Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I went to Philadelphia last weekend to visit my other brother's family. He's 2 years older than me. My oldest brother who lives in Englewood Cliffs is 3 years older. I actually went to Philly earlier this month for his 7 year old son's birthday, but that was with the rest of the family and it was just a day trip.

On that trip, I learned that my brother was introducing his son to plastic model kits. They were working on a model of the Titanic together, and he had a model kit of a B-17 (1/48 scale I think – rather large) in the closet, waiting to be built after he gets a little older.

Me and my brothers all got into building plastic models when we were kids, but he was indisputably the best at it. My efforts often turned out as incomplete or inconsistently painted pieces of crap. I forget how good my oldest brother was at it – we were bitter enemies when we were kids and many of my memories of him in that period have been wiped clean.

But my older brother seemed to have a natural talent for it, as he does with many things, and his assembly, painting and weathering were impressive for his age, which I'm guessing he was in the range of 9-12 when he was actively building these kits.

We were mostly into World War II warships and planes – 1/700 scale Waterline Series Imperial Japanese Navy warships and 1/48 or 1/72 scale Japanese and U.S. warplanes. We had definitely stopped by high school, maybe even junior high, and the remnants of the collection ended up out of sight on some closet shelf, I shouldn't wonder.

The years took their toll and the vast majority eventually was lost or destroyed and discarded. At some point, I decided to pack the remaining pieces away in a single box filled with synthetic cotton for meager protection. I forget exactly when this took place, but certainly it was after my brother left for college and I still had 2 years of high school to finish, or on one of my trips back from college on vacation.

I don't think he knew what happened to the collection, but I clearly remembered I had packed it away. So when I heard he was introducing his son to plastic models, I went searching for the box and found it without too much difficulty (aside from my mother filling my closet with clothes, after completely filling the closets in both of my brothers' rooms, the contents of my closet have remained untouched), and brought them down with me to Philly.

I was hoping to go to my brother's son's little league game, but it got rained out, so instead we excavated the box and pulled out the contents:

My nephew was pretty excited and impressed and asked a lot of questions. I was surprised at how many models were in the box. I knew the main aircraft carriers and battleships were there on top, but then there was an assortment of lesser ships, including heavy cruisers, light cruisers, a hospital ship, a seaplane tender, and an entire support fleet of destroyers and submarines.

I suspected there were some planes in there, but didn't know which ones, and there they were at the bottom of the box. Only one 1/48 scale plane survived, which is sad since we had a lot of them. I don't even know the name of the aircraft that survived (middle left of the photo), but we had maybe at least a couple dozen of 1/48 scale aircraft.

However, the piece that survived was a good representation of my brother's skill. The propeller and engine cowling are removable and he had painted the engine. He had also weathered the wings along the joints and around the guns for realism.

The other planes in the photo are smaller 1/72 scale models, and we had a lot of them, too. They are in various degrees of disrepair, and they make me think I may have made a decision over which planes to save, meaning the ones I didn't choose got chucked, which is sad if that's what happened.

The most damaged 1/72 scale plane is the light grey (white) A6M2 Zero with the diagonal blue line on the fuselage by the napkin holder, and it was saved despite the damage because the markings of the plane were supposed to be that of Saburo Sakai's plane or his flight group.

Sakai was Japan's leading fighter ace to survive the war, and he was a bit of a hero to us because his story was recorded in a book called Samurai! that may have been the first novel I ever read. He was among the best of the best and one of his stories was also featured on a Discovery Channel episode called Dogfight Over Guadalcanal.

As an adult, he remained an impressive figure to me because he became a man of peace, refusing to even kill a mosquito, and he went on reconciliation trips to meet and befriend the American pilots he had fought against during the war. When he died some 10 years ago, I read about it in the New York Times and printed out the article and tucked it into the copy of Samurai! that I still owned. It turns out my brother did the exact same thing.

The other 1/72 scale model of historical note is cut off on the left side, the B5N torpedo bomber with the yellow fuselage and brown and olive camouflage wings. That was the only plane with those markings and was flown by a pilot I think was named Fujita who led the attack on Pearl Harbor (NB: these are anecdotes from childhood memory, for which I haven't confirmed historical accuracy) (N even more B: after a cursory history wiki check, all of that information is wrong, aside from that a B5N, with standard olive green navy aircraft markings, led the first squadron in the attack on Pearl Harbor).

I'm glad how it all played out. It was a bit of atonement to have preserved these models and have my brother show them to his son 30 years down the line. It wasn't only with my oldest brother that I fought, me and my older brother also had our share of fights.

On one occasion when we still lived on Cambridge Place, we were in a heated fight, and it ended with me on a balcony on the upper floor of the house with a bunch of models threatening to send them crashing to the lower floor where my brother was. I remember him warning me not to do it, but then I started hurling them down.

I don't think they were his models. Even in our worst fights, I hope that it would have been unconscionable for me to destroy his work (my other brother would've been a different story, I'm sure). And since I'm not sure he would have cared whether I destroyed my own models, the most logical explanation is that they were my models that he had helped me complete, since I always ended up with a plastic ball of paint and glue when I made them on my own anyway.

I think that incident left deep scars on both of us for different reasons – on my part it represents the environment of sheer rage and hate that I was up to my eyeballs in.

I don't think having preserved these other creations from his youth is necessary towards anything in our sibling relationship that we haven't dealt with in our own ways through the years. There hasn't been anything hanging over us that has prevented us from having a more fulfilled and complete relationship that we can finally let go of.

But there's still the full circle aspect from that incident to actually handling these models surviving from 30 years ago. There's a bit of finality or bringing it to a close, and realizing it's about his son and raising his children emotionally well now, and not any lingering aspects or memories from the past.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Counting down one week before I return to Taiwan. That's reality. As it happens, I've allowed myself to fall into the fantasy of being here and ignore everything I still have to face when I go back.

I don't think returning to the States is anywhere in my future plans. There's nothing for me here, and anyway I don't think I could live within a hundred mile radius of my parents. They have been pushing me dangerously close to my breaking point with them without even doing anything.

And that's exactly it. They haven't changed or transformed at all to warrant any changes in my intolerance level. Nevertheless, there's nothing for me here, and still unmotivated to do anything, it is simply not an option.

I'm at a loss how to sum up this past month. I'm not sure what this month is or what it means. Maybe it just is. Maybe I know that it means nothing in the long run and is a reflection of that and that's why I'm unable to express anything about it. But I hope to.

I've been hanging out a lot with my sister-in-law at my brother's house. They live in the same town as my parents, so she's in very familiar territory to me. She comes from a family of 4 sisters and we discuss a lot about family issues and history.

I also went down to Philadelphia and visited my other brother there. That's more stuff I'd like to express, but have no idea how to say it. While I was down there, I met up with an old college friend and we had a good talk over brunch.

Bored now.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

For the vast majority of my accessible childhood memory, my parents lived in this town. There are scraps of other places, but mostly places I've only heard about: West Orange, Jackson Heights, and ... that's about it. My childhood memory is a fragmented, threadbare affair, and my sister-in-law informs me my oldest brother is no different.

I've always assumed that the nieces and nephews I've interacted with these past several years wouldn't remember anything about me, because I don't remember anything from their ages. But apparently they are getting a substantively different upbringing with things worth remembering (oddly, me perhaps being one of them).

My parents used to live on the north side of town at 22 Cambridge Place. That house still exists, albeit completely remodeled – no one has yet torn it down and erected a McMansion as is happening all over town. I do have memories from that house intact. And not all bad ones, believe it or not.

I guess I've been fascinated by memory recently, plumbing the depths of what I remember about that house. It had, and still has, a pretty large backyard with a fence around it – a common feature for older houses, but McMansions are huge atrocities on relatively small plots of land that yards are largely being done away with.

That was where me and my brothers played and explored. Ample tree cover, an old but usable swing set, a shed for my father's gardening equipment, which horrified me because of the spider life that took a liking to the place.

And one infamous night when my brothers and some of their friends camped out in the backyard in a new tent someone had gotten. I, the youngest, wasn't invited to the party. I remember this as fact, not as memory, but at some point I decided to go out and try to scare them.

I think I snuck up and created a shadow against the tent wall and that did the trick in scaring them. That lasted the whole of a few seconds before they realized it was me and they proceeded to chase me around the backyard in the dark. I headed for the gate, which was usually open, but they had closed it for the occasion. Hilarity did not ensue.

Again, most of this is fact memory, but when I impacted the wire fence, that's something I remember. It was just a flash, me running at top speed and brought to a sudden stop by the fence. I think I remember seeing red against white.

The aftermath memory reverts to facts. My parents, as usual, weren't around; I don't remember them involved in any of this. I vaguely recall one of my brothers, I think my second brother, taking me up to my parents bedroom where he called them to tell them what happened and field advice. I forget if I needed stitches, but I think the scar above my right eye is from that incident.

Fast forward to adult memories.

I was in 6th grade when we moved to my parents' current house, ending those formative memories. At my parents' current house, I finished elementary school, attended high school, left for college, visited during breaks, graduated, left for Japan, got dragged back from Japan, left for law school in San Francisco, set up a life in San Francisco, threw away my life in San Francisco, returned to my parents house, left for the monastery, returned to my parents house, and finally left for Taiwan.

And this time, visiting from Taiwan, I find remnants of stuff, relics, from my life in San Francisco. I got rid of a lot of stuff before I left, gave a lot of it away to friends (I had friends), but quite a few pieces made it back to New Jersey.

And this time, enough time has passed since I left San Francisco that these relics now have meaning. For example, what was just kitchen plates and bowls before now conjure meaning. Independence, living a life. That matching kitchen set was bought at a Bay Area flea market. Beer glasses that I snuck out of bars and clubs, because, Christ, for the price of beer, I should get something out of it. My collection of coffee mugs. Pots and pans that I used to conquer my complete lack of comprehension of how to cook.

Relics now. It's unthinkable now to return to the U.S. from Taiwan and set up that sort of life again. I tried it, it didn't work. And now I have these plates, bowls, cups and mugs still wrapped up in newspaper for shipping as evidence. And memory.

numbed silly

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Being here has become a major numbing experience. In fact, my daily patterns aren't that much different from what they were in Taiwan in terms of isolation and avoidance, although I do have mandatory social exposure to my parents, and I see my brother and his family every several days.

The first week crawled by, but then the second week zipped by and slipped away before I even noticed. All I do really is putter around, falling into all the same old patterns and habits. It's just more luxurious here.

My parents have a nice, spacious house in quiet suburbia as opposed to my noisy, dark urban apartment in Taipei. I've pulled out my guitar (Takamine) and bass (Spector) and have my drums (Yamaha) set up in the basement, and playing them has been sweet – much better quality instruments than I have access to in Taiwan.

My bike here is older, and almost failed as a result, but now that I have it working, I can feel how it is just a better quality bike than my Giant. It's a Peugeot that I bought in San Francisco 12 or 13 years ago and the gear shifters are outdated.

When I pulled the bike out, the shifters didn't work. Well, they worked one way, but not the other, so once the chain was on the largest ring in front, I couldn't downshift, and when the chain got to the lowest gear in back, I couldn't upshift.

The first place to which I took the Peugeot was Bike Masters in Englewood, where I've been going to since I was a kid. Ownership has changed, though, and the current owner is Korean. He took one look at the shifters and wouldn't give them a second glance, wouldn't even touch it. "Buy a new bike!", he said, not even making eye contact. I scoffed at his inability on the way out.

The second place I went to was Bicycle Workshop in Tenafly and they – Spanish speakers, although I don't know where they are from – were better with an explanation, maintaining there was no company support or parts for this kind of shifters, but they had one last ditch procedure they could try, but emphasized that they couldn't guarantee it would work.

It sounded like they'd seen this problem before since they prompted me with a question about how long it's been since I rode the bike – they suspected it hadn't been ridden in a long time, and I confirmed that it had been years since I rode it.

I gleaned that because of the long period of inactivity, grease had built up in a certain part of the shifters preventing them from "grabbing". They were going to soak them for several days in a solution to clear away the grease. Almost a week later, they called and told me to pick it up, it was working.

The weather has been hit or miss, though, and I've mostly been riding on a trainer in the basement for 30-60 minutes. I went out once on a sunny day, but quickly discerned it was too chilly for my liking and just rode to the north end of town and back. Barely 5 miles there and back. Small town.

But what am I doing? What's the point? I'm even boring myself now.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

My practice is grateful for my parents. Truly so, I'm not being sarcastic. Things they insinuate, things they do, things they outright say, things they represent are all opportunities for me to watch my practice in action, and overall I think I've come along quite satisfactorily.

And on top of that is genuine, normative gratefulness, simply for what they've provided and for how much worse they could've been as parents and were not. And below all the gratitude is a recognizable indifference towards them that informs me that they should not in any way be a part of what I decide to do or not do. I don't owe them that, nor do they necessarily deserve such consideration.

My reactions of becoming a cold wall, or feeling a tightening ball of anger or annoyance gripping in my chest, to what so far has been the worst reaction of becoming outright sarcastic and snarky, are all being watched and minded.

The first two types of reaction are easy to handle; they are immediate and immediately recognizable, and easy for me to grab a hold of, acknowledge and relax and let go of. Stop it. Good practice *pats practice on the head*.

In general, try to do no harm, don't say anything harmful or creates negative tension, even in response to an offense.

I'm neither articulate nor observant enough to describe their perceived offenses, but suffice it to say they are family things. Things that only come from being family and just about anyone knows it when they encounter it with their own families.

The incident involving sarcasm and snark was a response to relentless, although likely unintended, condescension and insulting of my intelligence by my approaching senility father, and the breaking point led me to start repeating what he was saying in exaggerated, mock agreement. I don't regret my behavior as it was harmless and more defensive exasperation than an offensive cut at his cluelessness that I twisted after plunging it in.

I've also been learning suggestions that my father, in general, can't be claimed to be a good, well-intentioned, self-sacrificing figure towards other people in his life, both professionally and personally.

As a medical doctor, I have no reason to doubt he has always conducted his business to the highest professional standard, strictly speaking – he has been sued for malpractice, but has won every time because his records are meticulous and logic and reasoning competent and defensible – but he never went the extra inch to help someone, not much of a bedside manner, I shouldn't wonder.

Personally, I always look for the good, well-intentioned person and read that into the non-expressive, blank wall exterior of my father, but I realize that may just be my own projections. Whatever, really. In my experience, he has never gone beyond the call of duty except for acting as the family bank, and that's significant enough, so fine.

They off-handedly called me "spoiled" in response to my apathy and lack of interest towards my life. So much to say about that. The great irony of a parent calling a child "spoiled" is that, well, someone did the spoiling (hint: it was them). Another thing is that they were calling me "spoiled" when I was a teenager. They're still calling me that?! Come on, where's the progress?! Where's the imagination?

But where I understand how it might have made me angry before on multiple levels, it doesn't now and I was content to think to myself, "maybe so".

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I've been in the U.S. for a week and I'm here for the entire month of April. Where exactly is this journey of mine taking me? 

If I had succeeded in my first attempt last summer, shit would have hit the fan through the second half of the year. If I managed to not leave a body, the mystery may have lingered, but by now the impact would have died down. Someone would have disposed of my material possessions, daily lives would all have resumed.

And when I say "impact", that's a bit of an unwarranted conceit. I don't mean any substantial impact. There isn't anyone substantial in my life to really be impacted. It would only be an obligatory or superficial impact – family, the result of the accident of having been born into their particular family; people who had a physical awareness of my existence.

I don't think anyone could be substantially impacted if they didn't know anything about me or my thoughts or thinking or ideas. If they didn't have any curiosity or inquiry, I feel justified in writing them off. They likely viewed me in a normative way, so they can deal with it in whatever normative way people do. It's not my concern.

Some people might puzzle, but no one knew me or the intricacies of the long-standing reasons that led me to finally do what I had always considered inevitable. Anyone who thought that I had linearly come to a decision for tangible reasons and then carried it out would miss the point entirely.

If not for this trip to the U.S. now, would I have made my second attempt when the window of opportunity opened in late March? Now with the second attempt in limbo, I'm at a loss at what to expect of myself.

This month in the U.S. already feels like it will be a month of great numbing. I'm not doing anything different or productive that's so different from anything I was doing in Taiwan. Just taking advantage of certain things available to me here. Value is still the same – just about nil.

I haven't been drinking constantly, and a week into being here, the times I've allowed a beer, it was like, "why am I drinking this?". My tolerance has been unpleasantly low. That might change as the month goes on, though.

My first week here, I've been double-whammied with jetlag and insomnia. I would crash hard late in the evening for about an hour. Then later when I'd go to sleep, I haven't been able to get more than 3 hours of sleep before I'd put a DVD on in the wee hours of morning. It's starting to let up now and I'm getting more sleep, not that the lack of sleep had any effect on me, though. 

It makes me wonder about a previous visit here where I remember having absolutely no jetlag, no insomnia for the duration I was here, and also sleeping pretty normal sleeping hours by an ordinary person's standard. Still haven't figure out what that might have been about.

I had a dream early on where the only thing I remember was having Shiho in my lap and kissing her. And another where there was someone "interested" in me and I was responding, but I have no idea who that was.

As long as I was back in the States and could call people here, I got back in touch with Sadie. Even though it looked like we had cut contact last year, it was as I thought. Either of us could make an overture at any time and we could go with it. And we'll go with it until the next minor falling out. 

No major falling outs for us, I shouldn't wonder. I want to value Sadie enough that if we have a major falling out, I would make an effort to resolve any issues. Minor falling outs are fine. They may be the result of feelings we don't know what to do with, but they don't affect the friendship, who she is to me.

Not sure I trust myself on that one, though. And don't want to test it.