week off: dragon boats and kaohsiung

May 26, 9:59 a.m. - Keelung River, Dajia Riverside Park

10:26 a.m. - Shida's dragon boat team. Or could be Shida's Mandarin Training Center's team. Actually that sounds right.

10:36 a.m. - Japanese goth chick and Hyun Ae

So much on my mind. Not getting any of it down. Par for the course. Internet down in my building, I'm at the public library.

The term ended yesterday, and I have one week before next term starts. There was no joy in class for the last three weeks of this term. The three hours of class each day became three hours to dread each day.

I think it started when we divided into groups for our final project. I was sitting next to a woman I've grown a little attached to this term, and I should have turned to her right away and proposed we form a group. Selfish. Instead, I thought it should be done democratically with everyone choosing their groups at once.

I ended up with the two annoying people that no one else wanted to be in a group with. Which translated into meaning I was an annoying person that no one else wanted to be in a group with. Interesting, or not, all the people in our group are leaving the class for next term, while everyone else is continuing with the same teacher in an intensive class.

On top of that, we started in on more difficult chapters and I got quickly lost. When I switch to a regular class next term, I get to choose which chapter to start on, and I plan on going back and doing those chapters again.

Truth to tell, I wasn't doing that badly. It turns out other people (of the four staying with the class/teacher), were also lost. And I ended up doing reasonably well on the final exam. Still, the grade doesn't matter to me. What matters is that I can't comfortably form the most basic of complex sentences. And I don't like the feeling in class that I have no idea what's going on and have no idea what's coming out of the teachers mouth. Ergo, switch to regular class.

I'm glad it's over. The visualization that got me through the last few days was being in a car, sliding on a huge sheet of ice, no worries, nothing I can do about it. Time is what would get me through the final exam and final project. Just do the best in the moment and not worry about what I wasn't fitting in, because there was no way I could possibly fit everything in. I told this to classmates and it turned into a helpful joke, I think. Just sliding on the ice.

End of semester shots (everyone looks so relaxed):

May 19, 5:21 p.m. - me and Hyun Ae chilling after class. Mystery: It looks like I'm holding my Sony Cybershot P9, with it's distinct rounded edge on one side, at the bottom left. So whose camera took this picture?!!! 

5:22 p.m. - classmates. Not the woman in blue. I think she was French, maybe a friend of the Canadian guy.

Not sure what's going on inside me, but it can't be good. Something creeping like a worm. A growing despair, isolation, hopelessness. But it's not an emotion, it's not like an emotion. It's a vibration. Everything is wrong. This is all wrong. My hands melt into the keyboard.

Everything's getting surreal again. Everything's getting "not me" again. This isn't my life. These people aren't people in my life. Vibrations reaching a critical frequency, and again, who's there? You?

Even this I know I don't consider real. It's part of the conditions that make up all aspects of my being, including my environment. I was perfectly "fine" by normative definitions until now. At the monastery, at my parents' house, even for the most part of this term here in Taipei. And I will be "fine" by my own definitions soon well enough.

This artificial stress has scraped off what was hiding what is lying underneath. In the course of my life, I'm really alone now. Just from my age and experience that comes along with age, I don't fit in with the people around me. They're not my people, they can't be. Even though just last week, no one even questioned that I wasn't past 30. Good lord.

Strange life. It's not mine. I don't recognize it anymore. I don't recognize me, or me in it. And putting it this way makes it sound like a good thing. Well, to me, at least. It doesn't feel very good.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Rude Mood (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
2. Lilywhite Lilith (Genesis)
3. The Story of Lucy and Jessie ("Follies" - Sondheim)
4. If Not For You (George Harrison)
5. Skylines (764-HERO)
6. Meditation (Meditacao) (Laurindo Almeida and the Bossa Nova All-Stars)
7. Exodus (live) (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
8. I'm the Man Who Murdered Love (XTC)
9. Afraid (David Bowie)
10. Slainthe Mhaith (Marillion)

Watching my mind through the stress, through the negativity. These are my habit energies, and as they chase me and as I attach to them in life, they chase me and I attach to them in death. They are ingrained, they are in my spiritual genetics, and they stay with me in future lives unless I find a way to transform them.

Not the stressors, which are variable, but the reactions. My reactions to the stress and my behavior are indicative of my habit energies. As real as they feel, they aren't objective facts. Other people wouldn't be feeling it or dealing with it in the same way. I can attribute it to my being, just being me, but what am "I"? I don't accept that I'm some objective, absolute, existing fact. My being, as is all reality, subjective and conditionally created; shifting and changing.

This realization that what I'm experiencing through my stressors in life is directly linked to what I might encounter in death really helped, because I've been working on the "what I might encounter in death" part quite intently. Just take that and apply it to these stressors in life. The absolute very least that it does is calm me down and makes me feel lighter. Not bad.

In one moment when the stress loomed today, I envisioned it as a cartoon version of what the actual death experience might be, which for some reason I think of as being more intense, vivid, disorienting and cacophonic. Today, it was just this single, paltry stressor, creating this anxiety and frustration in me, chasing me down.

I envisioned recognizing me for what I am and recognizing it for what it was, and this was not a big deal. This was at worse, a practice run and I should be able to handle this much better than I was. I was right.

12:54 p.m. - from a balcony at school shooting northwest at the landmark Shin Kong Mitsukoshi building next to Taipei Main Station

12:54 p.m. - from a balcony at school shooting straight down.

12:55 p.m. - The Mandarin Training Center is on Shida's annex campus. Those buildings over there are Shida's main campus.

12:57 p.m.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Nice Age (Yellow Magic Orchestra)
2. Shower Song (Versus)
3. Wake Up and Live (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
4. Totally Nude (Talking Heads)
5. That's Me (Genesis)
6. Long Distance Drunk (Modest Mouse)
7. Shred A (Le Tigre)
8. Electioneering (Radiohead)
9. Taa Deem (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)
10. Destroyer (The Kinks)

One more week of class. Language class.

One more week of language class, and I'm in full-tilt stress. The balance between experiencing the stress and watching the mind going through stress is tipping. Guess which way. Fuck watching the stress. The stress is in danger of being perceived as real and actual. I am experiencing the stress, I'm stressed, the stress is me, I'm no longer observing, but experiencing life, getting caught up in it. That's not my role. That's not what I've learned.

A lifetime of negative habit energy looms like a tsunami. Why am I doing this? What am I doing? Have I learned nothing? I'm even willing to take this negative habit energy with me for another time around, with no guarantee that I will have the tools and opportunity to transform it the way I do in this life.

Frustration. Impotence. Incompetence. Helplessness. Inability. OK, I'm still watching. But I feel the negative habit energy in the fiber of my being, telling me to give up, telling me I can't do this, telling me to pack it up and head back to the monastery and ordain already. Give it all up, let it go. Isn't that what it's all about anyway?

I can't do this. I can't do this alone. Alone. What was I thinking about living a hermit-like ideal? I don't have the raw ability to survive on my own in any situation. Just submit to the monastic community, at least they're there. They are always there for support.

No, that is still all wrong. It's a different kind of stress stoking the negative habit energy. I'll still have to deal with it there. Where to turn? Who's there? Wow. It suddenly got really quiet in here.

Hong Kong

Visa run day-trip to Hong Kong.

1:04 a.m. - Taoyuan Int'l Airport, Terminal 1. My flight to Hong Kong was too early to be able to get there in time by public transportation, so I had to go to the airport the night before and camp out overnight.

9:16 a.m. - Taking the Airport Express to Hong Kong proper. Lives stacked in rows.

9:18 a.m. - nifty feature indicating the train's progression

9:19 a.m. 

Riding and shooting out east to Xinyi District and back to the Jianguo weekend market (it takes place in what are parking lots on weekdays under the Jianguo elevated freeway), and ending up in Da'an Park. Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super (mostly shot at ISO 800)

Linjiang/Tonghua night market, during the day

Evidence of MRT Xinyi line construction. ISO 400

head in the clouds. ISO 400

alleyway in Taipei proper

3:17 p.m. - before smartphones, kids used to read

3:38 p.m. - Jianguo Weekend Jade Market, parking space lines visible

4:31 p.m. - Er-hu performance in Da'an Park

goofball classmates

Watching my mind split in two. On the one hand watching my natural reaction, my habit energies; on the other hand watching my ideal, what I strive to transform to.

On the one hand, my natural habit energies tend towards the negative, the critical. I'm sucking at this language thing, I'm thinking of dropping out and just going to the damn monastery or exercising "other" options. I hate this class, I hate my classmates. The textbook is so full of typos I've begun keeping track of them. I kick myself for not studying more diligently, I'm blogging when I should be studying.

On the other hand, I watch my mind knowing these natural habit energies aren't real. They are just habits borne out of my past karma and what I've cultivated before. Why am I frustrated in class? What's going on there? Why can't I get this material? I feel there is a psychological block that I'm keeping myself from absorbing this material, to communicate in another language. What is so important about this that I'm getting all worked up about it?

So I'm not studying. So I might bomb on the test tomorrow. So I might bomb in our final project that I'm really not looking forward to working with the particular classmates I'll be working with. Two weeks. Two weeks and it will all be over. Maybe it will go OK, maybe it will bomb and I'll totally embarass myself. Nevertheless, in two weeks, none of it will matter. I've liked my classmates all term, in two weeks am I not suppposed to like them anymore? Why?

Bombing in this class will not go on my "permanent record". Even if it did go on my "permanent record", what would that matter in the end, according to my ideals, my emphasis on understanding existence? We all die in the end. What is this "permanent record"?

Through all this, I am doing my best to insist on not sacrificing my practice to academic stress. Maintain regular regimen of sitting, even to the detriment of studies. Maintain study and recitation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, because, goddam, I'm getting something out of it. Shit is . . . beyond description. Blow my head into the void. Truth hits everybody (Sting's actual lyric is "Blow my head in two, oh boy". I like how I heard it better).

2:06 p.m. - Heping East Rd from the Da'an Park footbridge

2:07 p.m. - default shot

2:26 p.m. - artsy shots of inside the Shida main library

iTunes soundtrack:
1. The Show Must Go On (Pink Floyd)
2. Ticket to the Moon (Electric Light Orchestra)
3. Yesterday (The Beatles)
4. The Guardian's Prayer, pt. 1 (Longchen Nyingthig Buddhist Monks)
5. She's So Cold (The Rolling Stones)
6. As I Lie (J Church)
7. Digit (extended) (Echobelly)
8. Look At Little Sister (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
9. Sciuri Sciura (Blonde Redhead)
10. Giant (Throwing Muses)

These weeks have been hard. I don't even know what to say about them. The usual looming existential things, I suppose. The many layers of "what's the point?", and "what do I think I'm doing?". No answers, naturally.

The language studies go poorly. After this term ends at the end of this month, I'm going to switch from the 3 hour intensive course to the 2 hour regular course, because I just can't handle the intensive course. At least Jack Nicholson isn't telling me I can't handle it :p

Rounding out the last weeks of this term, things went into flux. Stress built, but it was an opportunity to check my practice. Watching my habits, desires, and attachments, watching other people's habits, desires, and attachments, but knowing that my practice encourages me to not be a slave to my habits, desires, and attachments.

Cultivating my mind to be flexible, to not be ruled by my ego, loosening attachments and aversions. And be happy about it.

I watched my mind as I decided to not continue in the same intensive class as my classmates. I felt the desire, I felt the attachment, but I knew it wasn't real. It didn't matter if I continued with them or not. Continuing with them looked attractive, it looked comfortable, but I knew it wasn't right for me. I knew it wasn't right for me, but I still was thinking about it. That, I watched.

I watched my mind as I let myself put myself into situations that I wasn't happy with, but felt good about not being attached to aversions. I watched my mind working, feeling I don't belong in the material living world. Why am I acting on an impulsive 'now', when I know in a month, it wouldn't matter if I pushed for what my ego and desire wanted, which might have caused discomfort and stress.

I pushed the words "compassion" and "wisdom" to the front of my head as ideals to guide my decisions and attitude.

No, I'm not attached to these classmates. I can let go of them without attachment or remorse. No, I'm not adverse to working with people I have no reason to believe working with will go smoothly. Everything will turn out in the end, and anyway, in any number of situations, these people might be my lifeline, my friends.

8:03 p.m. - stacks in Shida main library

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Battle For My Life (Sweet Honey in the Rock)
2. The Brazilian (Genesis)
3. Pseudo Silk Kimono (live) (Marillion)
4. Rainy Season (Seam)
5. We Are the Dead (David Bowie)
6. Justify My Love (Madonna)
7. Fat Bottomed Girls (Queen)
8. Nobody Home (Pink Floyd)
9. Lola (live) (The Kinks)
10. Flotsam and Jetsam (Peter Gabriel)