Just been living my life. Trying to think of something to write, but I don't think there's much left. Not much left to the fairy tale. I only know the fairy tale pretty much ends the way it began, and I'd have more insight on how it will end if I could remember how it began.

Vine-to-vine, I'm back in Taiwan. That was not the most successful trip back to New Jersey as I made no further connection with nephews and nieces, and relations with siblings and in-laws regressed, rightfully, amid their own family priorities. Relations with parents had no meaning. They need to give up on me and focus their attention on ruining the grandchildren.

They need to give up on me as everyone ought to give up on me, as I've given up on me; this idea of me. Back in Taiwan. This was not part of the foreseen reality, but there was no choice in the matter. And now what?

It's fairly obvious I need to keep moving towards what I want, while decoding why I was here at all.

Just living my life.

I met up with a childhood friend while in New Jersey after connecting on Facebook. We were two of the three Asian Americans boys in our grade. I don't recall consciously attaching any meaning to that, but we gravitated towards each other. Having met up with him, he became the person I've known the longest. I have evidence that he goes back as far as fifth grade, but he likely goes all the way back to kindergarten.

We mentioned so many names of people we knew in elementary school, people in our shared memory who are now as old as we are and with experiences as varied as possibly could be imagined. People we wouldn't recognize aside from their names, but they're names we grew up with, our first friends and classmates. Somehow we don't forget them.

But he didn't stop there, we went to the same high school, which is the Facebook group through which he contacted me. We drifted apart during high school, running with different crowds – him with jocks, me with the artsy-fartsy music and theater crowd. He played lacrosse and baseball like the cool asshole kids did. I was among the misfits on the track team. The school teams were the Bulldogs, but we called ourselves the Underdogs and even got Underdog t-shirts to wear to track meets (we were such nerds, someone even knew and could sing the Underdog cartoon theme song from the 70s). NB: actually there weren't really assholes at the school, people were pretty cool. When we did "West Side Story", jocks were recruited to fill out the Jets and the Sharks, and I reckon they did at least as well on stage as I did trying not to mess up guitar and bass parts of the Bernstein score.

He returned to live in the area where we grew up and is married with kids. His parents are still there. He had a kid sister who was sometimes on the periphery when we hung out. I can't imagine her as an adult now. She was actually in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 but managed to get out with only 30 minutes to spare before the towers collapsed. Only? I don't know what that means, time ran differently that day.

Vine-to-vine, the only reality for me now is hunting down music to get lost in. People don't mean anything. While I was in New Jersey, I started a vanity project making a mix CD for every year I've been alive comprised of my favorite songs released during each calendar year. As music is the most important thing to me, I figured that's what I should leave behind of myself in case my liver fails to live up to its name anytime in the near future.

I'm just living my life. I'm back in Taiwan. I'm not going back to that job. I'm supposed to be putting a concerted effort into learning Chinese, but what's the point of that? Where is that supposed to get me? It's all just excuse, when I should be making myself more aware of what I consider 'inevitable'.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 2 - Parents' house. Disposable black & white camera (all).

11:58 a.m. - Suburbia photostitch, Castle and Skyline Drives, Englewood Cliffs.

1:42 p.m. - Palisades Ave. access road down the cliffs to the Englewood Boat Basin.

Background noise of growing up in an area. You totally tune out signs or they just become so normal they become nothing, meaningless. 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 12:52 p.m. - Lincoln Center.

1:35 p.m. - Strawberry Fields.

Central Park.

1:39 p.m. - Pilgrimage. The Dakota building where John Lennon lived and was murdered.

1:44 p.m. - When I was growing up, it was just the Hayden Planetarium and this building didn't exist. I think it's the Rose Center and Hayden Planetarium now. 

1:49 p.m - American Museum of Natural History. 

3:58 p.m. - Crab that looks so much like a spider it gives me the willies.

4:48 p.m. - T-Rex.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 12:07 p.m. - Peavey Predator, from when it was a Strat copy.

4:46 p.m. - New York.

8:16 p.m. - Rubin Museum of (Himalayan) Art.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 5:37 p.m. - Another goodbye, New Jersey.