Christopher and Sarah Rebecca

Philadelphia, PA

9:53-9:57 a.m. - nephew and niece.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I had one of those “dreams” last night, not really a dream, but a semi-conscious experience that I know I’ve written about before, but still haven’t identified with a label. I just don’t know what to call it. I feel like whenever it happens, I write about it, but since I don’t know how to identify it or refer to what I’ve written before, I end up writing about it anew.

They started when I was in my early teens, and they’ve recurred throughout my life with varying frequency. I’m pretty sure it happened at least once in Taiwan, in my first apartment. It always happens while I’m drifting away to sleep, and it's a state where my mind feels fully conscious, I’m totally aware and thinking, but my body is not in my willful control.

Sometimes I’m completely immobile and sometimes I can “move around”. Sometimes it occurs suddenly with a jolt, other times it fades in while I’m drifting off to sleep. That’s what happened this time, I was drifting off, but then I drifted back to consciousness, only I realized I couldn’t move, and I knew it was one of those experiences.

I was still in my bed and I kept trying to move. Finally I was able to move my legs and I kept kicking them up in the air and swinging them around (kinda having fun with it) because I still couldn’t move my upper body.

Then I managed to turn myself over to my left and the space I was in kinda felt like water. It wasn’t water, but it felt “water-y”. My body sank a bit down through the mattress and when I breathed in, it felt like I was breathing in warm, breathable water.

It felt like I was floating, and I remembered that I had thought before about treating this as a possible death experience. Maybe this was what it was like in one of the stages of death, existing in what is referred to as a "mental body". So I put myself in that mindset that I had died, and to accept it and let everything about my previous life go. I also asked myself if I was ready and willing to die, and the annoying answer came back that I wasn’t. Just a habituated shock of panic about dying.

Who knows? Maybe that is what death is like. My consciousness was moving around, but if someone was in the room watching me, I would still have been lying there in bed.

Anyway, I floated over to one corner of my room, then floated upwards to the ceiling, getting my bearings and my ability to move around. Then I floated out the door (don’t remember if I had to open it or if I floated right through it), and in my parents’ house there’s a balcony that looks over the vast family room.

I remember propelling myself off the balcony down to the family room floor, and I remember thinking of trying to get out of the house and enter other people's houses. It’s the skeptic in me. I was thinking if this was an objective experience, then I should be able to go into other people's houses and experience something not in my subjective memory or experience.

If it was a subjective experience, then the only things I could experience would be things I’m already familiar with. Of course, the problem with this is that I do have an imagination, and even if I did manage to get into someone else’s house, how do I know it’s not just a product of my overactive imagination?

But as I got outside through the family room sliding-glass porch doors, the experience started to fall apart and fade.

The final image was looking out in that direction, east with the orange lights of New York reflecting off the clouds, looking through what looked like the silhouettes of giant blades of grass, blowing in a breeze, but not always full silhouette. Sometimes I could make out the details and they were very, very clear and vivid. I remember thinking what a great image that would be for a film (even though thinking about it now, it isn’t).

December 25, 5:02 p.m. - from my room in New Jersey

December 26, 1:08 p.m. - My Yamaha drums and Peugeot bike in the pool room in the basement. My drums are stored when I leave and it's always a delight to set them up when I return.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I mentioned before I have some funky karma that has me reacting unhealthily negatively to doing good things for other people. I think I'm getting better at it. I always think of doing the right thing, and when I see opportunities for doing something for someone else, I at least consider it before thinking the better of not doing it.

Several weeks ago, I was leaving my bike in the safety of the Taida campus because I was leaving for Kaohsiung the next day and was going to be gone for a week. Just after I locked my bike and was walking to the bus stop, I saw a guy struggling with two bicycles. I thought of offering to help, but I was still a bit distance away, an awkward distance to run up to him randomly to offer to help.

He wasn't making much headway like that, though, and by the time he finally toppled over completely, I was reasonably close enough to jog up and help him up and offered (in Mandarin!) to help him take the bike where he needed to go, and it turned out fine because he was just taking the bike to another place on campus which was in the direction I was heading.

It was just a short distance, but he was thankful since with two bikes it was much longer. We chatted in Mandarin, and then when we got to where he needed to go, I headed off whistling on my merry way.

With my luck, I just helped the guy steal the bike :p

In New York today, taking the A Train down to 42nd Street there was a South Asian woman with an infant in a stroller. I noted them because the baby was really adorable. They also got off at 42nd Street. As I looked for the exit to the 7 line, I turned around and saw the woman struggling up a flight of stairs backwards, lugging the stroller up step by step. That was a no-brainer to quickly go over and help them up the stairs.

I accomplished that with no feelings of self-disgust, and I'm reasonably sure I didn't help that lady steal the baby. I helped someone out and I didn't have to feel disgusted at feeling like I did something good. It was no big deal, it was just the right thing to do, let it go.

And then the missed opportunities.

Last night, I was over at my brother's place for dinner. He lives in a tower block in Fort Lee, with panoramic views of the Hudson River, George Washington Bridge, the surrounding Fort Lee area and its traffic. I knew that my parents had gone down to Edgewater for dinner and grocery shopping.

While at my brother's place, apparently a tree fell down somewhere and knocked down a power line. We could see from his apartment the traffic mess that ensued and covered the entire area, especially the road leading up from Edgewater.

I wondered aloud whether or not to try calling our parents to see if they were in the mess, and whether we could help direct them out. We didn't, and they were, and I found out later it took them two hours to get home. If I had called, I could have told them what was going on and directed them to turn around and find another way back.

The reason I was in New York today was to get an entry permit for my Taiwanese passport (I don't have an ID number, so I need a special permit to enter Taiwan, even though it's a Taiwanese passport). After I got it, I stopped in at Pax for a slice of pizza, the likes of which we can't get in Taiwan, btw. As I was leaving, a woman was also leaving. She had just bought a slice of some luxurious, expensive veggie pizza. She looked a bit smug and self-satisfied with it, and I couldn't blame her. It was pretty darn good pizza.

I didn't notice her again until entering the 42nd Street subway station, when she was suddenly right there in front of me, balancing the pizza which was on a paper plate while fumbling for her metro card. Suddenly the pizza was on the ground and I heard sounds of frustration and anger, and I walked past, a little embarrassed and feeling sorry for her.

I knew exactly how she felt. Just that morning at my parents' house, I was taking a container of noodles to the microwave when it slipped out of my hand and ended up on the floor. It was a lost cause. I don't know what's been on my parents' floor or when the last time it was cleaned. All I could do was dejectedly clean it up and throw it away. Wasted food.

When the pizza hit the ground, I didn't think about the noodles hitting the ground and the connection between them. By the time I made the connection, I was already on the uptown A, and it was only then that I realized, in an ideal configuration of my personality, suave and debonair, what I should've done.

I should have stopped, turned around, walked back to her and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, could you do me a favor? Could you walk back with me to Pax where I can buy you another slice of pizza? I can explain why on the way. Are you in a rush? Come on, let's go, come on.

"You see, the same thing happened to me this morning (at this point I mysteriously take on a New York accent – De Niro or Harvey Keitel maybe), I was walking to the microwave with a container of shrimp lo mein, and then suddenly, boom, it was on the floor. I was really pissed. I was pissed at the waste and my clumsiness.

"I thought of all the effort that all sorts of people put into preparing my food, the shrimp that gave their lives, the fisherman, the noodle makers, the farmers who grew the vegetables, the cooks, all the way down to my parents who bought the noodles and were stuck in traffic for two hours getting home with them. I kid you not.

"When I saw you drop your pizza, I thought about what happened to me this morning, and I remembered feeling pissed and guilty, and I thought it would really make me feel a whole lot better if I were to do some positive gesture, create some positive energy, by buying you another slice of pizza, no strings attached, just a selfless, goodwill gesture that I wouldn't even expect thanks for, but hopefully you'd feel better about it, too."

But I didn't. Just in my head.

1:19 p.m.

December 13-16

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1:36-1:37 p.m. - Container art on the plaza outside the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art.

Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super:

Love River, Kaohsiung.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14 - Rail yard, Kaohsiung. I feel like I'm just re-treading old ground.

Port of Kaohsiung. 

Someone with an opinion.

2/28 Peace Park

 Back in Taipei:

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16, 11:53 a.m. - Fudekeng cemetery has palm trees.

12:31 p.m. - Jingmei River, Shenkeng township.

12:37-12:38 p.m. - Another demonstration of the the Ricoh Caplio R4's zoom range. I didn't move to take these shots.

12:56 p.m. - Shenkeng old street. Shenkeng township is to the east of southern Taipei and is often said to be famous for its stinky tofu (臭豆腐), but that's a misattribution. Stinky tofu is something that puts off most foreigners as soon as they smell it in any night market or food street. I wouldn't argue with the comparison with used high school boys' gym socks (because girls' socks smell like flowers :p). In Shenkeng, it's delicious coated with a sauce that I can't tell if it's peanut or sesame or both, and stuffed with fermented vegetables (Korean kimchi is my choice). Actually, even in the photo, the sign on the left advertises 香豆腐 (fragrant tofu). Every ride I go on that goes through Shenkeng will include a stop for tofu. It's that good.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

I'm in a relatively calm space these days, having taken a leave of absence and visiting family in Kaohsiung.

I went on a bus tour in Central Taiwan for 3 days with my aunt and a tour group related to my uncle's business, and was supposed to leave tomorrow for another 3-day trip to Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Straits tomorrow, but I managed to cancel on that trip.

It's a family thing. Travelling with my uncle is never a smooth affair, and I really need to learn what I already know – never travel with him. I came down to Kaohsiung with a mild cold, so I went to bed early, and a little while later, my uncle comes in and tells me he's not going on the Central Taiwan trip. OK, it's not changing anything major, and he does tend to nag, so there are tangible pros to his not going, balancing out the cons.

The next morning I find out the Kinmen Island trip is postponed because of certain of his responsibilities, which makes me happy because I'm already foreseeing becoming batty by these travels. I start re-adjusting my plans. Then during the trip, I'm told the Kinmen trip is back on, my uncle doesn't have to stay in Kaohsiung during that time, and I almost plotz. Not happy. Fortunately, one of my aunt's friends who was on the trip decided she would like to visit Kinmen, so she took my spot, and I'm free to head back up to Taipei tomorrow to prepare to go to the U.S. next Tuesday.

During that bus trip, I had Amina dreams both nights, which I've already noted is an unusual occurrence. I didn't have a recording device with me so I have absolutely no details about the dreams aside from that they were Amina dreams.

One thing about one of the dreams I do remember was that there was another woman involved. It was someone I didn't recognize, but it was someone I was apparently possibly getting involved with while Amina was still a presence. But just as a friend, and I remember in the dream thinking that regardless of how I felt about Amina, priority goes to this other person with whom something might actually be happening. The only image in the dream I remember is lying on a bed with this mystery woman for the first time, and at one point my head coming to rest on her arm. Her not pulling away was an indication that there was something forming between us.

Later in the day, recalling the dream, it was with a bit of horror that I realized the mystery woman might have been a younger version of my aunt's friend, the one taking my place on the Kinmen trip. She speaks pretty good English and we did have a bit of a bonding moment in a discussion the first night. And on the second night at dinner, she came over to our table a few times to get food, and inappropriately pressed up against me while leaning over. At one time it was the front of her hip pushing against my arm, and I was thinking, "um, this is definitely inappropriate touching", but I didn't pull away from it.

As many of you don't know, although friends in San Francisco might, I have this thing about attracting older woman. I'm sort of a Granny Whisperer. Perhaps a future Max Bialystock in "The Producers", schtuping the old ladies on the Upper East Side for investment money.

To her credit, although in her 50's, looking past the facade of age, she did have a light of life in her that attracts me. A liveliness, a zest, a passion. And in the dream, it was definitely a 20's or 30's version of her. I emphasize I do not have a granny fetish. Yuck. I don't even like using my granny gear on my bike.

The memorable feeling from the dream scene on the bed was how nice it was to fall in love or be in love, which is totally counter my feeling in waking life. The idea of meeting someone and being mutually interested and falling in love fills me with dread. I think of the one thing leading to another and what do you end up with?

Not to brush aside the value of all the good things involved, but my emphasis ends up on the aging, getting sick, dying, loss, suffering.

Last night I met up with 姿慧 and found that she has scars and burns on her arm. I'm not thinking there are any deep parallels in our lives, I don't think her scars mean to her what mine mean to me, even though I don't know what hers mean to her, but I do think it's uncanny.

These scars are a point of connection between people who have them. I remember a co-worker at the law firm I worked at in San Francisco noticing my scars once, and then pulling me into her cube and showing me hers. We didn't say anything, we just grasped each others hands and smiled knowingly at each other. What we knew, I don't know, we just did.

I have a fantasy that's both a little violent and very intimate. Internally violent in ourselves, not a violence that is conveyed between two people. I want to coerce, pressure 姿慧 into showing me her scars, all of them, wherever they are. Pin her down lightly even, but always maintaining a safe atmosphere, and keeping a pulse on not pushing too hard, or going too far. Violent because the violence is already there. She could do the same to me if she wants.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2:47 p.m. - Cingjing sheep farm, Nantou County, in the central mountains of Taiwan

3:26-3:29 p.m. - Plenty of sheep and other wildlife.

3:36 p.m. - Euro-forming the mountains for tourists.

Sheep. Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. 

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 7:41 a.m. - Day 2, Aowanda forest recreational area and Sun Moon Lake.

9:57 a.m.

12:25 p.m. - Very hairy driving on mountain roads. Inches to spare.

4:41 p.m. - Shooting out of my comfort zone in terms of subject matter. I also learned I can't do black and white landscape.

4:49 p.m. - Photos don't lie, this actually happened!

5:11-5:14 p.m.

Sun Moon Lake, Nantou County.

Wenwu Temple

My comfort zone is easy small life snapshots.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9, 12:11-12:14 p.m. - Last day. A Euro-style resort.

Ripples.

I took a leave of absence this semester, so I don't have to start classes tomorrow.

Wednesday, December 5, 3:59 p.m. - Taida campus. The sound of the camera's optical zoom sounds like a can opener (j/k, not really).  

The reason I took a leave of absence is because I'm going traveling with my uncle and aunt for a week, and then I decided I want to do this passport thing, this Taiwanese citizenship thing right away, so I'm going back to the U.S. in the middle of December. I decided if I'm going back to the U.S., I don't want to go back for a short trip, so instead of missing so much class, I'm taking the whole semester off.

I don't know the status of the band I auditioned for, but they asked me to come by their last gig tonight to pick up a CD of their live performance to get a feel for it, so that means I'm still in the running. I honestly don't think I'll get the gig, but in case I do, I want to go back to the U.S. now because they want to start rehearsals in January and start gigging in February. I can also bring back my cymbals, drum pedal, and PZM microphone for the bass drum.

If I get the gig, it'll be fine. I'll just continue classes in Taipei, and the gig seems like a lot of fun and good exposure. If I don't get the gig, it'll be fine, because I'm leaning towards wanting to move to Kaohsiung anyway, and once I have permanent residency with my Taiwanese passport, the only thing to keep me in Taipei is this gig.

I had a great week in Kaohsiung last week. Since so many of my relatives don't speak English, it really forced me to speak Mandarin, and I think living there would really help improve things.

My cousin has a friend that I met earlier this year who turns out works in a music store, so I already made some music contact down there. I even helped try sell a guitar to an American who happened into the store while I was there – maybe I can get a job there, haha!

I met a woman up here in Taipei recently that I thought had potential as a social contact. We met through a meditation group, so we had that in common to connect with, but in our most recent meet-up, the truth came out. No way.

Yeah, that's it. No way. It was our third meeting, and our first two meetings were like she was refraining herself as anyone should when getting to know someone, being tactful and finessing. This time I got a glimpse of what she's probably really like. Inflexible, egotistical, and arrogant in her practice.

After a while I had nothing to say to her, because she's always right. And I don't doubt that she is always right. I just have nothing to contribute to someone who has already decided is always right, and as soon as someone disagrees with her, they're wrong.

For example when discussing what someone else thinks (which for me is something we can never really be sure of), her exact words were, "I know, I just know". OK. Maybe she does. Maybe she's right. But she wouldn't even entertain any doubts or any other perspective or explanation to suggest she might be wrong, and to me there's something wrong with that. It's inflexible, and whenever you have inflexibility, you have intolerance and dogma.

She's dogmatic about the practice, and I'm not into dogma. If you talk to me about dharma from a dogmatic point of view, I'm bored. She even listened to me only with dogmatic ears, so she wasn't really listening to me. And worst of all, she thinks she's open-minded and liberal about the dharma, but she's simply not.

The monastery this practice is affiliated with is Dharma Drum Mountain. Of the four major systems in Taiwan, this attracts me the most because it's Zen, and closely resembles the Plum Village system that I found so attractive in the U.S.

I found out that the Plum Village branch monastery in Vermont has closed, and relocated to upstate New York, just an hour and a half from where my parents live. They're in retreat now, so I don't know if I can visit for just a weekend, but I think I'll try to make contact with them and see. Maybe I'll stay for a week. And as monastics are shuffled among the branches, maybe I'll run into some that I knew at Deer Park. It's been more than a year since I last made contact.

Regarding practice, I agree about the importance of finding a teacher, but I think in a past lifetime I had a break from that system, and now I'm wandering a while before I go back. I'm not looking for my teacher in this lifetime, and I'm pretty sure I won't find that person in this lifetime. Or if I found him or her, for example Madoka or Nobuko, I wouldn't recognize her as my teacher. Not Nobuko, she's more very close dharma friend, not even speaking dharma in this lifetime.

As such, since I entered a gate through Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village monastic system, I accept him as my nominal teacher. I never met him and although his writings are lovely and wonderful, they don't blow me away. So even while practicing with Dharma Drum Mountain, I consider Thich Nhat Hanh as my teacher, and Plum Village/Deer Park as my home monastery. It's just like that.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 9:20 a.m. - Dharma Drum Mountain practice center in Beitou District.

10:39 a.m. - Danshui township.

11:08 a.m.

Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. All of the black & white pics this month are from one roll that came back really contrast-y. I don't know if it was in the C-41 processing (the negatives) or in the scanning to CD (the person scanning/scanner settings), I honestly know nothing about the process. It made the pics hard to work with, but you work with what you get, badda-bing:

Beitou:

Danshui:

Mt. Guanyin across the mouth of Danshui River in Bali township.