October 7, 1997 - Abstract of Maam at SFMoma

San Francisco, CA: Muddy Waters Cafe, 24th and Valencia

I've been irritable since, get this, not long after my parents returned yesterday. This morning, my brother came by at 5:00 to take me to the airport, and I turned off any vestiges of mindfulness practice and said, "Sometimes you just want them to shut up!". He laughed, but I was irritable at everything and was just glad to get on my flight to find I had a whole row to myself. I slept on the plane, but my hours are still wonky from jetlag, and I don't even want to figure out how flying to the West Coast will keep things wonky. Hopefully it'll make things all better.

It's been, what?, nine months since I left San Francisco. I've been cycling through emotions of being back. My adopted city, but no attachment to it, no sentimentality. My first emotion was revulsion. I hate San Francisco. Dreary, cold San Francisco. The jacket that I didn't need at 5:00 in the morning in New Jersey was now not enough in the middle of the day in San Francisco. I had a headache. I arrived at 9:00, and had over 10 hours to kill before my cousin and uncle's flight arrived. I sleptwalk through the airport figuring out what to do.

Things started looking up two hours later when I got the rental car my cousin had booked, and was heading towards San Francisco and the sun started coming out. What did I want to do? Where did I want to go?

I know this city, it's still my home. I drove north on 101, got off at Cesar Chavez, got into the wrong lane (the one that went to my last apartment here), got into the right lane and headed towards the Mission.

What happened? Where did all this parking come from?! Ample parking in the Mission and I got a burrito at Papalote. Good choice, since it's just around the corner from this coffeeshop, Muddy Waters. Oh, how I miss having options to Starbucks! Coffee so good.

I feel much better. Everything so familiar. Not weird at all, and not that I belong here.

I think I'll go catch Bride and Prejudice at 1:30, just to feast my eyes on the magnificent beauty of Aishwarya Rai. Then maybe a haircut on Irving Street. Not one of those cheap $10 places either. I wish I had learned 20 years ago that for my indistinct features and appearance, I should not be paying less than $20 for a haircut. Get someone who has some idea what they're doing.

Then maybe some walking meditation along Seacliffs. Ocean Beach? Golden Gate Park? Where else should I go to get my fix of being back. But knowing my uncle, instead of leaving tomorrow, we'll be here until Sunday. Breathe.

I couldn't fall asleep. I didn't want to fall asleep. It meant I would be woken up in two hours to begin the end, leading to the new beginning, and I didn't want a new beginning. I want it all to end.

Ha, last chance, last day in San Francisco. I won't begin driving until I get a little more sleep in my head after packing up the truck, and settling my accounts with San Francisco. It's still not too late, but not too late for what? Laughable. Let me go to sleep, and I'll wake up somewhere else.

But now it's time to shut off and disconnect. See you in New Jersey, the Garden State.

"Let you go to sleep
Feeling bad as me
Let you go to sleep
Feeling bad
There's a mean bone in my body
It's connected to the problem that I won't take for an answer
No I won't take that from you
Because I would hurt a fly"
- Built to Spill

INSTRUCTIONS FOR JURORS SERVING THE WEEK OF JUNE 01, 2004
Group Number: 602 you are instructed to call the telephone standby number or visit the website Tuesday, June 1, 2004 after 5:00 PM for further instructions.

Hopefully my jury duty experience this time around will resemble my jury duty experience in the past, and this will go on for a week without being called in.

Other things to do next week:
- Send in last rent check/30 days notice of vacating
- Get a less anachronistic haircut
- Re-activate Netflix
- Send in digital camera for repair

I did my ghost thing around the Castro this afternoon, walking around like I wasn't there, imagining a different world where the people I saw didn't look so heavy. Where people smiled and randomly said hello to each other. Where people didn't feel threatened or the need to feel threatening or dish out attitude. Where common courtesies were second nature because society was good about valuing them. Where people owned automobiles, but chose not to use them as a primary mode of transportation. Where people blew bubbles instead of smoked cigarettes. I'm in a commercial now, ain't I?

And then I ran into ex-co-worker, Ken. Nothing kills a ghost act than someone you know walking up and saying hi. I've fallen to such lows.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Walt: Good afternoon, Rhoda. I've got a little chest cold. What have you got for it?
Ruth Anne: Well, let's see, Tincture of Opium's good, codeine, oh and heroin syrup. Why don't you try them all and see what works best?
Walt: Much obliged, put them on my tab.
Ruth Anne: Mm-hm.
V.I. Lenin: I'll take these bunion shields.

I'm toying with the idea of doing a week of pure confessional. No cryptic shit. No intellectualizing. Just the honest truth of what I'm doing, thinking, and feeling. How much more boring and trying than usual would that be? Left-turn shit, but it's my weblog and my expression and I can do whatever I want. We all can.

But it's April, and for some psychic reason Aprils are always hard for me to get through. I thought this year would be different, just by not believing in it. But not only is this year no different, this year is the first year that the start of Daylight Savings had absolutely no positive, mitigating effect. No "shit is spiraling out of control again, but at least there's more sunlight each day". This year I just haven't given a rat's ass.

I don't know how far I want to take this, I'll probably be out of the mood of doing this by tonight.

But so far, I haven't seen anyone this month. More than half of the days I haven't even gotten out of the apartment. I've tried going on some bike rides, but hills are killing me, and hills are the only thing I'm good at. My computer caught a virus which has been annoying and I just don't want to bother so I keep the computer off. And I'm getting over being sick for the past few days.

Yea, sick. I don't want to get into that just yet. Light-headed, dizzy, loss of equilibrium/balance, light nausea, low electrolytes, feeling bleah. It's my own doing, so this is no pity parade plea (save it for the computer virus). In fact, in the midst of feeling like shit, I'm wondering if I'm actually enjoying this (definitely enjoying it more than the computer virus). Through this all I'm maintaining my sitting regimen as best as I can, since that is the only thing that is real this month.

Northern Exposure Quote of the Day:
Joel: Holy cow!
Holling: It's changed, isn't it?
Joel: Changed? Holling, that doesn't even begin to describe this. I mean, this is, this is...
Holling: Pink! Careful you don't bump into those little glass unicorns.
Joel: Wow, Holling, Holling. I gotta tell you, I mean, this would bind me up. It would totally tie me up, my colon would be tied in knots. I mean...no man could move his bowels in here!

Encore:
Practice period came, and nine weeks later, it went; ending yesterday after evening sitting. No fanfare, no recognition that anything happened. Story of my life.

The highlight of the nine week period was the bike thief.

At the end of December, I bought a new Cannondale mountain bike. I had a feeling about what I was getting into, knowing that my new bike would be primo targetum for bike thieves, but the reality didn't hit me until the end of the first week of practice period when someone tried to unsuccesfully steal it at around six in the morning, during morning sitting.

If you lock up your bike at 5:15 in the morning, as far as a bike thief is concerned, it's been there all night. It's still dark, and there is not a lot of people around. After that, I started triple locking my bike - two kryptonites and a cable. I figured that would be enough to discourage any bike thief, even at six in the morning.

The only thing I didn't lock was my underseat bag. I thought about it but decided it was worthless to me, until I got out of morning sitting one morning and found the contents of it emptied. The thief took an inner tube, a depleted patch kit, and a set of tire levers - notably not a tragedy. This was either second or third week of practice period in early February.

I thought, "fuckin' A, people will steal anything". But the more I thought about it, the less it bothered me. My feelings of feeling violated bothered me more because it was so minor and there are bigger fish to throw rocks at. So I left a note in the otherwise empty underseat bag. It read:

You took everything in the bag, but you left the bag
Now I think you have nothing to keep the stuff you took
Please take the bag and accept it as a gift

I'm not sure what my intention was. A part of me thought that the thief would never get the note. Part of me wanted to express that I wasn't going to be bothered, that I wasn't going to show fear to this thief. Part of me meant it and expected to find the bag gone one morning.

About a week later, I just happened to have locked my bike near a window of the meditation hall where I was sitting for evening session. During sitting, I heard something outside and waited for a telltale sound indicating that someone was trying to steal my bike (since there are more people around in the evening, I only double locked it). But no wrenching sound of metal on metal came through the window, and short of that, I wasn't going to disrupt sitting.

When I returned to my bike after sitting, the first thing I noticed was that the straps of the underseat bag were undone, but the bag was still there. I checked the bag, and on the reverse side of the note that I had left, the thief wrote:

...thanx but...
no thanx
I didn't have much to give you ...
but I hope for you to be blessed further...smart rider to use a kryptonite
I may be a thief
sometimes I give :)

In the bag, he left a nice monkey wrench with a short handle (definitely useful), a different set of tire levers, and a complete patch kit!

That's a good story in itself, don't you think? Too bad, I didn't get the closure I wanted.

After that, I didn't remove the bag to avoid it being stolen. Instead I left a follow up note, thanking him for letting me know that he wasn't black and white, but grey as we all are. Stealing the contents of the bag was black and white, it was bad. There's not much argument in favor of what he did being "good". But then his gesture made him grey. I couldn't judge him by this one bad act that he did. He wasn't a bad person. People do what they do, who knows why they do it?

I don't know his motivation for stealing the contents of the bag or trying to steal my bike (I think it was the same person because of his mention of the kryptonite in his note). I don't know his motivation for not taking the bag and leaving that stuff for me in the bag. I just know that he did one thing, and then he did another, and that's good enough for me, I'm OK with it.

We do things that harm other people when we don't see the other person as human. But once we see the other person as human, we no longer wish to harm them. I went out on a limb to see him as human, and in return, he saw me as human.

Along with my note, I left a Powerbar and a Twix. But stupid me, one morning I left sitting but didn't notice that the note and the Powerbar and Twix were gone until after I had stopped off at Safeway. So I don't know if he got the note at Zen Center that morning, or if someone completely random stole the candy when I locked my bike outside of the Safeway.

Damn. I was kicking myself for not paying attention. Part of me thinks I would have noticed the empty bag at Zen Center, but I really don't know, I'm really not as attentive as I think. Anyway, practice period is over and my bike will no longer be there from 5:15 to 6:40 every morning, or from 5:30 to 6:45 in the evening. Am I any richer for viewing a bike thief as human? Let's hope so.

I didn't make it out to morning sitting this morning.

At 4:28, I woke up from a dream that I clearly remembered. It was an Amina dream, a good one. A happy one. In the dream, what actually happened in real life may or may not have happened, but it looked like we were going to be friends again.

At 4:55 my alarm went off.

At 4:59, usually the time I'd be finishing putting on clothes to be able to get out of the apartment by 5:05-5:07, I decided I wasn't going, and went back to sleep.

At 6:37, I woke up and thought that sitting would be ending, and we'd be heading up to the Buddha Hall for the student talk. I got out of bed, and instead of home sitting, or going to the bathroom, or making coffee, I put on the "End of Evangelion" DVD to watch it with the commentary track to see if I'd like it any better than when I watched it yesterday. I did.

At 8:43, I began first sitting, and realized that the reason I wasn't able to get out for morning sitting was because of the dream. Even a happy Amina dream sends the echoes screaming.

In the waking world, what's done is done, and I'm even glad that Amina is no longer in my life. But emotionally, she was the ground zero of what would become a ravaged wasteland. And subconsciously, I wouldn't deny that I'm still devastated. It's a landscape I would explore if I knew how to.

When I'm alone, I'm whole and here
When I'm not, I utterly disappear.

SF Civic Center/UN Plaza

February 2, 2004; 5:30 P.M.

I don't want to be happy.

If I wanted to be happy, I would be doing what it takes to be happy. I would go back to my old job, not because it made me happy, but because it supported me and would be necessary for the things that make me happy. It wasn't an unbearable job, it wasn't killing me.

And with that sustenance, I would be happy by:
- going cycling on weekends or riding on my trainer in the evenings while watching music DVDs;
- renting or buying and watching music or anime DVDs;
- maintaining and nourishing friendships, even getting long-distance phone service to stay in contact;
- asking people to go to movies or shows with me, or dinner, or just hang out;
- finding a better apartment in a better part of town and being open-minded about "what I can afford";
- playing music and hanging around people who like playing music;
- continuing home practice and going to SF Zen Center twice a week for Dharma Talks;
- being frequently aware of my happiness or unhappiness, and stop doing what makes me unhappy, and do what makes me happy.

But I don't do these things because happiness, in itself or in material pursuits, is not one of my wants.

- I want to understand the fabric of existence.
- I want to know what this all is and why.
- I want to test it with my own suicide (not someone else's - important).

Don't tell yourself that you want to be happy and then not be. Let's be honest about our happiness and unhappiness.

- If you're unhappy because your job sucks, tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because your job sucks.
- If you're unhappy because you don't get along with your family, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because you don't get along with your family.
- If you're unhappy because your health is bad, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because your health is bad.
- If you're unhappy because you have a mortgage and a ton of debt you're eating your way out of, tell yourself you want to be unhappy because you have a mortgage and a ton of debt.
- If you're unhappy because the dog keeps peeing on the couch, tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because the dog keeps peeing on the couch.
- If you're unhappy because you can't make a relationship work, then tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because you can't make a relationship work.
- If you're unhappy because the weather sucks and puts you in a bad mood, then tell yourself that you want to be unhappy because the weather sucks and puts you in a bad mood.
- If you're unhappy because (fill in the blanks...)

And importantly, tell yourself that if you think you want to be happy despite this that makes you unhappy or that that makes you unhappy, then you're a fool.

Haha, well I hope this broke the funk I was in.

I did buy a bike used, but wasn't so happy with it, so I ended up "giving it away", within three days of acquiring it.

I'm really not one to regret decisions and I regretted buying this bike, and for things I acquire, I really have to love. Like my guitars, my A bike, my drums, and even my ex-car when it came right down to it, I'm not sure what I mean, but I "loved" those things.

I did regret buying this bike, and I didn't think I would ever grow to love it for one reason or another. I have nothing negative about the person who has it now, I hope he's happy with whatever he does with it. I feel lighter, so I thank him.

I read an interesting passage today on compassion and the Buddhist conception of the relationship between people, using an analogy of our hands.

When our left hand receives money, the right hand doesn't feel jealous, envious, or angry. If our left hand is on fire, the right hand doesn't hesitate to act to put it out, it doesn't think of the danger to itself, the left hand is itself.

It's a hard one, but I sort of get it. Even harder to put into practice since I have an aversion to physical contact with other people, but making physical contact with any other human being should be easy as holding one hand in the other. Depending on the circumstance, I'm sure I can overcome my aversion. Perhaps I wouldn't even think about it.

Delphine's birthday

December 13, 2003; 8:12 P.M. - I forget where, but I think it was an Italian restaurant in North Beach.

There is hope for my ability to give counsel!:

----- Original Message -----
From: S
To: me
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 4:48 PM

i did mean sitting practice, which i suck at to high heaven -- i'm already aware of the whole mindfulness thing and i keep trying to practice that regardless of what i'm doing.

----- Original Message -----
From: me
To: S
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 11:20 PM

that's great to be able to say you suck at something. In my experience, if you say you suck at something long enough, you find yourself not sucking at it at all! So keep at it, and keep sucking at it. I can even help if you fall into a lull and feel you're not sucking enough.

----- Original Message -----
From: S
To: me
Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2003 12:47 AM

your sucking speach is the best most inspirational speach i've ever heard.

you rock. :)

s

I'm still waiting for the effects of the monastery to wear off. 

It was overall a great experience; like a fish in water was I, and the possibility that I might enter the monastery, rather than a cemetery, has increased greatly. But I'm still getting my bearings. 

The overall experience has left me very happy, but not as in "happy happy joy joy" happy. Happy as in appreciative happy, as in glad to be able to feel alive happy, as in I can still kill myself and be happy happy. That is to say maybe it's more an objective happy than a subjective happy, although there is some overlap. 

This week since I've been back has gone quickly, though, and I'm not sure what the changes are yet. I went to Beale Street and that was fine, but to the extent that I had been considering them my last social group, that's not entirely accurate, as if they meant something. We go to play NTN trivia, not to be chummy. 

I've also gotten together with Sadie, and that was fine, too. I was willing to let everything go, but not letting everything go is also fine. I did feel sensitive to the hard times she's going through these days, and I did my best to respond positively, but I'm not really qualified to counsel or give advice. I gave my responses, but I felt they suffered from what I criticized about the responses to that Craig's List suicide note, that I wasn't getting into her shoes and walking around; that I was speaking from some way out plane, removed from her suffering. 

I noted her language and negativity and the resounding, boldfaced word "can't" and the idea of "impossible", and I felt such violence in that. It's such a violent way of treating oneself, building unsurpassable brick walls of futility, but it's a genuine feeling that shouldn't be cavalierly negated. 

I've visited violence upon myself in many forms in the past, but I recognize that always, on some level, I wanted to. It served a purpose and I recognized it as such. That's probably why I can't really empathize with other people's suffering. 

I rarely did what I didn't want to do, and I think that's often the case with most us, but not realizing that, it's useless to be told that. Having lost control, desperate trying to gain control, it's useless to be told that maybe you want to be out of control or that there's something to learn from it, and you'll gain control when you deep down in your soul realize you want control. Even if it's because you need it. 

I came back from the monastery to find Sadie had gone through this weblog. I knew I should have told her what I was doing and I'd be gone for a week. She was actually the last thing I thought of as I left my apartment, and I mean that in the good way, but I was too lazy to turn the computer back on and send off the email, so I guess I was asking for it. But now I have to consider the conundrum of people you know having access to your inner thoughts. 

I gave her this URL when it was still public and generally light. But since then I chased my regulars away and this weblog went underground to be unself-conscious and uncensored. Basically, that comments from the peanut gallery were no longer welcome. 

I can't tell her not to come here anymore, although I expressed my extreme reservations about acquaintances having access to each others' inner thoughts. First of all, taking weblogs seriously as a form of personal expression, they are purely personal expression, i.e., not intended for anyone specific. When I talk to someone or send someone an email, that isn't purely personal expression, it's shared expression because I'm taking into account what I know about them, how I want to say something, and what I want them to know. So going to the weblog of uncensored inner thoughts of someone you know circumvents that. 

There's also the risk of being grossly misinterpreted and people holding you to something you wrote and thinking that was written in stone. I think that risk is heightened with personal acquaintances who might succumb to the temptation to imbue everything with unintended meaning. 

Bottom line, you just can't know someone through their weblog. You can only get impressions, which is fine for strangers, but for actual acquaintances it gets messy without having your own safeguard reservations when reading someone's weblog.

Apparently, Sadie has also started a weblog and she's given me the url. But I won't go there until I feel comfortable that I won't be putting anything on her from her writings, or that there is a reason to go there. I'm satisfied that she will tell me what she wants to tell me and I don't need to go to her weblog to get information or topics to grill her on. If I perceive her emotional well-being getting more complicated, that is also a reason to go there, because maybe there are things she wants to express that are easier to put into a weblog than telling someone face-to-face. Also if someone says "go to my weblog if you want to know more about it", then that's also obviously a reason to go. 

But this weblog is not for anyone present, which is not to say that I don't appreciate the people I tried to chase away who have come back (or never left) and remained tactful about it.

Pac Bell Park photo series:

September 16, 6:55-6:56 p.m.

Off:
It was one of those days where every decision I made felt wrong. Patience and tolerance levels were low, while anger, hate, and presumably fear were high. Random people were annoying the hell out of me right and left. I think this was largely the way I had been living my life. Today felt like an exception.

I felt impermeable today. Life and the world not entering into me, and me not getting out into it, being in it, being a part of it. All that I've learned and felt activated lately wasn't there. I wasn't giving anything to the world, and the world wasn't giving anything to me. Just a walking impermeable fleshbag of ego. It's good that today felt like the exception.

I ended up in Golden Gate Park and did some reading in the so-called "Tibetan Book of the Dead". I re-read parts that I read in the morning and couldn't penetrate, and that's when the impermeability started melting away. I got the pages with a vengeance.


Reading with the pigeons in Golden Gate Park.

Off today. Woke up and was just "off". Even after a whole pot of coffee. Maybe it should be a "break" day. Every week should allow one break day, break the routine and not require anything, but I'll probably go out and read somewhere, seeing as today and tomorrow are supposed to be Bay Area versions of a heat wave. I already spent the entire morning watching anime.

Avoiding today's media smarm. Sure, we should remember, but all this media tugging at my heart-strings is inherently more cynical than anything I could artificially conjure, even if I tried. Stick to the facts and "remember" how the Bush Administration has cheapened the lives lost with its war-mongering and corporate profiteering. I recorded a three hour American Experience documentary a few days ago, chronicling the entire life cycle of the World Trade Center towers. I still flinched.

My problem with American Buddhism, even imported, is its need to explain or express things in dichotomies, mostly of positive and negative, as if Buddhism's only contribution to America is to help some suburban blonde office worker distinguish between what feels good or bad. I'm sure I have plenty to learn from American Buddhism.

But for now, it's the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. Finally, a flying carpet that I can jump on and ride.

August 31, 2003; 2:50 P.M. - Doing the Sunol Grade ride in the East Bay.


August 31, 2003; 2:51 P.M. - It had a caboose! You can see people in the windows if you click on it for the larger version.

August 29, 2003; 5:58 P.M. - A rare photo taken during Critical Mass with no bikes in it.

I woke up from a dream. I was in the water. I had ridden to the water. The city was dark. The sky wasn't very big. There were no stars. It felt like a very large stage. The water was warm. It was perfect, but it was just a rehearsal. So I turned back. Bought a board last night.


Back at Ocean Beach.