I guess I did drop it like a bombshell on my parents that I was leaving San Francisco and moving back to New Jersey within two weeks time. The first week I was back here, there was the expected discussion and concern about my future plans and job prospects.

Then it happened, my father said something in broken English that was sarcastic and obnoxious, forgetting what he never knew – that he had lost all rights to take that patronizing tone of voice with me when I unilaterally dropped and forgot everything I took issue with about them back in 1996.

Things were bad before then. Then almost overnight they had a son who was talking to them. They didn't ask what happened, they just went along with it and gave no indication how they felt about the sudden disappearance of tension and resentment.

I lost it in the moment, and I took what he said emotionally and didn't respond with a joke like I should have so that we could all laugh it off, depending on whether or not they could figure out the joke, which often depends first on whether they can figure out the English.

I have no idea what I said. I have no idea what he said. I blocked it all out almost immediately. I remember being ashamed at my slip, I'm supposed to have grown, I'm supposed to be better than that. But I do think he realized what thin ice he was suddenly on, and how quickly things could revert to pre-1996 tension.

Thin ice? I don't know. That suggests that he cares, and I'm really not convinced that he does in the conventional sense. It may very well be that he was concerned that things didn't revert to pre-1996, and the thin ice he was avoiding had nothing to do with how I felt.

I responded the next day by informing them that I would definitely be out of the house by the end of August. They back-pedaled like they've always back-pedaled before once they were faced with the damage they did. But I'm not that forgiving, and the end of August deadline stands; which is probably for the better and wiser anyway since an extended stay here certainly was not in the plans in the first place.

Since then, not a word about what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, where I'm looking for a job, what sort of job I'm looking for, that I'm looking for a job – nothing. Virtual radio silence on the topic.

I have an idea what is going on here, but I'm not going to go into it – way too complicated, as family matters tend to be. I don't think I would go quite so far as to call them psychological mind games, I don't think they intend it. I don't think they are masters of their ploys, but I think calling them subconscious psychological mind games describes it just about right.

They are just acting in character. I just have to be careful not to get caught in old family habits that I've outgrown and stay on my own path and not be swayed by any irrational emotions, and remember that they won't be affected by anything I choose to do. They won't let themselves be affected. That's not in their character.

Sorry, more on this, I know people's conceptions of God are like assholes – everyone's got one and thinks that everyone else's stinks, but I saw a car sticker that said "God Bless America", with a stars and stripes motif, and a huge Virgin Mary beside the image of the Twin Towers.

I've been taking all this "God bless America" crap since September 11 as ballyhoo, grandstanding, whatever. It's just an expression of whatever, patriotism or whatever bullshit reason to wage war, be xenophobic, or discriminate against Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians. My use of "whatever" three times in row is an indication of how much thought I gave to it.

It didn't really occur to me that people actually believe that God has something to do with all this, and that God specifically "blesses" America over everyone else (whatever that means, if God blessed America on September 11, I hope He doesn't do it again).

That image of the Virgin Mary with the Twin Towers really hammered home that people really do believe that it isn't just political, that there's a twisted theological component to what happened on September 11 and what America has become and done since then, and "God bless America" is meant somehow literally.

I'm appalled speechless. I don't know where to begin. I don't even want to touch the minor fact that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Allah is Arabic for God (although the etymology is more complicated (and rich), which is why it has become custom for Muslims to retain "Allah" even in translation).

The split comes from both sides with Christians separating their "God" from "Allah" by constantly referring to the Muslim God as "Allah" as if it was something foreign to them, and Muslims criticizing the Christian conception and treatment of the One and Only True God. Whose approval do you need to split God into theirs and ours anyway?

But this is what I was getting at in my previous post. We have this twisted notion that "God blesses America", and we have such conviction and faith in it that it has become a rallying cry to wage war against Iraq and create untold suffering with no end to it anywhere in sight.

"God Bless America" and we create these divisions, these separations, this "otherness", this "us and them", and us have no responsibility for them suffering. But only if we could see their suffering first hand, be there and live it. But we can't so we continue to deliver suffering to them, and they try to deliver suffering to us, all in the name of some concept of God, a human-made veil of God.

Believing that there is a theological, "God bless America" component to the aftermath of September 11 is just as bad, and almost the same thing, as the terrorists believing what they did was in the name of God. It never ends when you have a faulty, dualistic conception of God.

I knew I had written before what I wrote about in my previous post. Still not as in depth as it could be, but at least I'm consistent in my descriptions, I think.

I believe in God, but not in a being that is God, nor a higher power that is God. A lot of people might say right there that I, in fact, don't believe in God; I've just twisted and distorted my definition of God to encompass what might really be an agnostic or atheist position.

For me, God starts with us. Or me. Or Me. From there it spreads like a quantum wave encompassing every little, iddy biddy, tiny bit of the fabric of all existence, non-existence, all that can be known plus whatever amount of what can't be known.

In a way, I see cosmology as an ongoing scientific study of or search for God.

In fact, as soon as you say "God", you've already missed it by trying to grasp it, control it, own it, know it, unless your conception of God is such that when you hear the word "God" it blows up like a supernova, and you lose any attached conception of God, especially any "religious" conception of God. It's probably no coincidence that this is more or less the same as enlightenment in Buddhism.

But I digress. The important facet is that it starts with me. Or Me. And no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should stop me from realizing that for everybody else, it starts with them. Or Them. Not that it does, since others have their own conception of God and probably don't want me imposing my conception of God on them.

But it means that no religious doctrine, canon, principle, or belief should ever be exalted over Them. Especially when dealing with Them. Face to face. That is all. And that's only where it starts.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Joel: Hello, O'Connell.
Maggie: What do you want?
Joel: I just wanna talk.
Maggie: So talk.
Joel: Could you put the ax down, please?

Oh, and gmail gets the big donkey shaft from me.

I've had one experience in my life that might be interpreted as "mystical" – actually a series of basically the same experience. The first time it happened was when I was 14 or 15, and the last time it happened was just a few months ago (it has become such that it isn't even worth mentioning when it happens). After all this time, I still don't know what to make of it.

A full description of the evolution of the experience would bore anyone to tears, but there are commonalities which make it obvious that it's the same thing. It always happens when I'm drifting off to sleep, and suddenly I'd be fully conscious but completely paralyzed, unable to move, speak, shout, or scream, unable to mentally "snap out of it".

The experience has evolved through the years. Needless to say, the first time was really scary, and involved blinding light, deafening noise, and pure, unadulterated panic. The panic abated over subsequent occurences when I became pretty confident that I would always come out of it. Eventually, even the "paralysis" changed from literal immobility to more of a sense; like it was a space or a different form of consciousness.

Now when it happens, like it did most recently, I can sense it coming on before it actually hits; like hearing a train getting louder through a long tunnel. I can avoid it by forcing myself awake, but I usually let it happen because it's still interesting. I just let it happen and I "explore" the experience/space, but nothing "mystical" ever comes out of it. No new knowledge or revelation. It just ends and I go to sleep and wake up the next morning none the different.

Actually, there is an excellent description of the exact experience in a book called "The Woman Warrior: A Memoir of a Girlhood Among Ghosts" by Maxine Hong Kingston, only she describes the experience as being attacked by a ghost. I almost plotzed when I read that passage in the book. It's a great book anyway, go read it.

But I guess that's the whole point of this. I had this arbitrary, subjective experience which I can't recreate on demand or explain rationally, but which also can be interpreted any number of ways, depending on context. Having been raised in this modern, scientific, technological age, my impulse is to not interpret it mystically, but "rationally". Since I can't find any rational explanation, it has become an empty experience, one not even worth mentioning when it happens.

In another context, I might believe that I was being attacked by a ghost. In another context, I might believe that I was experiencing something divine or other-worldly and search for a message in the experience. I don't discount the possibilities, it's just that I was raised and educated in this particular context, and maybe I'm missing something because of it.

(sleep paralysis tag added retroactively -ed.)

Mysticism is one of those words I think I know what it is, but if pressed for a definition, I'm not so sure. So I think about how I would define it before running to a dictionary:

Mysticism: a spiritual approach, often a branch of an established religious order, that emphasizes direct experience of the intangible, unknowable, and unseen, often involving esoteric learning and practices.

OK, I'm pretty happy with that. Let's see what Merriam-Webster says:

1. the experience of mystical union or direct communion with ultimate reality reported by mystics; 2. the belief that direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth, or ultimate reality can be attained through subjective experience (as intuition or insight) 3a. vague speculation; a belief without sound basis; 3b. a theory postulating the possibility of direct and intuitive acquisition of ineffable knowledge or power.

Dictionary.com says:
1a. Immediate consciousness of the transcendent or ultimate reality or God.
b. The experience of such communion as described by mystics.
2. A belief in the existence of realities beyond perceptual or intellectual apprehension that are central to being and directly accessible by subjective experience.
3. Vague, groundless speculation.

Hm, OK so maybe I did know what it means, but I had to put a lot of thought into coming up with my definition; that certainly wasn't off the cuff. And I'm willing to concede, at the risk of being unimaginative, that science, as a field, will never be considered "mystical".

The official definitions also explain the often derogatory use of the word.

I certainly don't consider myself a "mystic" by any stretch of the imagination, but I picked up a book on Kabbalah for the first time ever at a bookstore, and man, some things were worded almost exactly how I've worded them in this blog.

One thing that really jumped off the page was about a fourth level of understanding where reality is understood as completely symbolic. I know I've written that before, because that's what I feel physical reality is – all of it is merely symbolic of something else that is the Real.

I've found that most mystical beliefs from different religious or thought systems are pretty closely aligned. That's why when I pooped out on Zen Buddhism in college I gravitated towards Sufism for a refresher shot-in-the-arm. It was the same thing, just worded differently and in a different context. I don't know why Kabbalah wasn't covered in that seminar on Western religions I took in college. Considering the focus of it, it seems remiss of the professor not to have covered it.

But I really shouldn't be too surprised at how general Kabbalistic ideas are closely aligned to Buddhism. But damn, there was a chart in the book showing the mystical mechanics of the human body, and I went running to find the Robert Thurman translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead which had basically the exact same chart in it! Only Buddhism presents it just as fact, Kabbalah roots the mechanics in Jewish theology and faith.

Anyway, it's fascinating stuff. I hadn't known that I had already been exposed to (and fascinated by) Kabbalistic ideas in the movies The Chosen and Pi, and The End of Evangelion (where it is taken completely out of context and used just as cultural fodder).

I guess cerebrally I tend towards mysticism, but I haven't touched it with passion, with my heart, and that's why I don't feel like a mystic. I haven't touched the understanding that I process cerebrally.

In another several thousand years, understanding might become either greater or of such a different quality that what our cutting edge sciences are theorizing now might be studied as secular mythology, even mysticism.

Our sciences, and our faith in sciences, are a product of our time, this moment in our mental evolution; this moment in the mental evolution of our consciousness. At other points of our mental evolution, our conceptions were completely different.

When people looked up at the night sky in ancient times, they had their conception of it. We look back at them and say that their conception was wrong. But when they looked up at the night sky, they were looking up at pretty much the same night sky that we look up and see, albeit much clearer, and it didn't concern them that sometime in the future, someone might think back to them and call their conceptions wrong. Even if it did occur to them, why would it change their conception, their reality?

It is so hard for us to imagine ourselves in another time past, and imagine the understanding of that time as the whole thing, as true and in fact. Greek gods, Roman gods, Hindu gods, Judea, Buddhist insight cosmology, Earth spirits, the scientific method.

Nope, that last one still doesn't fit. Not yet. We haven't discarded it yet. We don't think we ever will. Science is the final say. I'm not knocking science. Science is pretty fantastic stuff, but we're so arrogant about its superiority over any other world view. We don't even think of science as a "world view", we think of scientific conclusions as fact. Until the next scientific conclusion comes along, at least.

Even in my armchair field of interest of astronomy, navigating a spacecraft across the solar system and into orbits of other planets is pretty good evidence of the precision accuracy of science. But to think science, as a system, is the zenith of human knowledge and development of consciousness is possibly short-sighted, and not very imaginative.

Stephen Hawking's recent retraction of his prior theory on black holes sounds rather unimaginative, especially regarding something as poorly understood as black holes. Black holes are currently the rabbit holes of cosmology. Definitively supporting or retracting various theories like he's writing it in stone is like Einstein calling his cosmological constant his "biggest blunder". Decades later, scientists have revived the cosmological constant as viable in dark energy. Anyway, Hawking's position is probably better explained in the full published paper, and I probably couldn't even understand it if I tried.

There will always be a place for science, absolutely no doubt. Its accuracy regarding what it does cover and its benefits to humankind are invaluable. But if science and technology are the end-all of human thought and analysis, I think we're doomed. We might as well throw in the towel right now. It has to lead to something bigger. More compassionate.

I apologize in advance for any faulty physics, but physics isn't the point of this, he said.

It's all too much to get my mind around. I look up into the night sky and see a lovely, but very limited universe. Use a powerful enough telescope and we can get images of the universe from waaaay back in time; galaxies that don't even look like that anymore (or as one closed universe theory posits, we're looking at the same galaxies, including our own, over and over at different time periods over billions of years of existence).

And not long ago, the WMAP satellite brought us a digitized rendition of what is called the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation, the remnant radiation from the Big Bang, the primordial glow of the universe before the first stars coalesced and ignited. There's not much we can see beyond that.

Beyond that we get to the Inflation Theory – the theory that from the Big Bang, the universe experienced an almost instantaneous, hundreds-fold growth, faster than the speed of light. One "moment", all the stuff in the universe is contained in a size smaller than a proton, and then in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second (mathematically, that's 10 to the minus 35th second) it inflates to . . . I assume big. A big space. I assume bigger than the size of a basketball or I'd be disappointed, but who knows?

That's all fine for the astrophysicists and mathematicians, but for the layperson, isn't that splitting fine enough hairs to allow us to say it just "happened"? The universe was just created, pretty much out of nothing. At one moment, it pretty much wasn't there, come on, it's smaller than a proton, and the next moment, it's there. Faster than the blink of the eye, faster than the snap of the finger, faster than presto.

But you don't get something from nothing, so we say that the contents of the entire universe was all there. Anything that was going to become something was contained in that Big Bang. That's a lot of stuff. Presumably it contained all the stuff that comprises the theorized countless black holes in the universe.

Black holes, which are so massive that not even light can escape their gravity; where the laws of physics break down; where relativity and quantum mechanics must be reconciled (which is one of the main reasons physicists are trying to find a way to mathematically reconcile them with String and M Theory).

If the mass of a single black hole is so incredible, imagine something the mass of all the black holes in the universe, plus all the other mass in the universe concentrated in one point smaller than a proton. Never mind the mechanism to instigate the Big Bang and Inflation, physicists have theories about that which I don't need to understand. I'm just fixated on that concentrated little dot that is so inconceivably massive that it seems to me that it would crush itself out of very existence before the mechanics of the Big Bang could even happen. Nothingness.

I'm not touching the physics, that's way out of my league. I'm rolling in metaphysics, and it seems to me that: A) something may have been, in fact, created out of nothing; and B) that something was created instantaneously. When I read shit about the creation of the universe, I don't particularly care about the science, because it's so bizarre that my brain is mostly re-interpreting it into metaphysics or mysticism anyway; the metaphor, the puzzle, the journey, the Big Bang of consciousness, creation myths.

In another several thousand years, understanding might become either greater or of such a different quality that what our cutting edge sciences are theorizing now might be studied as secular mythology, even mysticism.

A meme that I got from Infinitely Pie:
1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?
June 5, 2004. Don't know, didn't care. And with flags all over the place still at half shaft, I don't care even more now. Put the flags at full shaft already, which is what he gave people with AIDS and poor people.

2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?
September 11, 2001. Living at 1557 Noe St. in San Francisco. Woke up to my radio alarm clock saying a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I imagined a small plane crashing into one of the towers by accident. When I woke up next, I heard that one of the towers had collapsed. I jumped off my loft bed, taking most of the blankets with me, and ran into the living room to turn on the TV.

3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?
August 31, 1997. Living at 198 Shakespeare St. in Daly City. I came home one night and my conservative, white guy dating, classical music playing, Japanese roommate had it on the TV. It was very sad.

4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?
April 5, 1994. Living at 247 19th Ave. in San Francisco. I wasn't a Nirvana fan yet. I liked everything I heard on the radio, but I was waiting to see if they were a passing fad. His suicide made me realize they weren't a passing fad, that he was the real deal, and I went to Amoeba that day and bought as many used CDs of theirs as I could find.

5. Take one for The Gipper: What’s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?
I'm partial to the Alzheimer flavored ones. Bastard.

6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA due to AIDS?
Ironically, after all that lambasting Reagan, I don't know. I'm not a basketball fan. But I recall watching an appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show about it. Does that sound right?

7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?
March 30, 1981. I was in 6th grade at Englewood Cliffs Upper School. When I heard the news, I believe I was in science class. This would have been several months after John Lennon was assassinated. I didn't know who John Lennon was. I was in wood-working when classmate David Gibbons asked, "Did you hear about that guy who was shot like 6 times and his wife who was right next to him wasn't touched?"

8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?
January 28, 1986. I was a Junior in high school and I had just gotten home after noon from a final that I had that morning. It was sunny and cold. Chris Grantham, a singer in a group I jammed in, called and asked, "Am I seeing what I'm seeing on TV?", I said, "I don't know, what are you seeing on TV?", he said, "I think you should turn on your TV", "What channel?", "Any channel".

9. Where were you when the OJ verdict was announced?
October 3, 1995. I tried to ignore it since I detest media hype. I was probably at law school when I overheard the news in a hallway. I remember one person's assessment of it saying maybe it wasn't right, but it was just, referring to the history of injustice that black people have endured in this country and continue to face. I didn't disagree with that assessment.

10. Where were you when the Berlin Wall fell?
November 9, 1989. I was at Oberlin College. I actually don't remember paying much attention to it, although I'm sure I was living in Third World House. Residents were allowed to take their dinner trays out of the dining hall and we would watch the evening news in the TV room. I remember watching the news about it there.

Rainy days and flooding in New Jersey. Flooding? I never knew New Jersey to have so much flooding. Over the years while in San Francisco, I remember hearing news reports of flooding in New Jersey and thought it odd. Now I think it has something to do with changes in the world climate.

I imagine being a satellite in an imaginary orbit fixed above the sunlit portion of the Earth, so that I'm constantly looking down at daytime activity all over the world. Towards my left is always activity during sunrise, to my right is always activity at dusk, the sun always behind me, and right below me is everything in between. Activity like ants scurrying.

I'm waiting for nature to run its course and decimate huge swaths of the human population within the next few hundred years. Not that I'm rooting for it, I just think it's natural and inevitable. Rampant human growth, egged on by global corporatization and industrial economics (uneven distribution of wealth and decision-making power), might be an affront to nature. We are driven to dominate it, ignore it, abuse it, but with humanity vs. nature in the boxing ring, I place my money on nature.

I think of the Earth as a living being, a body, and we are bacteria or a virus or whatever. I ain't no doc. As long as we're benign to it, it has no problem with us as parasites. But once we start attacking its vital functions, its ability to breathe or to process fluids or change it's surface (glaciers and ice caps melting), its natural functions will start working to eliminate the infection.

In a way, maybe I shouldn't care what we're doing to the environment. We can't destroy the environment, we can only destroy ourselves. Climate change, ocean levels rising, erratic violent weather, virulent, resistant diseases, global food shortage, maybe even war, but war is really small beans. Only we can be destroyed, and once we're destroyed or reduced to manageable populations with perhaps wiser administration of our being, the environment will rebound and heal itself.

Ha! Even when I'm not writing about myself I'm a barrel of laughs! I don't think of it as something to get depressed or frustrated over, even if it did happen within generations. Things happen, they pass, our history, our existence, it comes and it goes. And it's no reason to stop recycling or avoid driving cars, even though New Jersey doesn't seem to take recycling seriously enough (what? really? -ed.) and I'm learning the meaning of "you can't live there without a car".

Flooding in New Jersey is small beans. No one died. Not like in concurrent flooding in Niigata, Japan where 30 people have already died, or concurrent flooding in India where hundreds of people have died. Even so, it's just symptoms. The water will recede, insurance will get paid, dead will be burned or buried if found. Just go on.

I was sitting.

In a visualized space, there was a dark spot way off in the distance. So way off it didn't concern me until it was moving towards me at what must have been an incredible speed. When it got to be about the size of a U.S. quarter, it was distinctly a black sphere (black hole?), and I recognized it as my hatred. It was that feeling that only I know and can't describe of growing up here. It was a seething, pulsating, snarling, spitting, sneering hatred; an electric, vibrating tension over the whole surface my skin that teetered on the brink of imploding, but never did.

The black sphere continued getting closer at a slower speed, and as it got closer, it became clear that it was really a black hand grenade. I reached out and grabbed it. What am I supposed to do with this now? I don't hate anymore. I don't want to hate. But I have this hate. The path is not easy to get on, much less follow. Sometimes the fabric of your being prevents. Does this hate prevent, even though I don't hate anymore, and don't want to hate?

I sent an email out to Deer Park Monastery today, trying to get in touch with one of the monks who should remember me from last October. Try to find some words of encouragement to go.

I'm going to visit one in upstate New York tomorrow just to see what I find. It's an "American" monastery, but I'm afraid it might be like the system of San Francisco Zen Center and its affiliates – still attached to exotic Japanese cultural affectations and putting out that image to outsiders who might perceive that as being Buddhism.

I don't doubt that the monks have cut through such mundane physical manifestations, but for chrissake, stop banking on the exotic and make it truly American, truly rooted in a tradition of this place where Buddhism is sprouting. For some reason, Americans just love to exoticize things Japanese, so it's note to self: avoid monasteries with Japanese roots. We have words for those things in English, yo!

But while sitting, intense pangs of not even wanting to do that. It's just running away, filling and killing time. What a weird path this is turning out to be.

Leaving San Francisco completed my disconnection. No, that was only the first half of completing the disconnection. Coming to New Jersey completes the disconnection. All of my life in San Francisco has been rendered unreal. New Jersey was rendered unreal a long time ago, yet here I am – is it not real? How much more of a fool am I going to prove to myself to be?

These people are not my family. Any number of descriptives might apply, but they certainly shouldn't be considered family. I have nothing against them, I don't criticize them, I harbor no resentment, they just have absolutely nothing to do with me. Except that I'm now living under their roof. :/

It occurs to me that they have been doing basically the same thing, day in and day out, for the past 30 or so years (although in the past several years they've started going on vacation twice a year, always organized tours)! And they enjoy it. They enjoy their work. They enjoy work. They enjoy their routine. I can't hold that against them, but it is confounding. They have nothing in their lives, nothing to their lives other than work, and then spending money as the manifestation of the fruits of their labor. No passion, no deeper inquiry. Good for them.

I don't know if they have any religious inclinations, but they just might be atheists, and if so, they would be Zen atheists! And I am convinced that if I killed myself, the impact would be visceral at first, but it would fade and pass, and they would get through it largely unaffected. They love me in their own way, but what a bizarre way it is, and it's the result of their world view. I feel like I've just discovered a new philosophical species. And I thought I was way out there!

Coming to New Jersey completes the disconnection because it forces me back into the situation that started this whole horrible mess that is my life. It was horrible, I hated it here. This is why I cut, this is why I'm suicidal. I don't get depressed, I get angry, and I take it out only on myself. It's unconscionable to take it out on someone else directly. I had almost forgotten. I had forgotten. But the situation is completely different now, and while surrounded by the memories and the demons, it's just not real, I have to float up, I have to float on, I have to float down, I have to float away, I have to not exist.

I can't move on because I can't admit anymore that I hate these people. I hate these people and it's total bullshit that they love me. I've only been humoring people by acknowledging they love me. They don't because they can't, they don't know the meaning of the word. They can't be affected by my death if they can't be affected by my life. I'm a fool for still being alive. To the extent of who I am to me, but also for even thinking of them as a consideration.

Well, one big difference between now and a month ago is that no one will have to deal with the stuff I left behind. If I kill myself now, there are no other parties that would have to deal with anything. My parents can save face and not deal with anyone else, and they can shortly resume their routine of 30 or so years.

The final plan, deviating only slightly from the plan of the attempts, was to leave my apartment with a bottle of sleeping pills by 7:30 P.M. I'd take the 9 San Bruno bus about a mile to the transfer point for the 23 Monterey bus. At that point, if I didn't have one already, I could cross the street and get a bottle of Jack Daniels from Beverages & More. I'd take the 23 Monterey bus to Sloat Avenue, and I'd get off at the small mall way out in the Avenues. I would go to the Big 5 sports store at the mall and get a toy boogie board for $15, where I'd gotten one before and lost during the last attempt. From there I would either walk or take the 18 Parkside bus to John Muir Drive where there is coast access, and I'd walk to the beach, and unlike before, I wouldn't allow any waiting time. I'd immediately take all the sleeping pills, wash them down with Jack Daniels, and dive into the surf on the boogie board and paddle as hard as I could for as long as I could. The boogie board has a line you can tie to your wrist or ankle so you don't lose it. I'd hang on to it loosely in my hand so that I didn't lose the board, but once the sleeping pills took effect, I could let go of it. The alcohol would affect me immediately, but it's effect would be countered by adrenaline. It would take about 20 minutes to really start feeling the sleeping pills, and I would either drown or die of hypothermia. Ideally, this would be done at or just after high tide. There's no guarantee that whatever's left wouldn't wash up somewhere, but the hope would be that there would be no remains.

There would be considerable differences trying this on the East Coast.

I guess believing I'd change was naive.

My San Francisco sojourn couldn't feel like a bigger failure. Eleven years there, and all it took was a few arbitrary decisions for it to be no more. All I was so familiar with, all those experiences, all those people, and I turned around and it's all gone; can't go back. No roots. No reason to stay, no reason to leave.

It might as well not be there. It might as well not have happened. I won't ride on those streets again, or watch the fog, or know the clubs, know the traffic, know the people. I won't plot bike routes or give a stranger directions anymore. And it doesn't matter at all, because it might as well not have happened.

What was that about? Why was I there? I went forth into the world to make my fortune, and what happened?

And now I'm in New Jersey, where I started from, and I still have nothing. I know the area, I can get around, I just don't know where anything is. If you told me where to go for a haircut, I could get there easily enough, but I don't know where to go.

But there's no me here, either, and I don't want there to be. I'm back here, this is where I started from, but I'm a different person now. A lot has been added to me that has no association to here. What I listen to, what I watch, what I've become. And no one here gives a crap about any of that, particularly my family, the only people who know me here.

I went out on my journey, and if this were a story, I would have come back in ruins, in disgrace. Let me tell you my story. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you what I saw. But there is no story, there is nothing to tell. I went out on my journey, found nothing, and came back.

Now I'm here. What am I going to do now? I look back at the past eleven years and shake my head with pity and empathy. Then I look forward ten years from now, looking back at the past ten years, and I don't think I want that to happen again.

Rest Area in Nebraska:

July 2, 2004; 7:52 P.M.

I couldn't fall asleep. I didn't want to fall asleep. It meant I would be woken up in two hours to begin the end, leading to the new beginning, and I didn't want a new beginning. I want it all to end.

Ha, last chance, last day in San Francisco. I won't begin driving until I get a little more sleep in my head after packing up the truck, and settling my accounts with San Francisco. It's still not too late, but not too late for what? Laughable. Let me go to sleep, and I'll wake up somewhere else.

But now it's time to shut off and disconnect. See you in New Jersey, the Garden State.

"Let you go to sleep
Feeling bad as me
Let you go to sleep
Feeling bad
There's a mean bone in my body
It's connected to the problem that I won't take for an answer
No I won't take that from you
Because I would hurt a fly"
- Built to Spill