I've opined before that if I'd taken more drugs when I was younger, I'd be much better off today in terms of balance and personal comfort level.
I've also wished I could take some drug to make me definitively depressed so I could legitimately take antidepressants. I think drugs may be that drug. If so, then maybe not better off.
Yesterday was an unexpected bender. The band had already unofficially played its last gig in this configuration. No one has made any final decisions, but I feel my role in the band is done. We have no more gigs planned and the singer is taking off for several months on business starting March.
When the question comes up for the rest of us, I think I'll probably tell them to count me out. For most part I've just bitched about the band, and with this opportunity to bow out, I don't think I want to revisit last year's experience.
Yesterday, there was an "open jam" at the bar we play at, and it being the guitarist's birthday, it was also a get-together, so I went. The band leader/bar owner personally called me about it, and I think he did so to make sure there was a backup drummer for the "open jam" in case no other drummers came.
It was a joke of an "open jam", just as it has always been a joke of a "band". I don't think our band leader has any idea of what a jam is or how to jam. I don't think we have ever once just jammed. He has to have things structured and he has to be in control. When he tried to tell me the format of one song we were going to do and what he wanted me to do in each section, I said a diplomatic version of "buzz off!" and he backed off. That role I played in the band was done.
Not to dis him, he is a professional musician and I respect that for what it is. It's just completely different from what making music is to me, and from my point of view, he excels at the aspects he concentrates on, but he's myopically limited.
Anyway, last night was most likely a last hurrah (or whimper) for this version of the band. Afterwards, I got talked into going to karaoke with the singer and guitarist and associated people, despite just wanting to tell them I needed to go home and deal with my rage. I'm a porcupine, but it doesn't take too much prodding for me to engage with people, since it doesn't happen very often.
So karaoke was fun. Three drunken hours took us to 3:30 in the morning. Then they decided to go to the singer's house and I got convinced to hang out a little more. But hanging out with the singer and guitarist's crowd always entails chemical stimulation. This was my second time, a repeat of an incident last July during my insomnia.
My relationship with this sort of recreational activity is pretty tentative. In my recollection from last July, I don't remember feeling any different than if I were just drinking. But that might have been muted by the insomnia. This time I felt it and could directly connect the feeling with whatever we were doing.
I did have my set limits, though, and once the sun came up, I was done and refused any more and stuck to alcohol. It's not my bag, and I only did it because why not. I kept my concentration through it, not succumbing to any effect; examining the effect, focusing on the effect, keeping control of the effect.
I didn't leave until after 6 in the evening. The stuff kind of suspends time, I actually didn't get enough sleep the night before, and yet I was up for over 36 hours no problem. No appetite, either.
Before I left, the last two hours I was engaged in a pretty intense philosophical discussion with the singer. I want to attribute it to the drugs, but by that time I'd think it would have worn off. Maybe by then it was sleep deprivation and alcohol.
Our mouths were just motoring on, serving and volleying and sharing ideas and insights, but it didn't mean anything to me. And I thought of that while it was happening, I was wondering why I was having this kind of discussion with him.
In high school and college, maybe that sort of discussion would have been a trip, but I'm not friends with the singer. We've been in the band together a year, I like him well enough and more than the other members, but we never really connected. We're both intelligent and thoughtful, but we have no connection, so we were just throwing ideas at each other.
Maybe that's it. I've already long peaked intellectually with other people. Now it's just empty, vain. Stupid even. Closing the doors of my life. I don't necessarily want to kill myself, but that's the only thing that makes sense anymore, that's the only direction my life points at.
And it's been a pattern lately, identifying elements in my current and past life, and the only thing that makes sense is a path leading to suicide. But those are just intellectual exercises. Now it's starting to become experiential indication. Or interpretation.
I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm. - Wendy O. Williams
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
It's Chinese New Year season in Taiwan.
Like I said, there was no way I was going down to Kaohsiung for New Years after my experience with family at my cousin's wedding two weeks ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, my uncle called on New Year's Eve asking me when I was coming down, and in the background was the obvious din of a family New Year's feast going on.
I was at work. I told him I had to work and I wasn't going down. Truth to tell, there was no expectation on their part that I was going. It was only my uncle, and probably my aunt, who even thought of it, and they only thought of it when it was obvious I wasn't going. If I was going, they would have known about it because I always give them plenty of advance notice when I visit.
During New Years season in Taiwan, all government, education and most commercial activity shuts down for at least three days. Up to 9 days. Western corporate-influenced establishments remain open, as well as entrepeneurial businesses that want to take advantage of the fact that no one else is open.
On one hand, only being in Kaohsiung could have emphasized my mute isolation more than being alone and friendless in Taipei. On the other hand, it was so peaceful in Taipei with sparse traffic on the streets, and knowing that the vast majority of the population were with family and enjoying themselves. It made me smile. It made me happy.
It's so odd and true that our general notion of happiness is conditional. We're happy because of some condition. Take away the condition, and we're not happy. So is happiness equal to the condition? I don't think so. They're not the same. But then is the happiness false if all it takes is to remove the condition to remove the happiness?
Remove the condition, remove the happiness. It doesn't seem right to me. But then where I am in life, happiness is almost arbitrary. I can decide to be happy. I can recognize that when I'm not happy, that's my choice. All told, shuffling through layers of psychology and karma, I wouldn't mind describing myself as being pretty happy.
For the entire New Year period, the newspaper is printing a truncated version of the paper, which means reduced staff with reduced hours. Tonight I got out at 9:30 instead of the usual 12:30, and I was the only editor with only two page designers. It was very relaxed.
It was spoiling me, and it'll really suck when we get back up to full press next week. I only work a couple days a week, but still, those days feel like they're going to suck. Even riding to work with reduced traffic on the street was wonderful. Why am I living in such a big city? I really need to be in a small town. Big cities crush me, plain and simple. The din, the rush.
Even just the crowds, the amount of people is pressure. The traffic is pressure. Even though I feed off of it. It's more apparent when I'm on my road bike. On my street bike, I'm more aware of just the pressure. But when I ride on city streets on my road bike, it becomes a challenge, a tournament, a game. I jockey and race almost out of instinct. I push because with a performance bicycle, I can.
Not touching the suicide issue in this, again I'm simply asking myself these days, sometimes telling, why not just be satisfied? Why not, why not, why not? And the answer is yea, why not? I can be happy, why not just be satisfied? And still there's something missing in all this.
Like I said, there was no way I was going down to Kaohsiung for New Years after my experience with family at my cousin's wedding two weeks ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, my uncle called on New Year's Eve asking me when I was coming down, and in the background was the obvious din of a family New Year's feast going on.
I was at work. I told him I had to work and I wasn't going down. Truth to tell, there was no expectation on their part that I was going. It was only my uncle, and probably my aunt, who even thought of it, and they only thought of it when it was obvious I wasn't going. If I was going, they would have known about it because I always give them plenty of advance notice when I visit.
During New Years season in Taiwan, all government, education and most commercial activity shuts down for at least three days. Up to 9 days. Western corporate-influenced establishments remain open, as well as entrepeneurial businesses that want to take advantage of the fact that no one else is open.
On one hand, only being in Kaohsiung could have emphasized my mute isolation more than being alone and friendless in Taipei. On the other hand, it was so peaceful in Taipei with sparse traffic on the streets, and knowing that the vast majority of the population were with family and enjoying themselves. It made me smile. It made me happy.
It's so odd and true that our general notion of happiness is conditional. We're happy because of some condition. Take away the condition, and we're not happy. So is happiness equal to the condition? I don't think so. They're not the same. But then is the happiness false if all it takes is to remove the condition to remove the happiness?
Remove the condition, remove the happiness. It doesn't seem right to me. But then where I am in life, happiness is almost arbitrary. I can decide to be happy. I can recognize that when I'm not happy, that's my choice. All told, shuffling through layers of psychology and karma, I wouldn't mind describing myself as being pretty happy.
For the entire New Year period, the newspaper is printing a truncated version of the paper, which means reduced staff with reduced hours. Tonight I got out at 9:30 instead of the usual 12:30, and I was the only editor with only two page designers. It was very relaxed.
It was spoiling me, and it'll really suck when we get back up to full press next week. I only work a couple days a week, but still, those days feel like they're going to suck. Even riding to work with reduced traffic on the street was wonderful. Why am I living in such a big city? I really need to be in a small town. Big cities crush me, plain and simple. The din, the rush.
Even just the crowds, the amount of people is pressure. The traffic is pressure. Even though I feed off of it. It's more apparent when I'm on my road bike. On my street bike, I'm more aware of just the pressure. But when I ride on city streets on my road bike, it becomes a challenge, a tournament, a game. I jockey and race almost out of instinct. I push because with a performance bicycle, I can.
Not touching the suicide issue in this, again I'm simply asking myself these days, sometimes telling, why not just be satisfied? Why not, why not, why not? And the answer is yea, why not? I can be happy, why not just be satisfied? And still there's something missing in all this.
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| MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 4:15-4:16 p.m. - Taoyuan Int'l Airport. Meeting my parents to send them off. That's a persimmons in the top pic. All Ricoh Caplio R4. |
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| WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 7:42 p.m. - Maishuai Bridge #1 and Rainbow Bridge. |
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Candy Rain (2008, Taiwan)
I must say, and maybe it's the latent lesbian in me, but I really liked this film. But it's not because of the patent lesbian content. This film captured the essence of "indie film" that I loved back in the 90s, where aesthetic, emotion and observation was as important or even more so than plot or character development, or even story-telling. It still has to be about something, but it's more intangible, a feeling.
The film is comprised of 4 vignettes, and I don't know what it is about vignettes that indie filmmakers in Taiwan, perhaps lesbian indie filmmakers, like so much, but off the top of my head, I can recall 3 films, including "Candy Rain", that are made up of vignettes, and 2 of them are lesbian-themed films. Oh, and I just thought of a 4th film I've seen in Taiwan, but I think that was either a Hong Kong film or a joint HK-Taiwan film.
Often the challenge of films comprised of vignettes is finding the thread that binds them, or else why make a film that is comprised of a bunch of short films.
The first of the four vignettes shows kind of an idyllic relationship, but it shows that as good as a relationship can get, where two people fall in love and are compatible, it's still hard. Things come up everyday that create tension in the relationship. But a lot of the times it's just small stuff.
After a near-breaking point, one of them leaves and thinks about going back to her hometown, but then realizes with the help of a local shopkeeper that things can endure, relationships can span time, and you don't need your partner to do it, that is, if you're not needy, if you're patient and persistent. It's idyllic.
The second vignette is about a woman who is looking for love, but is really tightly-wound, anal, meticulous, private, closed, unpretentious and down-to-earth. She keeps her apartment meticulously clean and times how long her instant noodles have been steeping. The woman she meets online is the exact opposite, bold and full of life, playful and sophisticated and worldly-wise. It is a short relationship, and they are ultimately incompatible.
The third vignette shows the alternative alternative lifestyle. The two main characters are completely in love, but one is determined to get married conventionally and have kids because she strongly feels she has to fulfill that social duty. They promise to get back together again in ten years time, but it's hard to plan 10 years in advance.
The fourth and final vignette, titled as the same title as the Chinese title of the movie, "The flower eats the girl", is stylized and humorous, but perhaps intentionally so because it includes very serious issues of violence and infidelity. The women are young, the relationships volatile. It's a time for being wild and free, and not so concerned about other people's feelings.
I do like that each of the vignettes says something distinct about relationships, and I think it should be appealing that the insights about relationships (I'm not saying they're deep, mind you) are universal, they're not lesbian issues.
How I describe each vignette is my interpretation, and I don't think I've spoiled anything. I'm not sure I like that the filmmaker does explain each vignette in brief, wrapping things up, instead of letting the audience have their own interpretation, and leaving the filmmaker's intention unmentioned.
There is a physical thread connecting all the vignettes, which is that the exterior of where they all live is the same place, and in each vignette, a package is delivered to "Candy Rain". How each package is received also represents something about the main characters.
With a great feel and great soundtrack and an observational use of the camera to capture moods and feelings or extract them from ordinary life, I give this film 9 out of 10 tomatoes.
Painted Skin (2008, China)
An unremarkable "ghost", not horror mind you, film. It was watchable enough on competent acting, provided by veteran actors Donny Yen, Wei (Vicky) Zhao and Xun Zhou – those are the ones that I know, at least.
Many elements of the characters and their motivations go unexplained, which is not fatal to the movie, just curiously annoying.
The film is about a fox spirit that infiltrates a Chinese city and people start dying for the fox spirit's sustenance, but love is the ultimate theme. Love is tested in a dual love triangle, but everything turns out alright, although I'm not sure why, and that said, it's not a powerful nor emotional film, with no insights or enduring impact. Unremarkable, I said.
Actually, the character I like the best is the rogue demon hunter played by Li (Betty) Sun, even though her character isn't developed enough to add to whatever the movie was getting at, but was prominent enough to dilute one of the love triangles' meaning. Go fig.
I'm on the fence whether to give this 5 (rotten) or 6 (fresh) tomatoes, but I think I'll just barely pass it with a 6 out of 10, just for being watchable, not being insulting, and I really like Vicky Zhao and Xun Zhou, but it's not a film I'd ever need or want to see again unless it happened to be on TV.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
As much as I try to give as much as I can, whenever I can to my parents to let them know I appreciate what they've given me, despite half my lifetime devoted to hating them to rot and burn me to the core, our last meeting wasn't ideal.
It was the whole weekend that got to me, of feeling totally isolated, condescended to and patronized by extended family for my cousin's wedding, capped off by one last day getting the same from my parents and two uncles and an aunt, that I could only respond to their entreaties to me to move back to the U.S. with coldness.
I wasn't trying to. I wasn't mad or bitter, but the mindset that I was put in by those circumstances just didn't allow me to respond in any other way. If I'm treated enough in a way that I can't respond, when I get asked for a response, I can't.
However, it was the manipulative form of their entreaties that guarantees that I will not move back to the U.S. until it is fully convenient and advantageous for me. Their past manipulation is nothing I will soon forget or forgive. If they think I'm good to them now, it's only because it's no real loss to me. Whatever I do for them is fully within my willing capability; I make no real sacrifice for them. Not surprisingly, I don't think they ever have for me, either. At least not from my perspective.
I think for the first time this wedding weekend, I found I have no feelings for these people. I was totally an outsider. I had nothing to do with them. And I'm starting to feel it's not just because of the language.
One of my cousins summed it up. He is an American cousin, he grew up in the U.S. with me and my brothers and he was as close of extended family as I knew. Not that we're close, we didn't see each other for nearly 20 years. We were at another uncle's house having dinner, and I was asking questions about his parenting experience, and apparently my questions were getting far too philosophical.
I didn't notice him getting perplexed by the type of questions I was asking, and finally after one question, he swatted it down in exasperation and said, "I'm not as reflective as you", ending that line of questioning right there and then, to which he was perfectly pleased and would make no apologies. On my part, I had no problem dropping it, he was clear as an azure sky.
What am I doing in this family? Why was I born into this family? "I'm not that reflective". That should be the family motto. No one in this family is that reflective, and I'm starting to think that they've just been tolerating me and my philosophomorical paradigms and queries.
My cousin who just got married, he had SARS. He almost died. He told me that he had to put every ounce of energy he could muster into surviving or he would have died. Even that didn't make him think about life and/or death, or give him a greater appreciation for life. He's not that reflective.
My father's getting old, he can't move around that well anymore. He's a smart man, though, even brilliant by my brother's account. He's semi-retired, but he still goes to the office. My mother is afraid that inactivity will kill him.
I've more than once suggested he put his brain to use and write down something about his life and what he went through – leave something for his grandchildren to know him, in case he can't tell them himself. He was a first generation immigrant. There must be something of interest in his experience. But he's not that reflective.
I go through my experience and interactions with each and every one of my family members. They can discuss things, even debate issues with me, but when it comes to things mattering, I can hear the words collectively coming out of their mouths, "We're not that reflective."
It was the whole weekend that got to me, of feeling totally isolated, condescended to and patronized by extended family for my cousin's wedding, capped off by one last day getting the same from my parents and two uncles and an aunt, that I could only respond to their entreaties to me to move back to the U.S. with coldness.
I wasn't trying to. I wasn't mad or bitter, but the mindset that I was put in by those circumstances just didn't allow me to respond in any other way. If I'm treated enough in a way that I can't respond, when I get asked for a response, I can't.
However, it was the manipulative form of their entreaties that guarantees that I will not move back to the U.S. until it is fully convenient and advantageous for me. Their past manipulation is nothing I will soon forget or forgive. If they think I'm good to them now, it's only because it's no real loss to me. Whatever I do for them is fully within my willing capability; I make no real sacrifice for them. Not surprisingly, I don't think they ever have for me, either. At least not from my perspective.
I think for the first time this wedding weekend, I found I have no feelings for these people. I was totally an outsider. I had nothing to do with them. And I'm starting to feel it's not just because of the language.
One of my cousins summed it up. He is an American cousin, he grew up in the U.S. with me and my brothers and he was as close of extended family as I knew. Not that we're close, we didn't see each other for nearly 20 years. We were at another uncle's house having dinner, and I was asking questions about his parenting experience, and apparently my questions were getting far too philosophical.
I didn't notice him getting perplexed by the type of questions I was asking, and finally after one question, he swatted it down in exasperation and said, "I'm not as reflective as you", ending that line of questioning right there and then, to which he was perfectly pleased and would make no apologies. On my part, I had no problem dropping it, he was clear as an azure sky.
What am I doing in this family? Why was I born into this family? "I'm not that reflective". That should be the family motto. No one in this family is that reflective, and I'm starting to think that they've just been tolerating me and my philosophomorical paradigms and queries.
My cousin who just got married, he had SARS. He almost died. He told me that he had to put every ounce of energy he could muster into surviving or he would have died. Even that didn't make him think about life and/or death, or give him a greater appreciation for life. He's not that reflective.
My father's getting old, he can't move around that well anymore. He's a smart man, though, even brilliant by my brother's account. He's semi-retired, but he still goes to the office. My mother is afraid that inactivity will kill him.
I've more than once suggested he put his brain to use and write down something about his life and what he went through – leave something for his grandchildren to know him, in case he can't tell them himself. He was a first generation immigrant. There must be something of interest in his experience. But he's not that reflective.
I go through my experience and interactions with each and every one of my family members. They can discuss things, even debate issues with me, but when it comes to things mattering, I can hear the words collectively coming out of their mouths, "We're not that reflective."
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| 5:08 p.m. - Dongxing Rd. Ricoh Caplio R4. |
Thursday, January 15, 2009
I have a feeling I knew a lot more about death several years ago, contemplating suicide. Well, not "knew" a lot more, but it was much more real, more tangible. It was something. Now it's farce. My own suicide became a farce an indeterminate amount of time ago, but even death itself has now become a farce.
Maybe that should be the theme this time around. I should have themes for each suicide cycle. Nah, too much effort. Although there probably is a theme each time through, but I'm too lazy and self-conscious to figure them out.
What's going to guide it this time around? The only thing I do know is that I won't leave Taipei before some kind of serious gesture, event or attempt. Other than that, there is nothing determinate, and the old proposition holds that if I'm not executing it right now at this moment, I'm not going to do it at all. I will just continue puttering through life, one day to the next, the way it's been going.
But the thing is I will leave Taipei, so something will happen. If nothing keeps me in Taipei, I will leave, and without a good long stare in the face of my mortality, I don't have the strength or momentum to leave. I don't have the strength or momentum to just decide to leave.
Maybe it's not that death has become a farce, not that death itself has changed, death is still the same. Of course, it's just my attitude or conception of it. I've been steeping myself in the concept of death for so long, with no counteracting positive elements to give directly to my life some affirmation, that maybe deep inside I really have come to terms with and against our constructed notions of death.
Death is an interpretation and I no longer subscribe to the common notion of death, that it is in opposition to life; the antithesis. Of course it's natural, and it is an end, but it's not some ultimate end. Well, in some ways it is, but in other ways it isn't. I'm just no longer emphasizing the ways that it is.
When considering death, I end up considering life on Earth, and life on Earth will one day end. Earth is located in what is called the "Goldilocks" region away from the Sun. Not too hot, like Venus and Mercury, not too cold like Mars, but just right. It's not always going to be that way.
But being in the Goldilocks region is not just a function of distance, it's a function of time. We just happen to inhabit the planet at just the right time and place. And many other species have lived on Earth because the time and place conditions were just right for them. Climate conditions have changed over the course of millions of years, but various species still thrived.
I think I heard recently that 99.9% of species that have lived on Earth are now extinct. From our observation on this planet, species extinction is a normal part of the process of life on a planet with suitable conditions for life.
In a best case scenario, where we can assume we don't destroy Earth's habitability for humans ourselves, and not only that, but we find a way to peacefully resolve conflicts and cooperate for the benefit of all humanity, and use our resources in a sustainable, responsible way, a natural decimation of the human species is still foreseeable, although not soon, perhaps on a scale of tens of thousands of years. And that's giving credit to the human species for being particularly adaptable and clever when survival is at stake.
It just seems ludicrous and above arrogance to me that humans will still be around billions of years from now when the Sun exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and slowly grows into a red giant, burning away whatever is left of an atmosphere so that there's no more sky, and frying the surface until it itself is melted into a molten landscape.
Humanity, as brilliant, wonderful, beautiful and miraculous as it is, and as dear as we are to us, is just not that important in the natural cycles of the universe.
Somehow I feel much more in touch with the death of humanity than a death of my individual being. I'm not a part of my surroundings, I'm not networked with the humans around me in any significant way. My death really doesn't matter. No, really. Really, really, really. I don't know if I'm making my point clear. Reeeaaallllly. I'm not even talking about me anymore, because the me that can die doesn't really exist.
Maybe that should be the theme this time around. I should have themes for each suicide cycle. Nah, too much effort. Although there probably is a theme each time through, but I'm too lazy and self-conscious to figure them out.
What's going to guide it this time around? The only thing I do know is that I won't leave Taipei before some kind of serious gesture, event or attempt. Other than that, there is nothing determinate, and the old proposition holds that if I'm not executing it right now at this moment, I'm not going to do it at all. I will just continue puttering through life, one day to the next, the way it's been going.
But the thing is I will leave Taipei, so something will happen. If nothing keeps me in Taipei, I will leave, and without a good long stare in the face of my mortality, I don't have the strength or momentum to leave. I don't have the strength or momentum to just decide to leave.
Maybe it's not that death has become a farce, not that death itself has changed, death is still the same. Of course, it's just my attitude or conception of it. I've been steeping myself in the concept of death for so long, with no counteracting positive elements to give directly to my life some affirmation, that maybe deep inside I really have come to terms with and against our constructed notions of death.
Death is an interpretation and I no longer subscribe to the common notion of death, that it is in opposition to life; the antithesis. Of course it's natural, and it is an end, but it's not some ultimate end. Well, in some ways it is, but in other ways it isn't. I'm just no longer emphasizing the ways that it is.
When considering death, I end up considering life on Earth, and life on Earth will one day end. Earth is located in what is called the "Goldilocks" region away from the Sun. Not too hot, like Venus and Mercury, not too cold like Mars, but just right. It's not always going to be that way.
But being in the Goldilocks region is not just a function of distance, it's a function of time. We just happen to inhabit the planet at just the right time and place. And many other species have lived on Earth because the time and place conditions were just right for them. Climate conditions have changed over the course of millions of years, but various species still thrived.
I think I heard recently that 99.9% of species that have lived on Earth are now extinct. From our observation on this planet, species extinction is a normal part of the process of life on a planet with suitable conditions for life.
In a best case scenario, where we can assume we don't destroy Earth's habitability for humans ourselves, and not only that, but we find a way to peacefully resolve conflicts and cooperate for the benefit of all humanity, and use our resources in a sustainable, responsible way, a natural decimation of the human species is still foreseeable, although not soon, perhaps on a scale of tens of thousands of years. And that's giving credit to the human species for being particularly adaptable and clever when survival is at stake.
It just seems ludicrous and above arrogance to me that humans will still be around billions of years from now when the Sun exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and slowly grows into a red giant, burning away whatever is left of an atmosphere so that there's no more sky, and frying the surface until it itself is melted into a molten landscape.
Humanity, as brilliant, wonderful, beautiful and miraculous as it is, and as dear as we are to us, is just not that important in the natural cycles of the universe.
Somehow I feel much more in touch with the death of humanity than a death of my individual being. I'm not a part of my surroundings, I'm not networked with the humans around me in any significant way. My death really doesn't matter. No, really. Really, really, really. I don't know if I'm making my point clear. Reeeaaallllly. I'm not even talking about me anymore, because the me that can die doesn't really exist.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
It's friggin' cold in Taipei. I don't know if these are record lows for Taipei, but it's in the low 60s inside, and in a country where central heating is unheard of and space heaters are the only non-cost-effective solution, there's little respite.
It's conditions like this that make me think I spent lifetimes as a reptile, something cold-blooded that doesn't retain heat well. In these conditions, nothing would please me more than finding a spot of sunlight and laying out just to keep warm. I have no fear or aversion to snakes or lizards, not that necessarily means anything.
Just for fun, I like thinking about past lives by looking at what we are now, in this life. Maybe a lot of what we are may be impressions from past lives experiences. But there's no set formula for it. For instance, I really like cats and I think my attraction to that species was having been one before. However, there may be people who were cats in past lives and hated that existence and hate cats as humans. Tuna still makes me swoon.
My brother loathes cockroaches more than anything else. They freak him out as much as spiders used to me. It's very visceral. If his repulsion was from having been a cockroach in past lifetimes, it's not that he was disgusted by being a cockroach at the time, but an impression of it carried over, and his processing of it now, or as a human he has the capacity to process it now, makes him react with disgust.
I've mentioned my thing about spiders before, and I played with the idea that I had lifetimes as insects, many of which ended in spider webs. Imagining myself as a fly, and then imagining a spider, one the size relative to a fly, and being caught in a web and watching that spider come at me – I can see how that fear impression might be carried over lifetimes.
I've spent years getting over my fear of spiders, and I think I've been successful, but there are situations where I still have the same initial fear reaction.
I had a girlfriend who thought elephants were the cutest things. The guitarist of the band I'm in was not only a dog in previous lives, but it was very recent and direct that he attained a human form. I certainly don't mean this in a demeaning way, it's just an observation, but he is in many ways a dog in a man's body. Yea, yea, I know, that can be said about most men, but this guy is . . . shameless. Thankfully, he hasn't humped my leg recently.
Oh, and seafood, I think I've been seafood before. Seafood for most part repulses me, although I can actually eat it if it's socially expected (read: forced) of me. It's not that it isn't to my tastes, but eating it makes me feel cannibalistic for some reason.
It's conditions like this that make me think I spent lifetimes as a reptile, something cold-blooded that doesn't retain heat well. In these conditions, nothing would please me more than finding a spot of sunlight and laying out just to keep warm. I have no fear or aversion to snakes or lizards, not that necessarily means anything.
Just for fun, I like thinking about past lives by looking at what we are now, in this life. Maybe a lot of what we are may be impressions from past lives experiences. But there's no set formula for it. For instance, I really like cats and I think my attraction to that species was having been one before. However, there may be people who were cats in past lives and hated that existence and hate cats as humans. Tuna still makes me swoon.
My brother loathes cockroaches more than anything else. They freak him out as much as spiders used to me. It's very visceral. If his repulsion was from having been a cockroach in past lifetimes, it's not that he was disgusted by being a cockroach at the time, but an impression of it carried over, and his processing of it now, or as a human he has the capacity to process it now, makes him react with disgust.
I've mentioned my thing about spiders before, and I played with the idea that I had lifetimes as insects, many of which ended in spider webs. Imagining myself as a fly, and then imagining a spider, one the size relative to a fly, and being caught in a web and watching that spider come at me – I can see how that fear impression might be carried over lifetimes.
I've spent years getting over my fear of spiders, and I think I've been successful, but there are situations where I still have the same initial fear reaction.
I had a girlfriend who thought elephants were the cutest things. The guitarist of the band I'm in was not only a dog in previous lives, but it was very recent and direct that he attained a human form. I certainly don't mean this in a demeaning way, it's just an observation, but he is in many ways a dog in a man's body. Yea, yea, I know, that can be said about most men, but this guy is . . . shameless. Thankfully, he hasn't humped my leg recently.
Oh, and seafood, I think I've been seafood before. Seafood for most part repulses me, although I can actually eat it if it's socially expected (read: forced) of me. It's not that it isn't to my tastes, but eating it makes me feel cannibalistic for some reason.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
No left turn, I got through the wedding by disappearing. Man, was that annoying. I actually wasn't a total wet towel, although my nose was as my sinuses were acting up something fierce in the morning and I had an excuse to lay low. But then I went out and got some sinus medicine, and the noontime portion of the wedding was here at my uncle's place, and I stood for pictures.But then when orchestrating getting everyone to the wedding banquet site, it somehow got to me that I would be staying here to help take care of my cousin Audrey's son, along with the nanny who I consider a friend. I didn't mind that information as I didn't want to go anyway, and when people asked, I replied I wasn't going.
There was a bit in all this where it seemed that Audrey wasn't the source of the rumor of my staying behind, but I'm not sure I trust anything about her anymore, nor do I care. Suffice it to say that it was fine with everyone that I was staying behind, but then my parents were among the last people to depart, and they wouldn't have that, and I couldn't argue against them on this point, so I went.
When we got to the place, I found I knew where it was and it was an easy walk home, so I mentioned to my parents that if I didn't like being there, I could eat and then just leave. I ended up leaving just about right away.
The wedding banquet was a way-overblown dealy with hundreds of people who didn't know each other. My parents sat at the main table, and that was good for me because there was absolutely no way I was going to. I'm way too far down the totem pole for that esteemed position.
After that, all it took was to look around and be overwhelmed, find that anyone who even knew me was too busy, and I basically made my exit after making sure that my presence was known by certain key people who could vouch that I was there.
My experience with this family as a whole has been simply humiliating. I'm pretty much tolerated, condescended to, patronized and otherwise ignored. It might be 100% because of the language thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if a good percentage is actually because of my personality. I don't know what's wrong with my personality when I happen to make an effort, but apparently there is something wrong either way.
It could be the vibe I give out. It could be some family thing regarding my parents that I don't know about. Background, politics, education, philosophy? Whatever. Anyway, I can't definitively say who genuinely likes me aside from my uncle and aunt. OK, uncles and aunts. Maybe one or two others who I'll leave undefined. And I'm definitely more comfortable with the nanny to Audrey's kids than most of them. I relate to her more as an outsider.
I don't know if this will affect whether or not I move to Kaohsiung or not. Usually I don't have to deal with family en masse, and I'm not faced with a monolith to point out my insignificance. What this does do is make my suicide make more sense. To whom? How? I don't know, I don't care, shut up. I don't care if they care . . . which they probably do.
Something is slowly being made clear by all this, I'm not sure what yet.
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| SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, - My cousin Gary with bride-to-be in the shrine room on the roof of my uncle's building. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN. |
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| Gathered with family to pay respects to ancestors. |
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| 1:26 p.m. - My cousin Audrey's daughters Pie and Gracie. |
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| 1:43 p.m. - Two generations snapshot (the old guy is the husband of my cousin Sally, standing at the left). Family members of all five of my grandfather's children are present (grandchildren of only four). |
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| 2:37 p.m. - Bob and Jill, cousins to each other. |
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| 2:59 p.m. - KMRT station. I had to get away from all the family ruckus. |
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| 4:17 p.m. - KMRT station. I had to go back to all the family ruckus. |
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| 4:57 p.m. - Gracie, Jill, Sunny and Pie, watching TV before the evening wedding banquet. |
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| JANUARY 12 - Kaohsiung rooftops. |
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Kaohsiung, Taiwan
I've been dreading this weekend and now it's here, and after waking up with a migraine, I'm now in Kaohsiung, putting my brain into sleep mode cruise control to get me through my cousin's wedding on Sunday, to my parents' departure on Tuesday, so that I can get out of here and back to Taipei. Family from all over are converging here and all my usual comforts coming to Kaohsiung have been thrown out.I usually have a whole apartment to myself, with my own room, with my own bed. Now I'm stuck on tatami in a little corner of my uncle's apartment, which, mind you, I consider extremely gracious on my aunt's part, but I do feel like an inconvenience, the one who doesn't belong here, the one who no one can talk to, the only one that doesn't fall naturally into some relative order.
With all the people here, my isolation couldn't be more deafening. Yea, I know, this weekend is not about me, it's about my cousin, but I can't even participate in making this weekend about him, which I'd be more than happy to do. I've known him longer than most people in my life. It's only by virtue that he's family, but that's not the point.
Because the moment I open my mouth, if I open my mouth, which I'm not doing, I make it about me. I'm the only one here who only speaks English. So if I speak, it disrupts whatever thread of conversation was going on and makes people struggle because no one else here is a native English speaker. If I open my mouth, I have to be accommodated.
Is there a different way I could be handling this? Or should I succumb once again to being the butt of the big joke of my life. What would be the left turn way of handling this? One of my life lessons is to always take the left turn, always try to do something different, don't be predictable, habitual, caught in cycles and grooves. No, I don't follow this lesson very well.
My tendency, my habit is to try to disappear, sometimes even disappearing. Should I smile? I always smile, I'm sick of smiling, I'm sure it's obvious how fake it is now and it makes my face burn. Should I "just get in there" and mix with people? Even thinking about it fills me with dread and disgust. Don't take the left turn if it's going to make things worse. Sometimes bad is as good as it gets. Voila, two more life lessons!
I can do better being pleasant to my parents. Especially if this is the last time seeing them. They've been pushing me to go back to the U.S. and I don't know how long I can keep nodding and saying, "uh-huh". They mean good, they just don't know.
So this is my weekend of reckoning. This is the weekend I've been waiting for, and yes, waiting for this weekend was the right thing to do. Everyone should be happy for my cousin this weekend. But after this weekend, I have to decide whether to go to the edge again. I have to make it real again. No setting dates. No waiting for anything. It's wide open now, and I have to face what I'm about.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
I watched National Geographic's "Journey to the Edge of the Universe", kicking off NGC's "Space Month", participating in the 2009 International Year of Astronomy (yay!). I initially thought the program was only an hour long, and was a little dismayed when at 45 minutes, we were still in the solar system.
I wonder about people's conception of the universe and whether it merely extends to what is in the news – which is our space exploration within our solar system. When asked about the universe, do people not venture beyond our solar system, or beyond what can be seen in the night sky, all of which, with few exceptions, is within our singular Milky Way galaxy? Was NGC perpetuating this misconception?
Thankfully, I was wrong. It was a two-hour special. It did take 90 minutes to get out of the Milky Way, but that's a little more appropriate. The vast majority of what we know about the universe is within the Milky Way galaxy. However, I don't understand how, in presenting the universe in larger and larger scales, the formation of galaxy clusters was overlooked.
I love taking mental journeys like that. Despite the animation of the program, the universe is reality, it's out there. It's worth it to speculate or try to get our minds around the incredible vastness of the universe to put into perspective the less than grains of dust our lives are on this planet. And to appreciate the infinite value of our less than grains of dust lives.
I imagine standing on a shore at night, just like as when we look up at the night sky, we are standing on a shore of the universe (a metaphor used in the program, no doubt borrowed from Carl Sagan). But for me, imagining the journey into space is much like imagining the journey into death. A journey into indisputable fact, but experientially unknown.
I play with the idea of death, the temporary release of physical being and attachment into some primordial energy, being equated with the universe, or oneness with the universe. Our life being is a formalized and conceptualized version of this energy that pervades the universe.
I want to dive into that ocean. I recall the meditations from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and hope I can tap into them when my time comes. The book, however, is only a suggestion conceptualizing one cultured version of the death experience. I don't take it as literal but subject to my personal interpretation.
We are driven by our beliefs, but we're pitting beliefs against facts, and the fact is we will all find out the truth, we will all die, just as certainly as there is a universe that stretches billions of light years when we look up into the night sky.
I wonder about people's conception of the universe and whether it merely extends to what is in the news – which is our space exploration within our solar system. When asked about the universe, do people not venture beyond our solar system, or beyond what can be seen in the night sky, all of which, with few exceptions, is within our singular Milky Way galaxy? Was NGC perpetuating this misconception?
Thankfully, I was wrong. It was a two-hour special. It did take 90 minutes to get out of the Milky Way, but that's a little more appropriate. The vast majority of what we know about the universe is within the Milky Way galaxy. However, I don't understand how, in presenting the universe in larger and larger scales, the formation of galaxy clusters was overlooked.
I love taking mental journeys like that. Despite the animation of the program, the universe is reality, it's out there. It's worth it to speculate or try to get our minds around the incredible vastness of the universe to put into perspective the less than grains of dust our lives are on this planet. And to appreciate the infinite value of our less than grains of dust lives.
I imagine standing on a shore at night, just like as when we look up at the night sky, we are standing on a shore of the universe (a metaphor used in the program, no doubt borrowed from Carl Sagan). But for me, imagining the journey into space is much like imagining the journey into death. A journey into indisputable fact, but experientially unknown.
I play with the idea of death, the temporary release of physical being and attachment into some primordial energy, being equated with the universe, or oneness with the universe. Our life being is a formalized and conceptualized version of this energy that pervades the universe.
I want to dive into that ocean. I recall the meditations from the Tibetan Book of the Dead and hope I can tap into them when my time comes. The book, however, is only a suggestion conceptualizing one cultured version of the death experience. I don't take it as literal but subject to my personal interpretation.
We are driven by our beliefs, but we're pitting beliefs against facts, and the fact is we will all find out the truth, we will all die, just as certainly as there is a universe that stretches billions of light years when we look up into the night sky.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Assembly (China, 2007)
This is an excellent (anti-)war film, set in northeastern China, beginning late in the Chinese Civil War in 1948 between the Nationalist KMT forces and Mao Tse-tung's revolutionary Communist forces. The protagonist in this film is a captain in Mao's People's Liberation Army (PLA), however, this is not a political film. It doesn't take any stance for or against the causes of the Communists or the Nationalists, who, by the way, lost the war in 1949, and were chased from the mainland onto the island of Taiwan, led by Chiang Kai-shek. This film, appropriately, doesn't touch any of that.
The captain is a tough and seasoned, competent commander, but he's not at all perfect. He arguably commits war crimes at the beginning, and gets jailed for it, but in context, the horrendous idea of war crimes is also not so black and white. There's a human dimension to decisions and in the extremes of war, people act unpredictably and extremely.
The title of this film refers to the bugle call that would have signaled the captain's company to fall back from the position they were assigned to hold, and to rejoin the main forces. However, there is a question of whether the assembly call was heard or not, to disastrous consequences.
The human toll of war is emphasized when the captain searches for redemption and reckoning regarding his men after the fighting stops (the film stretches into the Korean conflict, including a pretty funny exchange between the captain pretending to be South Korean when his company runs across a couple of U.S. tanks). He is haunted that he may have needlessly sacrificed his men, and that his further actions, possibly cowardly, prevented his mens' sacrifice from being recognized as acts of valor. He has to go about putting together the pieces of evidence that might redeem him and his men.
I highly recommend this film. 8 out of 10 tomatoes.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
pt. 2
So what else 2008?
Hiccups. For about three months at the beginning of the year, I got hiccups three times a month for periods of over 30 hours. You can only know how much that sucks if you've gone through it. The first hiccup comes and you know it's gonna suck until the next day.
Although I did channel the hiccups and incorporated them into a meditation from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Something about "hi-ka" gasps regarding conciousness transference/control approaching the time of death.
Insomnia. That started at the end of May and lasted all Summer and then tapered away in October. I could only get a few hours of sleep every night and then I'd wake up and not be able to get back to sleep. It frayed my nerves and I went to work a zombie and even almost snapped at my uncle at one point. A few times since then I've had trouble sleeping and all of it came back with bouts of paranoid madness. Fortunately, those all have been one-offs. I think it has something to do with the air in my apartment.
The night job and insomnia did lead me to night riding, though, which I discovered is totally awesome in the Taipei area. No traffic, no pollution, no dehydrating, no sunburn – night riding was the bomb and definitely a good point of 2008, maybe the only one. It was such great pleasure exploring again, wandering, roaming, just going, getting a lay of the landscape (unfortunately the only lay), the roads. Couldn't see anything, no scenery, but you have to little give with the little take.
I must say I'm very pleased with my budget-priced Giant OCR2 road bike. It's taken me all over northern Taiwan. I put reflective strips on the forks and got a headlight for the night riding. It needs new wheels, though. They're more bald than I am, making downhills a hairy, scary deal, and glass is getting through the stock wheels more and more readily.
Anything else, 2008? Thanks for the Shiina Ringo! I've bought almost all of her CDs and DVDs available in Taiwan. I'd already downloaded most of it, but I just think if it's an artist I really want to support, I need to go and buy their CDs.
Hm, and weirdness. The October suicide of Korean actress Choi Jin-Sil. She was one of the most popular actresses in Korea. I didn't know who she was, never heard of her until a black and white, printed out newswire picture of her came across my desk at work. The picture struck me immediately for no reason, and I knew the caption I had to edit wasn't good news.
Instead of putting the printout in the edited captions box, I folded it up and took it home, and for the first time began a cycle of the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Hearing directly focused on a person, using her name, and trying to respect that she was Christian by altering the text to make Christian references.
I ran the recitation for the full 40 days as indicated in the instructions, even though I believe time is an artificial construct and either doesn't exist or exists differently in the death bardos, and even though really I have no idea what I was doing. I just felt an intimate closeness to her, like an older sister, someone I loved and missed not even having known her. She was someone I lost personally and want to find in the future.
I don't know how that works, but I'm open to the possibility. Like the way I think my estranged cousin Audrey may have found a way, in a way we couldn't possibly understand or articulate, to be born in the same family as me. We're karmically drifting apart and maybe have been through lifetimes, and as much contention as there is between us now, being cousins is actually the perfect relationship where awareness of each other is maintained, as well as whatever status quo until some detente can be reached.
Oddly, this thing with Choi Jin-Sil may have been my most significant relationship in 2008. She didn't reach her 40th birthday.
That said, I'm declaring friendships with Madoka, Sadie and Hyun Ae dead. Nobuko emailed a one-off late in the year and nothing since, but I cut-off from her once before, now she has immunity and she can come and go from my life as she pleases, no problem, I'm totally open to her. Actually, come to think of it, that goes for Madoka, too.
As for 2009, I guess I should smarten up and look forward to another empty year, with meaningless communications and collisions, with no affirmatively positive elements, no successful suicide unless I can help it, but lord knows we'll keep trying, and a probable departure from Taipei.
Hiccups. For about three months at the beginning of the year, I got hiccups three times a month for periods of over 30 hours. You can only know how much that sucks if you've gone through it. The first hiccup comes and you know it's gonna suck until the next day.
Although I did channel the hiccups and incorporated them into a meditation from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Something about "hi-ka" gasps regarding conciousness transference/control approaching the time of death.
Insomnia. That started at the end of May and lasted all Summer and then tapered away in October. I could only get a few hours of sleep every night and then I'd wake up and not be able to get back to sleep. It frayed my nerves and I went to work a zombie and even almost snapped at my uncle at one point. A few times since then I've had trouble sleeping and all of it came back with bouts of paranoid madness. Fortunately, those all have been one-offs. I think it has something to do with the air in my apartment.
The night job and insomnia did lead me to night riding, though, which I discovered is totally awesome in the Taipei area. No traffic, no pollution, no dehydrating, no sunburn – night riding was the bomb and definitely a good point of 2008, maybe the only one. It was such great pleasure exploring again, wandering, roaming, just going, getting a lay of the landscape (unfortunately the only lay), the roads. Couldn't see anything, no scenery, but you have to little give with the little take.
I must say I'm very pleased with my budget-priced Giant OCR2 road bike. It's taken me all over northern Taiwan. I put reflective strips on the forks and got a headlight for the night riding. It needs new wheels, though. They're more bald than I am, making downhills a hairy, scary deal, and glass is getting through the stock wheels more and more readily.
Anything else, 2008? Thanks for the Shiina Ringo! I've bought almost all of her CDs and DVDs available in Taiwan. I'd already downloaded most of it, but I just think if it's an artist I really want to support, I need to go and buy their CDs.
Hm, and weirdness. The October suicide of Korean actress Choi Jin-Sil. She was one of the most popular actresses in Korea. I didn't know who she was, never heard of her until a black and white, printed out newswire picture of her came across my desk at work. The picture struck me immediately for no reason, and I knew the caption I had to edit wasn't good news.
Instead of putting the printout in the edited captions box, I folded it up and took it home, and for the first time began a cycle of the Tibetan Book of the Dead: Liberation Through Hearing directly focused on a person, using her name, and trying to respect that she was Christian by altering the text to make Christian references.
I ran the recitation for the full 40 days as indicated in the instructions, even though I believe time is an artificial construct and either doesn't exist or exists differently in the death bardos, and even though really I have no idea what I was doing. I just felt an intimate closeness to her, like an older sister, someone I loved and missed not even having known her. She was someone I lost personally and want to find in the future.
I don't know how that works, but I'm open to the possibility. Like the way I think my estranged cousin Audrey may have found a way, in a way we couldn't possibly understand or articulate, to be born in the same family as me. We're karmically drifting apart and maybe have been through lifetimes, and as much contention as there is between us now, being cousins is actually the perfect relationship where awareness of each other is maintained, as well as whatever status quo until some detente can be reached.
Oddly, this thing with Choi Jin-Sil may have been my most significant relationship in 2008. She didn't reach her 40th birthday.
That said, I'm declaring friendships with Madoka, Sadie and Hyun Ae dead. Nobuko emailed a one-off late in the year and nothing since, but I cut-off from her once before, now she has immunity and she can come and go from my life as she pleases, no problem, I'm totally open to her. Actually, come to think of it, that goes for Madoka, too.
As for 2009, I guess I should smarten up and look forward to another empty year, with meaningless communications and collisions, with no affirmatively positive elements, no successful suicide unless I can help it, but lord knows we'll keep trying, and a probable departure from Taipei.
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| 12:17 a.m. - New Year's with the band's people. Ricoh Caplio R4. |
pt. 1
So what was 2008 in a nutshell, aside from yet another waste of a year?
It started in New Jersey with my last trip to the U.S., four weeks spending time with family and brother's in-law's family. Watching parents get old, nieces and nephews starting their own journeys. Touching sentimental smarmy scenes, but what life's about, I guess.
After I got back to Taiwan, I moved from my Xindian apartment back to Taipei in March on a lead provided by my estranged cousin. The move was a good one in every way but one, but the main reason was because I was running away from a problem.
The problem was a total asswipe of a white guy, an intolerable, obnoxious, bellowing meathead of a Brit football fan hoodlum who moved in next door. I couldn't find any better way to deal with that problem than to run away. I can't change the outside world, so I have to change myself, my situation. I have to relocate. I have the luxury to up and move and run away from my problem; not deal with it.
I joined a band and we started rehearsing in January. We started gigging in March. It's a cover band and we play bars and get paid, so it's semi-professional. In July, the bass player bought a restaurant and since then we've played most weekends there, exclusively.
It's a humiliating joke of a cover band, and I have no rapport with the other members, and if it weren't for the pay, I would have quit a long time ago. Quitting is always in the cards, but actually playing during gigs is alright and softens the drive to quit.
I started work in April as a copy editor at a local English-language newspaper. Not a bad job, I liked it and I could do it. I'm not bragging when I say that when I was the lead copy editor, fewer mistakes made it to print. Not none, but fewer.
And since I stopped being the fulltime copy editor, I've been appalled by some of the mistakes they've allowed go to print. Aside from the smaller non-AP style mistakes, they've had misspellings in headlines, and on the historic election issue, they even got the day of the week wrong on the front page. I didn't work on that issue because I had already switched to part-time, and then soon after that, in the middle of November, I switched to only working on weekends and emergencies.
The reason? I was running away from a problem. The problem? The newspaper re-hired a previous copy editor that I found offensive and obnoxious with a poor work attitude, and instead of working out the problem, I ran away from it. I don't know why the editor-in-chief re-hired her, he had problems with her before, and continues to have problems with her.
Why I can't stand her, I can't say. I just can't stand being in the same room with her. Her big fat face is a caricature of a witch, complete with hideous mole. Her breasts sag disgustingly over roles of belly fat, et. al.
Why this bile? I'm generally not one to attack someone's physical appearance. If someone's physical appearance makes me react less than ideally, I switch on meditations of the like: what if this was someone I love; there are people out there who love this person and would be hurt by my venom, I don't want to hurt those people; these are just circumstances and anyone can be affected by them; am I so perfect that no one is offended by my personality? Hell no.
I think it's karmic, and this is a copout and it's running away from engaging and dealing with a problem. I think in other lifetimes we were of various sorts and degrees of enemies, and not the family love-hate kind. This is of the Nazi-Jewish kind, KKK-African American kind. Unbridled, unapologetic and relentless.
But even if the karma carried over, we are not who we were then, and if I understand that, I should try to neutralize the karma by engaging her. And since we are not who we were then, we can work it out without the luggage that burdened us before. I didn't. And I have no intention of doing so.
So if we by chance meet again in another lifetime, it'll be the same, maybe it'll be her ostracizing me. Maybe she'll have a gun to my head, maybe I'll have a noose around her neck. And this is part of what it means to be caught in the suffering of cyclic existence, because I'm not willing to fix something in me I know is broken.
I'll continue working there on weekends and playing in the band until I decide to move from Taipei, which I think is imminent.
It started in New Jersey with my last trip to the U.S., four weeks spending time with family and brother's in-law's family. Watching parents get old, nieces and nephews starting their own journeys. Touching sentimental smarmy scenes, but what life's about, I guess.
After I got back to Taiwan, I moved from my Xindian apartment back to Taipei in March on a lead provided by my estranged cousin. The move was a good one in every way but one, but the main reason was because I was running away from a problem.
The problem was a total asswipe of a white guy, an intolerable, obnoxious, bellowing meathead of a Brit football fan hoodlum who moved in next door. I couldn't find any better way to deal with that problem than to run away. I can't change the outside world, so I have to change myself, my situation. I have to relocate. I have the luxury to up and move and run away from my problem; not deal with it.
I joined a band and we started rehearsing in January. We started gigging in March. It's a cover band and we play bars and get paid, so it's semi-professional. In July, the bass player bought a restaurant and since then we've played most weekends there, exclusively.
It's a humiliating joke of a cover band, and I have no rapport with the other members, and if it weren't for the pay, I would have quit a long time ago. Quitting is always in the cards, but actually playing during gigs is alright and softens the drive to quit.
I started work in April as a copy editor at a local English-language newspaper. Not a bad job, I liked it and I could do it. I'm not bragging when I say that when I was the lead copy editor, fewer mistakes made it to print. Not none, but fewer.
And since I stopped being the fulltime copy editor, I've been appalled by some of the mistakes they've allowed go to print. Aside from the smaller non-AP style mistakes, they've had misspellings in headlines, and on the historic election issue, they even got the day of the week wrong on the front page. I didn't work on that issue because I had already switched to part-time, and then soon after that, in the middle of November, I switched to only working on weekends and emergencies.
The reason? I was running away from a problem. The problem? The newspaper re-hired a previous copy editor that I found offensive and obnoxious with a poor work attitude, and instead of working out the problem, I ran away from it. I don't know why the editor-in-chief re-hired her, he had problems with her before, and continues to have problems with her.
Why I can't stand her, I can't say. I just can't stand being in the same room with her. Her big fat face is a caricature of a witch, complete with hideous mole. Her breasts sag disgustingly over roles of belly fat, et. al.
Why this bile? I'm generally not one to attack someone's physical appearance. If someone's physical appearance makes me react less than ideally, I switch on meditations of the like: what if this was someone I love; there are people out there who love this person and would be hurt by my venom, I don't want to hurt those people; these are just circumstances and anyone can be affected by them; am I so perfect that no one is offended by my personality? Hell no.
I think it's karmic, and this is a copout and it's running away from engaging and dealing with a problem. I think in other lifetimes we were of various sorts and degrees of enemies, and not the family love-hate kind. This is of the Nazi-Jewish kind, KKK-African American kind. Unbridled, unapologetic and relentless.
But even if the karma carried over, we are not who we were then, and if I understand that, I should try to neutralize the karma by engaging her. And since we are not who we were then, we can work it out without the luggage that burdened us before. I didn't. And I have no intention of doing so.
So if we by chance meet again in another lifetime, it'll be the same, maybe it'll be her ostracizing me. Maybe she'll have a gun to my head, maybe I'll have a noose around her neck. And this is part of what it means to be caught in the suffering of cyclic existence, because I'm not willing to fix something in me I know is broken.
I'll continue working there on weekends and playing in the band until I decide to move from Taipei, which I think is imminent.
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