Fulong Beach, east coast

2:24 p.m. - Sand sculpture festival.

2:32 p.m.

Yiti, acquaintance of a few months. Yoga freak.

Rainbow V 22mm lens toy camera, Ilford XP2 Super.

5:56 p.m. - Beitou, Keelung River. They're building something across the Keelung River there, but . . . there's nothing on the other side of the Keelung River. Bridge to nowhere.

5:58 p.m. - I usually don't like leaving for rides this late. Sun setting over Guanyin Mt. in Bali.

6:14 p.m. - Crossing the Guandu Bridge over the Danshui River.

6:19 p.m. - 橋大渡關. That's what it says!

6:32 p.m. - Sunset over Bali 八里. And time to head home to be back by 8:00.

6:33 p.m. -  Danshui River from Bali, Datun peak in the distance. Oh, now I remember this ride. I went out so late because I was so out of fitness I just wanted to go out and do anything simple.

These formulations don't mean much to me anymore, but I had previously wondered whether I had committed suicide through a string of previous lifetimes and that one goal in this or any given lifetime is to get comfortable enough with any given existence so that I don't commit suicide.

I'm not discounting that possibility; truth to tell I don't know, no one knows, and any formulation may just be psychological constructions. But recently I've wondered about the opposite formulation, which is not that I've committed suicide in a string of lifetimes, but that I've been trying to commit suicide in a string of lifetimes and each time I've failed.

Both formulations are, no doubt, the subject of my mindset at their respective times. Either, taking different paths, makes sense as to where I am now.

My current mindset contemplates suicide, the "killing" of the self, as possibly a major realization on a path of understanding. Self is a construction. Subjective perspective is a construction. Death is inevitable, it is a natural part of the life cycle. Clinging to life and the inability to accept death is an unnatural understanding.

How can we live for others if we haven't experienced in a profound way the sacrifice of one's own self? So profound that it becomes part of karmic DNA, so that when it comes time for a great sacrifice or commitment to live for others, it can be done.

It may be possible that on the path of understanding, suicide in some lifetime is absolutely necessary. It may be an . . . initiation? It's necessary to get to the threshold that we have to be willing to throw a life, an existence, away in order to move on.

Lately I've been feeling particularly attached to my current being. I feel I need to shluff it off like a heavy coat in warm weather, but I'm way too attached to it.

Lately, with suicide in mind as an end goal, I've been going through a range of states from delving back into my personal past history, projecting on possible futures, realizing my current place of wanting to leave, and through all my past theories and understandings.

Lately I plunge myself into the wonder and beauty of life, and quickly reverse when looking at my own life and existence, feeling I don't want to go on with this existence, I've lived long enough; that the wonder and beauty of this life is just kinda being wasted on me.

All these contradictory things I'm trying to reconcile, including feelings of anguish while also feeling I really do have things together and my understanding is pretty accurate. And also realizing these seemingly contradictory things are reconcilable. They can exist at the same time in me.

Like reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics. It hasn't been done yet, but they have to be reconciled because it's fact that they co-exist. I have these contradictory aspects, but as a whole, I'm not a contradiction. I'm me. There's no contradiction.