quote me

Maybe that's my destiny in life. To live the richest, most passionate life possible, and yet against my better judgments.

why i remain single these days

My dad's funeral, 2006. I needed some air after the service, and my niece, studying photojournalism at the time, snapped this picture.

Alas, my life these days affords me no room for ultimate romance. I chose a path that I knew would lead to it. I chose my mom. So here I am, for now a laid off unemployed deadbeat who stays home and looks after his old mother. LOL! Who would want to date me for that?

Furthermore, I do not look after my elderly mom out of obligation. I do so because I love her deeply. I do it because I WANT TO. That's the difference. It means I'm genuine, true to myself, and I'm proud of that. Who wouldn't be? After all, she and Dad did a universe of selfless good for all of us kids, they raised us and gave us everything they could. How could I not want to repay them in kind?

The reason she calls me constantly when I'm out - which of course drives me crazy - is simple: she is scared to be alone. That is entirely understandable. I know that if I were in the same position (and we all will be sooner or later) I would probably feel the same. To die without seeing a loved one's face looking down at you for the very last time, without that final beautiful gaze of love and acknowledgment and closure, is a profoundly frightening thing. To me it's far worse than death itself.

So, I'm single and not available. The last thing I'd want is to drag a man into my situation. I wouldn't want him to suffer because I put my mom first. I do get lonely from time to time and wish I could fall asleep at night in someone's arms. But it would be just selfish of me to have that while not being entirely there for him because I put my mom first.

There's also the jobless factor. Until the economy picks up and I have a better chance I remain unemployed. I wouldn't want to not contribute to certain experiences like going on trips, buying dinners out, and birthday gifts for my man. I don't feel it would be a balanced relationship. I would want to spoil my boyfriend, lavish him with all the wisdom I learned from my past relationships and experiences. And that's just not possible yet.

But I do love to have affairs. I love such moments. It's a very healthy thing to do when it's consensual and safe and you both say "Yes, let's have fun and enjoy each other for a while!". You give yourselves permission. LOL, I call it 'being European'. It's great adventure and it can only enrich your life, add colour, texture and spice to it.

Some people define the worth of their life by whom they share it with. Some people define that worth by the fact that they are sharing their life with someone at all. Some define it by eschewing such relationships and preferring to go solo. And some define it by refusing to let someone else suffer for their own selfish desires and lack of priorities.

I am an amalgam of all four of those, not because I can't make my mind up. It's because I know how complex life can be and it's far better to embrace that complexity and know where I stand at certain given points in my life.

inked skin and human fragility

Jack at the end of her personal mission to understand why her future was forever ruined during her childhood. Luckily for me I grabbed my iPhone just in time to catch this.

This otherwise fleeting instance at the end of her mission is the most vulnerable, humanistic moment that the story shows of her. That look on her face alone expresses everything she has ever lived through - and survived - in her life, down to her "souvenir" tattoos. I teared up watching it.

A powerful example of the level of production quality in this game.

Beautiful direction, cinematography, lighting, composition, and "acting". Gaming at its very finest today.

Mass Effect 2 is, for those of you who hadn't heard of it, an action role-playing game on the caliber of some of the very best science fiction that explores deep philosophical, political, social, and ethical issues - racism, sexuality, human rights (or species rights in this case), genetic experiments, identity, humanity. A sometimes difficult game to play in terms of choices and consequences.

These are the things we must all confront and address as a species if we are to grow and flourish and survive. It may start out as a game, but there is nothing game about what the experience speaks to us about.

...as we are

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

- Anais Nin

If you knew me more intimately would you intimate yourself to me more? Are you better able to transmit your thoughts and dreams and desires and experiences to me when I'm an abstraction, as physical proximity might disturb such transmissions? Am I more valuable to you from a distance?

This is the contradiction of the internet. It's a Janus face. One side allows communication from different points in the world, bringing us closer and affording opportunities to connect that would otherwise be impossible. The other side is cruel. It exaggerates the geographical interstices, the chasm of hundreds or thousands of miles separating us, which only brings disparity. We can transmit to each other our secrets but it only reminds us how far apart we are that only electronic words can reach us - no facial expressions, no hugs, no touch, no breath, no sensation of warm skin, no aromas from our bodies, no voice, no sound of hearts thumping.

When we deny ourselves outings, experiences, people, various sensations - the heat from the sun, the coolness of the moon, the prickle of spicy peppers on our tongue, the vivacity of spoken gossip from a friend, the bracing sting of the first sip of an icy cold martini, the wind on our face as we drive along the coast - the only things we have to fall back on are thoughts, mind games, inventions - surrogates that further deny us truth, the truth of experiencing.

Our minds begin to fill in the blanks left by such denials of direct experiences. We start to create feelings and thoughts to replace what we hadn't acquired in the first place....in person. I wonder if this is because we were made to be experiential beings and without experiences we scramble to at least have something, anything, to grasp onto, even if they are false and invented and projected. Is it really better than nothing?

photo: Boden Sea, Uttwil, 1993. ©Hiroshi Sugimoto

So, such is my life at the moment. If I wanted to I could turn off this laptop and go out for a walk. I hadn't done much anything this year. I'm broke. I can't work because there are no jobs. I can't travel anywhere. All I can do is wait for things to get better so I can make my move. I'm like a monk in a tower; I have views but they're of things far away, people I can't meet in person, places unreachable to me.

I'm out of the market for romance. My life isn't set up for it, there's no accommodation, especially in this town. Even friendships are tricky to maintain. I have a couple of local friends but it's expensive to go to out with them. Online friendships are even harder. The more we reveal ourselves to each other the harder it gets because we'd rather reveal ourselves to each other in person.

I can never understand people who swear by love affairs online, that they love having a boyfriend/girlfriend who lives in Sydney or Tokyo or Prague and they instant message each other everyday. What the hell kind of love is that? It feels so.....detached. That's not love, that's torture. LOL! It's a relationship you can switch off and walk away from whenever you have disagreements. Like an appliance. How convenient. But you can't take it to bed and make love to it, dine out with it at the bistro, enjoy a lovely conversation with it over cocktails, or lay your head on it and listen to its heartbeat.

I have no one in my life. I accept that. It seems like it would hurt knowing that it's a byproduct of other technicalities I suffer through presently. But strangely enough it doesn't hurt. Maybe it's because I've grown numb, I don't know. What I do know is that my acceptance of it helps; it lessens the pain of loneliness. What would really hurt is if I didn't accept it but at the same time knew that there's nothing I could do about it, either, for as long as it lasts.

Another thing that lessens the pain is knowing that it probably won't be this way forever. Things have ebbed and flowed in my life before. Why should this be any different?

I am the dynamism of my experiences.

fuck Kafka

^ Epicurus most likely had a lot of things to teach Kafka. Navel gazing isn't one of those things.

In a gaming community I frequent, a fellow member posted this:

Where do they come from and where do they go?

Why do people create knowing that it will eventually be destroyed? Why do people cling to life knowing that they must someday die? None of that will have meant anything once you do.

Kefka may have been completely batshit insane, but he raises a good point. Why do we do the things we do? What does it mean to live? Why do you insist on living and finding happiness knowing that it is temporary and death is probably eternal? What is your response when you are faced with these questions?

I replied with this:

First of all, I wouldn't trust Kafka to be my guru even if I were considering razor blades on my wrist instead of on my unshaved face. The guy most likely didn't know shit about enjoying himself, he was emo before emo was emo. Amazing writer, though.

Secondly, I have no idea if there is an afterlife (I'm atheist) but damn shit if I try not to have as much fun as I possibly could in this life I have now and to be as good as I can to other people.

I don't "cling" to life. I make hot passionate love to it. I lust for it and in it. Not because I'm desperate, but because it's there to take advantage of. It's not death I'm scared of, it's the absence of living.

Years ago I nearly died myself, from a medical condition, so I have some idea how it would feel to be on that "event horizon" of existence. It taught me a lesson: be good, have fun, lust is your friend, and build and create and enjoy while you're around and not give a shit if it all ceases to exist when you do. Because you have nothing else better to do, and what good would it do to just mope in a dark corner?

The idea of the worthlessness of this life hints at a lack of imagination and self-esteem, and certainly to a kind of laziness in imbuing value and a sense of time well spent, no matter how brief that time may be and no matter how mysterious dying may be perceived in terms of what may or may not come afterward.

Oh, I've done my share of navel gazing. The difference is that I got the fuck over it. My navel only looks interesting for so long, you know.

I could use another Mexicola (coke, lime juice, and tequila). Cheers!

e-chain of fools

"Don't even."

LOL! I just got "gently scolded" by people I don't know who work with my oldest sister. She sent me yet another one of those chain emails with really corny sentimental messages in them. You know what I'm talking about, right? They got, say, cute puppy dog pics, animated smileys with "have a nice day" wishes, or heartwarming human interest stories done in PowerPoint with very, VERY, VERY loud elevator music, and of course about a hundred cc's to other recipients. I'm sure you get these 'feel good' chain emails all the time. I delete most of them without even reading, but some I do read (against my better judgment).

I decided to be evil (oh yes, I'm capable of it) and reply not just to my sister but to all the recipients (most likely some of them forwarded it to my sister in the first place) with great sarcasm:

"AWWWWW! This is so excruciatingly corny and trite and whoever put it together with those cheap sofa painting backgrounds and deafeningly loud elevator/shopping mall music should be flogged senseless.

But the message is well taken and I agree. Thanks to all my parachute packers, I love you! May you never have to deal with unbearably corny 1970s style Hallmark greeting card type emails again."

xoxoxooxoxoxoxo

A couple of them wrote me back with an obvious tone of dismay: "Did you get up on the wrong side of bed?" "Who are you?"

Chain emails as such are the equivalent of real world chain mail to me, akin to numbingly annoying ones that clutter up my mailbox and waste good paper. This is how computer viruses and worms are spread, through attachments or links in the emails. At least you can never do that with real world letters. But as it stands, my family and some of my friends keep sending these to me, expecting me to forward it to other people.

Look, I am a good soul, I've survived life threatening crises and other moments of agony in my life, I volunteer my time and money to worthy causes, I love my mother unconditionally, I'm loyal to my friends. But that does NOT mean I do this cruddy Hallmark "perfect world" crap, there's something sickeningly saccharine about it and I will not apologize for it.

I do have my mushy moments but I hate it when emails like this try to force mushiness on me. That's just...revolting.

“I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn.”

Ever read Dorothy Parker much? You should. It's very grounding stuff.

shake it, baby

San Francisco Identifies Buildings Most at Risk | New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO — The picturesque Victorians and brightly painted apartment buildings where thousands of city residents live and work are especially vulnerable during earthquakes, according to a report issued Friday by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection.

The report said that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 or higher could render unlivable as many as 85 percent of the city’s “soft-story” apartment buildings — those that are less structurally sound because their ground floors are open space, often used as retail stores or garages. At least 65,000 people live and work in the 2,800 most vulnerable buildings studied in the report.

This is the city I want to end up in for pretty much the rest of my life. I grew up in Chicago and have a lifetime of beautiful memories from there. I used to want to live and work in the fashion industry in New York when I graduated from The Art Institute Of Chicago; that was back in the late 80s and I've since left the industry so New York means little to me today, at least in terms of career.

For me San Francisco represents a return to art making and is an inspiration for writing and for living richly and meaningfully.

As for the earthquakes, I must be philosophical about it. We all have a limited time in this existence, but to live each day paralyzed in fear of disaster and death is to live as if already dead. And how productive and good is that?

^ Yeah, I know, corny mushy touristy video. But still, how can I say no to this?

The best we can do is prepare for certain emergencies but still experience our lives, enjoy our lives, and prosper of ourselves in defiance of any fears we may hold. Practically, this would naturally mean searching for a home that isn't as susceptible to earthquakes as those older buildings, keeping track of where to go in such an emergency, and keeping supplies stashed for when things happen, and knowing exactly what to do in the moment.

In the end, it isn't death that I'm afraid of. What I'm afraid of is not having truly lived.

Related:

the shaking | a space alien

i will not glorify ignorance, mine or others'

When Did Being Smart Become a Political Deficit? | The New York Times, Letters to the Editor

As I read “Obama’s From Main St., Ain’t He?,” by Roger Cohen (column, The New York Times on the Web, Aug. 28), I started feeling a combination of rage and sorrow about the fact that being smart, articulate and well educated continues to be read as a deficit.

Let’s bring back the idea that being well read, cleverly witty, sometimes serious and sometimes silly, and maybe knowing a bit of art, music and history are all worthy goals.

Barack Obama is Main Street? Let’s hope so.

- Jane Nordli Jessep
Westport, Conn., Aug. 28, 2008

I remember a moment a few years ago when I was living in Oregon and at the tail end of a relationship with a man I loved. We were arguing about communication problems between us (I was wanting to be more open and upfront and expressive, he himself admitted he had serious issues with communicating himself openly). I asked him why he couldn't be honest with me about how he was feeling about us, why wasn't he trusting me when all I wanted was to help him, try to understand him.

He then lashed out - ad hominem - and accused me of being 'above him'. He said how could he even talk to me when I keep using fancy words and spewing out these ideas he has no knowledge of. Then he said that he saw himself as a simple man without much ambition but having me around made him feel really stupid and we were on two very different levels and he felt he couldn't reach me.

It was the very first time in my life I actually felt.....badly, about being so smart and learned in some way. Granted, I don't have a PhD, just a fine arts degree from a good art college, I don't consider myself some great intellectual who reads nothing but the classics, admires Hume and Russell, and looks down on those who have never even heard of Rakmaninov. I like that stuff, yes, but I don't begrudge others who don't like those, just as I don't begrudge them for not being into video games and roller coasters like I am.

But he did say such things to me, and I questioned myself, erroneously so. I thought, Is this what it's about? Having to dumb yourself down for someone because they don't know those fancy words you use? What he told me was one of the most hurtful things anyone has ever said to me. It hit me deeply.

< The Jefferson Library. in Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's crib.

Reading the op-ed piece above (and the original piece its writer was replying to) angered me. I realize that I should never, ever feel badly again for simply trying to better myself, exercise intellectual self improvement, learn new things, strive to be smarter, and use my knowledge pragmatically and constructively, not just for my own benefit but for the benefit of others.

The glorification of ignorance is one of the most profound fuck-ups in American society today. Our entire country, our culture, is infused with it to the point where many of us actually express pride in being ignorant! Well, fuck that! I am not ever going to stoop so low. I've worked my ass off trying to be a better version of me than yesterday, last month, last year. Why should I throw all my achievements away just to fit in? After all, everyone - EVERYONE - has the exact same chance as I to better themselves. The difference is that I took that chance.

If anything, the one thing I should be proud of is the fact that I brought myself up this high. I am the one who actually got off my ass and looked up strange new fancy words in the dictionary to know what they mean to be able to use them. I don't spoon feed myself garbage from mainstream media because I know better. Why should I be ashamed of that?

I think the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus owned us when he stated:

Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't chooose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap.*

* As intepreted by Sharon Lebell in The Art Of Living: The Classical Manual On Virtue, Happiness, And Effectiveness (Harper-Collins 1994).

Related:
Dumbass: An American Standard? | a space alien
Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians | Reason Online

dumbass: an american standard?

^ 'Bush and the dumbing down of America', an excerpt from Susan Jacoby's hour long presentation in San Francisco recently. The full talk can be had here. | For iPhone users the full talk isn't available on YouTube, but two of its moments, 'The dumbing down of political language' and 'Computers: not making you smarter', are.

"Writer and scholar Susan Jacoby is sure to raise some hackles with The Age of American Unreason - an unsparing jeremiad that attacks the dumbing-down of the American public. Jacoby's area of study is US intellectual history, though she worries that the field is becoming a moot point in the face of our country's pervasive "infotainment" complex.

As politics get folded into entertainment, she argues, so too does morality become indistinguishable from consumerism. Though hardly the first to bemoan the pitfalls of mass culture, Jacoby's portrait of American anti-intellectualism is especially germane in the middle of an election year." - Booksmith, San Francisco

Philistine. I love the sound of that word and what it signifies. It's an ironizing word when used in a certain way, in this case to dismiss someone who chooses not to grow intellectually (yes, you can decide to be smarter than you were yesterday). At the risk of making myself look like an evil sonuvabitch with 'elitist' leanings, I confess to calling your average American dumbass a Philistine and he wouldn't know what that word meant, and you could accuse me, hence, of being anything but a Philistine. But think about it, there was one time that I myself did not know what that word meant. And guess what I did. I got off my dumb ass and actually looked it up in the dictionary. I grew better that day.

How many of us Americans today actually choose to get off our dumb asses to look up a new and intriguing word in the dictionary? How many of us Americans today actually choose to think, critically and analytically? How many of us Americans today actually choose to deeply and honestly examine the philosophical essence of our values instead of merely complaining out of our asses that our values are being attacked by terrorists and dictatorships?

^ These two guys were themselves elite - highly educated and independent thinkers and massively passionate about creating a world where everyone can be like them if they wanted. Are you, as a 'dumb American', gonna give them shit, too, the way you look down on other intellectuals and great thinkers? After all, these two guys co-conceived what would become two of the greatest manifestos in our history, The Declaration Of Independence and the United States Constitution. Yep, meet Thomas Paine (left) and Thomas Jefferson.

How many of us Americans would rather go shopping or watch Jerry Springer instead? Think about it. Or don't think at all and choose to be just another dumb American, one of many millions who have forgotten that the United States Of America was actually founded by a small group of amazingly bold and intelligent individuals, themselves learned men who chose to enlighten themselves and think critically and deeply. Where is the sin in that? Why should we as Americans toss aside the very principle on which our nation was built - the chance to be the very best, brightest, and highest quality that we can be for ourselves, of ourselves, and to set this down as a fundamental human right for everyone?

After all, is that not what Michelle and Barack Obama did? Is that not what my brother, a successful immigrant who earned his PhD in theoretical physics and now works for the JPL Labs at Caltech did? Why is being intelligent, individualistic, and elite looked down upon by so many of us Americans who would rather listen to trashy shock DJ's and obsess over what Britney or Lindsey did and be referred to as 'the lowest common denominator'?

^ Do forgive me, but his impressive knowledge of art and history and his incomparable experience in museums and culture aside.....FUCK, THIS GUY HAS ONE OF THE MOST GODDAMN DISTINCTLY SEXY VOICES EVER!! *faints*

I remember reading an interview with Philippe de Montebello in The New Yorker years ago. He has been the director of The Metropolitan Museum Of Art for the past 30 years and will be retiring at the end of this year. de Montebello was once confronted at a press conference for making the museum an elitist institution, why has he not reached out to, say, black kids in Harlem or the working class.

His reply was, in effect, "Yes, this is an elitist institution. And yet anyone can walk in off the street, go into the galleries, and learn about the world through the art. No one is stopping you at the door and telling you that you are too poor, too ethnic, too this or that. Everyone is welcome. The very moment you choose to enter The Metropolitan is the moment that you, yourself, become elite."

grounding

On my nightstand, a photograph K took of me at my dad's wake
a few years ago.

~ Stay the course in good weather and bad ~

Regardless of what is going on around you, make the best of what is in your power, and take the rest as it occurs.

- Epictetus (interpreted by Sharon LeBell)