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.