"Issues I'm dealing with in this lifetime". I was introduced to that idea in my first year of college, I think from Richard Bach's Illusions. We choose our issues, our problems that we have to work on to grow spiritually. We are the otters of the universe.

Back then, suicide was already on my agenda, although much more angsty and not the edifice of philosophically developed bullshit I seem to think has a leg to stand on now. I labeled the issue I'm dealing with in this lifetime as "existence". And now that I think of it, that hasn't changed much through the years. As pretentious as "existence" sounds as an issue when I first identified it, I haven't replaced or upgraded it to anything else. Suicide for me is an existential issue.

But presently, I can tuck that issue in my cap because of another issue I'm recognizing in my self-imposed isolation. I'm not sure what to call it, but it feels like some sort of paralysis. I don't want anything, I don't want to do anything anymore. And by "paralysis", I mean that simply as a descriptive and not as something negative. Perhaps perplexing, but not negative.

People, if they're not depressed, want to do something. I understand it. For a large portion of my life, I wanted to do music. I wanted to practice, I wanted to play. I don't anymore. I may pick up an instrument now and then and noodle, but there's no feeling or wanting anymore. It's wet noodling. I used to be a runner, and that was almost a compulsion. If I didn't run, I would get antsy. It was even metaphor and motto, "you don't stop", á là A Tribe Called Quest. You don't stop meant the pursuit and the passion, which included towards suicide, as death is a part of life. I stopped. Then I got into cycling, and I still go for rides, but it's a major production in my head and a chore to get myself out the door by the scruff of my neck. It's not that I want to ride, I'm practically forcing myself.

People, if they're not depressed, want to be social and hang out with friends. I just don't want to. Some people I know have called me out and after reluctantly agreeing and meeting up with them, they subsequently haven't made any contact. Maybe I've become socially inept. I didn't feel I was inept, but it also may have just been the vibe I gave off. As much as I tried not to give it, it was, "I don't want to be here and want to leave as soon as I can".

I haven't rented a movie in an awful long time, because I just don't care to. I've been to Blockbusters since, but I would just walk out empty-handed.

Family in Kaohsiung have made overtures, but I just have no interest. I can't imagine a visit to Kaohsiung. What would I do there? Stare at family members I can't communicate with or be marginalized by family members having a conversation I can't participate in? Been there, done that.

I could travel now if I wanted with that windfall, but I just have no interest. Not even Taiwan, much less respond to Madoka's entreaty to visit her in Japan after she heard about the windfall. As much as I love Madoka and feel comfortable with her, I can't imagine going there and interacting with her in close quarters for whatever amount of time I'd be there. I'd want to be alone. I can't even imagine making the effort to go visit her.

And love itself. Just NO INTEREST. I don't want to be loved, I don't need to be loved, I'm perfectly happy not loved. Love, sex, intimacy: no interest. Connection: no interest.

And New Jersey family is asking me if I'm going for a visit for my father's 80th birthday, and I just have no interest. I'm still composing my email response that I don't want to go. Birthdays have never been a big deal in our family and family gatherings I've always found to be awkward. I can't imagine a visit to New Jersey. I'm trying to make the email not sound grim. If they do press for me to go, I might concede, though. Everything's a big whatever, meh.

I do things during the course of my days because I have to do something. I'm not a vegetable yet. I've already said I'm not a hermit. I can watch TV or DVDs or surf the net all day. I read at bookstores and the library. I go out to eat and I do eat, but I can't say I have much of an appetite these days. I don't ever feel hungry. I go out and eat because it's something to do and to ward off what I expect will become hunger if I don't.

I know, it all sounds like depression, but I don't think I'm depressed. I don't feel depressed. I'm fairly at peace, I really have nothing to complain about, so I don't for most part and dismiss it when I do. I cultivate happiness just for the sake of happiness; happiness not being the result of desire or acquisition, but just from this idea of conscious human existence. I'm here, why not be happy? I'm here, why be miserable?

I'm trying to figure out what to make of a huge windfall that would have anyone more deserving and appreciative doing cartwheels and floating on air.

My cousin called a while ago, and she told me some things had happened regarding family stuff and to expect some extra money in my bank account. I said, "oh", and after asking a few questions about what happened and hearing the answers, I didn't think any further of it. Not really any of my business.

Then a few weeks later I went to get rent money and saw my account balance and said, "oh ... my", and understood why my cousin had emphasized, "... you can probably stay in Taiwan for a loong time".

Actually, it happened like this: I withdrew the rent money and got the receipt and glanced at the left side of the balance, expecting to see 3 numbers in front of a comma and all would've been fine. Instead I saw a single number in front of the comma and thought, "that could be bad", and left the bank wondering if my account had been hacked. Where did the money go? That would be a game changer. No more money, time for plan B. Well plan A, which perpetually seems to be plan ... Q.

Then out on the sidewalk I glanced at the receipt again and looked at the right side of the balance and saw there were 3 extra numbers that I hadn't noticed before. Eyes widen. Oh ... my. I couldn't even try to calculate how much it was in U.S., and when I got home and did the calculation, I thought, "I think I'm going to get that G-Shock altimeter watch that I'd been eying since my Timex died".

I don't consider it my money. I'm just the custodian until I can hot potato it back to my parents where it belongs, but I recognize my parents' intention here. It's not my money, but I can use it however I see fit. And somewhere along the line, they've also seen fit to stop pressuring me to do anything.

And I'm reminded about a realization I had a long time ago that money is not one of the issues I have to deal with in this lifetime. It's not my current karma. Maybe I've dealt with it in past lifetimes, maybe I'll have to deal with it in future lifetimes, but it's not an issue in this lifetime.

Which means it doesn't matter if I don't have money; no money, go to plan Q. Or R. It doesn't matter if I have money, I'm not going to get bent out of shape if I do have it. It doesn't change anything. Reality and existence issues are the same either way.

However, I'd be in denial if I didn't recognize the possibility of changes in response to this windfall. And I have made changes. I'm very good at not spending money. My primary expenditures had been rent, food and alcohol. And my food and alcohol expenditures had strict self-imposed limits.

I decided I can get rid of those limits as an exercise in letting go, because even those measures of self-discipline can become attachments, and nothing whatsoever should be attached to. I'm not going to go crazy and start spending like crazy on food and alcohol. That's not who I am, but it's good to let go of any attachment that I was being good by imposing those limitations on myself.

And I'm still going to be very wary of any material acquisition – accumulating stuff – but I'll allow for upgrading and replacing things I already have which will just lead to . . . preventing ennui. Just enough change in my life to keep my mind materially positive and not bogged down.

Still not sure where all this is going.

I have noticed that what I've been posting for the past year plus has been a lot of long-winded, boring, highly-detailed, navel-gazing, rambling minutiae. Nothing clever, funny nor particularly interesting, I shouldn't wonder, which is what someone would want to be in a public forum such as the internet.

But as I've said before, this isn't about readership. This blog is just my expression. There's no theme here; I just post about what sparks the neurons, whether it be movies, music, reads, Buddhism, suicide, spirituality, death, religion, mental health or whatever issue I want to spout on about (and believe me I'm leaving out a lot).

It occurs to me that this long-windedness has a lot to do with the isolation I've found myself in. I'm no hermit. I don't think there's any such thing as a "hermit with internet". But isolated I am. Recluse may be a better description of what I'm doing. A hermit is cut off, and that can't happen with internet. A recluse is withdrawn, and that I am.

If social interaction is a release outlet, then I don't have it, and the constant mind-stream of my thoughts is going on and on without outlet, and then when I decide to type something down, it just all trickles out in highly-detailed, rambling minutiae.

But this isolation also emphasizes the mind-stream of thoughts; that it's there. And that in Buddhist practice, that's an aspect that needs to be tackled with the idea of cutting it off. It relates to our ego-selves.

This mind-stream of thoughts is our ego-selves or, if not, is representative of it. And it's that attachment to our ego-selves that keeps us in cyclic samsaric existence, so theory goes.

I remember in early practice coming up with visualizations to break the mind-stream, or at least be mindful of it. Back then it was simply about stopping the mental chatter. Recognize it, and try to return to some mental quiet. Beyond that, I didn't know. But now, years and years later, there's much more urgency to tackling and cutting off the mind-stream once there's a realization of how it's connected to the ego-self.

I would go so far to say that it's a key step towards enlightenment. It's a breaking, smashing of the notion of subjectively conceived reality. And the hardest part of it is that we have this mental structure that perceives reality, and now it's a matter of using that mental structure to disassemble that same mental structure. Maybe that's why enlightenment is so friggin' hard.

Hm. Korean media is doing it, so why don't I? The first half of 2012 is over and my vote for the top K-pop girl group release for the first six months is going to Sistar's "Alone":


Mind you, until this song, I haven't been a huge fan of Sistar. I've recognized their quality in previous releases, but there was always some element in their songs that prevented me from being completely hooked.

I got hooked to this song from the start, starting from the minor key and the sexy groove once it kicks in, but then the verse sections are quite good and the bridge and choruses are incredible.

Sistar are kinda known for being an overtly sexy group (and they've complained about that image, but then they should tell their choreographers not to make it a requirement for them to bend over like pin-ups in every friggin' video and dance routine they do), but I think in this song, sexiness is in the songwriting. The song is inherently sexy and whatever dressing or choreography is placed on it will be sexy. And they bend over like pin-ups quite a bit.

Runners up I would give to Miss A's January release "Touch" and Wonder Girls' fun June release "Like This" (both written and produced by Park Jin Young (JYP), on whom I have a man-crush because he seems to be some kind of genius to me). "Touch" has a great groove start to finish:



"Like This" is just a fun romp with fun choreography:


As for JYP himself, aside from being the CEO of the agency to which miss A and Wonder Girls belong and a producer and songwriter, he's also an artist and he did release a song in the first half of 2012 and promote it. And I must say that as few male pop artists there are that I'm willing to watch while they wiggle their bums, JYP has the moves and charisma that make me watch in a way that only Michael Jackson has otherwise compelled me. Seriously, he may not be physically attractive, but he has serious charisma:


I'll also give a nod to SNSD's first sub-unit, the 3-member TaeTiSeo's (Taeyeon-Tiffany-Seohyun) release "Twinkle". It's great funk/soul song written by an American composer/Korean lyricist. I think I'm not giving it the credit it deserves because expectations are always high for SNSD, and so when they meet those expectations, it feels par for the course even if it's a great track. The 3 singers, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb saying, are among the four best (along with Jessica) in SNSD.



Finally, I note the debut of rookie group Spica in the first half of 2012 because it's simply the best and most mature debut of a girl group I've seen thus far in terms of quality. As a group, they may have some of the best vocals in the industry, up there in the range of Brown Eyed Girls.

I think the idea behind the group was to have good vocals, and the main vocalist, I gather, is a professional singer who has been recording the guide vocals for producers for years (after hearing her demonstrate some songs by other groups she provided the guides for, I'm convinced the producers kept it in on many of the chorus parts of the final mixes). Also, from what I can tell, they're the only group I've seen handle harmonies live. With other groups, I've rarely been convinced harmonies were being sung live.

Paul (U.S./UK, 2011)

Caught this movie midway through on Cinemax and was immediately hooked, and fortunately it was broadcast again the next day when I watched it in full.

It's a fun sci-fi/geek romp about two nerds from England who travel to the U.S. on holiday to attend Comicon in San Diego and proceed on a geek road trip of "alien hotspots" in the American Southwest. On the way, they meet up with the title character Paul, who has escaped from Area 51 and is trying to reach a rendezvous point to be taken back to his home . . . um, planet.

It's definitely not for everyone, there's a certain British-ness to the humour, exposure to which helps get the movie. The movie might likely appeal to sci-fi geeks, and I'm not hardcore, but I have to admit it's in my background, and that certainly aided in my appreciation.

The movie is replete with sci-fi and cultural references, the geekiness of which encourages people to just go along with the ride and ignore the ridiculousness of the scenario and appreciate that it's silliness that is very well done.

In my own geekiness, I'm surprised in all the noted references online that the movie makes, I haven't found mention that Paul's healing power is taken directly from the Star Trek Original Series episode "The Empath", nor Paul's twice quoteth Pearl Jam nod, "It's evolution, baby" (one for the rockers maybe).

And to split hairs about cultural references, there's a difference between nods or homage in the script to cultural references and overt mention of cultural references that are within the context of the movie. So wearing an "Empire Strikes Back" shirt is not a cultural reference because it fits in with the character in the context of the movie. Anything at Comicon is not a cultural reference because those are what you would expect to see in the context of Comicon.

Characters quoting Han Solo or Lt. Ripley lines, or the "Star Wars" cantina music playing at the bar (online sources keep referring to that movie as "Episode IV: A New Hope", to which I say fuck that, the movie was "Star Wars". Period. And fuck George Lucas fucking with his own legacy) are cultural references because those references are outside of the context of the film. Those can be considered homage to where this film comes from.

I loved this movie, but it is for sci-fi geeks who would get the humor and have fun with the many references. I'll give it a fresh 8 out of 10 tomato rating. No higher because it's light, silly fare, but excellent and intelligent in the light, silly fare genre.

My latest compelling read at the library was Mackenzie Phillips' memoir High on Arrival.

In my youth, there was a hit sitcom in the U.S. I watched called "One Day at a Time". Mackenzie Phillips was a star on the show along with doe-eyed babe extraordinaire Valerie Bertinelli. But as adorable as Bertinelli was, Mackenzie had a charisma that had star quality written all over it.

She was also one of the daughters of "Papa" John Phillips of the 60s group "The Mamas & Papas". And as a daughter of a hedonistic, megalomaniacal rock star (read: bad parent), and as the title of the book suggests, Mackenzie ended up a drug addict and a junkie.

She also reveals in the book that she was a victim of incest, which apparently became the media lightning bolt for the book. Everyone immediately focused on the incest and the monster that John Phillips may have been.

Mackenzie doesn't paint her father as a monster and defends him to the end (she took care to keep the secret until after his death), but an objective look at his behavior, there is no other word for him than 'monster'. Not evil, mind you. Hedonistic and mega-selfish and self-absorbed, which to some may add up to 'evil' when applied to parenthood, but otherwise it's hard to find a description of evil in there, I opine.

I understand why there was so much attention on the incest, it's media sensational. But I don't think her memoir is defined by the incest issue. Mackenzie, herself, is certainly more than the incest, and I think what was compelling about her story to me, was a similarity to other books I've been attracted to and reading recently, which is that hers was a life of . . . difficulty.

I admit I had difficulty sympathizing with her main difficulty, drug addiction, and the difficulty she caused for people around her because of her addiction. It is hard for non-professionals to see drug addiction as a sickness that needs to be treated. Especially when the addict is a star and the money just flows in because of celebrity status.

Drug addicts treat people with impunity just to feel good for themselves, and when their behavior starts hurting people around them, it's hard to understand why they can't take responsibility for themselves, recognize the harm they're causing, and stop taking drugs. It's the ultimate in selfishness, that I suppose many people, in a similar vein, can easily equate with suicides.

I'm not quite sure why I found her story so compelling. Her difficulties aren't something I can relate to. Although the same can be said for the other reads I've found compelling.

I'm not an addict. I arguably abuse alcohol, but it's not an addiction. It's intentional, it has an aim and I monitor the effects. And it affects no one. Is there anyone who can be asked whether I'm an alcoholic and they would answer, "yes"? Absolutely not. Although there are people, I shouldn't wonder, who if told I was, in fact, an alcoholic would respond that they kinda suspected.

But alcohol is still a substance, and perhaps that is what I may perceive to share with Mackenzie or drug addicts. That fucking with reality. The way alcohol fucks with my reality is part of my challenge to reality (which likely has nothing to do with drug addicts' motivations).

I dunno. I relate to Mackenzie's memoir, but I'm not an addict. Alice Sebold's autobiographical "Lucky" spoke of post-traumatic stress disorder, and I related to it, but I can't identify any trauma in my current lifetime to be stressed out about post facto to become a disorder.

And then there are all those high-altitude climbing nuts on Mt. Everest and K2, participating in an activity which I describe as inherently suicidal, but still relate to on some incomprehensible level. It all means something, yo.

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Future Life Resonances: Christianity

I grew up in the U.S., a Christian country, but nothing about Christianity ever rang true to me. As a youth, I recall being exposed to Sunday school. I even have an extant copy of the New Testament from a completely forgotten Sunday school teacher who apparently had taken to me. Touching, as she wrote a message to me in it, but it's just an anomaly to me now.

Back then, there was absolutely nothing known about the teachings of Jesus other than what was contained in the canon, promulgated by the Roman Empire. Shall I emphasize that point? Promulgated by the Roman Empire.

Since then, scholarship on the so-called "Gnostic Gospels" has come a long way, along with the discovery and multiple translations and analyses of the "Gospel of Judas". I actually didn't even know how vilified the Judas character was in the Roman/Pauline Christian canon that is dominant today.

So back to future life resonances. It did occur to me that being reincarnated in South Korea might mean being born into a Christian household. It isn't a major concern. I do believe that once firmly on the path, we will always find our way back to the path in whatever lifetime or circumstance.

Then I realize how much I've been interested in and reading about the Gnostic Gospels recently. I think I even mentioned that if those alternative gospels had been available and taught, I might not have been so turned-off by Christianity. They make sense in terms of divine insight, rather than the controlling brain-washing of canonical Christianity with its superficial morality.

I'm inclined to take this interest in this other side of Christianity that has been suppressed for 1700 years as also possibly a future life resonance. Maybe I'll be born in South Korea, maybe I'll be born into a Buddhist household, maybe a Christian household, maybe like in this life a non-religious household. But no matter, I think I'll still continue on this path, and if I'm born in a Christian household, I'll be karmically/subconsciously primed against the current Christian canon.

If karma really does have force, I'll still question canonical Christian hegemony even if surrounded by it, but now that the gnostic teachings and scholarship on them are available and being spread, I'm not at all concerned that I can still find my way onto the path, even if surrounded by Christianity.

I mentioned before how disappointed I was in reading Elaine Pagel and Karen King's conclusion in their otherwise incredible scholarship in their book "Reading Judas". They opined that what comprises the Christian canon needn't be revisited to include the recent findings in the gnostic gospels because of the centuries of guidance the canon has provided, ignoring the centuries of harm, destruction and suffering that has happened in the name of the canon.

And they are conveniently willing to ignore teachings of truth, or more accurately the ability of people to determine what is truth when presented with a full spectrum of divergent teachings. I don't necessarily condemn them for their opinion, but I definitely don't agree with it.

Aside from it being their opinion, it is also a reality that 1700 years of brain-washing is not easily erased. Current Christians versed in the canon are deeply convicted in their belief that anything outside of what was decided by a council (Nicene) appointed by a Roman emperor (Constantine – who might as well be George W. Bush as far as I'm concerned) as gospel is heresy.

"Revisiting the canon" is simply not an acceptable option according to the church and unthinkable to the vast majority of Christians. It's not unlike one physics professor I had in college who cut me off when I mentioned "faster than the speed of light", and wouldn't even consider my question if that was the basis of it. Scientific canon states nothing in the classical physical universe can go faster than the speed of light. It's still cosmic law, but physicists today are more open-minded and willing to consider thought experiments whereby the speed of light isn't the cosmic speed limit.

No, scholarship into the other teachings of Jesus that are being uncovered are likely to remain in the realm of academic scholarship, and not likely to be considered as part of the Christian faith anytime soon, whether or not it was, in fact, an aspect of what Jesus taught, which I think it was. While what modern Christians believe for most part has little to zero to do with what Jesus taught. It is what it is, I have no problem with their faith and belief and how they pursue it, but it's simply not what Jesus taught. They changed it and should own up to it, even if it means they made truth out of fairy dust.

Anyone who takes such scholarship seriously would be, like author and scholar Bart Ehrman, who was a Bible thumping evangelist in his youth, forced out of the church, voluntarily or not. He now considers himself an agnostic but writes in a solely Christian context, and I think that's kind of too bad. Reading the Gnostic Gospels, even I'm convinced that Jesus was a big deal with a radical spiritual message in his time.

If punk band Mission of Burma was onto something when they wrote "The Roman Empire never died/It just became the Catholic Church", then the Christian canon is not about the truth or the true teachings of Jesus, but about control and domination. And 1700 years of control and domination is a powerful thing. Powerful . . . "karma".

Actually, all I wanted to say in this post is that my recent exposure to so many things related to the so-called Gnostic Gospels, the alternate teachings of Jesus regarding true divinity (including these two documentaries: The Gospel of Judas and The Lost Gospels), might also be what I term "future life resonances", similar to geekiness about Korea.

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Nothing about Korea resonated until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and met classmate Hyun Ae who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked. I'd been swapping mix CDs with people for years and gotten into bands and music as a result, but nothing compares to the impact and change K-pop brought. And it wasn't necessarily about that mix CD. Hyun Ae's CD may not have even been the start. I liked songs off that CD and most of it went into my iTunes collection, but it didn't make me a dedicated K-pop fan. It was just good music I was introduced to.

YouTube also started becoming big in 2006 and I credit YouTube for helping launch the second Hallyu wave, which otherwise might have been contained in South Korea without the international exposure YouTube brought. Trying to reconstruct my personal history of K-pop, I recall an early YouTube video of a karaoke competition variety show called Korean Madness catching my attention. Aside from those teenage high school students being hilarious and full of personality (Hyun Ae informed me later that the show was a competition and that those girls ultimately won), I ended up liking the song (the original is played at the end of the clip and, yes, I have it in my collection now) as well as the other songs they sang in the course of the competition. Those girls had good taste.

The next step was the Wonder Girls "Tell Me" dance phenomena. Wonder Girls debuted in 2007 and their dance for "Tell Me" went viral with high school students, flight attendants, military personal, traffic police, etc. etc. uploading themselves doing the Tell Me choreography. I watched a lot of those, starting with one high school student, and got into the song. Isolating the backing track, it's quite groovy and subtle, although I'm sure I didn't notice how cool it was right away.

Hyun Ae and I had fallen out of touch by the time I saw the video for Girls' Generation's (SNSD) Gee (2009) on MTV probably in 2010. That was when it took off. Initially, part of me was practically offended by what was on my TV screen, likening it to awful, superficial, garish, candy J-pop. What the hell is this crap? the snob in me sneered, reaching for the remote to change the channel, and I pointed the remote at the TV and . . . didn't. Not only did I stand there with the remote pointing at the TV for the rest of the song, afterwards I immediately went online to look them up.

So much of that video and song should have had me cringing. Even now I don't know what attracted me more to the video against what should have repulsed me. I should've considered it god awful and I wouldn't blame anyone clicking that link thinking it is god awful. But it's going to be a classic K-pop song if it isn't already and I agree with that. It wasn't pivotal only to me. SNSD had debuted in 2007 to much acclaim domestically in South Korea, but it was "Gee" that made them famous throughout Asia and led to a string of hits that made them the reigning queens of K-pop all through Asia.

Very soon after that, Invincible Youth started airing in Taiwan with two members of Girls' Generation (Sunny and Yuri) cast and I watched religiously even though it only had Chinese subtitles. The other cast members introduced me to other girl groups leading the second Hallyu wave (T-ara, 4minute, Brown Eyed Girls, Secret and Kara). K-pop became an obsession since 2010. No explanation except that it's a future life resonance. It seems I've determined that my next locale of rebirth will be South Korea and all this is an indication of it.

Future Life Resonances

So this blog has a label "future life resonances". To recap, "future life resonances" is a spin-off of "past life resonances", whereby under some flaky theory of reincarnation, we might suspect that aspects of our current lives and beings are the results, or resonances, of past lives by force of karma.

Karma, I very unscientifically propose, being an aspect of a natural energy substrate of the universe that is as unknown as the scientifically proposed dark energy. The form this natural energy substrate has taken with biological beings on this planet may be what we think of as consciousness or awareness. It's what enables all living beings to interact with our environment, from bacteria to human beings.

In the cycle of death and rebirth as envisioned by people who believe in reincarnation, karmic impressions are able to be transferred from one lifetime to future lifetimes. It's not scientifically testable. It is attested to by masters of various esoteric traditions. For laypeople, it's only intuitive in the most flaky way possible. "Intuitive in the most flaky way possible" is maybe a proper definition of "faith".

But whereas past life resonances look at our current lives and habits to think about what we might have been or what issues we might have dealt with in previous lives, future life resonances look at our current lives to imagine or project what or where we might be reincarnated in future lives.

Oh, and as far as I know, it's my creation. I didn't read or hear about it from anyone else, and it only occurred to me in relation to this Korea thing.

My implication is that my inexplicable attraction to South Korea so late in this life, and assuming this is late in my life (anyway it's later in my life), may be an indication that I'm angling towards a rebirth in South Korea, whether by choice or by force of karma.

I've had plenty of exposure to South Korean culture and people before, but never until now did it become a near obsessive focus. As early as college I had a Korean roommate for a semester, Myung Soo, and looking back at the people from whom I learned the most from college, he was one of them.

He had come to the U.S. when he was about 10 years old. He was very patriotic and spearheaded a Korean student movement to get Korea included in Oberlin's East Asian Studies department, which at the time only included Japan and China (I know, wtf?).

To the still marginal extent Korean studies are now included at Oberlin is because of his efforts and the stink that he raised. I know because I was at those meetings (drunk, if I remember correctly) with the all-white East Asian Studies faculty (I know, wtf?!) who tried to defend their hegemony.

How can you have an "East Asian" Studies department and not include Korea? Look at a map! They argued that most people were only interested in Japan and China, but that was probably more an expression that they, the all-white fetishizing faculty, were only interested in Japan and China. In the end, I think they realized they had to make more of an effort to promote Korean studies as well.

He was the kind of person who could change people's lives and he did. And he transformed himself, too. Initially, I was very unimpressed by him. He was very materialistic and superficial when I first met him, and I witnessed his changes over the years and after college he went back to L.A. and became a labor organizer. Far more impressive than anything I've done since college.

And, like all Koreans I've met, he was Christian. He actually turned my prejudice against Christianity around to realize all Christians weren't like mainstream white Americans, who I found to be frightening, hypocritical, racist bigots, spewing words of intolerance, hate and evil in God's name, while believing themselves to be righteous and godly.

My exposure to Christians had me thinking that it made sense to me that if Satan were to wage war against God, the most effective strategy would be to subvert and assume the word of God to spread evil, and Christianity was the very language of hate, intolerance and evil, while convincing the weak minded they were agents of God and good.

Myung Soo felled me on my ass just by saying, "Do you think I'm like that?". I hadn't thought of him as Christian, but he forced me to and to tear down that blanket view of Christians.

Still, nothing in my experience with him stirred any interest in Korea or Korean culture. For me at that time, it was all about Japan, a possible past life resonance. Aside from Myung Soo, I continued to have exposure to Korean culture and nothing about Korea resonated.

I met plenty of Korean/Korean Americans after moving to the Bay Area. Among them, I had a Korean American roommate who had graduated from Brown University and knew my brother ("You're Rob Li's brother?!", she said) and nothing Korean was inspired. I had a Korean co-worker who, when she called me inter-office, I would answer the phone in Korean (learned that from Myung Soo), and she swore my pronunciation was perfect.

Nothing until I came to Taiwan in 2006 and had a Korean classmate who introduced me to K-pop after I asked her to make me a mix CD of music she liked.

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The Root of All Evil - The God Delusion

I wouldn't say the views in this documentary reflect my own, but it's worth the watch for anyone striving for a balanced interest in the human condition and the role of humanistic rationality in relation towards religion, dogmatic religion, and how its far-reaching influence has become a scourge of humankind.

Richard Dawkins is an atheist, and after watching this, I think it's fair to call him a fundamentalist atheist. His language is virulent and his attitude unforgiving and not totally unlike religious fundamentalists. Even though I generally agree with his content, I'm not really comfortable with his form.

Even fundamentalist atheism can start looking scary in this documentary.

Fundamentalism by nature breeds intolerance. Even though fundamentalist atheism is relatively benign compared to the other kinds of religious fundamentalism that plague our existences, there's still a gnawing darkness that if these views were the dominant hegemony, the intolerance would still lead to persecution and violence. That, I think, is the legacy, manifest or not, of any fundamentalism.

I'm glad that Richard Dawkins targets religion based on evidence rather than spirituality in general. If a scientific atheist attacked spirituality, he or she would be attacking something they don't know and have no evidence for or against.

Science makes no claim about understanding spirituality or defining it. Spirituality is not in the realm of scientific inquiry, therefore a scientific attack on spirituality itself would be invalid, unscientific and likely dogmatic. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, "Absence of evidence (of god) is not evidence of absence (of god)".

Religion, on the other hand, provides plenty of evidence of its nature through human behavior and history. It is a human phenomena, and is reasonably subject to a science-like analysis and scrutiny. It's not hard science; no laws can be derived from Dawkin's inquiry. But he can rationally point to characteristics and concrete results of religion, and argue against its validity or value to humanity.

And I think what he portrays has a point. Religions, or aspects of religions manipulated in an aggressive, intolerant and dogmatic way, can rain untold suffering upon innocents who the general idea of religion are meant to protect.

If you're just trying to be good and make an honest living, that's no defense against religious fervor if something you do offends their religious sensibility. ( <-- I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, -ed.)

Einstein was skeptical about quantum mechanics to his death. He didn't refute it or describe it as bad physics; the mathematics were meticulous and experimentally proven accurate. But he felt they were incomplete.

Quantum mechanics was very good at what it was describing, but it was limited. Its results were so bizarre and counter-intuitive that something must have been missing in its description of reality. On the other hand, Einstein must have realized that leveling such a description of quantum mechanics opened up his theories of relativity to the same accusation.

If he couldn't refute quantum mechanics, then his theories of relativity were also incomplete and did not truly or fully describe reality. And that, I suppose, is why he pursued a theory of everything, merging quantum mechanics and relativity to his death.

My thinking and my bias is that even if a theory of everything is reached, perhaps the ultimate triumph of scientific process and theory, I still look at science with Einstein's own suspicious eye. It's very good at what it's describing, but it is successful because it limits itself.

Quantum mechanics works fine in the atomic realm, and as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very small, it's primo. Same with relativity; as long as it limits itself to the realm of the very large, the science is irrefutable.

But to me, I wonder if this explaining the realm of the very small and the realm of the very large, even if explained in a unified theory, explains the whole of reality. It might still do what it does very well because it limits itself. Physics describes the physical world, but it assumes the physical world is all there is.

And there's plenty of stuff in the basic existential human experience to suggest that assuming the physical world is all there is is fundamentally delusional, incomplete and arguably unsatisfying.

Carl Sagan: You Are Here (Pale Blue Dot)

Carl Sagan on the opening image, taken by NASA using the Voyager probe at his request:  

The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it might be a good idea just after Saturn to have them take one last glance homeward. 

From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would just be a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager would see – nearby planets, far-off suns. 

But precisely because of the obscurity of our world, thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having. It had been well-understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast encompassing cosmos. But no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

I know I'm no longer a part of this world. I don't occupy the same world as mostly everyone else does, I shouldn't wonder. No doubt there are others like me, searching, striving, wondering. Failing even, which I don't posit as a bad thing. I readily admit it, I'm a failure in many things. It's just not necessarily a bad thing.

But the vast majority of people are a part of the nominal world of physical phenomena, accepting it for what it appears to be.

I know I have trouble getting past that, too. I sense and experience reality and the world just as everyone else does, but I have that requisite doubt that what I'm perceiving isn't all there is to it and I have to attack that doubt head-on to try to figure out what my truth is about it.

So I read. My current reads are spread amongst libraries and bookstores.

Alice Sebold's (author of "The Lovely Bones") "Lucky" is a current read. It's her autobiographical account in which she writes in painful and gruesome detail about how she was raped, beaten and degraded as a first year college student and the ensuing events that led to her rapist's arrest and conviction.

Mind you, personally "rape" is my most hated word in the English language. I don't know why, it always has been. In any catalog of  "worsts" in the human experience, rape has always been an item that I've found particularly egregious and disgusting.

I'm not sure how it ties into my inquiry. Perhaps it's the subjective intensity by which we feel the human experience in the worst way possible. Similar to my fascination of high altitude climbers and their sick obsession with a basically suicidal sport. And I'm not criticizing it. I thoroughly understand it and am intrigued by it.

I now regard Alice Sebold as one of my life heroes. I don't know why. Maybe in a similar way as I consider Stevie Ray Vaughan as one of my guitar heroes even though I don't think of myself as a guitarist in any way. Her bravery in handling the aftermath of her rape stands for itself, but she didn't get through it unscathed.

She graduated from college, endured the rape and alienation by one of her closest friends and confidantes, and subsequently went through hard times of falling apart that I'll never know. And most disturbing in "Lucky" is her description and realization of having post-traumatic stress disorder.

I self-diagnose and know how I consider my feelings about myself and my experience, but when they match up perfectly with someone who genuinely has PTSD, it just makes me realize what a wuss I am. What trauma have I experienced? None. I'm no survivor of anything.

Still, discovering Alice Sebold's personal story and realizing the type of psyche from which a twisted and disturbing, yet lovely, work like "The Lovely Bones" can emerge made me feel somewhat connected. When you experience that kind of trauma, you no longer live in the same world that most everyone else seems to.

I'm also reading "Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, which is about scientifically accepted phenomena of things that are completely beyond human subjective experience, such as quantum mechanics and cosmological space-time theory and sub-atomic entanglement.

A lot of weird shit is described in what science is finding about the nature of reality, but what strikes me is about the effort to describe reality using our limited observational ability. As human beings, as biological products of the universe, our perception and observational ability is a product of evolution on this planet. i.e., for this perceptional reality.

As humans, we arrogantly believe we can understand the big picture, the whole enchilada. But really all we can really understand is what is observationally perceivable, and our perceptions are limited (granted human nature strives beyond our limitations to boldly probe natures of reality we weren't biologically meant to understand).

A very simple example is that we only perceive electromagnetic radiation in a limited range – mostly visible light. We need instruments to perceive electromagnetic radiation beyond that limited range. Our limit is natural. Perceiving what we call visible light is a product of evolution. We don't need to see ultraviolet or infrared electromagnetic radiation to survive.

On other worlds and other environments, it might benefit other biological creatures to perceive in those other ranges, and perhaps what we perceive as plainly visible in visible light, is imperceptible to them.

We have sound perception, but the sound spectrum is greater than what our facilities are equipped for. But we hear according to what is beneficial to us. Smell, touch, taste? These are just tools that make our environment navigable. But change the environment, and the tools will change, as will the general perception of reality.

The whole of reality is actually the entire range of everything, beyond our senses and include senses that we haven't even developed because of our limited environment on this planet, and we have no idea what those are!

Could there conceivably be an environment or a world where what we categorize or even deride as spiritual perceptions are requisite to survive? For us on this planet, the question ends right there. I don't think we can even conceive of it.

And, of course, death is foremost among my readings; meditations on death and the biological beings that we are, destined to die.

One book I've been reading in the bookstores is How We Die by Sherwin Nuland. Another is The Thing About Life is that One Day You'll be Dead by David Shields. Straight shooters of books about our biological reality.

How We Die is written by an M.D., a cardiologist like my brother and uncle, and his book is more about the biological process of dying. Describing what is happening to and in our bodies when we experience external forces that are bringing our lives to an end in various ways.

The Thing About Life is more philosophical and uses general scientifically observed facts and data about aging and the life cycle for readers to think about the life and aging process, which always culminates in death.

Lastly, I mentioned the book Reading Judas before, but it disappeared from the bookstore shelves before I finished it. Well, it reappeared.

Its relevance to my inquiry is that one of the issues that had disparate views and divided the early Jesus movement was sacrifice and death under the reality back then of Roman persecution; namely torture and eventual execution, either by crucifiction or games at the Coliseum.

They were pondering and meditating on death in a very deep and real way, because just by being followers of Jesus they were under threat of Roman horrors. The meaning of Jesus's death was a central concern among them.

One side promoted being martyrs and encouraged followers to bravely and willingly meet their end as sacrifices. Mind you, if you read the book, it shouldn't be lost that this attitude is the exact same attitude that current day Muslim extremists and militants hold. I can imagine those early Christians who held this view yelling, "Allahhu akbar" as they were condemned!

The argument in Reading Judas is that the opposing side, the side that was suppressed for 1700 years, was that this attitude was completely counter the teachings of Jesus. Thinking oneself as a willing sacrifice was primitive and vulgar. Jesus preached love and rebelled against the Roman Empire by refusing the practice of sacrifice.

And it won't happen, but it theoretically makes logical sense that Christians could use the Gospel of Judas to argue against Muslim suicide bombers, saying that's not what Islam is about. It won't happen because the Gospel of Judas is not canon, and it would be hypocritical because the attitude of Muslim suicide bombers is not much different from the early Christians martyrs who are canon.

And to wrap this all up, after trying to gain perspective on scientific observation despite our observational limits, which is a result of evolution, I have to admit that spirituality is also beyond our biological observational limits.

We don't need spirituality to survive, evolutionarily speaking. So what am I doing? What are we doing? Perhaps basically the same as cosmologists and astrophysicists – trying to describe reality.

What seriously disappointed me about Reading Judas was the authors' final stance that the Christian canon need not be challenged to be revised because the (Nicene) canon has been counseling and inspiring Christians for 1700 years.

This thoroughly goes against what they uncovered in their analysis that if the teaching and preaching of the canon is about a wrong God, it should be challenged. If Christians are being counseled or inspired by a doctrine counter to what Jesus taught, it should be challenged. They just roll over to the status quo.

WordsCharactersReading time

I mentioned earlier about lecturing my parents on not worrying what their children were doing and butting in and nagging, which just creates aggravation for everyone. Whether they were good parents or bad parents is a matter of opinion, but their job is over. We're all adults now, responsible for our own decisions, and unless they could offer wisdom and not just nagging, we're likely not going to listen to them.

OK, I didn't mention anything about wisdom, as I know they have none to give. I told them to focus on their own happiness and do the things they want and enjoy, and truly enjoy them without getting worked up about what they perceive their children might be doing wrong.

At the time, I thought I may have gotten through to them. I thought maybe they had a moment of, "you know? that's right, that makes sense". But upon reflection a few weeks hence, I realize that's totally against character. The far more likely scenario is that they thought what I've thought about them my entire life. Which is, "who are these people and where did they come from?".

It's far more likely that they listened to me with incredulity, realizing they have no idea who this person is or the nonsense they were hearing. "Happiness? Just do what we enjoy? Who is this person, where did he come from?" People who can't give wisdom will also not hear it.

Their identity lies in part in controlling the complete micro situation around them. Enjoy the aurora borealis? Enjoy traveling to the pyramids in Egypt or Machu Picchu or the Antarctica? They don't do those things because they enjoy the experience and being fascinated by the macro wonders of the world. They do those things because it's a measure of their material success in life.

They travel the world on package tours, but I'm convinced they never feel awe or grandeur at what the world presents. They don't reflect on the world system the Egyptians created or the extreme environment of Antarctica or the grandeur of the civilization that built Machu Picchu which was wiped out by European blood-lust and greed (I know, I know, that civilization may have had its own blood-lust and greed. Who knows?).

I'm sure they don't contemplate that the auroras exist as a result of the magnetosphere protecting our planet from solar radiation, without which life on earth as we know it could not even exist. Instead, they laugh at the Muslims praying five times a day towards Mecca with their butts pointing high in the air.

What they really enjoy is feeling they have a measure of control over their lives, which is an illusion they constantly try to maintain. When I tell them to just be happy, it's the same as telling them to lose that control. And that's just absurd.

This makes far more sense.

WordsCharactersReading time

Took this off someone's tumblr:

The Buddha was sitting under a tree talking to his disciples when a man came and spit on his face. He wiped it off, and he asked the man, “What next? What do you want to say next?” The man was a little puzzled because he himself never expected that when you spit on somebody’s face, he will ask, “What next?” He had no such experience in his past. He had insulted people and they had become angry and they had reacted. Or if they were cowards and weaklings, they had smiled, trying to bribe the man. But Buddha was like neither, he was not angry nor in any way offended, nor in any way cowardly. But just matter-of-factly he said, “What next?” There was no reaction on his part.

Buddha’s disciples became angry, they reacted. His closest disciple, Ananda, said, “This is too much, and we cannot tolerate it. He has to be punished for it. Otherwise everybody will start doing things like this.”

Buddha said, “You keep silent. He has not offended me, but you are offending me. He is new, a stranger. He must have heard from people something about me, that this man is an atheist, a dangerous man who is throwing people off their track, a revolutionary, a corrupter. And he may have formed some idea, a notion of me. He has not spit on me, he has spit on his notion. He has spit on his idea of me because he does not know me at all, so how can he spit on me?

“If you think on it deeply,” Buddha said, “he has spit on his own mind. I am not part of it, and I can see that this poor man must have something else to say because this is a way of saying something. Spitting is a way of saying something. There are moments when you feel that language is impotent: in deep love, in intense anger, in hate, in prayer. There are intense moments when language is impotent. Then you have to do something. When you are angry, intensely angry, you hit the person, you spit on him, you are saying something. I can understand him. He must have something more to say, that’s why I’m asking, ‘What next?’”

The man was even more puzzled! And Buddha said to his disciples, “I am more offended by you because you know me, and you have lived for years with me, and still you react.”

Puzzled, confused, the man returned home. He could not sleep the whole night. When you see a Buddha, it is difficult, impossible to sleep again the way you used to sleep before. Again and again he was haunted by the experience. He could not explain it to himself, what had happened. He was trembling all over and perspiring. He had never come across such a man; he shattered his whole mind and his whole pattern, his whole past.

The next morning he was back there. He threw himself at Buddha’s feet. Buddha asked him again, “What next? This, too, is a way of saying something that cannot be said in language. When you come and touch my feet, you are saying something that cannot be said ordinarily, for which all words are a little narrow; it cannot be contained in them.” Buddha said, “Look, Ananda, this man is again here, he is saying something. This man is a man of deep emotions.”

The man looked at Buddha and said, “Forgive me for what I did yesterday.”

Buddha said, “Forgive? But I am not the same man to whom you did it. The Ganges goes on flowing, it is never the same Ganges again. Every man is a river. The man you spit upon is no longer here. I look just like him, but I am not the same, much has happened in these twenty-four hours! The river has flowed so much. So I cannot forgive you because I have no grudge against you.”

“And you also are new. I can see you are not the same man who came yesterday because that man was angry and he spit, whereas you are bowing at my feet, touching my feet. How can you be the same man? You are not the same man, so let us forget about it. Those two people, the man who spit and the man on whom he spit, both are no more. Come closer. Let us talk of something else.”

Can’t say I believe this is a factual, but I like the idea.

All I would comment upon is the poster's last bit about not necessarily believing that this account actually happened.

I don't know, but I've never heard this story and there are elements in the substance that make me doubt that it's one of the authentic accounts of conversations the Buddha may have had. It sounds to me like a more advanced version of Buddhist philosophy, and worded in a way that the Buddha wouldn't have in his day.

That said, it's a good story and it is a good reflection of the teachings of the Buddha. So I would say it doesn't matter whether it actually happened or not. Facts are perhaps a matter of faith, but the important thing about Buddhism isn't the facts, but the inspiration and the teachings and any enduring truth that resonates through generations.

There's a certain flexibility regarding the "facts" when it comes to Buddhism, but the bottom line is that if the teaching is good and holds up under personal meditation and scrutiny, then it should be accepted, whether the source is the Buddha or not.

I give the story a thumbs up, as well as the poster's skepticism. And if he or she likes the idea, then that, I think, is a successful propagation of the teachings.

The first song that came up on shuffle play just past midnight was Half Past April by Rainer Maria. Sometimes I think iTunes has a mind.

I think I've already enumerated all the things I've lost interest in, things that used to comprise my identity. Music is gone, photography is gone, physical activities all gone.

While trying to find my way to my next attempt, things that interest me now reveal themselves in what I find interesting to read in the bookstores or libraries. And things that interest me to watch on TV.

I still have base, gross, human attachments, indicated by an ongoing appreciation of listening to my music collection. It's an attachment in that it's something hard to let go of. It's hard to just stop doing it.

I used to be a coffee drinker, a caffeine addict, but when I decided I just wanted to stop doing it, I did. I'm sure it would be the same for alcohol if I ever needed to make that decision. Stopping listening to music is just not an option.

Another attachment I have is towards food, indicated by my attraction to food programs on the Travel & Living Channel. But I think I can give up that attachment pretty easily. It's really simple desire. I can drool, drool, drool, but if I can't have the food, I have no problem with that.

I still waste a lot of time watching superficial South Korean entertainment media. I am a master of wasting time. All my life I've been good at occupying myself doing mindless, repetitive shit. I would probably be happy as a clam working on some assembly line that my mind might take as some kind of meditative environment.

I guess another ongoing interest is human mortality. I'm attracted to books and TV programs that deal with the human life cycle, death, and any investigations involving death. Even criminal investigations are a meditation on life, mortality and extreme human behavior.

I mentioned before getting wrapped up in people climbing the world's highest peaks. To me, that's a habitually suicidal activity. If you do it, no matter what the reason, there's a high risk that you either might die, or face a life or death experience.

You can't climb the world's highest peaks assuming you'll make it down alive. All the stories of people who've died on the peaks attest to that as fact. No one goes up assuming they will die, but no one can go up and assume they won't.

I'm still interested in Buddhist teachings, which is closely related to death, since the ultimate teachings of Buddhism regard death as the ultimate meditation on life. There are a lot of feel-good teachings of Buddhism on living that are propagated because that's all what most people can handle.

But a real challenge of Buddhism, I find, is the facing of mortality and contemplating what it is, or what one believes it is. Tibetan Buddhism outlines what past practitioners have discovered about it, but none if it is provable, so it's a matter of what makes sense to any one of us.

At least Tibetan Buddhism takes a good, hard challenge of the experience and what it is. It's not just some fairy tale of some mythic heaven or hell which seem an awful lot like human psychological projection. Human psychology = not ultimate reality. It's a created reality.

Also related to Buddhism, I'm still interested in cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics. Any ultimate spirituality must take the entire universe into account (most organized religions aren't universal, they are "us vs. them and we're right, they're wrong"), so any valid spirituality must investigate scientific findings on the universe, or be open to such an investigation somewhere down the line.

I don't mean blindly accepting scientific findings in the realm of spirituality. Science is by its own design unqualified to deal with spiritual questions. But as science limits its scope, it does what it does very well, and spiritual seekers would do themselves well by looking into those findings.

There's a lot that's scientifically unprovable in cosmological theory, but it's interesting how there's a lot of crossover with Buddhist conceptual thought. Likewise, it's interesting how concepts that have been taught in Buddhism for centuries match descriptions of reality by quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics and astrophysics have been finding there's a lot of real fucking strange shit when dealing with reality. Buddhism has been describing reality as some real fucking strange shit for quite a while.

On DVD I have Columbia University physicist Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe which dealt with string theory. National Geographic in Taiwan has recently started airing what seems to be another Brian Greene series called Beyond the Cosmos, which I think might be a TV presentation of his book The Fabric of the Cosmos.

When I was at Deer Park monastery, one of the monks was reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, but I wasn't able to get some of the esoteric concepts he was trying to explain. With this TV presentation, I think I'm starting to get it, and so I'm giving the book a shot at the library.

It's pretty mind-blowing stuff. It's interesting how Buddhist descriptions of reality are affirmed by scientific cosmology, but scientific cosmology is also on shaky ground as it's ever-evolving and can't rely on the scientific method to prove itself.

It's interesting how findings in quantum mechanics are no surprise to Buddhist cosmology. Buddhism has been saying those things for centuries but had no way to prove them. And quantum mechanics prove them.

In the end, the ultimate thesis is that the universe and reality are a pretty bizarre place, and that counteracts our daily conception of living and reality that it's . . . just normal.

My parents seem to be laying off. They haven't called in a while, and I didn't even snap at them or anything to put them off. In fact, I did the exact opposite.

They recently went on one of their twice annual vacations, which I think may have been a part of their life plan. They work diligently, make their fortune, and in their old age they travel the world on . . .  package tours. This time they went to Alaska to see the aurora borealis. Good for them.

The day before they left, I feel I got the better of them in a phone call that didn't get cut off, and entreated them to focus on their own happiness and stop getting wrapped up in unhappiness of worrying about what their children will do.

They're old, they've done their job. Whatever they've done, their parenting job good or bad is not the issue. We're all adults now, the decisions we make now are our own.

I emphatically encouraged them to enjoy what they were doing now – going on vacation – and not get worked up about what any of us are doing with our lives. They've done their part, there's little they can do to change any of it now.

They can try to "help", but because of the foundation they laid, or lack of, it's possible whatever help they hope to offer is futile. Whatever advice or encouragement or "help" they try to give, all of us are likely to go against it simply because it's them giving it. That's how poorly they failed as parents.

The only way to rectify it now is to stop. Let it go. They fucked up, they don't have the means to turn anything around or reflection to contemplate a new strategy, so the best thing to do is stop. Stop nagging, stop trying to control things, stop trying to impose a vision that is, by nature of them giving it, unacceptable.

If my oldest brother loses patients or the business he inherited from our father because of his anger management issues, or if my older brother ends up in a second divorce, this time with children being affected, or if I succeed in committing suicide, none are our parents' issue.

And I don't think my oldest brother will lose his business, and I don't think my older brother will fail in saving his marriage, and I don't think I'll fail in committing suicide, but whatever happens I strongly encouraged my parents to just concentrate on their own happiness, and not base it on what we're doing with our lives.

I think she listened.

The Adjustment Bureau (2011, USA)

Guess I should write this up now after the "The Family Stone" experience. I recently watched about the last hour of it on HBO and found the concept interesting, even if the ending was predictably typical Hollywood. And as I caught the first half hour today and watched most of it to the end, I've seen the whole film.

And as a 2011 movie, I'm in danger of being up-to-date on something! Or not.

When I watched the last hour of the movie – which was the intriguing part; if I had watched from the beginning, I would have changed channels – I admitted that I do have to give Hollywood credit for stretching the imagination. Of pushing our minds into thinking about the possibilities, rather than just accept physical life and reality as it presents itself. 

After seeing the whole film and putting all the pieces together, I'm not quite so impressed, but there are things worth mentioning. 

Basically, heaven, or the heavenly realm, is portrayed as a corporate bureaucracy. God is referred to as "the chairman". Angels, members of the adjustment bureau, are heaven's acting agents on earth and they dress in suits and have wage scales and just do their jobs. Heaven itself is a corporate office building. 

On one hand, I want to say this portrayal of heaven is not very imaginative, but on the other hand I want to recognize that maybe the filmmaker is saying something about our current times. 

Heaven isn't, in fact, a corporate bureaucracy, but as corporations basically dominate everything on our planet today, it's saying this is the model we can all (sadly) relate to today. If this film was made in China a thousand years ago or during the Roman Empire, the setting would be of a different paradigm. Heavens are changing paradigms, as is any concept of "God".

Anyway, there is a God and the chairman has a plan for humankind and it's written out in magical books that all of the "angels" of the adjustment bureau have which tracks out timelines of possible events and futures. 

The adjustment bureau "angels" (and their thuggish corporate goons) influence events in the earthly realm to occur according to the plan. If an event goes off plan, they intervene to put things back on track. They're part Twilight Zone, part Men in Black, part their own thing. They don't curtail freewill, per se, but just give humans encouragement to make the right decisions. 

It all goes wrong with the two main subjects in this film, who meet and fall in love. But their love is against the plan, so the adjustment bureau sets out to correct the situation. But it's not so easy to keep soulmates apart. Because in the current version of the plan, they have separate destinies. But in previous versions of the plan, things were different, and some things aren't so easily simply erased.

There's an interesting metaphysical realm to this film whereby the adjustment bureau can transport themselves in the earthly physical realm using doorways, which to them are substrates to other disjunct places in the physical realm to help them execute their duties.

It's a play on reality and ideas of fate and destiny. Is destiny a prison that we are locked into by some universal "god", or are we really making our own decisions of where we go and how we end up?

It's not that deep, it's sophomorical, and I'd barely pass this film with a nominal fresh 6 out of 10 tomatoes. I recommend it to people who are numbed to accepting Hollywood films as entertainment. A date and then go have dessert afterwards with a discussion that doesn't touch on the movie.

The Family Stone (2005, USA)

Bleah. I create these "rotten tomato" posts not to review movies per se like I really have something to say about them, but to remind myself of what I've watched. I think the reason I didn't write up this movie before when I saw it on cable was because I turned it on halfway through.

Too bad this time, because I turned it on at the beginning, and having some vague memory of the title, having turned it on halfway through before, and having found it intriguing, I decided to watch it.

I remember the title from when the film was released. I noted the pedigree of the title and that it was riffing on Sly & the Family Stone (as well as the too-clever double-entendre of balls), and as a Hollywood film, I promptly disregarded it.

When I turned it on part way through, I remember thinking that the movie couldn't decide whether it wanted to be a melodrama or a comedy, and I'm pretty sure I didn't watch it to the very end before, because I don't remember it being a schmaltzy, tear-jerking Hollywood stinker with a ridiculous feel-good happy ending. Or I simply, and more likely, blocked it out.

But I did recognize the attraction of when I turned on to it before. There was emotion involved regarding someone dying (woohoo, good times), and it was a family holiday film, which always begs comparison to one of my all-time favorite films, a family holiday film, "Home for the Holidays".

What I had forgotten from before was my general dislike of anything Sarah Jessica Parker or Wilson brothers, Luke in this case, although I recognize the talent of Luke and Owen Wilson. They're good, I just have to be dragged to see anything they're in.

As for Sarah Jessica Parker, I just don't see the appeal. But in this movie, I do. And it has a name. Rachel McAdams, whose appearance makes Sarah Jessica Parker tolerable. Sarah Jessica Parker walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Why the long face?". She does get credit for Matthew Broderick, though.

All in all, it was not worth watching. Great acting, Hollywood quality, but a stinker of a film with an ending that makes me wonder, "did I just watch this?". Seriously, he ended up marrying her, and she ended up with him?!! Gimme a break. Rotten 4 out of 10 tomatoes.

Lest I suggest that it was eye candy Rachel McAdams (I do think she's a good actress, not just eye candy, it's just that she needs a few more films under her belt to make that unquestionable) that prevents giving this movie a lesser rating, I should also say ... Claire Danes.


Claire Danes who was also in:

Home for the Holidays (1995, USA) 

Like I said, one of my all-time favorite movies, directed by the impressive Jodie Foster, starring one of my favorite actresses, Holly Hunter, and including Claire Danes, who amazes me no matter how small a role she takes.

The reason this is one of my favorite films of all-time is because of the progression, the pacing and the emotional pitch. The ending is also arguably feel-good, but for a completely different reason than "The Family Stone".

The feel-good tone of that film was reached by someone dying and a future that has ridiculously unlikely and forced circumstances, which apparently makes the American mainstream ooh and ah and feel really good about themselves for some reason, but makes me wretch and puke.

This film is emotionally more cathartic. It kicks cliches like how "family is all we've got" in the family stones, and states a more realistic "who are these people? where did I even come from?". Family memories, childhood memories, no matter how crappy things have become, that's where we came from, and that's what makes them treasures.

There's often nothing we can do about what we've become or the family relationships we have. But family memories are fact and they are the basis of who we are, no matter how different or divergent our lifestyles or beings become, and they will haunt. Unless you just learn to chill the fuck out.