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.

I Dream of Jinn

So I was reading an article in National Geographic magazine. Something about the Silk Road. Something about China developing a modern "Silk Road". Something about the reporter/writer traveling it on foot. It was a casual read, killing time, being lazy not reading things of real interest. The Silk Road is of casual interest to me for what it represents and has to say about human development; anthropology and archaeology. Basically I'm saying I have no concrete context for writing this.

But I came across this passage:

In "The Exhaustive Treatise on Shadows", central Asian polymath Al-Biruni observed that jinn were "the impure parts of the erring souls, after they have been separated from their bodies, who [the souls] are prevented from reaching their primal origin, because they did not find the knowledge of the truth, but were living in confusion and stupefaction."

and a little later this:

What to do if approached by jinn on the Silk Road: "No matter what it does, no matter how frightening it is, don't panic or show emotion. Just sit down on a rock and wait. It will lose interest. It will go away".

Jinn is the origin of the word "genie", so can be broadly understood to be supernatural in nature. Even superstitious, fine. Possible phenomena beyond normal human perception, I would put it.

The author projected some of his ideas of jinn in his writing, noting certain circumstances and wondering if they were jinn at work. In another encounter mentioning that he was likely the jinn in that situation. He was interpreting jinn in his own way that he could understand, and he was open-minded about them.

"Impure parts of erring souls" I don't read as judgments but descriptions. The parts that are impure aren't necessarily good or bad, the souls that have erred aren't necessarily good or bad. They are just descriptively impure or erring, as well as possibly actually being either.

"Primal origin" is from whence we came and . . . whernce we go (the word I believe you're looking for is "whither", you idiot. -ed.). I think the more sophisticated understanding is that they are the same place or state. The more ridiculous understanding is that we come from our parents bumping uglies and go to places called heaven or hell based on external judgment of our behavior.

The Buddhist-based description that I'm familiar with suggests the primal origin is a primordial energy state that's part of the cycle of reincarnation. A well-defined and self-identified drop of water falls into the sea and disappears until natural process create another drop of water out of the same molecules. A different drop of water made of the same stuff. Reincarnation is literally the recycling of souls. It's very green.

"Knowledge of the truth" a Buddhist might interpret is the truth of impermanence, an extension perhaps of one of its four noble truths of suffering. It's an easy lesson because we all ultimately experience it in death. When we die there is no greater expression that nothing stays the same, everything changes. But there are people whose attachments are so strong that they try to defy death and cling to some aspect of their life so much that they miss the lesson, even as they die.

"Living in confusion and stupefaction" is the way they lived their lives or their karma that preconditioned them to not be able to come to terms with death and the impermanence it reveals. That aspect of them gets stuck here as jinn. Basically ghosts.

"No matter how frightening it is, don't panic or show emotion" can be cut and pasted into parts of the Tibetan Book of the Dead and no one would even notice. In fact that's exactly what it says about the death bardos. I extend that to the living bardos. Except where large spiders are involved.

"Just sit down on a rock", well that's just meditation. "It will lose interest. It will go away".

That's great advice, I'm gonna start doing that. When negativity starts to overwhelm and I let myself get annoyed and aggravated by other people, I'm just gonna stop, get out of anyone's way and wait until my bad attitude loses interest and goes away. Jinn, ghosts, in us, out of us, as us. Discuss.

The book I mentioned before about the Armenian genocide is The Hundred Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey (2016). I peeked at it at the library because of the Armenia mention, still fresh in my mind from reading about World War I. Turns out it was exactly kind of what I would be looking for in wanting to know more about the Armenian genocide, often treated as a side note.

The book is written by the granddaughter of a survivor of the genocide who had committed his experience to writing in hopes that the story would not be forgotten. The book also tells her own story of discovering her family history and re-tracing her grandfather's path during the genocide, which started in 1915 and continued even after the war's end and her grandfather's escape.

The book goes back and forth between the past and present, not unlike how Godfather 2 went back and forth from Michael's main story and Vito Corleone's past story. It's a narrative gimmick which may not be for everyone but I was sympathetic to it. People telling personal stories delving into their past can be stories unto themselves, and there is a lot to be taken from the author's own odyssey. The hundred years in the title connects her with her grandfather, and the odyssey applies to both as well.

The book apparently took a long time to write, about 10 years of research and travel. Her own journey was likely the easier part as it is a first-hand account. For her grandfather's story, she needed his memoir to be translated for her, and then further research and historical corroboration to put it in context and flesh it out into a broader context and experience.

She doesn't include a translation of the memoir as a primary source even in appendix. Her presentation of his story is an interpretation and possibly enhancement, even embellishment, using whatever artistic or narrative license that was her prerogative. It's enough that her mother was a catalyst and involved in the endeavor to accept that the final product is a reasonably accurate representation of what happened.

I was riveted by the book. I even thought that maybe it might be worthy of being made into a movie. Lord knows people should know about the Armenian genocide, especially since the Turks continue to deny or try to justify it. As the book points out, you can't even mention it in Turkey under the current administration without great personal risk. In a relatively recent episode of Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown" in Turkey, he asks questions of people he knows from past visits, and whereas they talked freely before, this time they politely plainly stated that they preferred not to respond to particular questions. The official Turkish denial of the genocide is ostensibly among the reasons the EU won't even consider admitting Turkey as a member.

Personally, it was a meditation on suffering and the human capacity to endure. Not me, mind you, any upset to my world and I'd be among the first to die; natural selection. Unless we're talking about my capacity to endure the pointless banality of my life. As to suffering it made me very grateful for my circumstances and how much I don't have to complain about. Like I'm not going to complain about the cold, look at what he went through! Cold? Bring it on, I'm not even going to wear a jacket.

(One last aside on the Armenian genocide. People have linked the genocide as having inspired Hitler's final solution with his quote on the lines of, "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?" It's possible that when he decided to eradicate the Jewish population from Europe, his inspiration was the Turks, but a little internet fact-checking, because the internet never lies, shows that quote was made in regard to Poland at the start of WWII. 

Still, though, while reading the book, there are many mentions of Germans observing the genocide occurring and being disturbed, but unwilling to interfere since the Ottomans were their allies. I kept imagining the Germans thinking, "How inefficient, ve Germans can surely do a better job".)

Future life resonance. I've been eating Korean food almost every day since about the beginning of December. I have just about every Korean restaurant within a two miles radius mapped out in my head and continue to note and target the few that I've missed.

Truth to tell, I've never been this way about Korean food. Not like I am with Mexican or Italian. Two of the Korean restaurants were around when I first moved to this neighborhood almost 10 years ago and quite honestly I went years without going to either.

Now, I inexplicably melt at how good they all are. My knowledge and palette for Korean food isn't that sophisticated and I end up ordering the same things, but it demonstrates what I've heard from Korean food shows about local cuisines all around Korea being different. It's reflected in restaurants in Taiwan. You can order bibimbap at 12 different restaurants, and they'll all be different.

There are Korean restaurants who now recognize me as a loyal regular, coming in reliably at least every week or other, but they don't know they're just one of a veritable revolving door of Korean restaurants who all recognize me as a loyal regular. I feel like a cheap whore. Well, the opposite. I'm a cheap Korean restaurant John.

It confounds me. You eat so much of any cuisine, you're gonna get tired of it. And it's not happening with a cuisine towards which I've never shown any particular affinity. That's why I attribute it to a future life resonance. It's like "where is this coming from?".

Also since the beginning of December have been winter weather patterns; this year they've fluctuated quite a lot. When it got really cold right from the start, I feared it was going to be a long winter. Previous years' temperatures were mild until late January. But so far this season there have been very nice short stretches of warm temperatures in the 70s. Short stretches of rain, some hard, but not constant rain like in previous years. And stretches of low to mid-50s, brittle cold in a country where homes don't have heating. Very variable, not at all brutal. Yet.

Oh, you know, there may have been a trigger for the Korean food frenzy. Several months ago I watched a "behind the scenes" video of a rookie K-pop girl group and they were eating throughout it. At the very end, Lucy lifts the yellow box and I could see the name on it, Bobby Box. Just for shits and giggles, I searched it on google maps because I'm a google maps geek. I expected locations in Korea, but was surprised to get a hit in Taipei! I went there the very next day and have been going there once or twice a week since.



There's this thing in Korea called 'mukbang' (Japan too, I think, but I don't know what they call it) which are videos of people eating. They're popular because apparently it's very pleasing to watch people enjoying good food. I can't argue with that. This video qualifies as mukbang.

My initial reaction to Jonghyun's suicide may have been typical and normative, but those weren't the first thoughts I had about it. He died in the evening. Taiwan is an hour behind Korea, so I read the news after I got home for the evening, very soon after it broke in Korea. My first independent thought was a sadness-tinged, "He won't be going to sleep in his own bed tonight".

As news broke and sent shockwaves through the K-pop world in Korea and beyond, he was probably already lying in a hospital morgue covered with a sheet, not yet cold, rigor mortis yet to set in. No, he wouldn't be climbing into his own bed tonight with whatever he did and accomplished that day, with whatever demons he carried, with tomorrow's schedules and responsibilities still a night's sleep away.

He won't be going to sleep in his own bed tonight, like I will.

There's this word that has a common meaning, but my exposure to it is in the psychiatric field as, I think, a term of art. Ideation. All it means is the creation of an idea, really just a fancy, fairly useless word for thinking, but in regard to suicide it signifies a whole envisioning and fulfillment of the act. Ideation is a necessary step towards suicide.

A fundamental flaw in my ideation is that there isn't any not crawling into bed at night. Getting to bed every night has been an unconscious existential ordeal in its own way for I don't know how long. It only appears as such when I look hard at it. Every day the conveyor belt of getting from day to day culminates in going to sleep in my own bed every night.

The conveyor belt is a list of useless things I'll plan to do any day, blocks of time when I'll uselessly go where to uselessly do what, rinse and repeat, ultimately with the ideation of my bed at the end of the day. It doesn't serve committing suicide very well, does it? It just perpetuates uselessness.

I need to get rid of the idea of the conveyor belt even as I'm carried along on it. No idea how, that was reasonably zen. I have to get it out of my mind that crawling into my own bed as an ideated goal is necessarily desirable. At the root of the problem is being a creature of habit as long as things aren't going wrong. Doing the same things day after day because they're tried, true and safe. That's complacency. There is no value in that. I'm stuck in it.

It's done. It's over. It's dead. Finally.

It was a spider the size of which warrants burning the place down if in the U.S. How big? If I spread out my fingers and then clench the middle knuckles, that's about how big. Now I don't have huge hands, but never mind, if you're comparing the size of a spider to your hand, it's fucking big. An Australian might have thought it cute ("You call that a spider, mate? 'At's more like a pet, give it a name" Sorry, my Australian accent is terrible. I hope yours in your head is better).

Taiwan? I haven't heard of anything this big showing up in anyone's home, but I have seen larger in the great outdoors on hikes and thought, "I'd hate to find one of those in my room". How does a spider that size even get around in the city? Uber? And if they can get around in the city, why have I never seen one outside. Then it somehow just shows up in my apartment?

It was the stuff of nightmares or horror films. It made its first appearance back in August, more than four months ago. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I turned the corner and could see into the bathroom with the faint ambient light coming from out the window, I noticed the dark splotch on the floor that wasn't supposed to be there.

Quickly assessing it was some sort of bug, I sucked it up that I would just have to deal with it. I didn't fetch my glasses because . . . why? I didn't want a clear look at whatever it was I was likely going to have to squash. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door to keep it from escaping, entering the field of battle. Then the fucking thing took off! Holy shit, it was fast. I realized it was a spider and faster'n you could yell "fuck me in the ass!" it had scampered a bit up the wall and back down and out of the bathroom through the crack at the bottom of the door. I threw open the door freaked out at how fast it moved.

It disappeared behind the large cabinets that line one wall of my apartment. There was nothing I could do, it was safe there. I probably waited a bit to see if it might come out but knew it probably wouldn't. It ran scared and was going to stay where it was safe. Aside from lightning speed, things I noted before peeing and going back to bed include: 1) It had excellent eyesight; 2) It's strongest instinct was fear; 3) Did I mention it was fucking fast?

Yea, I went back to sleep. Long time ago, lesser spiders in the room would've kept me awake. But I've actively worked on minimizing irrational fears such as those of spiders, and there was no point in literally losing sleep about a situation where I couldn't do anything.

Thing is, I knew it was there. I knew it wasn't just going to disappear, find its own way out. I knew it was still there when I woke up, and over the course of weeks that fact became manifest.

Furniture lines that wall of my apartment. Three large closet cabinets with my desk and a steel frame shelf, where the wall behind it can be seen, between them. The spider could move freely out of sight under and behind the furniture. If it moved on the wall behind the shelf, I could see it but there are too many obstructions to do anything except note it and shudder.

It did make appearances over the course of weeks. I kept a sneaker handy to hurl at it if I got the chance, and once did but more to scare it. I knew there was no chance of hitting it and there's still a sneaker mark on the wall. The miracle was that I didn't create my own disaster by knocking a bunch of shit over, which with my luck I would've expected to happen. There were several ghost appearances where I swore I saw it in dim light but wasn't 100% certain. 99% when it was right under me while at my desk and ran back under the closet. 1% chance it was my imagination.

It stopped making appearances sometime in October. I optimistically hoped it had escaped, but knew that was unlikely. More realistically it had starved to death. I mean, what was it eating? I continued to terrorize myself over it and stayed vigilant; frequent visual room scans, not only left and right but up and down, especially going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

It met its sad end tonight after over two months without a sighting. I came home, turned on the lights, took my shoes off and did a room scan (that's something I routinely do after coming home, not because of the spider. I don't know what's my childhood trauma that justifies being so paranoid. I just don't like surprises and anything can happen in this world). Then I turned around and there it was on the wall right by the door.

Of course I hesitated. I froze. That gave it a chance to get behind the open closet door against the wall by the door. Note that I saw it and that it hadn't bolted. It was probably a good 15 seconds from when I entered the room and spotted it and it was just sitting on the wall. As scary and huge as it still looked, this thing was tired and likely emaciated. I kicked at the closet door but knew the gap to the wall was enough not to crush it.

I picked up a sneaker I had just taken off and pulled the door away from the wall and there it still was. It hadn't run to safety in the gap between the closet and wall. I took a thwack at it and missed and it reacted but didn't run. I followed up with a solid bonk and that knocked it wounded off the wall and to the ground. The coup de grace was easy and undramatic. You don't want to squash something that big. Kill it with blows. Blunt force trauma. And I could because it was already almost starved to death. If it was healthy and vital, any shot I might have would've been a frenzied, scream-like-a-girl, splatter-force blow and the clean-up would be even more disgusting and traumatic.

I did feel bad for it. Partly because of a book I had just finished at the library about the Armenian Genocide. When I first struck and missed the spider, it didn't run; likely too tired, too incapacitated for instincts to fully kick in, not unlike the starved, skeletal Armenians who were force marched by the Turks into the Syrian desert to their deaths. With the second blow it seemed to be like "why are you doing this to me?", not unlike when the Turks rounded up Armenian men and marched them away from their homes and villages and massacred them without mercy. Could I show it no mercy? At least now I know it's gone. That's the way it had to go. That's not how the Turks felt about the mass murder of Armenians after the WWI effort, allied with the Germans, failed. If I was a Turk, I'd be like "Spider? What spider? It was coming right at me" and then gone on killing spiders for the next five years.

Postmortem, I did as the Australian in my head said and named it Gonzalez. Speedy Gonzalez.

Had this facebook messenger exchange with my cousin Audrey over the course of a few days:

Audrey: Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Me: You too, and the kids! But we're not Christian. And we celebrate Lunar New Year and that's not for a month.
Audrey: You celebrate no holiday.
Me: I have nothing to celebrate.
Audrey: Celebrate that you are still here. (emphasis mine)

Gob-smacked. Wow, was that a stunner. Celebrate that I'm still here? Why? Who would say that to me? I just can't get my mind around anyone saying that to me whether they know me better or not. OK, it's more understandable from someone who doesn't, but from my cousin it near took my legs out from under me.

It's hard to describe the feeling. Wanting to punch her in the face? No that's unimaginable. Punch someone else in the face? Yea, something like that. Undirected aggression without anger. I almost felt insulted. So insulted that it almost amused me. Like I said, hard to describe. Disgust in there, too, a bit. Bitter, bad taste in my mouth. Celebrate that I'm still here. *smack* *smack* *bleah*

I'm still sifting through the layers of possible meaning and reason. Was she being characteristically tone deaf about an issue that should be lightly trod or was she  joking? This is the mind of a suicide, folks (often frustratingly unreadable, double entendre intended).

My cousin and I do that simple verbal sparring thing where some nonsense is said that's sort of a challenge to the other how to respond. That's what my first response was, not that I meant it to be. So then her reply follows in that same vein and is also a joke and a challenge. My reply as well, with glib hyperbole and faux dark tones that "people who know me" might wonder if I was being half serious and roll their eyes and ignore it as a result.

So was her last line joking or earnest? Logic suggests it's a joke. And if it was a challenge of 'let's see how you respond to this', she clearly won. I haven't responded. If it were a face-to-face exchange, and more clearly joking around, I likewise would have lost with no way to respond. And that's the point of the game.

Ah yes, it's actually a game in Korea, I've seen it on TV. Two people take turns trading taunts trying to trigger the other person. I've seen it in Chinese movies, too, where it's like a poetry duel using verses instead of taunts. They can range from the non-sequitur and absurd to pure zen. People everywhere engage in it with friends as a matter of conversation.

So I was successfully triggered. I can let it go. Did she mean to go too far? Well, that's the point of the game. Did she know she was going to far? Never mind the mind of a suicide, how about the mind of an acquaintance?

Short answer is that she has no idea about me and has stated as much ("of course you'd never commit suicide" were her approximate words and then going on without waiting or looking for how I'd respond). The longer answer is that she should at least have some sort of awareness and may be in denial. She has been exposed to ample evidence that something is not right with this picture and it wouldn't take much to put the pieces together to not brush any possibility aside (like she did).

Of course I would never commit suicide? Why? What gave her that idea? Buddhism probably. It's the perfect excuse to not deal with something she knows she can't deal with.

It is also totally possible that her final response was purely sarcastic. I was being sarcastic. Do you know what sarcasm is?

I kinda feel it would be remiss to not mention Shinee's Jonghyun committing suicide at age 27 last week. I'm not a fan of K-pop boy groups, but I am aware of them and respect a bunch, especially one of the original top groups of the second Hallyu wave.

I am familiar with the names of all five Shinee members. I have seen their promotion performances on music shows and acknowledge they are amazing, charismatic and talented. I knew Jonghyun also wrote songs for Shinee and other singers. It's a short list of K-pop idols who also write. When I find that an idol also writes, they get a gold star next to their name for creativity. They create.

My reaction to the news was probably very typical and of normative nature. Disbelief, terrible loss, tragic. He was young, famous, adored, talented. He had it made. He had made it. His suicide was felt far and wide, and more than he could likely contemplate. He was a public figure. He had responsibilities. Why?!

Since then it has come to light that he had been fighting depression his entire life and it finally overwhelmed him. There was nothing vain, cavalier or impulsive about his suicide. It wasn't the result of life circumstances that would likely have changed if he just lived on. He wasn't distraught over some tangible thing and went home and hanged himself like others have. He was and always has been in the middle of a dark storm that few people can even imagine. And it wasn't going to go away. Ever. He would eventually have been consumed by it.

Usually I hate the cliche platitude the living use to comfort themselves saying the dead have gone to a "better place". Not that anyone has said that about Jonghyun, but I would be alright with it if they did. It is a good description. He has gone to a better place: Not here.

He meant to do it. It wasn't what I call a "suicidal gesture" whereby a door is left open to be rescued. He meant to do it despite a final text message to his sister who did promptly inform the police.

Usually I would consider that kind of act a call for help with an unconscious half-expectation to be saved. His final text wasn't that. I believe he had no expectation or desire to be rescued.

It was partly a definitive good-bye, but it may have also served a practical purpose given the way he did it. He burned charcoal in a frying pan releasing deadly concentrations of carbon monoxide. The text also served as an alert so that someone would arrive, not to save him, but to turn off the burner and air out the CO so that no one else would be harmed.

It's anyone's guess whether he actually thought of that. Considering the information reported, I would bet that he did. He would have run the scenario in his mind and noticed the danger to other people and taken measures so that others weren't harmed. That fits with the profile of the type of person he was.

That would also answer a question I had about how his sister knew where to send the police. He didn't do it at home, he had rented a short-term apartment for the purpose.

Renting the apartment wouldn't have raised bells. On a most simplistic level he could just tell people he needed a fresh space to write. But then why give his sister the address? Anyone could contact him by phone. The only reason would be the expectation that someone would need to go there.

There are actually plenty of other reasons why she would've known, maybe she had even been there, but basically, dispelling all suspicion, she had it because he gave it to her. It could've been a totally innocuous message saying that he was renting a place so he could write, here's the address if anyone needs me. She would have read it and not thought it suspicious that he was including an address, but there it is planted. It is in the range of suicides to think like that.

Why he rented a place to do it and didn't do it at home is also something we will never know but also goes into the mind of a suicide. It suggests this wasn't spontaneous but planned over a period. There may be an element of separating and getting away from his familiar life. Suicidal thoughts was probably something he lived with, but renting the apartment was a definitive indication that he knew or decided now was the time. Specific reasons of his own we can't know.

Fans have noted other clues that could only be noticed as meaning anything in retrospect. He had a visible tattoo of a black dog that is a symbol for depression? That's news to me, but OK, the article explained it. Fans noted that at a recent broadcast he skipped a sentence that they could see displayed on his teleprompter mentioning his comeback in January. There are other possible reasons for it, but now it looks like he didn't mention it because he didn't expect to be around in January.

My going on and on about this displays the truism about suicide that it leaves more questions than answers. Details can be pondered, contemplated, analyzed, speculated upon, rocks thrown at, poetry written, statistics cited, Broadway shows composed, but we'll never know for sure.

I sympathize with Jonghyun. And I'm glad there has been a lack of public condemnation or judgment regarding his suicide. People seemed to grasp the true tragedy quite quickly, which is not merely that he committed suicide, but that he suffered so much to the point of committing suicide.

I can't say I was a fan, I don't have any Shinee in my music collection*, but I respected him and joined as one of the silent mourners around the world.

In that final text message Jonghyun sent to his sister, there is a phrase that has been translated in two different ways. Fans have latched onto the translation of him saying to his sister, "Tell me I did well". I think there's a very Korean nuance to it that I can't explain. Fans have responded en masse in their condolences telling him he did well. Same as me, it was probably the first thing they thought when they read that message in the news. You did well, Jonghyun.

* I do have several songs that Jonghyun penned for female singers in my collection. In fact, the day after he died, IU's "Gloomy Clock" written by and featuring him came up on my iPod Shuffle. The iPod was loaded the day before he died. That's a 2GB capacity iPod randomly selecting from a 100GB collection. That was one hell of a coincidence.

I don't know what came over me, it's probably another obsessive distraction, but I've started reading about World War I. While my childhood included World War II as a hobby, I never had any particular interest in WWI. My knowledge consists of scattered cursory bits of associated information like trench warfare, gas warfare, the first tanks, pointy German helmets, etc. I knew Franz Ferdinand was not the lead singer of the band (apparently there were fans who thought that).

I'm reading The First World War (1999) by John Keegan. As a supplement I also found at the library a rather massive photo book, The Great War, by Imperial War Museums (U.K.). Fortunate for me, since it's a visual reference to help picture how bleak and harrowing what I'm reading was. Fortunate also because it's not a reference that I'd otherwise come by casually. Only people really interested in the war would have it on their bookshelves, I shouldn't wonder.

I think anyone who doesn't know much about WWI but has any hint of interest in it or related subjects (and there are many) should read up on it. On one hand, it's very simple to describe and understand the contours of what happened and what led up to it. On another hand, it's an historical enigma that scholars are still debating about. You can point out all the various factors that contributed to the war, but adding them all up doesn't amount to the sheer magnitude of the horror and suffering caused and endured. You look at results and wonder why combatants weren't smacking themselves in the forehead asking what was going on and how it happened and why they didn't just yell "Stop! Wait a minute. What are we doing?". There were reasons. Many, many reasons, and none of them counters the insanity or incredulity of it.

Having nothing to compare it to, I found Keegan's book quite adequate and engaging. I felt I got a decent grasp of the contours of the conflict, but I would definitely look at other books for comparison if I find them. My major complaint was "white noise" information of troop movements which didn't help illustrate anything or mean anything in terms of strategy or intent. Same with eastern front fighting after the Russians withdrew. Oops, was I supposed to say *spoiler alert*?

I skimmed over those parts not feeling they were important, interesting or compelling to the narrative or knowledge of the war. Similarly, the Russian Revolution is covered so quickly it's almost laughable. That's not necessarily a problem or criticism. In a volume such as this, that's all that could be expected for a topic that deserves its own book. And I did laugh at the description of the Bolsheviks' frantic instruction to sign a peace treaty "at German dictation" when their delay tactics failed and Germany started invading.

Reading about the causes of WWI, it's easy and tempting, if not blindingly obvious, to draw parallels with the current world situation and whether a third world war is in the making. A lot of the debate over WWI is whether it was preventable or was it inevitable. Trying to answer that is to enter the quagmire.

I think the strongest argument today that WWIII is inevitable is the fact that WWI happened. The question whether it is preventable or inevitable is equally uncertain today and as much of a quagmire, and once you draw all the parallels of the fragile relations, belligerent stances and war readiness, the likelihood of a WWI situation goes way up. The scenario of a side conflict leading to an international crisis that no one will check because of self-interest, distractions, basic stupidity or any number of factors, then escalating into a worldwide conflagration is not so hard to imagine when reading about WWI.

Only the over-optimistic would doubt the world situation today is a powder keg waiting to blow. A pot coming to a boil. A powder keg in a pot coming to a boil. No wait, the boiling water would neutralize the powder. But seriously, with the presumptive main combatants being the U.S. and China or India and China or China and anyone but Russia, and non-presumptive but potential flashpoints of North Korea or Taiwan, that shit's gonna be hard to contain.

This is the dashcam of South Korean actor Kim Joo Hyuk in late October in the moments before he suffered some medical problem and crashed, dying later at the hospital. The full clip starts at 0:21.

After traffic goes through the intersection, pay attention to the black SUV to the right and then the black sedan that passes on the right. That's when Kim starts having (or noticing) problems and is either trying to get to the side of the road or has already started losing control of his functioning. It looks like he probably sideswipes the black sedan (not caught on the dashcam), who is probably honking like mad (no audio), alerting the SUV in front, who presumably seeing the collision in his mirror, steps on the gas and speeds away to not get involved.

As Kim's control further deteriorates, the cam shows a black sedan (presumably the one he hit) come up on the left, partially blocking Kim's car. Presumably, logically, the sedan driver only knows that he's been hit and Kim's car didn't show any sign of stopping because of the accident, and therefore he wants to prevent Kim from leaving the scene. That's when Kim loses all control of his functions and presumably his foot falls heavy on the accelerator leading him to hit the sedan again, careen towards the sidewalk and crashing. The last image before cutting off is Kim's vehicle flipping over. He had to be extracted before being sent to the hospital. From my very limited layman's experience and knowledge, I might profer he suffered either a seizure, heart attack or stroke. The autopsy was inconclusive.

What's sad and profound to me is that the dashcam includes the last things Kim Joo Hyuk saw of this world. He probably didn't wake up that morning and consider he might die that day. He may have, but I daresay most of us don't. He certainly didn't get into his car thinking he was about to die.

Everything was going normal until it wasn't. A late afternoon commute, driving from one place to another as he does every day. That's the profound part of the clip, not the accident but the normalcy leading up to it.

Death is a universal experience, but so are the moments of each of our lives leading up to dying that the dashcam so poignantly captures. And since we generally don't know when or how death comes, we don't know when those last moments of normalcy are being experienced. So breathe.

Then again, there was Elvis who died on the crapper.

I can't even English this.

email. remaining parent. from dead parent's email. cruise. February. me go with.

There is no nope on the scale of nopes to express how absolutely and irrevocably nope the nope is.

The only possible reaction on my part was to immediately delete the email, wash my eyeballs out with soap and try to forget about it. If there is to be communication, since I no longer have a phone, it would be through an intermediary, i.e. my brother, whence the nope can at least be buffered. There is no precedent and therefore no acceptance of direct email communication between the chaos and its spawn (that would be me).

"Yea, I'm alcoholic"
"Why do you drink so much?"
"Because . . . if I didn't, I wouldn't be alcoholic". Duh.

August-September-October-November, it's been three months since I cut back on drinking. It's no accomplishment. It doesn't feel like anything. And with the great revelation that a lot of the physical gripes I'd been griping about went away, there's a huge incentive to not go back to constant drinking.

It hasn't been hard. There have been the expected markers of alcoholism – pangs and temptation – but minimal restraint was necessary to get past those (restraint was necessary nonetheless). Also I haven't totally quit and I still probably drink enough to be considered alcoholic. Alcoholism, I shouldn't wonder, is not just the amount but the habit and regularity.

Ooh! That was quotable! Quote me, baby. Booyah.

Same as I mentioned before, I allow drinking before periods when I'm naturally not going to drink, i.e. before going to sleep and going out. But I also ration one beer outside of those times, meaning one in the morning and one in the evening is OK. I don't consider one beer a drink. It's a refreshing enjoyment, a quick buzz. More than one beer becomes drinking and I haven't done that at all.

To quantify, before I was drinking on average more than six bottles a week, but not quite a bottle a day. Now I go through a bottle about every three days; a schedule I've been on before.

Cutting back on drinking has also contributed to the cognitive dissonance since I'm clear and sober to contemplate the contradiction and futility of my continued existence. There are more spans going from moment to moment where I'm clear to question why I'm still here.

Cutting back on drinking has also put a full stop on insomnia, more or less. Same as I mentioned before, sleep isn't always perfect, but is OK and adequate. If I've been able to identify a bad night as insomnia these past three months, it's been a one-off.

Sleep, who can deny?, is a comfort. Waking rested after a good slumber is a feeling of all that's good about living and existing. For me it's cognitive dissonance. The feeling is quickly ambushed that it is temporary and I can't keep going on like this. The theoretical suicide is there first thing to contemplate during morning sitting.

There isn't anyone in my life, but if there were, this is where they start suggesting I go back to drinking constantly. Sorry, I'm done with feeling like shit all the time.

I finished "reading" Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide (1999) by Kay Redfield Jamison that I quoted earlier. "Reading" because I skimmed large portions of it, not because it was difficult subject matter but because . . . it got boring.

I liked the stories. I'm sorry, that's what I could relate to. All the biology, chemicals, statistics and other stuff I'm too lazy to qualify I could do without. There's a natural type of person who would be interested in this type of book. The author is one of them (an insider). I used to be, I shouldn't wonder. People who could relate.

It's likely a valuable reference read for those interested or curious about the pathology. The book limits its scope to the clinical and normative, but that's nothing surprising. It admits to an age bias, so a narrow focus is already intended. I didn't find a whole lot of insight, but I suppose it's difficult to be insightful about suicide. I don't mean this as criticism, the book does what it does well and handles the topic with compassion and empathy, albeit with added emotion at times.

I felt myself strangely detached while reading it. Maybe I've steeped in the topic for so long that it's not something necessarily emotional or even personal. I'm jaded. Or not even really suicidal, a poseur.

It's not a mental health issue for me as far as I'm concerned. Maybe there may have been a connection long ago, but it's a non-issue now. So reading about other people, I sympathize that they were suffering, but it's not necessarily something I share.

I suppose I found it inspirational, which of course was not its intention. It's not you, book, it's me. People who have been successful; also pointing out that I've been a failure and I don't like being a failure. I've failed at a lot of things, but things I ultimately didn't care about. This is something closer to home. And if I fail at suicide, that just means I live for a little while longer and die anyway. Maybe under more desperate or pathetic circumstances.

I'm winding up for another imminent attempt. Yet again. And like before it's totally hypothetical at this point and doesn't mean anything. I feel a need for it within the next half year or so and I'm going to focus and push for it, cognitive dissonance, aspiration, but admit it's not likely.

It's like telling a psychiatrist I'm planning to rob a bank. Which bank? I dunno, the one down the street? When? I dunno, within the next year. How? I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Any accomplices? No. What would you do with the money? Hm, I haven't thought of that. Continue to pay rent and food? It's hardly cause for a psychiatrist to be alarmed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I think it's fair to say that if I commit suicide, it would have been decades in the planning. Has there ever been anyone who prepared so well for a suicide in terms of limiting impact on others? Probably, but you've never heard of them nor has anyone written about them. Why? Because they limited their impact so that there was no one to write anything nor anything to write anyway.

If I commit suicide or simply disappear, which would be preferable, there isn't anything anyone could say about me that would be valid or current. There would just be the fact. They would be left with just the fact and nothing else to say beyond it.

Mind you, it's very intentional that I'm writing "if I commit suicide". I've been contemplating and aspiring toward it for years to the point of meaninglessness, which I suppose also adds to the lack of impact if I actually succeed. I'm all talk and the only meaning to this blog would only come from actually doing it. If I'm still talking, that's all it is.

I deserve to die. After all, I've put so much effort into dismantling my life so that there's no social value to my existence and withdrawing from everyone who was in it so that no one would be significantly affected by my dying, that I should be rewarded for it in some way, don'tcha think?

Years and years of continued existence, frittering pathetically away in base enjoyments of reading, watching TV and videos and listening to music and maintaining a marginal, nominal mindfulness practice is hardly any reward. I deserve better than that.

It's so sad, embarrassing and pathetic reading what I've written and re-written over and over repeatedly and redundantly about suicide and killing myself and realizing I'm still here years and years later.

Those patients with schizophrenia who are more intelligent and better educated, for example, who perform better on measures of abstract reasoning, and who demonstrate greater insight into the nature of their illness, are more likely to kill themselves. (p. 84, Night Falls Fast, Jamison).

The experts agree that I'm no great intellect or abstract thinker. Thanks. Of course, I'm also not schizophrenic. But I haven't been diagnosed otherwise, either! Wait, what am I saying? That I still might be schizophrenic which would just prove what a failure I am because I haven't committed 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.

Forcing myself to read the Chinese newspaper when I go to the library is like sadomasochism for one. So when I find an interesting book in the stacks, it's easy to allow the temptation. At the closest public library (there are four within walking distance (under two miles)), I'm reading Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence by Karen Armstrong.

It falls under world history among categories of reads that interest me; perhaps specifically human developmental history or human cultural evolution. It's a fascinating read that sweeps through various historical cultures in broad strokes, describing the relation between religiosity and violence.

Religion and violence, of course, go hand-in-hand, but the book is very well-researched and offers perspectives that aren't obvious nor common knowledge. There's room for disagreement, but she provides plenty of food for thought. I'd definitely recommend it.

Actually religion and violence don't "of course" go hand-in-hand, you still need human nature in the equation. You can just as easily say that economics and violence go hand-in-hand, and the same with politics and ideology. None of those, including religion, are inherently violent by nature or intent. Just add human nature and the potential for violence arises whenever conflict occurs and a clear "other" can be identified.

Despite reading the Chinese newspaper without understanding it being tedious and boring as hell (hard to stay awake), I'm only allowing reading books one at a time at any particular library. So when I go to one of the other three libraries, I have to read the newspaper. Only when I finish a book can I start another one at any library. Dumb rules I make for myself.

Summer ended rather quickly. I don't specifically remember how it's been in previous years (except perhaps one with a typhoon), but I'm sure this is how it typically is. I'm sure I probably mentioned it before, too.

What happens is the heat hits wet weather around this time of year (typhoon obviously qualifies), temperatures drop with the rain and *bam* thereafter it's clearly autumn. It's very sudden that the fan isn't on all the time, shirts are worn at home, and showers need an infusion of warmer water. More gradual are the window closing bit by bit, dressing in layers and moving under the covers to sleep.

I know I've mentioned before how I find it odd during Taipei summers that it's completely unimaginable how cold the winters get, and during the winter it's totally out of mind that summers are unbearably hot. This is the transition period, what happens between the heat and the cold. A lot of laundry gets done. That happens in the spring, too.

Distractions, distractions. Every day is all about distractions. Distraction conveyor belt to get from day to day.

Useless distractions; no running or cycling because even though I'm curious about the effect cutting back on drinking has had on those activities, doing those things might give me the impression that I've accomplished something. That I've done something not completely useless.

Reading Chinese is useless. That's OK. Watching lots and lots of videos on YouTube, which although enjoyable is utterly useless and is supposed to be reminding me how insubstantial and ethereal and empty such enjoyments are.

Not saying anything bad about that. There's nothing wrong with feeling good or even inspired in certain ways. Just remember to keep things in perspective and that none of it is anything I call real.

It's raining. It hasn't rained like this in quite a while. Nothing unusual, even this non-stop for days rain. It emphasizes that this summer can be characterized as having been rather dry, as opposed to summers where it rains every afternoon.

Sparse typhoon season, too. I think only two typhoons hit Taiwan. A one-two punch a few months ago, one right after the other with a strange sunny (but windy) day in Taipei between them. One went right across the island and the other swept up it; a hook and an uppercut. The destruction was typical, not disastrous.

Yesterday was the first day I woke up and checked the thermometer and it was below 80 degrees. That's autumn cooling in Taiwan! Air conditioning has been off for several weeks now. Fan is still on almost all the time. Sometimes I'll turn it off, only to turn it back on in short order.

The nature of my self-distractions to get from day to day has changed since cutting back on drinking and the resultant clarity. For one, I've stopped reading books I'm interested in at public libraries and I've gone back to reading a Chinese newspaper that has the phonetic pronunciation next to each character.

It's a newspaper for students, both native children whose knowledge of Chinese characters is still growing and foreigners here to learn the language. For me to read this newspaper is an exercise in pointlessness.

I consider my Chinese language learning at an end and having ended in failure. The point in reading this newspaper is to rub it in how much of a failure I've been in learning the language.

I can run my eyes over the words, some of which I can read and understand from previous studies, and know how to pronounce them because of the phonetics, but for most part I don't understand articles as a whole.

It further confounds me that after years of earnest study, how I can know so little? With what kind of further study could I have gotten to the point where I could read this newspaper? And I can't imagine even a lifetime's effort having me reading Chinese without the phonetics.

Basically I'm just tormenting myself, reminding myself that there is no effort that is worth it or will come to any fruition. Having suicide as a goal and death as the only thing worth learning about is all there is. There is no excuse for the distractions and pretending they are anything else than distraction, i.e., a waste.

The most sobering part of sobriety may be the clarity. Well, after the not drinking all the time thing.

It's not that I wasn't clear-thinking-ish when constantly drinking. I felt I was thinking clearly, and if I wasn't I was at least subjectively thinking clearly enough. But certainly sense reality as a whole took on a muddled or muted feel, amenable to distraction.

Since cutting back on drinking, I've been trying to alter my daily existence to stop being a distraction-to-distraction conveyor belt from day to day. It's still a work in progress. Can't say a particularly successful one, though.

As a grandmaster of distraction, all I've done so far is switch out my old daily distractions with new ones. That's not a total fail, as I tell myself that at least I wasn't attached to those distractions as a way of being. Also, the changes may be seen as first steps to further changes. Like pulling myself out of quicksand.

Ultimately, I'm trying to get focused on the task at hand; what I want to do, what I keep saying is the purpose of my life and where I've led it. Cutting back on drinking, increased sobriety lead to focus on ending this life, this manifestation. Move on already.

There's a frustration that alcohol has been muting all these years. Drinking less allows me to be more acutely aware of it. So I decide to soberize because I realized drinking isn't going to kill me, and that leads to clarity about the frustration that I'm still alive and the need to focus on suicide as the goal. I can't figure out if that's ironic or logical.

The worst thing the distractions do is fool me into feeling like I'm doing something worthwhile or personally productive. That feeling, for most part, shuttles me from day to day. Laziness contributes, too. Too lazy to commit suicide. Never having encountered the external "unbearable" is also part of it. Nothing particularly or immediately compelling to commit suicide has led to complacency. Never been tested.

So why is it now, this time's newfound clarity that is suddenly compelling? I could rattle off a whole bunch of reasons, but they're the same reasons, I'm sure, that I've been citing for years, if not decades. Actually yes, decades.

I have no reason to believe that I won't be alive in six months' time back to drinking a bottle a day.

And that's the point where I shut up because it becomes a theoretical, abstract stream of thought. I really want to focus this time, I really want to do it, but I've said and done this over and over before. It's an incredibly consistent internal dialogue that has become like a recurring nightmare.

And I want to say something is different this time, but I've said that over and over, too. Something's gotta be different this time. I've probably said that before, too.