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. 

TBD (to be determined) II

Visualizing approaching death positively is super important as far as I'm concerned. I recall an old "happiness generating" practice I used to do and that comes in handy in this regard. It was cold generating happiness without relying on outside factors, the way we usually conceive happiness. Happiness is an energy that can be tapped by not being afflicted or attached and just letting it emerge, accepting it despite counter outside factors, including death.

I visualize or mentally rehearse the death process with the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying as guides or templates. I don't take them literally, but I use the descriptions to help envision what I think it might be like for me to die. I agree with the notion that the death experience is not the same for everybody, rather it is informed by the subjective person, including psychological make-up, beliefs, overall life experience, circumstances of death, what was eaten for lunch, etc. Someone dying peacefully in a hospital bed will have a different death experience from someone being murdered in a violent crime or in a war. Two people sitting next to each other in a crashing jetliner, one of whom is a long-time mindfulness practitioner, will have similarities in the death experience because of the manner, but how they go through it would be different. Just for the record, I don't think I know what I'm talking about.

Although I think subjectivity may inform various aspects all through the bardo experience from death to re-birth, I also think that maybe the overall structure of the bardos as described in the Tibetan Book of the Death is universal, and whenever something is described as happening, something is happening but how that something appears depends on the previous and future lives. As much as I dislike the idea of imposing my beliefs on the rest of humanity, if I believe in reincarnation because it just makes sense as a natural cycle, one of the many that we see in nature, then I'm positing that it happens to everyone. We're all part of nature, regardless of belief that we are not, that we are somehow special and above it. Even a bardo experience of going to heaven and meeting God can occur as a result of strong belief and expectation during life, but then it will melt away like a reincar-ception into the bardo of re-birth and the process of reincarnation, with the last remnant wisps of the previous life wiped away by or at the conception of the next life, only taking karmic imprints into the new life. I did mention that I don't really think I know what I'm talking about, right?

The many near-death and death-revival accounts that exist may suggest the subjectivity and diversity in experience in just approaching death. Those accounts, often described as varying degrees of peaceful, may just be skimming the surface, either going deep into death with critical functions stopped but not for long, or being clinically dead for a longer period but not so deep that they couldn't be revived. By nature they did not go so far where the brain structures that support life processes were destroyed. Still, I think our mode of existence and being is so habituated (ego) that there's a lot of momentum of subjectivity that goes deep into the bardo experience.

Beyond near-death and revival experiences, when brain and physical sensory processes definitively stop functioning, I think we go into what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes as the outer and inner dissolutions which may be less affected by subjective experience. I think even the habit consciousness of the vast majority of people fades to black, maybe because it can't handle what's happening to it. I might even say the dissolutions characterize the end of awareness. The only way to maintain awareness is through training and practice while alive to prepare and recognize it when it occurs. And even then the death experience as described may be so overwhelming and disorienting that recognition isn't necessarily possible (spontaneous recognition, however, is still possible because anything's possible).

The Tibetan Book of the Dead makes sense to me when it describes parts of the bardo experience as being extremely disorienting and confusing. I imagine it would be. Our habituated existence has always relied on sensory input processed through our brains to form all of subjective reality. Very stable. At death, the senses stop reception, the brain dies, reality fades away, and all that's left as described in the book is a non-corporeal habit of subjectivity feeling like it's blown about in hurricane force winds.

All of this is just my own little thought experiment; envisioning a scenario maybe a way of trying to be prepared. Everyone who does this might come up with something completely different. Very little is narrowly defined, I think, in the bardo. The subjectivity of the death experience might also include the sequence of events. They don't occur in one uniform way and may not be clear-cut. I heard one lama talking about the dissolutions starting even before death, and listening to that I couldn't say I disagreed or thought it was wrong. I thought it was interesting, a very broad interpretation. And the bright light many people attest to and the calm that comes with it may also be related to the dissolutions, which I've contemplated as beyond the point of revival.

All of this is contemplating just the death point bardo, the first of three death bardos. I couldn't do this sort of thought experiment with the remaining two bardos because I don't have any real insight into them to add to what the Tibetan Book of the Dead already presents. Doing a personalized version would be like doing a bardo version of the Divine Comedy, and as much of a big joke my life has been, I'm no Dante. The death point is something we're all eminently qualified to contemplate, because it's something we will imminently expect. No one has to believe in anything in particular to contemplate it.

. . . a person's wisdom should be judged by the effect it has on his or her life. If that wisdom doesn't have the effect of settling the problems and difficulties in one's life – of creating a sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace, and freedom – then it cannot be the real thing. - Ajahn Brahm (The Art of Disappearing)

My immediate reaction was to ask myself whether whatever wisdom I have is the real thing, followed by a quick, emphatic nöpe! Mind you, I absolutely do not disagree with him. Reading things like that, it rings right. And I have no problem with anyone, myself included, telling me my wisdom is flawed.

But that was just my quick answer and pondering it with more nuance, it turns out to be more perplexing than that.

Does my purported wisdom or practice have an effect that settles the problems and difficulties in my life? What problems do I really have? Obviously it seems and feels like I have many, but when I have a goal of bringing my life to a close, my "problem" is just being here. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons why bringing my life to a close is the goal are not a problem.

Within being here, all the normative things that might be perceived as problems don't amount to much. The role mindfulness plays is that it keeps me from being overly neurotic or angsty about it like I have been in the past. It keeps negativity and negative reactions in focus and at bay and promotes the opposite, or at least neutrality. There has been a settling effect on the problems, but it may not look like it.

What difficulties do I have? I can't say I don't have difficulties. There are things that I find difficult, but they're mostly neurotic things that are difficult only because I create them or let them be difficult. Again, mindfulness just observes the perceived difficulties and tries to understand they're my own creation and not to get bent out of shape over them. Rainy days are difficult. My neurotic reaction about my neighbors is difficult. They're not really difficulties. If pressed, they fly out the window.

How about separately considering sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace and freedom? That's where it gets perplexing because contemplating dying brings exactly those feelings: sense of ease, well-being, space, openness, happiness, peace and freedom.

They aren't what psychiatrists might point out in some suicidal cases where there's a feeling of euphoria once they've made the decision to kill themselves. That's a false sense of those feelings because it's conditional on knowing they're going to be released from their pain, rather than having a settling effect on their problems and difficulties.

Contemplating death, those feelings are very real for me. The feelings aren't contingent on having made a final decision and looking forward to it as a relief. They are there with the very contemplation and vary in intensity depending on the depth of it. But are they connected to wisdom?

Some would say true wisdom would make me want to live. I would call that dogmatic, judgmental attachment to living just for the sake of preserving life that's ephemeral by nature. That's not wisdom, either. Wisdom is an understanding, it doesn't make people do or not do anything. It's morality's job to police behavior, not wisdom's, and I've never cared much for human or social constructs of morality.

I think it is very possible for practitioners to contemplate death and connect deeply with the reality that one day we will die and feel that sense of freedom and peace; that letting go. It's not an abandonment or a 'why bother?' letting go, but it's based on wisdom understanding, accompanied with mindfulness training to not be attached or overly sentimental about our lives.

Things not as bad as I mentioned before. Negativity has eased off, but inspiration is still blah. As a fellow practitioner said years ago, "stick to your method".

It means when you've affirmed a certain method works, if things start going off, just stick to the method and it will get you back on or point you in a new direction.

It's a matter of faith, but it's faith in something that you've tested yourself. Not blind faith. It's not something pushed on you. You stop, stay calm, and let yourself figure out what the dissonance is and how to get through it.

It's actually no different from a physical training regime. Everyone is different physiologically and regimes that work for some may not work for others.

A book I'm re-reading and slogging through trying to absorb again is Happiness by Matthieu Ricard. I had no trouble with it before. I've even considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way.

I've considered much of it obvious in a re-affirming way even though happiness is not a consideration for me. Happiness is not a goal for me, nor is it even possible. But I got what he was writing about.

It's still a meditation. Even if it isn't practically attainable, much less something to pursue, happiness is worth contemplating and analyzing. I mean even living an ordinary life, there's the Tibetan saying that everyone strives for happiness, but so many act in ways that curtails it.

And I'm not living an ordinary life. My life has always been all about multiple layers of sabotaging it and any happiness that may accompany it. It also hasn't been about being miserable, so there's that dissonance.

In re-reading "Happiness", I recognize that everything he's saying is right, but it doesn't apply to me. I don't fit into any of his descriptions or examples or metaphors or parables. The paradigms are normative, and I have no idea what to say after saying something like that.

The paradigms are normative. So what? I'm outside the paradigms of an accomplished monk who has translated for the Dalai Lama? Maybe, his writings are obviously for a general audience, but it's still dissonance. Stick to my method.

What do I do in my daily life to promote happiness? In my daily life, I distract myself a lot with entertainments. That's not happiness. I avoid suffering. That may be as close to what I can conceive of as happiness.

Various levels of contentment. If I'm not suffering physical ailments, I consider myself happy. But that's defined as a negative, an absence. I really, really, really enjoy listening to music. But that's not happiness. It's temporary enjoyment.

Needless to say, the bottom line is that I have no idea about "happiness". It's not a pursuit or a goal, just something to contemplate. At this point, I'd be happy to just dispel the dissonances. Still, it's not nothing. It's not unimportant. Maybe as an unattainable, it's more important to consider.

addendum 2:  I don't know if there's any connection between my dreams and efforts to generate compassion, but in a strange turn-around I had a full night sleep with positive feel-good dreams. That's strange because this is insomnia recovery sleep, which should be dead sleep with no dream recollection.

The two dreams I remembered were love related, both involved women I can't identify and were probably just archetypes; one or both may have been K-pop idols as the archetypes.

One was in a college dorm room-like setting, clean (in contrast to recent dream patterns) and there were other people there. I was lying in a bed when a woman crawled in basically saying she had gotten hints that I had feelings for her and she knew what her feelings were for me and she wanted to make things clear. That's it.

The other dream was like a date in an urban setting, a feel like Philadelphia, and the feelings were more ambiguous. We were on a date, buying tickets for something but she insisting on going dutch and not allowing me to cover, so there was no feeling of commitment or that she even liked me. It's just that it was a date.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have no desire for love or to have or pursue any "love interest". Dreams involving love I think are more a product of a basic human desire to be loved. I imagine on a basic level there is not a human being, however self-hating or cynical but without psychopathic pathologies, that doesn't mind being loved.

And I'm not that self-hating or cynical. It's just that on a practical level, it's not something I desire nor something I'd pursue or succumb to as an attachment. I accept and don't reject that love is a very important and powerful human component, including on spiritual and psychological levels.

So if there's a subconscious, psychological battle going on regarding compassion and manifesting in my dreams, I'd say my mind is fairly equivocal and flexible. Dreams can be hostile or they can be pleasant; either can manifest from trying to engage compassion. And considering my psychology, that makes perfect sense.

About cultivating compassion, the only interaction I have with other people is when I'm out and about in public. The only direct contact I have with people is when ordering food or buying something at a convenient store.

I don't have friends, I don't work, I only know one person in Taipei with whom I meet about three or four times per year for coffee or a hike. I don't have to deal with any interpersonal conflicts at all.

Virtually all my interactions with other people are indirect and abstract. When I'm out and about in public, I'm always listening to music (I turn it off when I interact directly with people). It is with these people that I gauge my ability to cultivate compassion.

What does it mean to cultivate compassion? First of all, it doesn't come naturally for me. I'm quick to judge (which is bad) and quick to be critical (which is bad). Since it's not natural, it's not visceral but more intellectual.

But that's not even right. When I say it doesn't come naturally for me, that's the result of current situation and experience and the cynicism that comes with experience. I look at my behavior and attitudes when I was younger, and I think it's fair to say I had a natural compassion towards people. I even used to consider myself a romantic, just to emphasize how much I've changed.

In my current situation, cultivating compassion is to look inside myself and locate and examine the energies of how I feel towards other people, and bending them towards the positive. To not be hostile, to want non-harm towards other people; to not be an agent of negativity in other people's interactions.

I've found that cultivating compassion is also key towards loosening my grip on my own ego and sense of the importance of myself. It's kind of embarrassing noting that this is something I struggle with when for many people it's natural and obvious.

Very important to the cultivation of compassion is recognizing emotions as energies within our bodies. That's also part of mindfulness training. When you feel an emotion, locate and identify it as an internal energy that is just as real as heartbeats, blood flowing and breathing in and out.

Once you do that, you can put a rein on emotions and not let them control behavior. It's no longer a matter of feeling anger or any emotion and accepting the emotion for what it feels like and reacting no matter how irrationally.

When you recognize it as energy, you can think of it as E. As in the equivalent of mass times the speed of light squared. How emotions fit in with Einstein's equation may make no sense, and that's fine. It kinda doesn't. But if you can visualize emotions as energy and abstractly consider it against E=mc², then you can start processing it as a physical property of the universe, as something controllable and not so mysterious.

According to the equation, a small amount of mass transferred into energy yields a huge amount of energy. So thinking of emotions as energy, that can be looked upon as a huge amount of energy. None of this to be taken literally, just to think about.

Since I nominally "cut back on drinking" over a month ago, things have been pretty smooth. Maybe alcohol is, in fact, the root of all my petty grievances. Again, just by the numbers, I haven't cut back that much. Two to four drinks less per day, but still averaging around 12 over the course of the whole day. All I know is that I haven't been feeling like death daily, good enough for me.

I don't know if it's related, but I've since been getting to the gym ahead of my membership expiring in June, and getting out on bike weather permitting. I think I even rode over 200 miles total, a monthly benchmark, in April. Performance is still way down, but so are expectations. Don't have to worry about failure when just doing something is the goal.

Sleeping during the past month was fine until yesterday and today when back-end insomnia returned. I'd stopped keeping track of my sleep before then so I can't say if there was any correlation between drinking and insomnia after cutting back. 

I suspected not. Even when I noticed sleeping well after cutting back on drinking, I still expected insomnia to not be affected and to randomly return, and it has. 

During the month of sleeping well, I haven't noticed any dreams, but with insomnia the dream level is so shallow that memory is more possible. Family still making appearances despite my recent realizations that I have nothing to do with them anymore and no reason to ever visit them again. 

I'm not saying I won't, but if they want me to visit, their overtures have to be pretty convincing. As it seems, nobody gives a rat's ass if I ever visit again, and I'm fine with that. 

I also had another Amina dream. Very unusual at this juncture since that is such a far gone part of my life. In the dream, she was deeply in love with and committed to me, but there were forces (she's Muslim) conspiring to keep us apart that we were willing to go against.

In a nutshell, I used to consider her the love of my life, but all of that and any concept related to romantic love has been negated for me. When you negate the concept of romantic love, no individual stands a chance. As an ex, she now rarely comes to mind and never as anything special, but rather even as a lapse.

I suppose there's some subconscious suggestion involved in her still appearing in my dreams, perhaps that it's nice to feel loved. In this life, being involved with her did have a deep experiential impression upon my feeling being loved. Subconscious notwithstanding, in the waking world now it's not anywhere on my radar of what I could possibly want or pursue.

The insomnia did interrupt my morning sitting. Morning sitting has become conceptually the most important thing to do every day. Sometimes I'd wake up and feel like cancelling, but within a few minutes realizing that is not an option. The physical and psychic toll of insomnia beat that.

I wish there were a way to describe the journey of regular sitting over years and years . . . decades, even if it's just 45-50 minutes every morning. But I can't because the experience changes so much. The only thing to do is to do it, understanding that a daily regimen of meditation is a personal journey. The experience varies, but if regular meditation becomes a bug of one's experience, the journey and what one discovers on it is pretty priceless.

I wonder what it would be like if I had found a teacher in this lifetime. I've eschewed teachers and gone at it on my own. The idea of having a teacher never resonated, maybe because of karma. Some teachings describe the teacher as indispensable, and I accept that. Just not for me in this lifetime; that's just instinct.

I do probably need a teacher, but I'm still figuring out teachings I've received in the past, either in this or previous lives, on my own. When I discover the need for a teacher in a future lifetime, I'll go back to seeking one out. When it becomes pressing, I'll do it.

I now consider myself to have been sick for quite some time, finally having come out of it in early October. I've been trying to trace how long I've been sick, and so far I've found a mention of having no appetite in November 2011, so it was probably more or less fully formed by then.

That squares fairly with my memory that I was afflicted for the entirety of 2012 and 2013 until October. It probably started in 2011 sometime after a trip to New Jersey in April of that year.

I'm guessing it didn't suddenly start, but slowly, amorphously manifest through my lifestyle of sitting in front of a computer all day, obsessively watching Korean videos and TV shows, and then getting out for only three or four hours in the evening to read at a library or bookstore and eat if I could manage it.

It manifested through certain symptoms in a way that didn't point to a particular pathology. Actually, in retrospect, if I went to a doctor, I think they would've taken a shortcut diagnosis and labeled it depression.

- I wasn't doing anything productive, nor felt any need to be.
- I had no social life, nor wanted one.
- I had no appetite (but wanted to eat as I also obsessively watched food shows on Travel & Living Channel).
- I had gastronomic or intestinal problems. My stomach wasn't behaving and was a source of daily discomfort.
- alcohol consumption maintained at alcoholic levels and even increased.
- I stopped morning sitting somewhere along the way, as I felt it no longer was contributing to mindfulness practice. There was no difference between sitting and the rest of my day, so I deemed it appropriate to stop.
- I developed rosacea! My parents visited Taiwan in December 2011, and that's when it started since I remember they asked about a pimple on my face. It didn't concern me as pimples go away after a few days, but this went on for 10 months. It resurfaced briefly during Sadie's visit in 2013, and it's been touch and go since then.
- Insomnia has been a constant, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Insomnia and rosacea are probably independent of whatever else was going on symptomatically.
- It became fully formed during this period that I had no interest in doing anything I had done before that established my identity.
- I was fully happy just lying on the bed all day listening to music. Music has constantly and consistently been a source of pleasure.
- Mindfulness reading and practice was continuous all through this. 
- Korea, Korea, Korea. Possible future life resonance possibly continuing, and if it was beckoning, that may be a source of psychic discord (die already so you can be re-born and continue the journey).

The only problem with the depression diagnosis is . . . I was pretty "happy" all through this. I didn't feel depressed at all. I had to take the physical discomfort in stride, but at no time could I say I was "unhappy".

Was I manifesting physiological signs of depression without the emotional or mental baggage? The psychiatric community would have a field day with that suggestion.

I've never taken my health for granted. Even while trying to destroy it with alcohol, I've been mindful to be grateful for what I've still been able to do and appreciate because my health remained relatively good.

But I have to admit that after the way I've felt for the past several years, it does feel like a great weight has been lifted with the disappearance of those symptoms. I want to be careful about this, though. I don't want to say I was unhappy because of those symptoms, and that I'm happy now that they're gone.

I think I've been pretty happy for a while. The health issues were a bummer and reduced quality of life, but if asked, I don't think at any point I would say I was unhappy. And with the issues abated (mind you I don't know if this is temporary), I'm experiencing pleasure in being able to eat and in the motivation to get out more, but that doesn't mean I'm any "happier" than before.

Taking pleasure is different from happiness. If the symptoms come back, the pleasure will be gone and it'll be a bummer again, but from how I've defined my happiness, that shouldn't be affected. If my happiness depended on my pleasure, that would suck.

"Issues I'm dealing with in this lifetime". I was introduced to that idea in my first year of college, I think from Richard Bach's Illusions. We choose our issues, our problems that we have to work on to grow spiritually. We are the otters of the universe.

Back then, suicide was already on my agenda, although much more angsty and not the edifice of philosophically developed bullshit I seem to think has a leg to stand on now. I labeled the issue I'm dealing with in this lifetime as "existence". And now that I think of it, that hasn't changed much through the years. As pretentious as "existence" sounds as an issue when I first identified it, I haven't replaced or upgraded it to anything else. Suicide for me is an existential issue.

But presently, I can tuck that issue in my cap because of another issue I'm recognizing in my self-imposed isolation. I'm not sure what to call it, but it feels like some sort of paralysis. I don't want anything, I don't want to do anything anymore. And by "paralysis", I mean that simply as a descriptive and not as something negative. Perhaps perplexing, but not negative.

People, if they're not depressed, want to do something. I understand it. For a large portion of my life, I wanted to do music. I wanted to practice, I wanted to play. I don't anymore. I may pick up an instrument now and then and noodle, but there's no feeling or wanting anymore. It's wet noodling. I used to be a runner, and that was almost a compulsion. If I didn't run, I would get antsy. It was even metaphor and motto, "you don't stop", á là A Tribe Called Quest. You don't stop meant the pursuit and the passion, which included towards suicide, as death is a part of life. I stopped. Then I got into cycling, and I still go for rides, but it's a major production in my head and a chore to get myself out the door by the scruff of my neck. It's not that I want to ride, I'm practically forcing myself.

People, if they're not depressed, want to be social and hang out with friends. I just don't want to. Some people I know have called me out and after reluctantly agreeing and meeting up with them, they subsequently haven't made any contact. Maybe I've become socially inept. I didn't feel I was inept, but it also may have just been the vibe I gave off. As much as I tried not to give it, it was, "I don't want to be here and want to leave as soon as I can".

I haven't rented a movie in an awful long time, because I just don't care to. I've been to Blockbusters since, but I would just walk out empty-handed.

Family in Kaohsiung have made overtures, but I just have no interest. I can't imagine a visit to Kaohsiung. What would I do there? Stare at family members I can't communicate with or be marginalized by family members having a conversation I can't participate in? Been there, done that.

I could travel now if I wanted with that windfall, but I just have no interest. Not even Taiwan, much less respond to Madoka's entreaty to visit her in Japan after she heard about the windfall. As much as I love Madoka and feel comfortable with her, I can't imagine going there and interacting with her in close quarters for whatever amount of time I'd be there. I'd want to be alone. I can't even imagine making the effort to go visit her.

And love itself. Just NO INTEREST. I don't want to be loved, I don't need to be loved, I'm perfectly happy not loved. Love, sex, intimacy: no interest. Connection: no interest.

And New Jersey family is asking me if I'm going for a visit for my father's 80th birthday, and I just have no interest. I'm still composing my email response that I don't want to go. Birthdays have never been a big deal in our family and family gatherings I've always found to be awkward. I can't imagine a visit to New Jersey. I'm trying to make the email not sound grim. If they do press for me to go, I might concede, though. Everything's a big whatever, meh.

I do things during the course of my days because I have to do something. I'm not a vegetable yet. I've already said I'm not a hermit. I can watch TV or DVDs or surf the net all day. I read at bookstores and the library. I go out to eat and I do eat, but I can't say I have much of an appetite these days. I don't ever feel hungry. I go out and eat because it's something to do and to ward off what I expect will become hunger if I don't.

I know, it all sounds like depression, but I don't think I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed. I'm fairly at peace, I really have nothing to complain about, so I don't for most part and dismiss it when I do. I cultivate happiness just for the sake of happiness; happiness not being the result of desire or acquisition, but just from this idea of conscious human existence. I'm here, why not be happy? I'm here, why be miserable?

I mentioned earlier about lecturing my parents on not worrying what their children were doing and butting in and nagging, which just creates aggravation for everyone. Whether they were good parents or bad parents is a matter of opinion, but their job is over. We're all adults now, responsible for our own decisions, and unless they could offer wisdom and not just nagging, we're likely not going to listen to them.

OK, I didn't mention anything about wisdom, as I know they have none to give. I told them to focus on their own happiness and do the things they want and enjoy, and truly enjoy them without getting worked up about what they perceive their children might be doing wrong.

At the time, I thought I may have gotten through to them. I thought maybe they had a moment of, "you know? that's right, that makes sense". But upon reflection a few weeks hence, I realize that's totally against character. The far more likely scenario is that they thought what I've thought about them my entire life. Which is, "who are these people and where did they come from?".

It's far more likely that they listened to me with incredulity, realizing they have no idea who this person is or the nonsense they were hearing. "Happiness? Just do what we enjoy? Who is this person, where did he come from?" People who can't give wisdom will also not hear it.

Their identity lies in part in controlling the complete micro situation around them. Enjoy the aurora borealis? Enjoy traveling to the pyramids in Egypt or Machu Picchu or the Antarctica? They don't do those things because they enjoy the experience and being fascinated by the macro wonders of the world. They do those things because it's a measure of their material success in life.

They travel the world on package tours, but I'm convinced they never feel awe or grandeur at what the world presents. They don't reflect on the world system the Egyptians created or the extreme environment of Antarctica or the grandeur of the civilization that built Machu Picchu which was wiped out by European blood-lust and greed (I know, I know, that civilization may have had its own blood-lust and greed. Who knows?).

I'm sure they don't contemplate that the auroras exist as a result of the magnetosphere protecting our planet from solar radiation, without which life on earth as we know it could not even exist. Instead, they laugh at the Muslims praying five times a day towards Mecca with their butts pointing high in the air.

What they really enjoy is feeling they have a measure of control over their lives, which is an illusion they constantly try to maintain. When I tell them to just be happy, it's the same as telling them to lose that control. And that's just absurd.

This makes far more sense.

WordsCharactersReading time

I haven't been remembering dreaming much lately, and even if I remembered that I had been dreaming, I had no recollection of the content of the dream. This time I woke up from the dream, remembered the dream and it happened to be an Amina dream.

Was it because it was an Amina dream that I was unconsciously particularly inspired to remember it? Meaning nothing else in my subconscious has been worthy of being remembered? And the whole Amina thing – hey, it's old. Or is it?

I was in the foyer area of a mansion, classic European-looking, perhaps Victorian? I'm not sure what that looks like. It was brightly lit by a large chandelier and had high ceilings. I was halfway up a curving staircase facing down towards the foyer area, and Amina was behind me, I couldn't see her, and I was shielding her because she was in some sort of state of undress. And I was being chivalrous.

I don't know who I was shielding her from, because down in the foyer were some completely naked, large and curvy women who were completely casual, didn't even take note of me there, and two of them separately walked by the staircase in all their glory into another unseen room.

My reaction was a bit of astonishment, but mindful of Amina behind me, we started to back our way up the stairs, where I knew on the next landing there was a bathroom that I could easily back her into and she could have her privacy. But when we got to the door, where I expected to stop and she could go in and close the door, we both continued in, and then she closed the door with both of us inside.

Calculating the situation and concluding my being there was consensual, I turned around and saw her for the first time in the dream. She was modestly dressed in a negligee and she was stunningly gorgeous, my reaction not being too far from the first time I saw her. Calculating some more, I concluded it was also consensual for me to approach her and start kissing her and then the camera of my perspective goes askew and I woke up.

So why did I remember this dream of all dreams? Was it because of Amina or because it dealt with romantic issues?

It's not because of Amina. Amina is most certainly now a fiction. So it probably had more to do with what Amina might still represent, which is romance, the human biological imperative, the crude human version of spiritual male/female union that represents a divine unity and oneness. Or not.

In the bright light of day, if I was in that same situation with Amina, I don't think my impulse now would be to kiss her. To love her. I don't think. Love is no longer a part of my equations anymore, I tell myself. Even if I could romantically love another person, which I doubt, my software then runs the program asking what next? What do I want from such a relationship? Do I want a relationship? Well, do I, punk?

But then why the dream? Why it was Amina is clear; it was because she was some sort of pinnacle, the love of my life I called her; but if I had the chance to even meet her again in this lifetime, I would probably decline unless she had some reason that was compelling enough for me to accept. Some love of my life.

I made the mistake when I was in New Jersey to mention to my sister-in-law my last relationship and the year it occurred, and smart cookie as she is being a medical doctor and all, she calculated how long it had been since I'd been in a relationship and made an exclamation to that effect.

Needless to rehash details, I'm clearly so out of practice that I can't be considered being able to give an objective assessment of the situation. It's simply out of my reality for even consideration. From the empirical evidence, I'm not even interesting, much less attractive, much less a pursuit, much less a catch. That's just reality and I have considered it and accepted it. It's even perfect.

I think I'm just going to have to relegate Amina dreams such as these as inconveniences of the human condition. Just because we're human beings, we crave love, attention, and we lust. If we can achieve communion with another human being, great, good for you. It's still an instinct for me, but it's not reality.

WordsCharactersReading time

I catch myself in moments when I remember to return to my breath. Anywhere, it could be at home or out walking or reading or studying in the library or an eatery. Something about being "alive", "existing", hits me and I breathe in and out and I savor each breath like it's a sip of the finest wine or Scotch ever. Like a dying person might.

I was asthmatic as a kid, and I remember reflecting on asthma: If you can't take breathing for granted, what can you?

Like a dying person might, I breathe in and out and savor the preciousness of just being able to breathe in and out. But this appreciation is only in contrast of a background of some existential pressure, a facing of one's mortality.

Am I facing my mortality? I pretend that I do, but am I? Am I going to go through with this? And if I don't, then what? I don't advise my line of inquiry to anyone. As human beings, we have to live our lives. To live our lives is to ignore our mortality. You can't live your life whilst pondering over your imminent mortality.

I'm not living a life, my life, any life, therefore I'm free to indulge in contemplating my mortality.

I'm constantly asking why people do what they do. I guess at and make up their answers, but they're incomprehensible to me.

Even the recent spate of blogs I've found written by writers – the only blogs I've found worth my attention – are imbued with existential angst, and as they go about their lives in appreciation and gratitude of the happiness they've found which is what they're blogging about, there still is an undercurrent of angst.

Were my parents actually quite wise that their marriage is not based on love? They've effectively reduced their suffering by not being in love. Whereas all these people getting married for love are kinda fooling themselves, or living on borrowed time or rather just living for the pleasure and desire of a moment, and not considering the big picture that in the end we all lose each other.

No, that's cynicism and sarcasm saying my parents were wise. And there's nothing wrong about people getting married for love. The wisest of whom remain realistic and aware that this kind of happiness is fleeting, and they find a balance between enjoying and appreciating their happiness and being aware that it's temporary, and sickness, aging and death always patiently awaits.

No, my parents are incomplete, deluded people. They are not even individuals. Their relationship is symbiotic and I can't even imagine either of them being able to survive without the other. As they grow old, I'm sure this has crossed their minds, I just have no idea what they thought.

And I'm still thoroughly convinced my death will be ultimately good for them, albeit that not being a reason for dying.

It's been rainy, dreary and cold in Taipei and it could go on for quite a while. I'm not quite sure what drags me out of bed each day, but so far I have continued to drag myself out of bed when it would be so easy to just lie in the warmth and comfort of my bed all day.

Peeing! I need to pee at some point, and that usually does it and I put in my 45 minutes of sitting, then make coffee and, voilà,  I'm up and out of bed.

This is it. It better be it. December 2010. The finish line. I entertain the idea of pushing the date a month further into January 2011 in order to create the greatest amount of time between the fact and the realization by people that something's not right.

I can't believe I've even gotten here from the August attempt. There was that mourning period of failure, then the Tibet trip announcement, then the Tibet trip. Then the parents' visit, and the Taiwan east coast trip to mitigate waiting for the parents' visit, and now waiting for the parents' December visit.

The wait is hard, the day-by-day is hard. I seriously think if not for this waiting, I would have made a second attempt already. Maybe even today. That would have been good. The "something's wrong" for other people, insignificant people, really, would be my "something's right".

The day-by-day hard is twisting my head around the lovely thought of ending my life and the explosion of loving life and all the little things that make life on this planet such a unique and wonderful thing.

And my parents continue to ruin it by calling more frequently since that fortune teller told them something was seriously wrong. Their inane phonecalls. While they were here expressing concern, I tried to tell them flat out that even if there was something wrong, they shouldn't worry about it because they were not the people who could do anything about it. They are unqualified to do anything positive in my life. They are disqualified.

The worst thing they could do is think they can have a positive effect, but as delusional as they are, as parents, they think they know it all, they think they know me, they think they can help. They don't and they can't.

Not long ago they kept ending phone calls with "...as long as you are happy", after which I noted they never asked if I was happy. And since then, they have, but they are not people I'm going to ruminate about happiness because they have no idea what happiness is. What they think is happiness is actually, to me, suffering in the profoundest sense.

Saying that, it also occurs to me that they have spent most of my life unintentionally making me unhappy, in effect guaranteeing that I would be unhappy. When I wanted to find a job during summer vacation while in high school, they said "Don't work, study". Thus robbing me of real life experience to engage in the world. Did I study by not working? No.

When I started getting into music as a teenager, they said, "If you want to do music, that's fine, but you have to be like Michael Jackson".

And then when I explored the monastic path, they said, "If you want to be a monk, that's fine, but you have to be like the Dalai Lama" (this didn't have any real effect on me because I was an adult and I could see their idiocy for what it was. I just mention it to point out their adherence to idiocy).

But when it came to law school, they said, "It doesn't matter if you go to the worst law school or get the lowest grades, just go to law school".

And law school is always a reminder that after college I went to Japan to try to find my way, and they stymied that to the best of their ability. There are so many things that if they hadn't done, I would be what they want me to be now, which is "happy".

They were rotten parents. It was unintentional, but all they had to do was look a little deeper into life than making money. They still don't. And I may still sound bitter about them. But there was that unilateral truce that I declared in August 1996, and I abide by it. But to some extent, when there's no closure, you have North and South Korea, you have an armistice, you have a cease-fire, but you don't have a peace treaty.

Their inane phonecalls now only serve to infuriate me to some extent. But actually they just bore me. They bore me by their sheer lack of knowledge of me, they bore me by their futile attempts to "help". They bore me because the obvious is right in front of their faces and still choose to ignore it.

I dig deep for compassion for them. I don't have to dig deep to believe my suicide will be good for them. To me, that's obvious, easy; and a terrible reason for suicide, but fortunately, it's not my reason. My reason is my own path, not theirs. If they can take something good out of it, good, fine, I'm glad. If they don't, c'est la vie. I didn't expect them to with their mundane, normative way of living this extraordinary life. But I hope.

I twist my head around the lovely things in life, the things that I'm currently loving. But even in that regard, I'm just an observer. Life is still just a spectator sport, and I don't need to be here for all the wonderfulness to go on, even with the negativity, the haters and the shit.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

Zero jetlag. I attribute it to the type of insomnia I had. It was even a bit surreal. I was expecting to feel something, as I always do on long international flights; as just about everyone feels after long international flights.

But I arrived at night in New Jersey last Tuesday, got to sleep at a reasonable hour, got a full night's sleep, got up at a reasonable hour, and since then not a hint of jetlag, no grogginess, no crashing, not even a sudden pang of tiredness at an odd time of day.

In fact, I've been sleeping totally normally without any hint of insomnia, either. And I've continued normal sleeping hours, which is odd. Usually when I'm here, I maintain night owl hours and go to sleep in the wee hours and wake up pretty late.

It wasn't promising on the flights, either. I may have gotten a couple hours of sleep out of sheer exhaustion, but mostly it was just twilight fading in and out. I expected not being able to sleep on the flights, since I also couldn't sleep on the bus to Kaohsiung several weeks ago.

And it was a long flight with three legs of flying – first to Tokyo, then to San Francisco (including a burrito run to the Mission District), then to Newark.

TUESDAY, JUNE 16 - Mission St. @ 24th. The plan was to buy a bunch of burritos from my favorite taquerias (San Jose (to the right in the pic), El Farolito, Cancun, Pancho Villa) down Mission St. to 16th St. and take them to New Jersey and stick them in the freezer.

10:08 a.m. - Took the BART from the airport to 24th St. station, and then back to the airport from 16th St. station. When I first arrived in the Bay Area in 1993 I thought BART with its cloth covered seats and carpeting was luxurious compared to the New York subway. Now they're just disgusting and the smell was unbelievable.

2:21 p.m. - Flying to New Jersey with a backpack stash of contraband burritos. Yo necessiiito mi burriiiitos.

Otherwise, I'm glad to be in the U.S. Maybe the sleep thing is telling me to get the hell out of Taiwan. On the other hand, I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing here, I have no place with these people, just as I have no place with family in Kaohsiung. And as I've scrapped moving to Kaohsiung, I don't see any reason to move back here. And I'm not looking forward to going back to Taiwan. Being in Taiwan was too hard. Existing is hard enough for me, add all that and that's pushing my mental health to the limit.

I haven't been sitting. Insomnia finally stopped morning sitting a few days before I left Taiwan, and since then I've stopped. So this is now the longest time I haven't done morning sitting since I left the monastery.

I'm taking a break. Maybe it was getting to be too much pressure to get something out of it. Maybe it was making me complacent because achieving this routine made me unconsciously think I didn't have to maintain the practice throughout the rest of the day. I don't know.

I don't know. I was thinking of visiting Blue Cliff Monastery in Upstate N.Y. while I was here. Blue Cliff opened last year, I think, after the Plum Village branch in Vermont closed down (I've thought before of visiting the Vermont center). I recently saw photos on the Blue Cliff site and some of the monks I was closest to at Deer Park are probably at Blue Cliff now. But I don't know if I'll be able to fit a visit in. I really should.

I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations again, realizing that happiness doesn't come from external circumstances. I know I can be happy right now, I can choose to be happy. I'm just choosing not to. The reasons why I'm choosing not to are a little more complicated. I'm trying to boot up the happiness meditations to make sure they still work, although I still want to be unhappy.

Which is odd because I know the happiness is right here. Hm.

It's Chinese New Year season in Taiwan.

Like I said, there was no way I was going down to Kaohsiung for New Years after my experience with family at my cousin's wedding two weeks ago. Not to put too fine a point on it, my uncle called on New Year's Eve asking me when I was coming down, and in the background was the obvious din of a family New Year's feast going on.

I was at work. I told him I had to work and I wasn't going down. Truth to tell, there was no expectation on their part that I was going. It was only my uncle, and probably my aunt, who even thought of it, and they only thought of it when it was obvious I wasn't going. If I was going, they would have known about it because I always give them plenty of advance notice when I visit.

During New Years season in Taiwan, all government, education and most commercial activity shuts down for at least three days. Up to 9 days. Western corporate-influenced establishments remain open, as well as entrepeneurial businesses that want to take advantage of the fact that no one else is open.

On one hand, only being in Kaohsiung could have emphasized my mute isolation more than being alone and friendless in Taipei. On the other hand, it was so peaceful in Taipei with sparse traffic on the streets, and knowing that the vast majority of the population were with family and enjoying themselves. It made me smile. It made me happy.

It's so odd and true that our general notion of happiness is conditional. We're happy because of some condition. Take away the condition, and we're not happy. So is happiness equal to the condition? I don't think so. They're not the same. But then is the happiness false if all it takes is to remove the condition to remove the happiness?

Remove the condition, remove the happiness. It doesn't seem right to me. But then where I am in life, happiness is almost arbitrary. I can decide to be happy. I can recognize that when I'm not happy, that's my choice. All told, shuffling through layers of psychology and karma, I wouldn't mind describing myself as being pretty happy.

For the entire New Year period, the newspaper is printing a truncated version of the paper, which means reduced staff with reduced hours. Tonight I got out at 9:30 instead of the usual 12:30, and I was the only editor with only two page designers. It was very relaxed.

It was spoiling me, and it'll really suck when we get back up to full press next week. I only work a couple days a week, but still, those days feel like they're going to suck. Even riding to work with reduced traffic on the street was wonderful. Why am I living in such a big city? I really need to be in a small town. Big cities crush me, plain and simple. The din, the rush.

Even just the crowds, the amount of people is pressure. The traffic is pressure. Even though I feed off of it. It's more apparent when I'm on my road bike. On my street bike, I'm more aware of just the pressure. But when I ride on city streets on my road bike, it becomes a challenge, a tournament, a game. I jockey and race almost out of instinct. I push because with a performance bicycle, I can.

Not touching the suicide issue in this, again I'm simply asking myself these days, sometimes telling, why not just be satisfied? Why not, why not, why not? And the answer is yea, why not? I can be happy, why not just be satisfied? And still there's something missing in all this.

MONDAY, JANUARY 19, 4:15-4:16 p.m. - Taoyuan Int'l Airport. Meeting my parents to send them off. That's a persimmons in the top pic. All Ricoh Caplio R4.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21, 7:42 p.m. - Maishuai Bridge #1 and Rainbow Bridge.

"They say that when you meet the love of your life, time stops." - Ed Bloom (older), Big Fish

For me, time only stopped for one person. Only one person I remember perfectly vividly the first time I laid eyes on her. Only one person made such an impression that she was seared into my memory. I remember what she was wearing, the length of her hair, the direction she was walking, where we were, and the very specific words that crossed my mind, "...most beautiful woman I've ever seen". I'd call that time stopping.

Josephine, I can probably pinpoint pretty close to the day I met her, but only because we met during a Summer semester in Thailand, and that arrival had a definite date that I probably have recorded in black & white archives. But no recollection of an exact moment.

Shiho, I should. I saw her picture in my brother's yearbook before I went to that school and met her. I was into all things Japanese at that time, and still no recollection of when I first met her. Time definitely didn't stand still. Not until years later, at least, when she left. And I had already met her, so that doesn't count. Time stopped for a different reason.

Hiromi, I'm surprised I don't remember since I'm sure I thought she was gorgeous the moment I saw her. But truth to tell, I see a lot of people I think are gorgeous the moment I see them, and time doesn't stop. And time didn't stop for Hiromi. She did have her other significant impact, though, which is if I could go back and re-live a period of my life, it would probably be the semester with her, when dear friend Amina was in Dublin.

Nope, and no one else. So what was that and what happened? Just plain stupidity maybe. I think Amina would love that movie, too, with its treatment of narrative and multiple layers. But that was a long time ago, what do I know about her now? I think I'm gonna hunt down the DVD at Blockbusters so I can see it without commercials. I remember when the film came out, I wanted to see it because it looked interesting and very different from Tim Burton's other films, and it used Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill" in the trailer. But I think 2 other films at that time also were using it, and that kinda ruined it.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6, 2:30 p.m.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 3:02 a.m. - Maishuai Bridge #1. Night riding.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 - Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super.

Nanjing E. Rd., Sec. 5 looking east.

Shit. Relating working now with working back then, it's really the same pointless, absurd same thing. Relating band now with band back then is even worse.

Playing in this cover band is totally stifling. In one sense it is making me a better drummer in terms of basics, but on another hand it's also preventing me from progressing. I'm a better drummer than they know or appreciate because . . . it's a cover band. Playing in this band is good because it makes money, but it's an obligation - my gratitude for letting me in, but when I feel the obligation has been paid, I will definitely quit.

This work thing isn't flying, which leaves me wondering . . . then what? It's true, I had trouble sleeping in San Francisco, and it was a big problem. My sleep problems now is existentially work-related and is also a big problem.

I'm so counting on having a tumor. Please god let me have a tumor. GOD: It's not a tuumaa.

Since February, before starting work, I've gotten extended hiccups 3 times a month. This is not normal. I really think I have something seriously wrong with my health. Which is right and proper, since that's my intention. If my drinking isn't ruining my health, then why the hell am I drinking?

Still, the joy-generation meditation. I have instinct, and then I have consciousness. My instinct is negativity, hostility, mired down, angry. My consciousness kicks in joy-generation: be happy now because it's not worth it not to be happy now. I don't know if it's because I did it before, but it really works. Happiness is not a dependent thing. It can happen by ourselves, just by ourselves.

The joy-generation meditation is helped by a further meditation on what I think should be considered absolute truth. I wish good and happiness upon all people. I wish all people do good to other people and to have good done to them. Even those suffering, wanting suffering, I wish upon them the suffering they want so they can progress. Sometimes we need suffering.

And always death as a focus. Focus on death to maintain these philosophies. We all have to die. What is the purpose?

Maishuai Bridge #1. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

SUNDAY, MAY 25, 4:46 p.m. - Another gig at Le Mer in Qianshuiwan.

I saw a movie recently with musings about happiness. It made me muse about happiness.

For me, there is no objective standard for happiness. Happiness doesn't happen because of some objective thing, some objective other thing happening. There is no road to happiness, nothing leads to happiness.

I think happiness is often confused with desire, when people think if they get some object of desire, they will be happy, but in truth, when people get the object they desire, they desire more and remain unhappy.

But I think there is some validity in that idea of happiness. Happiness is a state, that is, there is such thing as happiness, I think. Happiness has meaning. Remove desire from that equation, and that is something closer to what happiness is.

Oh wait, I've been through all this before with the "happiness generation meditations" I used to do. The idea was to do these meditations where I just generate happiness within myself, not attached to anything outside, no object of desire. Just create joy within myself. And I remember it working, that it is possible.

For me, that's the most important aspect of being happy. It has to come from within, it has to be a being. It can't rely on something else. If you want to be happy, just be happy. Don't look for it down some path, don't expect it to be a result of some other thing. And if you're unhappy, then choose it; realize you're choosing it. I'm sure I've written this before.

I met up with Hyun Ae last night for the first time since October. We went to see the new Wang Kar-Wai film My Blueberry Nights. I wanted to see it because Norah Jones is butter-meltingly gorgeous, and the trailer used Cat Power's The Greatest. I had no idea it was the new Wang Kar-Wai film, and I couldn't even guess when Hyun Ae was telling me what her co-workers were telling her about how the director has a really strange style and was from Hong Kong.

When Wang Kar-Wai's name came up on the screen I almost fell out of my chair and I tried to communicate to Hyun Ae in a fraction of a second, without distracting from the fact that the film was rolling, that Wang Kar-Wai is one of the greatest directors of our time, and when I predicted several years ago that in the future film schools would have entire curriculums on Wang Kar-Wai, was told some already do.

I think I said, "Gaw!", jabbing frantically towards the screen.

Yes, my blueberry nights with Hyun Ae she has no idea about. That I have no idea about. Wang Kar-Wai films are more about impression than narrative, and the song "The Greatest", also more about impression than what Chan Marshall is singing. Chan Marshall is in the film, by the way, and it only hit me when the character says the word "sentiment" that it was Chan Marshall.

And Hyun Ae is only impression to me. She's not about desire, she's not about wanting, not even sentiment. She's just an impression of those things. I neither desire nor want her. I just love blueberry, it's one of my favorite flavors, and was drinking lychee-blueberry juice during the film that Hyun Ae had paid for.

I wanted to tell Hyun Ae, "Once I wanted to be the greatest, no wind or waterfall could stall me. And then came the rush of the flood, the stars at night turned deep to dust, melt me down into big black armor. Leave no trace of grace, just in your honor", and then I would kiss the bits of blueberry pie from her lips as she lay sleeping, exhausted.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1:11 p.m. - Jingmei River default shot.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 5:46 p.m. - Miramar Mall in Dazhi with Hyun Ae.

Unknown, Taipei - Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super.

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

I'm in a relatively calm space these days, having taken a leave of absence and visiting family in Kaohsiung.

I went on a bus tour in Central Taiwan for 3 days with my aunt and a tour group related to my uncle's business, and was supposed to leave tomorrow for another 3-day trip to Kinmen Island in the Taiwan Straits tomorrow, but I managed to cancel on that trip.

It's a family thing. Travelling with my uncle is never a smooth affair, and I really need to learn what I already know – never travel with him. I came down to Kaohsiung with a mild cold, so I went to bed early, and a little while later, my uncle comes in and tells me he's not going on the Central Taiwan trip. OK, it's not changing anything major, and he does tend to nag, so there are tangible pros to his not going, balancing out the cons.

The next morning I find out the Kinmen Island trip is postponed because of certain of his responsibilities, which makes me happy because I'm already foreseeing becoming batty by these travels. I start re-adjusting my plans. Then during the trip, I'm told the Kinmen trip is back on, my uncle doesn't have to stay in Kaohsiung during that time, and I almost plotz. Not happy. Fortunately, one of my aunt's friends who was on the trip decided she would like to visit Kinmen, so she took my spot, and I'm free to head back up to Taipei tomorrow to prepare to go to the U.S. next Tuesday.

During that bus trip, I had Amina dreams both nights, which I've already noted is an unusual occurrence. I didn't have a recording device with me so I have absolutely no details about the dreams aside from that they were Amina dreams.

One thing about one of the dreams I do remember was that there was another woman involved. It was someone I didn't recognize, but it was someone I was apparently possibly getting involved with while Amina was still a presence. But just as a friend, and I remember in the dream thinking that regardless of how I felt about Amina, priority goes to this other person with whom something might actually be happening. The only image in the dream I remember is lying on a bed with this mystery woman for the first time, and at one point my head coming to rest on her arm. Her not pulling away was an indication that there was something forming between us.

Later in the day, recalling the dream, it was with a bit of horror that I realized the mystery woman might have been a younger version of my aunt's friend, the one taking my place on the Kinmen trip. She speaks pretty good English and we did have a bit of a bonding moment in a discussion the first night. And on the second night at dinner, she came over to our table a few times to get food, and inappropriately pressed up against me while leaning over. At one time it was the front of her hip pushing against my arm, and I was thinking, "um, this is definitely inappropriate touching", but I didn't pull away from it.

As many of you don't know, although friends in San Francisco might, I have this thing about attracting older woman. I'm sort of a Granny Whisperer. Perhaps a future Max Bialystock in "The Producers", schtuping the old ladies on the Upper East Side for investment money.

To her credit, although in her 50's, looking past the facade of age, she did have a light of life in her that attracts me. A liveliness, a zest, a passion. And in the dream, it was definitely a 20's or 30's version of her. I emphasize I do not have a granny fetish. Yuck. I don't even like using my granny gear on my bike.

The memorable feeling from the dream scene on the bed was how nice it was to fall in love or be in love, which is totally counter my feeling in waking life. The idea of meeting someone and being mutually interested and falling in love fills me with dread. I think of the one thing leading to another and what do you end up with?

Not to brush aside the value of all the good things involved, but my emphasis ends up on the aging, getting sick, dying, loss, suffering.

Last night I met up with 姿慧 and found that she has scars and burns on her arm. I'm not thinking there are any deep parallels in our lives, I don't think her scars mean to her what mine mean to me, even though I don't know what hers mean to her, but I do think it's uncanny.

These scars are a point of connection between people who have them. I remember a co-worker at the law firm I worked at in San Francisco noticing my scars once, and then pulling me into her cube and showing me hers. We didn't say anything, we just grasped each others hands and smiled knowingly at each other. What we knew, I don't know, we just did.

I have a fantasy that's both a little violent and very intimate. Internally violent in ourselves, not a violence that is conveyed between two people. I want to coerce, pressure 姿慧 into showing me her scars, all of them, wherever they are. Pin her down lightly even, but always maintaining a safe atmosphere, and keeping a pulse on not pushing too hard, or going too far. Violent because the violence is already there. She could do the same to me if she wants.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2:47 p.m. - Cingjing sheep farm, Nantou County, in the central mountains of Taiwan

3:26-3:29 p.m. - Plenty of sheep and other wildlife.

3:36 p.m. - Euro-forming the mountains for tourists.

Sheep. Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super. 

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 7:41 a.m. - Day 2, Aowanda forest recreational area and Sun Moon Lake.

9:57 a.m.

12:25 p.m. - Very hairy driving on mountain roads. Inches to spare.

4:41 p.m. - Shooting out of my comfort zone in terms of subject matter. I also learned I can't do black and white landscape.

4:49 p.m. - Photos don't lie, this actually happened!

5:11-5:14 p.m.

Sun Moon Lake, Nantou County.

Wenwu Temple

My comfort zone is easy small life snapshots.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 9, 12:11-12:14 p.m. - Last day. A Euro-style resort.

Ripples.