It shoulda been a no-brainer. If the broken space heater was the "actual trigger" for depression, then go buy a new one! The reason it didn't occur to me right away is: a) I've long had a moratorium on buying more stuff, new stuff; anything I bring into my apartment I need to have an idea of how it will exit my apartment, and b) I'm in my last few months of money. What I have left won't see out the summer and the sooner it runs out (if I don't go to the bank), the sooner that's supposedly the end of my life, so don't spend frivolously*. The option of buying a new space heater sat in a total mental blind spot. 

* I am aware of the many layers of contradictions and neurotic nuttiness leading to absurd formulations that just don't make any sense. Yet there they are. Story of my life. And I do find them outrageous, dismaying and infuriating in alternating and varying measure. If you were me, I'd bet you'd want to kill yourself furrow your brow, too.

But I decided under these circumstances whereby the universe isn't playing fair and is maliciously and artificially creating the perfect conditions for my personal misery (no hot water, broken space heater, possible record-breaking brutally cold winter with constant clouds and relentless drear . . . coincidence?! I think not), I felt justified in bypassing my own neurotic rules and at least go and price new space heaters. I went out with the aim of buying the cheapest one possible that will make showers bearable. I got one for a little over US$30 and is less than half the wattage of my previous one, but it'll do. It'll have to. I won't complain and I'm still armed with the attitude of treating the misery as practice. Actually, it's of minimal effect with limited range depending how cold it is, but I don't want to understate the importance of at least being able to take the edge off the chill at key times. 

It's still definitely better than nothing, but I think the most important thing is that I took control of the one thing over which I had control. If I had continued to treat the loss of the space heater like the water, weather and Siberian blast (literally), as something I couldn't do anything about, I could've risked falling into a hole of hopeless, helpless despondency. I'm not so confident about my mindfulness practice being able to ward off despair and realize it's only temporary and will pass. It's possible I would see it as an undeniable disruption of the day-to-day conveyor belt whereby all avenues of coping to maintain a modicum of comfort and stability would be gone. 

And it's only early January; winter is still a long way to get through. I bring myself back to my breath and focus on breathing and calm. It is only a little bit of comfort to see next week's forecast with several days in the 70s and sun. The temperatures then go down again perhaps suggesting a possible rollercoaster of a season. I can't project how my psyche will hold up or whether my resistance and mindfulness practice will fail and accept all my efforts have gotten old and I'm too exhausted to try to maintain them. I'm not that tough. I hope I remember to remember it's all alright. Otherwise it's narcissistic ego-attachment. Let it go.

Whoa, dude, I'm being hit by a nasty bout of depression. I know I've written about experiencing depression in recent memory (meaning a few years) since it's rare by my reckoning. When it happens it's confirmation, to me at least, that I'm generally not depressed. There's a big difference. To me at least, if not how I sound.

To catch things up the past few weeks, my left knee appears to have pretty much mostly healed from whatever that was, but the sciatica still dogs my right leg from time to time; not too bad, doesn't contribute to depression, just a limp. The weather has no doubt been a contributing factor in the depression. There were maybe three days that weren't gloom and drear and with temperatures creeping into the low 70s and pale sunlight fighting a losing battle. But that long-range forecast predicting cold temperatures right around New Year's was not only spot-on, but spot-on with a Siberian vengeance with probably record lows on New Year's Eve. I'd be surprised if records weren't broken or matched. Cold contributes to depression with not a promising forecast.

Contributing factors aside, I'm gonna attribute the actual trigger for the depression being my space heater breaking. A few weeks ago I tried out pointing my space heater into the bathroom during showers and it helped mitigate that misery to the extent that I didn't give a second thought about using it every night since then or what it might be doing to my landlord's energy bill (I don't pay it directly, but I still feel bad since he's my cousin's uncle). Using the space heater made me think I could get through this. Whatever however shit it was to plummet myself under a cold shower, there was that steady flow of warm air making it bearable and which was especially appreciated when I was done and temperatures only rose at that point. The space heater breaking was the universe laughing and telling me to go fucking kill myself already, daring me at this point. The universe has no qualms laughing at the big joke of my life and making it worse in the pettiest ways. So the universe is not so much #worstlandlordever, and more the model of #sadisticthirdworlddictator.

I have no problem putting a theoretical, ideated suicide (i.e., not to be taken seriously) back in the cards on the table, except one principle I hold to is depression can't be a contributing factor towards suicide. If I'm feeling depressed, I'm not going to do it. Clear out the depression and I'm good to go. I am fighting the depression with positive thoughts and energy and happiness-generating meditations. It's all part of mindfulness practice. Ironically, a contributing factor in the depression is feeling that my practice has been going no where, but then countering that by identifying that as subjective with limited validity; don't worry about it, just keep practicing. 

I don't know if it's just me and my personal version of mindfulness practice, but depression can't crush a turnaround in positive mentality and realizing all of these conditioned things shouldn't be taken as real, fact or substantive. Unfortunately, I also think a part of my method is what I mentioned before about getting angry to cope with situations. I recognized getting angry may not be ideal as any sort of weapon, even fighting depression. I'm confusing and conflicting myself now, so I'll stop. I don't have a conclusion to which this train of thought is heading.

I only have reasons to commit suicide and letting go of this life, and nothing but my ego-habit and attachments preventing me. All of those contributing factors towards depression are valid contributing factors towards suicide, except depression itself. Good fucking grief. Why can't I be a normal person and just kill myself if I'm depressed and without all the neurotic conditions I've placed upon suicide? Just take a gun and shoot myself, except this isn't the U.S. and guns are hard to come by. OK, buy a portable barbecue grill and burn charcoal in my bathroom leaving one of the small windows above open to clear out the carbon monoxide so no one else is affected. But I don't want to leave a body. I don't want someone to find me and have to deal with a body. Why? What the hell is wrong with me? But it is absolute, I won't subject anyone to that. 

Oh, Happy New Year, btw! 2021, yay!

I will mention that a superficial way of dealing with depression has been in the mix CDs I've made for every year I've been alive. As geeky and pointless that may seem to anyone else, there's nothing like being able to put on a CD that was personally curated by myself and guarantees every song and segue is an uplifting bop of appreciation of beauty, groove or emotion. I guess it helps that the one enjoyment I have in my life is listening to music. Obviously it wouldn't help anyone who doesn't care much for music. But I highly recommend that sort of project for its therapeutic benefits in both making them and in listening to them in the lowest moments.

Finally, I need to own up to a mistake I made trying to be clever in my previous post. I referenced the song "War" and then thought I was being clever by referencing the song "Low Rider" thinking both songs were by the same artist. They aren't. War is by Edwin Starr and Low Rider is by War. So you can see how I got into trouble; an honest mistake. Why I would think "War" was done by a band called War simply went over my head. Well, Japanese all-girl punk band Shonen Knife wrote a song called "Shonen Knife". That even made it onto my 1991 mix CD.

I've been experiencing depression lately! I don't get depressed in general, believe it or not, so although it's unpleasant and perplexing, it's also a bit interesting in ways. If I may be so bold, my brand of mindfulness practice precludes mental health issues. Or perhaps, rather, what might be conventionally seen as mental health issues are filtered through a prism of mindfulness practice, broken apart and considered in constituent parcels.

When the feeling arose, the first thing I did was identify it and not deny it. It felt bad, it was dark and persistent, it was a thing as real as it could be without being solid and it didn't have an identifiable cause. It wasn't a passing mood or just feeling down. Hello darkness my old friend, you've come to bend me over once again. As soon as the identification was made, mindfulness practice kicks in to investigate it; examine the contours, what is it doing to my thoughts and feelings? Pick it apart intellectually at first and then dispel it logically by realizing its illusory nature and using my brand of mindfulness practice that doesn't allow for it because I have too many other mental afflictions to investigate. Don't get attached to it, don't give it any substance or traction, don't react to it and just let it be and wait it out as if it were a physical ailment. That's what mindfulness practice teaches in this situation, that's what makes it useful.

The manifestation is real and can't be downplayed, only placed into perspective. It arises at times when there's a lull in my mental continuum, between things I was doing that kept me distracted, and it would be exacerbated by the simulated urban hermit situation I've created for myself; the isolation, the lack of connection and relationships, no where and no one to turn to. Tunnel vision, tunnel consciousness, closing in on all sides, tinges of desperation. The season and the sun going down sooner each day not helping; even my age and degraded eyesight contribute. It's hard to describe when I'm not feeling it, and when I'm feeling it, trying to describe it isn't high on my priorities (actually no, that's exactly what mindfulness practice does, blogging about it is what's not high priority).

I thought it may be related to Sulli's suicide. Not just hers, but a month earlier another female singer, Woo Hyemi or Miwoo, was reported having died at age 31, but she was much less known and reportage was sparse and ambiguous regarding the circumstances with little follow-up. That's code in Korea's cagey media that foreigners learn to decipher that it was most likely a suicide. If a young death is not suicide, they readily report the cause, so if they don't report what happened for whatever reason, that's pretty much their way of reporting it was a suicide. And it turns out I know who she was, her debut song as Miwoo made it onto my 2015 mix CDs. A month before her death she released a song under her name Woo Hyemi which I didn't recognize, but I subsequently looked it up after I realized who she was and it's poignantly sad, but quite beautiful.

I have kept both women in mind, including during morning sitting, focusing energies, trying to get my head around at least Sulli's depression and mental illness that led so finally and deafeningly to her suicide. I'm supposedly suicidal, although having failed at it for so long might preclude the claim. I don't have depression, although believing I'm suicidal but failing at it for so long might preclude the claim. But I know I wouldn't commit suicide because of depression, and even during these bouts with it I've re-affirmed that. And oddly, regarding alcohol, drinking doesn't make it worse as one might believe it would. It's actually a comfort, something familiar. Here's that feeling again. I think I'll have a drink. Ah, much better.

But I was having trouble empathizing and understanding what happened to Sulli, and I want to. Shinee's Jonghyun I got. Robin Williams I got. Even Anthony Bourdain I got, just a lot didn't make sense and was counter to what I supposedly got. With Sulli it was why'd you hafta go and do something like that? So the universe, if not Sulli's energy itself, sends this to me to try on for size.

I guess the next step in mindfulness practice is connecting the depression with Sulli herself to try to understand it and generate compassion for her and truly empathize. This feeling I'm experiencing but multiplied by 10 or some greater factor had become her reality. Whoosh! I can only scratch it, but that may be enough. I don't need the full force of what she felt nor how all-encompassing and consuming it must have become. May she reincarnate in peace.

I was wrong about the two previous posts not needing to have been writ. They were actually helpful. Sometimes you need to go some place to realize it's not a place you want to go. Oh. That's kinda the story of my life.

The conveyor belt/treadmill metaphor was useless, albeit accurate, but realizing that still requires formation of some other paradigm. New paradigm. Different paradigm. What was wasn't working.

Nothing should be comfortable about my existence, considering how it has to end. Well, how it has to end for all of us, but trying or pretending to choose to in my case. Itsa big difference. For people in general, we all have to die but that's no reason to not get comfortable about existence as much as we can. Let it come when it does. Don't go where you're not invited until you're invited.

For people like me with the realization of death as a focus, there is no getting comfortable with existence. Death is a reality that can't be put aside because putting it aside is ignoring the obvious, and existence is by nature uncomfortable because it's fleeting and needs to be explored and understood as such. Maybe that's what the great adepts were getting at. Maybe they were as bad at it as me. Probably not.

I'm thinking I have to tap into sadness and despair, not as emotions but as concepts, which is a bit ironic since Buddhism teaches to do away with concepts. In this case, the concept is a tool in furtherance of doing away with concepts. Which in many ways is exactly what many Buddhistic methods necessarily are.

Sadness and despair are useful in that those are the normative emotions, tools, concepts that ordinary people avoid or are given as reasons or explanations for suicide. But I'm not ordinary, I'm not necessarily suicidal, it's just what I want to do and will eventually have to do since that's the way I set my life up. Not being suicidal makes it hard to commit suicide. Tapping into sadness and despair just as concepts, and not as the things humans generally attach to as real and things to avoid, can help. 

There's a lot of blurring that goes on. All the beauty in the things I love and appreciate become sadness and despair because they are fleeting. They won't last no matter how much I want them to be loved. Dig deep and deeper into those emotions of love and appreciation and they become sadness and despair because they all come to pass. It's still love, and joy is still joy, laughter is still laughter, but they take on more dimensions, they become multi-faceted. Anger is no longer a feeling but an energy that's pretty useless and can be stopped when recognized as an energy. Lust is no longer some base animal impulse for desire and self-gratification, but a very powerful energy that is very useful if controlled. Despair and sadness don't mean depression. Everything starts getting transformed in practice.

I don't know when it will be time, I don't know how others knew it was time, but I've come to imagine it's a full-body realization. I've never had that before. I used to talk about being at 100% or getting to 100%. As a full-body realization, I doubt I've ever been near 100%. I won't project on what I think I was, I may have never even been 1%, I may have gotten to 80%, I just don't know myself that well. 

On Monday, I went out and got something to eat. Soba noodles. After coming home, I put on my running gear without any intention of doing any sort of jog or plod. Shin splints appeared again last week and I've been off since then.

I went out to the riverside path and confirmed I wasn't going to try any sort of exertion; I just wanted to be out. Ended up just milling about listening to music before puking up the soba noodles and then returning home. I try to be discreet about puking in public and I don't think anyone saw me.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I didn't eat anything. I didn't get out. Raging insomnia totally messing with my routine. I also didn't puke at all.

Today, still insomnia. Did go out and get something to eat and came home. Puked it all up after several hours of lying on my bed feeling deathly sick, listening to my heartbeat in my ears, unable to pay attention to the Harry Potter movie I was trying to watch.

I don't know if this means anything. This is just what happened. It's probably happened before and I probably even posted about it.

The decline continues with no end in sight. How far can the descent go without reaching a bottom?

I haven't had anything to say for the past two and a half months. That's not true. There's always something. It's been dark and getting darker, and still no proactive plan to end things.

Thoughts of death and dying have been prevalent, but still just a lot of stagnation and theory. There's no reason for me to be alive. There is no clinging to hope; there is no "hope", just the last lame selfish enjoyment of continuing to listen to music. That's all that's left really.

Clinging to any last reason to live, and all I can come up with is listening to K-pop? There is no other reason I'm still alive. I'm not living for anyone, I'm not productive, I don't produce anything, I don't contribute to anything; not to anyone's perspective, knowledge or happiness. I'd've made a terrible Protestant.

It occurs to me that this blog may ultimately turn against me. It's very possible it still may be found by people who knew me. It's very possible that people would be disgusted by my attitude towards my life.

You hear of people called heroes who fought for their lives in the face of adversity, and here I am just throwing it all away just waiting for an end. It should have ended a long time ago. Where I am is the result of how I've always lived my life and I never intended to live this long.

Ten years, twenty years ago people may have reacted differently. Maybe understanding if not sympathy, not that I would have expected it. If I died now, having written all I've written, I expect a reaction more on the lines of "what a fucking idiot, should've gotten over with it before".

I can't imagine anyone being affected by my dying; old story I know. I expect it to just be passing news. You hear of people dying and other people paying tribute. Even mentioning their death is a tribute. I can't even imagine a mention.

How can my death have any littlest bit of impact on anyone else when my life hasn't had the littlest bit of impact on anyone else? My life goal has been to have as little impact on anyone else. And it goes both ways. I don't expect anyone to be affected and no one has the right to be affected.

When someone dies, people close have the right to "own" the dead; the right to mourn, the right to acknowledge the person meant something. No one has that right with me.

Now I realize that the most I could expect is disdain and disgust.

The past two and a half months have been a mess. I don't even know what it means anymore to think that things are spiraling out of control. A logical train of thought leads me to conclude nothing is spiraling out of control.

Mindfulness practice has felt like it has gone off the rails, but mindfulness practice is what keeps things grounded. Daily sitting has suffered more than it ever has except during the worst of insomnia. I can't seem to understand, much less absorb, the readings I read and re-read anymore.

Still, mindfulness practice is still a skill like casting magic spells in the Harry Potter series of books. Certain unwanted negative emotions or thoughts arise and you can identify them and recite an incantation and wave a wand and make it fly off.

I am immersed, mind you, in reading the Harry Potter books and watching the films which are showing on HBO. Whatever works. Twenty-five years ago it was reading the Lotus Sutra and equating concepts from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series.

Such comparisons only contribute to the utter meaninglessness.

WordsCharactersReading time

I've noticed the efficacy of mindfulness practice has broken down completely recently. It's a continuation and extension of what I mentioned in January when I first noticed something . . . off.

My mind is clouded, my thoughts are clouded, my feelings are clouded. Negativity grows and creeps and I can't stop it. I apply the practices, the visualizations, the meditations and they just aren't working.

I've been going back to the teachings in the books that have been so illuminating in the past, and sometimes I'm reading sentence by sentence with negative responses and resistance arising constantly.

It's not that I think the teachings are wrong. I read and acknowledge they are right, but my mind is resisting, making excuses why they don't apply to me now; excuses that I know are wrong and deluded, but reflect how I feel.

It may be a problem of not having a social support structure; no community, no friends, no family. Even hermits living in caves have benefactors who check up on them and deliver food and supplies as necessary. Even hermits are not as nothing as I am in my current existence. They are especially not nothing.

Maybe weather, winter blues, is a contributing factor. If it's raining, if there is no sunshine or shadows it's just such an easy excuse to stay holed up except to get out for alcohol. Not even food that much as I'm never hungry anymore. Whatever sparse nibbles I have in my room are enough to not want to eat.

It's not that I'm giving up on mindfulness practice. Morning sitting is still the most important thing I'll do for the day. Occasionally I'll take a break day, but for most part, even if I wake up and don't feel like sitting, by the time I'm vertical I'll be preparing for sitting. Actual break days are often justified by physical health conditions that actually manifest.

Besides, I know from experience that the teachings work. If they're not sinking in just now, that doesn't mean they don't work. It's far more likely that certain conditions and attitudes are preventing me from realizing them in the present moment.

I'm not worried. I'm not going to stop applying the teachings, but I expect I'll be spinning wheels until conditions are right when the sparks start plugging again. It will be of continuing importance to keep objectivity and keep just observing internally and not reacting emotionally and uncritically. That would be a waste of all I've learned.

As the saying goes, "If you're going through hard times, keep going".

When the thought of even one more day becomes unbearable. When the thought of even one more day becomes too painful. When?

Nikon N70, Kodak BW400CN, ISO 800:

Now I know I'm re-treading subject matter. I know I posted this subject already.

I am now past 50 hours of hiccups.

I was a bit proud of the fact that I got home from work and didn't have a drink until I was ready to go to sleep, until I found I couldn't get to sleep.

I will not go through what I went through last year.

If hiccups persist, if insomnia persists, I simply will find myself fully justified in self-destructing in any novel way that my imagination fancies.

"Insomnia is a common and debilitating disorder that results in substantial impairments in a person's quality of life, reduces productivity and increases the risk for psychiatric illness," says senior author Paul Shaw, Ph.D.

The full force of my negativity comes to the fore as I declare how much I hate my life and my existence. It's worthless, it's a waste; at the same time as I declare how much I can do with my life if I let it. I don't fucking care.

A life can't go on without active positive elements; and a careful examination of mine, there are no active positive elements; only passive positive elements. The active negative elements trump. Psychosis prevails.

Work conditions are woefully not helping. I've defined active elements that will make me quit, and I have a co-worker who is trying to avoid those elements coming to fruition. But if this continues, it is out of his or my control. I will quit. And if I quit, I will tell no one, but just let my bank account deplete until there's simply nothing left.

Simply nothing left means simply nothing left.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4, 4:34 a.m. - Where I don't sleep during insomnia.

4:56 p.m. - Neighborhood park at the end of the alley where I live.

Auditioned last night for a weekly paying gig on drums. I think I did alright, but fear of commitment keeps paralyzing me! Was it fun? It occurred to me just now that, yea, it was fun. I don't know what I'll do if I get the gig. They definitely sounded like I was in the running.

Things in my head keep proliferating, growing, getting confused, weeds growing and entangling. Several posts ago I felt all my life I was cutting through the over and undergrowth, getting rid of all the confusion only to find at my core, a steel, shiny, smooth sphere of negativity.

I got to class this morning alright, after what was easily my worst riding commute to date. I guess that's not saying much since riding to class is always smooth and more pleasant than taking the bus or getting stuck in traffic on or in a motorized vehicle. I was just trying something new and made a series of bad decisions that made the commute inconvenient, but I took that all in stride and still got to class earlier than anyone else.

But then during the first half of class, I noticed something in me progressively changing, deteriorating, collapsing, imploding. I don't know what. It's like my body was about to shut down, but I was aware of it happening.

I feel that way a lot these days. Watching too much Discovery Channel, describing what happens when something bad happens and the body starts reacting and shutting down. I've been feeling my soul or my spirit doing that.

Maybe it's the Winter, but man did things get bleak fast. All the development, all the theory, all the cultivation, pushing myself towards positive thinking, so quickly dissolved away.

Now I walk down the street and I look at people's faces and they just fill me with overwhelming sadness. Why compassion? Why exist?

I'm faced with staring down the gaping maw of my existence, and this is my basic core. All my life, digging up, confronting, and dealing with issues was clearing away the wild growth, hoping to get to an answer, a doorway to lead somewhere, but instead is an impenetrable, cold negativity. This looks like the (dead) end of the road.

How do you go back? Why should I want to? The word is unbearable, and it's an unbearable where suicide doesn't exist, not by changing definitions, but the idea, the act, are no longer an option, because that's how bleak it is. If suicide could even be considered an escape, escape is no longer relevant.

It feels like all my life I've been clawing down through the dirt, the weeds, the muds, the trees, the woods, trying to get to the core of something.

I've eaten through it all Gotten through the shit Cleared away the brush

And now I find myself clinging to a nine-foot diameter stainless steel pinball. The core. My core.

Nothing new is going to happen
Nothing's coming down the line
Nothing's gonna change.
Just sitting on this shiny metal impenetrable ball.

This is just the way it is. Unbearable, and has been for quite a while now.

With every step, the ground beneath my feet turns to sand. The sand spreads out, consuming everything around me. The landscape turns to sand. The incessant rain of Taipei disappears as everything turns to desert. My skin dries, my throat parches as I become part of the landscape.

None of this is real. None of you are real. You turn to sand in my hand. You turn to sand in my mouth. You turn to sand in my mind.

I'm running out of ideas. Running out of future. Ropes that grounded me cut loose. I have to do what? Responsibility what? But in this landscape, there are no shores; there's nothing to do but drown.

At some point in my past this may have been madness, but even madness turns to sand. Even suicide turns to sand. So what is this and how is it different? I can actually enjoy this. I can turn my eyes to the sun directly above, and say, "hey, wow, I must be on the equator". How else is it different? Before it wasn't boring.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 12, 6:21 a.m. - Shots from my apartment window (3).

8:53 a.m.

1:07 p.m. - Apparently I like this skyline detail, I've shot it before.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 14, 7:19 a.m. - Fudekeng cemetery

7:30-7:33 a.m. - Riding down the south side of the mountain from Fudekeng, on the north side of the park with those freaky sculptures I posted last month there is what looks like a Buddhist temple.

I've been having trouble sleeping all week. I don't get worked up as much as I used to about not being able to get to sleep. My attitude now is that if I can't get to sleep by the time my 30 minute radio sleep timer turns off, I get up and sit or study or read. Eventually the need for sleep will catch up.

So last night was a shit night, which is not to be distinguished from the rest of the shit week, or today's shit day as it continues to rain, exacerbating the leak in my ceiling. My hopes for last night being my sleep catch-up night were fading as anxiety and despair over my situation grew.

My blood was turning to ice, freezing, numbing, then cracking as every few minutes I would hear a drop of water hit the trash bin I had placed under the leak, for which I had to move my mattress. I thought I had better just get up and write basically what I'm going to write below, but I also knew if I did that, I would be hitting a tipping point because I would be running on pure negative emotions by that point.

I don't know what I did besides just staying in bed, but I fell asleep.

The tipping point thing was important, because as I'm trying to re-establish my aspiration to suicide, I realized a few days ago that I was still thinking of it months in advance. That had to change, I had to make it now, whenever that would be.

Whenever suicide comes up, it can't be months in advanced or even days in advanced. If it's not now, stop thinking about it. If something tells me, yes, I'm ready now, then make the decision and go, or when the MRT starts running in the morning.

As a mental exercise, that has been great. Forcing myself to make it immediate helps put it back into perspective whether it's something I want to do. Mostly it is. It just befits all the patterns in my life. I just keep coming back to it. I dunno, it's just different.

I've also been running through every aspect of it I can possibly think of during sitting. Including the difficulty I will cause when the news reaches my family. Not easy stuff. How the news reaches them is a whole nother story, but also goes to why they are still not a reason not to do it.

I look at my life, all it's been and what it looks like in the future, and my present bloody butt-fucking circumstances, and I'm supposed to tolerate this so they don't have to go through that? What they go through or not go through is not my responsibility, just as how I got here and the desolate wasteland exile I've found myself in Taiwan is not their responsibility.

Of course, we are each others' responsibility, as our mutual emotional bond depends on it, but apparently somebody didn't get the memo. I'm pretending I didn't see it.

But I managed to get to sleep, and I woke up this morning and it was still raining. I studied for my test today, took my test today, bombed my test today leaving one section pretty much blank.

But I walk and appreciate my two legs and that I'm in good health. I feel my breath and feel its life, my contact with the world, it penetrating me and delivering itself to me. I thank it, I thank me, I thank all that makes it possible. However, the result of that gratitude is not necessarily what you might think it should be.

But if I give up and decide I can't stand it anymore and go back to the U.S., I will try to find someone to take over my lease, but if I can't and lose the deposit, so fucking what?! If I feel I can't stand it anymore, what the fuck is $600? Why care about the lost tuition money?

Money is not supposed to be an issue in this lifetime. With all the unlubricated butt-fucking karma I have, that is not an issue. Maybe I've dealt with it before, maybe I'll deal with it later, but it's just not my problem issue in this lifetime.

I guess that's all. I'm just glad I waited until now to write this. Maybe it doesn't sound reasoned and calm (maybe it does), but I feel more comfortable getting this out like this, than I would have if I tried to last night.

4:14 p.m. - Taipei 101

5:34 p.m. - lights turning on. Indeed, office lights were on all day.

5:35 p.m. - Taipei City Hall. A candidate for ugliest city hall building ever. The Chinese characters literally translated say Taipei City Government. Because I understand that much (and not much more).

Rainy days are the hardest because they can get lonely. Really lonely. Not the self-imposed alone from sleeping from 5 or 6 until past midnight. Sunny days I can at least ride. Today I just walked and walked in a spitty mist until my feet were sore.

4:09 p.m. - In the Technology Building MRT area.

Not sure what's going on inside me, but it can't be good. Something creeping like a worm. A growing despair, isolation, hopelessness. But it's not an emotion, it's not like an emotion. It's a vibration. Everything is wrong. This is all wrong. My hands melt into the keyboard.

Everything's getting surreal again. Everything's getting "not me" again. This isn't my life. These people aren't people in my life. Vibrations reaching a critical frequency, and again, who's there? You?

Even this I know I don't consider real. It's part of the conditions that make up all aspects of my being, including my environment. I was perfectly "fine" by normative definitions until now. At the monastery, at my parents' house, even for the most part of this term here in Taipei. And I will be "fine" by my own definitions soon well enough.

This artificial stress has scraped off what was hiding what is lying underneath. In the course of my life, I'm really alone now. Just from my age and experience that comes along with age, I don't fit in with the people around me. They're not my people, they can't be. Even though just last week, no one even questioned that I wasn't past 30. Good lord.

Strange life. It's not mine. I don't recognize it anymore. I don't recognize me, or me in it. And putting it this way makes it sound like a good thing. Well, to me, at least. It doesn't feel very good.

iTunes soundtrack:
1. Rude Mood (Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble)
2. Lilywhite Lilith (Genesis)
3. The Story of Lucy and Jessie ("Follies" - Sondheim)
4. If Not For You (George Harrison)
5. Skylines (764-HERO)
6. Meditation (Meditacao) (Laurindo Almeida and the Bossa Nova All-Stars)
7. Exodus (live) (Bob Marley & the Wailers)
8. I'm the Man Who Murdered Love (XTC)
9. Afraid (David Bowie)
10. Slainthe Mhaith (Marillion)

It's September and Summer is coming to an end. I feel dying in the air. It's wonderful.

I've been pursuing a "great despair", chasing it through dark woods, flying across interstellar space, digging in the dirt, wandering in a fog. Sounds odd. Most people have their despair walk right up to their front door and knock. I've got it so good. I don't know if it's that kind of despair.

If I'm not suffering from the despair that most people seem to grapple with, it's because I'm in denial. And I'm happy about that.

And because I've got it so good.

I really need to stop creating manifestations of abstract thoughts.

I first caught a glimpse of the despair when I was up at the monastery this past time, and it was pretty horrid and deep, sinking completely into my body and being, lying in the complete darkness of the dorm room. If I claimed to have posted about my deepest, darkest secret, I haven't.

But it's not the substance or source of the despair I'm going for. What happened in the past happened. I can torment myself feeling bad about it, I do feel "bad" about it, but attaching to it is something I just won't do. Torment is OK, but guilt is for suckers. I don't even know what the repercussions were or if there were any. There must have been.

Despair is just mind.

I don't want to make light of the great despair. I'm not sure I even understand it. Maybe it's the same thing as the "great doubt" I sometimes hear about. There seems to be many similarities. But just from the glimpse I got, I think it's something I need to chase for a bit because it's got something I need.

Not that I know despair. I recently re-read two books, Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust and Maus, and there is no even imagining that kind of despair. And the stories of the Holocaust that have come down are "only" the ones from the survivors! But maybe it is that huge, incomprehensible despair I'm angling for, but theoretical, conceptual. But that's sort of making light of it. Back to the sketchpad.

FUUUUUCCCKKK, STOP!!

No! I know what I'm going to do and I am going to do it, but not with this kind of pressure.

Not with this kind of pressure, not with this feeling that I'm pushing myself too fast or when I'm not ready.

It's not too fast, and I am ready, just . . . whoa. OK? Whoa. I can go now, I can go tonight, I can go next week, but I will not go feeling like . . . this.

Just get the fuck away from me. Please.

I received a mix Meghan sent me today and I could have cried, but I couldn't. So I watched the second half of "West Side Story" and that put me over.

I was fortunate to have been exposed to "West Side Story" at a pretty early age, being told it was an American masterpiece. I feel sorry for anyone who is so jaded by modernity that they can't see the brilliance in that film and can't let themselves be folded into the story.

Meghan isn't making things easy, as it's perfectly within her realm to not make things easy. As it was with Sadie's email a few days ago, the message was so hard to read. It's so hard to accept positive emotions from anyone, positive affirmation. I'm the silhouetted decrepit skeleton of some sunken Spanish galleon. I don't mean anything to anyone anymore, and even if I do, and now I know I do, what does that mean?

My eyes glaze and I skim over the words. I have to force myself to stop, slow down, and read each word and take them in. No, it's not easy. It's not easy when people tell you point blank that they love you, that you are special. I can accept it intellectually, I don't have esteem/confidence issues, but looking at the monolith of my being, being special to another human being is just no longer a part of it.

No, Meghan isn't making anything easier. Sadie, with access, when accessed, isn't making anything easier. Delphine, who has no idea whatsoever, does not make things easier.

No, this isn't the first time that Meghan has made me grip my computer keyboard until I realized I was about to break off several letters which would not be a good thing. In my experience with the English language, you really need all 26 letters. Eksept maybe 'x'. The 'w' and the '1' were most often the likely victims. But the core of my being, this mortal coil, shimmering and glowing, can't help but want to explode.