Blue Cliff Monastery

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

It was as if nearly four years hadn't passed. I went up to Blue Cliff this past weekend. Didn't jump off of it, either. Three of the monks I knew from Deer Park were there; two of them I was particularly close to, and the third also recognized me right away.

I was actually worried about going, even on the drive up. I hit a lot of traffic and then ran into a thundering hailstorm that reduced visibility to a few feet and slowed traffic to a crawl, and my first reaction was this was a sure sign for me to turn around and head back.

But then I realized, no, this was about right. There always has to be at least a symbolic ordeal on any journey, and I figured once I got to my destination, the skies would clear and it would be all rainbows and bunnies, and it turned out that was pretty close. No rainbow.

Such a short visit, but by Saturday afternoon, I was already in the rhythm. It felt like I had never left Deer Park, only it was Blue Cliff – a much smaller landscape and monastery. Time was spanning, and my departure on Sunday and then eventual return to Taipei seemed a fairyland away.

Those two monks I knew from before certainly helped, and our chemistry, for better or worse, was exactly the same as before. It may have prevented me from getting to know the other monks better. At Deer Park, I eventually gravitated to certain monks, but I was initially exposed to them all equally, so I knew who all of them were.

Anyway, I told them, and the community in less detail, about the troubles I've been encountering in my practice recently. Being with the community was wonderful – it did wonders – but certainly not enough, I shouldn't wonder.

During Saturday work meditation, I was aware of the chatter in my head, but I realized that in that setting, it was softer, not oppressive – happy chatter. In the outside world, the chatter had taken an aggressively negative character and would amplify just by being in the outside world. Negative karmic seeds would be fed and grow, and that's the advantage of being in a monastic setting.

It, of course, came up whether I was still considering ordaining, and I told them it was never out of the question. And they reminded me that the cut off age was 50, which to my ears sounded like I have plenty of time to decide – which was good. The Plum Village system has one of the oldest cut-off ages for ordaining.

Needless to say it was great hooking up with them and they did give my batteries some charge. I took exactly two weeks break from sitting, and they jump started that. I'm still unsure where things are going or how things will turn out, but I'm glad for the positive spin they gave me.

FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 5:57 p.m. - From the guesthouse balcony shortly after arriving and registering; main meditation hall across the street in the distance. That's a public road that splits the monastery grounds. 

8:26 p.m. - Registration and administrative building at the left. The guesthouse is off-screen left. Straight ahead leads to the monastics' quarters. Off-screen right is a little house that I don't know what it was, but that little stone fountain-like thing will locate it in other pics.

8:30 p.m. - Main meditation hall across the street.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 7:08 a.m. - Main meditation hall photostitch.

7:17 a.m. - Entrance hall. Thich Nhat Hanh's calligraphy above the door says, "Look deeply" and "Listen with compassion".

7:19 a.m. - The sitting rows are separated by gender. The main bell moves back and forth depending on whether a monk or nun leads the session. The main altar is by the window to the left with a teeny-tiny Buddha statue.

7:21 a.m. - Yea, so I don't know how I feel about this. Such a grand hall, but a puny Buddha that's not much bigger than the one on my modest home altar. Deer Park also had issues with Buddha statues. They had ordered an appropriate statue for their meditation hall, but then it was too big to fit through the doors. They put it up on a plateau overlooking the monastery and an arrangement of orchids was used in the meditation hall.

Reverse angle. Actually I think they based the architecture on Deer Park's meditation hall; they're very similar. It was designed by the current abbot of Deer Park who was an architect prior to becoming a monk.

7:37 a.m. - Macro photography, vaguely recalling the diamond net of Indra.

9:12 a.m. - Guesthouse, where I took the first pic, at the left, admin building center. Main meditation hall is off-screen right across the street.

11:50 a.m. - Another view of the meditation hall with other structures. I think that's "Thay's hut" on the left. "Thay" is what Thich Nhat Hanh is called in the respectful but familiar. I think it just means "teacher" and can be used generally. I think all of the satellite monasteries in the Plum Village system have a "Thay's hut" for when he visits. I've never referred to him as "Thay".

1:38 p.m. - Clouds start to loom, thus quote the raven crow.

3:15 p.m. - The much smaller landscape of Blue Cliff. Deer Park's surroundings accommodate weeks or months of exploration, but Blue Cliff can be covered in an hour. But 43 minutes later:

3:58 p.m. - Thus quote the crow: "I told you so".

4:23 p.m. - Listening to a dharma talk.

5:43 p.m.

7:45 p.m. - And there's the little house with the stone fountain-like thing marking it, making a pretty little picture.

Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera. Kodak BW400CN. There's that stone fountain-like thing again. Earlier in the day.

Site of the day's work meditation.

SUNDAY, JUNE 28 - From the main meditation hall road, looking at the other monastery facilities across the street.

2:09 p.m. - A group of Koreans visiting for a few hours to experience the monastery and a sitting session.

2:36 p.m. - Preparing to leave. However, I delayed leaving because I was told there would be a visiting contingent from a newly-created Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM) facility just down the road. DDM from Taiwan, with whom I'd been attending sitting sessions with their Int'l Meditation Group. I knew the guy! I kinda stopped going after he left to return to the U.S. to establish the facility. His successors were Taiwanese and too "Chinese Buddhism" for my taste. Unfortunately he didn't recognize me, no doubt in part because he had absolutely zero expectations of running into me in the U.S., much less at Blue Cliff. I could see him trying very hard to place me.

2:53 p.m. - With Brother Phap Lai, who I knew from Deer Park. He's originally from England.

3:31 p.m. - Phap Khoi, also from Deer Park. He's been on the monastic path for many lifetimes and becoming a monk early was the easiest decision he made in his life. He's from Seattle and is one of Thich Nhat Hanh's Vietnamese-English translators when he's traveling to places where he'd speak in Vietnamese.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I guess I'm deciding to go visit Blue Cliff tomorrow. No one else is making or influencing the decision for me. No one else is making or influencing the decision otherwise. It's a short visit, and it's much closer than Deer Park was from San Francisco.

On one hand, from the point I left Deer Park to now, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to comment to the brothers. I don't know if I've progressed or how I've changed.

On the other hand, none of that is the point of my going. If monks I knew at Deer Park are there, they have no expectations of me. They'll be glad to see me in whatever state, even a bad one. OK, I'll go. On trust.

My favorite Taiwanese band, Tizzy Bac, has another video out. Again, incredibly creative and a great, intense song. The title is something like: "If I see hell, I'm not afraid of the devil"


And I learned that Shiina Ringo released a new solo album yesterday, so now I have something to look forward to returning to Taiwan. I don't know if the release date is the same in Japan and Taiwan, but I'm hoping it will be available by the time I get back there. I may even try to pick it up at Taipei Main Station on my way home from the airport.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Sleep just started being disturbed, but I'm not sure. Not too bad, but any disturbance indicates an ongoing problem.

I don't want anything. I can't think of anything I desire except to putter about my days undisturbed, which unfortunately doesn't gel with the need to make money to live sorta thing.

But I don't want anything, and I don't have anything. That should mean I'm happy, right? Hm.

Much of my first week here was spent on my laptop. My brother switched out my dying 60 GB hard drive for a new 250 GB drive. I've been putting my files back together and consolidating all my music back in one place.

Music, photos and videos are all done. But I've lost all my Internet favorites, including blogs I visit/stalk. That's a hint, btw.

I'm still considering visiting Blue Cliff this weekend, but it's hard for me to want to do anything. I don't want to go, but it probably would be a good thing to go. But then I don't want to return to Taiwan, and I don't want to stay here. I just do what I have to. I don't want to go into NY to meet up with Peggy and her friends tonight, but the ball of expectation has been rolled. I could pull out, but that would be lame.

I just don't want to do anything anymore except listen to my iPods.

TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1:20 p.m. - Ikea with my sister-in-law and baby Zayden (photo added much later as my sister-in-law wouldn't be happy if I posted it in real time - ed.).

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Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Zero jetlag. I attribute it to the type of insomnia I had. It was even a bit surreal. I was expecting to feel something, as I always do on long international flights; as just about everyone feels after long international flights.

But I arrived at night in New Jersey last Tuesday, got to sleep at a reasonable hour, got a full night's sleep, got up at a reasonable hour, and since then not a hint of jetlag, no grogginess, no crashing, not even a sudden pang of tiredness at an odd time of day.

In fact, I've been sleeping totally normally without any hint of insomnia, either. And I've continued normal sleeping hours, which is odd. Usually when I'm here, I maintain night owl hours and go to sleep in the wee hours and wake up pretty late.

It wasn't promising on the flights, either. I may have gotten a couple hours of sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but mostly it was just twilight fading in and out. I expected not being able to sleep on the flights, since I also couldn't sleep on the bus to Kaohsiung several weeks ago.

And it was a long flight with three legs of flying – first to Tokyo, then to San Francisco (including a burrito run to the Mission District), then to Newark.

TUESDAY, JUNE 16 - Mission St. @ 24th. The plan was to buy a bunch of burritos from my favorite taquerias (San Jose (to the right in the pic), El Farolito, Cancun, Pancho Villa) down Mission St. to 16th St. and take them to New Jersey and stick them in the freezer.

10:08 a.m. - Took the BART from the airport to 24th St. station, and then back to the airport from 16th St. station. When I first arrived in the Bay Area in 1993 I thought BART with its cloth covered seats and carpeting was luxurious compared to the New York subway. Now they're just disgusting and the smell was unbelievable.

2:21 p.m. - Flying to New Jersey with a backpack stash of contraband burritos. Yo necessiiito mi burriiiitos.

Otherwise, I'm glad to be in the U.S. Maybe the sleep thing is telling me to get the hell out of Taiwan. On the other hand, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing here, I have no place with these people, just as I have no place with family in Kaohsiung. And as I've scrapped moving to Kaohsiung, I don't see any reason to move back here. And I'm not looking forward to going back to Taiwan. Being in Taiwan was too hard. Existing is hard enough for me, add all that and that's pushing my mental health to the limit.

I haven't been sitting. Insomnia finally stopped morning sitting a few days before I left Taiwan, and since then I've stopped. So this is now the longest time I haven't done morning sitting since I left the monastery.

I'm taking a break. Maybe it was getting to be too much pressure to get something out of it. Maybe it was making me complacent because achieving this routine made me unconsciously think I didn't have to maintain the practice throughout the rest of the day. I don't know.

I don't know. I was thinking of visiting Blue Cliff Monastery in Upstate N.Y. while I was here. Blue Cliff opened last year, I think, after the Plum Village branch in Vermont closed down (I've thought before of visiting the Vermont center). I recently saw photos on the Blue Cliff site and some of the monks I was closest to at Deer Park are probably at Blue Cliff now. But I don't know if I'll be able to fit a visit in. I really should.

I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations again, realizing that happiness doesn't come from external circumstances. I know I can be happy right now, I can choose to be happy. I'm just choosing not to. The reasons why I'm choosing not to are a little more complicated. I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations to make sure they still work, although I still want to be unhappy.

Which is odd because I know the happiness is right here. Hm.

OK, well that sucked. I'm not even sure the hiccups are gone, but I'm in a lull now and the latest count was 69 hours. New record after the 50 earlier this month. So if I had worked Friday night, I would have worked three shifts of work with hiccups.

Despite my constant references, no one at work thinks I'm suicidal. Probably a good thing. And insomnia hit a new low today, too, not even getting to sleep for the meager 3 or 4 hours. I did manage to put myself down for about 3 hours before work, though, and that got me through the shift. Whine, whine, whine.

And I'm going to the U.S. Tuesday. And I still have a shift to do at work. No sleep tomorrow night, as I'll no doubt be packing and leaving my apartment at about 5:30 A.M. to get to the airport.

I don't know how I feel about going back. I'm going back wrecked and no one knows anything about it. And my internal rage has been getting the better of my mind lately.

I need to implode and kill myself before I explode and hurt someone else. And I'm bringing back the paradigm that my life will have been wasted if my parents die before me. My purpose in life in respect to them is to give them that unexpected experience. Yea, that's self-serving, so what? What are you gonna do about it? See? . . . about to snap.

I am viewing this trip to wrap things up over there, no regrets, just in case I never go back and people rummage through my stuff. I want to know what they'll find. Because I care.

Also because a couple of my steel drum CDs didn't make it onto my iPod the last time I was there! I thought I put everything on, even the really obscure shit. I also know I have an early Namie Amuro CD in the stuff leftover from Josephine. I learned after Amina to never throw things away related to exes, just save them what the hell. And never get rid of negatives. That's probably my biggest regret.

With Josephine I saved everything, including that Namie Amuro CD which I remember disliking. I probably still won't love it because it was before she changed her music to a more R&B style. Back then she was pure hideous pop. My tastes have mellowed with age, and I like a limited amount of pop now, including Namie Amuro.

And especially Korean pop. I hate U.S. pop for most part, Japanese pop seems silly for most part, Taiwanese pop makes me gag, but the Korean pop artists I've been digging into, I download in bulk, put them on my iPod on shuffle play, and for most part, whenever something comes up, I'm like, "damn, this is good, dog". I'm not sure what's different, but the writing is just much better and better than generic.

Stuff like this is somewhat understandable, even though I'm not into techno, and techno is her basic background tracks, but she's quirky, even freaky, and it's great writing. Oddly, I've liked all of her stuff I've listened to. But then stuff like this it's inexplicable how I've listened to maybe over a dozen times and I'm still no where near sick of it. These mob girl bands were probably started in Asia by a Japanese group called Morning Musume in the early '90s and I couldn't stand them.

I'm babbling. I'm procrastinating from packing, and sleeping, and it's all gonna domino since I need to do laundry tomorrow morning, and then work. And I still don't know if I'm going to get to sleep. If I were Australian, I might say, "I'm totally facked".

Hm, hiccups not gone yet. 70 hours. I might see a doctor in the U.S. I'm hoping it's a tumor.

Diary of an insomniac

Yesterday wasn't bad. I got a good 6 hours of continuous sleep and then languished in a twilight for another couple hours. It didn't help at work, though, since the effects of sleep deprivation are cumulative and I still crashed in the late hours of work.

Then today, technically yesterday now, I got about the same. Very good sign. And work was decent. No fading out.

But let me just say hiccups just started, let's see how long they last.

And let's review: Insomnia – valid excuse to commit suicide for those predisposed to commit suicide. Persistent hiccups – valid excuse to commit suicide. Loser who has hiccups and can't get enough sleep – mandate to commit suicide.

THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 1:04 a.m. - Just a chicken outside a bar in the wee hours of morning.

Suspect X (Yougisha X no Kenshin) (2009, Japan)

This movie is a love story made out to look like a murder-suspense-mystery. But how you look at it determines the success of the movie. If you look at it as the crime drama that it facially appears to be, it has fundamental flaws that sink it. But if you can change your view and see it as a love story . . . maybe.

But it's a stretch to see it as a love story. It seems the writer of the story had an end point in mind – something abstract about love – and then constructed this crime drama story around it to get to the point – by any means necessary.

The movie involves a murder and subsequently two geniuses are pitted against each other – a math genius who aids the murderer, and a physics whiz helps the crime investigation, but oddly, they're acquaintances, and arguably friends.

One fundamental flaw is that once a suspect has an air-tight alibi, even a "suspect X", police don't waste time pursuing that suspect on a hunch and keep thinking some smoking gun piece of evidence is going to magically appear to implicate them. Air-tight alibi!

Another fundamental flaw in the logic is how an easily defensible case of involuntary manslaughter is turned into a homicide investigation by the characters themselves.

OK, I don't know Japanese criminal law, so my thinking may be skewed, but following U.S. law, the evidence probably would have amounted to the murderer not even doing jail time. Despite the movie's offering of the otherwise, there would have been overwhelming evidence that it was a case of self-defense. Maybe Japan doesn't allow for self-defense as a justification for one's acts.

But maybe the writer overlooked this legal flaw in order to attribute it to character flaws where they act irrationally due to ignorance or love.

Another flaw that I didn't realize until the second viewing is that the police-helping physics professor, and his genius, is the main character in the movie (it's more apparent in the trailer). The problem is (aside from not exactly being bowled over by his logic or genius (nor his arrogance)) this protagonist is being used against the murderer and math teacher, but the scenario establishes those two as sympathetic characters from the start.

The murderer is really a victim and the math teacher is just a man in love who thinks he can help out his neighbor. The attempts to make him creepy only appeared on second viewing of the DVD, and still didn't take away from him being a sympathetic character. He plots, he deceives, but he's not evil. He's just in love.

The viewer knows the general truth about what happened, twists notwithstanding (nor make sense), and then we are forced to see how the protagonist unravels the plot, but truth is already established, not just the truth of what happened, but the moral truth that it was a case of self-defense, and we're not on the side of the protagonist.

That all said, it's not a bad film per se. It's an enjoyable enough ride, but definitely not one to dwell on whether all the pieces add up, and it was worse on second viewing, which only corroborated the doubts I had during the first viewing. There are twists towards the end which I also have doubts about, but would leave up to the viewer to decide about.

I'll pass this movie with a fresh 6 out of 10 tomatoes. It's worth watching for fans of Japanese film, it is distinctly Japanese (with telltale sexism involved, btw), but I don't recommend this film as a suspense or crime drama. It doesn't hold up. I don't give it a rotten rating because it doesn't insult my intelligence.


Juno (2007, USA)

When the trailers came out for this movie, I could tell it was of the same breed as such cinematic bile as "Thumbsuckers" and "Garden State" – two films that are easily on my list of worst films of all time, and I don't even have such a list. They are the list. A Hong Kong film called "Ming Ming" also makes the list. "Little Miss Sunshine" is also in the pedigree, although I don't remember hating that film. Didn't love it, either.

But this pedigree of film is kind of a hybrid between Hollywood and independent; or rather Hollywood trying to be indie because it seems the hip thing at the time and a potential money-maker. Disgusting.

They are films that pander to the indie form, but they aren't indie, they don't have the independent spirit. They aren't starving, self-doubting artists who don't know if their films will make it to any audience. And if not starving artists, even if they do have money – money is good for filmmakers, film backing is good, if you have money, support filmmakers – they don't have the artistic vision.

They're trying to make money using a formula. Try it enough times and you just might hit paydirt. They ripoff the style of artists with lesser means and try to imitate it because what real artists come up with is still cooler than anything they'll make, because those artists mean it.

Getting off my soapbox, I braced myself to hate this film, and I'm pretty much right about the pedigree.

This Fox Searchlight film thinks that more than half of the recipe for an indie film is a soundtrack of predominantly low-fi, whimsical, sweet, clever, and yes, independently produced ear candy, and if you take away the soundtracks of "Thumbsucker" and "Garden State", you more or less have shit. You'd lose all the indie dinks who raved about those films.

The dialogue in this film sounds like it was written by someone who was constantly shocked with a cattle prod by someone who was yelling, "Be more hip, make it more 'hipster', man". The dialogue is truly pretentious.

The film also panders by making all the characters likeable, even if flawed. Everything works out smoothly, everything's hip. There's no real tension, it's simple and straight-forward. No sophistication.

That said, on the second viewing of this DVD, I'll pass this movie with a fresh rating. I stand behind all my criticisms, but differentiate this from "Thumbsuckers" and "Garden State" in that I was able to watch it for the second time.

Even with the pretentious, snappy hipster dialogue, the story does chug along at a good pace and the situations are likeable, if not believable. Oh, no synopsis of the film because the trailer above says it all.

I'm begrudgingly going to like this film. And I'm going to do an end-turn on myself. I said this film wasn't sophisticated, but that's kind of what's good about it. All the characters are likeable and do the right thing at the right time. The father says the perfect things, the stepmom is there when she needs her, the boyfriend is perfect, the adoptive husband is flawed but ultimately does no harm, etc., etc.

My point to myself is what's wrong with a film that portrays how people should ultimately treat each other – which is well. My family members are married and raising children and I always hope they'll do and say the proverbial "right thing", and a film that portrays people doing the right thing is not a bad thing.

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Diary of an insomniac

Last night, I got 4 hours of sleep from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m., when I woke up for the first time. But after that, albeit repeatedly disrupted I don't know how many times, I think I was able to fall asleep repeatedly until 12:45 p.m. That's the least I can hope for to consider a good night's sleep.

The previous two nights, I got 3 hours of sleep, and then afterwards tossed and turned in a twilight where I clearly wasn't asleep, but wasn't so restless that I just gave up and got up, sacrificing any hope for rest. Those twilight periods could last up to 3 hours.

I don't know what those twilight periods are or whether I'm getting any rest in them. What I would do after an initial phase of not falling back to sleep is put on a CD on timer to turn off in about 30 minutes. If I wasn't back to sleep in 30 minutes, I would just get up.

But after 30 minutes, listening to the full contents of the 30 minutes, I would hear the timer shut off the CD player and I wouldn't be asleep, but sometimes I would neither get up nor re-set the timer for another 30 minutes. I don't remember falling asleep, but there would be periods in the 3 hours that I remember going into REM dream sleep. Just snippets of dreams, but close enough to consciousness for me to remember that they happened, not what they were.

Work is being affected. I'd get to work fine, but by the end of the night, I'd definitely be feeling the effects of sleep deprivation.

Those twilight periods haven't been as disturbing or frustrating as outright insomnia like last year, perhaps because in the initial period after getting up, I'd be fine. Well, more or less. More less, I guess.

If I didn't have to work, I'd be fine. But I guess anyone could say that.

20th Century Boys (2008, Japan)

I rented this knowing nothing about the movie. It's apparently the first installation of a movie trilogy, and it's about a group of elementary school classmates who have grown up and grown apart, but when they were young they did what kids do, and they created a fantasy doomsday scenario.

As adults, they find out that the fantasy doomsday scenario is actually unfolding and they suspect it is someone who was privy to the original fantasy who took the inspiration to make it come true, but they don't know who it is, it may be one of them. The person involved has started a religious cult to support the doomsday scenario and is creepily referred to as the "Friend".

The events bring the schoolmates back together to foil the evil doomsday plot, although complications arise as the main author of the original fantasy, Kenji, the film's main protagonist, gets pegged as a Most Wanted terrorist.

The film is based on a manga which I had never heard of, not being into manga, but it has that hip, cool style to it. I guess the story would be classified as science fiction/suspense. I'll say this for it, though: Knowing nothing about the film, I put the DVD on just to run it for maybe an hour to get a sense of it, and if it was worth it, I'd watch it more closely on a second viewing.

Turns out that it kept my attention for the whole 2 hour plus viewing in the wee hours of morning. It did the suspense thing really well, where it posed mysterious bits of information that I wanted to know more about, so I kept on watching. Is it quality suspense or cheap suspense? That's the million dollar question. I thought the payoff was decent.

I'm not sure where it's going to go in the 2nd and 3rd movies, the 2nd of which is about to exit theaters in Taiwan, and I'm tempted to catch it instead of waiting for the DVD release. I definitely give it a fresh rating, although I'm also going to acknowledge my doubts that it really is a good film and give it 7 out of 10 tomatoes, rather than 8. I recommend this film to fans of Japanese anime, manga, and popular culture.


Broken Flowers (2005, USA)

Director Jim Jarmusch is one of America's great independent/art house film directors. My old boss really liked him and we went to see "Ghost Dog" when it came out. I remember that because I called in sick to work that morning, and she said, "OK, but we're still seeing 'Ghost Dog' later, right?" She was a cool boss. But then she melted down one day and ended up killing herself not long after, which kinda made her even cooler in my book. Or maybe it just made me an ass.

This is a pretty good film, although as far as artsy filmmaking goes, I've been into the Asian scene for a while, which is really out there, so this seemed a bit straight-forward.

It's about a guy, Don Johnston, who was supposedly a bit of a Don Juan in his youth, and he gets put on a journey to seek out 5 past girlfriends from about 20 years ago. Now the Don Johnston/Don Juan thing isn't supposed to be clever or anything; he's watching "The Life of Don Juan" on the TV when we first see him.

So he cold calls on them in succession, and we get the different reactions of these exes meeting him 20 years later: one is welcoming; one is uncomfortable but cordial; one is condescendingly disinterested in seeing him again, but gives him a few minutes before finally bluntly sending him on his way with one last humiliation; one he gets the crap beat out of him. And one is dead, so we actually only get four reactions.

Now I'm not giving anything away by saying this. This isn't a plot that I'm ruining. Jarmusch films aren't so much about plot, and as he is known for road trip movies, this actually kinda does qualify as one. And the important thing about the film is the journey and not any conclusions or destinations.

Fresh 7 out of 10 tomatoes.

It did make me wonder what it might be like if I cold called on my past exes. I wondered how they might react if I suddenly appeared on their doorsteps.

Amina, I really don't know. It could go either way. We did not end well, we never closed, but I'd like to think the extreme degree to which I loved her might carry some currency 20 years on, when any reason she had to break up with me is no longer a threat or imposition.

I'd like to think she'd greet me with a big smile, and I could meet her kids and we could chat over coffee over the course of a lazy afternoon, where we wouldn't even touch on our past. In my dreams. But actually, even though there is a distinct possibility of a negative response, I'm having a hard time conjuring it. Maybe because that aspect of her that I was exposed to which quickly ended our acquaintance was incredibly short. It's just possible.

Now Shiho . . . Shiho's the dead ex. She's the one I'm told died a few years ago, but I still go to her grave, meeting a very kind and compassionate soul on the way. Oh, that's another aspect of "Broken Flowers" – with every ex, there is someone else in the picture who also exhibits an aspect of the response to him.

Yes, Shiho is the dead ex, but that's a copout. I'm not in a film. Any of them could be dead. Let's say she's still alive and I show up on her doorstep. She'd be very, very predictable. But it wouldn't be negative. We could chat and it would be nice. In fact, if her husband was dead and she was raising her kid(s) alone, she might be the one I end up sleeping with for a night.

Hiromi. Hiromi would be the disinterested one who would condescend to me until I reached the end of her short patience with me and sent me on my way. She's a very busy woman.

Luyen might be freaked out at first, but ultimately pleased. I don't think I'd get beat up by showing up at her door. Did I treat anyone so badly that I might? The closest would be Amina, I think, in one of the unimaginable bad scenarios, and might involve her wearing a hijab (I really have no idea which way her life went after we parted ways, but I am kidding).

Josephine. Why on earth would I want to show up at Josephine's doorstep? But, oh yeah, there's something I want to find out, so there I am. I imagine her the uncomfortable, nervous, but cordial one. We won't get anywhere, but she'll quietly wait things out, even letting her husband talk her into having me stay for dinner.

But that's tricky, because she actually did show up cold on my Internet doorstep. She found my fotolog, created an account and said 'hi'. It was me who wasn't the warm welcoming one. I gave measured responses, and I consciously thought that if we were going to continue an acquaintance, it was going to take time.

We exchanged nice words, I actually had closure. She did offer her phone number, but I didn't call – that was too quick. She also offered the number of a psychiatrist because I think I was having some issue then, might have been the insomnia.

And then she disappeared, closed her account. That was the Josephine I knew from way back when. But then several months later, she opened another account, got back in touch for a little while, and maybe I didn't respond fast enough again and she closed the account again. And that was it for us.

If she showed up on my actual doorstep, I can't say my reaction would be too much different. I'd be stand-offish, but I would welcome a chat with her.

OK, now for the others. If Amina showed up on my doorstep, I think I'd be standing slack-jawed shocked for several minutes, but ultimately I think a wave of being pleased would well up. If she was there, it wasn't because she was trying to get rid of me, she'd already accomplished that. She wouldn't be trying to serve papers on me, any statute of limitations would have long passed (that's a joke, folks -ed.). She's the one who could walk into my life for a day and get me into bed for a night. Well, if I were at all interested in physical intimacy at all with anyone.

Shiho might be the one who would get beat up, if I had someone so protective of me that it would come to that. I did lose a lot of respect for Shiho and how she ended it disgusted me. Not that she scarred me that much. But if that were the criteria, then it would be Amina that gets beaten up . . . but I would intervene. Oh, gimme a break, there's no getting beat up in this scenario; something equivalent maybe.

Or if my life were at all accomplished, if it weren't the mess it is, I might even be the one that condescends to Shiho and sends her off without any satisfaction.

It's so fucked up that I'm not the dead one.

I am now past 50 hours of hiccups.

I was a bit proud of the fact that I got home from work and didn't have a drink until I was ready to go to sleep, until I found I couldn't get to sleep.

I will not go through what I went through last year.

If hiccups persist, if insomnia persists, I simply will find myself fully justified in self-destructing in any novel way that my imagination fancies.

"Insomnia is a common and debilitating disorder that results in substantial impairments in a person's quality of life, reduces productivity and increases the risk for psychiatric illness," says senior author Paul Shaw, Ph.D.

The full force of my negativity comes to the fore as I declare how much I hate my life and my existence. It's worthless, it's a waste; at the same time as I declare how much I can do with my life if I let it. I don't fucking care.

A life can't go on without active positive elements; and a careful examination of mine, there are no active positive elements; only passive positive elements. The active negative elements trump. Psychosis prevails.

Work conditions are woefully not helping. I've defined active elements that will make me quit, and I have a co-worker who is trying to avoid those elements coming to fruition. But if this continues, it is out of his or my control. I will quit. And if I quit, I will tell no one, but just let my bank account deplete until there's simply nothing left.

Simply nothing left means simply nothing left.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 4:34 a.m. - Where I don't sleep during insomnia.

4:56 p.m. - Neighborhood park at the end of the alley where I live.