It's not like I have time for TV, but I watched HBO's 6-part miniseries based on Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and despite my early enthusiasm for a new adaptation and willingness to give wide latitude in considering it, I hated it by the end, forcing myself unenthusiastically to watch the last 3 episodes (after enthusiastically watching the first three episodes before realizing something was off). It was quite a disappointment.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I watched the 1970 Mike Nichols film in high school and absolutely loved it. Then I read the book and absolutely loved that even more. It's one of my favorite books from high school days. Then I re-watched the film sometime later and didn't love it quite so much. It just didn't compare to the book, although I think if I watched it now I'd be much more forgiving, giving it wide latitude, especially since this mini-series showed me how badly an adaptation can go wrong and totally miss the point of a work.

Given the nature of the source material, wide latitude needs to be given to any adaptation. There's a loose plot which isn't particularly important and mainly serves as a foil to describe and embellish, chapter-by-chapter, upon all these oddball characters and oddball situations that paints a decidedly non-oddball context (WWII) into something oddball and absurd in itself. Horrible incidents occur and are described in gory detail, injustices that make the blood boil are committed, but all are balanced with the word most often used to describe the book: satire. There's a joke in these pages, the absurdity and irony of war would make us laugh if it wasn't such a horrible reality. As satire, the work is supposed to make us laugh.

The mini-series goes fundamentally wrong by ignoring the satire (NB: an adaptation of a satire doesn't automatically make it a satire). It focuses on that not-so-important loose plot and treats it as a straight-forward, chronologically linear drama with literal depictions of events in the book while missing ironic and ridiculous subtexts. There is little to nothing funny about this mini-series, nothing absurd, ironic, satirical, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. There's no tension between what's reasonable and unreasonable. There's nothing witty in the dialogue or the twists on logic. There's a lot that seems curious and weird because they're still using the satirical source material but are way off in rendering it and can't point to satire to explain it. Like when you try to crack a joke in a situation where no one feels like laughing.

The mini-series creates consequences to action where there should be absurdity, and just makes the protagonist loathsome, selfish, irresponsible, cowardly and immoral. Immoral? Modern wars are all pretty much immoral, but the mini-series seems to point to this one person as the epitome of immoral, when he's supposed to be the hero and one of the few who makes sense in all his absurdity. Confronted by an absurd situation, someone who is even more absurd sometimes makes the most sense. Instead, it's possible in the mini-series to count how many people literally die, directly or indirectly, as a result of "Yo-Yo"'s petty, short-sighted and self-serving actions and then witness his complete lack of remorse for his agency. Or maybe this mini-series is much more clever than I'm giving it credit for and it's saying something about the U.S. now. Probably not. Actually from the way they sequenced scenes, I'd say it was fully intentional that the viewer draw the lines of consequence pointing to Yossarian's culpability in many of the deaths of his comrades. The purpose for doing that eludes me because I just ended up disgusted with the guy and not caring what happens to him (the exact opposite from the book).

However I could be wrong. The reviews are good, although many seem to be doing the limbo to praise it and none have convinced me. I admit the look of the mini-series is very aesthetic and the performances and technical aspects decent. I'm not panning the series for what's not there (I think every reviewer did what I did when the mini-series was announced and re-read the entire 400+ pages book). There's so much in the book that they had full license over what they chose to use and what they left out. Although with so much material in the book, I fail to see why they had to add things that weren't in the book. Actually, almost one entire episode (focusing on Milo Minderbinder) I don't remember even being in the book except as straight narration.

I wonder if another reason for the good reviews might be that there's not a single reviewer, I shouldn't wonder, who hadn't read the book and they're really gushing about the book. Or maybe they hadn't watched the whole series yet when they reviewed it.

marking time

So I think the seasonal Plum Rains (lit. 梅雨) of May-June have come and gone, and methinks they were probably quite average this year. There have been weak years recently when they weren't all that prominent and strong years when it just rained for weeks on end with no small effect on seasonally affected nerves and lots of chocolate consumption to deal with it (I think there are people who argue the actual physiological benefits of chocolate, opposed to people who argue that chocolate just makes happy). And I think I've discovered that a hallmark of the Plum Rains is their unpredictability against weather forecasts. Has anyone else noticed how accurate weather forecasts have gotten in the past few years? In the course of my life I've always thought of forecasts as general guidelines as to what to expect. Even during my time in Taipei, the guideline has dictated "always carry an umbrella". But for however many years I've noticed forecasts to be surprisingly accurate within hours, with completely wrong forecasts to be the exception rather than the expectation.

Not so much during the Plum Rains. Advanced satellite and model analysis technology still can't factor in whatever the conditions are that make the Plum Rains so very unpredictable. I've had to walk my bike home miserable in the pouring rain twice already because the forecast and my looking up at the sky before heading out both missed it. More times than that I've left my bike home and nary a drop would fall from the ominous cloud cover. I think the Plum Rains are done now, and even with rain constantly and consistently in the afternoon weather forecast (we call it "summer"), there's a certain amount of confidence possible on whether it will actually rain or not in the next few hours I'll be out based on the rain percentage forecast and looking up at the sky.  

So it's summer, and that means it's hot. I haven't determined yet if this is a "hell hot" summer or just a "normal blazing hot" Taipei summer. Truth to tell, I haven't been paying much attention to my environs outside my apartment. I've been feeling unusually cut off and isolated – which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a descriptive – for whatever variety of possible reasons. I even stopped "forcing" myself to go on 20-mile rides. The Plum Rains contributed to that at first, but then I just didn't feel like it when it started drying up. Once I want or feel the need, I'll go. I wonder if I'll feel like it after the Tour de France starts this weekend. I don't know why, but I just got the inkling to follow le Tour this year. Maybe it's a feeling of wanting to connect with something outside that's familiar.

It's not like I have time for TV, especially since my eyesight has degraded to the point that my laptop screen is too small and I use my flat screen TV as my main computer monitor. I can never just turn on the TV and have it on in the background (like Mandarin news to keep the language in my ears or movies I'm not sure I'm really interested in) while I stare at the laptop. It's one or the other, if I switch to TV, I'm watching a specific program or movie. I do not miss the waste of time that was channel-surfing. So I don't know what I'll do in following the Tour de France. I just know I won't watch the whole thing. Probably not even whole stages. And I should remind myself that watching cycling is inherently boring. You need the passion for the sport before you can watch it, although I'm sure there's an argument for that applying to all sports. Fair 'nuff. I'm gonna stick with the excuse that I'm trying to feel a connection with something about my life from before, despite it being useless, meaningless and futile. That got dark real quick. 

Actually, my iTunes collection broke the 20,000 files mark recently. Last month let's say. I've mentioned benchmarks I've broken in the past and thought about mentioning 20,000 when it happened, but it's actually a bit of a conundrum I'm a bit conflicted about. Who am I kidding? It's a total mess. 

You can never have too much music, I recently heard someone quip.

I disagree, you can. I do and I can describe what it means to have too much music. It becomes a total mess. It's such a mess I don't think I can describe how it all happened in any sane, rational-sounding way. Basically I'm a serial music chaser and hoarder, and it's pretty much gotten out of hand. The main basic problem is that there is a ton of music in my collection that I deem excellent – music that comes up on shuffle play and I don't have any thought of removing it – but I don't really "know" it.

It partly hearkens back to the regrettable hard-drive dumps circa. 2009-10. I think my brother had given me a 500 GB external hard-drive, and the brilliant but misguided idea dawned on me to hook it up to various music-loving friends' (I had friends?) computers and let them transfer whatever they deemed worthy onto it. I got a lot of music that way, and, mind you, everything got reviewed before I put it in my collection, plenty of what they gave didn't make it. And a considerable amount eventually got taken off despite my initial approval.

And I'm not even going to talk about Limewire* and K-pop, except to say without K-pop, those hard-drive dumps may have been manageable. K-pop probably makes Limewire look like a drop in the lake. Let's just say that since breaking 20,000 files recently, it's already up to 20,117. No more than a handful of files are added every three days in my very geeky system of listening and adding, but it's a constant drip-drip that has been going on for years.

Years of constant process has led to this collection of over 20,000 files, most of which I think deserves to be there, but quite a lot which I don't really "know". I think it's good, I like listening to it, but I don't know a whole lot about them. How many albums does that band have? Name some. Name one. Name some of their songs. Name one! Band members' names? My answers would be woefully deficient. Do I consider myself a fan? Using the criteria of bands I'm very much a fan of, I'd have to say no.

Then what the hell are they doing in my collection? Would I even notice if they were removed? Why don't I get rid of them? It doesn't work that way. Easier said than done. He hit me first. And I am constantly vigilant for files to remove. I have two folders named "Removed from iTunes" and "Removed without prejudice" (I'm a hoarder, I rarely delete files permanently). The "without prejudice" is a borrowed legal expression and that folder is for music I removed for whatever reason I felt at the time, but it wasn't because it's bad (and could theoretically be reinstated because it was removed without prejudice). The criteria for removing files is ever-shifting and is usually done spontaneously.

I think I just hit the geek-overload point in this post which demands that I cease and desist. It's such an over-bloated, neurotic mess that would cover topics such as my hoarding history, my listening habits/procedure, the growth of K-pop over the past 10 years, the "great unlistened wasteland" in my iTunes collection, etc., etc. It isn't pretty.

Needless to say, none of this is any big deal. It really doesn't occupy a whole lot of mental space, and despite trying to come up with strategies and criteria to trim down cull swaths of my collection, it's more of a background mosquito consideration. In the meantime I'm enjoying the listening, I'm hardly suffering. Except in the Buddhist way that I'm still acting out a delusion, which has karmic implications if I'm attached in any way. I don't think I am, or I tell myself I don't think I am. I'm aware this is just games I'm playing with myself and anything can change in a heartbeat and none of it will matter. Even the way I listen to music is heading towards obsoletion. What did I do before iTunes and iPods? What did I do before iPod Shuffle for that matter? What will I do after my iPod Shuffles die? I'll adjust. And breathe a sigh of relief.

* It's just a matter of time when no one will remember Limewire. It was a Napster-like file-sharing service that was widely used for downloading music, but almost immediately forgotten once it got shut down for copyright reasons. No mourning, no despondence. No nostalgia. It was great when it was there, no one cared when it was gone. Like my life, lol!! (I was thinking that had to be a metaphor for something🤣).

I'm in my third day of a non-digestion/intestinal-related dull ache in my abdomen. It's merely uncomfortable and I wouldn't even mention it if I hadn't recently written about having itchy palms and the surprising discovery that they may be symptomatic of liver problems. Like the itchy palms, I expect this ache to pass in short order, but I feel I should mark these things for posterity. In case anyone's interested in my posterior. 

And again, looking up what the ache might be a symptom of predictably led to liver problem sites, and the liver problem sites were inconclusive with some things that matched and others that didn't. The ache could get intense and occasionally becomes a backache, but that gets intermingled with cycling-related back pain which kept me off-bike for 2-3 days earlier this month. The pain didn't spread to my right shoulder. Other symptoms relate to appetite and inability to eat, but I had those symptoms years ago and nothing ever came out of it. I can now happily eat one meal a day with an optional but usually unnecessary snack from a convenient store. Zero weight loss, I'm sure. My diet and exercise don't explain my protruding stomach, which I described before as a paunch, but per the websites, yes this is more of a protrusion. It doesn't seem natural, like an alien is about to burst out of me. Or like I'm pregnant, which I suppose isn't so far different from an alien bursting out. On the other hand, my father also had a protruding stomach, so it could be genetic. On another hand (look ma, three hands!), he ate three meals a day and lived a sedentary lifestyle with minimal exercise that my mother forced upon him. He didn't drink, either.

Bottom line is that clinically I'd be considered a life-long heavy drinker I shouldn't wonder, if not an alcoholic, so at this point it's not a matter of if, but when. And now might as well be when, but even if now is when, I'm not going to get bent out of shape over it, seeing as I could've seen it coming from years ago, and whenever it does come, it could've come at any time during those however many years ago that I could have seen it coming. And if now isn't when and this ache disappears as I expect it will, well that's just the story of my life. Until it isn't.

It's hardly unexpected when the pitfalls of not having a teacher manifest, and I really don't mind it. It's good having to be careful and not be arrogant about not having a teacher/guru/master. I recognize the disadvantage at which I put myself by not having or looking for one, but I have my reasons that I've mentioned before. I opine there's a karmic basis for my attitude, and I also recognize the advantages of not having a teacher. Such as making mistakes. Lots of mistakes, but learning from them myself. 

For the past year and a half or so, I've been pretending to do "ear training", but for a while I've suspected that it's just been an excuse to listen to more K-pop. Basically I've been playing bass along with K-pop songs learning the root progressions and singing along with the root movements, concentrating on the intervals and trying to internalize and remember how they sound. Although I have noticed some progress, it's the laziest ear training possible.

Playing along with songs is marginally effective, if not useless. Admitting the real goal is to listen to more K-pop, the better way to pretend it's "ear training" is to not play along with a song, but rather listen to the movement and only play a note after hearing it. If you make a mistake guessing the interval, it's obvious and you know it, clap your hands. If you're playing along and make a mistake, you just kind of fudge over it and go on and there's zero mental correction. And playing along with a song, eventually I'll memorize the progression in my hands and my ear does nothing. Focusing on interval-to-interval, I force my ear to work and suddenly I'm making mistakes unless I learn the intervals aurally.

Real ear training would involve a better method that I would've found frustrating and boring (bored = not enough motivation to be a musician; frustration = not enough talent). None of this has any basis in reality, it's all theoretical musing; just an example of how I go about figuring things out for myself. 

I don't know how I feel about this second example since it's about sitting meditation, which I've been doing long enough that I've probably had this realization many times before. And it's the most basic thing, the first thing you learn about sitting. It's about focusing on breathing, and specifically about focusing on the tip of one's nose or the nostrils to concentrate the mind on the breathing in and breathing out.

What feels like a minor revelation recently was that you have to be tenacious about it, not lazy. A typical tendency might be to find it too difficult to continually focus on the breath without the mind wandering. The teaching is once you realize the mind is wandering, just clear out the thoughts and start over concentrating on breathing. Easy. Only to find the mind is wandering again within 20 seconds. It's even easier to eventually decide it's impossible and to just give up and let the mind wander and graze in the pasture.

Being tenacious, I think, is no small part of the method. It may be the only way to get something out of it. For a while, the main focus should be to tenaciously drag (I call it 'tenacious d') the mind back to the nose and the breathing. Forget about the focus on breathing and put that on the back-burner because the mind will start wandering again. Focus just on noticing it and bringing it back whether it's 30 seconds later or halfway through the sitting session. It doesn't matter that your mind has just spent 10 minutes running through an entire discourse about some inane news article you read or something someone said yesterday, just don't get frustrated or discouraged and focus on noticing it and start over. 

Although it's properly taught that nothing should be forced in sitting practice, it should also be emphasized that some sort of mastery of the method is eventually necessary. It may be the case that at some point it's too hard to keep the mind from wandering and it's frustrating to constantly try to rein it in. Then the teachings might say it's OK to let the mind wander, but it's not OK to just accept that permanently. Going back to working on the method is necessary. An example I've used before is that it's like learning how to ride up hills on bike. The first time you try riding up a hill, you're huffing and puffing and it's the hardest thing you've done since breakfast, and you strain and struggle and make it to the top and you're sweating and swear you'll never try that again. If you accept that and never try again, you won't find out that the next time you try it, it'll be easier and you'll be totally surprised how not hard it was to get to the top. 

What's more, tenacity has rewards. You will naturally be progressively successful at bringing the wandering mind back to the breathing, and something happens and it's almost automatic that the mind stabilizes and may start going deeper into states of concentration that might be confused with drowsiness, but might be the discursive mind fading out, or even heightened alertness and awareness, even getting to a near trance state.

I'm coming across this basic realization now, which is a bit woeful considering how long I've been sitting, but it very well may be I've come across this multiple times before. Having a teacher may have helped make it stick. There are the teachings written in books, but a skillful teacher would be able to expound on anything in the books, I've mentioned before. Maybe they don't write about being tenacious because that adds pressure and risks creating a mental goal for sitting where there shouldn't be any. But once practicing what's in the books, a teacher can guide a student to the tenacious-d according to what the student will respond to and without stress or goals.

Taking this concept into my current Vajrayana reading-inspired practice (i.e., not Vajrayana practice), I can have some confidence that I'm not completely going off the rails. Despite admonishments that a guru is necessary, I'm alright with the direction of my current practice, and even if it might take longer to land a particular concept or practice, I have reason to think I'll get it close to right eventually. Maybe I'm making excuses for not pursuing a guru. But maybe I'm right and a guru isn't strictly necessary as long as there's a sincere and dedicated (albeit mine being perhaps somewhat flaky) search and plenty of time to open up instinctively to the teachings and a healthy dose of critical self-doubt. And even inspired by Vajrayana, it's important to keep the core tenets in mind, first expounded in Theravadan Buddhism, which are that nothing whatsoever should be clung to as 'me' or 'mine', and that all practices should be in furtherance of reducing suffering.

Even if I were told by some mystical augur that I'm advanced enough that I would be guaranteed to attain enlightenment in this lifetime if I sought out a guru, I think I wouldn't do it. Because then enlightenment just became a goal to be attained, rather than a path to follow in order to learn and discover enlightenment as a reality. To seek a guru motivated by a guarantee of certain enlightenment would be an immediate failure for me. It's a paradox, a Catch-22, a test even. I'm totally open to the guru requirement, but it's just not for me in this lifetime. If that forecloses enlightenment in this lifetime, so be it. I have no problem with that. 

I've been looking for that passage from one of my Theravadan Buddhist books I mentioned about alcoholism being about chasing a sensation. I found something close*, but it was about addiction and didn't use the word "chase", which was key to me. I'm starting to wonder if that actually might be the passage, and what I found so inspirational was how I formed it for myself in my mind. I'll keep looking, I don't think it was an inspired idea but a direct read.

That "chase" is important as a mental concept because it emphasizes the willful pursuit aspect of alcoholism. I know alcoholism is now considered an insidious and complex illness that requires treatment, but that's not my field and I don't know anything about it. From a mindfulness practice aspect for my purposes, it's filtering all that out and focusing on the chase, the willful pursuit in the moment.

I've been applying mindfulness practice to drinking to locate that sensation, that breaking point where the lure of another shot and another shot becomes irresistible. It isn't there at the first drink. It takes a few drinks for it to appear, and mind you I sip through shots; about four sips a shot. It's been years since I've shot my liquor, well-named I daresay, brutal and violent. Fuh yuh uh quick. Sipping shots is more demure and dâinty. That's me.🌷

That actually does help with the mindfulness because it spreads out or breaks the effect into increments, and the first indication that the chase sensation is kicking in is when the time interval between sips noticeably shortens. Resistance falters and that's when I mark the sensation and I know if I let go and cross the threshold I'll officially be chasing the sensation, sliding down the slippery slope. It manifests in manifold ways that I won't get into, but needless to say involves more alcohol intake/sensation chasing until I either brush my teeth and go to sleep or get out of my apartment for the day, both of which likely involve final "one for the road" drinks to satisfy the sensation, but is usually never a good thing. OR I mark the sensation and mindfully remind myself that to continue leads to "feeling bad", and if I heed that I can then stop. 

I'm also trying to force myself back onto the buying-a-bottle-every-three-days schedule, instead of every other day. I'm not trying to stop, I don't care about that. If I'm drinking enough to be considered alcoholic, yippy-da-doo-day. I'm just trying to manage a schedule to avoid feeling like crap, whatever that means. I know it when I feel it. So I've saved two empty bottles and when I buy a bottle, I dole the fifth into thirds and those are roughly the three days portions. Imagine my horror when I saw how little that is. I felt I could chug that and still see straight. But it's only a guideline serving restraint, a self-warning. Buying a bottle every three days never meant that's all I drank. That's why I have a tiered system of reserve bottles, because I always finished a bottle by or on the third day and dipped into the reserve bottle. It's anal, neurotic alcoholism.

* An addict takes a drug because he wishes to experience the pleasurable sensation that the drug produces in him, even though he knows that by taking the drug he reinforces his addiction. In the same way we are addicted to the condition of craving. As soon as one desire is satisfied, we generate another. The object is secondary; the fact is that we seek to maintain the state of craving continually, because this very craving produces in us a pleasurable sensation that we wish to prolong. Craving becomes a habit that we cannot break, an addiction. And just as an addict gradually develops tolerance towards his chosen drug and requires ever larger doses in order to achieve intoxication, our cravings steadily become stronger the more we seek to fulfill them. In this way we can never come to the end of craving. And so long as we crave, we can never be happy. - The Art of Living: Vipassana Meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, William Hart, p. 46.

This passage is more about the dharma view of craving as an affliction, which applies just as much to shopping, rather than the affliction of sensations we chase, pleasurable or not, such as alcohol.

Not sure what this post is going to say about me. About how much of an out-of-touch Luddite I am? About how something so petty can change my life (I'm a simple person)?

My "life changing" experience was watching someone's vlog that was sponsored by Samsung Galaxy Buds and subsequently discovering that my laptop is a Bluetooth device. I was just watching the vlog thinking the Galaxy Buds have nothing to do with me since I don't have a "smart" phone, but then there was a portion where she was at a schedule using them without a smartphone in sight, but working on a laptop. The light bulb above my head flickered slightly as it dawned on me that if my laptop has Bluetooth, then wireless ear buds could be really, really useful. 

That set me off searching for what Bluetooth capabilities my laptop has, and the clincher was realizing that I do have a Bluetooth device in my room. Years ago, I bought a Jawbone Mini Jambox speaker which has Bluetooth, but that wasn't what I bought it for so it didn't apply. I've had it on my nightstand for when I was ensconced in insomnia and could listen to CDs with my 90s-era Sony CD Walkman plugged into them via a "cable". But I went through the steps to "pair" the speaker with my computer (working the lingo) and voilà! For me (Luddite) it was like a miracle! Music playing on my laptop over here is coming out of speaker way over there with nothing connecting them! I would've become Christian if Jesus demonstrated it to me. The benefits and applications of Bluetooth earbuds skyrocketed (the flickering light bulb over my head turned into an exclamation mark)! And that, my friends, is how in 2019 I entered the 21st Century. 

Of course, the easiest thing to do would've been to go out and buy a set of Galaxy Buds, but they're expensive, equal to my Sennheiser Momentum earbuds whose cables are veritably melting in Taiwan's heat after a year and a half of extensive daily usage. I shop around, try to do "research" (those are non-sarcastic quotation marks), but find that there are so many Bluetooth earbuds on the market (I had no idea) that I end up confounded. The brands and models in stores in Taiwan don't match brands and models reviewed online, and even though I can go for a cheaper product, I don't want to end up with something that doesn't sound decent (like my purchase of cheaper Audio-Technica earbuds which I found to be sub-par and led me to immediately buy said Sennheisers, budget be damned). The Galaxy Buds' sound quality is touted by reviewers.

Within two days of watching the vlog, I shell out US$150 for the Galaxy Buds and there are pros and cons, but pros are amazing and the cons I just have to adjust to. I don't have to decide when I want to listen to something through speakers and when to tether myself with earbud cables to listen. Now everything I listen to on laptop is untethered and I can get up and go about while listening. Actually it was mostly K-pop music show videos that I listened through earbuds, so since watching was involved I had to stand no more than three or four feet from my TV screen. Now I'm free. The even greater advantage is no sound degradation from the constant fan/air conditioner during hot weather. It's something I just had to deal with before, but when cooler weather arrove and the fan/aircon turned off, it was always dismaying how much sound I was missing in the electronics/wind drone and I had just spent however many months listening like that.

Anyway, now I have to exercise discipline with expenditures. Zero temptation to replace my Sennheisers unless the cords disintegrate and wrapping exposed wire with electrical tape is untenable. Or if they completely fritz out, but fortunately they're still going strong and sound fine, great. The Galaxy Buds are just as good as far as my ears can tell. And good thing I'm done with replacing my wardrobe for most part. I have my old shirts piled up for recycling, and looking at them I can't believe I wore them for so long. Yuck, really. All my new shirts are pretty plain and nondescript, just new. Still mostly light fabric, short sleeve, button-down shirts. Unlike my old shirts, these are mostly darker solid colors, no patterns. Everything I bought, including sleeveless and t-shirts, needed to have a front pocket for my iPod Shuffle.

I think people might like the idea of needing to replace their wardrobe, not just as a matter of vanity. I won't go so far as to say it was a bother, but like I've said, I have no idea about clothes or fashion or what 'looks good', so I won't say it was fun. I'm all about comfort and ease and taking into consideration my primary form of transportation is bike. In summer months, there's nothing comfortable or easy about riding a bike to get around. It's just HOT. Can't care how I look. Fortunately, in Taiwan people might appreciate if you dress well, but otherwise no one cares how you dress. 

Mindfully paying attention to my drinking, I confirm it has ticked up. Not sure how I feel about it, I don't want to overreact. On one hand, it's bad. It does feel bad and I'm not sure I can do anything to reduce it; i.e., not sure I have the motivation to reduce it. On the other hand, that's just what my drinking does. It waxes and wanes. Sometimes I drink more, sometimes I drink less. I'm drinking more now, in time I'll drink less, attsamattafayou.

I do feel it. Mind gets taxed, bodily feel bad, wiped out after drying out. Where I'll draw the line is if intestinal problems return. That's weird. So that's where feeling bad bottoms out? I can accept all those "higher levels" of feeling bad? It's still feeling bad, but I can accept it? This conundrum may be an example of what some Buddhist teachers describe as the burning mental fires. The best said example is that when kids accidentally put their hand in a fire, they learn their lesson and never do it again. But as adults, we're constantly burning our minds doing painful and harmful things, but sometimes we never learn our lesson. So this is exactly an issue Buddhism deals with and somewhere I've missed a memo and need to focus on and figure out.

There's a passage in one of my Theravadan Buddhism books that I'm trying to look up about alcoholism being about chasing a sensation. Identifying and viewing the effects of alcohol as a sensation we're chasing resonated as something that could be helpful. It becomes fodder for analysis and mindfulness practice. What is the sensation? Why am I chasing it? Why is it so hard to resist one more drink, and then one more and then one more? I totally get that part about the sensation. There are times when I'm getting ready to go out and I worry that I don't have that sensation, that feeling that . . . it's not that I'm not drunk enough to go out, but I want to have drunk enough to have that sensation before going out.

Maybe I'm just splitting hairs and what I'm describing and analyzing is that I'm just like any other stumbling, slurring alcoholic. I can go on and on about this and in the end, someone will say 'get in line, yer just another drunk'. 

Oh, and I looked up what I mentioned about my skin itching and welting and it is a thing called dermatographia, skin writing. The article describes it exactly  down to not seeking medical attention because it doesn't seem too bad and goes away soon. The only thing it doesn't mention is cortizone cream as a topical treatment. The article mentions that it is triggered in some people by "infections, emotional upset or medications such as penicillin". I don't think I've had an infection in decades, nor medications. Emotional upset it is, lol! Bottom line, doctors don't know what it is. Story of my life.

I felt an itch on my left palm. An odd place for an itch, I thought. When I instinctively scratched it, it wasn't pleasant. It was a little pins-and-needles painful, and I immediately applied mindfulness practice to not scratch it. Scratching an itch is supposed to be pleasant. It's supposed to give relief to an irritation.

For as long as I can remember, I've always had skin particularly sensitive to scratching. Scratching caused my skin to welt, and there wasn't relief, just more itch to scratch. Before mindfulness practice, there were times I would mindlessly scratch until my entire back and arms would be red and welted. Horrific as it looked for anyone who saw it, I never considered it significant and never sought out what was going on medically. Applying mindfulness practice, I would concentrate on the sensation while completely resisting the urge to scratch and just focus on it until it went away. I'd gotten quite good at it. Whenever it reached a point that I knew it wasn't an itch that would get relief from scratching, I stopped and let it go away by itself. In the case I lost patience before it went away, I still have two tubes of Cortizone-10. I can't recall ever having an itch on my palms and can't imagine Cortizone-10 working on it. 

So it was a bit annoying when it started up on my right palm as well. There was redness along my palm lines, but it wasn't so bad that it prevented me from doing anything. I was able to plunk away at a bass for supposed "ear-training" practice just fine. It was enough for me to look it up online afterwards to see if it was a symptom of anything. What jumped out was that a burning sensation on palms was symptomatic of cirrhosis and of course my first thought was, "so this is how it ends". My liver's about to fail. But then I clicked on the link and of all the other symptoms of cirrhosis listed, none really rang a bell. At least none which I consider novel. Insomnia? Pfft, that's so last year. I've already used the joke that I'm of Asian descent, so no one would know if my skin was turning yellow. 

And since, the sensation has also occurred to the soles of my feet, the feet equivalent of the palms! Oooh! It's irritating. It's annoying. It persists. It comes and goes. If I stretch or scrunch my feet or hands, it's exacerbated and I feel it more intensely for a little while. My bathroom slippers are accupressure slippers and that also intensifies the sensation.

I roll my eyes at this. It's my full expectation that this is not a health scare of either cirrhosis or diabetes, another condition where palms may burn, and will disappear in a few days without fanfare. That's the pattern of everything before that seemed like a health scare. I know better now until it turns out to be something different, and I'll deal with that when it becomes something different.

As it is, I've been off bike for a couple weeks because the plum rains have arrived. This coming week appears like there might be ride opportunities with drier weather and only chance showers, so it'll be a day-to-day thing, but I have zero concern the burning on either my palms or soles will prevent. For the record and no one's interest but my own, only one weekday in May so far was dry and even sunny (I don't ride on weekends when there are too many people on the bikeways), but I knew from experience that it was too cool for the bikeways to have dried out, so I didn't ride, and that suited me fine since it was a mad windy day. Windy is unpleasant, but more of just an excuse to not ride. It's alright because it provides resistance training. Wind resistance slowing me down to 11-12 mph is still less than gravity resistance on hills where I go down to 8-10 mph. And going the opposite direction, the wind assist is great. I was once flying at a sustained 27 mph on a flat because of the wind at my back (translation: wheee!).

As for my liver, I feel like I've cut down on drinking, and since August 2017 I have. Back then I think I was buying six bottles a week. Only one day per week that I didn't. But I thought I had cut back to a schedule where I buy a bottle every three days. Maybe I was on that schedule since then, but recently I noticed that I'm back to buying a bottle every other day, with reserve bottles at home for when I run out. I always have two tiers of reserve (three actually, a desperation back line of mini-bottles!) to make sure there's never no alcohol in my apartment. Again, I'm talking liquor, not beer.

I don't feel like I've increased drinking, but that's what the schedule suggests. When I leave my apartment every day, that's a drying out period, as is sleep. But when I wake up or come home, there are hours before I allow myself to start. But somehow in the time that I allow it, it has increased. I don't feel it, but the schedule doesn't lie. But that's alcoholism. Or my brand of it. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the benefits of not having a phone is that my mother can no longer call. After my father died, it became even more clear that we don't understand nor like each other and we can't communicate without insulting each other, both intentionally and unintentionally, and phone calls would at best be barely civil and would always be frustrating and negative. They would revert back to the days when they were overtly strained and awkward and didn't last long because I had nothing to say to them and no interest in what they said. It was a fortunate coincidence that just a few months after my father died, Taiwan ended 2G phone service and I simply refused to upgrade because I didn't need nor cared to.

On my part, I would be perfectly content to never hear from her again. I can't speak for her part, but for whatever reason (habit? investment?), she feels compelled to try to remain in touch, and that, unfortunately, has led her to start sending emails. Early on, I overreacted to an overture to go on a cruise, but I learned quickly if I just ignore them, that's taken as a response and there's no follow-up. Now when I get an email, I typically glance at it just to get the gist and immediately delete it. Sometimes she sends photos of my brothers' families, but if they don't send photos themselves, obviously they don't care if I have photos of them or not and they get deleted after I see how the kids are growing.

There was one photo she sent not long ago of the monument that she had made for my father, and since it is quite large, I think she has it in mind that this is a family . . . thing. As family members die off, they and their dates get added to the monument. The concept was mentioned when I was last there when my father died in November 2016, and I was horrified by the thought of some attachment to them for all eternity.

If I had my druthers, I would just disappear without a trace and I wouldn't care whatever they put on the monument. It has nothing to do with me. I don't care what name they use, and the end date would only be the year since an exact date couldn't be pinpointed. What I would want, though, is the URL of this blog under my name and dates. I wonder how many tombstones have internet URLs on them. I'm sure it's been done.

The question for me, though, is how do I get this URL on the fucking monument. If I leave a note mentioning that's what I want, that would direct people to this blog, which I don't want to do. I'm not hiding it, I do assume it will be found, but I want it to be found without my having to direct people to it. I'm being totally neurotic. And once they find it, they'll find this last willful testament that I want this URL on any marker they insist on making for me, and they'll have to do it or else it will be a clear diss at me in my afterlife and all of eternity! You want that on you?

Actually, if they find this blog, they'll have an exact end date. Or, like Kurt Cobain, close enough.

Same as February last year, I went to the bank – with wary reluctance, mind you – to add funds which could last me until about November-ish. Unlike last February, there isn't a problem anticipated about the funds coming through, and unlike last February I didn't fall into a pit of squirming self-loathing regarding adding funds to survive instead of just facing the looming end of finances.

I think part of that self-loathing was borne out of the frustration of making the humiliating attempt to add finances and being told it might not go through because of the defective instrument. This time no defect, no problem anticipated, no frustration, ergo no self-loathing. But I also feel something else that helped fuel the self-loathing back then is different now, and does relate to recent posts about how I should be feeling now and what I should be doing.

I don't think I'm taking a lax attitude about continuing to exist or being comfortable about being here. I've established that these existential quandaries need to be bothering me front and center on a constant basis (even today, from my reading jumped out, "You understand that the time of death is uncertain, death comes quickly, change happens rapidly, and there is no time to waste" - Gampopa, Confusion Arises as Wisdom, p. 205). Maybe I've only found that I can't joke about it. But my finances keep getting extended. They got extended, obviously, after that bank failure last February. And it's alright for me to be alright with that. Finances aren't my great corrupter. They just enable dysfunction. Finances aren't the problem. You probably could've told me that.

Fine, all my past patterns indicate that I'll cruise along as usual until November. And then I have several more presumably non-defective instruments and all my past patterns indicate that I will continue to extend my finances as long as they're available. And it's alright for me to be alright with that.

The difference from before is having added into my awareness and mindfulness practice how suddenly things can turn. And I shouldn't let what all my past patterns indicate become cynical resignation to what will definitely happen. Even if they forecast what probably will happen, I need to navigate every section of time on its own merits of causes and conditions and contemplate whether it's finally my turn. Mindfulness zooms into moments and details, pixelating them, and stops time and feelings and all the old existential questions well up in new ways and dimensions.

And quite frankly, I think my practice – mindfulness practice with Vajrayana influences – has been becoming something that makes my existence at least worth something to me. That is to say if I happen to keep being able to live, practice is a reason to not feel so bad about it. It's no change of direction or reason to live. It may even help towards my goal as realizations, inspirations and even experience of the nature of reality align with them. It's good stuff. It's down the rabbit hole. But even I will stop short of the suggestion that practice can be a way towards suicide. It's not. But the more I write about it, the messier it'll get so I'll just leave it at that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was wrong about the two previous posts not needing to have been writ. They were actually helpful. Sometimes you need to go some place to realize it's not a place you want to go. Oh. That's kinda the story of my life.

The conveyor belt/treadmill metaphor was useless, albeit accurate, but realizing that still requires formation of some other paradigm. New paradigm. Different paradigm. What was wasn't working.

Nothing should be comfortable about my existence, considering how it has to end. Well, how it has to end for all of us, but trying or pretending to choose to in my case. Itsa big difference. For people in general, we all have to die but that's no reason to not get comfortable about existence as much as we can. Let it come when it does. Don't go where you're not invited until you're invited.

For people like me with the realization of death as a focus, there is no getting comfortable with existence. Death is a reality that can't be put aside because putting it aside is ignoring the obvious, and existence is by nature uncomfortable because it's fleeting and needs to be explored and understood as such. Maybe that's what the great adepts were getting at. Maybe they were as bad at it as me. Probably not.

I'm thinking I have to tap into sadness and despair, not as emotions but as concepts, which is a bit ironic since Buddhism teaches to do away with concepts. In this case, the concept is a tool in furtherance of doing away with concepts. Which in many ways is exactly what many Buddhistic methods necessarily are.

Sadness and despair are useful in that those are the normative emotions, tools, concepts that ordinary people avoid or are given as reasons or explanations for suicide. But I'm not ordinary, I'm not necessarily suicidal, it's just what I want to do and will eventually have to do since that's the way I set my life up. Not being suicidal makes it hard to commit suicide. Tapping into sadness and despair just as concepts, and not as the things humans generally attach to as real and things to avoid, can help. 

There's a lot of blurring that goes on. All the beauty in the things I love and appreciate become sadness and despair because they are fleeting. They won't last no matter how much I want them to be loved. Dig deep and deeper into those emotions of love and appreciation and they become sadness and despair because they all come to pass. It's still love, and joy is still joy, laughter is still laughter, but they take on more dimensions, they become multi-faceted. Anger is no longer a feeling but an energy that's pretty useless and can be stopped when recognized as an energy. Lust is no longer some base animal impulse for desire and self-gratification, but a very powerful energy that is very useful if controlled. Despair and sadness don't mean depression. Everything starts getting transformed in practice.

I don't know when it will be time, I don't know how others knew it was time, but I've come to imagine it's a full-body realization. I've never had that before. I used to talk about being at 100% or getting to 100%. As a full-body realization, I doubt I've ever been near 100%. I won't project on what I think I was, I may have never even been 1%, I may have gotten to 80%, I just don't know myself that well. 

Appalled. Fucked. Wack. Facked (Australian accent). Those are some words that have occurred to me to describe my previous post. I was poking fun at myself, but what I wrote is seriously twisted. Ah, another word. Some sick shit. I could probably go on if I put my mind to it. Totally muhfoofooh.

The suggestion that I should just comfortably accept staying alive just because shit isn't hitting the fan is mind-blowing and has been sending me into core code wtf? reality collapses and existential fishtail skids. Poking fun at myself as a coping mechanism for neurotic dysfunction and things not going my way is fine and dandy, but it's wack telling myself it's fine and dandy when all the screens start blanking on and off with static and white noise because the frivolous bit of code I introduced (the previous post) is just that bogus.

So no, no, no, no, no, no, no (oh mama-mia, mama mia) on that smooth-ride-day-to-day, wait-for-something-to-happen-first attitude. I should be stressed, I should be on edge, there should be existential angst. Mindfulness practice should take any emotionality and hysterics dramatics out of it, but the tension and cognitive dissonance is necessary. I should be constantly pressing towards suicide despite a pattern and history of failure (the 'failure is overrated' claim is still valid). There is something seriously wrong with this picture, this program that is my life, and pretending it's a smooth ride that I can be lazy about (lazier than I am, apparently possible) is way off mark. The previous post is just a sub-routine, a fail-safe. It's an aspect that's there and may actually come to pass, but it's not a primary paradigm.

This may come off as sounding really strange, but it also conflicts with my ideas of interdependence, which I believe in as a part of mindfulness practice. Interdependence is integral to mindfulness practice, actively recognizing the connections and relations between everyone in our lives. When you think and act independently and not interdependently, you risk running into trouble. The interdependence aspect of mindfulness practice helps avoid or mitigate those problems because you considered other people before acting.

In my case, consideration of interdependence of course comes with a twist. Where's the interdependence when my life has been all about isolating myself and cutting contact to some degree or another with literally everybody? But even with my idea to commit suicide, I'm aware of interdependence. And actually I theoretically couldn'twouldn'tshouldn't commit suicide without interdependence, it would be pointless. The interdependence is still there in the removing myself from their lives and affecting them as little as possible. It's a whole life thing, cutting off from people doesn't eliminate interdependence.

Somehow, though, distilling suicide to a knee-jerk reaction feels like an independent, selfish (yep, I went there) act. It treats suicide as just needing a trigger and becomes a matter of cause and effect and suggests I can be casual and cavalier until that trigger occurs. That all reacts badly with my ideas of interdependence which require continuous, mindful recognition that there is gravitas in such an act. However little impact it may have, it needs to be respectfully contemplated. I've done all I can to mitigate any impact, and there may be shock, but not any real impact beyond knowledge of an unpleasant fact; a fact of life I may add. I could've been killed by a bus and the impact should largely be the same.

So with the albatross firmly back around my neck, I'm back to wondering how will I know it's time? How did they know it was time? What strategies do I have to determine when it will be time? The spanner in the works is that time has long past, anytime will do really. Then the question becomes a perpetual 'why not now?' and I've been asking that for so long it's meaningless and ridiculous. Really, this and the previous post shouldn't have happened. I should've just posted about riding and the weather. Taipei should just cancel winter at this point. I think this is the first winter I haven't switched out my floor fan for a space heater. I don't think it's possible at this point for Taipei to get cold enough for a long enough period to salvage any notion of winter.

meet the new paradigm, same as the old paradigm

I started using the metaphor of the conveyor belt to cynically describe routine getting me from day-to-day, hoping to spur me to some sort of action. That was an abject failure. Even cynically observing that it had morphed into a treadmill has done nothing. Instead, the metaphor itself has transformed to accurately describe a "smooth ride". And who doesn't like a smooth ride? Would you rather be riding in the backseat of a car driven by a really smart kangaroo or on Space Mountain? It doesn't matter if it's a conveyor belt or a treadmill, my day-to-day is a smooth ride and I don't have to do anything, and as long as it's a smooth ride day-to-day, why do anything?

I'm well aware the smooth ride can get bumpy rolling on a dime. How long can a life designed like mine go on without something going wrong? It's become clear that I need something looming to actually do something, but loomage doesn't have to be some long, drawn-out thing where I'm watching the train approaching from way off in the distance, like finances dwindling away, and I have time to brace myself for impact and wane philosophical. Loomage can dramatically appear with the drop of a hat. I have a "go bag" ready (sort of) so that when I'm confronted with the situation whereby I assess I really don't want to deal with this thing and I'm done, I can go immediately.

For example, I have it established in my mind that I'll never move again. I can't imagine having the energy or motivation to ever put in the effort to futilely organize all the stuff in my apartment into manageable parcels to transport. My apartment now is the last place I'll reside. So if my landlord says he's selling the flat and I have to move, I'd look at all the circumstances and what I'd have to deal with to move, decide I don't want to deal with all that, and it's a go. I'd tell the landlord I'd begin looking for a new place and that's the last he'll hear of me (with apologies since he's been so good to me).

Actually, I don't know what situations would qualify as triggers, I don't even know if needing to move would actually qualify. I've been there before with the same attitude and duly ended up moving. Multiple times. I just don't know myself that well, but apparently I do have a survival instinct to deal with situations. My life is all about discrepancies between what I intend and what I do. Wait, everyone's like that, why am I tidying it up like that? My life is all about the discrepancy between intending to kill myself and never actually doing it. Imagine my surprise on the day that I actually do have to die. I'd just be so relieved that I don't have to do it myself. Disappointed, I'd consider it a failure, but relieved. Failure is overrated anyway.

How bad of a disruption to the smooth ride is necessary for me to decide it's more than I want to deal with; that finally ending it all would be the better option?
- Despite what I said, I think having to move still qualifies, past resilience notwithstanding. How would I even go about finding a new place? I don't have a phone. I can look up listings online, but convincing someone to deal with someone without a phone is probably asking a lot. How do I go about getting someone to move me? I don't have a phone. I don't speak the language. I don't know anyone I would be willing to impose upon to help me. Prior times I've had to move, at least I could figure out logistics of what I had to do. It was at least possible. Conceivable. Ideatable.
- Broken toilet that I can't figure out and doesn't affect anyone else? Things like water outage or internet down affect my neighbors and I'd just have to sit tight until they contacted the landlord. If it's something that affects only me, I'd have to contact my landlord. I don't have a phone. I could ring his doorbell. My Mandarin is pretty completely gone. Can't shit, commit suicide. Strange, but for me it's not so crazy. I'm a pampered, privileged bastard.
- Finances. That, my usual albatross, goes without saying. At some point, somehow, the money will be gone, and when the money's gone, the money's gone. It's math even I can do.
- Losing my keys. I've long contemplated that. I even mentioned it to Sadie when she was here that it was a trigger and she was like, "Let's get your keys copied NOW". I don't know how hard of landing or a brick wall this one is to go. First of all, forget the "go" bag, it's out of reach in my apartment. It may be a slow burn figuring out how bad it would be to ring my landlord's doorbell and get a new set of keys. Given my past and my psychology, I'd probably ring his doorbell despite long contemplating it to be an absolute trigger.
- Enlightenment! That strangely actually makes sense, but I'm not going to get into the mechanics of that. Believe it or don't, I couldn't care less. I think we just got an answer to the likelihood of this one.

All of this purely speculative and none of these likely to happen. But something will. I can count on that. 

personality insight

A cold is a cold, and calling it "low-grade" didn't make recovery any quicker. Recovery from that cold wiped out three ride days last week. Not a bad thing really; that day I went out and abandoned almost immediately was actually unpleasantly chilly from wind and radiant cold despite air temperatures in the 70s. All three days were like that. Three days of 20-mile rides would've added up to 60 miles, giving me a total of 180 miles for the month, leaving only one more ride to hit 200 miles for the month; a loose goal, totally unnecessary, that had looked easily attainable. Without those three days, not so much.

Come this week, I gave Monday one last day of recovery for good measure and the last three days of the month were forecast to be in the high 70s and sunny. Days I would regret if I didn't take my bike out. It occurred to me if I did 25 mile rides, I could break the (totally unnecessary) 200 mile mark. And so it was, no longer sick but still coughing. 25 miles the first day, 26 the second and I only needed 20 miles the third day. What a difference between 20 and 25 miles. It's just 15-20 minutes more, but at my age feels like it's starting to take something out of me. Mind you, 30 miles used to be the minimum of what I considered "a ride". 20 miles will do as a standard outing now, a daily constitutional. It's a quick jaunt and on with my day. Don't even need to shower if it's cool enough.

The "duckhead" is the upper left portion of the ride. If I didn't cross that bridge, it's a perfect outline of a duck head:

26-mile duckhead-Waishuangxi-Maishuai:

I caught a low grade cold on Saturday. Then it got cold, moist and gloomy outside for a few days and I used all that as an excuse to stay home for most part and feel sorry for myself (not really, I love staying home all day, the only problem is going out is my excuse to not drink through the afternoon and dry out, which I do like). The cold peaked Monday (the low grade one, not the weather) and today was recovery with a lingering cough, the kind that feels juicy and satisfying but is still a cough, and some wheezing and fatigue. Tomorrow and the rest of the week is supposed to be mid-60s and up and no rain. Sun, actually. I'm wondering if it's stupid to be planning on doing 20 miles tomorrow. Obviously I'll keep expectations low, I won't "time trial" it like I usually feel like I'm doing, and I'll abandon and come home the moment I feel I can't finish it. Thursday and Friday are definite ride days.

I wonder about how I caught the cold. Maybe I touched some surface with some germs on it and delivered them to a facial orifice? I went to a tonkatsu restaurant on Saturday with plenty of surface areas shared with other people. Leaving and entering my building I touch doors where germs can have been left by neighbors. Should I consider this to be my first social interaction of the year? 'Tis the season to carry a handkerchief to open doors.

<in the end>:
- Wisdom prevailed Wednesday and no ride. If I were still young and stupid, I may have pushed to go in a fit of braggadocio, as the pros call it, but I gauged my fitness and thought of consequences to my throat, to my lungs, to my metabolism and decided better not.
- I got out on my bike Thursday, but with the help of unprecedented construction completely blocking the bike path, forcing a 180 not even 2 miles out, I took that as a sign and abandoned. It would've been a disaster if I tried to do 20 miles. As soon as I started I was figuring out shorter routes using which bridges, 13 miles, 10 miles, 8 miles, . . . 3 miles! The construction said go home now, thou shall not pass! Seriously, when I first came to Taiwan, random construction was practically expected. In the past however many years, though, Taipei had advanced to the point that if there was construction blocking a bikeway, detours would be created or alternate routes posted.
- Friday I took the Thursday hint and I'm staying off bike until full recovery. See? We can still learn even at our ripe old age.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming out the woodwork, through the open door

Pushing from above and below

Shadows with no substance in the shape of men

Round and down and sideways they go

Adrift without direction, eyes that hold despair

Then as one they sigh and they moan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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