I survived Christmas alright, although this is probably the first one I've spent on the East Coast in over 12 years or longer. I think I made it a point never to be here for Christmas, and no one ever pressed the point. We are not a Christmas-y family. We're not a holiday-y family. So spending a single Christmas with family couldn't be that bad. Especially since it'll never happen again.

I'm still trying to gauge my progress. I want to die, but I'm not pushing anything. I also don't want to die, which is different from before – I won't call it an improvement – that is, I can see advantages in not rushing into dying. Balanced perspectives.

I read an article today that I read as encouraging towards a hermit ideal, barring suicide or entering a monastery. It was about being isolated from the world as the ideal for practice. That means isolating one's mind from the attachments to the world that cultivate habits that take physical reality as absolute fact and given.

It's about mental discipline. I could enter a monastery and still be completely attached to my worldly existence and cultivate those attached habit energies. On the other hand it's possible to be engaged in the world while remaining unattached and cultivating a mind that breaks down the habit of thinking of this table as a table.

But, there is a middle path that God takes because He's Buddhist.

Without going to extremes, an image that can be used as a constant meditation or concentration practice is a candle flame at the center of my mind, and only my concentration on it keeps it lit. Lose concentration, stop visualizing it, and it starts to flicker in the wind.

Still, the idea of getting this TEFL certification to go to Taiwan or Japan to teach English just to support myself while I otherwise live a quasi-hermit-like existence still seems ludicrous. What's the point? And it makes me want to push my exploration of dying.

I found a bottle of 151 proof rum in the house, and I've been drinking it because I don't think anyone will miss it. I haven't drunk a bottle of this stuff in over 10 years. And every time I take a shot, I remember why.

It's harder to drink a shot of 151 rum than it is to cut. That also makes it better than regular 80 proof liquors because it forces moderation. One shot of 151 rum and you don't want to touch the stuff again anytime soon. It will fu** you u*. You will feel like you're breathing fire. Two shots in an evening tops. Three per day tops.

current soundtrack:
1. Get Off the Internet (Le Tigre)
2. Sometimes I Make You Sad (Supergrass)
3. Like the Weather (10,000 Maniacs)
4. Sunday Bloody Sunday (live) (U2)
5. See My Friends (live) (The Kinks)
6. Martha My Dear (The Beatles)
7. Rebel Rebel (single) (David Bowie)
8. You Could Drive a Person Crazy ("Company" - Sondheim)
9. The Field (Throwing Muses)
10. Terminator X Speaks With His Hands (Public Enemy)

Christmas loot:
1. Muppet Show, Season One DVD
2. Cowboy Bebop complete sessions
3. Genesis: Platinum Collection
4. The Art of Living by the Dalai Lama
5. Lonely Planet: Taiwan

You see, folks, this is what I call newsworthy, certainly more so than the incessant story after story after story of sensational, 15 seconds of fame worth of paranoia/cynicism inducing bad news fed to us night after night on the television.

In short, a worker in a candy store in California was bagging the purchases of a customer and her diamond ring fell off into the bag. That made the news a few days ago. The person who found the ring returned it.

Having been well-trained in media cynicism, I can dig up a few points to be critical about, but no, the story is all we need to know. And if the news aired more stories like this, our realities wouldn't be such that petty criticisms can take down the point of a happy ending.

I just want to be prepared for death.

Death is inevitable, it is something that is going to happen, it is definitely coming. We all go out in different ways, but we all go out. Five to one, baby, one in five, no one here gets out alive.

That's fine when people say sure, it's coming, but it isn't here now, so why be bothered by it now? Life is for living. That's valid. I'm not trying to be universal about this.

I don't know why it occurs to me to be bothered by being "unprepared for death". It has something to do with recognizing the impermanance of moments, and being unsettled by that impermanence. Youth passes, friends and acquaintances pass, events pass. Seasons pass, years pass, eras pass. Now passes, and the future will come to pass. And then we die. Our lives pass.

It unsettles me to treat life as permanent when it's not. It's not true, it's not real, and I'm striving for something true, something real. Something unaffected by death. Whatever it is, it's intangible, nothing physical or material stands up against death.

But it has to make sense to me, not just because someone said something about it however many hundreds of years ago. Even if it was the result of an exploration similar to mine. Even if it may have been my exploration way back when. In this lifetime, or these lifetimes, I need to explore it and experience it myself. Same as it ever was.

So I try to prepare for death without being obsessive about it. Meditations on death and the death process, visualizations using existing literature and intuition as a guide, meditations on life and existence, breaking it down to try to get a sense what it really is. Meditations on biology, human functions and feelings. Using falling asleep as a rehearsal for dying.

And even death passes. The cycling of life is what makes sense to me, because I see cycles all around me in nature, from water, to leaves on the trees, to seasons, to stars, to galaxies. Nothing dies into nothingness. Nothing dies into a dead end heaven.

I look around me and see things transform and recycle. Every molecule came from somewhere and was something else before. Every molecule will cease being what it looks like now and become something else. And along with the conservation of energy theory applied to all physical phenomena, I stretch it and apply it to spiritual energy, and allow it to follow the same cycles.

I've started noticing how song titles in these song lists sometimes match what I'm writing about. With over 9000 songs being shuffled, I'm not really reading anything into it aside from coincidence, but it amuses me.

current soundtrack:
1. Kecak (Sekaha Ganda Sari, Bona) Indonesian traditional.
2. When You Sleep (My Bloody Valentine)
3. Let It Be Me (Indigo Girls)
4. Circles (Chick Corea Akoustic Band)
5. Los Endos (Genesis) < --haha
6. Isolation (Joy Division)
7. Dusk (Duke Ellington)
8. We Work the Black Seam (live) (Sting)
9. Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel)
10. Guide Vocal (Genesis)

Still thinking about death. I almost stopped when I caught the first few minutes of some Barbara Walters crap on primetime TV about Heaven (and likewise death and the afterlife). If it was any indication of popular perception, what a worldly heaven people believe in. It made death so unattractive.  

Fortunately, PBS was re-broadcasting an incredible documentary called From Jesus to Christ, a scholarly piece about the development of the early Jesus movement and how it developed into Pauline Christianity, so I watched that and avoided offending myself further by watching that Baba Wawa drivel. 

I wonder if people really think about death. I lean towards thinking they don't. I wonder if people think about what it means to really think about death. Do they just believe what they're told in church? Do they look deeply into themselves and ask what they really believe? Does what they're told really make sense to them on a deep intuitive level? Does thinking about death relate to why they're writing that check to pay the bill, driving their car, eating dinner? Because it should. 

I have to watch myself, though. I've been recently grappling with the realization that any belief system that distinguishes between right and wrong, meaning my belief system is right and that other belief system is wrong, is automatically rendered...wrong. 

It's hard because I have my thoughts and I think they're right, but as soon as I think they're right, someone else's thoughts and ideas are wrong, and that renders what I'm thinking wrong. And I do think that approach is right. I am trying to suppress an ego-habit of some self rightness granted to my thoughts just because I had them and they make sense to me. 

And really there are so many people out there who are just dead wrong. Doh!

I wish I had been writing about sitting and meditation all these years to maybe somehow track the process and progress. But for some reason I've always felt it was this very private thing, and talking about it would be like a touchy-feely, hippie thing.

I hate people talking about meditation, and even guided meditations, at the monastery, whenever I knew morning sitting would be a guided meditation (retreats usually), I sat on my own in the small hall.

It's just not something I can write about, it's so intangible and big, but...I dunno, something. I know it started as something. How did it get to where it is now? How is it so different now from when I started? The only big benchmark is when I first went to the monastery and found I could sit for 45 minutes, which is now the ideal length of time.

At this point, it is emotionally and mentally involving, if not draining. In a good way. Sometimes right before a session I'd have to brace myself mentally, a little anxious about where my mind will go this session.

I still think sometimes (grasping at thoughts), but not often. And it took a long time to get to the point where I don't think. I'd say after almost 15 years, it has only been recently that I'm not "chasing after thoughts", having something come to my mind and attaching to it by thinking it through.

The mental flow is always there, and it may be a very subtle difference between attaching to thoughts and not attaching to thoughts. Sometimes I will follow a thought, but I won't be attached to it, I won't be thinking about it. I'll just be "riding" it. It's hard to describe.

Random mental images come and go, and I pay attention to them in that they are manifestations of my mind and thoughts; "what is this and where is it coming from?". Again, I don't attach to them. When some mental formation forms, not even an image, sometimes just abstract colors and shapes coming together, I don't stay with it, just observe and when it dissolves or changes, I just let it. No control.

As far as I know at this point, I'm not committing suicide. I'm also not entering a monastery. I think the path left to me is a solitary hermit path. Go to Taiwan to teach English, but live simply, don't save any money, continue practicing and cultivating.

Take the middle path like God says he does in "South Park" because he's Buddhist (shit, that was so funny I nearly crapped myself. That and that "the Mormons" was the right answer (to get into heaven), in the same episode). I won't practice asceticism. I won't be miserable, just try to find what true freedom means to me.

The Palisades from the Alpine Lookout off the Palisades Parkway:

There are two lookouts between Exits 1 and 2 on the Palisades Parkway. This is closer to Exit 2. I used to come to these lookouts a lot when I was in high school just to get out of the house, away from the 'rents. I even wrote a song about hanging out there. Or more accurately it's a song that was inspired by hanging out there.

The river is, of course, the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York. The road down below is the Hudson River Drive, a scenic drive frequented by cyclists, including myself.

Death on my mind these days. Well, maybe death on my mind as usual. Not morbidly. 

PBS re-aired the last "American Experience" about New York which focused solely on September 11. That was one heavy day. If we could have held onto that feeling, if it had lasted, would we be better people? Would we be a better country? The sentiments of compassion and understanding people expressed, the philosophical depths that people reached about how quickly and easily our lives could end. How quickly and easily we could become sad. 

Needless to say, it didn't last, and the vast majority of people were ultimately unaffected in their hearts, in my opinion. I don't know what's in other people's hearts.

And the execution in California of the founder of the Crips gang, who started writing children's books on Death Row, warning kids about the dangers of gangs and drugs. Here was someone who was doing good, and it resonated when I read someone say if he isn't a candidate for redemption (clemency), who is? And another who asked would Arnold now go into the inner cities and try to keep kids out of gangs? 

And on the other side, there were people outside San Quentin yelling "Kill him!" Damn. Kill him. Kill. Who has that right? He doesn't, and the courts found that he had killed. And the response now is to kill him. But I think his killing people was not just about something innate about this human being that should now be snuffed out, over and done with. 

His killing people was him wrapped up in the totality of the circumstances of his upbringing and situation. What does killing the human being accomplish if the circumstances are still out there? 

And I don't know, but the circumstances surrounding a government killing a person doesn't compare to the circumstances surrounding a black, inner city kid with no prospects, no advantages growing up in a disempowering system and social fabric that ultimately has him making a horrid choice of killing people, maybe even enjoying it by some accounts. 

I'm just thinking this through. I'm not hardcore anti-death penalty, I'm generally against it for fuzzy reasons, but the issue is too messy for me to argue one side or another. I'm thinking of this one person, I think his name was Tookie Williams. Stanley "Tookie" Williams, I think. 

Williams suffered because of his circumstances, and he caused suffering to other people, the victims and the victims' families. Then his surrounding circumstances changed again, including about six years of solitary confinement, and he started writing books that got him nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Is it unrealistic to think that Williams's writings might save lives from stopping kids from joining gangs and entering a life of violence? 

Might he have saved one life by changing the circumstances of an inner city kid so that he doesn't become a murderer? So that another family doesn't suffer like the families of Williams's victims? Is it so far-fetched to think that because the victims' families lost a loved one, there is this person now with great street-cred writing books that might prevent another family from suffering like they are? Is there no solace in that? 

Maybe not, I'm just thinking, no conclusions. 

I moved to California not long after the death penalty was reinstated in the 90s. I didn't pay too much attention to death penalty cases because the issue is so polarized black and white, and life and death to me are very gray. But Williams' execution made me quite sad, and when I went to sleep at 2 o'clock EST Tuesday morning, I knew that we would be executed in an hour, midnight PST. I knew when I woke up, he'd be dead. I went to bed like I always do, like we all do. 

There is a visualization meditation of being on Death Row. I've never been guided through it, but I've done something like it on my own while sitting. Waiting to die. Like the night before you're going to take an overseas flight, you're counting down. Like the day before an important job interview, you're counting down. You do things while you're counting down, you eat, you pack, you prepare. And time will pass and you'll go and catch your flight and go to your destination, or you'll get ready and go to your job interview and get it or not. Or you count down and you die. You're dead. It's all over. This is all over.

It sucks going through old photographs and seeing someone and wanting to reach out to and say "hi" because of all those memories you shared together, but you can't because you just cut contact with her.

It sucks cutting contact with someone and coming across an old photograph of her, and realizing that you've both changed and the old feeling isn't there anymore and communications have become frustrated and strained.

It sucks not being able to cut contact with someone because you're waiting for her to contact you so you can cut contact with her.


July 23, 1997 - a lighter moment at the Burmese Refugee Camp

Maybe it's that my focus shouldn't be on committing suicide. When the right time and certitude fall upon me, the option is always there. As long as I'm alive, I can always commit suicide, that's the wonderful thing about a goal like that.

Maybe it's not the committing suicide, but the wanting to. Always. That's partly really horrid, partly completely right on. And it's still much better than resigning myself to living, which always seems to translate in my head as 'living an ordinary life', i.e., not striving to move beyond the stagnant form of ordinary existence, and taking manifested physical reality as actual reality.

As I feared, after I finished scanning my black and white negatives, I've been working on a project to scan all my color negatives. It was really something going back to all these negatives and piecing together my past through film. It's an incomplete document, considering the negatives that got lost or thrown away.

I learned the hard way to never throw away negatives. If you're mad at someone, if you want to cut them out of your life, forget about them for dumping you to marry the person you always made fun of together, burn the pictures, toss them off the Golden Gate Bridge, feed them to your neighbor's ferret, but don't get rid of the negatives. Hide them, store them somewhere out of sight, out of mind. But if that person really did mean something to you, despite what they did to you, you will regret destroying the negatives.

It's difficult going through my past like this. What happened to all these people? What went wrong? How did I get here from there? It must all fit together with what I am now. And the only constant is that I don't belong here, I don't want to be here, my goal in life is to drop this kind of attachment to life in order to move on. Prove it to myself in the most drastic way.

My parents get back from vacation tomorrow. They've been gone for the past week and a half. I really need to get out of here.

What's the entry I want to be brave enough to write?

I don't think it exists. It would require some truth, some realization, and I have neither. Even just a solid feeling, just to be able to be depressed enough to take some action, even if it's suicide. And write that entry.

Suicide is supposed to be feeling-driven. It's not supposed to be an examination, an exploration, part of a journey. It's not supposed to be a paradigm or a philosophy. I'm supposed to feel really, really bad. Inconsolable, is the word I read elsewhere tonight. The distortions around the edge of my reality are supposed to be madness, not . . . curious.

But that's what it is. And maybe that's what has prevented execution. And now, recently, it has become ambiguous. No, it's not an answer, I've never seen it as an answer. But now with ambiguity comes thoughts of not doing it – not seriously, I don't think it will ever be seriously completely gone – and that means living and continuing my exploration in this lifetime instead of switching to another one. It's a decision, is it an "answer"? If it is, I reject it.

It's rhetorical anyway, I wouldn't want to hear anyone's rhetorical answer anyway.

I look back at the elements and occurrences in my life that posed and presented the questions, the dilemmas. I think them through, I create a logic, I follow my feelings, and there are no answers. They lead to paradoxes. Now even suicide is one. It never was before. When I tried to explain it to other people, it would transform in my throat and the words would come out in the shape of a paradox, but they didn't start off that way in me.

So I'm taking this online certification course to teach English overseas, which still seems a boneheaded idea to me. I'm going to cut communications with the remaining few people left, since I might as well. I've got this bottle of expired Target sleeping pills that I want to take, just because it's about time I did something like that. Nothing life-threatening, just something to push me way down for a day. And through this all, I still try to maintain the monastic training.