I had an interesting dream experience; a first for me, I think.

I had a "normal" type of sleep (as opposed to the abnormal, insomaniacal types of sleep I have), whereby I get a sufficient amount of good sleep, and upon waking I go through a period of waking and falling back to sleep multiple times, and having dreams in the shallow sleep periods.

Usually the dreams are unremarkable or I otherwise forget them very quickly after waking. But this time, it was like one, same dream that I kept waking up from and then fading back into. There was continuity, even though much of the contents of a dream are indescribable because too many things kept changing and it would be a disjunct mess to try to explain everything I remember.

The setting was a constant; a small-knit community like a village or school campus. I didn't know most of the people and most of the people were white, which may be strange since I usually don't note the race of people in dreams (they were all very nice and non-threatening).

And for me, whatever was happening, I had this feeling everyone knew what was going on and there were things they were (supposed to be) doing, but I had no clue whatsoever and was constantly trying to figure out who these people were and what they were doing.

I know that may reflect my psyche in this physical perceived reality, but in the dream it was literal. Like an alien plopped on a college campus and has no idea what college is about and trying to figure out why everyone is going about doing what they're doing.

Another constant was that early on in the dream, I had won something and received a certificate. It was some photo thing, but the certificate I received was some arts and crafts thing with my picture on it, and had nothing to do with any photo I took. There was a name for it, but I don't remember it, and it was apparently a big deal because in all periods of the dream, people would walk up and congratulate me.

A lot of the dream, the plot as it were, was trying to figure out that award and why it was such a big deal.

Like I said, the dream was constantly shape-shifting and it'd be nonsensical to describe everything. One notable scene was when I had a dream within the dream.

There was a room, and it was my brother's room and he was there and we had some interaction. At some point he lies down on his bed to take a nap. I go off to another part of the dream, but then I come back and he's still asleep, so I decide to take a nap since he implicitly welcomed me to (I'm uncharacteristically not socially avoidant as I currently am in this physical perceived reality). He has a roommate, but there are three beds, so it's no problem.

So I'm lying on the bed and the roommate comes back and there's a vibe of "what the hell are you doing on my bed?". I don't say anything, assuming everything's cool, then he just accepts it and starts putting stuff on the bed and that's when I look up and notice there are only two beds, and I'm on his.

I get up and want to apologize saying that I had a dream and there were three beds in the dream, so I thought it was alright, but decided not to because of how crazy that would've sounded. That's all I'll say about that even though the scene continues but shape-shifts into something else, including more misunderstanding between this stranger and my brother.

Another section I noted because it involved some woman that involved . . . some woman. I noted it just because of the woman aspect, tapping into the biological fact of human reality. I forget the lead up, but I think it had something to do with the award and something being written down by me or someone else in relation to it.

But then a woman who was there looked at it and discovered it was a code and she was able to break it. It was kind of like a bunch of words, but then if you read just the first letter of each word they make up a sentence. I tried to look at it but didn't see it.

But she said it was a message and that it was time for me to "get together" with Noel. Or Noelle, I suppose is a woman's name. The implication was a relationship, but the woman is a bit of a mystery since I think I had met her before, but she was in another village or another part of the campus. She wasn't easily accessible.

Finally, the last section is notable because I ended up at my uncle's place and it was nearing midnight and I was about to go out and he was under the impression I was leaving that night and he didn't know when we'd see each other again (themes from reality), but I hadn't prepared to leave so I would probably come back and leave in the morning.

And I don't feel like I was lucid dreaming at that point, but I remember thinking "this is the end of the dream, this is the end of the episode". All that up to that point was fiction, and now the credits were about to roll.

I think there was a brief feeling of defiance that this was a dream and I wasn't staying in it for the fucking credits and I do remember forcing myself out of the dream and waking up. I don't know why I didn't try to go back in, but I got up for good. Maybe because sometimes you have to know when it's over.

I don't think I can get through another year like 2012, but lord knows I'll try.

I'm not doing anything, and I'm doing it well. Happy enough that if I died today, I'd die happy.

I frequently counter being neurotic by telling myself, "What the fuck do I care what anyone else thinks?". It pretty much always works whenever I can recall it.

I'm trying to figure out how to put 2012 into perspective. Without boring the fuck out of myself. 2012 was different from the two previous years, but the two years prior were a progression that culminated into the habit of 2012. 

January 2010 was when I stopped working (quit my job at the Post), and that is a defining constant of the past three years, but 2012 was the year I basically lost interest in doing any and everything, and pretty much every single day, with minor variations, was the same idea for the entire year.

The routine was characterized by complete social avoidance. I met up with a total of three people. I also avoid my neighbors who live in the rooms on this same floor. I'm friendly saying 'hi' when I happen to run into one of them, but that's it.

In fact, my daily routine neurotically involved avoiding them by getting out of the apartment in the late afternoon before they started coming home from whatever they did during the day, presumably work. I'd come back after 9 o'clock or so as if I was coming home from . . . something; like somewhere I had to be with something to do. I know, neurotic.

There was some cycling later in the year because of the bike GPS I found, which is different from previous years when either 2010 or 2011 I stopped being able to drag me and my bike out of the apartment. Otherwise, very little sunlight was seen. I don't get direct sunlight in my room.

I constantly tried to turn out the lights and get to bed at or before 3 a.m. That rarely happened. Mostly I was pleased if I could accomplish that by 4. But usually couldn't.

Getting up was an entirely different and varied affair, often depending on insomnia. And my complete lack of interest in wanting to do anything made hours lying in bed listening to music completely reasonable. Even enjoyable.

I guess one affirmative development this past year was not only maintaining quiet sitting for 45 minutes after getting up for most of the year, not every day, but also adding a second 45 minute session afterwards, mostly concentrating on internal energies, inspired by tantra and Dzogchen teachings, which I've apparently been absorbing and integrating for years without even knowing it.

Otherwise, as I've noted before, all of my previous interests that used to identify me were pretty much completely gone. Listening to music has been a singular enjoyment, and a lot of time was spent on things Korea. The possible future life resonance thing.

If I'd been more diligent or efficient in dying like I was supposed to sometime during these past few years, my theory being I was heading for South Korea in my next life, and having failed to accomplish that goal, metaphysical or psychic resonances of that life-to-be have started to inexplicably appear in this life, as I've previously noted that I'd never been particularly interested in Korea despite plenty of exposure to the people and culture.

As for this year, my goal is still the same. Whether I'll accomplish it or not, I have no idea. I'm not going to sweat it. I'm boring the fuck out of myself.

Good lord, that last post was completely wrong. It just shows how primitive my worldview has become. It's more likely just a projection of my own mental state in the guise of sophomoric philosophilosizing.

If one must consider people's motivations for doing what they do, they're no doubt countless. While being simplistic, where is "Because I enjoy it" or "Because the sum benefits of it outweigh the inconveniences and annoyances and even the tragedies" in my thinking?

That said, it also re-affirms the feeling of dissipation of the relevance of my existence. These are just idiotic thoughts I have for most part now.

Looks like after 10 years, this year is the year I've posted the least. Kinda makes sense. Not sure what else there is to say. But it's not like there's nothing left to say. I'm still a thinking, breathing, metabolizing entity. I'm not dead yet. On some levels at least.

At the same time I feel my existence, or the relevance of my existence dissipating. Both. There's no point in saying anything. And there is no point in saying anything. But as long as I'm still here, might as well say whatever there is left, right?

I still go about my days. And they're not bereft of meaning worth communicating, although I might doubt the value of what I might communicate.

A ten year old blog, well, well, well.

Obviously there are likely things I posted through the years that I'd be embarrassed about now or might need to qualify or even consider outright wrong. Or not. I can't think of anything offhand that I think I was completely wrong about. Whatever.

Wrap things up? I don't know.

Maybe for starters, for the past two years at least, I've been doing basically the same thing every day. And every day I go out, I look at the people and I wonder "why are they doing what they are doing?", I try to imagine what their motivation is.

Oftentimes I imagine the answer is "because it's their programming". What they do is what they're programmed to do, and they're just running the program. Another possibly more condescending answer is "they don't know why and they don't ask, they don't know what else there is". Another answer is "*belch* why not?".

I'm not satisfied with any of these answers, except maybe the last. I've said this before, but I don't know why people do what they do, nor why I should adopt their motivation to do something, anything.

Life of Pi (Taiwan, 2012)

I have to say it straight out. Having just read the book recently and now seeing the film, the film is better than the book. I can't really fault the book, though, because the nature of the novel lends itself perfectly for a visual experience through film.

Many things described in the book require more imagination than I have to visualize them just reading the book. In the film, I don't have to put that effort into it and I can realize what the author was trying to describe.

It's hardly an action movie, but there is visceral motion in the story that Ang Lee makes the audience feel that couldn't be conveyed in just words in a novel, I thought. And Ang Lee's digital teams' visuals are absolutely stunning.

Finally, as I mentioned, in the book a character mentions it's a story that will "make you believe in God", and I didn't think the book delivered on that. The movie does. Perhaps not in a literal sense, but in a conceptual sense.

There's that big, albeit subtle, turn-around scene when it's like, "oh, that's what he means. Yea". I'm scientifically oriented at heart, and a running theme of this blog is to keep that orientation in check. Science is amazing in how it describes reality, but it is only amazing because it limits itself so strictly.

It doesn't investigate what it can't find evidence for. Scientific reality I accept. But I also accept a reality that science can't touch. And the question is, do you prefer a reality that is only scientifically describable, or a reality that has elements that science can't describe?

It is an intense film. I wouldn't preclude reading the book for all the detail that is fleshed out, although a lot of the stuff left out in the film was definitely not necessary in the film. I can't say if my appreciation is greater having read the book, and of course at this point I can't watch the film not having read the book.

I think I'm going to give this film 10 out of 10 tomatoes. 9 at the lowest.



Skyfall (2012, UK)

Oh, good grief, it's a James Bond film. Either you like James Bond films or you don't. They all have flaws or are hard-boiled or whatever.

Daniel Craig continues with the hard, gritty, no-nonsense James Bond that you're not necessarily supposed to like. And the franchise now is part of the 21st century action film genre where if you deliver big bangs for the buck, you've succeeded.

And that's what this film is. A visual amusement park ride of an action movie. It's hardly high cinema, has a lot of flaws, but it's a James Bond film. Nominal fresh 7 out of 10 tomatoes. It's no where near a total fail, but leaves a little to be desired.

I've read a bunch of rock autobiographies lately. I mentioned Ozzy's about a year ago. These autobiographies are like reading history for me; people who have contributed to the music background of my life and hearing their perspective in kind of their own voice. Aside from Ozzy, I've read Keith Richards' "Life", Sting's "Broken Music" and I'm currently reading Steven Tyler's "Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?".

Keith's book renewed interest in the Rolling Stones for me. I was fine with the Rolling Stones until the Tattoo You album, after which I think I felt the Stones lost their relevance and I thereafter didn't pay attention to them even when critics were reporting a "return to form" after the 80s ended. Growing up, I liked all the Stones repertoire played on radio and I bought a bunch of LPs from the 70s and wasn't blown away. A lot of filler on the albums, I thought. Looking back I probably just bought the wrong albums.

If you buy a band's great albums, you can then accept their lesser output. But if you buy their so-so albums first, you don't get the momentum to discover their best albums. So I bought Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock and Roll, Some Girls, Love You Live and of course Tattoo you and Emotional Rescue which were released when I was old enough to be buying albums. I didn't buy Exiles on Main Street, Beggar's Banquet, Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers. Anyone familiar with the Rolling Stones catalog can probably look at that list and see I missed the great, classic albums and understand why I failed to appreciate them through the rot of their 80s output, a period characterized by public feuding between Mick and Keith. Privately, they rarely even recorded in the studio at the same time, if ever.

It's no literary masterpiece. Actually, it's a total mess with the timeline scattered and many stories and anecdotes placed haphazardly out of context, but that's not the point. What makes it a great read is that it's Keith Fucking Richards, and if real rock and roll or the Rolling Stones are anywhere in your background, it's kind of a must-read. The thing is over 600 pages and if I end up back in the States, I'll probably buy it and read it again with their musical catalog cued up for when relevant songs and albums come up.

I didn't expect much from Sting's autobiography and I wasn't disappointed. The Police are legendary, but I was never impressed by Sting's personality or arrogance. I gave it to him that he was a brilliant songwriter, one of the great pioneer rock bassists who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Paul McCartney, and I credited him to be of above average intelligence.

I expected the book to be pretentious and full of himself. It was written after he was only 50 years old and no where near the end of his career nor when he was old enough to have the reflection or levity to be some definitive life statement. But the most surprising aspect of his book was how poorly written it was and the shocking use of high school-grade metaphor.

I think he even (pretentiously) admits that he was trying to be a writer, drawing on his own life as the source material for a literary work. And it's for most part, really, really boring. I figured out too late that most of the first half of the book should be mercilessly skimmed and ignored. Inconsequential anecdotes from some random person's early life (not unlike this blog, but I'm neither famous nor getting paid for this pure vanity project).

The only interesting part of the book for me is when he talks about the formation and early days of the Police and that back story, and that takes up a good part of the book, and then the story suddenly ends with the U.S. tour of Outlandos d'Amour, their first album. The bulk of the Police years are not mentioned, which indicates he had nothing to add to what had already been plumbed through the media through the years.

That book is the worst of the bunch for me, but I'm not a Sting fan. Just as he once emphasized, after an interviewer referred to "Police songs", that they weren't Police songs but his songs played by the Police, I'm a Police fan, not a Sting fan.

The only thing that made an impression on me was the idea that he is not a happy person. Fame and fortune hasn't brought him happiness and he admits that at the center of his being is an unhappy person that was probably formed in his early life. It doesn't change just by superficial success. If the inconsequential anecdotes of his early life are of any worth, I'd glean that his lifelong unhappiness was caused, perhaps innocently, by his parents, as well as modern, post-war life and economies. As a person, I also appreciate that certain depth to him and can hardly fault him that.

Steven Tyler's autobiography is easily the best and most entertaining of the bunch. Unlike Keith's book, it sounds like Tyler's voice, whereas if you hear Keith talk, the book sounds like nothing what would come out of his mouth. He doesn't talk as coherently as the voice in the book, and the book isn't all that coherent. 

But befitting the primary driving creative force of Aerosmith, Tyler is also a great writer and communicator of his ideas. He's funny and candid, doesn't hide his pubescent boy sense of humor that only a rock star is allowed to carry on the rest of his life, and tells it like it was, the good, the bad and the horny.

I'm not a huge Aerosmith fan. I liked their hits, thought a lot of their albums were filler, and like the Stones I ignored them after the 80s rot settled in with guitarists Joe Perry and Brad Whitford leaving the band for a few years. Unlike the Stones, I did notice when they came back with distinctive and worthy hits, but like the Stones I also considered them irrelevant in my youthful perspective, compared to new music that was coming out (alt rock which led to 90s rock and indie rock).

I was moved by Richards's book and I am being moved by Tyler's. Although Richards' perhaps more so because of the span of the legend of the Rolling Stones. There's a joie de vivre in a rampant, decadent rock and roll life, one that I may have dreamed about as a teenager; one that in retrospect I would never have wanted nor been able to handle. But I recognized that spark of what drives you when that spark is music. I guess I didn't want it enough. I didn't work hard enough at it. And though music remains the last love of my life now, inexplicably in superficial, corporate manufactured K-pop, I'm glad I have the bedrock of appreciation of something real.

Steven Tyler, on the other hand, I'm appreciating him as a human being. Someone down-to-earth, passionate and honest with himself, even regarding all his faults in his rock and roll past and lifestyle. I don't know how to explain it. He is a spiritual person and is in contact with the unseen life energy that gives our world meaning. Not enlightened in the sense of transcending it in recognition of a completely different "reality", he is still very much in contact with the perceptual world, but he sees the channel, the bridge.

He comes across to me as an exceptional human being.

I finished reading "The Life of Pi". I started reading it when I heard Ang Lee's (Taiwan) film adaptation of the book was going to be released soon; this week now. As opposed to reading books after seeing films, which is what I have been doing, I thought this was a good opportunity to read the book before seeing the film, which I haven't done in a long time.

I have a lot of faith in Ang Lee. There's not much he can do that would disappoint me. He's a bold filmmaker who isn't afraid of challenges. Wang Kar-Wai (Hong Kong) is another of my favorite filmmakers, but I wouldn't argue against anyone who accused him of staying within a certain artistic comfort zone. He does his thing and he does it amazingly well. Ang Lee hasn't stayed in any comfort zone and I like that about him.

"The Life of Pi" is a fictional work by a Canadian writer about an Indian teenager who finds himself stranded in the open sea in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. Within the story itself, I was struck by the main character's drive to survive and how completely opposite that is to my own mindset.

That dedication and will to overcome life-threatening challenges and survive in life is totally foreign to me. And is totally fine and refreshing but doesn't change an alternative perspective that would be thrilled and excited about being faced with a situation of abandon and futility.

Survive? Why? Just accept. I jest. Survival in itself has its own rush as a moment of living, although in the big picture of human lifetimes, survival still does not avert the inevitable.

But the story isn't a spiritual or existential metaphor; the being stranded out in the ocean in a life-threatening situation and coming to terms with needing that life-threatening situation to survive, no, no, no.

It's a good read, but shouldn't be mistaken as a great lesson about life. The book itself states plainly what it is commenting on, something a little more mundane and to be honest it was a little bit of let-down. As if I had been bamboozled.

It's certainly not a story that will "make you believe in god", as purported by one character. The religious background laid down has nothing to do with the main events of the story. I would go so far as to obliquely even say the main events of the story are . . . literary.

Wow, November.

I look ahead several months and see February. Or March. Am I really still going to be here in February or March 2013? Slogging on with no direction, purpose or motivation? I'm not positing that as a bad thing, just fact.

It seems inconceivable, but several months ago – could've been May, could've been June – I was looking ahead several months, and seeing November and asking, "am I really still going to be here in November?" Another chilly, rainy winter?

Rilly, I am.

I guess that's what I get for taking things one day at a time, which is what recovering alcoholics and addicts are supposed to do when they're trying to get their lives back on track. Not the most productive game plan if I'm angling for a risky, radical path towards an understanding that only mystics and crazies have historically entertained.

Whenever I pull back and look at the big picture with my lifelong aspiration, I feel I should be more proactive about it. Maybe when I can, I will.

I don't posit having no direction, purpose or motivation as a bad thing for me, because I don't want direction, purpose or motivation at this point. I think it's fair to say I don't want, need or have those things because never in any of my life plans did I expect to still be here at this age.

Anything before in my life that I strove for, was motivated by or desired still assumed that I would've been dead long before getting to my current age. It's no wonder that I'm still here and am pretty content doing absolutely nothing productive or involved.

Still being here is a bit of a bonus maybe to keep cultivating the meditations I've come across, but just because I'm still here doesn't mean I'm gonna get worked up about having no direction, purpose or motivation.

You know, it's strange. I saw The Return of the King a few months ago and then started reading the Lord of the Rings books. When I was reading The Return of the King, I couldn't recall any images depicted in the movie in what I was reading.

Now having re-watched the movie, it's pretty much there, with the same dark arts of adaptive screenwriting applied as in the previous films, including the added elements, others greatly diminished, and the one-dimensional, dumbed-down portrayal of characters.

Then I realized why I didn't remember any of the scenes even after seeing the movie at least a few times over the years, all on TV or DVD. While watching this time, at some point my attention started to turn to what I had been doing on the internet, and paying just enough attention to catch what seemed to be the important bits.

I think I did this every time I watched the movie before. With the first two movies, I watched them all the way through. I guess what I'm saying is ultimately, the third movie is . . . boring. And if I had seen it in a theater, I likely would have at some point taken out my phone and started looking at it.

I don't have a phone to look at, but you get the idea. And if I did, I probably really wouldn't do that because it seems to fall under the behaviors that are considered rude. I don't know, maybe it's accepted behavior. I haven't been to the movies in a long time, either.

Again, I don't know how anyone who hasn't read the book had any idea what was going on in the movie, particularly the third movie. Maybe there's the broad outline through which audiences just let themselves be led by the nose, and since they could follow that, they thought they got it and became fans because of the flashy CG visuals and shiny objects. Them bad, them good, fight!, good wins, destroy the ring! destroy evil. Yaaaaaay.

But when I watched it before, I obviously had no idea what was going on and who was who and why were they doing what they were doing, and I started to get bored and paid half attention to the film. Even after reading the book and recognizing who was who and why they were doing what they were doing, which is not necessarily clear in the film, it got boring.

I don't know. I've been saying keep the films and book separate, they're different beasts. The book is legend among its certain audience, the films are historically epic just from the scope of the thing, and I'm not going to retract that, but I just have to note that every time I watched The Return of the King, apparently I got bored.

Oh my, did I really say that The Two Towers movie was faithful to the book?! Well, the reason why I said that was while reading the book, I could visualize all the scenes as presented in the movie. But the movie is veeeeery different from the book except the main plot points and general direction.

What I don't understand is why there is such a huge following for the movies. Did everyone read the book? If they didn't read the book and are just fans of the movie, how the hell did they understand who everyone was and their roles and relationships? You only get that from the book.

But if they read the book, how are they such huge fans of the movies when the movies take such liberties in changing the themes and feel of the book which give the book its charm. Once you read the book, you watch the movies and notice what's left out (but at least you know who everyone is).

I opined that The Two Towers was the worst of the trilogy, not to imply it was bad, but I stand by that. The screenplay is the weakest, and all the people and the parties are muddled unless you read the book. And if you read the book, again it's the dark arts of adaptive screenwriting that has them drop a single line to identify something that was fully explained in the book and have an audience member remember it.

What's inexplicable to me is that many of the changes and added scenes weren't necessary or were specious and came at the cost of keeping scenes from the book that would have better served the story. Faramir is kind of a jerk to the Hobbits in the movie, but he's a lionheart from the start in the book. He's more worthy than Boromir in the book, while he's exactly the same as him in the movie.

But again I remind myself they are different beasts. I'm purposely making comparisons because that's what I set out to do when I decided to read the book.

I think The Return of the King will be airing again next week. Truth to tell, when I was reading the book, I remembered very little from the movie aside from maybe the spider and the Mt. Doom scene. So I think a lot was changed in that movie, too.

Another summer gone. Still alive. I noticed this year how quickly summer ended in Taiwan. I don't know if I noticed it before.

Summer for me in Taipei is when the thermometers in my apartment read 88-89 degrees, regardless of what it is outside. Air conditioning gets used, usually timed for an hour at a time, and otherwise the fan is on all the time, and is on all night. Showers are cold.

Summer ended when thermometers started reading 83 degrees. No more air conditioning, but still electric fan action, but not all the time. Timer turns it off after I turn off the lights to go to sleep. Showers are still basically cold, but with some hot water to take off the edge.

A typhoon is just brushing the eastern edge of Taiwan, not expected to hit, but has brought clouds, rain and a stiff wind, adding to the feel that summer's over. It's a super-typhoon. A few days ago when it was in the Philippines, the winds were blowing precipitation down on mostly sunny days in Taipei.

It perplexes me that I'm still alive, striving along with no reason to.

I read the entire Lord of the Rings this summer. I read it because I haven't found any new "meaningful" reads, i.e. relevant to my existential situation, and I'm just killing time now. I read it because HBO aired all three films over the course of three nights and I wondered how different the films were from the books and I recalled seeing them in the public library.

There are, indeed, significant differences in the first and third parts, but the second part, The Two Towers, is pretty faithful. Oddly, The Two Towers, in my opinion, was the worst of the films. Muddled and scattered, but works fine in written form. Go fig.

Since finishing the book, only the first film, Fellowship of the Ring, has been aired again and I watched it again, and I realized how clever the dark arts of adaptive screenwriting is. Mind you, I think the films are instant classics just because of the scope of the damn thing. And the books are very long-winded with paragraph upon paragraph of descriptions of Middle Earth geography and meals and lore that were kinda lost on me.

But the screenwriters were ingenious in sticking in bits that were described at length in the book as mere tidbits that only a geek who lives and breathes Lord of the Rings or someone who just read the book would notice. It's out of necessity, I know. Otherwise the films would be impossibly long. Large swaths are left out of the films, but when possible, if the screenwriters were able to insert some tiny detail, they did.

I'm waiting for HBO to air The Two Towers and The Return of the King again. The third part was the least familiar when I was reading the book, whereas whenever I hit a portion of the first two parts that was covered in the movies, the visuals from the movie immediately took over. That's how effective the movie visuals were.

I didn't note how long it took to finish reading the book, but it was a pretty long ass time. Just a few hours a day in the library. And, mind you, the book and the films are better considered different entities. The films are sumptuous and grand and epic, but are no replacement for reading the book.

After Lord of the Rings, it also occurred to me to read The DaVinci Code because that also aired on TV, and I thought if scholars on the gnostic gospels are mentioning it, I should check out what this popular novel says about them. I don't know why, but I've been surprised that even many of my college peers have no idea what the gnostic gospels are.

I thought maybe that work of fiction could be a fun introduction to the topic, but . . . no. First of all, the film is a verbatim adaptation of the book. If you saw the film, you don't need to read the book, if you read the book, you don't need to see the film. And simply put, the addressing of the gnostic gospels is not at all scholarly, but appropriate for a thriller.

And that's what I did this summer.

Westward bikeways (Erchong)

Running out of steam on this getting-back-into-cycling-thing-because-now-I-have-a-GPS. I've started shying away from climbs (which was the thrill of cycling when I first started), ergo this quick and completely flat bikeway ride.

And after this ride, I won't ride for nearly three weeks despite numerous perfect days for riding, and by the time I go for another ride, summer will be officially over and it will show in the weather and temperatures. A typhoon will also stymie any attempt to ride through that third week.

Perfect weather days, I plan to ride, but then I just can't bring myself to drag my ass and my bike's ass out of the apartment.

I've noticed that these Garmin maps don't always load properly on the first try and require reloading to appear. The mildly perplexing part of that is that when they don't load properly, the default map is Manhattan, which includes my childhood stomping grounds in New Jersey, including Fort Lee.

It's a map that's immediately recognizable and as my childhood stomping grounds, has a hint of "home". Certainly more home than any map here in Taiwan.

I recently re-bought the Robert Thurman translation of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. There are four translations. The first I think is marred by Western-centric chauvinism, the second by Francesca Fremantle includes an incredible introduction by Chogyam Trungpa, Thurman's is the third and is very scholarly and professor-ly (he writes in an open-minded way, sometimes muddled, that really encourages "getting" the ideas from one's own point of view), and the fourth one is currently the most complete and comprehensive translation of the available cycle of literature.

I think I first picked up a used copy of this translation at some bookstore on 16th St. in San Francisco some 9 or 10 years ago. It was my introduction to Tibetan thought and methodology.

Robert Thurman ordained as a novice monk in the 60s, but before fully ordaining, he returned his robes (not an uncommon occurrence) and returned to the States and became a scholar on Tibet; professor of Tibetan Studies at Columbia University and founder of Tibet House, based in Manhattan. Father to Uma.

It was pretty mind-blowing back then and I marked up that book real good. I gave that copy to my cousin in 2004 or 2005. The last I heard, she hadn't read it and I'm predicting she won't until I die or disappear, presumed gone for good.

It's not quite as mind-blowing this time around as the ideas are pretty standard Dzogchen teachings, which I've repeatedly been exposed to through the years. I've also gotten more acquainted with Robert Thurman's distinct style, and I'm reading that more in the book now. Although there's still a lot to appreciate, there's very little I'm marking this time around.

There is an aspect I've been delving into that makes re-reading it now very timely. I don't always like Robert Thurman's choice of terminology, but there are concepts that I've been exploring that are clearly the same as what he explicates in his book.

The Tibetan methodology on death studies I might describe as personal scientific. It has been referred to as "science of the mind", but I don't think many of the insights can't be objectively verified scientifically. They can, however, be subjectively verified, following the methodology, but even as such, they cannot be dogmatically insisted upon as being some truth. It's an aspect of faith that instructs, "go figure it out yourself".

Another book I've recently read and found illuminating is the Dalai Lama's Advice on Dying and Living a Better Life. Tibetan methodology on death sciences focuses intently on the nature of consciousness and meditation on it.

On the most basic level, it's important to separate gross consciousness, which is the result of our physical senses feeding information to our brain which processes the information to form what we call consciousness, from suggestions that other processes are involved which define our being and are important.

When we die, those physical senses fail and that gross consciousness which is the result of our senses becomes irrelevant. And it might be the other processes, perhaps described as inner winds or subtle winds, that carry our karma through to whatever's next for each individual.

It's suggested that our adherence to gross consciousness is the deepest form of karma there is. It's what keeps us in the cycle of life, death and rebirth because it has become habit to live according to these perceptions which create what we call consciousness and reality.

As Robert Thurman puts it: The "presence-habit" is the deepest level of misknowing conceptualization, which maintains the sense of "being here now" as something or someone finite . . . supporting addictive and objective instincts of self-preservation, and blocking awareness of the primal bliss-wisdom indivisible of the eternal reality of enlightenment.

So what else is there? I don't know if the Dalai Lama used the phrase, but the phrase I got out of his book was "energy body". Thurman mentions a "magic body" which might be the same thing, although that's an example of his terminology that I don't like. There's nothing "magic" or magical about it.

But it suggests we're not just living corpses. Take away the senses that we identify as providing our living aspect and we become corpses. There's more to our consciousness than what we grossly perceive through our senses. There's a lot going on with our bodies that we can't perceive through our senses and this comprises an "energy" body that carries subtle "winds" of our being that are just as important as sight, sound, touch, smell and taste.

On a physiological level, there's an analogy with electrical impulses of our nervous system, neurons firing in our brains, cellular formation, blood creation in bone marrow, skin dying, hair growing, etc., etc. It includes our heart beating and digestion and the functions of our major organs. We're not consciously aware of these things, but they are happening, and they are of great importance to our being alive.

The meditation starts with these functions, realizing them or imagining them or imagining being conscious of them, even though we don't know the particulars of what they are doing at any given moment.

But the energy body also contains emotions and impulse thoughts, intuitive thought and instinctive reactions. Humor is an example of one of these energy elements. As well as desire and hostility. Focusing on different elements can help different people start to be aware of and identify this "energy body" and the winds that carry aspects of our being we're otherwise unaware of or don't care about.

This is just the starting point. And there's a whole nother aspect of investigating it which involves sexual energies. It's something I'm certainly unwilling to go into. I don't think there's anything written down in terms of specific teachings because it can't be taught.

It might be within a category of intuition meditation where individuals have to figure it out themselves because any external teaching is suspect of being perverse or prurient. You can only learn it when you're ready, and when you're ready, you'll figure it out yourself, and no one else can know if you're ready and have the proper discipline to separate instinctive, animalistic sexual urge and lust from transcendent, "divine", sexually instigated understanding and wisdom. Wisdom not derived from consciousness based on our gross senses.

I've said too much already, meaning I've displayed too much of my ignorance already. Although Thurman's use of terminology such as "primal bliss-wisdom" and "orgasmic ecstasy" to describe the experience is specifically chosen and not unrelated to this, I shouldn't wonder.

I got together with an acquaintance today. I may have mentioned her before, her name is Tako and she was a co-worker from the China Post several years back. I never attributed much to our acquaintance, although we did converse a bit, even a little bit after our time at the newspaper, and seemed to have some bit of a connection.

Friend? No. Nothing elevated our interactions to the point of being able to call it friendship, despite having shared a lot, including a lot of music.

For the past year, she has been in Australia. Before she left for Australia, she asked if we could meet up. I declined. We're not in such constant contact that I was willing to meet up just to say goodbye, and I told her as much.

If our acquaintance was of any meaning, then we would have been meeting up regularly anyway. I would have known she was thinking of going to Australia! We hadn't been, so if she suddenly wanted to meet up because she was about to leave, fuck that. It's not worth my time or effort. I told her I'd welcome her when she came back.

After a year, she came back for a visit and asked if we could meet, and I expressed that I would not miss an opportunity to meet with her. So we met.

Meeting up with her affirmed any connection we had during our conversations before. She's a special person and I gave as good as advice as I could on life. Is she a friend? No. We met up, we parted and went our separate ways and she won't be occupying any mental space. If I never heard from her again, it wouldn't make any difference.

We spoke freely about anything that occurred to us, and one topic was about my penchant to walk away from any relationship I had; a self-destructive behavior that I don't recommend to anyone who wants to do anything with their lives, and I told her so. She asked me, as a request, not to walk away from her, and my response was easy. No.

My explanation was that I knew myself too well to not be able to promise that, but the truth is, despite whatever connection we seemed to be making, she doesn't come anywhere close to what I have considered a significant friend. If I made a list of the important people in my life, it would be an insult to the other people on the list, from my perspective and reckoning, to include her on it.

Xindian->Rt. 110->Dahan River east bank

This was a revisit of a ride that I used to do when I lived in Xindian, south of Taipei. Now I live in east Taipei, and the rides I discovered while I lived in Xindian require the extra ride of going to south of Taipei, so I haven't done any of them in quite some while.

Although I knew this ride could be of considerable distance, I knew this ride didn't have any challenging climbs. As it turned out, at 35 miles, it wasn't even of considerable distance, although there were a couple of ways I could've extended it well beyond 40 miles.

This ride had 3 sections: the urban ride through Taipei and down through Xindian, then the significant portion of the ride on route 110, which is pretty rural and contains the only modest climb, and then the return home which is almost all on riverside bikeways.

Towards the beginning of the route 110 section, I caught up and passed another cyclist who was decked out in full cycling gear, riding a fancy bike. I wasn't trying to be dominant or drop him, I was simply riding faster than him at that point.

It didn't bother me when he got on my wheel and got in my draft. Sadly, many Taiwanese riders I've encountered aren't aware of cooperative drafting and their responses to me drafting them have been pretty variable and some silly.

Basically drafting is when you ride right behind someone else. The person in front is doing all the work of cutting through the air, and the person behind benefits from being in the slipstream and not using as much energy to maintain a certain speed.

In professional cycling, a person takes a turn in front and then peels off and goes to the back to let someone else take a turn. In hobbyist road cycling among strangers, it's not that organized or certain that they have the concept, and if someone gets on someone else's wheel, instead of the person in front peeling off, the person behind will push forward to let the person in front know they are taking a turn.

And with this guy, I thought I found someone who knew drafting etiquette; he got on my wheel and then pulled in front to take a turn, then I pulled in front to take a turn, but then he pulled in front on a hill and dropped me. He even looked back to see if I was going to challenge him. Fuck no, you keep your Tour de France fantasy, I'm too old for this shit.

I dunno. Did he think it was some competition? I sure didn't and didn't give a crap. Although the fact that I couldn't keep up with him emphasized the fact that I am old and I've gotten seriously weak, and should be wondering how long I'm going to keep this charade up just because the market has produced the bike GPS device I wish had existed more than 10 years ago.

It's all good and fine to do the best one can in tackling mindfulness issues, one of mine being negativity, with one push-button issue of (karmic) violence and aggression. I'm generally not violent or aggressive in any way. Even when I feel an instance of anger flare up, I'm quick to extinguish it.

That instance of anger is important and I'll come back to it, but as to violence and aggression, I'm wary about this part of my mindstream that runs through scenarios where I encounter a confrontational situation where I take offense and lose any mindfulness or equilibrium and go ape shit on the other person.

Part of me says not to worry about it, it will never manifest, I'll never act on it. But then yesterday morning I had a dream where I did act on it. I don't remember specifics of the dream except that a situation arose, there was a sense of either offense or threat, and I went all out and attacked with the intention to destroy.

I don't remember the result, except that I came out fine, and that the person was somewhat reminiscent of someone I knew in my first year of college. That person was someone I had no problem with and totally respected.

She was an upperclassman, a bass player and a bit of a bull dyke. I think she was an East Asian Studies major and spoke Japanese, so maybe she was a bit of a lesbian rice queen. No problem there. And in reality she could've kicked my ass, as I think she also had some military experience in her background. No idea there.

The point about the dream, and the rest of it was also filled with my own fear and being threatened, is that it was scary because it establishes that violent and aggressive nature in my karma in a definitive way. The way I see it is that as it manifested in a dream, it was proven that it is something real in my subconscious that I have to worry about and deal with.

That flaky mindfulness thing about "I'll do the best I can" is not good enough. And I think this may be an important point about enlightenment, where serious transformation must be faced and achieved. Where doing the best you can is, quite frankly, easy. How about doing what you can't. Open your eyes and don't see. I can't. Well, do it.

I'm led to believe my karma has issues of violence and aggression, and it's rooted in anger. I've gotten good at clamping down on anger flaring up. As soon as I encounter a situation where I react in even the mildest offense of "What the hell are you doing?", I shut it down.

That's no reason to pat myself on the back. That may be doing the best I can. The impossible is wiping out any mote of anger flaring up at all, and that's what needs to be done in the scan of my perception of reality. Wipe out that karma completely. How do you wipe out karma that was created by someone else (previous life/lives)?!

It has become instinctual and immediate. It is part of my fabric. How do I not get angry for even a microsecond, how do I not react? But it has to be done no matter how impossible it seems. That's what may be considered transformational.

泰安路 (Taian Road, 1,473 ft.), Cidu

Another example of the advantage of having GPS on a bike. I was planning on doing a tried and true ride out to Ruifang and Taiwan's east coast and looping back through Keelung and heading home. I recall the ride being long, but with only a little climbing.

But while heading out to Ruifang, I came across a road that had always intrigued me and made me wonder if there was anywhere worth riding. There was a bunch of signage at the intersection that led under a railroad overpass that made me think it was a tourist destination.

So I checked the GPS, found that it was a climb, but it was an out and back road. It didn't go anywhere. I decided to abandon the original ride and do the climb, knowing it was out and back, and having done an unplanned climb, I could just go home with a satisfactory ride.

The climbs I've been doing have been increasing little by little. I'm still convinced I'm cooked on climbs, due to age and/or alcohol. I just can't do them like I used to. I have yet to break either a 2,000 foot climb or 2,000 feet of accumulated climbing.

And there are limitations to the GPS because of human error. I found a certain bridge closed on my return home, and in plotting an alternate route to bypass the bridge, I didn't follow what looked on the map to be the most direct way to get back on the road to Taipei and went on what was familiar and "made sense" and ended up taking the long way just to backtrack to the exact opposite side of that closed bridge. I ended up riding several more miles than I had to, albeit the shorter way would've been through car and truck-choked urban streets of Xizhi.

Shortening miles isn't necessarily the point of rides or GPS, but sometimes it comes in handy when running out of fuel or time.