There's a reason I've lived this long according to "chronic suicidal ideation" and I just got a reminder of it, albeit futile at this point. 

It was the most disturbing aspect of it as described in that video, which is that people with chronic suicidal ideation are chronically looking for reasons or excuses to keep living and keep taking them. It was disturbing because it's verifiably true in my case in the most ridiculous ways. 

I remember (if memory serves) back in San Francisco writing a journal entry why I wasn't going to end it all at one point because I had to pick up my photo prints from the Berkeley Extension that I had left at the darkroom to dry and also because Throwing Muses were coming to town and I definitely wanted to see them (they're a top five favorite band of mine). I'm sure I was being sarcastic in writing it down, mocking myself for such petty considerations. Theoretically, really anything could be an excuse.

A couple years back I posted something neurotic and nutty about not sending a birthday email to my older brother and why I wasn't going to send one, which then prompted me to send one at the last minute because I was getting so wrapped up in the concept of the birthday greeting and my reasons to not send one were so neurotic that it would just be dumb not to send one. Good grief.

I think the context was that we're not all that close and I hadn't sent him a birthday greeting in years, I don't quite remember. I didn't expect a reply and that would've been totally acceptable and normal for our relationship, but I also knew he just as well might reply because that would still be natural and just depended on how he felt. And he did send a polite and cordial reply. Last year I think I sent something that he didn't reply to and that was fine; it was year one of the CCP Wuhan pandavirus and as a doctor he was under a lot of stress and pressure. 

This year I forewent any nuttiness and planned on sending a birthday greeting as if it was a normal, routine, long-standing practice and without all that neurotic energy. And he replied that same day. I'm not sure what it was about his reply this time. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it seemed unusually . . . attentive? engaged? thoughtful? But I don't want to suggest any of his other communications weren't those things if he feels he was just replying like normal. Often I can describe communications with family members with words like polite, cordial, obligatory or sincere, bare-minimum response. No response. This wasn't any of those and just felt a bit . . . more.

It could be my imagination or rather my chronically suicide-ideating mind that is constantly grasping for reasons to live on that's reading into it wot's not there. Unreasonable pangs of living a little longer and even visiting them as suggested? Check in with the kids and see if they remember me? Visit my aunt in New Jersey who has been warding off lung cancer for a number of years? Like my aunt in Kaohsiung she has always been kind to me and pleasant to visit. 

Back on planet earth the reality dawns that flying abroad probably requires a smartphone. I don't know, as useless as search engines have become (spearheaded by Google), I haven't been able to search if smartphones are required for international travel. The assumption of course is that everyone has a smartphone and search algorithms can't even conceive of that in returning results. 

That's why I haven't made any moves to get vaccinated. When measures were announced in English for virtually everyone to get vaccinated, the part involving a smartphone to schedule it put an end to my vaccination aspiration. Everyone has a smartphone, they don't need to provide alternative means. Yes, I do realize no one can relate to my outrage. Anyway I'll wait until enough people are vaccinated that it's simple enough to show up with ID and get a shot. I'll wait until they're waiting for me.

Ah, but futile. And wow I'm glad I don't have the money to do any of that. Mentally running through habit is one thing. Reality is another. Embracing reality sounds pretty good about now.

musing

I loosened my restrictions on drinking for a few days since I'm nearing the purported "end" anyway, but then decided that was a bad idea. Even hints of feeling like crap I'd rather do without, even approaching "the end" (of the money). By "loosening restrictions" that just meant allowing for bigger sips out of the shot glass, as much as half the shot at a time, but that did lead to filling the shot glass more often and slippage down the slippery slope. 

I remember when drinking alcohol was enjoyable. Beers with friends is a fond memory even if I don't have memories of any specific friends anymore. It just must have happened and the idea that it must have happened is a fond memory. The Beale St. NTN trivia crowd in San Francisco is the closest I get to remembering specific people. Friends invited you to come over and the standard operating procedure was for invitees to bring beer or wine of choice. Band rehearsals always enjoyably involved beer. Even alone beer was enjoyable, turning on music equipment with a Giants or A's game in the background on the TV. 

I don't remember exactly when drinking stopped being enjoyable. I wonder if there's any sort of consensus among heavy drinkers and alcoholics that drinking is no longer enjoyable. Are there drunks who still enjoy it? Probably. Happy drunks maybe. I can't say I enjoy it but I still do it, but not so much that it feels like crap. Once I start it's hard to stop, but it's important to know when to draw the line and hard stop. Ah, there's your mindfulness alcoholism. Or maybe it's the drinking knowing I'll have to stop that's unenjoyable. Going down the slippery slope is enjoyable, the consequences are not. I'm trying to figure out what my mind is doing with alcohol.

It kinda sucks being able to drink liquor like water. The uninitiated often have a visible, physical facial or bodily reaction to liquor – a good, healthy response to a toxin. When I took bigger sips of liquor it felt nice and easy and even downing the whole shot or even more from a glass would've been . . . I'm tempted to try it just to find the right word, but I won't. The feeling like crap thing, the havoc it wreaks on internal organs and functions. 

All through this blog I've gone back and forth whether I'm alcoholic or not. Actually it's more that I am but whenever I write about it I'm arguing that I'm not. I guess somewhat telling is that approaching "the end" it didn't occur to me to just try stopping. 

It's no secret and I think no shame that I consider Genesis my fave band of all time, and I typically piggyback Peter Gabriel solo into that number one spot out of convenience. Peter Gabriel and Genesis (whether fronted by Gabriel or Phil Collins) were a huge part of my high school and life soundtrack. 

There are, however, limits to my fandom when artists, trying to keep up with technology, continually re-release or re-issue their catalogues and expect fans to keep up with the upgrades because of whatever bit of better sounding technology is introduced. I was perfectly happy with David Bowie's second round Rykodisc releases and completely ignored future rounds of re-issues claiming better fidelity because of technology. 

My attitude was the same when Genesis released their ultimate Box Set collections. Why am I gonna buy what I already have? What I didn't know was that they didn't just upgrade quality and technology, but it seems they went back to the original multi-track recordings and dug up things that were mixed out of the final original releases. That's interesting!

I only noticed because they've been uploading "official audio" videos, no doubt in part to get fans' attention to buy tickets for their "The Last Domino" tour next year, which is advertised in the video description. I rarely click on those videos because why would I? I've listened to the songs dozens or hundreds of times over the years. 

But then they posted this:

This is "The Battle of Epping Forest"! I clicked on this audio-only "video" expecting just to enjoy the song yet another time, but being so familiar with just about every second of old Genesis recordings, things I'd never heard before stuck out like a sore thumb. 

My ears perked up at the 2:17 mark with backing vocals I'd never heard before and putting me on notice to listen for other things new. Phil sings a high harmony and then ends on "war" with what I consider a classic Collins note – just an unexpected choice of note but sounds great. The lower vocals are evidence (there's not a lot) that Mike and Tony did actually record backing vocals they're always credited with, albeit they unimpressively sing in the same vocal range as their speaking voices (the way guys who are uncomfortable with singing sing "Happy Birthday"). The snarls and grunts of distorted guitar by Steve Hackett in the following section were also originally mixed out and there are a bunch of minor vocal parts throughout the song that have been restored; perhaps considered mistakes at the time, but interesting now.

The song is just epic silliness that only Genesis could really pull off. Other prog rock bands dabbled in whimsy and eccentricity in minor works, but mostly stuck to spacey and science fiction-y and dystopias and other-worldly things to imagine and think and be paranoid about. "Epping Forest" is a galloping, raunchy romp about mob bosses and their street gangs inspired by a story in the morning newspaper (as a cultural reference, I think of the Guy Ritchie movie "Snatch"). I think keyboardist Tony Banks (it was Phil) complained the song is too "wordy" and was disappointed about the vocals going by at a mile a minute, but I don't understand how he can complain or what they expected when they handed over this big hunk o' composition to Gabriel. 

Even just reading it it's something to behold; the puns, rhyming and word manipulation. The verse playing around with the Silver Cloud Rolls Royce is just confoundingly clever ("Did he just . . . ?", "Was that supposed to . . .?). There's a lot I didn't get until much later. Like I didn't know a Silver Cloud referred to a model of Rolls Royce until I heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of The Rolling Stones' "Get Off My Cloud", whereby they were in Texas and at one point one of the members was leaning on a car that happened to be a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and when the owner saw it he drawled at them "Hey, get off my Cloud!".

Along the Forest Road, there's hundreds of cars - luxury cars

Each has got its load of convertible bars, cutlery cars - superscars!

For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out

'Cos they disagree on gangland boundary

There's Willy Wright and his boys

One helluva noise, that's Billy's boys!

With fully-fashioned mugs, that's Little John's thugs

The Barking Slugs, supersmugs!

For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out

As these Christian soldiers fight to protect the poor

East End heroes got to score 

In the Battle of Epping Forest

Yes, it's the Battle of Epping Forest

Right outside your door

And you ain't seen nothing like it

No you ain't seen nothing like it

Not since the Civil War

Coming over the hill are the boys of Bill

And Johnny's lads stand very still

With the thumpire's shout, they all start to clout

There's no guns in this gentleman's bout

And Georgie moves in on the outside left

With a chain flying around his head

And Harold Demure from Art Literature

Nips up the nearest tree

(Here come the cavalry!)

Amidst the battle roar

Accountants keep the score: 10-4

They've never been alone after getting a radiophone

The bluebells are ringing for Sweetmeal Sam

Real ham, handing out bread and jam

Just like any picnic . . . 

It's 5-4 on William Wright

He made his pile on Derby night

When Billy was a kid, walking the streets

The other kids hid - so they did!

And now after working hard in security trade

He's got it made

The shops that need aid are those that haven't paid

"I do my double-show quick!" said Mick the Prick, fresh out of the nick

"I sell cheap holiday, the minute they leave then a visit I pay

And does it pay!"

And his friend, Liquid Len by name of wine, women

and Wandsworth fame

Said, "I'm breaking the legs of the bastard that got me framed!"

They called me the Reverend when I entered the Church unstained

My employers have changed but the name has remained

It all began when I went on a tour

Hoping to find some furniture

I followed a sign saying "Beautiful Chest"

It led to a lady who showed me her best

She was taken by surprise when I quickly closed my eyes

So she rang a bell and quick as hell

Bob the Nob came out on his job to see what the trouble was

"Louise, is the Reverend hard to please!"

"You're telling me!"

"Perhaps, sir, if it's not too late we could interest you

in our old-fashioned Staffordshire plate?"

"Oh! No, not me, I'm a man of repute"

But the devil caught hold of my soul and a voice called out, "Shoot!"

To save my steeple, I visited people

For this I had gone when I met Little John

His name came, I understood

When the judge said, "You are a robbing hood!"

He told me of his strange foundation

Conceived on sight of the Woodstock nation

He'd had to hide his reputation

When poor, 'twas salvation from door to door

But now with a pin-up guru every week

It was Love, Peace & Truth Incorporated for all who seek

He employed me as a karma-ma-mechanic with overall charms

His hand were then fit to receive, receive alms

That's why we're in the Battle of Epping Forest

This is the Battle of Epping Forest

Right outside your door

We guard your souls for peanuts

And we guard your shops and houses for just a little more

In with a left hook is the Bethnal Green Butcher

But he's countered on the right by Mick's chain-gang fight

And Liquid Len with his smashed bottle men

Is lobbing Bob the Nob across the gob

With his kisser in a mess, Rob seems under stress

But Jones the Jug hits Len right in the mug

And Harold Demure, who's still not quite sure

Fires acorns from out of his sling

(Here come the cavalry!)

Up, up above the crowd

Inside their Silver Cloud, done proud!

The bold and brazen brass

Seen darkly through the glass

The butler's got jam on his rolls

Roy doles out the lot

With tea from a silver pot

Just like any picnic . . . 

Along the Forest Road, it's the end of the day

And the Clouds roll away

Each has got its load

They'll come out for the count at the break-in of day

When the limos return for their final review, it's all through

All they can see is the morning goo

"There's no one left alive, must be a draw"

So the Blackcap Barons toss a coin to settle the score!

- Gabriel/Banks/Rutherford/Hackett/Collins

What's more of a secret and not a little bit of shame is that I used to be able to sing (liberally speaking) the entire thing without a lyric sheet along with the record at the top of my lungs (and range) and with the accents when the house was empty or (alone) in the car. Oy vey.

Guitar god Eddie Van Halen died on October 6. And I just found out that the Van Halen brothers are essentially Asian American! What the fuck?!

How I didn't know Eddie and Alex are Asian American is pretty frickin' mind-blowing. Their father was Dutch and mother Indonesian. I don't know a single American with one white parent and one Asian parent who doesn't consider him or herself Asian American, although I'm sure they're out there. Maybe the Van Halen brothers?! Maybe the Van Halen brothers themselves kept quiet about their Indonesian heritage for whatever reason which is why I never knew about it. I knew they were Dutch and that Van Halen is a Dutch name, either from reading it in a magazine or hearing it from a classmate who read it in a magazine. Not a word about Indonesia and I remember a classmate wondering why Alex had "Chinese eyes" in a rare photo where he wasn't wearing sunglasses. Brother Eddie looked "normal" so that was the end of our junior high inquisition.

Furthermore, in the past few days it has come to my attention that the brothers had immigrated from the Netherlands at an old enough age to be passably fluent in Dutch (young enough to not have a Dutch accent), enough to give interviews in American-accented Dutch. They were at least bilingual!! (I haven't come across anything definitive indicating they didn't know any Indonesian from their mother, maybe they did but mum's the word on the Asianyay ingthay). 

I grew up in upper-middle class, white suburbia where racism definitely existed but wasn't horribly overt or physically violent as it was for the Van Halen brothers. We idiotically didn't listen to black music and that closed-mindedness extended to sexism as we stupidly didn't think girls could rock and ignored the obvious evidence that they could. It also made us Grade A assholes making fun of foreigners and thinking a death-metal band called Stormtroopers of Death with an album titled Speak English or Die was a hoot. What a bunch of fucking idiots we were and represented. I'm not proud of it. I did my best to fit in and in return they did their best to ignore that I looked like the people we were making fun of (no one turned and looked to me at that Alex Van Halen "Chinese eyes" remark). 

If we had seen videos of our rock heroes speaking a foreign language, I bet our narrow little minds would've been blown! They're foreigners! But not nearly as much as if we had learned they were Asian American. I don't know what I would've done with that information. I probably would've distanced myself from it and dismissed it. At that age and in that place, there was no Asian pride, no "Asian American", and Indonesia wasn't even really part of Asia anyway, at least not the important part. There wasn't even awareness of racism; I didn't learn about it until college and only then did I realize it was there all along like rigpa. 

I'm very proud that Van Halen was the first ever rock concert I went to, still in junior high. Diver Down Tour, Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands, NJ. I remember being in the stands and not believing I was in the same space as Eddie Van Halen! He was right there before my eyes with his trademark 500-watt smile doing his bouncy multiple scissor kick jumps on the raised platform stage left and David Lee Roth with his acrobatic, martial arts kicks and infamous ass-less chaps. 

My first rock concert and there were Asian Americans in the band! In later pictures, his Indonesian heritage is facially more apparent and he could pass for an elder Southeast Asian gentleman. Alex can stop wearing sunglasses all the time.

If I knew they were Asian American, I probably would've made more of an effort to remain a fan after the first white guy David Lee Roth was fired. My mind would've been blown 30 years earlier as my Asian American awareness dawned and remembered Eddie and Alex were "half Indonesian". I had trouble getting into their post-DLR sound and didn't feel like chasing it. Even now in my iTunes collection I have all six David Lee Roth-fronted studio albums, but only two songs with Sammy Hagar. And then after the second white guy Sammy Hagar was fired/quit, the name Van Halen became more associated with ridiculous, ego-driven drama and I didn't need that kind of instability in my life. 

I couldn't say I was a fan anymore when the third (fourth?) white guy Michael Anthony was fired (white people being fired by Asians is a comic thrill you only understand if you laughed when Apu gleefully hired Homer to work at the Quik-E-Mart), but I couldn't imagine any legitimate reason for the bassist to be fired. They could spin the revolving door with singers, but Michael Anthony's solid playing and stratospheric backing vocal was the third key to the Van Halen sound. The only reason that makes sense is nepotism, Eddie wanted his son Wolfgang in the band and that's not a legitimate reason. May as well change the band's name to "Eddie & the Family Van Halen" (that would've taken balls). I dunno, maybe Wolfgang was too young at that point for this theory to hold, but when he was finally recruited, it didn't look good. At least Eddie may have been clearing the way for Wolfgang.

I actually have Van Halen's entire catalog of studio albums on my computer (even the reviled Van Halen III), unscrupulously downloaded many moons ago from some unscrupulous Brazilian or Russian site that had them all just in case I might someday be interested. They aren't loaded onto my iTunes and so I have to specifically choose to listen to them like in the old days of LPs and CDs, which is rare for me to do and most of it has gone unlistened to until recently. I have to admit the music is consistently good, Eddie and Alex kick ass no matter who is singing. But aside from them I'm still not thrilled by the writing or what's on top (nothing against Sammy, I wish I liked it more).

One of the greatest, game-changing electric guitarists of all time was black. The other was . . . Asian American?! I'm still trying to get my head around that one. I was born too late to appreciate Jimi Hendrix, but then got it when I realized what he did to electric guitar in the 60s is analogous to what Eddie Van Halen did in the 70s. I just couldn't hear it because I didn't experience it and everyone was standing on Jimi's shoulders by the time I came of age. They were like a two-stage rocket with Jimi taking off into space and then Eddie blasting into hyperdrive 10 years later.

14 min. clip from the Mean Street Tour supporting Fair Warning, a year and a half before I saw them. No ass-less chaps, but that's quite a bulge Diamond Dave is sporting.

This is a K-pop post I thought of composing two years ago, but decided against it because of the likelihood I wouldn't "feel it" in the long run. It would be dated and I would be embarrassed having posted it. And it's still an embarrassing post, it's K-pop, but two years later I came across the videos and still liked the idea of the post, so maybe not something I'd regret. 

I imagined myself going back in time to my younger self in 2003 when I was living in the Mission District in San Francisco and all about indie rock: Modest Mouse, Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, etc. And I would say to my younger self: watch this video and pay close attention to it and tell me what you think of it (I, of course, would know exactly what my younger self would think of it). 

My younger self would say, "Holy fucking shit, what the hell was that?", and I'd tease, "It's a 'K-pop' song (appropriate finger gestures). This song is hot in South Korea this very year, what'dya think?".

"Just 'what the hell?'" I'd reply, "It's pretty fucking weird, why are you showing me this? And what happened to your hair?!"

"Because", I'd say with a dramatic pause, ignoring the jab at my thinning hair, "15 years from now a K-pop girl group is gonna cover this song and you're gonna be all over it watching it dozens of times, geeking out about how super fun and cool it is. You'll even read the lyrics. And not only that, but you'll also already be into the entire genre by that time".

"Aw, that's fucking lame. Whatever. Well if you say it's gonna happen, then it's gonna happen. I know things change and I'll change, but it doesn't matter to me now, it still looks pretty stupid. Oh alright, show me the clip 15 years from now."  I knew I would take the bait (the two older gentleman in black in the audience are the original artists.)

I honestly have no idea how my 2003 self would have reacted to this video. I was a real snob, all about real musicians writing their own songs and playing their own instruments and I would have resisted this concocted pop confection, but I knew a hype beat and cool groove when I heard one and I think I couldn't deny it was pretty infectious from the get-go. I hope I could've managed a conciliatory, "Actually not that bad".

It's possible – I don't know how possible – that I might have thought if my future self traveled all that way to show me these videos, I may have been hinting something to myself. Maybe to not be closed-minded about music and be open to what can be done. Beyond that I don't know if my life course would've changed any. Probably not much, except knowing that time travel was possible *yawn*. And that I'd still be alive 15 years later *sigh*. Not that I'd change anything since I know I'd be stubborn like that. I probably wouldn't have figured out I wasn't hinting at anything at all and was just using time travel for inter-dimensional geeking out.

May 3, 2004, 2:28 p.m. - My San Francisco apartment in the Mission District. Band posters for Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse and Rainer Maria. The cat's name is Ransom, sitting atop a first generation Bose AM-5 satellite speaker cube. I'm told those original design Bose speakers are much better than what came later.

Things have been unsettled lately. Hairy, even. All internal, mental space. Externally little has changed, same as it ever was; sometimes the external acts up and is annoying or my body reminds me about aging, other times it's calm and behaves but it's a comfort that I know can only be temporary. It's the uncertainty and anxiety when the feeling arises that something has to happen, something has to change. I don't know if anything's going to change, despite the press that something is looming. The comfortable pattern has been that nothing changes, but the reality I'm well aware of is that's impossible to continue in perpetuity. These disturbances, I should note, are also a part of the repeating pattern, lulling me into thinking things'll be alright. And they will be alright. Until they're not.

The internal space has been characterized by turmoil, dynamic and surreal. I've been trying to deal with it by bringing everything back to practice; mindfulness practice as well as Vajrayana-inspired practices that I've developed from instinct, what resonates and makes sense to me. Part of the turmoil is that in the background is a doubt about it, what if it doesn't describe a reality of life and death? And it doesn't. Or at least that's totally the wrong question or approach. The only certainty is death itself. The only question is my attitude towards it and how I'm existing approaching it whenever and however it comes.

So many practices that without a teacher sanctioning them, I know I may be running risks. Or not. What risks? I imagine they would be risks on such a subtle level (karma or energy) I wouldn't even know about them. On a mundane, this-world level I'm not too concerned about risks. Those would be risks of harming myself or other people or psychological or spiritual damage. I'm not worried about those, the normative narratives that define those concerns just don't apply anymore. Take psychology, if I spoke with a psychiatrist, we wouldn't even be speaking the same language. I mean I'd find an English-speaking one in Taiwan, but the assumptions would all be completely different. I may say I'm suicidal, but there is no concept of harming myself anymore. The psychiatrist would write a prescription for antidepressants (which I've always thought would be convenient to overdose on). Harming other people is necessarily a this-world consideration, but I've done all I can to minimize that. Any harm I cause would be indirect and more about them than me, and I don't know who "them" are anyway. Who am I causing harm? Who's here?

Mandala practice, dakini practice, bardo practice. Practices that are not practices because they are not sanctioned and therefore considered risky. Considered risky by whom? Of course there's only me, but my doubts in calling them risky are also my fail-safe. Can't be arrogant or self-assured about them. Always leave room for just being plain wrong.

Apparently "bardo practice" is a real thing, and what I'm doing is not it, but very strangely when I read about the real thing, it reminded me of a "winter term" project I did way back in college. Despite all the reading I've done about Tibetan Buddhism and the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, I only came across a description of a "bardo retreat" in relatively recent years in a book by Reginald Ray called Secret of the Vajra World. It's described as a retreat that was done in confined cells or mountain caves of Tibet and considered very advanced and even "dangerous". It's done in complete darkness and effectively complete solitude over a number of weeks. The retreat is supposed to help get an experience of the after-death bardo states and the instructions received for the retreat is essentially the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

At Oberlin, we had a "winter term" which was the month of January between fall and spring semesters where students could do anything they wanted and get credit for it as long as they framed it in terms of a project and got a faculty member to sign off on it as academically valuable. As one faculty member described it, you could raise a cactus and get credit as long as you designed it as a project.

My idea for my first winter term started with "solitary confinement". Mind you, this is so way back far in my past I have no idea about the motivation behind it nor the psychology that certainly was at play. I'm just describing how I remember it. I lived in a dorm which had a wing of apartments that were intended for guest stays by short-term faculty. I discovered that one was vacant and asked if I could use it for a winter term project. The idea was to hole myself not just in the apartment, but in the bathroom, which had a bathtub, of the apartment for winter term. Ideally complete isolation, no lights, no books, no music, no external distractions. The curtains of the apartment would be drawn so light couldn't seep in. I arranged for a friend to bring me easy-to-prepare light meals three times a day, emphasis on the easy as I didn't want to be a burden, but mind you hermits and retreatants in mountain caves in Tibet often had benefactors or supporters with arrangements for supplies.

How to get a faculty member to sign off on it? Well, I was considering being an East Asian Studies major and had taken classes to that effect, and in one Japanese history class the concept of "wabi/sabi" was introduced. That concept was expounded upon much later in a "King of the Hill" episode, so I'm going to assume everyone knows about it without my explaining it. But I went to that professor, a most illustrious and revered Ronald DiCenzo (RIP), and proposed my winter term project as exploring the wabi/sabi concept as "Beauty in Isolation". He bought it, god bless his heart, and signed off on it. Some lucky cactus got a reprieve from being raised by my lack of green thumb.

Actual extant memories: I forget if the project was three weeks or four weeks, but I made it for most part until the last week. In that time I stayed in the bathroom, mostly lying in the bathtub with the lights off. I only opened the door to take in the plate of prepared vegetables and leave it out. It wasn't complete isolation as I could still tell day from night since it was impossible for the bathroom to be completely light-proof, and I could still feel and hear activity because this was still in a dorm on a college campus. In the last week, I ventured out into the apartment. That's all I remember. I spent time outside the bathroom in the last week. The only actual memory of the weeks inside the bathroom was singing through the entire double album of Genesis' "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway", just because I could. I knew all the lyrics (but if I forgot any I had all the time in the world to recall them). And it was confirmed later by dorm residents telling me they could hear me warbling through the vents like a ghost (you can only imagine my embarrassment)! Was I going slightly mad in there? It's hard to argue otherwise.

Reading about the actual existence of a "bardo retreat" and relating it to that winter term project made me wonder where the hell did that idea come from? Could it be from past life resonances whereby I had undergone those bardo retreats? Another brick in the wall of evidence that reincarnation is a thing?

Back to present tension, what I'm calling "bardo practice" now has more to do with envisioning present life and reality as a bardo, equivalent in reality as the death bardos. The death bardos are described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and practicing living as if in a bardo state is treating it in the same way. In living reality, I'm being buffeted uncontrollably by the winds of reality like a bird in a gale. I seem to feel I'm in control of myself, that I make decisions of what to do at any given moment, but that's just illusion and delusion of being swept through the dire straits of the walk of living bardo. I'm actually in no more control of my fate, direction and destiny as I envision I would be as described in the death bardos.

In ways it's an extension of what I described before as my version of what I call "mandala practice". Both emerging more prominently in times of internal tumult and disturbance, working to melt away the habit of perceiving reality as concrete and actual. Even when we're able to accept and embrace the teachings of impermanence and the constantly changing nature of our lives, I think we still tend to treat that impermanent and constantly changing nature of our lives as reality, as actual. Somewhere along the line I got it in my head from the teachings that it all has to melt away, the experience of enlightenment is an experience of non-duality, no difference between this ego-conceived concept of me who is here and everything else sensed and perceived around me. It can't be striven for so I'm not striving for it, but I hope to work around the edges and challenging my perceived notions and concepts of reality. The easy targets are negativity and dysfunction and the effects of self-imposed isolation.

Not much going on with the change of seasons. The change of a season's enough of a reason to want to get away. It's still hot, but pleasantly hot now and continues to get cooler. My previous post about iPhones and cameras has not led to any re-interest in shooting, thankfully. Some looking to see if I see anything, but alas no "seeing", which was what photography was about. Actually, I vaguely recall the reason I stopped shooting was because I stopped seeing, and had been struggling with it for some time. So much so that I think it was an easy decision to stop. And then, as I mentioned, I was glad to have stopped when smartphones made me irrelevant.

I did go back into my archives to the last rolls I shot in 2011 to get a sense of why I stopped (months actually, not rolls as the last few months were with my brother's Nikon D80 DSLR). It actually wasn't all that lacking, a lot of re-treading subject matter as I'd already shot so much in my years here there wasn't a lot new. But it's the feeling that's important and I won't doubt what I was feeling at the time, which is that it was getting harder to see. Ah, it all comes back to me now. The idea was that the shots are out there, around us all the time, and it's a matter of being able to see them. They're not all gold, a lot are duds, but a good amount are workable. But there's nothing to work on when I'm not shooting anything, and I'm not shooting anything because I'm not, at the very least, seeing something. I'm perfectly happy not going back to all that.

But that led to looking farther back into my archives and remembering that fotolog was pretty much dead and had been for some time – a good thing really since their quality and functionality as a website ended up sucking quite a wad. But that means my photos are no where online. So shameless, narcissistic, serial archivist that I am, I'm contemplating the possibilities. I'm considering uploading them to this blog retroactively since almost all my photos are meticulously dated, a practice I started immediately upon taking beginning black & white classes. And since Blogger is now owned by Google, one (rare) advantage is I think the memory storage limit is very high. I actually don't know. If they're still stored in Picasa, I have no idea what the limit is. But if they're stored on Google Drive, I still have 7GB of storage. The problem remains that it would be a project that would take a very, very long time and I might get bored or sick of it. Photography pre-dates this blog, so at least there's that limit I can impose on myself. The purpose would be purely archival, mind you, as I'm under no delusion that the photos would ever actually be seen. It's just what serial archivists do.

"Why thank you"
July 28, 2010, Taipei. From my last roll of Lomo Fisheye 2, none of which has been posted anywhere. Generic color 400 film.

After Phil Collins mentioned his friendship with Eric Clapton in his book, I thought I'd revisit Clapton's autobiography in the library, maybe in a more favorable light. Nöpe. What a prick. What a twat. He can literally go fuck himself. Obviously I'm biased, so what I have to say has zero credibility. I'm not trying to convince anyone to dislike him, nor dissing anyone who is a fan. Since he's a rock legend, I'm not gonna dis his music. I just never liked enough to become a fan, but really I never thought any of it was bad. Unlike Nickelback or Hootie, never did I turn it off because it was Eric Clapton. Just not my cup of vodka. For the record, he does appear on my "every year of my life" mix CDs ("Layla" (1970), "I Can't Stand It" (1981), "Can't Find My Way Home" (1969), "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" (1984), and he may have been on "My Sweet Lord" (1970) on a background acoustic guitar). That is to say as much as I dislike him, I can't deny him.

The funny thing is I didn't particularly like him before, but now I know why I don't like him. Just not an impressive personality. Maybe it's a matter of "camps"; as to likes and dislikes, we would be in opposite camps. He likes killing animals for sport, I only kill insects when I can't get past karmic obscurations that make me find them unacceptable in my personal space. He disses Genesis and Led Zeppelin, two of my top five fave bands of all time, where zero acts he's associated with even ranks. He's into and takes pride in fashion, I'm anti-fashion. Clothes weep when forced to be worn by me. If we met as peers, we wouldn't connect or would rub each other the wrong way. Maybe it's self-fulfilling prophecy – who reads a rock bio of someone they don't even like? I tried reading his book before and stopped because it turns out he's the kind of a man who likes to pull the hooks out of fish. I should have left it at that.

That's actually a good point. Without being a fan of his music to back him up, all I read were his numerous, egregious character flaws. It didn't help that some of his character flaws are painfully similar to ones I see in myself; things about me that disgust myself. If not a fan of Steven Tyler, Keith Richards, Phil Collins, Pete Townshend, Sting, Kim Gordon, Ozzy Osbourne, etc., would their books have impressed? And I shouldn't wonder that a rabid Eric Clapton fan, one with rabies that is, would love his book, despite him coming across as weak, arrogant, cowardly, judgmental, privileged, abusive, selfish and an overall weeny. Oops.

Oh wait, Sting's book didn't impress me, but I pretty much expected that. I was just surprised by what it was that didn't impress. I expected to not be impressed by his arrogance and pomposity, but on the other hand I also expected intelligent, well-written, witty and insightful writing. I was totally surprised at how bland and boring the book was. And I got into Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon) way too late to consider myself a fan, even though I would've been if I had been exposed to them earlier (Versus, one of my fave 90s indie bands was clearly influenced by them. When I first heard Sonic Youth, it took a few seconds to realize it was Versus that sounded like Sonic Youth, not the other way around), but Kim Gordon's book, Girl in a Band, is a must-read for a woman's view in the male-dominated world of rock bios. By the time I read her book, I did have many, if not most, Sonic Youth albums in my collection and a healthy respect for them. Although by the end of the book, not so much for Thurston Moore. Fuckwad. 

I don't want this to devolve into a Clapton diss-fest, so the last thing I'll comment on is the death of his four-year old son, Conor, that made headline news when it happened. I interpret the way Clapton describes that horrible moment in time as him interpreting Conor as an angel who was sent to him. The way I imagine it is that it wasn't Conor playing near an open window 49 floors up unsupervised and then accidentally falling out of it in a moment of carelessness, but it was a condo with floor to ceiling  (at least very large) windows that happened to be open for cleaning, and in Conor's playful, four-year old running around flung himself out the window. No one could've prevented it, it wasn't about no supervision. If there were a camera in the room, it may have looked like Conor just hurled himself out the window. Realistically it must have been horrible for the little boy and his last moments terrifying not knowing intellectually what he had done as he plunged to his death. But spiritually, for Eric, it was recognition of being touched by an angel, having had an angel in his life. Conor didn't fling himself out the window and plunge to his death, but flew up with grace, sacrificing himself, to teach Clapton something about his own miserable life. If there's anything redeeming about Eric Clapton, and there is actually quite a lot, it's Conor. Stevie Ray Vaughan, a blessed spirit in his own right by my estimation, obviously didn't do it.

I found a blue feather today at the end of a 20-mile ride. It was about the last 100 meters when I saw it; swerving so that my wheels didn't go over it. It was an eye-catching blue and I figured it fell off of a pet tropical bird that I know at least one person owns and takes to the riverside parks to get some flight time. I've seen it. It didn't sink in immediately, but blue feather! As soon as I crossed my finish line I headed back to the area to look for it. Why didn't I stop immediately and pick it up? Why did I have to "finish the ride" first?

Anyone recalling Richard Bach's book Illusions would understand the significance of the blue feather. It's on the cover of the friggin' book! The master is trying to teach Richard something or another in response to one of his questions and ends up challenging him to conjure up something, magnetize it into existence. Richard chooses a blue feather, but fails miserably until later in the evening when he gets excited noticing the milk he's drinking is from Blue Feather Farms or something. It's not an actual blue feather that the master was hoping for, but Richard was pretty pleased with himself. Who wouldn't be?

I'm not sure where I stand on that sort of thing now. I used to believe in it, that coincidences were actually rare. More often things happened for a purpose and not just coincidentally. We bring things into our lives, good or bad, when we need them. Now that's more of an idealized, romantic view of possibility that's best reserved for the youth. Not so much for cynical grown-ups who are beaten down and embittered by reality, lol! I used to look for signs, signs of meaning, signs that could be interpreted to mean something. Nothing ever came out of any of that, now coincidences are just coincidences, but that's not the signs' fault. But that sort of reality manipulation by a master is not far off from what realized Tibetan lamas are claimed to be able to do. Miracles. Masters of reality to borrow a Black Sabbath album title. The historical Jesus may have been one according to some theories speculating he spent years as a young adult studying with yogis in India and became quite an adept, having become quite adept at it. 

It's not that I don't believe in that sort of possibility. It's just not manifest in my perceived reality now; causes and conditions, karma.

I was discouraged when I didn't immediately see it when I looked for it. The wind was gusting and it was possible that it was blown away, or maybe someone else picked it up in that minute or two to finish the ride and go look for it? I covered that short stretch of bikeway several times without spotting it and decided it was no big deal, whatever. But as it often happens, just when I gave up on it, I spotted it just off the paving, picked it up, stuck it securely in the brake cables on my bike headset, called it macaroni and headed home. 

But all this is not why I'm writing about it. Later in the day, I was re-reading one of the books I'm constantly reading and came upon this story that I've read and re-read many times and had to smile when I read it today:

There is a very moving story in the Jataka Tales about fearlessness. Once there was a parrot who lived in the forest, and one day the forest caught fire. Since the parrot was able to fly, she started to fly away. Then she heard the crying of the animals and insects trapped in the forest. They could not fly away like she could. When the parrot heard their anguish, she thought to herself, "I cannot just go away; I must help my friends."

     So the parrot went to the river, where she soaked all her feathers, and then flew back to the forest. She shook her feathers over the forest, but it was very little water, not nearly enough to stop a forest fire. So, she went back to the river, wet her feathers, and did this over and over again. The fire was so strong and hot that her feathers were scorched and burned, and she was choking on the smoke. But even though she was about to die, she kept going back and forth. 

     Up in the god realms, some of the gods were looking down and laughing, saying, "Look at that silly little parrot. She is trying to put out a forest fire with her tiny wings, lol!"

     Indra, the king of the gods, overheard them. He wanted to see for himself, so he transformed himself into a big eagle and flew down just above the parrot. The eagle called out, "Hey, foolish parrot! What are you doing? You're not doing any good, and you're about to be burned alive. Get away while you can!"

     The parrot replied, "You are such a big bird, why don't you help me to put out the fire? I don't need your advice; I need your help."

     When the little parrot said this with so much courage and conviction, the eagle, who was actually the king of gods, shed tears because he was so moved. His tears were so powerful that they put out the fire. Some of Indra's tears also fell on the parrot's burned feathers. Wherever the tears fell, the feathers grew back in different colors. This is said to be the origin of parrots' colorful feathers. So, it turned out that the little parrots's courage made the fire go out, and at the same time, she became more beautiful than ever. - Confusion Arises as Wisdom, Ringu Tulku.

That pretty much sorta qualifies as magnetizing. Finding a blue feather from a tropical bird that recalled the book which introduced me to the idea of magnetizing things into our lives, and then reading a tale the same day about how parrots got their colored feathers. Actually, even finding the feather qualifies, albeit taking 30 years for me to finally actualize my blue feather.

When I got home, I wondered what did I think I was going to do with this dirty, discarded, slightly tattered, beautifully blue foot-long feather (yellow underneath) that I had picked out of the dirt off the ground? It went straight from my bike headset to my sitting "altar". Of course.

Phil:
Last month I finished re-reading Pete Townshend's autobiography "Who I Am", and I was out near Eslite bookstore with time to spare, so I bought Phil Collins' autobiography "Not Dead Yet". I'm a bit surprised I didn't buy it the first time I saw it more than a little while ago, seeing as Genesis is my fave band of all time and Phil is at the top of the list of my fave drummers. But unfortunately he was more than a great drummer who fronted post-Gabriel Genesis to the heights of success. Solo, he also became an international pop superstar and fronted Genesis to their arguable artistic low of the wildly successful Invisible Touch, which for people like me tainted his legacy. As a fan, it's hard to begrudge him success, but . . . "Sussussudio"? I couldn't listen to any of his solo work after that, aside to see if I might like it. I never did.

Reading about Genesis was a delight, and I read extra slowly during the Gabriel years to savor it. He could've written a book twice as long just covering every detail of his Gabriel-era experience and I still would've read it. I would've bought it right away, too. He gives his view of his role in the 80s as the "it" guy who was everywhere and you couldn't get away from him unless you turned off the radio and never watched MTV. In previous interviews he's said that he basically took every call that came his way because you don't know when the calls would stop coming. I suspect constantly working was also his way of running away from his personal problems, which became a part of his personal problems.

Unlike the vast majority of egomaniacal superstars, Collins was aware of his bad press and that there were quarters that reviled him. Despite his success, he remained characteristically self-deprecating, almost to a fault (like when he dismisses claims that he's a "world great" drummer), which likely kept him grounded and realistic. The stunner is how willing he is to make himself look bad in the name of getting his own truths out. And his failed relationships make him look really bad. He just had some seriously wack relationship mojo, aside from engaging in the typical male rock star behaviors. I've read a bunch of rock star autobiographies and messed up and failed relationships practically come with the territory. But this is the only rock autobiography that was followed by a lawsuit by his first ex-wife for defamation. That's wack mojo! For crying out loud, just let a little old man tell his life story.

I went back looking for articles about that lawsuit, filed in 2016, and from what was reported I hope it was or will be summarily dismissed. Collins doesn't ever say anything defamatory towards his first wife, he just gets facts wrong that were construed to be defamatory. He outright states that the book is just how he remembers it and differs from other people, so personal interpretation of even wrong facts I don't think is actionable. How his first ex-wife feels defamed by a wrong fact doesn't make the wrong fact defamatory. How Phil feels about not being a "world great" drummer doesn't make him not a "world great" drummer by any objective standard.

No doubt there are mistakes of fact in the book. In fact, there is one mistake of fact that can be verified by hundreds of thousands of fans who saw Genesis live in the 80s. He was writing about being a showman in the 80s and making the audience do dumb things (pretty close to his words) in the name of entertainment. Specifically the introduction, he writes, to the song "Domino" when the lights come down. Every Genesis fan knows that "lights coming down" doesn't mean they were dimmed, but that the entire lighting rig is lowered so that the stage, seen from the front, looks to be in letter-box format and the lights are hanging just a few feet above the drum overhead mics, extra vivid because they're less diffuse. It was just a gimmick, I reckon, they did just because the technicians figured out that they could do it. It didn't serve any part of the show; it wasn't a requirement that had to be brainstormed on how to do it. To justify the gimmick, Phil had the audience do dumb things. Only, as the video verifies, the song wasn't "Domino" but "Home By the Sea". I wanted to sue-sue-sue-dio Phil Collins for getting the song wrong.

To geek out a bit, "Second Home By the Sea", which is segued into, has my second favorite note Phil Collins sings. The song is mostly instrumental, but at the end reprises lyrics from "Home By the Sea" including the line "things that go to make up a life". The way he sings "life" the last time in the reprise is totally different from all the times before (with appropriate echo) and to me has always been the song's emotional closure before the actual closing line of the song, "as we relive our lives in what we tell you". (My favorite Phil Collins note is the backing vocal on the chorus of "The Light Dies Down on Broadway". He's just doing "ah"s, but on the third note where I expected the note to go down, back to the first note actually, he goes up to a harmony note and I love it every time I hear it.)

And as long as I'm geeking out, my favorite lyric from "Home By the Sea" is:

Coming out the woodwork, through the open door

Pushing from above and below

Shadows with no substance in the shape of men

Round and down and sideways they go

Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair

Then as one they sigh and they moan

Needless to say, it was worth the read. My opinion about him is the same. He's still a drum legend and always a thrill to watch, but I'm not going to be getting into his solo catalog beyond what I already have, his first two albums. He does fill in a lot of information that I didn't know, even about Genesis, and his physical struggles that forced him to stop drumming are tragic. He suffered for a career and ambitious drive that was always pushing his own limits as a drummer, vocalist and entertainer, it's no wonder his own body would smack him down like a fly on a windshield.

Pete:
I will re-read Phil's book, possibly right away, but last month was finishing off Pete Townshend's book for the second time. When I look back and think of my favorite rock bands, The Who is faded far off in the background microwave radiation, but it's undeniable they loomed large in my formative years. It was no less than a legacy they left on impressionable young rock and roll minds without our necessarily even knowing it.

Memory is replete with the evidence. Keith Moon's epic drumming is the stuff of legend, figuring out John Entwistle's "My Generation" bass solo, listening to the synthesizer solo on "We Won't Get Fooled Again" loud in the dark, wearing a Who t-shirt in an extant teen birthday photo, writing out Who lyrics on the cover of school-owned textbooks (we had to cover them with brown paper shopping bags and could write all over them as we pleased), even traumatizing my baby cousin later (she told me even later) by telling her 11 people were crushed and killed at a Who concert on her birthday, December 3rd.

It has to sink in now what a towering talent Townshend was. Reading his narrative of what went on, the words "brilliant" and "genius" don't necessarily jump off the page, but coupled with watching past concert and documentary clips on YouTube and having enough files in my iTunes collection for them to come up reliably often on shuffle, there is a sense of who is this god among us? 

It's hard to conceive of why he couldn't get the "Lifehouse" project off the ground after the success of Tommy. It's actually better explained in documentaries by other people who really had no idea how to make Townshend's vision happen. Out of the rubble of "Lifehouse" we got the classic Who's Next album, but it's confounding wondering what he was getting at and what the album could have been above and beyond the multi-platinum, classic, must-hear-before-you-die Who's Next.

I did download the Lifehouse Chronicles, the "Lifehouse" project demos that Townshend ended up releasing in 2000 and it's fascinating, amazing stuff. Not least because versions of almost everything that ended up on Who's Next is included, plus songs that would end up on Who By Numbers and Who Are You, but these are fully formed, high quality demos that he made himself. He is not only among rock's most underrated guitarists (and by no means is he rated low), but an accomplished engineer, and no slouch on bass and drums. I always wondered how Quadrophenia was recorded because there's so much synthesizer on it, played by Townshend, with lots of space between band-playing sections. It wasn't an album where The Who could gather in a studio and play through the songs. How did they do it? It's likely the band worked off Townshend's demos to record their parts.

Both Phil and Pete mention Phil's offer to fill in for Keith Moon after his death, but they tell different stories. It was fun and interesting reading the differences, because of course they have different memories of the fact. That it was an important enough anecdote for both to mention tickled me pink and erased any suspicion that Pete's rejection might have been a diss, and personally I think Phil's version is actually closer to the truth. He was the one putting himself on the line, so it would make sense that he remembered it better, despite not being able to remember the Genesis song where the fucking lights are lowered.

Phil also mentions Eric Clapton enough that I think I'll try reading his book again in the library. I'm not a Clapton fan. I find him overrated and boring for most part and my favorite work of his (the original "Layla" excepted) is as a sideman playing lead guitar on Roger Waters' The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking. I tried reading his book before but it was boring going and I swore to myself that if he mentioned going fishing, I was closing the book and putting it back on the shelf. It was totally random, just imagining what is the most boring thing to read about. And then he mentioned going fishing. I closed the book and put it back on the shelf.

The best I can accept of Eric Clapton's purported greatness is Jimmy Page describing him as the greatest ambassador of American blues. That's totally fair. He's a great guitarist, but basically a copycat and interpreter for white people. As for who Jimmy thinks is the greatest of the Yardbird guitarists, he points to Jeff Beck. There's an assumption that Jeff Beck would cite Jimmy Page. Neither would say Eric Clapton.

Nice these late autumn days in Taipei. There was a spell of cooler weather earlier with some rain but warmer again currently. I suppose this is the equivalent of Indian summer. Aboriginal summer. Last gasp of warm weather before however we get into winter, ease or plunge I forget.

Yesterday was so nice that after lunch I started wandering and meandering on my bike, thinking of all the possibilities where I could go just casually riding before heading back to my own neighborhood. I didn't get far. With each pedal, the prospect of going further became more unattractive. I've done this before. I know Taipei and there's nothing new to discover by going on; nothing interesting, nothing fascinating, only familiar nothing. Dead to me city.

It's been years and years that I've been doing nothing, never venturing beyond about a two mile radius of my neighborhood. There's been infrequent reason to go beyond that. I know any changes I notice will be changes of the same things. In a similar vein, I can jump on the MRT to some random station to see how things are different in that area and I'll end up feeling how pointless that was.

I used to get on my faithful Giant road bike and go on "rides", so long ago in the past that I can reference them as something I used to do. I would get out of Taipei and ride in the surrounding townships, in the mountains, in what used to be Taipei County. All of those towns and cities are now districts with their same names in one consolidated entity called New North City, literally translated, or New Taipei City otherwise. I explored as much as I wanted to and as much as I want to. There's nowhere I haven't been or want to revisit.

And retreading old ground, supposedly and theoretically this would all be different if there were someone else in my life that I might enjoy doing . . . things. Finding something new somehow becomes fun when it's with someone whose company is enjoyable. Even going somewhere familiar with someone is enjoyable because it's about the company. Even going somewhere familiar with the same person because it's about us going there this time. How charming.

But no, I get bored. Boredom is how I got to where I am now. Even enjoyable company will eventually become boring to me, and that makes it pointless. It's pointless to continually find new enjoyable company who I know will eventually bore me. That pursuit, knowing its pointlessness, would become an attachment to enjoyable company. I dislike that kind of pointless more than I like enjoyable company. The kind of pointless into which you have to put energy. I'm fine with the pointlessness of my life in general because I don't have to put much energy into it.

I do remember when Taipei wasn't boring, when there was always somewhere new to go and discover, whether by street bike in Taipei proper, road bike further afield, or MRT or bus along whichever lines they went. Early on, some of it was done with classmates or that Korean chick, but most of it was on my own. Then there was that visit by Sadie in 2013 where it was that enjoyable company thing.

Now I look at google maps and I'm not even curious about anywhere. I just look for food places in and around a two mile radius. Hell, when I first got here there was no google maps, I bought a paper map at a bookstore to decide where to explore. That's indicative of the changes, but the changes are more than that. The world and society has changed and moved on to become a place that isn't mine anymore and doesn't interest me.

I haven't kept up with changes. Mind you, I still don't have a so-called "smart phone". I put that in quotation marks, but for most people that would be like saying I don't have "lights" at home. What do you mean you don't have lights at home? (I don't have lights at home). What do you do for light at home? (I just don't need lights at home). You just sit in the dark? (Computer and TV screens provide all the light I need). I do have lights, but transpose that to a phone.

What do you mean you don't have a smartphone? How do you live? How do you breathe? How do you exist? Are you even here? In a few decades, that may not be hyperbole. And "smartphone" is a word, it's not spell checked as an error. That's how much the world is passing me by. I may not even be a qualified English editor anymore.

I imagine a virus that is only transmitted through staring at smart phone screens and which is time activated and then kills the user. There would be a mass die-off of humanity. I would survive. Who else? You? Would I be the only adult surrounded waist-high in children. Not even, as I read an article about how most kids have phones now. Me and homeless people shall inherit the earth. I haven't seen any homeless people with smartphones. Yet.

I digress. Whoa, do I digress. Well, never mind. I was just going on about how the world and society has changed and transformed and I didn't even notice nor care. Come to think of it, I totally saw it coming, too. And still don't care. It's not judgment, just description.

elegy

I'm calling it "reverse ideation". Instead of mentally forming a suicide attempt, I visualize the aftermath, having already done it. I wouldn't have done it at home, I would've done it elsewhere, but I wake up in the morning at home and run it through my mind that I had done it the night before. I was gone. My waking up experience is incidental, hypothetical. Witnessing time and space that continues to happen, but I wouldn't be here.

Last month, June 8, Strasbourg, France. If Anthony Bourdain were to have done this reverse ideation, he would have woken up and imagined that he had hanged himself the night before. He knew he was there for work and was due to work that day. His award-winning crew was all there nearby, and he knew he was supposed to meet his friend, chef Eric Ripert, who would be co-hosting the episode, for breakfast. Only he wouldn't show up. He was hanging in the bathroom by a bathrobe sash.

It would be Eric who would be tasked with first noticing his absence and hunting him down. It would be Eric who would find him first, the first to know. The authorities would be called, the crew would be gathered and informed, his family would be contacted and informed. Then it would hit the headline news around the world.

Unfortunately, it wasn't reverse ideation. That's more or less how it might have happened.

So many layers that I can't understand. He was on location in the middle of a shoot, in the middle of a season of "Parts Unknown". His loyal and talented crew were all there prepared to work, to set up and capture the shots and scenes that had earned the show, and previous incarnations, several Emmy Awards. He had a daughter who was just coming of age with years ahead where she could really use him, might very well need him.

He was still making his mark on the world, he still had something to say, much more to discover around the world through the show and much more to show and deliver to his television audience. He was doing a job that he loved and felt blessed to have. And he was supposed to meet Eric Ripert for breakfast. Within all this, he decides it's the exact right time to get off the train. The ride, for him, was over.

I'm not even a super fan. I consider myself an ordinary fan, like tens of thousands ordinary fans around the world. Whenever I saw one of his books in the library, I read it. Whenever his show came on, I made a point to watch it, even re-runs. Whenever he appeared to me in media, he was prioritized. That's the hallmark of his ordinary fans.

When I was living in San Francisco, I had a flatmate who was a souz-chef and she lent me Bourdain's first book "Kitchen Confidential" soon after it came out to give me an idea what her life was like. His writing was incredible; irreverent, funny, insightful, sarcastic, eloquent, personable, scathing. Years later when I got cable TV (so this would be in Taiwan), I recognized his name instantly in the cable TV menu and since then I never missed his shows when they aired. Just this past December when my TV service went down for two months, I mentioned that it disrupted a season of Parts Unknown that was airing on TLC. When he died, season 10 was airing and still is.

It also turned out that he was an alumnus of my high school, Dwight Englewood, albeit some 13 years earlier when it was still called Englewood School for Boys. In his New Jersey episode early on in "No Reservations", some shots from the school in the opening teaser I recognized as being the cafeteria and hallways of Leggett Hall. Only people who went there would recognize that. He grew up in Leonia, where a girl I had a crush on during high school lived. I hate to say it, and it's easy to misunderstand this, but our formative years were probably not too much unlike each other. Obvious, distinct differences, but there was likely shared experience growing up towns apart, and a decade apart back then was closer than a decade apart now.

His suicide makes no sense, and in some ways I understand his better and feel more connected to his than others, even though there are aspects that are diametrically opposed. Even principally opposed. He was an active agent in this world, super-connected through his shows with friends literally all over the world. He had friends, family, he touched people in meaningful ways. He would return to places the show had been years and years before, and people would remember him and he them. He had responsibility, he was gifted and active, he had public worth. And apparently still suicidal. Killing himself may be seen as having been both bold and cold.

For me, being suicidal has meant the opposite; disconnect, be worthless to others (not worth keeping in touch, not worth contacting), don't do anything, have no responsibilities or attachments, affect as few people as possible. And mind you, I have thought of contacting various people through the years, but decided not to because of this principle. If I want to disappear, just disappear. Don't be something to someone and then mind-fuck them by disappearing.

When I die, I want people to react with indifference, an afterthought. I've traditionally overestimated my worth and angled for a soft landing. Truth to tell, I expect the vast majority of people with whom I've had the pleasure of acquaintance in my life to never even know. The news would just not cross their front porch. And if it did, it would be 'Wow, really? How? Wow! Really?! When? Wow! That long ago?! I had no idea'. That's as soft a landing as it gets for people who were never even off the ground. The hardest landing? Geez, what the hell did they expect?

Where I relate to him and feel connected to him is that few have mentioned depression or are suggesting he was depressed. Yes, there are simpletons who assume he was depressed because that's the easy way out of understanding something they're too dim to fathom. When no one in a position to know, including his mother, says he was depressed, the idiots can only comfort themselves by attributing his suicide to depression. Kate Spade was depressed, Chris Cornell and Shinee's Jonghyun battled with depression. These were established. Robin Williams is a little more complicated. He was subject to depression, but was battling all sorts of demons.

I don't think Anthony Bourdain was depressed, unless someone who would know comes out and definitively says so. He was morbid, had a dark sense of humor and probably had a close relationship with mortality that pervaded his existence. It shows in his shows, he jokes about death often, making fun of his own demise and conjuring it in humorous imagery and appropriate snark. There was even a previous episode featuring Eric Ripert (Swiss Alps, I think), who was plotting to murder Bourdain and trying to figure out how to get away with it. I saw it after he died and it was still hilarious. Ripert is Buddhist which made the premise even more ridiculous, but it shows how Bourdain's gestalt permeated the show.

I'm not depressed. I even tried to convince myself I am not long ago to befit my suicidal angst (not), but it didn't last long and was a total failure. That attempt was pretty ridiculous and ranged farcical (the skit in my head was hilarious). So if it wasn't depression, was Bourdain's suicide a little more like my theoretical forays into suicidal ideation? Based on some amorphous principle, rather than solely on emotions. An understanding of not wanting to be here anymore, not needing to be here anymore despite daughter coming of age. Perhaps an understanding of the vanity and fleeting nature of life. I mean true understanding. It's not a giving up. I love what I'm doing, I get feedback that I'm doing good, but nothing's permanent and I trust my daughter will land on her feet. I'm ready for what's next.

I'm not gonna pin any of that on Bourdain. That's what I'm hoping to see in myself, minus the loving what I'm doing and good feedback, and of course the daughter. In my view of the world, the daughter would preclude suicide. Of course I don't need to explain my reasons, the fact that I don't have one is the explanation enough. The fact that Bourdain had a daughter is testament to her worth and value to him enough, suicide notwithstanding. Sometimes some people just want to die. They just don't want to be here anymore.

Maybe that's what Anthony Bourdain found in all his travels and all the people he met and spoke and connected with, all the views and perspectives of this vast world that he uniquely internalized. He could present them to us in his shows in diluted, edited form, but he experienced those people first-hand. Was it too much? Maybe. Did it lead to a better understanding that few people, if any, could have without walking the path he walked? Likely.

All this in a world where issues are no longer discussed, where there's more often than not partisan digging in, digging in ideological trenches, digging in heels. People don't want to hear the other side, much less understand or experience it, and they're proud of that fact. All this in a world of emerging generational warfare where Bourdain had no choice but to be a partisan representative. However much he could empathize with both sides and tried to present them fairly, he was getting on in age. He was old guard. Whatever it was, it warranted pulling the emergency brake on the train because it was time to get off.

I wake up in the morning and in reverse ideation, I committed suicide the night before. I don't know exactly where my body is, but I hope it will simply return to nature without ever being discovered. In the reverse ideation, nothing in my apartment changes for the entire day except the external light from the window until it fades to darkness in the evening. It lightens up the next morning and changes through the day until it fades to darkness once again. This goes on for days. Then weeks. Months? Between weeks and months, there's a jiggle of the door knob that someone finds unlocked. Until then, no one noticed anything amiss. Mission accomplished.

After Anthony Bourdain died, TLC Asia posted a few of his early No Reservations episodes. It was pretty raw back then and there was still a sense of trying to appeal to an audience. The camera people were still finding their feet, but it was the beginning of what would become more than camera work. Later on, and fully established in Parts Unknown, it was no less than cinematography. It was no less remarkable than Bourdain's writing. The camera work on other shows is pretty utilitarian, union maybe, and just gets the job done. Zero Point Zero Productions camera work is pretty much art.

I finished reading Janna Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space (2016), about the history of gravity wave detection and the development of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory).

I've had a lifelong love for astronomy. This is totally boring and no one knows about it, but for that very reason why not mention it? Nothing hardcore. I never owned a telescope although at one point had getting one on my wishlist. I've had binoculars with a tripod mount that I used for stargazing. Mostly it's been naked eye observing and identifying constellations; contemplating the beauty and profundity of the vastness of the cosmos.

I've rarely lived in places that were amenable to stargazing. College at Oberlin was OK out there in farm country, and it was there that I first spotted the Andromeda galaxy naked eye and through binoculars. It's exciting stuff for people who get a kick out of that sort of thing. Deer Park Monastery also had fairly dark skies.

The darkest skies I've seen were in rural western Massachusetts where my brother was living one summer with his girlfriend and some college friends. 1986, I think. I was still in high school. Town called Monterey. It was a lakeside property and once when I visited, some of us took a boat out on the lake at night. It was the first time I realized why the Greeks named it the "Milky Way". Seeing it under such dark skies it dawned on me why the ancient Greeks might imagine milk squirting wantonly from a beautiful, young maiden's voluminous naked breasts across the night heavens. Or a cup of goat's milk spilled on the breakfast table, take your pick. Profundity of the cosmos.

I had a subscription to Astronomy magazine in the early 80s and that's where I first read about the LIGO/LISA gravity wave detectors. I likely didn't really understand any of it but pretended I did. I do remember reading about the L-shaped arm configuration of the detectors, and that's probably all that I really understood; I knew what an L looks like. And what I certainly didn't understand is that those articles were reporting on a massive undertaking that was actively being developed and people were working very hard to get money from Congress to fund it.

The distant background of the book is that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted gravity waves, but even he wasn't confident whether they really existed. The accepted belief developed that even if they existed, they were impossible to detect, being all sorts of non-hyperbolic descriptions of really, really, really infinitesimally small. The book covers the scientists involved and their backgrounds and the decades that saw inspiration, theory, experimentation, failure, and interpersonal friction and drama that eventually led to LIGO getting the green light per my Astronomy magazines. I had no idea what was going on.

Until Levin's book. Fantastic read, I think, for anyone interested in the topic. Very well written with Levin being a physics and math professor herself, so a science insider. As an aspiring writer, this book is very readable (her prior book, which I also found in the libraries, not so much) and even has some Sagan-esque moments in inspiring awe at what's going on in the universe.

It was a timely read, too, as two of the principal scientists, Rai Weiss and Kip Thorne, won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on LIGO and the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Oh whoops, damn! *spoiler alert*. A third principal, Ron Drever, who should have shared in the Nobel, despite being fired from the project, sadly died in March 2017 and thus became ineligible. I think no one doubts that, despite his being delusional and living in his own world and impossible to work with, that he was a genius and would have shared in the honors.

Timely, further, in that LIGO made headlines again in September 2017 with a gravity wave detection that immediately alerted other telescopes and led to corresponding radio and light observations of the event, making a pioneer, so-called "multi-messenger" observation of an event.

As long as I mentioned Kip Thorne, I watched the movie "Interstellar", on which Thorne acted as science advisor, multiple times when it aired on HBO. I also read Thorne's book on the relevant science of "Interstellar", as well as filmmaker Chris Nolan's book on the making of the film. I think the movie has a berth on my top ten favorite films of all time (there are probably more than 50 films on that list). Kip Thorne's book was particularly illuminating as even I started to be able to envision the physics involved. Certainly not anywhere near full comprehension, but a lot of "oh wow!" moments.

And as long as I'm mentioning astronomy, several years ago I read How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming by astronomer Mike Brown. I also recommend it for anyone interested in astronomy with the caveat that Mike Brown, although readable, writes more like a scientist. He writes about his own research and role in Pluto's demotion from a planet, but in no way is he trying to be an aspiring writer. He has no intention of giving up his day job.

Both books convey what a cutthroat world academic science is with competition as emotionally charged as any sports event, just in longer time spans, and with dramas that could put Hollywood tabloids to shame if only they involved more breasts and vapid, vacant personalities saying and doing dumb things.

These kinds of reads make me realize that I could never had made it in the academic world. I'm not that competitive or ambitious. Or smart.

I had to buy a new set of earbuds last week.

Some time into my years in Taiwan I started buying quality earbuds. Until then, I was satisfied with the crappy earbuds that came with iPods. When they melted and fell apart in Taiwan's heat and humidity, I never spent much more than US$30 (NT$1,000) on replacements, usually Philips.

I grew up in a time when you bought something, you expected it to last. It wasn't a disposable culture like it is now, where product obsolescence is planned. I was outraged that iPods came with earbuds that were of such poor quality that they couldn't last. Did they have no pride in their product? Now I have a pile of Apple earbuds that I've never touched. It's almost an insult that they still include them.

Then one day I impulsively splurged on a set of UE (Ultimate Ears) earbuds because what the fuck. They were probably in the $60 range and had noise blocking ear pieces. They lasted probably over a year until they, too, succame to Taiwan's weather.

By then, I was sold on the sound quality of higher priced earbuds and on noise blocking, in-ear earbuds. Also at some point during a visit to the States, my brother had offered me a set of $100 Sennheisers that he said sounded terrible, but it turned out he just hadn't used them enough to burn them in. I used them for several hours and gave them back when they sounded fine. But that incident probably set my price range even higher.

For the past few years, I've gone through three sets of Monster iSport-line earbuds which were in the over-$150 range in Taiwan. Same company that makes Monster sound system cable. In high school and college, Monster cable was the gold standard for stereo systems, but at the time prohibitively expensive. What I'm saying is that their reputation preceded.

The sound quality was great, no complaints there. Construction, mostly the quality of material used, not so impressive, especially for a product at that price and advertised for sports usage. I put up with a lot for a long time for that sound quality. Actually I only bought the third set of Monsters because they were on sale for about $100 and I considered that a deal even though I had low confidence in the construction.

Eventually all three failed, finally due to right channel defects. I wouldn't buy Monster earbuds again. Maybe the right channel failures shouldn't be considered uncommon considering how hard I used them, but it's time to try something new.

I bought a set of Audio-Technica earbuds at under $90 ($60 on Amazon). So far I'm not blown away. They're muddy in the lower-mids and bass ranges. Clarity and separation are mediocre at best. One reason I bought them was to test the theory that price is an indicator of quality. This doesn't challenge the supposition.

If they continue to not impress or satisfy, I can go with even cheaper ($60 range) or more expensive ($120) Sennheisers available in Taiwan. If I'm such a stickler for quality, I should go with the pricier ones.

I also have a set of Bose noise-cancelling earbuds which I bought when I was more confident about my finances, needless to say. I only use those on rainy days when I don't go out on bike. I baby them as you would a $250 product.

They sound great, so I also use them as reference in assessing earbud quality, mindful of my age and musician past that my ears aren't as sharp as they once may have been. They only sound good with the noise-cancelling on, though. If the battery dies and switches to passive mode, they don't sound all that great.

addendum: I gave up on the $90 Audio-Technica earbuds (ATH-CKS770). The weird thing about them was that some files sounded passable; nothing special, they didn't draw attention that the sound was just par. But then other files would sound muddy. I can't make any sense of it.

So I went and bought the expensive Sennheiser Momentum earbuds which unfortunately were more expensive than I remembered and were actually $160. The miscalculation gave me pause because I'm always hesitant about big purchases and it's habit to take any excuse to not buy something unless I'm really sure.

I decided I was really sure. I hated files playing and being disappointed how randomly muddy they sounded. I know I don't have money to throw around, but it's all relative, isn't it? How much have I not spent in alcohol over the past three months? I don't know, but probably easily enough to cover the full price of the earbuds. And I didn't stop drinking to save money.

Anyway, the Sennheisers are amazing. No burning in needed. They were immediately and clearly superior to the Audio-Technicas. Clear and tight bass, sparkling highs, incredible clarity and reproduction. No random files sounding muddy.

So no regrets buying the Sennheisers. A little regret having bought the Audio-Technicas, but not a total loss since I can use them with my Korg Pandora PX5D for guitar and bass. For some reason only stereo connector plugs work with the quarter-inch to eighth-inch adapter. If it has the Apple control ring on the plug, it doesn't work. I already tried them with the PX5D and they sound fine.