rids the world of his/her presence. But that wouldn’t be right, would it?

And now a little Poetry Corner from response #23 to the Craig’s List suicide note:

Date: 2003-09-25, 3:05PM

To You:

People are always judging,
when they don't understand.
I live in a society,
where one has to grow-up,
and be a man.
I sit in this room,
not knowing what to do.
I am so confused,
and no one has a clue.
No one is here to hold me,
and tell me it will be alright.
Maybe I should just kill myself,
and pray to God to hold me tight.
But then I thought twice,
about taking my life.
After knowing someone cares,
it doesn't feel right.
How can I just throw my life away,
in just one night?
There is so much more to life,
then to not put up a fight.
I need to learn to love myself,
then everything will be alright.
As long as I see,
what life has to offer me.
There is nothing else to do,
but to live life and be free!

I’m no poet. I know it. So no comment. Except maybe *bleah*. Simplistic drivel. It's like when you're miserable or in a crappy mood, or caught stuck in the rain, and someone is going off reciting Christian or Hallmark inspirational sayings. And you just want to hit them. Or puke. Or puke on them. And then hit them.

Suicide note response #22, edited for syntax:

Date: 2003-09-25, 2:56PM

Seriously, what was your point of posting here on Craigslist? You claim that it is not a cry for help . . . sure! I was feeling a bit sad and sympathizing, but with your kind of attitude, I think the world is better off without you. Good luck! Just know that you're bound for the fires of hell. While the rest of us will continue with our sweet life and look forward to the gates of heaven awaiting us.

ADIOS!

I’m guessing this is a response to the suicide’s follow-up posting (below) because of the "but with your kind of attitude" line. It sounds like the original note made him feel one way, but then he changed after reading the follow-up. I can’t identify the "kind of attitude" in the follow-up that is so offensive. Maybe that he was unmoved by all the responses? What did he expect?

The moralistic, religious swing in mentioning the "fires of hell" and the "gates of heaven" says more about the hypocrisy, smug self-righteousness, and intolerance that religion often provokes than anything else. As if suicide is the cosmic "Go to Jail" card, as if this writer is the paragon of compassion and virtue, as if he personally knows what’s awaiting any of us.

A real compassionate "heaven" it must be that is awaiting this guy, after telling the suicide the world is better off without him and sarcastically wishing him luck. A real thrill to be knocking back pints of St. Peter’s amber with him. But if G*d gave him such a "sweet life", it makes sense that the gates of heaven await him, too. Although if the suicide has any loved ones, I’m sure they would think differently about this guy’s fate.

Or is it irony? Is he just being ironic?

And now, a word from our sponsor original suicide note poster, basically unedited:

Date: 2003-09-25, 2:25PM

By the time many of you read this, I will either be on my way or gone. As I stated before, my post is not a cry for help or a plea for attention. I just wanted to voice some feelings before I left.

I thank all of you for your responses. I have read all of them with careful thought. To those of you who care and offered assistance, I thank you especially, but do know I have sought all of the help I have been able to stand. To those of you who write back in anger, I feel for your losses, but do know those feelings you express are yours. You have experienced a loss. Those who left you did not. Please do not be angry with us who are done here. We are merely offering a good-bye. Finally, to those of you who have offered comedy, you have indeed brought a smile to my face. Not enough to make me wish to stay, but a smile nonetheless. As far as donating my personal belongings, I have already taken care of most of that and have only the bare minimums to take with me.

To those of you who offered tears, I sincerely apologize. It was not my intention to make you sad. Please do not be. This is a positive choice for me, and I am not sad about it. I am sorry for your empathy. And I am sorry I cannot feel the same as you.

To those of you who have responded with inanities: please understand you are part of the problem. You offer such excellent proof of part of that problem against which I rail. You lives are vapid and empty with the exception of your own self-absorption. Please do not be part of the problem. Instead of just complaining, either fix the problems in your life, or politely excuse your selves.

As for my parking, space, that indeed will be up for grabs. And that shall be explained later.

Thank you all again for your responses. I shall continue reading your responses until late this afternoon when I depart.

Some of you have expressed the morbid curiosity so endemic to our human condition. I do not blame you; I would be curious as well. I have enlisted the aid of a close friend who will be posting the details of my departure tomorrow after I am gone. If I post such details now, some of you will doubtlessly attempt to notify officials at a needless expense to our society.

This friend is NOT assisting me with the act of suicide. Only with some of the details after I am gone.

Again, thank you for all of your comments and feelings. I do appreciate all of it, but I am just done. I have thought about this for several years now and have explored many different options. Needless to say, none of the options have blossomed in to anything I wish to pursue.

Thank you, and good-bye.

There’s nothing I can identify about this to suggest that it’s a fake, i.e., not by the original poster. Aside from the new mention of a "friend", it’s very consistent with the tone and content of the original suicide note. I think suicides tend to take meticulous care of relative trivialities, and this posting seriously addresses all the types of responses that were posted. He reiterates points from the original note, and they're consistent.

There was a post later on that was purportedly by the original poster, saying it was all a hoax to get a rise out of people, and I regret not copying it for further examination, but my impression was that it was clearly a forgery.

There were no follow-ups the next day by the "friend". It’s possible that the suicide overestimated the friend’s willingness or ability to be so "objective" and go along with it. It is also possible that the suicide backed down at the last moment and found some other course to follow.

a bit of realistic:
Mind you, I'm fully aware of the conceit this weblog takes in even suggesting that anyone cares whether I commit suicide or can justify it. The truth is that I systematically phase people out of my life in order to remain abstract, nominally significant, and ultimately inconsequential.

Suicide note response #21, heavily edited for brevity and the gist of it:

Date: 2003-09-25, 1:53PM

I am witnessing right now a life that is tragically and painfully being drained away by liver cancer. Day by day, my grandfather’s soul leaves us. He used to be so vibrant, always laughing and telling jokes, a sparkle and love for life in his eyes. That was before he started drinking and became anti-social and resentful of the family for “leaving” him. He basically drank himself to death. Despite all the hurt, pain, and anger that his drinking caused, my family is 100% here for him through his last days. All of the pain has gone away and turned in to love, sympathy and sorrow for what happened and what could have been.

How does this apply to you, my friend? My grandpa could have changed his life, but he took the easy way out - alcohol. When I look into his sunken eyes, I see so much pain and regret. I’m so sad that he is dying with all his pain and mistakes left unresolved. I wish I could have helped him while he was still able to make a change, but he had to do it for himself, but he had no desire to even try. Now that there’s no turning back, I see him living every last second in complete fear. I don’t know what happens when we come to the end of our rope, but I see my grandfather clinging on to life with every last breath he has. He’s scared as hell and we can see it in his eyes. Please listen to my words.... merely “enough” is never enough. You CAN make a change in your life, whether it’s talking to a counselor, taking anti-depressants, consider what is making you stressed/sad/unhappy. You can turn your life around, remember, it is what you make of it.

This is terrible about her grandfather, but the moral of this story of consequences and regret is not directly applicable to suicides. The grandfather made his decisions to act (and not act), consequences were manifested, and he lived to regret it. For successful suicides, consequences and regret are precluded, although the consequences and regret of failure probably should be considered.

As for the applicable part of this response, for the downtrodden, for the messed up life, I also believe in the human spirit and the ability to change and turn a life around if the will to do so is there. For the person considering suicide, consequences and potential regret should be considered, as well as whether the issue is a matter of having a screwed up life and whether there is the ability to change things and turn things around.

Again, this response implies that suicide is an "easy way out", which it isn't. It's more of a desperate way out, but how someone acts in desperation is hardly the easy way, unless by "easy", you mean easy to choose.

For me, living is extremely easy, existing is a combination of easy and hard, and I don't expect anyone to understand that, but there's nothing easy for me about dying or choosing to die. I am well aware that even after death, the trials I believe I will face might be harder than this life can ever be (but like any test, there's always the chance that it will be a breeze, depending on ability and preparedness). I also know that in my next life, should that be the case, I might end up in far more difficult circumstances to pursue my journey. So what's my rush? More on that later perhaps.

Anyway, the message in this response is good for suicides in general, but I don't like that she missed the part in this particular suicide's note which mentioned that he had already tried turning things around. So it's like she's moralizing and giving advice without even listening to him. Hm, she should join the mental health profession.

I intentionally left in the part of this response where she mentions the family is 100% behind him, even though he dug his own grave and caused so much distress. People who call suicides "selfish" might also call this grandfather selfish (or they might not, because that would bring to light that everything we choose to do is selfish, and for condemnation purposes, they just want to confine selfishness to suicides). Anyway, I wish those people would try imagining treating suicides this humanely, instead of taking the easy way out and calling them selfish, as if it resolves their participation in the issue.

I talked to my parents last night, and I mentioned I'm quitting my job. It has been an unwritten rule of our "cease-fire" that they are not allowed to exert pressure, coerce, or manipulate any aspect of my life, so it was with unease that I heard them saying that I shouldn't quit my job until I had another one lined up. It was thin ice they were on when they said they didn't want to see me looking for a job again for a year like before.

In the end, I recalled the other half of that cease-fire rule, that I am not to allow them to exert pressure, coerce, or manipulate any aspect of my life. And this should all be amusing as I have been unemployed for eight months already. So when I visit them next month to return their car, I can either tell them I quit, or continue keeping them in the dark. It doesn't materially matter, they're not active participants in my life and I don't care either way. But if there's an issue of who's in control, then I should tell them just to remind them.

This is really a very minor consideration on my mind.

There are still several more of those responses. I intended to stop posting them and my commentary once I felt I had exhausted the issues presented for myself, but hey, I like to process that shit. The issue is both very simple and very complicated. And I'm sure I'm not going to convince anyone of anything. I'm sure my commentary isn't even consistent.

I'm almost done with the Threefold Lotus Sutra for the second time. Never has there been a book that had me so captivated that I wouldn't recommend. I think I've heard it referred to it as the Buddhist analogy of the Qu'ran, the Bible, or the Torah. It's the final sermon before this Buddha's final extinction, but it's not that straightforward; I would go so far to say that it's not even in this dimension. Even though it's a book written for humans, it is a sermon at the highest level of Buddhism, the understanding of which humans can barely scratch. Trickle down theory maybe.

It's personal. What I get out of it may not be what anyone else gets out of it. And it's a bit confounding of a read. It's a bit confounding to read. My reading of it is informed by modern scientific cosmology and astrophysics. To understand the sheer size and esotericism involved, I'm thinking of galaxies, stars, and light years and a fourth spatial dimension, just as a tool, just to help bend my mind in a way more familiar. It's a brilliant work that any Buddhist or person with Buddhist leanings should at least run their eyes over.

Suicide note response #20, I missed copying the time stamp, heavily edited for spelling and syntax:

Hey, how's it going? I posted earlier basically telling you not to do it. Well, I've read other people's posts and the majority is telling you NOT to kill yourself. So PLEASE for the love of God - do not kill yourself. There is so much in store for you if you just open your eyes and make this day the beginning of something new. I'm telling you - APPRECIATE what you have and you will have a newfound positive outlook on life. Man, look at all these people on Craigslist, I thought all they do is whine and bitch but look what you've brought out of us. I, for one, love to complain here about stupid shit, but when I read your post, I was dumbfounded. I never thought I was capable of saying kind words to a stranger, but man I care. Yes I care for you! Be strong. Oh, to the people telling this man to go and kill himself already, if you're in such a hurry, why don't you kill yourselves - fucking assholes. DIE! Craigslist will be so much better without you selfish twisted fucks. Sorry to end this with a rant. But hey, I still care - think hard, don't do it.

Peace & love to you, my friend.


I can’t identify which earlier posting was this person’s, but it does sound an awful lot like that annoying cheerleader. Both posts mention "new beginning". By this time, the clichés are just making my eyes glaze over; not even worth picking apart. They're hurting my head.

Suicide note response #19 is another response to the other respondents, lightly edited for syntax and spelling:

Date: 2003-09-25, 1:42PM

Attention ALL Decent Human Beings, Assbags, and Those Who Don't Give a Shit:

Have you read all these response postings? What you will find is a complete and fascinating representation of society:

The "decent human beings" that are trying to help this poor soul, or fake, are the ones who keep this insane culture intact and functional. Bravo to your collective conscious. May you live forever.

Those "who don't give a shit" look at this guy as another statistic. They read it in the paper every day. It doesn't affect them. These are the guys asking (perhaps tongue in cheek) for his parking space, $$, furniture, etc. You idiots are asking for this stuff because your character is so flawed that you don't have the tools to earn it yourself. May your mother die tomorrow.

The "Assbags" encouraging the guy to JUMP or Do It, comprise the sewer system of our society and the foundation of all that we would like to eliminate for the good of a better world. May you die tomorrow.


Can’t really comment on that response! Tawk amungst yuhselves.

Suicide note response #18, heavily edited for spelling, grammar, and syntax:

Date: 2003-09-25, 12:36PM

Notice how everyone who had someone close to them die, are such ANGRY mother fuckers. Please don’t take your anger out on this confused person - it is not going to bring back your loved ones. Imagine if your father had written a post like that, then some asshole told him how much of an asshole he was, and to fuck off!! Imagine that, he would have probably done it sooner. INSTEAD, GIVE REASONS TO LIVE, you mean, heartless assholes.

I, myself, will be of minimal help in this department, because I am not too happy myself. But just get in a car and drive, the beauty of this state makes me feel better every time I see it. You have to remember, if you kill yourself, you are not hurting yourself, you are hurting everyone who loves you.

And that last guy who posted, with the .44, that was a great guy. Such a good outlook, he's a fighter. That is someone who I can take strength from. I am a guy and I don’t say this about other men very much. but he is really a great person, and a really cool dude.

Hm, I guess this is more a response to the other responses than a response to the suicide note. But I think a suicide can indirectly get something from this note. Not the banal cliché portions of going for a drive and hurting everyone who loves him, and not the patronizing prejudice against suicides implied in calling him "this confused person," but just what he’s expressing to the other response writers. That’s pretty positive.

Response #17 has absolutely nothing to do with the original suicide note. Like the "Buddha Boy" response, this idiot was inspired by the suicide note just to condescend and blow hard about his sophomoric knowledge. I’m only posting it to show the range of idiocy there is regarding responses to suicide. I tried to trim it down, but every sentence is a gem, a real eye-roller:

Date: 2003-09-25, 12:35PM

Ah, the Human Condition. To live by the flesh and be tortured by the universal soul. To realize that our individual life is just a speck in the dark, but to recognize that we make up a whole. Remember that, you are part of a whole. Whether you would want to admit it or not, you are. I won't tell you to turn to God, I won't tell you to think of all those you will leave behind, I won't tell you to persevere through your problems. I will tell you that everyone suffers, that is the Human Condition. To be a virtuous person, you must struggle, you must force yourself to find the medium between two extremes. To take one extreme over the other is not virtuous. Throughout the ages men have dealt with the same problems over and over, why do you think people still recite Shakespeare to children, why is our education system still based on the principles of The Liberal Arts? People struggle everyday, the degree to which everyone struggles is subjective. I am not in the business of telling people what to do, of telling people what they should care for, or telling someone what should be their goals. Rather, I will tell people to Think. Think before you speak, Think when you read, Think when you act, Think when you feel. Use your mind. Do not subscribe yourself to prize other's thoughts, but your own. But continually change your thoughts as you receive new information. Think about where you are, where you are going, what you are doing. If Socrates is correct, by taking your own life you are interrupting the Universal Soul. If Socrates is correct, all that you wish to know is already present within yourself, it is just a matter of time before you uncover and remind your soul of the knowledge which it already posses. If you read one book today, read Plato's "Republic". And if you do decide to live tomorrow, read St. Thomas Aquinas' "Confessions". If you don't have them, I'll even lend them to you, but don't make a choice until you have thought it through entirely. The entirety of the situation does not just subscribe to your job, your home, you family or lack of, your spouse or lack thereof, your money or lack thereof. Think.

Suicide note response #16:
Date: 2003-09-25, 12:23PM

Boy are you going to be surprised!!

You are like a child who, because he cannot see his mother in the other room thinks she is not there anymore.

The body we inhabit is far more subtle that you realize. Just because we have been enculturated and educated into believing our physical reality as perceived by our senses is all that there is, that doesn't make it so.

I am not talking about the existence of God or 'a higher order'. I am talking about Reality, Bub.

So you can go ahead and kill the body, and just as the child that discovers his mother is just around the corner, so too will you discover that a subtler form of you, yes the same you that now thinks, judges and acts, will continue existing. You can't actually kill yourself; you can only remove yourself from your gross body.

How long will you suffer after your suicide, bound to the results of this earthly life that you threw away? Without going into further details, since you are 32, expect to suffer for your immature act for another 68 years(!).

C'mon, isn't there something else you'd rather do?
The choice is yours. Don't be a chump.

Buddha Boy

Oy vey! What an embarrassing response from "Buddha Boy". I guess if you read little enough of any religious doctrine you, too, can be condescending and moralistic. OMG, what the hell is that metaphor of the mother in the next room?!!

He thinks just because there’s a Buddha in this room, it is there. He opens his mouth to show his great knowledge using specialized terms such as "gross body" and "subtle body", only to find the people he was talking to have already moved halfway down the block.

I slap his shaved monk's head 56 times. Ah, what is this? So much hair as if not shaven at all.

He is like the fifth blind man describing an elephant, wherefore unbeknownst to him he cannot even find the elephant and wanders in the field, "ah, this is what an elephant is!"