I proclaim my aspiration to die! Dying is wonderful and something to look forward to. Attaching to material pleasures is cheap and fleeting. As they happen, they should be appreciated and enjoyed, but attaching to them is crass. Dying is primo.

Dying is not an end. Mystics have been proclaiming this since the beginning of spirituality. It's transformation, analagous to the cycle of seasons, to the cycle of water. Caterpillar-coccoon-butterfly. The physical body recycles, but that's not important. Molecules deteriorate, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We return to the earth, the physical universe, and the molecules are recycled and reused, but that's not what's important.

Our spirit, our consciousness, the primordial energy that rises and forms who we think we are, subsides back into the primordial form, but retains imprints that continue in a different being that rises and forms. That's what I believe in, that's what I think is important.

Being here is important, too. It's important to cultivate wisdom, an understanding of existence and its mechanics. Or not. It's perfectly fine to just live life, which may be cultivating experience of existence. Subliminal. Experience of existence is necessary for an understanding of existence. It's important to treat other people right.

But it gets to a point where death is part of existence, and that needs to be incorporated in the experience and understanding. Otherwise it's just going round and round in nature's cycle.

The insomnia is getting marginally better. I still wake up after 2-3 hours, but since the last post, I've been able to get back to sleep for several hours more. I've been forcing myself to relax and have a better attitude about it, and that's helped. Overall quality of life still low, though.

I think my kidneys may finally be feeling the stress of alcoholism. More and more I'm waking up with my lower back aching. And it's not muscular, I know that at least. The pain goes away after I get up. I often felt it after taking sleeping pills, too.

Sometimes it scares me that this is serious and I'm gonna die if I don't turn this around, but then I remember that I want to die. We all have to die, I don't want to avoid it. I really, really don't want to make it to my next birthday, so I should welcome this. If I don't tell people my age, no one would guess how old I really am, which is really funny to me.

I think I want to be more open about my aspiration to die. My life aspiration is to die. Isn't that wonderful? We all have to die, and most people don't want to. I'm guaranteed to get my wish! What's wrong with that? Especially now that I have no current plan or idea of offing myself.

It makes sense, too, with where I am in life. I don't want what other people want. No thought of buying a house, marrying, having children, settling down. I don't want to invest in desire and craving and acquisition, as if the things we pursue are permanent or lead to happiness, or don't ultimately end in death.

As an aspiration, I want death to be at the forefront of my thought process. Whenever I see an attractive person, I immediately look around for someone much older and not as attractive, and I think of them as the same person at different stages at life. I challenge the base attraction by questioning why it doesn't transfer over. If I'm not attracted to the old person, why be attracted to the younger person, the younger person will eventually be there, too.

What a mess my life is. I don't mind it, but I wonder if it could have been different, or if it would have been better if it was.

THURSDAY, JULY 10, 10:23 p.m. - Band stuff. Digital black & white.

MONDAY, JULY 14, 3:57-4:01 p.m. Taipei Arena nice afternoon light and intersection of Dunhua and Civic Blvd.

TUESDAY, JULY 15, 10:27 a.m.

THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2:22 a.m. - Garam clove cigarettes from Indonesia.

I'm at the tail end of three days off from work, trying to do something about this lack of sleep. Best intentions from family members went to naught, useless, and now it's up to me to deal with this myself. The way it should be. The way the pattern always has been.

I still can't sleep, but something is changing. I don't know how I'll handle it once I go back to work, but I get the feeling that this is an ordeal, and when I get through it, I will have transformed. And indeed, something needed to change.

I wouldn't be surprised if the insomnia has been an internal rebellion to the strict habits and schedules I keep falling in. I need to liberate myself from that. I get stuck. And just as I was saying to myself in frustrated exasperation, "Why the hell can't I get to sleep?", my unconscious had been getting sick of this "thing" I've become and was saying to itself in frustrated exasperation, "Why the hell is he stuck in these stupid mundanities?"

My unconsciousness and I need a better way to communicate.

These past few days of no work I've just been relaxing in my sleeplessness, knowing I didn't have to go to work. After lying in a half-daze for the whole of the nights, I think I managed to get some sleep afterwards, in the morning hours.

One idea I had for this time off was to head out of town, go down to Kenting and hang out on the beach for several days if I couldn't sleep. Probably not a good idea, since as exhausted as I was, the last thing I need to try to do was do something. Which is probably why it was a good idea, but my body wasn't convinced.

In an early bid to shake things up, last Friday after work, I met up with band members and crew who were celebrating the singer's girlfriend's birthday. Just meeting up with them was a break from routine. The attempted socialization was a train-wreck, and I'm not sure the foray into drugs was all that wise in that I don't think they effect me the way they do other people. I had to ask what I was supposed to be feeling and still didn't. I didn't notice anything different from alcohol and insomnia.

The day after that I had to work, and when I got to work I only had 2 hours of sleep in over 24 hours, and I thought it was gonna be another meltdown. But before work, going up in the elevator, I told myself that was not going to happen. I was going to keep it together. And I did.

SATURDAY, JULY 5, 5:48 a.m. - nice morning light in a part of town that isn't mine.

6:54 a.m. - up all night with band members and their peeps.

Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN:

Maishuai Bridge #2

Xinyi District

Dongxing Rd.

Around my neighborhood

Accupressure stone walking path. Minsheng Park.

How much weight can a body take? The weight of things unresolved, lacking closure, things started and never amounting to anything. The weight of flights of fancy that went into the Bermuda Triangle of imagination.

How long does it take for the weight of nothingness to accumulate to the point of being unbearable? Where you can't even point to where the weight is coming from, inarticulable.

How much weight do you have to bear until people agree that you should just be put out of your misery, that it's too much for them and you to stand. I know the answer to that. Few people want to put other people out of their misery. Misery loves company, after all.

It's not living I have a problem with, it's existence. No one seems to get that. I might take several days off next week and go down to Kaohsiung. See what happens.

That incident after the six mile run was interesting enough, although ultimately easily dismissible. Worst case scenario, that was about stressing my body almost to a breaking point, coupled with lack of rest from insomnia and alcohol.

I got sent home from work tonight. I think the month of insomnia finally caught up, but I'm not 100% certain that was it. I'm at least 90% sure it is.

It hasn't improved any, and the band had a gig last night, and before the second set, I was like, "this is gonna be the hardest set of my life." Strangely, it went alright after a shaky start. But maybe pulling it together for the gig, maxxed out what little reserves I might have had left.

After the gig, declining hanging out with Amy, I went home and eventually got 3 hours of sleep. I went to sleep after 3:00 and woke up at 6:00. Instead of puttering around like I usually do when I can't sleep, I eventually went out. I came back after noon, and managed to fall back to sleep until after 4:00. I then headed to work, got something to eat, but when I got to work, that's when it happened.

I can't even describe it, I can't even relate to what happened, but my body pretty much shut down. I was able to do my work, albeit probably very slowly. I could feel my heart beating. I was sweating. My eyes kept tearing up, so I probably looked like I was crying. I went to the bathroom several times to splash water on my face and at least one of those times I began hyperventilating.

Although I was able to do the work in front of me, I'm pretty sure my reactions and interactions with people made it really obvious something was seriously wrong. Eventually my boss told me he told the person who was supposed to be my second tonight to come early, and he called the new hire who wasn't scheduled to come in to also come in tonight, and that I should go home.

They now know how serious this is. I came home and it's not like I went to sleep right away. I still can't sleep. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep.

I started cutting again during the past few weeks, for the first time in perhaps maybe a year but probably not that long, just to alleviate some of the feeling. Although I want to note that cutting is just a thing that I do because I can because it's in my history. It doesn't mean anything and doesn't point to any major underlying whatever.

One thing I've done to take advantage of the insomnia is to make sure I don't stop sitting. After I wake up after 2-3 hours, I sit. I've also begun a new cycle of reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

It's bad. It might be really, really "bad", but I don't want to lose focus that this existence is unbearable, and if this kills me, I really, really wouldn't mind. I don't want to attach to living. I don't want to attach to dying. I don't want to be averse to living, I don't want to be averse to dying.

SATURDAY, JUNE 28 - My neighborhood. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

Banners protesting something about the new MRT line that's being built. I shot from behind the banner so when I flipped the negative the words wouldn't draw attention.

MRT construction means traffic lanes changing every several weeks, including the movable bus platforms.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial House, near Taipei Main Station.

Taipei Main Station.

Experiments in cropping details. 

Cropping detail experiment.

Danshui township on the way to Le Mer for a gig.

I really hope this insomnia is almost over. I will quit my job if it looks like it will continue indefinitely. Although I did fall into a comfortable rhythm the past few days as Cinemax has been airing Season Three of Battlestar Galactica from 3:00 - 6:20 in the morning, and I've been able to catch up with the episodes I missed because of the insomnia. I thought I saw them all on my brother's DVDs, but I had no idea they revealed the final 5 Cylons. Holy crap!

Now I'm ready for the next season, which Cinemax usually starts airing after they blitz through the previous season. Yay! I hope it doesn't interfere with Sopranos on HBO.

But they finished the season, having aired 4 episodes per day for the past week, and now I have to try to find a new schedule. The past few days, I took a sleeping pill during the last episode, and that usually tided me over all the way through most of work the next day, with crashing typically in the last hour, when the pressure turns on to get the newspaper's final pages out.

The insomnia has seriously disrupted a lot of things. Fortunately, the band hasn't really been disrupted because the bass player bought a restaurant which will eventually become our regular weekend gigs once it opens, but until then we haven't been rehearsing because he's been busy doing that. Still gigging, though, and so far gigs have been alright. Maybe the insomnia has been helping the gigging!

Running and riding went out, although I did try running a few times, once achieving a 4-mile run at an average of 8:24 miles. Even now I look at that number and go, "Wow, that's slow". Usually I can't run that slow if I tried.

Yesterday I found a layer of dust on my bike. Optimistic that the insomnia will be gone soon, and not having work or rehearsal today, I didn't take a sleeping pill yesterday morning and slept decently, I think. I think I slept at least five hours before waking up for the first time. That's really good. Usually I haven't been able to sleep more than three hours, and the first time waking up was also the last time.

But then I took my bike out to see where things were, and after just a few miles I realized it was a very bad idea, and headed back. I suspect even after I can sleep again, it will take a while for my body to recover.

Then at night, I don't know what came over me, but I decided to go for a 6 mile run, 6 being the longest distance I've gotten to this season. I was determined to do it even at 8+ miles. Part of the optimism, I suppose, that the insomnia will be gone soon. I also didn't drink coffee today for the first time since I can't even recall. I wouldn't be surprised if since the monastery when I decided to kick the caffeine addiction. After I had re-addicted one of the monks, haha!

I did the six mile run at 7:34 miles and was upset. Upset that I didn't mark 7:30 miles. That's pretty twisted, but I do think I was a little delerious at that point. I was talking to myself and directing myself to get to the nearest 7-11 to rehydrate. This wasn't supposed to be a push run, just a do-what-I-can run, but it started going well enough that I did start pushing.

I made my way to the nearest 7-11 and then started home through the Raohe night market which was almost closed down. I downed 800ml. of sports drink, sucked down a vitamin gel packet (Asia's answer to energy bars), and then after I downed a bottle of orange juice, I couldn't take another step. I stopped. I felt my chest tightening up and thought, "hm, not good".

I felt a huge pressure envelop my body and I found myself clutching my chest, which made me think, "heart attack?" (it is the classic gesture in movies, after all). Then I forced myself to relax and breathe, stop, loose the pressure. As calmly as I could I continued through the night market to the entrance where I knew there were benches, and there I sat down.

I don't know what that was. I guess I don't really care. I did prepare myself that if I was going to collapse, I would collapse where there were people around, and at 1:30 a.m., there were still people around a closing night market.

This incident probably had something to do with the lack of rest my body has gotten. If I have a heart problem, I wouldn't be surprised, considering how much abuse my heart has absorbed. An alcohol related problem I expect, but find no evidence of. I even wonder if running and riding has actually stymied my efforts at self-destruction. Cardiovascular work-outs, pretty good oxygenation. God, that would suck. But it's not like I would have given up running or riding.

SATURDAY, JUNE 21 - Amy, Andy & Alex @ Le Mer. Another gig there, another hanging out on the north coast in the late afternoon.

7:51 p.m. - Between sets. The other band members are more socially connected than me and have peeps willing to travel all this way for our gigs.

I've been in a photographic drought all this year. It's already halfway through the year and I've only developed two rolls of black & white, no lomo fisheye or pinhole. In the U.S. when I dried up, I usually went to the magazine and photography sections of bookstores for inspiration, at least to give a kick in the butt to my black and white, but it's not like that in Taiwan.

Not helping is having a Thai photographer friend here who takes incredible photographs. He shoots with a DSLR, and I hold DSLRs with a certain amount of reservation. Not because of any fault with the medium, but because DSLRs have leveled the playing field so much, putting technical excellence in the hands of people with minimal compositional or imaginative skills.

Particularly lacking in the imaginative. Gorgeous, perfect shots that frankly bore me. Or worse, people using DSLRs and producing pictures no better than if they used a point and shoot. But his shots are just fantastic. Make me go 'why am I bothering?' which is, of course, the wrong attitude.

National Geographic channel recently aired two shows on photography, I hope it's a series and there's more, but they were really inspirational. If it's a series, it may be on the history of photography, and so the ones I saw focused on black and white.

They reminded me why I do it, and made me go through my fotolog and for once I was getting inspiration from my own photography, flatter myself not. But the feeling was, 'yes, this is why I do this'. A question someone asks in one of the programs is, "what is the language of photography?", and to me it was a no-brainer, the first thing I thought was that it's the language of memory. Or is that what he said? I forget.

Someone else reflecting on photography's early days said, "Back then, the feeling was that in the future people who didn't understand photography would become society's illiterate". Which is, I think, totally wrong. People who didn't understand photography didn't become society's illiterate, but people who did understand photography became able to manipulate society.

If there are more National Geographic programs, I'll lose interest once they start covering color, which usually means commercial and fashion photography. Color photography bores me. Although now with DSLR technical excellence, I can appreciate fine color film photography. Fine color film is just as good as DSLR, but even better because it's warmer, and you know effort when into creating the image. It wasn't almost automatic like with DSLRs.

As for black & white film, I like it because of its faults and unpredictability. Not that I wouldn't mind being able to come up with a sharp shot for once (should consider getting a much better lens someday), but a lot of times I get back a roll and am disappointed at first, but after I start working with them, I end up liking the feel.

Finally, another thing that made me relate and connect was someone mentioning that pushing the shutter is like an orgasm, a moment when you realize that's it. OK, maybe not quite like that, but I'm not a quick shooter. When I compose a shot, I hold it for quite a long time before I shoot, even though there might be no difference between the first second and the fifteenth second I'm holding the composition. I might even risk losing the shot. But when I shoot is a matter of feel, and it's got to be right or I won't shoot. I might even abandon a shot if I lose the moment. It's kinda zen.

FRIDAY, JUNE 13 - Bus commuting on days of rain. 12:49 a.m. - OK Mart convenience store on Sanmin Rd. Coming home I have to catch one of the last buses that run on Minquan Rd. that covers the west-east distance to work, and then I still have to walk between a kilometer and a mile south on Sanmin Rd. 4:56 p.m. - Xingtian Temple on Minquan E. Rd. Approaching work, I won't be considered late. 

SATURDAY, JUNE 14 - Keelung Rd. Is the human element the point or a distraction? Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

MONDAY, JUNE 16 - Nanjing E. Rd., Sec. 5. My neck of the concrete and steel woods. MRT construction making a daily mess of things on this major boulevard unless there is absolutely NO street traffic (but a human element present).

The Living Mall

What was I thinking? Big bang. Scientists describe it as literally as possible so that non-astrophysicists can understand, can relate. Some describe it as literally as possible so that they themselves can understand, can relate. But I think there are some who realize how inadequate the convenient description is. What actually happened is far more abstract, far more fragile, intangible than our minds can fathom.

It goes at one point in time, the more advance thinking goes, at one point in "time", since the concept time was also created at the same moment as the big bang, all matter in the universe was situated in an infinitesimally small, atom-sized space, and "something" happened to trigger this thing to explode in a massive eruption that created time and space, and thus the universe was born.

As I write it out, I'm unconvinced. Make it so linear, and it's too arbitrary to be scientific. After all, as Freud once said, it's just a theory.

I think some scientists know it's not that linear or concrete or even conceivable. To conceive something, we think we should be able to describe it, to visualize it, but one current cosmological theory of the beginning of the universe acknowledges that there was a span of time between the big bang and the existence of light. How do you visualize something without light?

After the big bang, the nature of what existed wasn't visible, and it was after some time when conditions in this unseen, primordial, molecular soup changed that finally the process that would become the shedding of light would occur. Finally the conditions were that a photon of light wasn't immediately absorbed or dissipated and it shot forth and suddenly the universe became visible. It shone, gases were revealed.

But that uncertainty of what was going on in that period, that murkiness, I think, brings question to that concrete idea of "everything in the universe within a tiny space suddenly banging and creating the universe". Maybe that's just a convenient, concrete description. As humans, maybe we're too arrogant, or maybe it's just our natures to resist the idea that there is some phenomena that we can't explain. Or maybe it's just coping with that inability.

Maybe the dot wasn't quite so small. Maybe there wasn't a nothingness of a void before then. Maybe it was an event that involved a previously existing universe. I'm just trying to cope.

And I've been thinking about the idea in physics of conservation of energy, or maybe my version of it since I'm no physicist. I think I heard somewhere the idea that the amount of energy in the universe is not only finite, but is quantitatively conserved. No energy is ever lost, it can only be converted to another state.

Aren't my thoughts energy? Aren't my memories energy? My consciousness? How much of my life do I not remember? I think it's easy to state that the vast majority of my life, I don't remember. Where is that energy? Why do we forget? Why don't we remember absolutely everything, especially since it is said that we only use about 10% of our brain's capacity? Hmm.

Yea, that can go several ways. I can't help tying it in with karma. These things are the energy of karma, karma exists because we do, because our consciousnesses do. The energy is not lost just because the memory can't be recalled. The energy is imprinted, converted into an energy called karma. And that karma converts back into manifestations of future personality, a continuity of energy, of being. A soul, maybe.

I'm losing the thought. I mentioned that I'm having insomnia these days, right? Well, I am. I can't get more than a couple hours of sleep without waking up fully alert. Even with sleeping pills I wake up – they just helped me get back into an unsettled sleep because I'd be too groggy to find the bottle of Jack Daniels.

Extended hiccups make me want to kill myself, insomnia also makes the option attractive. I know I won't, but I wonder about these things and why my afflictions just happen to be of this nature. It's in my mind, I know. If I had eczema, or if I still had asthma, I'd think the same thing. At least it's not a tumor.

And I still think the fundamental nature of our consciousnesses has something to do with dark energy.

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon (China, 2008)
Rating: Nominally fresh 6 out of 10 tomatoes.

It's an ancient China period piece, warring clans trying to unite China, armies, generals, heroes, blah, blah, blah. And Andy Lau. What film has he not been in lately? Fortunately he's a pretty good actor, and his presence in films always seems to make them better. The film I give a nominal fresh rating for being competent, but it's not very memorable. So much so that its flaws aren't even worth pointing out.

It's about two kinsmen (Andy Lau and Sammo Hung) from the same village who join one clan's army. They have big dreams of returning home heroes. But only one rises quickly through the ranks to become a top general in the clan. But the fighting just goes on and on, and the movie makes a sudden jump in time, perhaps a commentary on the futility of war, as the characters see their dreams fizzle while their aspirations go unfulfilled.

The bits and pieces of the film are good, but as a whole, it's flimsy and can't hold the amount of water it tries to contain.

And more period piece madness:

An Empress and the Warriors 江山美人 (China, 2008)
Rating: Rotten 4 out of 10 tomatoes.

I sat through this movie in the theater just saying over and over to myself, "weak . . . weak." As it happened, it was a pretty bad movie, you know, weak, but it was mercifully short, and that one redeeming factor, at least, stops me from bitterly spitting bile reviewing it.

The movie is set in old China where clans battled it out with their armies. The story centers around the daughter of a king, who is reluctantly made empress to avert a power struggle between factions in the clan after the king dies.

The factions still have it in for each other, and the faction that supports her, including a top general who happens to be her childhood mentor and friend – and perhaps crush – undertakes training her in the arts of war. The opposing faction are one-dimensional "bad guys", who are painfully predictable and unambiguously, unredeemingly . . . scheeeeming. All they needed was a trademark evil laugh.

The flaws in this movie are facially evident from the outset. I remember that 10 minutes into the movie, I thought "if this is what I can expect, this is going to be a bad movie". Things don't make sense, like "why is that guy there when he's supposed to be on the battlefield?", "why is the king alone when he is mortally wounded?". The movie is riddled with inconsistencies and illogic like that. It's an incompetent movie. For instance, inconsistencies in the depth of water is incompetent. Illogical scene jumps and people running as fast as horses is incompetent. The empress reverting to a pouty little girl is just annoying.

The acting, for such amateurish material, is pretty good, and that helps pull the movie through (even though it doesn't pull through). I can't recommend this movie to anyone wanting to watch a good Chinese period movie. I would only recommend it to someone who is willing to put up with a fluff Chinese period movie when everything else at the rental store was out.

What are we if we are just our memories?

What are we if we don't have our memories? If our memories have no bearing on reality?

I was wrong when I said Josephine was gone for good. Josephine, ex-girlfriend from 10 years ago, having found me through one of my fotologs, then disappeared for several months, has reappeared with a new fotolog of her own and has started posting her own photos.

I thought I shut down any possibility of us meeting up again, but I oddly opened the possibility of her coming to one of my band's gigs. Her coming to a gig would mean something on the lines of meeting up again. Curious. How did that happen?

Who are you? What are you doing here?

It's alright. Anything that might let me connect with . . . something that might have seemed real before . . . .

If it were Amina, I don't know, just some strange immersion? I call her the love of my life but there's nothing there anymore. It's totally irrational now. If it's a past life thing, I think that she was a stranger I happened to pass upon and then subconciously internalized in some quasi-obsessive way, and then pursued in this life having run into her.

Losing her was only natural. It wasn't based on anything real. Nothing deep, nothing meaningful. It was all one-way. It wasn't reciprocated in the way something with meaning should. She never returned, so there was never a circle. Circles are all-important in nature.

If it were Shiho, . . . she did go deep in this lifetime. She had the advantage of years and music over Amina. I recently saw the movie Linda! Linda! Linda!, which has become one of my favorite films for more than one reason. The least of which was one of the minor characters plays a song on stage that when I heard, I immediately recognized but didn't know what it was.

I knew I knew it because I could hum along to the melody and knew what was coming next. A perusal of the end credits and a web search and then a limewire download revealed to me that I had the Unicorn song on a cassette tape in New Jersey in a box of Shiho-things when we used to send mix tapes to each other.

A night spent on YouTube looking up music related to songs Shiho Nakai put on mix tapes makes me realize how deep Shiho had gotten just using music. But using music to get through to me is more about me. The music still means something to me, but Shiho somewhere out there might have absolutely no feeling or relevant memory relating to me whatsoever.

More than half of what I looked up on YouTube, although maybe sourced in what Shiho introduced me to, was what I found on my own. Shiho does not get credit for that.

Shiho, out of sight, out of mind, is just a memory. Not real. Even with the music to haunt. Amina, out of sight, out of mind, is just a memory. Even with the pervasion into fabric. Josephine, in sight, in mind, is fucking scary, not something I can handle as something on the road in front of me.

As much as I loved Josephine, she was no Amina, she was no Shiho. That is totally fucked. I need to think about why.

What are we if we are just our memories?

Medley

Shit. Relating working now with working back then, it's really the same pointless, absurd same thing. Relating band now with band back then is even worse.

Playing in this cover band is totally stifling. In one sense it is making me a better drummer in terms of basics, but on another hand it's also preventing me from progressing. I'm a better drummer than they know or appreciate because . . . it's a cover band. Playing in this band is good because it makes money, but it's an obligation - my gratitude for letting me in, but when I feel the obligation has been paid, I will definitely quit.

This work thing isn't flying, which leaves me wondering . . . then what? It's true, I had trouble sleeping in San Francisco, and it was a big problem. My sleep problems now is existentially work-related and is also a big problem.

I'm so counting on having a tumor. Please god let me have a tumor. GOD: It's not a tuumaa.

Since February, before starting work, I've gotten extended hiccups 3 times a month. This is not normal. I really think I have something seriously wrong with my health. Which is right and proper, since that's my intention. If my drinking isn't ruining my health, then why the hell am I drinking?

Still, the joy-generation meditation. I have instinct, and then I have consciousness. My instinct is negativity, hostility, mired down, angry. My consciousness kicks in joy-generation: be happy now because it's not worth it not to be happy now. I don't know if it's because I did it before, but it really works. Happiness is not a dependent thing. It can happen by ourselves, just by ourselves.

The joy-generation meditation is helped by a further meditation on what I think should be considered absolute truth. I wish good and happiness upon all people. I wish all people do good to other people and to have good done to them. Even those suffering, wanting suffering, I wish upon them the suffering they want so they can progress. Sometimes we need suffering.

And always death as a focus. Focus on death to maintain these philosophies. We all have to die. What is the purpose?

Maishuai Bridge #1. Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN.

SUNDAY, MAY 25, 4:46 p.m. - Another gig at Le Mer in Qianshuiwan.

Trying to remember the feeling why I quit my job back in San Francisco. And relating it to why I'm back at work now, in Taipei. I'm sitting in my apartment in front of a computer and there's a big animated question mark above my head.

Already I'm feeling my practice suffer. Sleeping problems are back, I had those when I was working in San Francisco. I don't think I had them in the interim. I think part of the problem is the stress to get sleep backfires.

The quality of morning sitting has declined.

Not that any of this is bad. It's just another aspect of practice. If I want an ideal setting for the ideal practice, I should have entered the monastery. The reason why I didn't was to slog it out in the outside world. This is just fine.

And then there's always the unbearable. I remember cryptically asking Sadie about the 'unbearable', and she answered like she knew what she was talking about, before realizing she didn't, but she did. But I do think her unbearable is different from mine.

My unbearable is existence. This crude existence. One of the reasons I know I'll never have children is because it's just unbearable thinking about making a life to go through this. If I can't empathize with existence, how can I impose it on another living being, even though I know another living being might think it's great, and might find me terrific as a parent?

I look at people all around me at all different stages of life, and I find it unbearable. Especially the children. I imagine what they'll go through in life, for what purpose, to end how, and it's unbearable. I project myself onto people at different ages, and it's unbearable. Especially the ages I already know about.

I look at human beings, I look at humanity, I look at what we're doing to the planet and the legacy we're leaving our children, and it's unbearable. It's not necessarily rational, I know, there's still a lot of good in the world, there's still a lot to discover, to change.

What am I missing?

I had this thought tonight at work of going to China and join a construction crew to help reconstruct the quake-stricken areas. Help build, do something positive. I'll consider it again a year from now after I feel my current commitments to the band and work are cleared. That's a cop-out, though, as I know my situation in a year can completely change, and I'll abandon the idea.

What on Earth Have I Done Wrong? 情非得已之生存之道 (Taiwan, 2007)
Rating: Fresh 8 out of 10 tomatoes.

I don't know what to say about this unconventional film. I saw it in a theater, so it at least got a local theatrical release. Such low budget endeavors such as this probably don't deserve this high of a rating, but something about it worked for me.

It's a local Taiwanese "mockumentary", mocking the director's own life. It's a fake documentary about the director trying to make a film but hits so many personal and professional roadblocks that he turns the project into a fake documentary about how the documentary came about. The documentary, which is fake. Yea, I'm still trying to figure it out, and that's part of the cleverness of this film.

All the characters are playing themselves, but every scene is on a set. Aside from that technical question, the film is about the seriously flawed director and how he comes to grip with his flaws and how they lead to a cathartic revelation about happiness and what kind of person to be to be happy. The dramatic catharses along with the sophomoric ruminations on happiness actually work to make this film poignant and memorable.

I saw a movie recently with musings about happiness. It made me muse about happiness.

For me, there is no objective standard for happiness. Happiness doesn't happen because of some objective thing, some objective other thing happening. There is no road to happiness, nothing leads to happiness.

I think happiness is often confused with desire, when people think if they get some object of desire, they will be happy, but in truth, when people get the object they desire, they desire more and remain unhappy.

But I think there is some validity in that idea of happiness. Happiness is a state, that is, there is such thing as happiness, I think. Happiness has meaning. Remove desire from that equation, and that is something closer to what happiness is.

Oh wait, I've been through all this before with the "happiness generation meditations" I used to do. The idea was to do these meditations where I just generate happiness within myself, not attached to anything outside, no object of desire. Just create joy within myself. And I remember it working, that it is possible.

For me, that's the most important aspect of being happy. It has to come from within, it has to be a being. It can't rely on something else. If you want to be happy, just be happy. Don't look for it down some path, don't expect it to be a result of some other thing. And if you're unhappy, then choose it; realize you're choosing it. I'm sure I've written this before.

May 11-17

Nearby Keelung riverside park photostroll, Pentax ZX-5n, Ilford XP2 Super:

Intersection of Tayou, Nanjing E., Keelung Rds. & Maishuai Bridge #1.

Raohe St. with numbered stall markers for when Raohe Night Market sets up.

Rainbow Bridge by Raohe Night Market.

Cut-off, roll-ending frame 37.

SUNDAY, MAY 11, 5:11 p.m. - Qianshuiwan, Taiwan north coast.

5:12 p.m. - La Mer bar & restaurant back porch, Qianshuiwan.

5:17 p.m. - Qianshuiwan is on Rte. 2 out of Danshui and almost to the next township of Sanzhi on the north coast. The band got a gig to play at La Mer in the evening.

FRIDAY, MAY 16, 4:28 p.m. - Riding east (looking west) up the right bank of the Keelung River.

4:54 p.m. - Taipei Military Cemetery in Nangang District, the eastern-most part of Taipei.

5:25 p.m. - Fudekeng Cemetery, still pretty accessible by bike from my new place.

MAY 17, 3:36 p.m. - Same photostroll as the black & whites. 

3:38 p.m. - Shots from Rainbow Bridge. Bottom pic taken with Ricoh Caplio R4.