I worked on a meditation/exercise today that I don't know if it's new or not, it might not be, working against negativity and hostility.

Basically everyone I see, I not only consider a friend, see as a friend, but I put it on my face that I'm about to react to seeing a friend. This is an extension of another exercise I've been trying to implement – practicing a pleasant face.

I've been growing more and more aware that what I'm carrying on my face out into the world is not good. Years and years ago I used to test my mental state in the worst of times by seeing if I could put a credible, genuine smile on my face, and if I could, I knew I was alright. Back then, I was always able to.

Now when I tried it – totally forced, fake. That realization hurt like hell. So now trying to be more aware of the face I'm taking out in the world, I try to practice in a mirror putting pleasant back on my face, get it back into muscle memory. Not easy, and I realize that what I'm taking out into the world on my face is unpleasant, heavy, who wants that?

So I focus on people who come into my field of vision and visualize them as a friend that I'm really happy to see, and I try to put on my face the feeling like I'm just about to greet them, and they're going to respond.

Of course I don't manifest it because it would likely start freaking people out, 'who is this person?', but if the person does happen to look at me, I would want them to have the feeling that something pleasant might have just happened if this person wasn't a stranger. That the look on my face was something warm and familiar, but only almost. Realize it's a stranger, and just pass on by.

Not the heaviness and hostility I'm carrying around these days. But it's become habit, and it's hard to kick. I encounter people and visualize them as friends, imagine them as friends, and then I have the type of encounter which makes me think "why do I have such stupid friends?"

Photos sometimes outline a day's rough movements. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN:

Rode north into Taipei on the riverside bikeway.

Crossed Roosevelt Rd in Gongguang to the Taida campus.

Taida campus outside the language center. Those three buildings on the right have figured in my shots before.

For some reason I was in the Liberty Square area a couple miles northwest of campus.

4:35 p.m. - Ending up in the Taipei 101/Vieshow area in Xinyi District three miles due east of Liberty Square.