Both days of this weekend hit temperatures in the 70s. I don't know what that is in Celsius. Nice degrees Celsius.

Both days I took my bike out, but it being the weekend, I figured I wouldn't be able to do the 20-mile fitness sprints that I've been doing because there would be too many people crowding the riverside bikeways. I was right, so tried to think quick of an alternate ride to do. I don't know what I was thinking yesterday, but it occurred to me to start training on hills.

Last year was a bad hill year. I trained up to them like usual, but when I tried my first real climb – Jiuzhuang Street 舊莊街 in the southern hills of Xizhi 汐止, just east of Taipei – I couldn't do it. I abandoned twice before I finally struggled all the way up on my granny gear and going back and forth across the road on steeper sections. I never got comfortable with hills last year. I attribute it to alcohol.

But guldarn it if the 20-mile sprints I've been doing on any nice day through the winter weren't of great, wonderous benefit! I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it's certainly better than not riding at all for 3 or 4 months.

I was able to ride a handful of days in December, with my winter riding gear comprising a long-sleeve microfiber under my cycling jersey. In January, I missed the one day that was rideable because I ... was drunk. And February has been great. I can't even count how many times I did the sprint or a variation of it.

Yesterday as I approached the first incline leading up to one of my training hills – they go up, but not steep, not long, and not high – I had an 'oh shit' moment thinking I wasn't ready for this. Training hill or not, vertical is still vertical; gravity is still gravity. As I made my way up, though, I thought I could just abandon if it got too hard. Then I realized I was having no problem with this. No granny gear.

As I approached the the top of the climb, I was mildly pleased at how unabandonable the climb was. I passed someone on a mountain bike at the crest of the climb and headed down the other side into Shenkeng 深坑 and had a snack of stinky tofu 臭豆腐, which is what Shenkeng is famous for. For good reason, too. I'm not a huge fan of 臭豆腐, but it was rilly, rilly good.

Today I went out again and did another training climb which is usually my first of the season because it's the easiest, even easier than yesterday. It goes up Chongde Street 崇德街 through Fudekeng 福德坑, where the cemeteries are concentrated. Dead people are given the best views in Chinese culture.

Again no problem going up and I went down on the Muzha side and as long as I was there, I made yet another detour to Shenkeng for stinky tofu. Shit is goooood. From there I wanted to avoid anymore hills in case my luck runs out, and stayed on the flat Jingmei riverside bikeway back into Taipei.

I passed by where I used to live and was amazed to find that on a section of the Jingmei River where there was previously a quarter mile break in the riverside bikeway, and where I had surmised couldn't be connected . . . they had connected it. It was amazing. I can't say that it was pretty, but they made the bikeways contiguous! I was amazed.

It almost makes up for the fact that the Taipei Flower Expo which started last November and lasts until April blocks off a significant portion of riverside bikeway on the south bank of the Keelung River. Pisses me off.

I think last year set a precedent that the first real climb of any season will be Jiuzhuang, section 2 in Xizhi. Not that I plan to be in Taiwan past this year. Not that I plan to be alive past next month but probably will and end up in New Jersey. I think I'll tackle it later this week if weather holds.

I'm not comfortable with this window being temporarily shut. It puts me on edge. It reminds me it's my age-old pattern of putting this off for specific time increments and that always leads to not doing anything. Not doing it.

And I might not do it, but I have to at least try. But if I suspicion I'm not going to do it, I might as well set forth the plan, go stand at the precipice, decide I'm not going to do it and then come home, put on a pot of coffee, pay my bills and slog on. Why wait a month in order to not do something?

My brother gave me an opening to go back to New Jersey. But moving back to the U.S. is something I just don't have the strength for unless I get this attempt out of the way. I can't even imagine changing apartments at this point. What's the point?

But for all I know the next failed attempt may just get me to ask for my job back at the Post. The hermit ideal, why can't I just be satisfied? Just settle here and move from day to day and stop chasing. I know I've considered this before, and it just doesn't happen like that. I know that much.

It's been a year since I quit my job. The world hasn't come forth and offered me anything indicating it wants me to stay. It's been a hell a lot longer than a year that the world has not given me any indication it wants me to stay.

I know, it's not the world's responsibility to come forth and indicate it wants me to stay. Fair 'nuff.

It's up to ourselves to find our way and reason to stay. My damn point is that I don't want to stay. Every day I look at people and I wonder why they are doing what they're doing. I can't think of one of their reasons that could be my reason. If the world doesn't want me to stay, and I don't want to stay, then I'm just a fucking idiot for still being here. It's that simple.

As I've said before, I've been suicidal ever since I learned about the concept. Suicide. What's that? It's when you kill yourself. ...You can do that?! I think my introduction to the concept had something to do with Japan. Kamikaze? Bushido code? Yukio Mishima's "Spring Snow"?

A lot has changed through the years, though, the least of which has been my motivation. In the early years, even I admit that my reasons were bad ones. But aside from reasons and motivations, it's gotten to the point that the very definition has changed, and A) suicide is no longer the killing of the self; and B) no matter how I die, I will personally consider it suicide. All of this I've discussed before.

What I would like, and I don't know if I have the station to make this claim, is that my suicide be as an offering. One that benefits me and the people who are vaguely around me. I'll even go so far as to arrogantly offer it as a teaching. Even if it's not appreciated by them. I don't feel it's arrogant, but others may interpret it as much if I said it as such.

I don't want to be here. No one has given any indication they want me to be here except in the most general, mundane, spare-them-the-suffering-of-"losing"-someone way. If they wanted me to be here otherwise, then they should have given some indication.

They didn't, so I think I'm safe in saying no one is concerned about my being here. If they were concerned, then they're the idiots for not indicating as such. The value in my death is that it wouldn't rock anyone's world, but it would still stand as a symbol that shit happens. I can live with that.

No one has the right to be substantively affected by my dying. I was affected by Ritu's death, but I didn't have the right to be substantively affected by it. I was affected by her death, and then it went away and I can't conjure the feeling I had when I got the news no matter how I try. However, she did have people who were substantively affected by her death, I'm sure.

No one has the right to be substantively affected by my death. Not even my parents. Especially my parents. They're the ones who need to learn something. For them, this would be rapping their knuckles with a ruler. That's all they deserve from my dying, but otherwise they have little rights.

random bits and pieces

Fuck, no, today is not happening. Not that there's anything wrong with it, just bring me tomorrow.

Window is temporarily closed for about a month, but that's a pile a shit. I've got my fingers on the pulse of every day. Again. That's also a pile of shit. And this window is a pile of shit, too. Something's going to thwart this, too. I'm enjoying listening to music way too much to not be distracted and attached to it to a fault.

Six hours yesterday with iPod earbuds in was not sensible and was too much. Don't do that again. Hearing in my right ear is patchy today and even computer speakers volume up hurts a little. And I notice the missing frequencies.

I'm not worried about my hearing, it's pretty good about recovering. If, however, noticeable hearing loss became permanent, I don't think I'd complain. Complaining would be stupid. I was a musician and I used to be concert-going, and despite protecting my ears, there's only so far that goes. Hearing loss is expected. It's payment for what I enjoyed.

The extended music listening yesterday was because I sat planted in the bookstore finishing reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho on several people's recommendations. Good, but of this metaphysical genre, I still like "The Little Prince" and "Illusions" better. No one dies in "The Alchemist". Well, there's your problem!

Yesterday I also had a "Dude! Where's my denim jacket?!" moment. How the fuck do you lose a denim jacket? Did it fall off while I was walking down the street? (somehow this made more sense than the possibility that I left it somewhere accidentally). But I backtracked my steps from the day before and recovered it from a pizzeria (Napoli on Bade Rd.), including camera, although the photos had been perused. They got bored when they reached my Hualien shots. Fair 'nuff.

Two things: I was totally surprised I recovered it. I expected it to be a loss. Two: in the U.S., even if I recovered the jacket, the camera would've been gone. Taiwan:2, U.S.: 0. And three: I wasn't that drunk.

And four: On one of my previous digital cameras, I took a picture of my contact information with a message of compensation for return of the camera. I don't know if it would work, but maybe I should do that again. Or not. I just don't care anymore.

I still don't "get" the seasons in Taiwan. Taipei, rather. Growing up in New Jersey and college in Ohio, the four seasons were well-defined, and I eventually realized I didn't have a favorite season, I just loved the change of seasons. Each transition was wonderful and lovely in its own way.

San Francisco had three seasons, although one was split in two. Summer was the foggy season. You could always tell who the tourists were in the summer because they were wearing shorts and t-shirts. And shivering. Spring and autumn were the nice season – nice temps, sunny skies. Winter was the rainy season.

But Taipei, I still don't get. Winters are cool, if not downright cold, and during the winters I can't imagine that Taipei could be a hot place. And that's what it is during the summer. Sweltering hot. Oppressive hot. Hot that makes me balk at going on rides at midday.

But during the summer heat, I can't imagine that in winter bundling up and heaters are required. Taipei doesn't make sense to me and I have no sense about when or how the transitions occur. I just know that summers are fucking hot, which I adore, and winters are nasty cold and rainy and mold grows everywhere.

If I gave Taipei another five years, I might start to understand it, but, inshah'allah, I'm not going to give Taipei another five fucking years.

I think I just condemned myself to another five years in Taipei. Well if so be it, bring me wenches!!

5:38 p.m. - BaDe Rd., sec. 4

part deux

I've never read anything about anything like this, but I wonder whether the recent Korea fetish I've developed over the past five years might be something like "future life resonances". Akin to and opposite past life resonances I've written about before, whereby people who believe in it might muse about past lives based on current life patterns, habits and characteristics.

Quirks about me that I can't explain have led me to wonder if I was Japanese in my previous life. My cousin Audrey thinks so. She also has an affinity towards Japan, and she even thinks we were a couple there in a past life. In Kyoto, apparently, although my spidey-sense is not quite that particular (and mind you I find a lot of what my cousin says as suspect). I also think it's possible that in some previous life I was a Native American tracker in the southwestern desert of the U.S.

Those sort of quirks are distinguishable from characteristics that do have an explainable basis in this lifetime, like my love of music or being a musician. It's possible that it's from a previous life, but my affinity towards music could have developed logically and naturally in the course of my experience in this life. I have no particular sense that it came from somewhere else, that it's extraordinary. Unless you count that I come from a decidedly unmusical family. Music wasteland.

This Korean thing came out of nowhere and had a definite start – asking Hyun Ae to make me a mix of Korean music she liked – which snowballed into an unreasonable affinity towards many other aspects of Korean culture, which outlasted and surpasses anything Hyun Ae may have been about.

The strangest and most uncharacteristic thing, of course, is K-pop, which I would have rather choked to death on than listen to when I was younger. It boggles my mind, and no matter what excuses I make or try to make it palatable for other people to give it a listen, it's still pop music. And other people who hate pop music also aren't convinced. I've lost a lot of music cred over K-pop, I shouldn't wonder.

Another thing is I've read that through the death bardos, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and related literature and commentary, that in the early stages of the bardos, we have more association with the body and life that we just left. The habit mind of the existence we just left is still fresh and strong, so whatever disembodied impression or consciousness there is, it's related through that.

But as we progress through the bardos and still don't attain enlightenment or realization or whatever and head towards another round of samsara in a brand-spankin' new life, we have more of an association with our life-to-be, our future life.

So I wonder whether there might be an analogy at the end of the life bardos whereby we start experiencing things that may be resonant of things regarding our future life. As with past life resonances, sensitivity and inquiry is required to spot them. 

Stranger things have happened. Of course, there's this outrageous assumption that I'm at the tail end of my current life. I'm not going to die for the theory, but I'd have to die sooner rather than later for this theory to have even a drop of being in the realm of the credible.

Post-ited Sogyal Rinpoche:

Sometimes I think that the greatest achievement of modern culture is its brilliant selling of samsara and its barren distractions. Modern society seems to me a celebration of all the things that lead away from the truth, make truth hard to live for, and discourage people from even believing that it exists. And to think that all this springs from a civilization that claims to adore life, but actually starves it of any real meaning; that endlessly speaks of making people "happy," but in fact blocks their way to the source of real joy. - The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

I'm pretty sure that first sentence is a rare occurrence of sarcasm in the book.

Contemplating deeply on the secret message of impermanence - what lies in fact beyond impermanence and death - leads directly to the heart of the ancient and powerful Tibetan teachings: the introduction to the essential "nature of mind". Realization of the nature of mind, which you could call our innermost essence, that truth we all search for, is the key to understanding life and death. For what happens at the moment of death is that the ordinary mind and its delusions die, and in that gap the boundless sky-like nature of our mind is uncovered. This essential nature of mind is the background to the whole of life and death, like the sky, which folds the whole universe in its embrace. – Sogyal Rinpoche, "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying"

I mentioned before I read this book at Borders bookstore in New Jersey, but recently I bought it here in Taiwan, so this is my book with my own "annotations". I don't highlight in books anymore. I used to. But I too often found that when I went back to look at my highlights, I didn't really get why I highlighted certain passages in the first place.

So now I use post-its at the edge of the page where I find passages that are noteworthy. The benefit is that instead of leading me directly to something I might have noted before, I only know the general paragraph that inspired me before, but to get it, I might need to read a bit before or a bit after and look for what I thought was noteworthy.

Anyway, having finished this book, I'm going back to what I post-ited, and having no doubt about why.

Tais Toi Mon Coeur (Dionysos):


Last month I linked a video in a fotolog post and one of my contacts, a total stranger, responded with an interest in the artist, so I offered to send her copies of the CDs of hers that I was planning to buy at that time because I had seen they were on sale.

It was a Japanese singer named UA. I don't know how big she is in Japan, but I don't think she's as big as names like Salyu and Chara. I thought there was a good chance she might be difficult to find in France.

In return, this mademoiselle sent me three CDs of popular music in France. The above video is one of the bands I've quite taken to, but I really like everything she sent. Another band is called Noir Désir, who is apparently France's premier rock band - the equivalent of what I call Southern All-Stars in Japan. Pretty much everyone who knows anything about music knows their name.



The third CD she sent was just a mix of some of her favorite songs, not limited to French music. The first song I recognized was "Hurdy Gurdy Man" by Donovan, which I don't have in my collection, but then I wondered whether there would be anything on the CD that I already did have in my collection.

I was totally floored when the one song she included that I do have in my collection is a Kristin Hersh song (Your Ghost)!  OK fine, I know that doesn't mean anything to anyone, but Throwing Muses is one of my top five favorite bands of all time. Kristin Hersh's expression has gotten me through a lot of hard times.

I've seen Throwing Muses or Kristin Hersh live every chance I could get. It's an emotional connection that I'm not alone in. We TM/KH fans are a rabidly loyal bunch. We LOVE Kristin. Also David, Bernard and Tanya, but especially Kristin, I think.

Good ol' mix CD music exchanges. I'm totally into exchanging entire music libraries on external hard drives with people, but as Tako said, "I only have two ears!". It can be tiring sludging through entire music collections, and friendly CDs therein have the advantage.

Sending things through the post is also a nice novelty in this digital age. Of course, I'm ripping these CDs onto iTunes, but it's still nice to have these physical CDs. Someone took the care enough to go through the effort to make and send them.

part uno:

I just finished reading a book at the bookstore called The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama. It's not meant to be a comprehensive, academic, scholarly investigation into the institution of the Dalai Lama, but it's well-researched and annotated and written in an anecdotal manner that makes it an easy and fascinating read.

It traces through all the information and history the author could find related to all the past Dalai Lamas, and also goes into pre-Dalai Lama Tibetan tradition that laid the foundation for the creation or discovery of the institution.

I'm not a literary type, so I think that's the extent I can pretend to say anything about the book as a book. But it's a great book for anyone interested in Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism or the Dalai Lama. It will help demystify the Dalai Lama and a lot of misconceptions Westerners may have about what he is.

There's plenty of room for skepticism surrounding finding reincarnations of a particular person, even if it's purportedly a highly realized person, especially when it's in a country or region that undergoes as much political strife and turmoil as anywhere else in the world.

It had me wondering where I fit into the Dalai Lama institution. That thought popped into my head as a joke, but part of me sensed that I was serious. It wasn't just a thought, but also a feeling. Where do I fit into the Dalai Lama institution?

If I believe in these teachings or this philosophy, then I believe in reincarnation, so there must be certain mechanics behind it in the natural world for why it happens. It has to be explained as something naturally occurring, or else it's just religious dogma. It shouldn't be explained or understood as some mystical, magical occurrence.

And as a natural phenomena, albeit one that can't be directly observed, it must happen to everyone. With stories of high profile reincarnations like the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, etc., there may be a little bit of feeling that it happens only to them, or rather that it's only important in regard to highly realized people like them.

But for ordinary people like me, it doesn't matter, it's like it doesn't happen. No one's going to look for my reincarnation and I will have no idea who I was, so why bother. Just develop good karma and hope for a good rebirth.

I don't think that way, I've always tried to intuit how certain aspects of the way I am now may be sourced in past life karmic resonances, even if I'll never know anything about a past incarnation. As a person, I'm as far away from who I was in a past incarnation as I am from, say, my next door neighbor or someone in Lithuania.

Completely different people. If I could meet a past life incarnation, I'd be interested in talking to him or her to try to get some insight into me now, but as a person, I might not even like the person.

Other possibly helpful anecdotes are that there are countless highly realized lamas whose reincarnations aren't sought after or found. They just continue on their spiritual path without being identified with whatever great lama in the past.

Also the 6th Dalai Lama, following the "Great Fifth", rebelled against his station and never fully ordained as a monk and famously spent much time drinking and singing and spending nights in brothels. Tibetans never doubted he was the Dalai Lama, but in no way did he live a spiritual life.

Under the theory of reincarnation, however, he still carried the karma, and many people will argue that many of his songs and poems about love are in fact spiritual references (much like in the poetry of Rumi).

Personally, it sounds to me like one of two possibilities. One is that the Great Fifth intended to take a break and live and enjoy a secular life next before resuming his work, and indeed the seventh Dalai Lama is one of the most highly regarded.

Or the behavior of the sixth may be accountable by how he was found and raised. The fifth wanted his death to be kept secret for something like 14 years in order for the construction of the Potala Palace to be completed.

So the sixth was found in secret and kept in isolation for much of his childhood. He and his family weren't even told that he had been identified as the next Dalai Lama, much less entered into a prestigious monastery for spiritual training expected for the Dalai Lama.

So by the time the cat was let out of the bag, his personality was already formed and it hadn't been inculcated into him from an early age that he was the Dalai Lama, and if it were today, I imagine him being slightly bemused and saying, "Dude, cool."

Finally, I read somewhere that a Tibetan lama had identified Steven Seagal as the reincarnation of some high-ranking lama. He clarified that it doesn't mean Seagal is anyone special aside from a major action movie star because he hadn't spent his life dedicated to study and meditation, but he was, in fact, the reincarnation of so-and-so lama, for whatever that is worth, which is likely not much.

So all this, I gather, is why I wonder where I fit into the Dalai Lama institution. Maybe because, if you believe this stuff, we all are part of the "Dalai Lama institution", because it's not the Dalai Lama institution. It's just the natural process of reincarnation.

I met with my old Mandarin teacher for a language exchange today for the first time in three weeks because of the Lunar New Year holidays. I haven't seen anyone except passing strangers for three weeks. I'm willing to testify that will fuck up your ability to socially relate.

My cousin says she'll be in Taipei on Tuesday with an entourage and wondered if I could join them. I think she has an ulterior motive, so I'm reluctant. I'm a reluctant baby sitter, that is. When she calls on Tuesday, I need to ask how I'm going to be fed, and that will determine whether I meet them or not.

Soreness has returned to my lower back area and I'm no doc, but I dare imagine that my liver and kidneys are under stress. Two days between buying bottles of liquor are my norm, but I recently had to force myself to stretch it out to two days. The choice is mine to cut back against the trend towards drinking more. I really don't want to leave a body, so if there's that risk, I need to get my act together and stop procrastinating and downloading k-pop.

Torn. It's a funny relationship I have with alcohol, and it occurred to me today that it might be alcohol that is keeping me here day to day. It's when I manage to not drink for extended periods of time that I most deeply reflect on why I'm still here when I don't want to be, and it's compelling. The window open right now is still pretty perfect.

And I get very, very conflicted when I even consider continuing on (and that's before any realization of how much money I have in my bank account. I've never had no money, and unless I go back to the Post, that's where I'm headed in 2 to 3 months or so, I haven't done the math).

Recently, if I manage to not drink for any extended period of time, I end up trying to be productive in any number of random endeavors in which I like to partake, but then I stop and end up staring into space wondering what I'm still doing here. And I have my answers, but they're all shallow and inconsequential. The only thing that makes sense is to manifest what this whole blog thing is supposed to be documenting.

On the other hand, if I get sucked into drinking too soon in a day which just leads to more drinking, it sort of just numbs and washes things out and suddenly tomorrow is here. Of course, the ridiculous irony is that this kind of drinking will have to kill me eventually, too. Or not, I am pretty convinced I won't die of alcohol-related liver/kidney failure.

I also realize that one major revision for my next attempt is NO ALCOHOL until the actual execution. I'm pretty convinced it was alcohol that thwarted the last attempt and the last one in San Francisco. If I go through with it, I have to be lucid and it has to follow a day of mindfulness and meditation, and the elements of the execution need to be as concise as pulling a trigger.

Lunar New Year came and went. Another year turned over. I seriously don't want to keep doing what I've been doing the last year. In fact, whenever I head out of my apartment and realize I'm still doing the exact same thing in the exact same patterns that I have for the last year, it's not good. It's not alright.

And I still strangely remind myself that I recognize that I believe this is all a manifestation of some karma. I don't need to do this, to play out this karma. There's a separation between my own personal realizations, which looks at my life from the outside and says I don't need to do this and this karma, which is where I've led my life and makes doing this logical, comfortable and makes sense.

I don't think I'm particularly attached to doing this, obviously – I'm still here. But when my mind starts processing my personal theory of everything, it just makes sense. Of course if you believe in it, all of this is karma, even the separation, and I do think I'm on a path that has a continuity over multiple lifetimes.

If you believe in reincarnation, the vast majority of people totally forget their previous lives and don't question why they are who they are now. If you do question it, then you realize a certain continuity and that there's a reason why you are the way you are now. You're not the same person, there's not necessarily anything about you now that is like a previous incarnation. The only thing that gets transferred is the ingrained, karmic habits.

So I do think suicide is part of my path. I look ahead and think of the possibility of continuing on and it's not attractive. It's useless to me and to other people. I am of little consequence to anyone else on this planet right now, and my life is that way because of the circumstances of my life and the decisions I've made.

It's time to stop being useless and reboot, and I mentioned before that maybe suicide is a requisite part of the spiritual path, perhaps whatever the motivation. You need it in your karmic DNA the feeling of giving up this precious life before you can really understand what it means to live a life of service to others, and even if you do it because you think your life sucks, I think everyone has it deep within that this life is precious, and the act of suicide still has that imprint of selflessness, of letting go.

The worst part of this is that I just admitted that I get conflicted. I don't know how the story ends. Although, come to think of it, imagining myself in my apartment with absolutely no cash left is . . . pretty funny.

Lunar New Year Day . . . 5: Now it's the real Day 5, what I thought was two days ago.

And it's Monday, so I thought it should be the day that life in Taipei would start getting back to normal. Neighbors started returning yesterday, yay going back to normal. Or not. Apparently not all of them have to go to work today. One was in the kitchen banging around all through morning after-waking-up sitting today.

And I started drinking already, so I don't know if I'll be able to get out for a 20 mile sprint today. Weather still looks good. I didn't go yesterday. Recovery days aren't needed for short rides, but avoid-getting-bored break days are probably wise.

And my 80GB iPod Classic went fetal. I'm trying to fix it even though this iPod is superfluous. That is, I wasn't affected or that much bothered by its pooping out. My iPod shuffle is my main iPod, and at home I can just use iTunes on my computer. I'm still trying to fix it for fixit's sake, which means long stretches of time my laptop is doing something that I'm not involved with, which always make me suspicious what it's up to. I'm doing something called a "low-level format" now. No idea.

Hovering over the laptop and micromanaging each "format error" (no idea) makes it all too tempting and easy to reach over to my right and pour a shot.

The neighbor banging around in the kitchen really didn't bother me, I didn't mean to imply that. Although at one point it almost was disturbing, but not in a normative way. I'm trying to maintain a meditation I've recently come upon. Well, I'm always trying to maintain whatever meditation I've come up with, and rarely am I successful. These things come and go at my mind's behest, and my mind and I don't have the greatest of relationships.

But this recent one seems pretty important, and is grounded upon something a little more concrete and not necessarily driven just by the inspiration of having come across it. It's based on what I mentioned before of focusing on the five senses and how they make up our perspective of reality, and upon isolating and discounting them, there's a better chance of being open to . . . I don't know, whatever. Whatever else there might be that is not constructed from our senses.

I don't know if I'm successfully preparing myself to recognize the inner mind, but it's just what occurs to me, and the 45 minute sitting sessions recently have been virtually timeless. When the timer goes off, I've had no sense of the 45 minutes going by as time.

I've also been visualizing a burning blue-hot flame at the top of my skull to incinerate all constructed conceptual thoughts that flow through my mind. Thoughts, memories, mental progressions and constructions get sent up into the flame as soon as I'm aware of them, and often what I'm left with is just the empty blackness of my eyelids, which although they start slightly open, have closed by then.

Only the black isn't purely black. I wonder if anyone can do this, just close your eyes and you don't just see black, but specks of light and color that move and change. That's what I stop in and just focus on what formations occur, as long as they don't lead to discursive thought. I'll refrain from interpreting it, because at this point I have no reason to believe it is anything but subjective projection, however once I wondered if what I was seeing wasn't a subconscious memory of a past death bardo state.

The banging around in the kitchen didn't bother me, per se. I've been sitting in urban residences for years and you just have to tune out outside noises and distractions. But today it was more of the idea of the disturbance that almost started disturbing me. Like in bardo descriptions where it sometimes feels like being assailed by one thing or another horrible disturbance. It's all subjective and it's a loss of perspective, but if and once you regain it, it's no longer a disturbance. Although it still was a distraction.

Lunar New Year Day 3: Whaaa....t!!! Day 3? I thought it was Day 5. No wonder when I went out on February 1, when I thought the New Year started, it looked like business as usual. Then at midnight on Day 3, I wondered why the hell it sounded like the entire city was going up in fireworks.

So re-working the timeline, I thought New Years started on February 1. I was wrong, it started on February 3. Which means when my uncle called on the 1st to ask me if I was coming down for New Years, it wasn't an afterthought to which I'd obviously reply in the negative, and did. He thought of me beforehand, which is so unexpected that I might have accepted the invitation.

It also means I wasted two days hunkering down to get through the holiday for nothing. They weren't holidays at all.

Then after the midnight fireworks, a bunch of stuff on the 3rd made me wonder what was so special about the 3rd day of the New Year. It wasn't until the next day that I looked The Truth up online. That was the New Year and accompanying celebrations. And I missed it.

It has left me all out of whack and out of sync and it's all par for the course because it maintained no changes in my life and no contact with anyone and neglected during this most treasured time of year in this culture.

Today, when I thought New Year's stuff would be dying down and shops starting to open up, it's still only Day 3, opening for business is strictly voluntary. Taipei is still dead to the world. Which I really like. I'd love to live in a city with the population the size of Taipei during New Years. My neighbors have all been gone since Wednesday night.

And the weather has been great since the actual New Years Day. I even took out my bike and did a 20-mile sprint along the bikeways, knowing full well that the weather could turn south on a dime and I might not be able to ride again for the next month or two. Then yesterday was still nice, and today was downright sunny, so I did the 20-mile sprint again.

Normally I wouldn't go near the riverside bikeways on a weekend because it's too crowded, but with Taipei's reduced population, it was quite manageable and agreeable. I'll take advantage of it as much as I can, since I don't think a 20-mile sprint needs any recovery days.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 5:11 p.m. - Xinyi @ Guangfu Rd.

Reign of Assassins 劍雨 (Sword Rain) (2010, China/Hong Kong/Taiwan)

Co-directed by John Woo, starring Michelle Yeoh. That got my attention right away as a recipe for a potentially good action film.

There is a rumor that the mummified remains of the Indian monk who brought the Buddhadharma to China 800 years prior has special powers that would allow whoever possessed them to perfect his or her martial arts skills and rule the martial arts world.

A secret society of assassins called Dark Stone is set on obtaining the remains, which have since been cut in two and separated. During a raid on a minister's home, where one part of the remains is said to be located, the minister is killed and his son seriously wounded, but then one of the assassins betrays the Dark Stone and she steals the remains and disappears.

She runs into a would-be monk/swordmaster and ends up hanging out with him for 3 months and afterwards has a change of heart and tries to turn her life around, leave the martial arts world and become an anonymous citizen in the capital city. Hilarity ensues.

The plot is pretty sophisticated and ambitious with some trademark John Woo twists and surprises. Although I'm not sure I'm correctly attributing credit to him since he was the secondary director. Unfortunately, the presentation of such a complicated plot is very difficult and it does get muddled in places. Although the overall plot arc is pretty clear, I had to watch this twice to connect all the little dots. Actually I enjoyed the film more upon the second viewing, already knowing the twists and surprises.

The action is pretty good, but not spectacular. There's quite a bit of CG in the swordplay and the fighting didn't feel as kinetic as great fight scenes should feel. They didn't grab me, but they were by no means sub-par. It also kinda looked like camera angles and editing were a large part of the fight scenes, rather than martial arts skill and training.

The major problem I had with the film was the lack of character development and no background to give insight into the characters and what their motivations are. The characters are just there and are who they are and we're just supposed to go along with it. The main character's "transformation" to turn her life around and the would-be monk/swordmaster who catalyzes it is brow-furrowingly inexplicable. It's a shallow device.

But as I mentioned in my last comments on a John Woo film, Red Cliff, where he did try to do character development and failed miserably by my estimation, you don't watch a John Woo film for the characters, you watch it for shit blowing up and guns that never have to be re-loaded. Or in this case, flaming swords, wounded people crawling home for one last bite of homemade noodles before dramatically croaking and a hot wench assassin who likes getting naked and having sex.

I still recommend this film for fans of martial arts movies. Fresh 7 out of 10 tomatoes.

A Brand New Life (2009, South Korea/France)

This film is about a 9-year old girl who unexpectedly gets left by her father at a Catholic orphanage in South Korea in the early months of 1975. At 92 minutes short, the film at first blush seems to be a simple and straight-forward arrow shot of a story, which in both narrative and filmmaking is unremarkable.

However, upon second viewing, I found all sorts of depth and complexity curled up in it like the extra dimensions in String Theory. It's deceptively simple and I got the feeling that there was more to the film to dig up. The filmmaker was getting at something intentional that the viewer had to find.

Of course, having studied religion, and having a film syllabus in one of my religion classes, I did put this film under that kind of scrutiny, which is frustrated by being set at a Catholic orphanage, and so being is already replete with Christian imagery.

But there were some other things the director managed to slip in that weren't part of the overt Christian context of the film. The feet washing scene might be noted by people looking for such symbolism, as well as the death/resurrection scene, but it's not like the film was littered with these references.

On further inquiry about this film, there seems to be autobiographical references of the director in this film. It's set in 1975, and the director was 9-years old in 1975, and she had also been left at a Catholic orphanage for adoption. So I wonder maybe it's the director's personal experience that might be infusing the film and begging the audience to look beyond the story, and look at the characters, look at the histories, the contexts, none of which is covered in the film, but behind it all are real people; is a real person.

Perhaps an irony in coupling the comments to this film with Reign of Assassins is that I complained about the failure of giving background and motivations to the characters in that film. But in this film, it may be what is not included that is so compelling.

While the main character is at the orphanage, the camera never looks beyond the short dirt road that leads to the locked gates of the orphanage. We don't know why the father leaves her there, they didn't seem to have financial problems, nor did there seem to be any overt social upheaval to protect her from. We never even get a good look at him until he gives her one last look.

The workers at the orphanage are impassive automatons for most part. They neither mistreat nor coddle the girls. Their solution to the main character's stubbornness or disobedience is to leave her alone and ignore her, thus leaving her feeling the sting of her own abandonment and helplessness. But then we get a hint that they, too, are hiding and repressing their feelings. Maybe they have to.

Also not included in this film is a music soundtrack. I think whenever a film excludes a music soundtrack, it's an intentional decision that is as important as what's written in the script or where to place the cameras. And it's anybody's interpretation why that decision is made. I merely observe that music often serves to enhance scenes or to transition from one scene to another or indicate what the viewer is supposed to be feeling. This film needs none of that. It's part of the complexity in the simplicity. The something there in what's left out.

Many aspects of the film are heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking to see this happening to a once smiling and happy-go-lucky little girl. Betrayed by her own father in whom she misplaced unconditional love. Ultimately, though, I think the director meant to express hope in the ending. And in the title. After all, she turned out fine. I also have a Korean American ex-coworker who was adopted by a white American family and she turned out fine.

It's sad to be turned away by your own parents, it's heartbreaking, and I don't know what the context was for so many Koreans putting their children up for adoption in the 70s, but it doesn't mean their lives are ruined or victims of some horrible personal disaster. It's a story deserving to be told, but not one begging for sympathy or pity.

After an initial nominal 6 out of 10 tomato fresh rating, I bump it up to a robust 8.5 tomatoes. It's a great little film that requires a bit of viewer patience and inquiry.

Keelung River. Nikon N70, Ilford XP2 Super, last roll of film.