I need to get serious about this as things may be starting to come to a head.

A recent thought that has been playing in my head is the realization that my suicide is an integral part of my parents' journey. I know there is a psychological aspect of this suggesting these thoughts are a way of attaching meaning or responsibility of committing suicide to some fictional "higher" or external purpose, therefore I have to do this, and I'm not going to try to refute them.

I'm just acknowledging them as valid counterpoints. I'll just admit that there are parallel viewpoints. They may be even intertwining viewpoints.

One thing my personal cosmology and theory of everything has not been able to account for is why was I born to these spiritually bankrupt parents?

Previously I've chalked it up to a mistake. That my ability to navigate the death bardos was faulty from my previous life, and although I was accurately able to manage a target of Japan, where I was conceived, I wasn't able to discern appropriate parents.

Instead of being born Japanese, preferably to dharma-friendly parents as perhaps was my target, I was born to a spiritually bankrupt Taiwanese couple temporarily living in Japan, who then immigrated to the U.S. Fuck me.

But calling it a metaphysical mistake is an easy way out. And even though such an incident would not be beyond my karmic theory, I have to consider what is more likely in that same theory. And that is there is more to the bond of the parent-child relationship.

In reincarnation, karma not only draws us to a species of organism we're previously familiar with, but also to specific karmic matter, people, with whom we were acquainted. That's behind the metaphysical concept that we're drawn to certain people, or that certain people are in our lives for a reason.

So even though it's possible that my being born to my parents was a great metaphysical blunder on my part, I still have to examine the possibility of a substantive relationship, no matter how onerous that is to me.

As I said, they are spiritually bankrupt. I've documented before that I almost got my parents to admit that money is more important to them than family, and I backed off at the last moment because I realized I didn't want to hold that mirror to their faces.

That might be the extreme of it, but even in all other aspects of their lives, they are mere simple, primitive, unimaginative beings living normative lives just because they were born, and they question nothing about the reality that surrounds them. There is no mystery to the life cycle to them.

Even further, within the Tibetan Buddhist description of types of karmic existence, I describe my parents falling under the category of "hungry ghosts". Tibetan iconography depicts hungry ghosts as beings who have enormous stomachs but throats that are as thin as a coffee stirrer. Their desire is huge, but there is no way to satisfy it, so they constantly crave and strive for things in a meaningless, futile way.

How can I have been born to these people? From whoever I was in a previous life, did I guide myself to these people? In my grand scheme of things, informed by Tibetan Buddhist ideas, this is not impossible to do. And if I guided myself to them, then why? Maybe I bit off more than I could chew.

Perhaps from a Zoharic point of view, I may suggest that there isn't a direct meaning or connection, but that all beings are at their own spiritual energy level between the material and divine, and even if my parents are firmly mired in the lowest, material realm of malchut, they still are on their spiritual path.

Even if I have a hard time conceiving of any karmic connection with my parents, the Zohar suggests that spiritual energies are still affected by our relationship. We're worlds apart and they can't change me or even conceive of the reality I live in, and I sure can't change them, but their energy on their path is still there, and my energy on my path is still here.

And I seem to be firmly fixated that suicide is my path, even as that path keeps being distracted. And to compound that fixation, my parents (and everyone else around me for that matter) inadvertently keep pushing me towards suicide. "Do what your heart tells you to", "Do what makes you happy", "You're the only one to decide your own future". Suicide is my response to all of those well-intended platitudes.

I want to say my parents need this for their spiritual growth, and I've probably said that before already. And of course that's where the psychological conundrum comes in because you always have to look at psychology whenever someone feels compelled to do something.

Actually, no, I don't need to do this. It's my choice, whether I do it or not. But I am convinced that from a Zoharic point of view, they would be the better for it. They would have to face a challenge they are unequipped to face, and those are the best kinds of challenges for our spiritual states.

And recently, as they've always done, they're trying to push me down a normative path that conforms to what they envision to be life. That's a path I've well-established for myself as virtual death. But that pushing may just be the catalyst to actualize my goal of suicide, which is not death. I'm not going to go all out and call it life, knowing who I am it may or may not be, but it's more life than what my parents can envision.

I don't know what my parents would go through if I disappeared. Quite honestly, there might not be any of the emotional trauma that often accompanies people who lose a loved one.

Well, a child in this case, I don't think my parents are qualified to consider me a "loved one". To them, I consider myself an "acquired attachment". Aside from the accident of being born to them, there is nothing about me they could possibly reasonably love.

If they go through a period of some distress and then accept it and move on in the manner that they handled their own parents' death, then there was nothing I could do for them by living. But if they are challenged and really have to struggle, then I think there is benefit.

But god forbid our karmic energies are linked beyond this lifetime.

I got through another Lunar New Years in Taiwan. It's something I dread from several months prior as something I really don't want to face. If you're alone and solitary in Taiwan, you'll really feel it during the Lunar New Year when families get together for gatherings and feasts.

The floor I live on has been just me for the entire week. I avoid contact with my neighbors at all costs, but there is a psychological effect when they're suddenly not there. This past week with no one else here, I've felt cabin fever creeping up and put in an extra effort into mindfulness and realizing these are just insubstantial mental formations.

I noticed more intense mental chatter in my head more intensely and put my index finger to my lips and go, "Shhh...." to the chatter. Shut the fuck up, brain.

For the first three days of the Lunar New Year, everyone gathers with family and just about everything closes. The only things open are the convenient stores and Western fast food joints, otherwise people like me would starve and be competing with cockroaches and rats for scraps on the floor.

More shops start opening during the next three days, but aside from travel hubs, it's still pretty quiet. I think the first three days are about family, then the next three days are about returning home and getting together with friends. Just observing, I don't know if that's true.

My family in Kaohsiung didn't bother calling to wonder if I was heading south for New Years. Maybe they learned from last year, when I mistook the date of the New Years and thought my uncle was calling me out of obligation as an afterthought and declined, when really he was calling me two days in advance.

More likely they just assumed I wouldn't go south as I didn't visit at all in 2011. Furthermore my parents were just in Taiwan for the presidential elections a few weeks ago, and I didn't accompany them to Kaohsiung. They'd always welcome me, but have no reason to believe I'd go.

And I got through yet another meeting with my parents. I met them at the airport and accompanied them while they were in Taipei, and then I met them when they took the High Speed Rail going to the airport to return to the U.S.

Man, this blog is starting to bore the hell out of me.

Bah. I keep forgetting this is MY blog and I can say or geek out about anything I want. This is what's in my head coming out, it's not a conversation or discussion. It's not a free speech zone, comments are moderated. I'm not writing for a readership, nor in reality do I have a readership.

Furthermore, in light of my not posting much lately, I probably should be making more of an effort in shoving whatever's in my head onto these pages. It may be boring as hell (to both you and me), but I should treat it as my last will and testament.

I think there has been a reason why I've been posting less and less. I've been disappearing from all of my web presences because I've more and more come to realize there's no point.

I review my web presences and I understand why I created them, but after time I feel that those things aren't for anonymous public observation. I'm thinking of privatizing them and making them accessible only from this blog.

This blog should, to me, continue to have a point. It's the only portal that should have a point, and any other entry points to who I was shouldn't exist.

I haven't posted to my main fotolog since September because it got boring. Photography got boring. For me, digital is killing photography. Digital is killing seeing in photography. And my foray into digital with my brother's DSLR was boring.

Digital was fine and good for snapshots using point and shoot cameras as far as I was concerned, but DSLRs have leveled the playing field and while when I started learning about photography and using a darkroom, I was the only one I saw regularly walking around with a bulky SLR in hand.

Now you can't not see them with their full kits of lenses and tripods. When I started — and I was among the last generations that didn't have a digital choice I shouldn't wonder — if you saw someone else walking around with an SLR, you knew they were doing it with some sort of art in mind, for the seeing.

Now it's not about seeing. It's about technology and the camera and images that may look good but anyone could take them. People aren't really looking, and they're definitely not seeing. They take pretty photographs somehow thinking what they're capturing is better than the real thing. And we're all to blame for being impressed by that. I know there's another side to it . . .

And of course there are people who are seeing and are thinking and capturing worthwhile images and they know who they are. I'm not criticizing them, and when I come across their images I think, "Holy fucking shit, why can't I see like that?".

So I've been disappearing from the web. There's no point, no worth.

By no worth, it's not a psychological or an esteem issue. It's a realization of the vast machination of globalization through the internet that renders each of our anonymous voices only as significant as we think our egos are.

And as much as ego is a focal point of understanding in Buddhist practice, my decreased web presence has been an expression of recognizing that ego is illusory. It's not that I don't matter. I do matter, and if I wanted to, I could matter even more, but I don't want to.

I saw most of the movie "The King's Speech" on HBO, and towards the end, two classical music pieces were played on the soundtrack. The first I immediately identified as Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement, because once you hear that somber and dramatic piece and identify it, you'll never forget it. It's as distinct as the 1st movement of the 5th.

The second piece was more elusive. I knew it was on my iPod, but I had trouble identifying it. I finally decided it was a Chopin Piano Concerto, either 1 or 2. Wrong. It turns out it was Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 (Emperor).

The reason I note this is because what I said about not being able to identify K-pop girl groups just by their sound or voices and how that reflects on their artistic integrity or identity.

Truth to tell, my ability to name a composer to any piece of classical music in my iTunes collection is probably not that much better than my ability to name a K-pop girl group, and I've been listening to these classical pieces for a whole lot longer than I've gotten into K-pop.

I'm not seriously comparing K-pop to classical music or suggesting the artistic integrity of either is any more or less than it should be. I'm just admitting that whatever criteria of whatever in my mind is a load of crap. And I'll love members of various K-pop girl groups way more than any classical composer period. Seriously, where are the hot female classical composers?

And why "The King's Speech" ended with two pieces by a quintessentially German composer, considering the film is a distinctly English perspective of the period leading to the start of World War II, is a bit baffling.

Decent film, great acting portrayals, although plot-wise the film was only going one way, and as such was predictable and any feeling that it was a good film was likely emotionally manipulated. I'd give it a nominal fresh rating of 6 out of 10 tomatoes.

Bah. Part of the purpose of the previous post was to make sure I post something else soon, since having a post gushing over K-pop girl groups as my lead post is . . . a little embarrassing? And if these are the last posts of my life, maybe I should be posting more often. Although as my personal history has shown, these likely are not the last posts of my life, despite my immediate plans.

To be clear, I don't consider K-pop as having "artistic integrity" as I've traditionally snobbishly defined it. I like the stuff I do given its artistic limitations as pop music, and I take it for what it is — fun, catchy; I would argue well-written. And K-pop fandom has a lot to do with their cults of personality over consistent musical excellence, which is not in their hands anyway since they aren't the creators of the music.

Some K-pop groups have some say in their artistic direction, even less play any part in the creative process of writing music or lyrics. Or even defining their own roles. Last year, SNSD gave an interview to MTV in New York, and the American interviewer asked how, with nine members, did they decide who would sing what part, and the answer was a no-brainer. They matter-of-factly blurted out that they didn't decide that, their agency did. So I realize that most of these acts are corporate puppets.

Corporate puppets? So are they the artists they think they are? Well, sure, why not? It's part of my taking it for what it is. They think they're artists, they are working hard at it. It's a different artistic standard. My contradicting myself comes up, though, in that I still can't stand pop music as a genre from anywhere else.

Recently I've been testing my ability to even distinguish the difference between the sounds of various girl groups, and the failure is pretty total. I've dumped a lot of K-pop into my iTunes and so when a song that wasn't immediately recognizable from TV promotions comes up on shuffle, for most part I don't know what the song is or who does it, so I try to guess.

More often than not, I come up with a list of who it might be, and rarely can I identify the group just by the music or the voices. Usually a group on the list is right, but not always. Many of them, truth to tell, sound the same, and songs are likely interchangeable among the groups.

This is in contrast with Western rock acts that I've acquired in the past five years with entire collections of albums given to me on an external hard drive. I can name very few songs by The Killers, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers, Wilco, etc., but once I hear the sound or the voice, I can at least identify the band.

So strictly speaking, individual K-pop groups don't have a musical identity, and to me that equals no artistic integrity. And even though I've come to love the cults of personality of various groups and it's a little hard to put them down and say I think they have no artistic integrity, that assessment at least squares with my opinion of pop music in general.

Several months ago I gushed about K-pop girl groups' autumn comebacks, with two that were still pending, T-ara and Wonder Girls.

T-ara (whose member Hyomin was on Invincible Youth), I dunno, it's weird because I kinda get an underdog vibe from them. They're definitely a top girl group, but rarely included when mentioning the "elite" girl groups. And they should be. Despite an underdog feel to them, there's also an air of queen bees about them.

They actually had their autumn comeback in November, but they immediately followed up with a January release that they're promoting, and which I think is a better song:



Wonder Girls are the only girl group in this flurry of comebacks that wasn't represented in Invincible Youth, although technically Hyuna, now with 4minute, debuted with Wonder Girls and is on one single with them. But no, she is never associated with Wonder Girls now, not even as a "former member".

This was a much anticipated comeback because they had been out of the Korean scene for a year and a half. Their agency took a gamble to try to promote them in the U.S. and the results were mixed at best and the group underwent hardships and indignities that other Korean girl groups likely can't imagine.

SNSD are safely considered the reigning queens of K-pop girl groups, but if Wonder Girls hadn't gone overseas, I don't think they would necessarily be considered second to SNSD at this point. This comeback, I think, is very strong, and if they had stayed in Asia, it's possible their regional standing would still equal SNSD.



Wonder Girls, along with SNSD, were on the leading edge of what would grow into and come to be known as the second Hallyu wave; the second time K-pop had a surge of popularity, this time marked by international popularity thanks to the advent of YouTube in 2006.

Both Wonder Girls and SNSD debuted in 2007, before there was a wave and K-pop was just being K-pop. YouTube was instrumental in creating the wave, I think, because suddenly a much wider, international audience was getting in on it.

I don't think I really got into it until around late 2010 when Invincible Youth finally aired in Taiwan, about a year after it aired in Korea. But I had been primed for it as early as 2006 when Hyun Ae gave me a K-pop mix CD, and a lot of it was quite good.

I think the media started reporting on the Hallyu wave as a phenomena in 2009 (the year Invincible Youth started airing), and since then it has just continued to explode domestically and internationally. With so many K-pop groups debuting every season, eventually the market will get over-saturated and the quality will likely decline. Currently, no end in sight.