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. 

I've been mulling over the "chronic suicidal ideation" revelation since hearing about it for the first time this past February. It blew my mind that it was even a thing. It blew my mind how perfectly and accurately it seemed to describe this most basic thing about me. It was mind-blowing going back anywhere in this blog and seeing evidence of it all over the place like a poorly covered-up crime scene. 

On the other hand I'm also wary. In processing it like a psychiatric diagnosis retroactively into what I've been writing all along, am I just seeing what I'm looking for? Is it valid if I hadn't identified it before, nor had any of my reads or anyone else I've spoken to over the years? Is it a mental crutch I'm using now for affirmation or to "feel better" about it or whatever reason? Or is it not even for me at all, but whoever else might happen upon this blog? As a recently encountered topic (coincidence?!), it's not gonna make it off the front page so the topic should be quickly visible as an important idea or theme. Well, thanks to this post.

The more I've thought about it, the problem is "chronic suicidal ideation" is only one description of reality, and in one certain version of reality it certainly is an accurate and appealing description of my life. But that's not really the reality this blog intended to describe. I had never heard of the term and if this blog were written with a self-conscious awareness of it, it may have been written quite differently. This blog even started as a self-described "mental health" blog, and if I knew "chronic suicidal ideation" was a thing in psychiatry I may have stuck to viewing my thoughts and experiences through that filter instead of organically as they happened.

As it happened, I think this more or less stopped being a mental health blog when I found mindfulness practice either nullifies or at least superficially checks mental health issues in the long term. I stopped seeing them as issues or afflictions and more as crutches or excuses that could be dismissed and allowed to leave. Common mental health issues went away, suicide didn't; possibly suggesting it never was a mental health issue. It took that form because of external circumstances and my internal reactions – it was the only way available to describe or understand it – but it was already there in a primordial form that predated teenage angst. I served it well carrying it with me in that form out of habit for many years but then it didn't survive mindful scrutiny, it lost that "protection". 

I might describe this blog as having become more about a flawed or problematic internal spiritual struggle which integrated suicide as an existential or valid philosophical inquiry. Being flawed or problematic doesn't necessarily mean there are faults or problems, that's just the nature of my path to learn from. That said, there most likely probably are faults and problems, but what can you do?

The "chronic suicidal ideation" descriptive is important, but it's not that important to me. It's important as far as the psychology goes, and even with mindfulness practice the mechanisms of psychology are ever-present and confounding, if not disturbing. It's important in filtering everything I've written, but it was only an aspect of who I was and not necessarily the most important. If I were to put emphasis on it, I feel like I'd be trying to shirk personal responsibility, that the reason for committing suicide was something other than my own doing; I had a mental illness and wouldn't have done it otherwise or if I had it treated. 

I don't know if it was fate or destiny or karma or none of the above, but there was a perpetual drive towards suicide that I can't quite understand or explain and it would be futile to try. I've tried. It was futile. I lived my life like everyone else made up of a combination of the things I've done and decisions I've made along with how I responded to how the world around me reacted and presented itself and unfolded. Causes and conditions that led to a result. It wasn't something completely out of my control like an illness. There was probably a high likelihood that I would eventually do it because of decisions I willfully made and not because I was messed up or depressed or despondent or without hope. Quite the opposite. And it wasn't easy, either, mind you. 

After what I said about not doing email communication with my parents, I'm actually copying and pasting (unedited) an email my mother sent recently that I didn't delete right away as I usual do:

How are you ?Last night I dream about you.You were planning to go out,I asked you that you need money but you didn’t answer, I started to search at master bedroom, I couldn’t find any money for you,Then I thought I could call Dad to help,but when I picked up the phone I found Dad already died in the mean time I waked up. I will send the check to you soon.Stay safe and healthy and happy.

She sent something worth mentioning? 

Well, no, not quite. More as a demonstration of how my mind works, my first thought was she had a premonition of my suicide, lol! The "planning to go out" and "didn't answer" is the symbolism for my leaving this life. Do I really think this is prescience or premonition? No. There are no mystical energy waves she's picking up about what's going on over here (trab pu kcip, trab pu kcip, yenom erom dnes, nemow sdeen sram, sorry my Malay incantations are really rusty). There is no deep mother-child connection giving her insight into something "only a mother would know". To suggest she suddenly is in tune or developed an intuitive *fifth sense* that she's never had before is just pretty funny if not ridiculous. 

So how is she interpreting the dream that she feels the unusual need to tell me about it and send money? I have no idea and can only speculate. It could be pretty mundane. It could be subconscious passive-aggression remnant from the past, not as virulent as it used to be but still part of her habit energies (probably not totally benign, but not at all malicious this late in the game and age). I'm pretty sure there's not a glimmer of thought in her mind that suicide is anywhere in my reality. 

Her automatic reaction to send money would be funny if it weren't just tiresome, and could also suggest possible habitual machinations that are old news and not worth delving into. Or not, I have no idea. I still have a bunch of undated checks from long ago that I decided not to act upon, and she sent something at the turn of the year, presumably a check, that she tried to guilt me for ingratitude because I hadn't acknowledged receiving it and thanking her for it. The truth was she sent it without telling me, and she doesn't know that no one here expects to receive anything through the post so the mailbox is perpetually filled with junkmail that gets cleared out maybe once a month. After I confirmed receiving it and thanked her, I tucked it aside without even opening it. 

So now because of that dream or whatever subconsciously-triggered reason, she's sending more checks and I'll be sure to look out for them this time and acknowledge receipt and thank her; I wasn't committing to suicide in the next week anyway. Anyway at this point, if I went to the bank now to try to execute the overseas transfer of money through a check, it wouldn't go through before my current funds run out, so these checks are monetarily worthless (although I do actually appreciate the gesture). 

If my parents had wanted to be monetarily worth something, they shouldn't have taken back that huge amount they deposited into my bank account many years ago. That's an old story, but a long time ago they sold their stock in my grandfather's bus company or something and had my aunt put the money into my bank account, presumably to avoid taxes. They put it in my account so I simply considered it a huge windfall, but I didn't go crazy and start living a life of luxury or indulge in that Lambo I've always coveted (OK, maybe it wasn't that much money but I didn't even buy a new bike). 

If they had left it there, it was an amount that would have sustained me way beyond their lifetimes, nevermind mine. But it just wasn't in their habitual capitalist character to have a chunk of money laying around somewhere and not have it working for them in some way. It took several years during which I lived off of it, but they eventually took it back, as was their completely fair right to do so, to buy some building of rare family sentimental value in Kaohsiung. I've never known my parents to be sentimental about anything, not even their own lives or history. At the time they talked about what the building was and what it meant to them more extensively than they needed to, as if they were justifying to me why they were taking their money back. They didn't need to justify anything, it was their money! 

I didn't feel anything against them when they took it back and cooperated fully once they made it clear they were removing the money from my account. However, I think it was at that point that I started calculating how much time I had left based on what was left in my bank account (US$1000/NT$30,000 = 1 month). I haven't heard anything about that building since, and the "time I had left" since then has only been extended by their contributions that required me going to the bank and transferring money from the States. I stopped doing that when it became too frustrating and humiliating even for me.

Maybe I'm the one sounding passive-aggressive here, maybe so, but these are also simply my facts as I know them. To the extent I'm being passive-aggressive is just supposed to be ironic and/or sarcastic.

But wow, if they had left the money (or any significant amount) in my account, what a nightmare or personal disaster it would be for me now (no sarcasm here). Well, it's possible I'd just continue cruising along as long as there was money and I wouldn't think of it as a disaster. I would just deal with the total pathetic mess my life appears to be looking around me, falling apart or deteriorating in multiple facets, misery symbolized perhaps by no hot water during the winter and the broken toe (which still hurts three weeks later but is much better, I can even savor this level of pain, thanks for asking). Looking at my life situation that way, running out of money has an aspect of great relief.

As I've opined before, money may karmically not be a consideration in this current lifetime; maybe in the past, maybe in the future but not now. So it's either ironic or poetic that money is the ultimate trigger to bring chronic suicidal ideation to fruition. Well, if it happens. 

Not to put too fine a point on it, I actually still have over US$6,000 cash in hand but it's too old to convert. The cash is inconvertible. It is incontrovertible that the cash is inconvertible! The bills are so old – lacking all the fancy holographic watermarks and colored fibers that make them hard to counterfeit – that banks here won't accept them. Their machines can't count them. They need to go back to where they came from to a bank in the U.S. to be exchanged for new, modern bills. I'll leave a note on the stash to that effect and however whoever wants to handle what happens is otherwise out of my hands. None of my business.

The six grand is useless to me, but that's OK since it's also meaningless. Six grand would've just been more buffer that I neither need nor want. I appreciate that six grand may be a considerable amount for someone just getting by and wants to live, but my history suggests I would not use it nobly nor to the benefit of anyone else, but rather just exhaust it like I have all my funds before it just to live a few months longer only to arrive where I am now. None of my business. 

WordsCharactersReading time

strange parents

In addition to "chronic suicidal ideation", I also recently learned about parental estrangement from a blog! Parental estrangement is not so much a psychological defect or condition (unless you're coming from the specific perspective of either the parent or child in the arrangement, and it's always the other that has it), but rather seems to be a phenomenon that mental health experts observe and explain to parents who experience it and describe it during therapy. 

I, of course, am not on the receiving end of parental estrangement, but rather the giver, the creator, the . . . disher of it. It's interesting to read about a parent (one in my age range no less) on the receiving end, although any parent who blogs about it is already cooler and perhaps less deserving of it than one who is clueless and feels indignant self-pity when a child finally says, "fuh dis shit, later for you". 

I'm not judging, but the author of the linked post seems halfway in between. She's aware and funny with the "slap her upside her head and tell her to call her mother" line, which seems to be the type that would make me roll my eyes and call, but she also admits to red lines crossed that if you don't recognize are intolerable it's hard to gain sympathy regarding whatever reaction manifests and you might never understand it to your own detriment (i.e., you may be smart and funny, but you still crazy (or in adult language, you don't respect what they want respected)). 

I'd also be wary about the estrangement "for no apparent reason" line. My robot vacuum cleaner comes right at me every single time I stop paying attention to it for no apparent reason. I focus on the computer screen for 15 seconds and suddenly it's bumping against my heel. True, I don't know what its childhood trauma is, but I assure you it does this for no apparent reason. Of course the line isn't implying there's no reason, just no apparent reason; a reason indiscernible to a parent. The reason is boldly there right on its face. 

I suppose reading about the phenomena from the "other side" point of view makes me feel the slightest bit of sympathy towards my own mother, but not really. Just the slightest bit. More like "OK there's another side, but I don't really care". Furthermore, I haven't really ghosted my mother, per se. Never when I had a phone did I have a blanket policy of not answering when she called, that's too rude even for me. I had a selective policy of not answering.

It just so happened by total coincidence that a few months after my father died in late 2016, Taiwan discontinued 2G phone service and I simply had no reason or desire to upgrade to 4G, ergo no more phone communication with or phone anything for me. I don't know whether my father's dying had anything to do with my abandoning phone services, I rarely if ever talked to him on the phone. Nevertheless it's possible if not probable, such are the complications of parent-child relations. I consider my parents a single entity and his presence/absence certainly must have had some influence/impact.

Instead she eventually took to sending emails. This part is too fuzzy and convoluted to go into, but email communication between us was just never going to happen. My parents never established that sort of relationship between us and it was just too awkward to react to emails in any other way than to skim in case of anything important and immediately delete them. If something she sent required some direct response, I'd respond with the absolute minimum of what needed to be said. 

It's a reap what you sow thing. We simply effectively have no history of written communication, and she simply doesn't have the English skills for it. I already dumb down my speaking for her, but I wouldn't extend that to writing where I can't get immediate feedback on how much she's not understanding. And when conversations can become infuriating simply by merely brushing a taboo subject (i.e., my life) or questioning what is not in her realm or rights to question (i.e., asking "why?" in response to anything), why prolong them by carrying them out in writing? I may be self-destructive but I'm not masochistic.

This all is perhaps an example of what I meant about "psychological defect or disorder" imputed to the "specific perspective of either parent or child". This is old news and hardly a dear topic, yet I still get sucked into it and go a little crazy just from someone blogging about it as something new to my ears. 

It's an age-old waltz, a futile game of guilt and blame. I purportedly don't feel any guilt regarding my role, but here I am feeling like explaining myself as if I have something to convince. I tell myself I don't blame my parents and would prefer to not carry that karma into future lifetimes, but I obviously haven't released all attachment to the issues. I'm hoping to release the karma partly through intent and reminding myself not to blame anyone for anything, but I probably could do more to manifest it in this present lifetime (i.e., stop carrying it around like a stone by blogging about it). 

Likewise, I don't expect my parents to feel guilty about anything and I have no evidence that they do aside from being unsuccessful in making me become a doctor or lawyer. Whether they blame me for anything is not my business and wouldn't elicit any reaction in me anyway. I don't know what my mother would think about this thing called "parental estrangement", whether she'd feel validated or disassociate from it since it has any relationship with the mental health field. She of course is the model of perfect normalcy for whom the suggestion of therapy is a deep insult. There I go again. And I'm not about to solve or resolve anything for myself or anyone else by writing about it so . . . better to stop while I'm behind.

WordsCharactersReading time

WordsCharactersReading time

I have to say, I'm glad I backtracked (a bit) about the mental health field not being able to effectively deal with "chronic suicidal ideation" and perhaps general accusatory suggestions regarding their prejudices and assumptions. Better to backtrack before being seen as ignorant or outright wrong. When I said I did a search for the term to see if it was really "a thing" and that the jury was still out about it, I actually just plugged the term into a not-Google search engine to see how many exact matches were hit. I probably clicked a few links but nothing bores me more than anything clinical and my reading didn't get very far. 

More recently, recognizing I had been lazy about it, I did what any reasonable lazy person would do next and plugged the term into YouTube where no reading would be required and found a video that was on topic and quite illuminating. I would say a lot of what he describes sounds quite accurate and generously covers a broad spectrum of issues and concerns. 

Among the things that stood out for me (in happy bullet-point fashion):

😀He mentions there's no single agreed-upon definition for the condition (although I thought mine wasn't too bad). I'm not even sure whether the term is established as "chronic suicidal ideation" or "chronic suicidality". All I'd like to point out is that the former describes it quite clearly and satisfactorily with each word contributing meaning towards a definition, while a full one-half of the latter uses a made-up word that isn't really self-explanatory. Of course I'm not a professional and not privy to made-up nomenclature accepted in the field. Like "suicidology".  

😀Treatment for chronic suicidal ideation is qualitatively different from patients who suddenly start talking about suicide as a result of something detrimental happening in their lives. Seems like a no-brainer but worth mentioning. Maybe it's too simplistic to say long-term strategies are more appropriate when it's chronic, but that is an important distinguishing characteristic. Prevention is more important when someone is immediately suicidal, but prevention strategies aren't necessarily applicable or appropriate when it's chronic. Of course the chronic condition can potentially manifest and become immediate at any time. Sucks to be their therapist.

😀A characteristic of chronic suicidal ideation is a balance with life-sustaining motivations! Wut?! People who are suicidal just see one way, ending it all. When it's chronic, however, people feel that way or see themselves like that and want to end it all, but in truth "ending it all" is a secondary motivation behind some primary, life-sustaining excuse to keep living. That is so fucked up, but then I looked in the mirror and it's the story of my life! That's how it's always been and that's how it is right now! It's a good thing that the final and ultimate life-sustaining element in my life, as he tells it, is about to come to an end, and I had planned it that way to eventually be inevitable. Either I'm a genius of suicide or an idiot (or just crazy). But it's still a few months down the line because of life-sustaining excuses and who knows what might happen before then.

😀To his credit, he does mention (briefly at least) some motivations behind chronic suicidality are existential and outside the realm of the mental health field. No amount of talking or therapy is going to change the underlying thesis (it is no longer an underlying mental condition or disorder) that is motivating the suicide, and of course that speaks to me directly. It may speak only to me. 

😀I still note that chronic suicidal ideation is not posited as a primary condition. It's always depression or a disorder that leads to it, and it never exists itself as the cause of depression or a disorder. Maybe there's a reason for that, but it might be interesting to hear that addressed even if ultimately discounted. Maybe they want to study me! Or not.

I have to say, the whole "chronic suicidal ideation" realization has been a bit of a revelation. For the past however many years I've been trying to schluff off ideas about "identity" and superficial things that supposedly identify who I am. I have no career identity as I have no career. Hobby identities have disappeared as I've stopped doing them for various and sundry reasons. Personality identities have been reduced in significance as I've worked on diminishing the primacy of ego-self and subjective absolutes; things that are taught as being the root of our suffering. I say I've worked on it, not saying I've been successful or good at it.

But now here in the 11th hour when I'm supposedly supposed to be about to cross my finished line, the universe plays this one last big joke on me: By the way, this is what you've been your ENTIRE life. I can't get away from it or schluff it off, even this blog is a full-frontal record testimony of it. Whatever I was trying to do with my life at any point, whatever pursuit or aspiration I had, this was always there lurking underneath. Not that I didn't know that, but stamping it on my forehead like an identity-albatross around my neck right at the end is like . . . *boo!* All these years blogging about something unaware it had a name, I dunno, makes me feel like I've been punk'd, bamboozled. By myself.

And it isn't even something mysterious or ineffable or unique. As evidenced in the comments on that video there are plenty of people like this. I thought I was pretty much alone in grappling with this, but it's apparently not uncommon. Not that I was too surprised, mind you, but it was a worldview-changing realization in a minor way. It's hard to describe that kind of 'wow' feeling, when just a little bit of information has a huge effect but little actual impact. 

I felt that maybe I could be an inspiration to these people, that maybe I could make a difference. Maybe if I could successfully commit suicide, they'd see there was hope for them, too! Or . . . NOT, but that's just how weird this all is. And maybe we shouldn't create a support group. But that's only because I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was a place to drink where no one knows who you are. 

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WordsCharactersReading time

I'm trying a new approach to alcohol. For the past three and a half years, I've drunk the same way every day in the name of "cutting back" at the time. I allowed for one-third of a bottle per day (measured out, basically a ration), two beers, and some dipping into reserve bottles after the third of a bottle was done.

The drinking schedule would begin around 10 or 11 at night enjoying a beer, followed by the third of a bottle of gin or vodka. I'd pour into a shot glass and sip it by halves or thirds. By 2 a.m. lights out, I like to have left at least a shot in the bottle for the next day and the satisfaction of showing restraint in not finishing off the ration. The next morning I could have a beer around 11 or noon and then finish the third of a bottle. After that I could dip into reserve bottles (scotch), which would be restricted by my leaving for the afternoon around 1:30 p.m. That would be maybe 2 or 3 shots at most. 

But something I noticed recently was that this strict rationing had also become a license, encouragement even, to drink. Sometimes I'd get to the times when I usually start drinking and I'd start drinking because it was time I could start drinking, not because I necessarily wanted or had the impulse to. And of course once started, it's down the slippery slope. You could sooner stop a fat German boy in lederhosen after shoving strudel in his face or Alice going down the rabbit hole after taking a tab of acid.

So the new approach is if I've been getting along just fine through my night or morning without even thinking about alcohol, don't start just because I can. If I'm fine without, just stay fine until it does beckon and I "really want it". I'm not sure what that means yet. I think if I notice I'm actively resisting, that means I really want it, and I can just go ahead. Resisting like that just creates a mental complex and who needs that? I don't need another thing to be nutty about. It's a fine line between resisting and "showing restraint". 

I wonder about my motivation for doing this and whether it has anything to do with my funds imminently running out, ostensibly ending my life as planned. I wouldn't put it past my thinly-veiled subconscious. Maybe the less I drink, the less I spend money thereby adding a few weeks? I dunno, it's possible but I hope it's not that crass or desperate. I hope I don't hang on spending every penny before I realize what I have to do in accordance with how I've set my life up. It may come down to that knowing me, but I hope not. There is an even worse scenario (accounted in a Buddhist fable) whereby I run out of money and still can't do it but that's another story, nevermind. 

Another possible subconscious motivation is accepting that alcohol has decidedly failed to kill me (unlike before where it failed to kill me but there's still hope!), so . . . may as well cut down even further? That sounds weaker than the money theory. If the drinking schedule isn't making me miserable and is manageable, why change it? Or maybe I'm testing mindfulness practice as a tool for tackling alcoholism? Sorry, "alcohol use disorder" I think they're calling it these days, good grief (*insert facepalm emoji*). I've always held the belief that I could stop drinking if I wanted to just through mindfulness practice. But no, if this were the case it wouldn't be a subconscious motivation but a conscious decision. 

Actually that "why change it?" question may be more onto something. And that's the wrong question, rather why not change it? If I'm really facing the end of my life with the end of finances within a few months, everything's changing! My conscious mind wants to maintain normality and keep the day-to-day conveyor belt going, but that's a reality that is untenable. My subconscious mind (i.e., the "universe") may be telling me to shake things up and get rid of ideas of normalcy and stability for my own good. That does make a lot more sense. It's not just alcohol, but other things in my habits and routine and even external life and health have been getting shook lately and it's always off-putting or annoying and requires adjustment. I don't like it, and that's the point. I don't like it when the conveyor belt gets disrupted, but that's where a wrench needs to be thrown.

mizerable daze

The weather oracle has already declared this to be a La Niña winter and the long-range forecast for Taiwan is that it will be mild until the end of the year, and then temperatures would plunge after New Year's followed by a long, cold, bitter winter (of course Taipei is subtropical, but that's how I read it). I remember cold, bitter winters over the past 10 years because I would bring cold weather stuffis back from New Jersey because of them. Below average winters aren't pleasant, but at least I should be sorta prepared for them.

And that "mild until the end of the year" is turning out to be no comfort as Taipei has just had two solid weeks of gloom and drear when it wasn't outright raining, which it has a lot, and at least another week and a half of the same according to the forecast. Weeks and weeks of this kind of weather is also in my experience here, notably my first two winters. It seems every kind of worst winter weather is being dished out all at once this season, perhaps the universe's answer for Taiwan avoiding the worst of the CCP pandemic and making sure 2020 sucked for everyone!

Adding to the personal suckage of 2020, one of the two major hypermarts near my place closed at the beginning of the year/pandemic. It was the closer of the two and was in walking distance for alcohol runs during extended rain periods. The remaining store isn't too much farther away in the opposite direction, but requires going by bike. The result is that whenever there's a lull in the rain, I do an alcohol run and accumulate a stock to last as far into the rainy period as possible in case it turns into constant rain. So far there have been enough lulls to consistently maintain over a week's worth of alcohol. 

Even more suckage is developing sciatica in my right leg. Somehow I immediately knew it was sciatica when the pain started (the word just came to me) and was able to confirm its likelihood with a web search that described it exactly. It was pain that was both dull and sharp and I couldn't pinpoint where on my leg it hurt, it was just the whole turkey leg. The description of a "radiating" pain rang true. And since it's a nerve issue, there's nothing that can be done about it but wait for it to go away (similar to the ridiculous issue I had with my cervix long ago).

I expect the pain to simply go away as that seems to be my karma (pattern/habit) my whole life. Same with the pain on my left knee that has developed in the past two days. That's too soon to worry about and I'll finish off the glucosamine I have left which usually takes care of knee pain. Only a little disturbing is that Advil seems to have no effect and it really fucking hurts (not quite as fast as "sciatica" came to mind, "gout" became a possibility). It's far worse than the usual glucosamine-cured knee aches and hampers mobility. Outwardly, sciatica only slows down my walking to thinly veil a limp. This knee pain has shown effects on walking, stairs and bike riding; makes me look crippled, even on bike. 

And then there are the cold showers as mercury continues to descend. Even no where near the depths of a forecast long, cold, bitter winter, cold showers aren't pleasant. I'm still mindfully gauging my emotions at the lack of hot water while in the shower. I scroll through my range of emotions, wondering what I'm feeling. I know what I'm thinking; I'm thinking at least I'm not in the Siege of St. Petersburg, at least I'm not Jewish in the Holocaust. I'm only at "abandon ye all hope of hot water", but how do I feel about that? OK, cold. I feel cold. That's not what I mean. Frustrated? Wronged? I don't deserve this? Injustice? Violated? Tempting, but no, none of those.  

How am I supposed to feel as I jump under the cold shower? This sucks!, yes but that's not a feeling, it's a fact (or an opinion depending upon who you ask, i.e., someone who isn't directly experiencing it). Holy shit! yes, but that's more an expression of a feeling. What is the emotion behind that expression?

What goes through my mind is "let go of ego, let go of attachment (to comforts), let go of the self (what suffers)". There's something practice-related going on. What comes up in my mind is certainly not the peaceful deities/lights (representing the ground of reality) in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, but rather the wrathful deities that appear after liberation through the peaceful deities is missed. 

Wrathful deities is more like it. Wrath; this is more akin to anger. Not anger at anything or anyone, just a violent and virulent dissonant energy. It helps me get through it. If I wasn't angry, maybe I'd be wimpy and whiny and complain about it in bouts of self-pity, but St. Anger says, "be damned, cold water, it is not you who will defeat me". All the while not knowing it just may (along with sciatica, seasonal affective disorder, gout, isolation and not being known, gastrointestinal issues, alcoholism, etc., etc.). 

Anger has helped me survive a lot along my way. Is that a good thing? It can't be, can it? Anger and negativity feed each other. But I'd posit negativity as a general or background state – that's not good, it just taints and sours everything. Anger, when controlled, can be a sword, a weapon, an adrenalin bomb, something you need when confronted. Actually, no, it's not a good thing. I'm probably just trying to justify the "way I am", but it has likely caused more grief than good for me.

WordsCharactersReading time

I did a little thought experiment with that cancer blog I read and went back to the beginning of his experience to see how far I would've made it if I found myself in a parallel situation. I swear I'm not obsessed with his blog or anything, but there is a lot to think about and mull over theoretically about living and dying from what he presents.

He first noticed something wrong with his guts during a road trip in the latter part of May 2014, initially thinking it was a bad omelette while driving out to Chicago. He endured symptoms over the course of the road trip with his brother taking Route 66 (and copious amounts of over-the-counter stomach medicine) from Chicago to Santa Monica, and by the end of May he was back in Seattle. I imagine I would've done exactly the same. If it was physically possible for me to keep pushing on, I think I would have in silent complaint. 

The next milestone was stabbing abdominal pains on June 9 that kept him up all night wondering whether he should go to the ER. By morning he quickly realized going to work was not going to happen and he went to the ER that was three blocks away from his condo in Capitol Hill. He calls it Group Health, but from Google maps (no I'm not obsessing), I think he's referring to the Kaiser Permanente, a west coast health care behemoth with which I'm unfortunately familiar. 

Could I even get to the ER? I was once in a similar situation a bunch of years ago (whoa, dude! That was coincidentally also in September! I didn't look for the post to get the link, but just came across it in the course of things. I call it 911 in that post for familiarity, but here, and most of Asia, it's 119). Five or six hours of excruciating, stabbing abdominal pains that had me laid out gripping my mattress, sweating with the air conditioning on, making frequent trips to the bathroom whenever that seemed to be an option for some relief from the pain. I had my backpack prepared as a go-bag with things I thought I'd need if it got so bad that I felt it was absolutely necessary to make a dash out into the rain and hail a cab for the nearest hospital. But it abated after five or six hours and never came to that. I never told anyone about it, but my best guess is that it was kidney stones which I hear are very painful but no permanent damage after they pass.

I don't know what my breaking point is to go to the ER when enduring that kind of pain, but it's safe to say more than five or six hours. But what if the pain continued and didn't look like it was going to let up? I'm going to assume for this experiment that I make it to the ER, but because I'm me I have to consider the possibility that I wouldn't get to the ER. Faced with needing to do something, no longer being able to endure enduring the pain at home, I might just make my way to the river about a half mile away (possibly less than three Seattle blocks), and I have no idea how that scenario continues. Collapse and die? Collapse and fall into the river and drown? Collapse and someone notices and calls 119? 

But I get to the ER because he did. He had health insurance and I don't, but Taiwan has national health. I don't know how that works nor where I fit into it, but let's say, like him, I don't have to worry about that (my national health card would've been thrown into the go-bag). A CT scan is required. He had a problem lying down for any period of time because of back problems, but I don't. The scan results pointed to needing a colonoscopy and he had to be sent to another hospital for that as an in-patient, but he couldn't just head over there himself. He needed to call someone to go with him. He had to go through his metaphorical rolodex and his younger sister was finally able to accommodate. 

Me?: "Is there anyone you can call?" No. No family? No. Friends? No. No friends? I don't even have a phone. I don't have anyone's phone number, much less anyone with a car. I can't even call my landlord. Imagine if that was where it all ends, lol! But as far as this thought experiment goes, it just may as well be. If in that parallel situation, I suppose they would arrange an ambulance or (more likely) a taxi to transport me (or they might have the facilities to do the colonoscopy), but once the reality of the colonoscopy* became manifest along with the discovery of the mass and the surgery required to cut it out, I would go along only as far they rolled me along that path telling me what needed to happen, and only as long as they actually instigated it. As soon as I could make an escape, out of their sight and their control, it would be endgame for me. If at any point I could say, "I need to go home and think about it" and they let me, that would be it and I'd be gone. If they said, "No, we can't let you go under these conditions", then I'd play along until I could get away. I'm a very patient patient.

* They literally, not metaphorically, shove a camera up your asshole after 24 hours of cleaning out all the shit, literally, with the medical metaphor of Drano and look for anything that doesn't belong there.

Needless to say, there would be no chemo for me. Once a terminal diagnosis is made, I wouldn't do anything to further treatment. I don't know if I would even tell anyone, but stranger things have happened and I just don't know myself well enough to guess what I would do (that's a totally separate (and futile) thought experiment). My hope would be just to have enough time to metaphorically clear my browser history (as well as literally clear my browser history since that seems to be what people do, not sure why), finish up any loose ends and proceed with plan A, involving dying without dignity. 

April has always been an uneasy month for some reason or another. Early on, years and years, decades ago, it was existential, neurotic, psychological stuff or something. That's all faded away with age, mindfulness practice and ultimately no one caring, but April still seems the time when ripples occur. Now that just means minor disruptions in days that are otherwise all mine to decide what to do, defined only by my neurotic impulse to impose some structure on my daily routine.

April last year, the disruption was being called to Kaohsiung for some family business, and that was the first time out of Taipei for me since my father died in November 2016. Since then I haven't ventured outside of Taipei except for a couple of instances when my mother passed through town and I went to meet her for a couple hours near the airport, the maximum amount of time we can stand being with each other.

Earlier this month, it was my sister-in-law's older sister who came into town. For some unknown reason, she asked me if I wanted anything from the States. Twice. We're not that close. We never were. Well, we were cordial which would justify the offer, but we've been totally out of contact for quite some time, including unanswered emails, which could be construed as less than cordial. I ignored the offer the first time thinking she was just being cordial and just responded favorably to her visit and my willingness to be available, but after the second time I wondered maybe if I shouldn't ask for some things to communicate that we're good to the point that I could ask for things. Without the second offer, I definitely wouldn't have asked for anything.

So I made a few modest requests that were intentionally aimed to be of no, that is to say ZERO, inconvenience to her. Things that I didn't need at all, but brands that are personal preferences that I don't have here, and she wouldn't really even notice in her luggage. Rite-Aid lens cleaner, Q-tip brand cotton swabs, Advil, a box of Velveeta Shells and Cheese. She asked what size for those items and I low-ended the sizes so they wouldn't take up room in her luggage. And I also suggested that she could ask her sister, with whom I'm much closer, to pick them up during a Target run, since I think she goes pretty often since she has four kids and all.

Where it started going wrong is when she asked me to meet her at the airport hotel in the morning after her arrival just to pick up the stuff, before she and her dad were to catch the 10:30 High Speed Rail to southern Taiwan. We had an exchange of short, increasingly tense emails over the course of a few days where we clearly were not having a meeting of minds. She would state times and places to meet, and I would respond with the unlikelihood of my being able to meet her demanded time frames. There was never any sense of 'OK great, I'll see you there'. In my last email before I turned off my computer the night before, after she had already landed and was at her hotel, I told her I would go and try to get there in time before her 10:30 HSR. I had already done my best to convey the unlikely-to-impossible scenario of my getting there in time in hopes that she would just concede and say I could get the stuff when she arrived in Taipei a week later.

It irked me because she was making me travel three hours round-trip to the Taoyuan HSR station for a hand-over of a small package that I knew was not likely to happen. She never mentioned willingness to take a later train, which at most was an hour later, for a train ride that would take only about an hour anyway.

As it happened, I arrived at the HSR station at precisely 10:34, but I wandered about for 20 minutes looking for her in hopes that something changed in her plans or she decided to take a later train. I think we were probably both incensed. I couldn't believe she took her train even though she knew I was coming all that way, and she couldn't believe I couldn't get there in time (despite my constant reservations that I would be able to).

What she didn't communicate at any point until it was too late was that it wasn't a small package, and that's why she wanted to get it off her hands. In my last email, in which I was hoping to convey frustration at her insistence that I go against all odds that we would be able to meet, I think I asked, almost sarcastically, how big was the package anyway? I assumed it was small, because that's what I intended.

It turns out that she did ask her sister to pick up the stuff. But as generous as my sister-in-law is to me, she got jumbo-size everything! Sizes of Advil and Q-tips that I've never bought for myself before, and a 5-pack of Velveeta which is what took the most room. It was only after I got home and checked my email that she mentioned the package was the size of a small backpack. And it wasn't until a week later that I received it and saw it really was not a small package she could ignore in her luggage.

Still, if it was such an inconvenience for her to carry that around, why couldn't she just wait for me to arrive and catch a slightly later train? That was her decision. I think she may not have known that just across the Airport MRT station from the HSR station was a huge outlet mall where we could've done some browsing and shopping and I could've bought her and her dad coffee and croissants. I don't know why and didn't ask subsequently why her schedule was so inflexible that she couldn't call someone and tell them she was arriving an hour later. I don't know why she didn't communicate earlier that the package was a significant burden which may have been incentive for me to get there in time. I did calculations later and I would've had to have left at least a half an hour earlier for even the possibility to get there on time, or in the alternative I could have taken the HSR myself from Taipei Main Station to Taoyuan HSR instead of the Airport MRT. It would've been a lot more money, but I would've done it if I knew I would otherwise be burdening someone who was doing me a favor.

When we did meet in Taipei for dinner the next week, it was very cool and formal, and clear that was the only time we would be meeting while she was here. We were passive pissed at each other. My Mandarin teacher, the one I get together with every once in a while, came because she met my sister-in-law and her sister when she was in the U.S. for a year teaching Mandarin at an Ohio university. When she told me she was traveling to New York, I put them in touch and they've stayed on each other's radar. In fact, my sister-in-law's sister's husband, a professional jazz musician is coming to Taipei in June, and we've earmarked the date to go.

I don't think my Mandarin teacher noticed any tension. The dinner wasn't about us and it was superficially perfectly appropriate discourse considering the company. But when parting after dinner, my teacher asked me if I wanted to get shaved ice at a famous place just a block away, and I was like 'why not?', there's nothing cool or formal between us. It was then I was able to inspect the package my sister-in-law's sister brought me and I could see the full extent of the inconvenience. But it was funny when I described the sizes I asked for and the sizes my sister-in-law got for me. What's great about getting together with my teacher is that we can kvetch and bitch about things to each other, but then offer perspective and get catharsis as a result.

I emailed my sister-in-law's sister a final apology before she left and she said fuggedaboudit. We're not good, but we know now not to even try to make it good. She won't offer any favors and I'll never ask for any. That's not fact, mind you. She might not think anything about it aside from unfortunate circumstances, and not some grand karmic incompatibility. She might have let it go as soon as she heard that I did go but failed to get there in time. If she were to read this, she might just as easily say, 'no, that's not it at all'. She's a federal judge, so being reasonable is her profession. And her family are much better, positive people, as opposed to the negativity-drenched, passive-aggressive shit storm chaos that is mine.

And if she ever asked me for a favor, I would do my damned best to make it happen.

I look back at my life and wonder, 'what was that?' Was that worth living? Whatever. I was born and had to live it. Worth is subjective. It is what it was. Was it worth my while? Did I live up to my potential? How exactly did I spend my time here? What was I? What did it mean to be here?

I was nothing. I made myself nothing intentionally. That was my purpose, so I think I was reasonably successful, flatter myself not. What was the purpose of becoming nothing? Spiritual pursuit, I think it's safe to say. All is vanity. Even becoming nothing is vanity, but that's better, I think, than a foundation of vanity to build a life thinking it's something when it's really just vanity.

I'm just trying to make sense of the whole journey and the whole ego lens with which we go through our lives.

I was nothing very early on. Psychology is in the works here, but it eventually mixes in with the spiritual pursuit thing. Of course that feeling of being nothing starts with my parents in childhood, but that's not to blame them for anything since I have two brothers with the same upbringing who became something. We were all nothing to my parents to the extent that making money was more important to our parents. But since their making money became integral to my brothers' becoming something, the transition was natural.

And once the concept of suicide was introduced to me, I latched onto that as a formulation for my life and I never did get beyond that and only embellished the philosophy and rationale behind it as a goal. I was döömed. That was it. My life in a nutshell was about settling into a pattern of constantly sabotaging anything that people normally live for (I'ma call it identity), realizing it's all vanity.

Identity as vanity. My years of stripping away identity was trying to strip away the vanity. All those things I did along my journey that I tried to base my identity upon were just vanity, things to do. Look at me, I'm this or that and I feel pride about those things. Drummer, bassist, runner, cycling, cutter, alcoholic, English editor, all identities and matters of pride.

In the end because of my impulse to sabotage my life and identity partly by alienating everyone in my life, there was only me left. What use is there of an identity when there's no one there to show it to, to be it? Then I stopped being impressed by myself. There was only me left to tell me I sucked at all those things, and I did suck, and I did finally tell myself as much.

So what was this all worth? Just the fact of it? Maybe. The fact without vanity, without pretension or thinking there was any meaning to it. I was not known, no one knew me. Even being unknown or forgotten is folly and vanity thinking I was anything worth being unknown or forgotten! Not even that. That's a great freedom actually.

People try to be an identity, what they present to the world. People try to be somebody. If people can't be famous and remembered historically, they try to be someone and mean something to their friends and family. But it's all vanity. So you're remembered, people mention tales about you generations down. Tales that even inspire. Yay? Good for you? I don't get it. Just disappearing suits me fine. Which is why I suppose I think of myself as Buddhist (albeit different from how many Buddhists think of themselves, as an identity).

Or the alternate last sentence is: . . . disappearing suits me fine. And yet I have this blog.

I didn't have TV since the beginning of December. The provider is bbtv in Taiwan. Their internet is fine, but their cable TV service is wanting. Actually, to be fair I didn't even try to notify anyone there was a problem. I left it to other people on the floor who apparently didn't mind not having TV as much as I didn't mind. It's totally possible bbtv would have responded immediately and had service back up pronto.

Internet did go out at the end of December, the same day I killed that spider in fact. I knew someone would call the landlord for that and internet was back up two days later, but for some reason no one mentioned TV and the person who fixed the internet didn't realize TV service was out, too.

No internet was not fun. A little lonely maybe? When it was back up I wanted to run to the internet and say oh my god, i have so much to tell you! I didn't have anything to tell. That was just the weird feeling. And not to anyone, mind you, but to the internet itself. I watched three movies on my computer in those two days.

I adapted to no TV, even though it disrupted shows I was watching, notably season 4 of Fresh Off the Boat, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, and Discovery Channel shows How the Universe Works and How the Earth was Made. I'll watch anything on astronomy or cosmology, geology, earth sciences, earth history, archaeology. Things that span and give insight on how this all came to be.

After TV went dark, I checked every few days to see if it was back up, and after a few weeks I stopped doing that. I found new ways to completely fill up my time to the point that I felt I didn't have enough time. I started spending a lot more time with my bass as well as watching YouTube videos voraciously.

Today, after maybe a month I checked the TV not expecting anything and it was back up. Only Fresh Off the Boat is still airing. I missed a bunch of episodes, but they'll probably re-run them.

On one hand, two months without TV, I think, really did break my TV addiction. I don't even want it, I don't want it on all the time even in the background as I had it before. I'm sick of channel surfing when there's nothing on. On the other hand, it's February leading up to the Oscars in March and HBO is cramming Oscar classics and there's a lot I know I'm too weak to miss.

Another unexpected side effect, I think, was that what little of my Mandarin speaking ability went completely out the door. Even watching English language TV, Mandarin entered my ears through commercials. And at times I would have local news on as background noise. Without that I was completely in a non-Mandarin environment unless a Mandarin language song came up on my iPod and I long stopped trying to understand lyrics while listening.

As it is, my flatscreen is default connected to my laptop, not TV. I'll peek at TV schedules to see if there's anything of interest coming up, but I see breaking with TV as a good thing.

I went to the bank recently to add some buffer to time I have left in the form of an undated check. Currently the amount in my account will last me until June, and then I have some emergency reserves I keep in house. This injection would give me about seven months. Buffer.

Lots of psychology going on here. I don't need or want a seven month buffer, I'm hoping I don't even need until June. But there I was in the bank trying to implement this injection only to find it might not even work. Why? Because it involves my parents (even after my father died, I still can't refer to my mother as a singular individual entity). If it involves my parents, it involves chaos. It's natural law, you throw something up, it comes down. OK, maybe there's a tinge of subjective interpretation going on, but I'm working with empirical evidence.

I totally regret going to the bank. It wasn't worth the chaos and I had to implement full mindfulness practice to maintain homeostasis, giving off a general air that I couldn't care less what ultimately happens, which is true. I had prepared everything thoroughly for it to be pretty routine, but because of the chaos caused, I have no idea what's going to happen.

I'm bracing for the consequences. There weren't supposed to be "consequences". The injection was just supposed to happen as calmly as two ships passing in the night. Now there's the threat that people will try to contact me, which may sound like a "poor baby" moment, but is still disturbing and distracting. My strategy will be to smother any consequences and cut off anything anyone might try to do. The worst is anyone thinking I need money, so that's what I'll have to emphatically shut down. Fuggedaboudit, I don't need it.

I'm just really annoyed and disappointed in myself for even trying for the injection. I've been complaining about the day-to-day conveyor belt of my life and its uselessness and banality, and here I go trying to extend it? This is me mocking and making a joke of my own life. This is me insulting everything about me and myself and ascribing me to a new low level of pathetic below rock bottom. That might be magma, but that sounds too cool.

What was I even thinking? It was just a bunch of ordinary factors that fell on one day that made it seem the perfect convenient day. But not knowing there was going to be a problem, I probably would have gone eventually anyway as I watched my account decline every month. So what is the psychology of this adding buffer?

OK, even while I'm saying I "hope I don't even need until June", clearly clearly clearly if the injection went without a hitch, I would have kept on through the seven months because that's how lame I am. I have to accept that as it is. And this check isn't the only undated check I have so I have to assume I would have continued to add buffer if the option was there (they all have the same defect, so the option is gone even if this one injection works). Because that's how lame I am. That's what all the evidence of my behavior suggests. That's how I've even gotten this far in years. It sure hasn't been through hard work and ambition.

If I had known there was going to be a problem, would I have gone to the bank? Giving it a good deal of thought, I'm gonna say probably not. I could take that as a sign and resign myself that what I have left is all I have left. And if this injection doesn't go through and really all I have is until June and change, I'm not going to do anything and accept that this is it. I hope I'll accept that this is it. There is no evidence in my behavior to suggest confidence in that.

I think my hand will need to be "forced", and only then will the suicide option become a reality. This is what I mean when I keep saying I've designed my life with suicide as an end. No matter how much "buffer" I'm able to keep adding to my life, eventually there will be no more and since I don't have the ambition to find independent means to maintain my life (get a job), and do have the idealized goal to commit suicide, well then voilà.

I need to face having no option. I need that experience just as much as I need to actually commit suicide. I need it to LOOM. I need to have the train bearing down on me. I need to be in the death zone on Mt. Everest and realize I'm in serious trouble and not going to make it down. I need to be force marched into the desert by government soldiers who hold more value in toilet paper than in my life. I've pretended to be totally committed to doing it in the past, but there always was the option of coming home. I always had my house keys. Come to think of it, that's not total commitment. This time it won't matter if I take my house keys, there still will be no money if I fail. And then what? I don't even want to think of it. The alternatives in that situation are just as bad or even worse than suicide.

So physical activity is OUT because it would likely contribute to a false sense of accomplishment; no cycling or attempting to run. Until I do.

Fake reading Chinese is OK because it emphasizes the futility in learning the language in my case. I love the complexity in this pathology. I don't think I'm unable to learn the language in some fundamental failure of being. The key to learning a language is interaction and usage. You have to communicate with other people. That's what I'm unwilling to do and presumably the basic reason for my failure. 

Forcing myself to pretend to read a newspaper with Chinese phonetics just exposes me to a diversified vocabulary and emphasizes how much I don't know. It's not vocabulary I would necessarily need in daily conversation, or if it was I'd learn it in daily conversation. It keeps me mystified by a seeming impossibility of learning a new language because there's always so much more to learn, when basically the problem is that I've pretty much isolated myself from interacting with people.

Pretending to play bass or guitar is also OK for pretty much the same reason. I've given up any identity thinking I was a musician. I still have some basic technical facility on fretted instruments, so I can play along to songs and work out chord progressions and appreciate what went into the songwriting. 

I also have the Jamey Aeborsold jazz play-along series of workbooks and music files. These are apparently THE essential studies for anyone interested in playing jazz. Despite that not including me, I still wondered why I'd never even heard of the series, so I asked my sister-in-law's sister's husband, Tom Kennedy, an A-list professional bass player (go ahead, look him up), and he confirmed it. Everyone goes through Jamey Aeborsold. It's K-12 for aspiring jazz musicians.

It's an endless source of music learning and backing tracks to play along with for practical application. For me, it emphasizes that after however many years I thought of myself as a musician, I really know bupkis about music. Even the meager facility I have on fretted instruments, my fingers always do the same one kind of pattern and movements over and over, and even that I don't know what I'm doing. I assume it's some basic blues scale.

So in terms of wasting my life away on the conveyor belt of distractions to get from day to day, pulling out my guitar and bass is OK.

It's about getting me to a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance about my existence. I shouldn't be here, but I am only because I can be with minimal effort. I'm here because I'm lazy; too lazy to end my life even though the very framework I've built for it has been to end it.

The framework and foundation of my life, through attitude, theory and implementation, has all been set-up for ending my life. All the activities and things I've done and pursued during my life were just fluff and filler, false identity. I don't regret any of it, a lot of it was probably a blast as it happened.

But the fun should be over and I can't let myself be fooled by it now. I don't know what I will do, the pattern my history shows doesn't suggest anything dramatic *yawn*. The best I'll expect at the time being is continue to work on relatively sober development of perpetual cognitive dissonance and hope for the obvious and only proper outcome.

As I remember last winter in Taipei, it was pretty mild until around January 20 and then it got unusually cold for two months without much let up. It was always cold, rainy or dreary until late March.

This winter was similarly mild until late January before turning cold, but temperatures have been variable, so not as bad as last year. It's gotten cold, but not as cold as last year and not as protracted. In the past month daytime highs have gotten into the 70s and I think even 80s.

Really cold for Taipei is low 50s. Expected winter cold I would put above and under 60 degrees; not too different from San Francisco.

I would also mention that age becomes a factor in tolerance of cold and pain. The least bit of unpleasantness can ground me at home despite my telling myself that I need to get out. Two days of solid rain kept me in this past weekend except to get alcohol.

It's psychological. I perceive unpleasantness and dreariness, but I know from experience the climate conditions really aren't that bad. Every time I perceive it to be unpleasant outside but force myself out, I get out and think it isn't that bad. It's messed up.

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.

Full insomnia last night. I stopped posting about insomnia because I thought what I had posted already got the point across. It has never stopped and has been recurrent (and likely a continued detriment to any employment). What was different about this bout is that in the few times I slipped into dreams, the dreams were particularly brutal.

I mention this in conjunction with my previous post where I mentioned dreams having become unpleasant and distasteful. This time they felt downright persecutorial and hostile, like my mind conspiring against me and attacking me.

I don't know if there's any relationship with the compassion meditation I recently employed, whereby I go about trying to generate compassion in any, even the most superficial, interaction with people when I go out. The meditation is even preemptive, trying to anticipate a normally negative reaction and steeling myself to be compassionate (not hostile) no matter what happens.

I found it feels great! I'm still forcing it as a meditation, where my normal, natural psychological state would be negative. But really, it feels so much better to force myself to generate compassion than to naturally accept being negative.

(I have a feeling if I looked far back into the archives of this blog, I'll find that I've already posted something pretty much exactly like this before).

It just seems suspect that I experience unpleasant dreams that prompt me to want to develop more compassion, only to be followed by overtly hostile dreams. Maybe it's a psychological, subconscious battle going on. That would be interesting. As it is, I'll stick to compassion and if it's my subconscious reacting against it, I'll give it time to get used to it.

addendum: Maybe I couldn't control irritability as a result of the insomnia, but on this day the attempt at compassion/non-hostility was a total fail. Impatience, intolerance, self-righteousness ruled. Not that anyone noticed, it's not like anyone turned and looked at me like "what an asshole", but I noticed.

I've noticed common themes in my dreams lately. Like messy living quarters, even bordering on squalid. Disgusting floors, old buildings. Internal conflicts with other people in the dream that aren't confronted or resolved. General dissonance, chaos, mess. Dissonance with my environs. Dissonance with the absence of people in my life.

One recent morning, the feeling from the dreams was so distasteful that when I awoke, I finally didn't try to push myself back into a dream state even though I was having trouble sleeping. I was like, "fuck it, I'm not going back into that", and got up.

That's what I do when I have trouble staying asleep in the morning; when I can't just fall back to sleep and it's pretty much back-end insomnia. I can force my consciousness back down into a dream state, which is and isn't the same as getting back to sleep. When I wake up again, it seems like I was asleep, but it's not to be mistaken with restful sleep. It's very shallow and dominated by the dream state.

The nature of these dreams suggest that I'm obviously still disturbed by many things on unconscious levels despite mindfulness training and striving for Buddhist ideals of cultivating wisdom and compassion. No surprise there, since despite trying to cultivate transformation, I clearly cling to many negative conceptions and habits (karma).

I can still resort to being an asshole. Or if not overtly exhibiting asshole behavior, I act in a way that makes me feel like I was being an asshole. I was thinking like an asshole. I judge people by their behavior. In my mind I impose how I feel people should behave in this world on other people. Even giving someone a cold, judgmental stare is no good. And I did that recently.

I connect this with the dissonance in my subconscious. This outward hostility and judgment has very much to do with all the subtler levels of mind and stains them and makes them ugly. I need to make compassion and kindness more of a daily mindfulness meditation.

It has to be happening at every moment every day when I have to interact with other people even in the most superficial way. At every moment when I'm out, I have to be generating compassion to any and everyone around me. There can be no let up, even when I'm not interacting with anyone.

It's not easy. In the past, I've justified aggressive and asshole behavior by thinking of it as a "fierce" element which can be compassionate, especially when safety is involved. Sometimes being mean or presenting an illusion of danger alerts people of the need to pay attention, the theory goes.

But maybe that was just an excuse to allow primitive anger emotions to arise, despite being mindful of my emotions and claiming to myself I wasn't being angry. So many complex levels of conceptual thinking may be preventing progress. However I justify negative behavior, the bottom line is those excuses aren't in my job description.

My dreams are telling me something. I can't fool myself with sitting meditation and mindfulness practice and think there isn't a lot of ugliness in my karma that I can't work on. Even with limited time in my life, even with the implicit negativity of placing a limit on the time in my life, I can work on the ugliness and put compassion and positivity as a foremost meditation in my daily life.

I retract things in my last post regarding my cousin. They were immediate impressions and observations, perhaps frustration, but they miss our long-standing past and connection.

She came up to Taipei again without her kids and we got together just she and I, and everything was different. She ended up shaking the foundation of my existence in a way few have done before. She didn't mean to, she wasn't trying to. It's a specific chord that she managed to hit by accident.

She still doesn't know what chord she hit. I don't know if she saw my hand shaking or if she knew I sat back in my chair and froze because if I didn't I wouldn't be able to hold back tears. Or a tear. There may have been only one. But she noticed something and stopped and let me get composed.

We were talking about our relationship through the years and how I'd always been there for her when she needed me. But when her husband admitted he was having an affair, she didn't come to me. She didn't call, she didn't tell me.

I knew that when she finally did tell me, I had asked her why she didn't call me and I remember that she gave me a satisfactory answer, but I couldn't remember it this time and planned to ask her again. Fortunately I didn't need to admit that I forgot what she said before because she brought it up herself. 

She said she didn't want to depend on me as she had in the past. She knew she could always depend on me for support and to be on her side, but she felt that was not what she needed. She needed to get through it without me for her own strength and independence. 

She outlined all the times before when she went through problems and came to me and I was always there for her. During her good times, we fell out of contact because she didn't need me, and I was fine with that. I didn't need to always be in her life. I didn't even go to her wedding. But if she needed me, I was always there.

But she noticed that I never needed her. I never went to her when I was in crisis. She was never there when I needed help. And that was it. She touched something she wasn't supposed to. She noticed. I couldn't articulate what it was, but the conversation stopped and she sensed to stop.

She doesn't know that if anything, my life is one big crisis, basically all the time. She doesn't know how conflicted I am about needing help or accepting help. Even defining what it means to need help or to even want it.

Even just the suggestion of recognizing I may have needed help sent me into emotional shock. You have no idea. You're not supposed to have any idea. But to even indirectly suggest that she might have been someone I might have gone to in times of need was . . . too much.

She placed a loving hand on a wall that is built with bricks of silence and suicide. But what she touched was a breach. No one goes there. No one wants to go there. No one wants me to depend on them. It would be a disaster. And I told her as much.

It occurs to me that she has never seen me vulnerable. This was the first time she ever even scratched the surface, and she got in accidentally through the back door. It's not like I have to be "strong" for her. In our spiritual relationship, we are not only equal but I posit myself below her in many respects. Respect, gratitude, love, intimacy.

But, wow, the things she doesn't know. She doesn't know about suicide; she freely talked about contemplating suicide when she found out about her husband, but in passing she tossed out the assumption that suicide is impossible for me. She assumed it, she didn't even pause and ask, "right?" (I had admitted that in my current life, I'm pretty much just waiting to die).

She doesn't know about the alcoholism, even though every time we meet she mentions that I've been drinking because she can smell it (she's one of those annoying people who can smell alcohol on someone hours and hours later). She doesn't know about the insomnia.

She knows about the past cutting, but she went into denial about it before and that's probably the status quo. I haven't done that in years, but she hasn't followed up or checked that I still do or don't, even as a joke. I understand it's hard. Even Sadie, who had noticed scars and assumed it was cutting, was surprised at the extent of it when she saw it all. I've long stopped trying to hide it.

So Audrey hit an emotional chord. And then she backed off. As she should have as far as I was concerned. She mentioned several times over the rest of the evening how I would hit her emotional chords and keep poking at them. Maybe she was pointing out how I wasn't letting her keep poking. And maybe that's so, but that's what I'm imposing on her. She doesn't want me to depend on her, trust me, it would be ruinous, disaster.

Suicide has been a part of my resonant mental fabric since an early age, and I've learned through the years that I can't trust to tell anything I consider my truth to other people. Layers and layers have been laid so that when my cousin lovingly suggests that maybe I can tell her? Not a chance. Thank you, but no way.

People trying to get to know me, getting under my skin. Remnants of people trying to care. But these are my issues alone. As Audrey tried to grasp what had happened, I even invoked why I ultimately didn't ordain as a monk at Plum Village.

She had previously hijacked my attempt to explain it during her prior visit, but I was finally able to impose it on her this time. One of the reasons I didn't ordain (or more specifically engineered my aspirancy to be questioned), was partly because of one important discussion with the monks about having to deal with issues.

It was suggested to me that personal issues would have to be dealt with as part of the spiritual path. And for me, mine is not a path that anyone else has to deal with whether they want to help or not. If the monks saw I needed help, they would be available to help. Audrey, I'm sure, would be willing to "help" if I asked for it and explained how.

But it's not "help" I want or need. It's the howling abyss I need to face and plunge into willingly and fearlessly to see what it is and put it into my karmic experience.

Walking with her back to Taipei Main Station where she was going to meet her brother to go back to Kaohsiung, she started to flirt with me (she had a glass of plum wine). She thought it was hilarious that when she would hook her arm into mine, I would stiffen and become visibly uncomfortable.

My reactions were purely visceral. I also review them as funny, but . . . different places, different progressions. And I don't see that sort of reticence as permanent. She can flirt, she can be intimate in the future and, well, we have long-standing past and connection.

WordsCharactersReading time

WordsCharactersReading time

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.

Turns out I had written a post with almost the exact themes of my previous post way back in late 2013. Well, at least there were similarities, but there were enough differences that alarm bells didn't go off indicating that I was repeating a pattern.

That's one of the stories of my life, repeating patterns; mostly patterns of indecision and not doing anything. If it's a pattern, it's likely something psychological or pathological. Recognizing that, I have to call myself out and state that I'm not immediately dying. I'm not ruining my health. Feeling so bad that I suspect that I'll likely die in the near future is simply alcohol-related hypochondria.

Alcohol is another pattern. I have a theory which prevents me from complaining about any of the things I complain about: Any complaint I have is probably alcohol related. To put an end to whatever it is I'm kvetching about, all I have to do is cut back on drinking. Since I know that, if I don't voluntarily cut back on drinking, then I can't complain. I'm purposely perpetuating a problem.

As I mentioned, I did cut down on drinking. Continuing to keep track, I haven't cut back all that much. I have days where I have 12 drinks. Average, though, is around 10 drinks, which means I've only been cutting back around 3 drinks per day. But apparently it makes a difference.

Important, though, is distribution. A drinking day starts from after morning sitting and is spread out until I wash my shot glass and brush my teeth and lights out. I think something that has made a difference is not drinking too much too early. Resist early drinking and I'm alright. 

And simultaneously with cutting back on drinking, I've pushed to be more active and I've finally been getting to the gym and on my bike, after having believed I was done with both. It doesn't hurt that spring has arrived after a pretty brutal winter. 

It was a mild winter until later in January. It was only a two month period from late January to late March, but I think there was a record number of days that temperatures in Taipei didn't get out of the 50s. Snowflakes even fell in Taipei proper, perhaps for the first time ever. But I saw them. It wasn't a lot, it wasn't a snowfall, just lone snowflakes falling from the sky on one grey Sunday afternoon. 

And around the time I wrote my last post, little niggling things annoyed me to form a cloud of negativity around my head. The remote control for my cable TV box broke. Then my laptop's cooling fan started fritzing out. Things fall apart. By Chinua Achebe. Totally demoralizing winter. I thought I was dying. That was the hope.

The turn-around from just cutting back drinking has been marked. Even my sleeping has been pretty stable. But all of this is a work in progress. I've been getting to the gym, but my endurance and strength are way down. Pathetic even. I've been getting on my bike and immediately went for 30+ mile rides including modest hill training, but I can feel how weak I am. 

I've been turning the broken TV remote into a positive. I had been letting my daily life schedule be ruled by TV. But without the convenience of the remote, my TV habits have been stymied by the limited control buttons on the cable box, I'm using this as an opportunity to break that habit, even dependency, on the TV distraction.

The computer fan problem is ongoing. If my laptop is on long enough, the fan settles and stops making noise. Some days it functions fine from start-up. But even so, it is ailing and needs replacing. Until I figure out how to get that done, it's a practice in patience and not getting annoyed.

So how am I moving forward? I'm not dying. I'm eating. I'm riding and getting to the gym. Positive, it seems. And yet, positive isn't necessarily good or proper for me. Things are still heading into only one direction. These "positive" developments may force me to be more pro-active towards what is proper for me. Take things into my own hands. And when the bank account hits zero, that's it.