the guru, part two

The whole guru thing doesn't really occupy a lot of my thoughts. It's more an abstract side issue and I'm happy just to reiterate that my current attitude towards gurus may be a point of personal karma. It's conditional and will change with karma and conditions. I'll probably have to deal with it in some lifetime and I'll leave it at that.

That's all good and well since as soon as one touches on the issue of the guru, it does get really murky really quickly. It gets into psychology. It gets into controversy. It gets into history and cultures clashing. Who needs it? I don't. But people do get into the guru thing and the attendant issues and possible messes.

For example, I've read that when you've accepted a guru, you give yourself completely over and never doubt their teachings or methods or authority nor the compassion and wisdom behind it. But one part of my current attitude towards the guru is that I tell myself I could never give up critical observation over any purported guru. It's something hard-wired into me that I don't believe in never questioning something right in front of me that seems wrong, even if it's a teaching or method by a guru who I've accepted as legitimate.

Even though I think my attitude is healthy, independent thinking, maybe it's actually a block, a karmic obscuration, a negative result of something in past lives that's essentially impeding progress on the path. An unwillingness to submit, an attachment to ego. *Me*. I think that's questionable. I think that sounds wrong. It's seeing the form of something and thinking it's one thing because of my adherence to my subjective view and interpretation when the substance is something completely different. That's actually not a bad point. It's just the tip of the iceberg how messy it gets.

This exact issue is part of the heart of the controversies regarding allegations of sexual abuse by Tibetan Vajrayana gurus that have started to be reported. The truth can be very tricky in these cases because of the multiple levels of perspectives and subjectivity, which includes the "secret" aspect of some of the teachings.

One bottom-line starting point for me considering the issue is to believe the accuser, although various layers of nuance may be forthcoming. There's a power dynamic involved and the person in power, the guru, doesn't get immediate benefit of the doubt. It's the guru who is responsible for having proper discernment who is ready for whichever teaching.

It is proper discernment that when effectively applied prevents sexual abuse scandals. If a scandal arises, it's the guru's failure to protect the teachings, practice and vows. On the other hand, if a guru explains himself adequately, then the burden may shift to whether there were circumstances regarding the student that the guru wasn't aware of and was mistaken or misled. The subjective harm might still remain, but there might be no criminal or improper intent.

That power dynamic is a very poor foundation for a guru-student relationship, and may be related to why I'm so averse to the guru idea. The student wants something and perceives the guru as someone who can offer it. In a near-best case scenario, a qualified guru does have it, but it may turn out to be a minefield of figuring out how to deliver it.

It really breaks my heart to hear of these abuses because they just shouldn't be happening. It breaks my heart because it violates one of the most sacred and beautiful (and misunderstood) aspects of tantra. It confounds me why it's happening. Is it the teachers' fault? Is it the students' misunderstanding?

One thing seems clear to me is that there must be an immediate moratorium on any purported practice that even remotely touches on sex between teacher and student. There's just too much room for misunderstanding and abuse in the current climate where Tibetan gurus in exile can gain rock star status (which wouldn't exist in Tibet) and western sensibilities aren't fully understood and westerners are cultural newbies and susceptible to abuse.

My understanding is that the Tibetan tantric tradition and practice developed over centuries and became a thing. But that thing is not something that can be plunged into the deep end of the west without controversy, conflict and misunderstanding. Personally I do think these teachers have lost their way, confused by how westerners reacted and responded to them. They are being overcome by emotions of pride and lust brought on by wealth, fame and power that wouldn't emerge in traditional Tibetan contexts. There would've been self-/community-imposed checks.

Those checks are needed now and need to come from the larger Buddhist community. I thought the same thing when I was outraged by Buddhists in Myanmar using their position to practice violence and hate towards Muslim Rohingyas. I was thrilled when the larger community actually did speak up in a widely-circulated letter condemning what Buddhist monks were doing in Myanmar. They didn't have any authority, I'm not sure what effect the letter had (apparently not a lot), but it was important to say something.

The Dalai Lama would be an appropriate person to call for a moratorium since Sogyal Rinpoche, who he considers a friend, was involved in a scandal and has stepped down from all official roles. The Dalai Lama did the right thing in declaring that Sogyal Rinpoche had been disgraced/disgraced himself, which coming from the Dalai Lama was tantamount to a complete loss of credibility and authority to teach and that he should go into extended retreat. Mind you, as far as I know, Sogyal Rinpoche has never accepted fault nor expressed realization of his error.

Mind you further, that doesn't mean that Sogyal Rinpoche's international bestseller "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" has lost all credibility and is worthless. My detachment from the guru concept includes not being disillusioned by his downfall. The teachings are not the guru. People who were inspired by the book should not confuse the disgraced Sogyal Rinpoche with what they found so inspiring from the book, which was something inside themselves all along.

Despite a moratorium (which actually would have to be secret, an internal memo, because publicly it would draw all sorts of unwanted and misunderstood attention) on all sexual contact between teacher and student in the name of tantric teachings, the principles could still be taught to students who are ripe for them. The practice should be stopped even with students who are ripe for them and instead the scandals must be confronted and the teachings should focus on why the practice is being temporarily stopped. The errors of the teachers accused of abuse must be explored and explained where they went wrong. And truth to tell, I don't think it's all that complicated. Just go back to the very beginning and take a refresher course of Theravada Buddhism and review all basic, Mahayana and Samaya vows. It doesn't take a zen master to not get involved in a sex abuse scandal.

I don't know if the recent reports of sexual abuse in the Tibetan Vajrayana community is an outcropping of the #metoo movement, but reversing the disempowerment of women, I hope, is a global movement and I wouldn't expect Buddhist institutions to be immune. If there are problems Buddhist institutions perpetuate, they must be confronted and rectified.

practice musing II: the guru, part one

I've been very mindful of the fact that I don't have a teacher, a guru, nor am I pursuing one, even though I've read many times that a teacher is considered absolutely necessary in Vajrayana. If you don't have a teacher, the path is fraught with dangers and uncertainty. These are things I accept as fact and would never go against and would parrot as being fundamental to the teachings. It's part of my self-doubt, fail-safe system against ego or any ego-driven "I don't need a guru" sensibility. It's part of the balance of my unorthodox path where I'm forging ahead on my own but won't let ego off the leash at the risk of megalomania or falling on the wrong side of delusions and dangers with which the path is fraught.

Still, I have no teacher nor am I pursuing one. I do recognize I'm solely relying on what is said in books about the necessity of a guru. It isn't something in my practical experience or intuition. I've never had the feeling that I'm stuck, I can't go on without a teacher, I need to find a teacher. Obviously I think I'm alright going about it alone for the time being and can still learn and progress; that I'm not doing too badly slogging it out on my own. I think it both has to be this way and is supposed to be this way. And this is my intuition. I think, to some degree feel, that with my current karma, my thinking and attitude, it would be fruitless to search for a teacher.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot. I'm sure there are tangible benefits of having a teacher. But on the other hand, I'm pretty confident and surprised about the things I'm getting without a teacher. There's a lot I get that I feel is karmic holdover from previous life practice; I get it because I've gotten it before. Even in the field of tantra and its focus on energies, I'm being extremely cautious and circumspect with the unorthodox practice I've developed, but I'm following intuition about something that is not intuitive. Intuitive would be taking the blue pill.

And with both tantra and Mahamudra, neither of which, despite my mentioning them, do I think I'm really practicing since I don't have a teacher, the inspirations are slow-coming, revealing themselves very gradually. These things have been years and years in the unfolding. Maybe the time makes up for the lack of guru. A guru might be able to tell I'm ripe for a practice and give proper instructions. Without a guru, I have to wait for inspiration and intuition, and still have to go through the process of figuring out a practice and doubting whether it is valid or not and developing safeguards to not overstep my ability or aptitude.

I daresay it's been a fascinating journey in itself without a guru. Again, not a point of pride or ego, just a lot of wow. Perhaps it would be even better with a guru, but that not being my current path, it's fine.

What about a worst case scenario whereby my guru were to suddenly appear and look at my practice and say it's completely wrong and I've totally lost the way? That's actually funny. I wouldn't contradict that assessment, but my path is still my path. If it's completely wrong and lost, that's part of my path. And if my guru were there to make such an assessment, then he or she is there to set me straight, no problem. Being told it's wrong is total fantasy. Unless, of course, it turns out that I'm the guru who suddenly appears and tells me my practice is completely wrong. Then it's not so funny. But still workable, I'd hope.

And I gather that's just Mahamudra right there. It's not striving for enlightenment nor cognitive over-analyzing, but looking around and realizing this is it, it's been right here all along. Confusion arising as wisdom. Wisdom arising as confusion maybe? But for me that's just scratching the surface, I'm just intellectually looking around and realizing this is it, which is different from actually experiencing it. That's what I've read. Not having experienced it, I can't personally attest to it. Then there are many more layers deep of the wisdom to unfold, even as confusion. Or even more confusing.

On the surface level, it's fine for it being even the music arising as wisdom. Listening to music has come to dominate my existence. It's totally superficial and ephemeral and meaningless, but it's still a dominant energy in my existence. If life is practice itself, then it's just practice whatever I'm doing. Even if it's something stupid as listening to music, I'm gonna suggest it's still beneficial as practice.

It's not lazy, passive listening to music for mere distraction or pleasure; turn it off and it's gone. It's focused engagement with the energies evoked and recognizing the reality in those emotions. Aural energy converted to psychic energy and manifesting as potent emotion. It doesn't disappear when it's turned off, but lingers as meditation, as reality but not permanent. If it's what makes up my existence, then it's not nothing. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing.

These are some positive spins on my practice. I know I can be accused of inventing practices and making things up as I go along based on dubious, unverifiable inspiration. That's definitely not ideal. What if everyone decided they could do that? Then I'd be a fool to do any different. Not good. I drop terms like Mahamudra and tantra just because they are what I come across while reading and they describe things I find inspiring, but I should be under no impression that's what I'm doing.

Notably lacking in my practice still are cultivating compassion, freedom and openness to the world and sacrifice. There are limits to practice when there is no human engagement and challenge. Not that I'm not working on them. Putting them down in words may make it seem like I don't have those things, but they're works in progress. As is the whole shebang.

practice musing I

I often express a disparaging, if not humble, view of my mindfulness practice. I've called it lazy and undisciplined, and without a teacher or community is perhaps dangerously unregulated. But I've been re-assessing my view of it in a positive self-affirming way so that it doesn't seem quite so bad.

I don't exactly live the hermit ideal, but I think living alone in urban isolation with minimal human contact is a good thing for the path. Or it has good aspects. It takes a lot of energy to interact socially with people, whether it's at work or for pleasure. I mean it takes lots and lots of energy that people don't notice because it's natural for them to expend energy in that way. I notice because I'm not.

During the few times I've gotten together with people over the past however many years, I've noticed that once engaged in social interaction, it's a steady stream of energy, of being "on". All the cogitating, processing, input, measuring responses and reacting is all energy expenditure. Again, all of it very natural and normal but a lot of fucking energy! Once good-byes are said, I can breathe and relax into myself into the state I'm in the rest of the time, virtually all the time. That state has benefits for practice.

It's hard to transform, as practice encourages, when so much energy is spent on normal, everyday social interactions. For me, without even noticing, I'm able to use that energy in self-observation and contemplation and allowing for transformation whenever opportunity arises in both affirming and challenging situations. And I think I have transformed a lot in positive ways on the path (and regressed mindfully on *ahem* occasion). One good indication is how terrible I am at interacting socially now. I used to be reasonably social, but now I couldn't meet a person and hold their interest for more than a few sentences. The opposite is true, too, mind you.

And not everyone can do that. Most don't even want that, I shouldn't wonder. They'd get lonely and start craving company. I daresay there's a lot I've cultivated being able to do in furtherance on the path that people would say is not for them. This is no point of pride nor tooting my own horn, mind you. It's just recognizing different ways of looking at things.

. . . a person's wisdom should be judged by the effect it has on his or her life. If that wisdom doesn't have the effect of settling the problems and difficulties in one's life – of creating a sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace, and freedom – then it cannot be the real thing. - Ajahn Brahm (The Art of Disappearing)

My immediate reaction was to ask myself whether whatever wisdom I have is the real thing, followed by a quick, emphatic nöpe! Mind you, I absolutely do not disagree with him. Reading things like that, it rings right. And I have no problem with anyone, myself included, telling me my wisdom is flawed.

But that was just my quick answer and pondering it with more nuance, it turns out to be more perplexing than that.

Does my purported wisdom or practice have an effect that settles the problems and difficulties in my life? What problems do I really have? Obviously it seems and feels like I have many, but when I have a goal of bringing my life to a close, my "problem" is just being here. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons why bringing my life to a close is the goal are not a problem.

Within being here, all the normative things that might be perceived as problems don't amount to much. The role mindfulness plays is that it keeps me from being overly neurotic or angsty about it like I have been in the past. It keeps negativity and negative reactions in focus and at bay and promotes the opposite, or at least neutrality. There has been a settling effect on the problems, but it may not look like it.

What difficulties do I have? I can't say I don't have difficulties. There are things that I find difficult, but they're mostly neurotic things that are difficult only because I create them or let them be difficult. Again, mindfulness just observes the perceived difficulties and tries to understand they're my own creation and not to get bent out of shape over them. Rainy days are difficult. My neurotic reaction about my neighbors is difficult. They're not really difficulties. If pressed, they fly out the window.

How about separately considering sense of ease, well-being, space, happiness, peace and freedom? That's where it gets perplexing because contemplating dying brings exactly those feelings: sense of ease, well-being, space, openness, happiness, peace and freedom.

They aren't what psychiatrists might point out in some suicidal cases where there's a feeling of euphoria once they've made the decision to kill themselves. That's a false sense of those feelings because it's conditional on knowing they're going to be released from their pain, rather than having a settling effect on their problems and difficulties.

Contemplating death, those feelings are very real for me. The feelings aren't contingent on having made a final decision and looking forward to it as a relief. They are there with the very contemplation and vary in intensity depending on the depth of it. But are they connected to wisdom?

Some would say true wisdom would make me want to live. I would call that dogmatic, judgmental attachment to living just for the sake of preserving life that's ephemeral by nature. That's not wisdom, either. Wisdom is an understanding, it doesn't make people do or not do anything. It's morality's job to police behavior, not wisdom's, and I've never cared much for human or social constructs of morality.

I think it is very possible for practitioners to contemplate death and connect deeply with the reality that one day we will die and feel that sense of freedom and peace; that letting go. It's not an abandonment or a 'why bother?' letting go, but it's based on wisdom understanding, accompanied with mindfulness training to not be attached or overly sentimental about our lives.

(It resounds, reverberates and resonates: I don't need to be here anymore, I don't want to be here anymore. Same as it ever was.)

I broke out of my dearly-held daily routine today and did a recon of Taiwan's northwest coast. It only recently became easier to get to the northwest coast when the Taoyuan Airport MRT opened last year. I didn't pay much attention to it because it didn't affect me. From where I live, it's still easier and quicker to take the express bus from nearby Songshan Airport. But it turns out the MRT can be used to get to the coast.

My interest is in shorelines. Getting to the northeast coast is easy from Taipei, but the northeast coast is too cluttered and developed, too many people. From any point, look left, look right, there's something right there. The north coast is only realistically accessible for me by bike, and that's no longer an option. I doubt I have the fitness to even ride the 18 miles to Danshui, the start of the north coast. The north coast was ideal once, but only that once.

I have been to the northwest coast on bike before. Once, on what I remember as a pretty epic ride before I had a bike GPS so I don't have a record of it. It must have been among the longest rides I've gone on ever, riding up to the mouth of the Danshui River and then down the northwest coast and taking me past Taoyuan Airport to get back to Taipei. But the coastline struck me as very appealing as not so crowded with development. Just no way to get there.

The airport MRT came into my consciousness about a month ago when my mother was here, and I realized the last stop before reaching the airport is only about three miles from the coast, where I'd been on that bike ride years ago. Three miles, about an hour walk. I can manage that.

I decided to go today because there's been a dip in temperatures. The past month has been too hot to make the six mile round-trip walk realistic or without risk. I also got a bug in me to do something different from my dearly-held daily routine. I went out without full commitment to the journey and was prepared to turn back at any point. That was reflected in details that I missed: forgot to bring my GPS, wore the wrong sneakers, didn't do time calculations. I didn't even bother eating. Whatever I did, it was not supposed to be trying nor tribulating.

And there was nothing noteworthy about the trek except that it was way out beyond my daily life scope of the last many years. The MRT was just an MRT ride, the walk was just a walk. Good decision to go on a not flaming hot day, as that would've been quite miserable. On any other day this past month, I might have stepped out of the Kengkou MRT station and said, "nope". Not walking six miles in this.

My destination was Zhuwei Fishing Village. I didn't know about it on that bike ride years ago, but remember diverting there when I was passing by. There's a bright red bridge you can't miss, and on bike I couldn't resist exploring.

This time, once I got there I didn't linger. I underestimated the time and just did a quick walk-through before heading back to the MRT station. I didn't explore the coastline because it looked like there was work being done to it, perhaps development to make it more of a destination for visitors. Access wasn't immediately obvious.

I might do another recon in a month's time with better planning. Leaving early in the morning to avoid the heat and allowing for inspecting the shoreline further south of the fishing village. I also learned from this recon that Kengkou MRT isn't the best way to get to the coast. The stop before it, Shanbi MRT, has both YouBikes and buses that run to a stone's throw away from the fishing village. I think the bus is the better option.

I live on the third floor of a residential low-rise in a flat sub-divided into four discrete apartments. I don't know any of my neighbors. I don't know what they look like. Very rarely we might pass one another coming or going. I wouldn't recognize them passing on the street. I don't know anything about them except their audible departure routines in the morning or when they deviate from it.

When I contemplate my demise scenarios, it's safe to say there would be little impact on them except in the unfortunate circumstance if I bite it in my apartment. If I don't leave a body in my apartment, there would be little to no disruption or disturbance in their lives beyond the bustle of the disposal of my belongings.

They know just as little about me, and flipping the scenario I would experience little disruption or disturbance if any of them were to no longer be among the living. If they died in their apartment, I don't think any of them are so disconnected and isolated like me that people wouldn't come looking for them before olfactory factors became necessary to alert the world of their passing. Whatever the scenario, the bottom line is I wouldn't be very much affected.

There are two people in Taipei that I know and have met with socially in the past . . . let's say five years, albeit rarely. If either of them died, I don't know how the news would even get to me, and it's not a stretch that it just wouldn't. I just wouldn't find out. Exactly the same if I were to die.

I have a nominal facebook presence. Again, no one there would know if I died unless someone plied my computer post-mortem and stumbled across my page and were to tactlessly and tastelessly announce it to a reply chorus of "aw gee, that's too bad" at best. Any announcement to inform my contacts would have to be made on my page, so that's pretty freaky. Speaking from the grave. That's actually a great idea. Write the announcement in my voice. Get creative.

And on the flipside, if any of most of the couple dozen contacts I have were to die, . . . well, I'd probably at least know about it. Some are as active as me on facebook or even less and maybe there would be no one to mention them dying. But my response couldn't be much more than "aw gee, that's too bad". I'm not involved in their lives. I don't make contact with them or try to be more than an abstract, internet presence. Even people I've known from long ago who were much more than "facebook friends", we're not present to each other now. Effectively "aw gee, that's too bad" friends.

Finally, all that's left to contemplate is a few family members. What if Audrey or any of my cousins or either of my brothers committed suicide? There's no reason for me to think any of them would, but none of them thinks I would, either. It's impossible to really know what it would feel like, even going deep into the scenario in meditation, but I'm having trouble imagining myself reacting much differently than how I would expect them to react if I died.

Whatever impact there is, it would be something to experience and then pass. It would pass. Again, there's no involvement in each other's lives. If I died, what difference would there be in their lives except the knowledge that I'm now dead? If any of them died, what difference would there be in my life? Only the expectation that they're out there and available for a possible hypothetical future meeting up? Not good enough. If they care, they should be present. If I care, I should be present. We're not present, so we don't care. Voilá, we have a meeting of the minds.

My finances are secure beyond my prior estimate of not lasting much beyond June. Several more stopgap months have been added with a possible scenario that could push things well into next year. Nothing of my doing. Same as it ever was. No looming anytime soon. No hands are going to be forced. We all know what that means. Well, that my hands aren't going to be forced, and I know what that means.

It means despite my intentions and aspiration, my life will continue to chug along for the foreseen future. And that "possible scenario" I mentioned I'm just gonna assume will happen with as much certainty as me not dying from some alcohol-related health failure.

If it doesn't happen? Great, we have loomage! And if I do die from some alcohol-related health failure? Great, plan B worked. When the aspiration is to die, not even laziness is a deterrent.

I'm pretty disappointed with myself, writing like this. Last August was supposed to have been the great wake-up rallying call to stop floating by on the conveyor belt of daily routine to get me mindlessly from day to day. I even cut back on drinking as a result of that revelation. In February I flogged myself for betraying my aspiration by attempting that humiliating failed money injection into my bank account. That said a lot.

And now it sounds like I'm resigning myself once again that since I don't feel the looming need to execute my life plan to die, I won't. No matter how I feel, no matter what circumstances I can point to about how it's different this time and need to do it, I've been through that before. I know it's a pattern. Past patterns of my behavior suggest I will continue to go from day to day on the conveyor belt of routine as long as there is money left; i.e., no looming. Because that's how lame I am.

I'm trying not to be defeatist about it. I still have my theoretical plan in place with a time frame, but the likelihood that I'll actually go through with it is doubtful to the point that it can be dismissed. This disgusts and frightens me. Sort of. Mindfulness practice prevents actually feeling those things as something real.

Actually, my mindfulness practice has gotten suggestions that this entire scenario is my path. It's not a test or a challenge whether or not I'll do it or not nor that doing it means success or not doing it is failure. It may very well be that is completely not the point. The point is to exist in it now and not be pulled by attraction or aversion one way or another. It doesn't mean to be lazy about it, either, like whatever comes happens and just accept it. That's lazy. It's more recognize what's happening, as well as my reactions, and focus a laser-like attention to it to try to realize this is the path in the most profound and personal way.

I feel that suicide is my chosen path for this lifetime? Fine, keep pursuing that instinct. I know from experience that's not going to go away. Circumstances arise which make me decide not to do it right now? Fine, it's not a problem. It's not cognitive dissonance. Or if it is, that's the path.

I have a Tibetan Buddhist book I've read many times over which has a title that I never quite understood, Confusion Arises as Wisdom. So many times I've looked at that title and wondered 'what does that even mean?' Recently I feel that I'm starting to get it intuitively, if not realizing it's obviously the simplest iteration of what's at the heart of Mahamudra teachings. The ontological or existential confusion that arises in our experience contains the wisdom that is embodied in everything in and around us and is constantly being taught and manifest. But no one would buy a book with that title.

I recognize the cognitive dissonance of feeling the need to commit suicide in this lifetime (at least) to further myself on my path, while also thoroughly not minding all the little distractions and enjoyments of living. There's this big thing I want to accomplish, but there are all these little shiny things I love. I'm not suicidal, but that's what I really, genuinely want to do. My life, all things considered, is pointless just living it otherwise.

There's the dissonance of thinking I'm on a certain path while rejecting the idea of finding a teacher to help me advance on that path. But there is likely no teacher that would accept or advocate my aspiration to commit suicide. Nor should there be, I'm not complaining. That's why I don't have a teacher. I've chosen this course and know I can't find a teacher, mentor or advocate to help guide me. I can't even find a friend to drive me, finding a teacher is quite out of the question.

But these dissonances hold the wisdom that I can learn from as long as I keep the core values in place, which is to not cling or be attached to anything attractive, and not to be averse to anything repulsive. Whatever else is going on around me is karma playing out, ignore it, not my business. Family? Not my business, ignore it. Where the money's coming from? Not my bidness, ignore it.

But even clinging, attachment, aversion and revulsion are confusion arising as wisdom, or perhaps neurotic dysfunction arising as wisdom in my case. They happen. But then also recognize that those things clung or attached to will need to be cut loose and let go. It's in their nature to happen and to be discarded. Things that are avoided and create aversion will still happen and must be faced and dealt with. In their nature blah, blah, blah.

2017 mix CDs

It seems like there should have been a sea change in the K-pop girl group scene in 2017 with the epidemic I mentioned before of girl groups disbanding, losing members or falling into limbo with inactivity or no news to the point of potential irrelevance. It was shocking. Yet here I am with no problem still filling two CDs for 2017. New groups have emerged amidst new trends and new top groups. Same as it ever was.

All the extra video links are supplementary videos that I enjoy. The full stage "camcorders" are room sound quality (poor), but they capture the full choreography and the audience noise, and are the closest facsimile of what it might be like to actually be there. I started linking the unofficial stage mixes by a user whose editing skills are amazing in 2016 and continue here (they also serve as a terrific review of fashions and variations girl groups go through in the course of a promotion). And then other various and sundry videos that I like.

(updated 1/15/2019)
2017 mix CD, part one (zip download):
1. Girl Front (Odd Eye Circle (LOOΠΔ)) (music video)
2. Baby Face (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (official audio)
3. Rookie (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, stage mix)
4. I Don't Like Your Girlfriend (Weki Meki) (live version, full stage camcorder, funny relay version)
5. Excuse Me (AOA) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Irony (Park Bo Ram) (audio only)
7. Bippity Boppity Boo (Berry Good) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
8. Yes I Am (Mamamoo) (full stage camcorder, ad-lib compilation stage mix (captions recommended), unofficial stage mix)
9. No Thanxxx (Epic High) (lyric video) (audio only)
10. The Weatherforecastors (All Day Sunny) (Grace) (audio only)
11. Aloha (Pristin)
12. Signal (Twice) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
13. Gashina (Sunmi) (dancers gender reversed version)
14. Love Me (Lee Hyori) (audio only)
15. Jealousy (Baek Ah Yeon)
16. Night Rather Than Day (EXID) (full stage camcorder, live version)
17. Love Cherry Motion (Choerry (LOOΠΔ))
18. Some (Bolbbalgan4)
19. Listen to This Song (DIA) (official audio)
20. I Think I Love U (Sonamoo) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
21. Nalari (S.E.T) (full stage camcorder)
22. Only U (Laboum) (full stage camcorder)
23. Roopretelcham (Elris)

2017 mix CD, part two:
1. WoW! (Lovelyz) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
2. Happy (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
3. Heart Attack (Chuu (LOOΠΔ))
4. Bing Bing (AOA) (full stage camcorder)
5. Wee Woo (Pristin) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
6. Will You Go Out With Me? (DIA) (full stage camcorder, live stage, Eunchae focus cam because super cute, unofficial stage mix)
7. Red Flavor (Red Velvet) (full stage camcorder, Seulgi focus cam, unofficial stage mix)
8. Dlwlma (IU)
9. Stars (Rothy)
10. In the Rain (Kisum)
11. Pow Pow (Elris) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
12. Would You Like? (Tymee) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Rolly (Good Day)
14. DDD (EXID) (full stage camcorder, funny parts switch version, even funnier parts switch audio over live version)
15. Last Carnival (Juniel)
16. Pastry (Nine Muses) (audio only)
17. Kiss on the Lips (Melody Day)
18. Love is Sudden (MIXX)
19. Everyday I Love You (feat. Haseul) (Vivi (LOOΠΔ))
20. Glass Shoes (fromis_9)
21. Twinkle (Lovelyz) (unofficial stage mix, full stage camcorder)
22. Hz (Hashtag) (audio only)
23. Heart Shaker (Twice) (live version, full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)
24. Hwi Hwi (Laboum) (full stage camcorder, unofficial stage mix)

2016 mix CDs

A Certain Kind of Death

(tip: watching documentaries at higher speeds saves time)

Charnel grounds, in some societies, used to be where unclaimed corpses were taken and left to the elements or to be consumed by vultures and wild animals. Certain types of yogins and adepts would go there to meditate and confront human death and decomposition. We don't have charnel grounds.

We have documentary filmmakers. This sort of documentary is certainly no equivalent to charnel grounds, but still has meditational value in contemplating the raw reality of one kind of death, especially since there's no censorship. So yea, *warning* graphic images of corpses. It's not intentionally gruesome and it's neither unduly respectful nor disrespectful. Just the facts, ma'am.

I'm glad they didn't censor anything. It's important to see death as it really is, not prettied up to be presentable and "alive looking" at funerals. That's just a way of being in denial about death, I think. When you see a dead body, there should be a visceral reaction. This is everyone, how we all essentially end up naturally. After a mortician gets done with a body, we can look at it and think, "It's not so bad". I call that a certain kind of denial.

Still, don't even consider watching this if you have any inkling it's something you don't want to see. And if you don't know and just want to "take a look", be prepared to stop as soon as you realize you don't want to go there. It's like at the first realization I'm hearing a Celine Dion or Justin Beaver song, I shut it down immediately by any means necessary short of murder (bodily harm is acceptable). Although I wouldn't know right away if it was a Justin Beaver song since I've never heard enough to recognize it. I've heard just enough to know I'd rather look at human corpses than listen to that. Unfortunately, I do know what Celine Dion's unspeakable devil-howling sounds like.

Mind you, the documentary is not about the dead bodies. The dead bodies are just part of the narrative of people who die without friends or family to check in on them. People who die and have to be discovered, rather than surrounded by loved ones or relatives at least. They become cases for the government to deal with. The fact that they died is just part of the cases and that aspect is shown.

I contemplate the possibility of ending up like this. It's my worst case scenario to die in my apartment of some medical or health failure and needing to be discovered after neighbors, strangers, are alerted by the foul smell. I won't go unclaimed, at least. Personally I don't care at all about that. I just don't like the inconvenience and disturbance to other people.

If I die outside of my apartment by some accident or health failure, then I'll likely go unclaimed and end up in Taiwan's version of this kind of fate. No one would be able to ID me and no one would notice me missing for a while. The first person to notice, I've mentioned before, would be my landlord after several months of missed rent and not posting the gas meter reading, which I have to do every other month.

In my ideal situation, I would disappear without leaving a body for anyone to deal with. After it's clear that I've disappeared and not coming back (this blog found?), there would just be my meager possessions for which I'll leave a holographic will instructing that my things be taken by anyone interested and otherwise donated if there's no interest. The rest will be disposed of and I'm sorry for the inconvenience that will cause. Hopefully someone can be hired, like in the documentary ("drayage" I think they called it), using my remaining funds to take care of that.

I have to remember to specifically state that if I leave bodily remains, control of them is absolutely, under no circumstances to be given to my mother. That's the only aspect of leaving a body that I care about. My final wish is that my complete cremated ashes be scattered in the ocean.

I doubt holographic wills exist legally in Taiwan, but for that reason they might be respected. There's probably little reason for holographic wills in Taiwan. A holographic will is one that's written by the decedent but not notarized nor legally overseen or represented. They're enforceable in California and other states where they are statutorily supported in cases where property disputes arise.

The last book I read off the stacks in the public library was The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot: A True Story About the Birth of Tyranny in North Korea (2016) by Blaine Harden. It juxtaposes the stories of Kim Il-Sung's rise to power and North Korean air force pilot No Kum Sok (whoever came up with the romanization of his name should be shot) who defected to South Korea at the tail end of the Korean War, delivering a Russian-made MiG-15 fighter jet in the process.

The juxtaposition is a gimmick as No Kum Sok has already published his memoir and I'm sure more in-depth and scholarly works exist about Kim Il-Sung. It makes for a pretty light read and excellent as an introduction to North Korean history. There's not a whole lot to say about the book beyond that, either you're interested in the topic or not. The story-telling is good and contains a lot of information and history about that time and place that I imagine many aren't aware of aside from in broad strokes.

There are things that I consider mistakes which may be small but I personally found glaring and highlight the white, male author telling other peoples' stories. There's nothing wrong with that. Whoever wants to write stories is free to write them, it's just that there are consequences, and always have been consequences, when a dominant hegemony writes the stories of a perceived other. There's always a skewed perspective, if not being plain wrong.

As far as I'm concerned Asians are a race. White people are a race, black people are a race. Differences between races are why we have the word "racism". Therefore only under specifically proscribed circumstances can Asians be racist against other Asians. Chinese and Japanese can't be "racist" against Koreans, as the author tells it, any more than Germans can be racist against the British. Calling the French "frogs" is not racist. It's funny. Even the French condescendingly find it amusing (<French accent> Ah, you styupit Americans are trying to insult me, how amusing </French accent>). Self-hating Asian American kids trying to fit into racist white society by making fun of other Asians is Asians being racist against other Asians. That was me in elementary school, by the way.

He also writes that leaflets were dropped by U.S. forces over MiG Alley on the North Korean and Chinese border that were written in Korean, Russian, Mandarin and Cantonese. So the author doesn't understand how the Chinese language works. You can speak Mandarin or Cantonese, but you don't write Mandarin or Cantonese. Irregardless of what dialect of Chinese is spoken, there is only one written Chinese language, simplified and traditional characters notwithstanding.

The simplified Chinese characters that Mainland China created was to promote literacy because the modern, common, Communist Chinese presumably lack the brain power to handle the rich meaning and art involved in traditional writing. Sounds about right. It likely wasn't in place yet during the Korean War, and even if it was, the U.S., as ignorant and racist as it was at the time, likely wouldn't have known about it.

Wow, I'm just insulting everyone today, ain't I?

WordsCharactersReading time

I had to go down to Kaohsiung yesterday for some family bullshit issue. It falls under the category of "none of my business" and was at worst an inconvenience pulling me away from my dearly held daily routine. It wasn't the type of family chaos my mother embodies. It's the kind of thing likely many people have to go through at some point, so I'm not complaining.

I was just a pawn. I, along with other grandchildren, inherited property from our grandfather many moons ago for some legal reason, probably to avoid taxes. Now our parents, who have the real interest in the real estate, need us to sign over power of attorney to them. None of my business, of course I'll do what needs to be done, even if it means departing from my dearly held daily routine.

However, the inconvenience was an opportunity to activate mindfulness practice outside of my dearly held daily routine. I was actually surprised how good I was at identifying everything I was feeling moment to moment and what was going on all throughout my body as energies and applying the practice. All of it illusory and easily brushed aside.

Stress? Nope, it's unreasonable (or I'm aware of it and allowing it). Worst case scenarios? Nope, wrong attitude. Just do the right thing given any situation. The one thing I had to be insistent upon was that I was returning to Taipei the same day, and I did the smart thing in buying a non-reserved seating return ticket as soon as I arrived in Kaohsiung. I could take any train home, but it had to be that day. I don't know why anyone would think I was staying for more than one day.

Watching energies is, I think, a Tibetan Vajrayana practice which requires a teacher and initiation, so I make no claim that I'm doing it right. I'm just going by intuition with a vague belief that I've received initiations in previous lives. All I'm doing in this life is trying to review and maintain them without screwing anything up until I go back to accepting the idea of a teacher.

Every experience, sensation and bodily/mental function is an energy that should not be assumed to just happen because we're human. Even hunger or lack of hunger, or digestion and waste excretion are all energies. Sexual impulse and reaction are among the strongest of energies. All of them should be vigilantly observed as they occur with an understanding of their empty and enlightened nature. That is definitely something I'm going on intuition since I can't explain what that means at all.

There's one important mantra that has been said to encapsulate the entirety of the Buddha's teaching: "Nothing whatsoever should be clung to (as me or mine)". An extension of that I use most often during sitting is, "No thought whatsoever is worth dwelling upon". Thoughts constantly arise, I can't help it with my monkey mind, but I can constantly remind myself that none of them are worth anything.

Now it's "May all enlightened energies embodied in each and every experience be ignited like a fire". Alliteration. The refuge of the destitute (Sondheim). It's ironic Sondheim calling alliteration the refuge of the destitute since his lyrics are literally littered with alliteration. And he's brilliant at it, no destitution there!

That they be ignited like a fire is to emphasize the active and potent nature of the energies, like a volatile gas. The fire of transformation. No idea. The fire leads to transformation? Transformation is somewhere in there. I just wanted to say the word because it sounds like it belongs somewhere in the equation.

It was a low-key, day-trip visit. My uncle and I took care of the legal stuff and we visited another aunt and uncle briefly. Then my uncle and aunt took me on the new Kaohsiung light rail to show me some of the many changes happening in the fast-developing city. I'm not sure how accurate it would be to say it's like Taipei years ago, but I hardly recognize Kaohsiung now, aside from the heat. Taipei, too, is now very, very different from what it was when I first got here.

A cousin, the son of the aunt and uncle we visited in the afternoon, showed up at the last moment and took me to the High Speed Rail station to return to Taipei. I also spoke on the phone with two other cousins who speak English reasonably well.

And that was Kaohsiung; the first I've been out of Taipei since my father died in Dec. 2016. First "disruption" to my dearly held daily routine in that time. During that time, in total, I've met up with my old Mandarin teacher once; a classmate from my first Mandarin language class, with whom I'm unusually still in touch, twice; and I saw my uncle twice in 2017 when he came up for two of my landlord's (a distant relative) children's weddings.

That's the story of all my personal contacts. I have nothing to do with them, and they have nothing to do with me. As they know nothing about me or what I'm doing or not doing with my life, I also have no idea what any of them has had to deal with in the past few years. One of my uncles died recently, the father of one of the cousins I spoke with on the phone, maybe even in the past year, and it was just information. I wasn't prompted to attend any funeral.

It's the worst kind of small talk when you know nothing about each other but have to force interest in their lives. Certainly they've had difficulties and other worries occupying their minds. I wouldn't be surprised if any of them has contemplated suicide. But that's not something that comes up in the small talk relationships I have with these people.

WordsCharactersReading time

There are two chapters of the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead (2005 complete translation) that I've mentioned before as chapters I regularly skip when reading through the cycle. Chapter 8 (Signs of Death) and Chapter 9 (Ritual Deception of Death).

I think I may have been diplomatic about them before saying they have dubious relevance in light of modern medicine and understanding of life processes. A lot sounds superstitious and/or based on folk belief. The truth is I found them downright ridiculous. Here's an example that demonstrates what these chapters are like: . . . if one urinates, defecates and sneezes simultaneously, this too is an indication of death. (p. 157, paperback).

You can make that stuff up. I can't, but someone did unless it's true, but much of it defies verification, and there are hundreds of statements like this. Line after line of brow-furrowing "how can anyone have written or believed this?". And how was this included in a cycle of what are sometimes considered sacred texts?

Anyway, I'm reading through the cycle and got to these chapters and decided to give them a shot, and no difference in my reaction really. Reading quickly, eyes rolling, pained expressions, face palming my way through it. And then it hit me. This might be something like what's considered a "hidden text".

I read it, but I can't understand it because I haven't been initiated into practices that might open up the meaning to me. Someone who has been initiated might read the chapters and know exactly what they're talking about and it has nothing to do with the literal words on the page.

And mind you, I love the preceding chapters, I have no problem with them. Chapters 4 and 7 at times I find quite soul-stirring, but not everyone would. And Chapters 5 and 6 might very easily elicit the same reaction I had towards 8 and 9. What the hell is this shit?! That, I would say, is a reasonable outsider reaction without an understanding brought by a guide or intuition. I had no problem with those chapters because I had already been exposed to them numerous times from reading Chapter 11 (Natural Liberation Through Hearing), what before this complete translation westerners thought to be the whole Tibetan Book of the Dead. And yes I was confounded at first, but then figured out how I can interpret them personally to not have a problem with them.

I think there might be a whole tradition of hidden texts, but I know next to nothing about it. I never looked into it specifically and just sort of accepted it as a Tibetan thing. I had no problem with the basic idea. As the story goes, the Tibetan Book of the Dead itself was a hidden text. Padmasambhava wrote it in the 7th or 8th century and hid it until the 12th or 13th century when it was discovered by Karma Lingpa. Some say the physical texts were hidden around the country in monasteries or out in nature or shrines like geocaches. Some say the texts were telepathically embedded in objects or received as revelations in dreams.

OK, maybe I've absorbed more than I thought about hidden texts. It's not a dear topic, though. Or maybe all the magical mythology is something more mundane and Padmasambhava's writings were never really lost, but were limited and the few people who had access to them had no idea what he was talking about, similar to my reaction to 8 and 9. It took centuries of spiritual development and finally when Karma Lingpa came across the writings, he could understand and interpret them.

My experience with these chapters seems extreme where there's nothing unclear about the literal words, and any interpretation into something profound or meaningful would need to make quite a stretch. It might be like reading a cookbook recipe and making a dish that turns out terrible and not knowing why it tastes so bad. But then later returning to the recipe and realizing, "Oh, so that's how you change your car's motor oil". wut?

But I certainly don't think it's in the realm of the impossible. Even recently I've mentioned re-reading books that I've gotten before and was even inspired by, but having a tough slog at them this time around, going sentence by sentence and having trouble getting any of it.

This isn't intellectual understanding. If I could switch into intellectual mode I might be able to just read through them and get the gist just fine. For a heart understanding, they're not just words on a page and information. The heart must be open to understand it, and if it's not I'm not going to be able to fool myself that I'm understanding it, even if I've understood it before when I read it when my heart was open.

There's another curiosity about Chapter 8. In a section entitled "Signs of Extremely Near Death", on pp. 174-176/7, the description is not signs of extremely near death, but from everything I've read, it's literally describing the "death point" bardo/between. This is what everywhere else describes as happening once a person dies.

I've mentioned before that I think this belongs in Chapter 11 as part of the recitation for the recently deceased, and in my copy I've written in where to jump back to these pages of Chapter 8 to be recited repeatedly during the first few days after death because it seems important. It confounds me because it's such a glaring discrepancy and it's not mentioned in any of the commentary.

Those passages are also the only descriptions that aren't totally outrageous. If you're willing to have faith in these teachings, this describes what happens. It's not if such-and-such happens you'll die in 9 months, or if this happens you'll die in 5 months, or that happens you'll die in 1 month. Or if you stand naked in a field in the morning and do prostrations to the east and press your palms deeply into your eyes and then look into the sky and see an image of yourself missing a head or a leg or peeing in forking streams while doing the hokey pokey and farting, then you're already dead.

I'm gonna burn in hell.

Watching every day. Watching every day go by since the reality of the limited funds, and therefore time I have left manifested. Man, did March blow by in a hurry. Not really. If I was trying to be dramatic, it went by in a hurry, but actually days went by as they always did. I just paid more attention to them begin and end.

On principle, I'm not changing how I go about my days. I don't know why I have that principle, it's just what I always told myself to do. Actually, I imagine many suicides are like that. Once the mental decision is made, nothing is particularly different externally until doing it. The decision is faced and the plan is made without trying to project "warning signs" unless they're trying to be saved or stopped.

"Once the decision is made", I kid myself. Even though the depletion of funds is concrete and unavoidable, why am I even waiting? Why not now? That's the question that has characterized my pathetic pathology, and in the past has always indicated I wasn't going to do it. Why not now? Because I don't have to. Hopefully, in a few months I'll have to, but only then can I tell myself that my decision is made.

I wonder if there's anything about my life I wish I had done differently or better.

Not really. Aside from perhaps having suicide as my dream, my goal and aspiration in life. Given that, I think I've absolutely excelled in that regard by distancing myself from people who may be affected and minimizing any impact on them. I'm a very considerate and thoughtful suicide.

So no, there's nothing I could have done differently or better. Anything that qualifies to be in that category would be being more social and present in other people's lives, ego-affirming acts or being. Making connections, contributing to the betterment and well-being of others. Just making someone laugh over drinks. I think I used to be considered funny at some point.

Worthy enough things to do and be, but when you know you're suicidal, when your end goal is suicide, and you design all the little bits of your life to make sure it ends with suicide, then not so much. It just creates attachment and sentimentality. I think I did it right.

Regrets? I can't possibly say I have no regrets. No, I have regrets. I wish I could have practiced better. The Dalai Lama once described himself as a "lazy monk". He was being humble, the point being practice can often, if not always, be better. But we practice to our ability or else we might do more damage than benefit. I just wish I could have practiced better, that doesn't mean I could have. Given more time, I still wouldn't have practiced better.

I regret being born to my parents. Yeesh, what a monkey wrench that was. I still can't make heads or tails of why I was born to them. It happened. I can't just brush it aside as a mistake, even if it might have been. I have to examine whether there was any substance in that relationship and it's a cold trail.

But no, they were the perfect parents for what I want to do. No attachments, no sentimentality. If suicide is something I need to do to advance spiritually, they were the perfect parents. Practically inspirations. Actually inspirations. I don't remember when I was first introduced to the idea of suicide, but I think it was a bit of a revelation of, "you can do that?". And it was a response grounded in being a miserable child of my parents. I was probably in the 8-11 age range, I'm not sure. It was pretty early, I shouldn't wonder.

When it comes right down to it, my only theoretical regret is being this way, what Sadie said she hated about me. It theoretically would have been nice to not have suicide as a goal and have been some positive influence to someone else. It just wasn't going to happen in this lifetime. And I hope that regret is something I can carry over as karma to push for in future lifetimes. But in this lifetime, the big spiritual challenge is to voluntarily give up the attachment to that which is so dear and precious to me: my ego, my subjective perspective, my life.

I don't know what came over me, but I recently read a flurry of WWII books. I guess I have a predilection for reading about harrowing ordeals and a fascination with the unimaginable extremes of the human experience. In this case during wartime. I've always thought it bonkers that we created these beautiful, graceful, elegant, powerful machines like planes and ships and then used them for destruction and killing and to get attacked and destroyed by some construct of "enemy". Well, no, not "and then used them for", but for the purpose of.

Ironically, the first book I read, Flyboys (2003) by James Bradley, is the one about which I'm most lukewarm. The premise was intriguing with the first chapter mentioning a recently declassified case regarding navy pilots who were shot down near a Pacific island not far from Iwo Jima and captured by the Japanese and executed. George H.W. Bush was shot down but was rescued by a U.S. sub before being captured.

It turns out it wasn't that extraordinary a story. It was just another incident of a wartime atrocity. Not to trivialize it, maybe all such stories should be told, but not all of them need an entire book for the telling. What was special about this story? What's the emotional take? Is anyone going to make a movie out of this story like Bradley's first book, Flags of Our Fathers? I doubt it.

Nothing really stands out except a future U.S. president participated in the mission and if he was captured and killed our history would be slightly different (he was a one-term president). This book would still have been written, with one less interview subject and his story as a victim would have been told in it, but we wouldn't know that he would become president, albeit one term, if he lived. I'm being snarky, as a navy flyer defending our country, I'm glad he survived.

(Holy shit! No, our history would be radically different because he wouldn't have spawned that idiot other Bush president who was probably the worst U.S. president ever at the time. Second worst now. Not only that, but I've always said that without Bush junior, there would be no Obama presidency. I had serious doubts that Obama could win because I knew how racist the U.S. is (NB: turns out it's even more racist than I thought it was), and I had trouble believing we'd elect a black man for president. But we did! That's how bad junior was!*)

To compensate for the lack of a book-length worthy story that tells itself, he writes about everything else he can to pad the book. He writes about the history of Japan-U.S. relations, Japan's modern history and militarization, the development of the U.S. air corp, U.S. aggression and racism, and more. It goes beyond just setting up context, but covers things only related with a huge stretch. I was waiting for a chapter on the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the war. It never came, but considering everything he writes about, it was fair game.

The way he writes had me leaving the library always in a sour mood. I'll give him benefit of the doubt that everything he writes is sourced, but I felt he shaded the facts in a way that emphasized the worst, the most negative, unredeeming, gory aspects of war. Maybe he's antiwar, which I have no problem with. If I had to take a stance I'd probably be antiwar, but this book didn't make me feel antiwar. It just filled me with disgust in general, and not at anything.

I have no great love for FDR. I agree that he was among the greatest U.S. presidents, but he's also the one who signed the order to imprison all Japanese Americans on the west coast during the war, a clearly racist act as German Americans weren't subjected to similar treatment and Hawaiian Japanese were exempted because they were too many and it would have been "impracticable". But Bradley's referring to him as "the Dutchman" definitely betrays something about his attitude towards the wartime president. That is not a term of respect. It's like writing a book about killing Osama bin Laden and constantly referring to Obama as "the Muslim" (even if FDR is of Dutch descent (I personally don't know), he was, I imagine, as Dutch as Obama is Muslim, i.e., not at all).


Left For Dead (2003) interested me because it's about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, which I knew about already and many people recall from the movie "Jaws", which is mentioned in the book as a key inspiration for part of the story. One part of the story is, of course, what happened to the Indianapolis and how it was entrusted to deliver the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian Island and afterwards was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on its way to its next assignment. The tragedy was that no one came to rescue the survivors who floated three or four days, suffering death from exposure, shark attacks and hallucinations and delirium. Now that's a story that tells itself. No matter how you write it, it's harrowing and emotional.

The other part of the story is the redemption of Captain McVay who was court-martialed for the sinking and blamed for the deaths of his crew and committed suicide in 1968. His court-martial can be viewed as a big black eye on the face of the integrity of the U.S. Navy. It was the classic sacrificing a "lowly" captain to save the careers and egos of higher up generals. It shows the disgusting, shameful, cowardly effect of hubris of those in power who don't want to admit responsibility.

The book also dispelled a myth I held about the Indianapolis that the failure to be rescued was related to its top secret mission to deliver the atom bomb to Tinian. It simply was unrelated. That mission was completed and its next mission was just its next mission.


I found two books at one library that I ended up reading in tandem because they both involved B-17 raids in Europe in the second half of 1943. They sort of complemented each other, although one book was about a single mission involving many flight crews and its aftermath, and the other was about a single incident with the story surrounding one flight crew and one German fighter pilot.

To Kingdom Come (2011) is about the September 6, 1943 deep-penetration, daylight bombing mission on Stuttgart, Germany without fighter escort that one general thought was the road to winning the war. It was basically a "test of concept" mission. He was wrong, the mission was statistically a disaster and such missions would soon be abandoned until the development of the P-51 Mustang long-range fighter could be completed to provide escort all the way to targets and back.

The book is about the mission so it focuses on several crews who flew the mission and survived to tell the story, including crews that were downed and aided by the French Underground to get back to England. Extraordinary stories.

A Higher Call (2012) is centered on a bombing raid three months later in December 1943, so there is overlap between the stories of the two books (crews from To Kingdom Come were still trying to get back to England) as well as mention of same bomber groups. Some descriptions, such as bomber groups taking off and mustering in the sky, are virtually identical.

The subject incident in the book, the purpose for the book, is very simple. The subject B-17 was badly damaged in the bombing raid and against all odds managed to stay in flight. One German pilot was the last chance to make sure the enemy didn't get away, but he ended up deciding not to shoot them down and let them go over the English Channel, albeit certain they wouldn't make it all the way back to England. If the crew were able to see the damage that the German pilot saw, maybe they wouldn't have made it!

The rest of the book is all back story and aftermath, and like To Kingdom Come, which jumps from story to story, so does this book which made reading them in tandem feel perfect. And I have to admit I wasn't sure what to make of the author and his background, but it's a well-written book. Towards the beginning of the book he describes an incident of the German fighter pilot trying to find work after the war and then cuts it off to go into the back story. When he goes back to finish the incident much later in the book, I didn't need to go back and refresh myself what had happened. I remembered exactly what was happening and I attribute that to good writing.

The emotional take from this book was huge and profound. The pilots and surviving crew met decades later and it was amazing the gratitude of the descendants realizing if it weren't for this former Luftwaffe fighter pilot standing before them and his one act of mercy, none of them would be here.

No one forgets who they owe for their survival for generations. Even in To Kingdom Come, the B-17 crews remembered the brave French citizens who helped them survive, some of whom were later caught and executed by the Nazis. All of them doing their jobs and what they believe in. The German pilot didn't do his job, but did what he believed in, which is that you don't shoot a crippled, defenseless plane out of the sky.

This actually hearkens back to the book on the Armenian Genocide I read a few months ago. The granddaughter of the genocide survivor travels to Syria during her research to find the descendants of the Bedouin sheikh who saved her grandfather's life to thank them. They ask her how many people their father saved by saving her grandfather. She counts her relatives and replies 15, much to their dismay. Only 15? That's plenty for a U.S. lineage, but the sheikh's lineage was in the hundreds! It's still a funny anecdote.

It's crazy. The lives we lead are crazy. The world we live in is crazy. Who knows the effects of our actions? The Japanese narrowly missed killing two future U.S. presidents. But they illegally executed POWs whose future effect we'll never know. There's no way to judge it. It just is what it is. I say I'm glad Bush senior survived, but what if his spawn wasn't just a bungling moron and was a Hitler or a Trump? Then it becomes hard to say I wouldn't be glad he didn't survive. It's a conundrum that defies logic or morality. And that's the world we live in.


* more of my hare-brained political theory (a.k.a., the Busherfly Effect, yea I just made that up):

I finally went to the ATM and found that the injection did not go through last month, so no buffer. I'm just mentioning it to mark when I learned I have a few months left in my bank account. I've been in this position before of counting down months, but all those times something happened to keep me afloat. I don't foresee anything this time.

Well, I said I need it to LOOM, and here it is now looming. I've always told myself I wouldn't do anything different ahead of a next attempt. I still hold to that in principle, but if I want to waste my time differently from what has been my routine, I'll allow it. I'll be more economical about how I waste my time. I have a few books I'm reading in the libraries that I'll finish up, but then I'm going to focus on the books that I have on Buddhist practice.

It's fine, but I feel it. It's not nothing. It's not something I can ignore. But it's something I suppose will evolve.

I finished reading Janna Levin's Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space (2016), about the history of gravity wave detection and the development of LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravity wave Observatory).

I've had a lifelong love for astronomy. This is totally boring and no one knows about it, but for that very reason why not mention it? Nothing hardcore. I never owned a telescope although at one point had getting one on my wishlist. I've had binoculars with a tripod mount that I used for stargazing. Mostly it's been naked eye observing and identifying constellations; contemplating the beauty and profundity of the vastness of the cosmos.

I've rarely lived in places that were amenable to stargazing. College at Oberlin was OK out there in farm country, and it was there that I first spotted the Andromeda galaxy naked eye and through binoculars. It's exciting stuff for people who get a kick out of that sort of thing. Deer Park Monastery also had fairly dark skies.

The darkest skies I've seen were in rural western Massachusetts where my brother was living one summer with his girlfriend and some college friends. 1986, I think. I was still in high school. Town called Monterey. It was a lakeside property and once when I visited, some of us took a boat out on the lake at night. It was the first time I realized why the Greeks named it the "Milky Way". Seeing it under such dark skies it dawned on me why the ancient Greeks might imagine milk squirting wantonly from a beautiful, young maiden's voluminous naked breasts across the night heavens. Or a cup of goat's milk spilled on the breakfast table, take your pick. Profundity of the cosmos.

I had a subscription to Astronomy magazine in the early 80s and that's where I first read about the LIGO/LISA gravity wave detectors. I likely didn't really understand any of it but pretended I did. I do remember reading about the L-shaped arm configuration of the detectors, and that's probably all that I really understood; I knew what an L looks like. And what I certainly didn't understand is that those articles were reporting on a massive undertaking that was actively being developed and people were working very hard to get money from Congress to fund it.

The distant background of the book is that Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted gravity waves, but even he wasn't confident whether they really existed. The accepted belief developed that even if they existed, they were impossible to detect, being all sorts of non-hyperbolic descriptions of really, really, really infinitesimally small. The book covers the scientists involved and their backgrounds and the decades that saw inspiration, theory, experimentation, failure, and interpersonal friction and drama that eventually led to LIGO getting the green light per my Astronomy magazines. I had no idea what was going on.

Until Levin's book. Fantastic read, I think, for anyone interested in the topic. Very well written with Levin being a physics and math professor herself, so a science insider. As an aspiring writer, this book is very readable (her prior book, which I also found in the libraries, not so much) and even has some Sagan-esque moments in inspiring awe at what's going on in the universe.

It was a timely read, too, as two of the principal scientists, Rai Weiss and Kip Thorne, won the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on LIGO and the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015. Oh whoops, damn! *spoiler alert*. A third principal, Ron Drever, who should have shared in the Nobel, despite being fired from the project, sadly died in March 2017 and thus became ineligible. I think no one doubts that, despite his being delusional and living in his own world and impossible to work with, that he was a genius and would have shared in the honors.

Timely, further, in that LIGO made headlines again in September 2017 with a gravity wave detection that immediately alerted other telescopes and led to corresponding radio and light observations of the event, making a pioneer, so-called "multi-messenger" observation of an event.

As long as I mentioned Kip Thorne, I watched the movie "Interstellar", on which Thorne acted as science advisor, multiple times when it aired on HBO. I also read Thorne's book on the relevant science of "Interstellar", as well as filmmaker Chris Nolan's book on the making of the film. I think the movie has a berth on my top ten favorite films of all time (there are probably more than 50 films on that list). Kip Thorne's book was particularly illuminating as even I started to be able to envision the physics involved. Certainly not anywhere near full comprehension, but a lot of "oh wow!" moments.

And as long as I'm mentioning astronomy, several years ago I read How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had it Coming by astronomer Mike Brown. I also recommend it for anyone interested in astronomy with the caveat that Mike Brown, although readable, writes more like a scientist. He writes about his own research and role in Pluto's demotion from a planet, but in no way is he trying to be an aspiring writer. He has no intention of giving up his day job.

Both books convey what a cutthroat world academic science is with competition as emotionally charged as any sports event, just in longer time spans, and with dramas that could put Hollywood tabloids to shame if only they involved more breasts and vapid, vacant personalities saying and doing dumb things.

These kinds of reads make me realize that I could never had made it in the academic world. I'm not that competitive or ambitious. Or smart.

I didn't have TV since the beginning of December. The provider is bbtv in Taiwan. Their internet is fine, but their cable TV service is wanting. Actually, to be fair I didn't even try to notify anyone there was a problem. I left it to other people on the floor who apparently didn't mind not having TV as much as I didn't mind. It's totally possible bbtv would have responded immediately and had service back up pronto.

Internet did go out at the end of December, the same day I killed that spider in fact. I knew someone would call the landlord for that and internet was back up two days later, but for some reason no one mentioned TV and the person who fixed the internet didn't realize TV service was out, too.

No internet was not fun. A little lonely maybe? When it was back up I wanted to run to the internet and say oh my god, i have so much to tell you! I didn't have anything to tell. That was just the weird feeling. And not to anyone, mind you, but to the internet itself. I watched three movies on my computer in those two days.

I adapted to no TV, even though it disrupted shows I was watching, notably season 4 of Fresh Off the Boat, Anthony Bourdain's Parts Unknown, and Discovery Channel shows How the Universe Works and How the Earth was Made. I'll watch anything on astronomy or cosmology, geology, earth sciences, earth history, archaeology. Things that span and give insight on how this all came to be.

After TV went dark, I checked every few days to see if it was back up, and after a few weeks I stopped doing that. I found new ways to completely fill up my time to the point that I felt I didn't have enough time. I started spending a lot more time with my bass as well as watching YouTube videos voraciously.

Today, after maybe a month I checked the TV not expecting anything and it was back up. Only Fresh Off the Boat is still airing. I missed a bunch of episodes, but they'll probably re-run them.

On one hand, two months without TV, I think, really did break my TV addiction. I don't even want it, I don't want it on all the time even in the background as I had it before. I'm sick of channel surfing when there's nothing on. On the other hand, it's February leading up to the Oscars in March and HBO is cramming Oscar classics and there's a lot I know I'm too weak to miss.

Another unexpected side effect, I think, was that what little of my Mandarin speaking ability went completely out the door. Even watching English language TV, Mandarin entered my ears through commercials. And at times I would have local news on as background noise. Without that I was completely in a non-Mandarin environment unless a Mandarin language song came up on my iPod and I long stopped trying to understand lyrics while listening.

As it is, my flatscreen is default connected to my laptop, not TV. I'll peek at TV schedules to see if there's anything of interest coming up, but I see breaking with TV as a good thing.

I went to the bank recently to add some buffer to time I have left in the form of an undated check. Currently the amount in my account will last me until June, and then I have some emergency reserves I keep in house. This injection would give me about seven months. Buffer.

Lots of psychology going on here. I don't need or want a seven month buffer, I'm hoping I don't even need until June. But there I was in the bank trying to implement this injection only to find it might not even work. Why? Because it involves my parents (even after my father died, I still can't refer to my mother as a singular individual entity). If it involves my parents, it involves chaos. It's natural law, you throw something up, it comes down. OK, maybe there's a tinge of subjective interpretation going on, but I'm working with empirical evidence.

I totally regret going to the bank. It wasn't worth the chaos and I had to implement full mindfulness practice to maintain homeostasis, giving off a general air that I couldn't care less what ultimately happens, which is true. I had prepared everything thoroughly for it to be pretty routine, but because of the chaos caused, I have no idea what's going to happen.

I'm bracing for the consequences. There weren't supposed to be "consequences". The injection was just supposed to happen as calmly as two ships passing in the night. Now there's the threat that people will try to contact me, which may sound like a "poor baby" moment, but is still disturbing and distracting. My strategy will be to smother any consequences and cut off anything anyone might try to do. The worst is anyone thinking I need money, so that's what I'll have to emphatically shut down. Fuggedaboudit, I don't need it.

I'm just really annoyed and disappointed in myself for even trying for the injection. I've been complaining about the day-to-day conveyor belt of my life and its uselessness and banality, and here I go trying to extend it? This is me mocking and making a joke of my own life. This is me insulting everything about me and myself and ascribing me to a new low level of pathetic below rock bottom. That might be magma, but that sounds too cool.

What was I even thinking? It was just a bunch of ordinary factors that fell on one day that made it seem the perfect convenient day. But not knowing there was going to be a problem, I probably would have gone eventually anyway as I watched my account decline every month. So what is the psychology of this adding buffer?

OK, even while I'm saying I "hope I don't even need until June", clearly clearly clearly if the injection went without a hitch, I would have kept on through the seven months because that's how lame I am. I have to accept that as it is. And this check isn't the only undated check I have so I have to assume I would have continued to add buffer if the option was there (they all have the same defect, so the option is gone even if this one injection works). Because that's how lame I am. That's what all the evidence of my behavior suggests. That's how I've even gotten this far in years. It sure hasn't been through hard work and ambition.

If I had known there was going to be a problem, would I have gone to the bank? Giving it a good deal of thought, I'm gonna say probably not. I could take that as a sign and resign myself that what I have left is all I have left. And if this injection doesn't go through and really all I have is until June and change, I'm not going to do anything and accept that this is it. I hope I'll accept that this is it. There is no evidence in my behavior to suggest confidence in that.

I think my hand will need to be "forced", and only then will the suicide option become a reality. This is what I mean when I keep saying I've designed my life with suicide as an end. No matter how much "buffer" I'm able to keep adding to my life, eventually there will be no more and since I don't have the ambition to find independent means to maintain my life (get a job), and do have the idealized goal to commit suicide, well then voilà.

I need to face having no option. I need that experience just as much as I need to actually commit suicide. I need it to LOOM. I need to have the train bearing down on me. I need to be in the death zone on Mt. Everest and realize I'm in serious trouble and not going to make it down. I need to be force marched into the desert by government soldiers who hold more value in toilet paper than in my life. I've pretended to be totally committed to doing it in the past, but there always was the option of coming home. I always had my house keys. Come to think of it, that's not total commitment. This time it won't matter if I take my house keys, there still will be no money if I fail. And then what? I don't even want to think of it. The alternatives in that situation are just as bad or even worse than suicide.