Photo and Consequences

Photo and consequencesThe early fall of my 63rd year of existence on this planet stamped forever in the stream of my consciousness. I was vain about my body. Since I had been bragging about my "magnificent" physique all summer long to a group of new friends, I thought I might as well back up my bragging with a photo of me in a brief. To me, it was like a photo of any male on the beach or around the swimming pool. Lo and behold, a woman who a few weeks prior had proudly sent a photo of hers in a bikini lying on the beach somewhere on the planet, posted a complaint in an insolent, haughty, cavalier, and quite stupid language about my bad taste and indecency , and demanded an instant cessation of my posting such photos in the future! This came from a woman who once blithely disclosed that her password to a certain email account of hers was a vulgarism! After her complaint, I promptly sent an one-word apology to the group and a request to have my name removed from the subscription list. So it looked like I didn't understand women at all. I thought I did, but apparently I did not. Not really. Not at all. Then I began reflecting on my psyche and that of other people including the one upon whom I conferred various pet names. And I arrived at the following verities/observations:1. The romantic world is a stage where the players are actors and dancers par excellence. 2. The more inferior the players, the more ruses they employ to cover up their intrinsic worth or, rather, lack thereof. 3. Trust is a rare commodity. I was played for a fool by Chinko Mixto.4. I was naive and trusting, perhaps too much so, of being accepted for my idiosyncrasies.5. Midget was stupid in thinking I was in need of her. All she had was ego, and not an ounce of love inside. She was insolent, just like Chinko Mixto. Anyway, I took a risk and flunked it, so to speak. But I had to do that to find out whom I was dealing with. I had to push the envelope. I was fearless, and they were fearful of coming across as condoning or, heavens forbid, liking lasciviousness so they had to appear as prude and coy (Quelle fausse pudeur!) Now I decided to go off the map. Now I become invisible. And quiet, too. Like a church mouse. Reader, please don't write back and tell me that I just wrote two sentence fragments. I know what I'm doing, I think. I just met a Southern belle at the poker table and I was blown away by her charms and manners and grace. It was a delightful experience. She was in town for a printers conference. She was a marketing executive of a printing company. She was a mixture of naïveté and worldly sophistication. Her Southern accent was a delight. She was proud of her true age (28 but could easily passed for 19) and showed me her driver's ID to prove her being truthful. She had an unusual last name and she called my attention to that and laughed merrily about that. She had a winsome personality and didn't seem to care if she lost a hand. She was a sharp contrast to the woman in the preceding paragraphs. Her personality won me over and made my day. In addition, I recouped all what I had lost the day before in poker and that helped my mood, too. This encounter cleansed me of the poison I ingested recently and reminded me that I must surround myself with pleasant, nice people. That in turn would make me feel good about life and humans. So with this much improved mood, I walked out of the poker room and into the bright sunshine of the fall. The lovely music of the Oldies helped also. I was struck as to why humans came to invent music. I recently read a book about the how, but not the why. Could it be music was a way to amplify and transcend ordinary human discourse, and to appeal to the raw simple emotions? Except for some complex classical pieces of music whose understanding requires a refined sensibility, most pieces of music elicit instantaneous reaction. One either likes it or not after no more than a minute. And it's hard not to like or even to love a musician whose music brings so much peace and joy to the listeners. Unfortunately for me, the therapeutic effects of listening to music didn't last. By the time I got near my condo, I got riled up again by the unpleasant memories associated with the photo. I felt then I had to discharge my frustrations and annoyance. So I turned the car around and got to the gym.I murdered the exercise machines that evening. I worked on them with a vengeance. I wanted to sublimate and transcend my anger, my rage. I wanted that by next time, if and when I give in to the impulse of vanity and have a picture of my body taken again, women would pant and salivate and faint with desire instead of lodging a complaint using feeble excuses ("She doth protest too much!"). I wanted clearly delineated definitions on my body. I wanted to possess a well-sculpted body just to feed my vanity. After an hour of intense workout, my 63-year-old body was screaming for mercy. I relented and headed for the whirlpool to soothe my body of the aches and pains and muscle burns. That was where I met her. She was a Hispanic of incomparable beauty and sexiness. She made my knees weak, my heart flutter, and my mouth water. Believe it or not, I am a bashful, shy, timid kind of guy. But that evening I couldn't help myself. All my timidity evaporated into thin air. She was like a powerful magnet and my eyes were two hapless little balls of iron. They turned to her. They hungrily took in her beauty and sex appeal. I started talking to her in my halting, broken Spanish. Luckily for me, she didn't talk much English so she had to put up with my poor command of the language of Cortez and Cervantes. She didn't know French otherwise I would express myself in that language of love because meeting her was like meeting life and encountering love and sex for the very first time. She opened the eyes of my heart and unlocked the door of my desire. She had everything in looks a man dreams about a woman. Sparkling teeth, long eyelashes to go with beautiful almond eyes, sheeny black hair, young (mid 20s), all curves and filled to the brim with vitality. The more I talked, my Spanish got better. Words came back from long- gone university days. She even noticed that and complimented me on it. I was in a trance. I waxed poetic about her beauty and sexuality. I disclosed that I "specialized" in writing love poetry. She demanded proof so I recited a poem I just wrote a few days before:Mon coeur a un secretLe secret, c'est toiJ'ai un désir Un jour je te baiseraAvec un tendre plaisirJ'ai un espoirMa nuit n'est plus noirEt je ne sera pas solitaireMais dis-moiComment je te fais Connaître mon grand amour Pour toiUne chose plus importante:Je souhaite que tu chantes Pour moi la chanson "Tristesse" de ChopinJe suis ton copainTon amour toujours Of course, I translated into Spanish for her benefit. After I was finished, she clapped her hands and exclaimed "How romantic! How beautiful!" I beamed broadly and my heart soared. The poem clinched it for me. She left her car in the 24 Hours Fitness Club parking lot and rode with me in my Beemer back to my condo. I did have a lucky day. I met a nice Southern belle, recouped the money I lost the night before, and now this Hispanic young woman within my reach. She had on a black top and tight jeans over shapely legs of which I had gazed longingly earlier. They didn't stay on her for long after we got inside the condo. We enjoyed ourselves like we were teenagers and this was the first time we tasted carnal pleasures. We went on for several hours, exploring each other. We went beyond where we each had been before. My sex and my mouth both hurt from being on her everywhere. Later, I took out some weed and offered her some. We smoked, drank beer, and talked until the wee hours of the morning. Then we passed out in each other's arms.When I woke up, she was gone! Alarmed, I jumped out of bed, my heart was racing and I was breathing hard. I was relieved when I located my wallet and found none of the money and the credit cards missing. I took a quick look of the condo and found everything seemed to be in order. I was then relaxed enough to realize that I needed to pee. Her note was on the bathroom counter, with a glass placed on top of it as if she was afraid a hurricane would come through and blow away her loving departing words:"Mi querido Roberto:Siento que no permanezca alrededor para decir adiós. Yo no tuve el coraje de ver dolor en su rostro. Tuve un muy buen momento anoche. Mi mejor. Deseaba que yo había conocido antes. Me ha gustado mucho y sabía que me adoraba. Pero me voy a casarme el mes próximo. Ya no puedo verte, pero siempre estarás en mi corazón. Espero que no se siente muy mal por lo que hice. Estoy segura de que encontrará una guapa mujer pronto porque estas muy agradable, educado y divertido estar alrededor.Te quiero,Sandra(My dear RobertoSorry that I didn't stay around to say goodby. I didn't have the courage to see pain on your face. I had a very good time last night. My best ever. I wished that I had met you sooner. I liked you a lot and I knew you adored me. But I am getting married next month. I can't see you anymore, but you will be forever in my heart. I hope you don't feel very bad about what I did. I am sure you will find a nice woman soon because you are very nice, educated, and fun to be around.I love you,Sandra.")I was stunned by her note. I read it again and again. I understood her situation and accepted her decision. Still, her departure left a void in my heart. The void is not filled up yet. But the latest encounter is giving me hope. Hope is what sustains and drives me. It makes me get up in the morning. It helps me write love poetry to whoever that catches my fancy. I have boundless dreams and fantasies. By the way, nowadays when I think of the Hispanic woman, I don't associate her with the name Sandra as that name was the one of a really insolent and stupid bitch who got on my nerves for a long time until she was run over by a proverbial bus last week. I didn't shed a tear over her demise as near the end of her life, she was cranky and impossible to talk to.To me, the Hispanic woman was always a Mariposa who flew out of my reach but left an indelible beautiful memory. Didn't I tell you that besides hopes and dreams, I also live for memories?Wissai/NKBa'September 15, 2012

Photos of children monks in training

Some may view the photos as examples of brutal indoctrination and brainwashing of children, but the reality is that parents of these children voluntarily send their kids to the monasteries so they could benefit from the general education as well as the Buddhist conception of reality. The pictures represent the training under the Theravada branch of Buddhism, the alleged earliest and purest form of Buddhism. The Buddhist mendicant monks (the novices as well, as seen by the pictures of the children) make their daily rounds of soliciting for alms (they are supported by the community) and eat one meal a day before noon whatever deposited in their begging bowls. They don't work in the ordinary meaning of the world so they can have time to study Buddhism. In return, the community learn about Buddhism and benefit from their scholarly, social and political (when the nations in crisis. In the past Buddhist monks led demonstrations against the military junta in Myanmar) leadership.

True knowledge is at once simple and mysterious. And so am I. I remind myself time and again that most, if not all, common folks fail to realize that I am both a shining mirror and an iceberg. Even my mistakes and sufferings have the markings of bathos, pathos, and some grandeur as I do have the sensibilities of a poet/philosopher. Your journey has the markings of a late start. Read "Confessions of a Philosopher" by Bryan Magee.

Last night I had two horrible dreams: the first involved my killing of my mother; the second one was about a fight to death with a guy I hated.

Wisdom

I finally listened to my intuition. What helped me was the greed and unfairness of the other party. As I get older and closer to my demise on this planet, I realize false pride and greed are the two usual defects that cause sufferings in this world. I used to have them, too, but I got rid of them about two years ago. Ever since, I have been more at peace with myself.

Talking about pride, yesterday one 60-year-old man lamented and got upset over being dumped by a nympho married woman. He said that he had never been dumped before. Everybody laughed about his obvious lie. I tried to save his face by saying that he could have said the truth. I then added that I was dumped all the time and there was nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I was grateful that some women dumped me, I said. That remark made everybody laugh, including myself. You see, getting dumped may not be a pleasant experience, but if looked at the right way, it could be a highly educational process because it would force us to really go through a soul-searching exercise and consequently may learn a lot about ourselves and others.

Nowadays I try to conduct my self with a lot of love and grace. I don't always manage to do that. There are many relapses and reversions to juvenile behavior. Anyway, I talk less than I used to. And if some assholes piss me off, I try to keep my mouth shut and stay away from them. I belatedly realize that I may initially attract people by my looks, but to keep them I have to be mindful of my speech and my conduct. Who I axm is more than how I look. It's what I say and do in addition to how I dress and present myself to the world. I have stopped listening to conflicting voices. I now listen to one voice, the voice of good and understanding, the voice of acceptance, the voice of peace.

The Sea of Misery

Here I was
In the midst of balmy winds, 
the freshest air, the vast open sea,
I felt utterly lonely
And I wanted to die.
Tears crept into my eyes.
My duchess, my ever-present lady
Looked at me with surprise.
She asked me why on our anniversary
I seemed to be drowned in misery.
I quickly lied,
No, honey, it was just smoke getting into my eyes.
But there's no smoke here, she replied.
Yes, there is, I insisted.
Where? Where? Show me!
I said, surprised you asked,
You were the one that started the fire.

Roberto Wissai/NKBa'
March 24, 2012

Notes and Quotes

Random Notes and Unattributed Quotes (mostly from Bryan Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher) on almost everything, but principally on a thing called philosophy

A human who has been wrestling with philosophical questions would tend to look with askance at those who don't, no matter how successful and smart the latter are. Life is all about questions, facts, reality, and understanding within a finite earthy existence. To live is to be ready to say goodbye decisively at anytime to everything and everybody one holds dear and precious. Thus, there should be no room in one's life for petty envy, lies, and false pride. Among all living humans, how many can actually silently say to themselves that they are walking on that path and all the misunderstanding and ridicule and mockery be damned. To thine own self be true, exhorted the Bard, but who have listened? 

I started writing these notes and quotes with a rather smug and pompous notion of sharing and displaying my philosophical acumen and zeal, but as I went deeper into an unfamiliar terrain of subtlety, my pride became less pronounced and self-consciousness got more acute. It began to dawn on me that in the advanced stages of stupidity, lack of originality and profundity is made up by an excess of vacuity evidenced by a plethora of words. 

 It didn't matter that nobody was in awe and shock of what I knew; what really counts is whether I have learned anything before I die, whether I have finally mastered the art of not suffering over triviality. So, here I am, with the memory of two pretty pubescent girls almost naked in their skimpy bikinis frolicking in the warm waters of the Caribbean freshly imprinted in my mind, I see clearly the nature of sex and lust and procreation; the peacefulness that comes with self-understanding; the destructive forces of false pride and anger; and the power of forgiveness. So, I forgive her and many others that came after her. I forgive also all the stupid errors, mistakes, and missteps that I committed in the name of pride, revenge, and justice. One day, a woman like her would come along and I would tell that woman "No thanks, but I don't wish to suffer again." I would be back to my books and study with earnest. I would take care of myself while striving to be nice and understanding and forgiving. You see, love is just a habit, a memory, a game of pride and ego.

You talk too much. And I certainly talk too much. You think you are somebody. So do I. And we both delude ourselves that we are too good, too nice and nobody really deserves us, but deep down within us, in the marrow of our bones,  in the wee hours of the morning when loneliness weighs down on us, a nagging doubt comes up: perhaps we are not rich enough, not good-looking enough, not nice enough to catch anybody worthwhile. Reality always makes its presence known. False pride is an incompetent actor.

An incompetent writer like yours truly never forgets the first time he received a few words of (insincere) praise for his whimpering prose. He let the sweet poison of vanity seep into his blood and corrode his soul. He convincers  himself that he possessed talent. From that moment on, he dreams that his name will outlive him. He also fancies that he is comfortable underneath his skin and at ease with the world at large. So he writes and writes, day in and day out, hope against hope, with a fervent desire that one day out of his worn-out pen and petty mind emerges a book or a poem that ensures his immortality. Certainly he is not a coward for he is trying his best; he gives all what he has.

"By cowardice I do not mean fear. Cowardice...is a label we reserve for something a man does. What passes through his mind is his own affair."
                                                     
"Fear has a whole taxonomy---anxiety, dread, panic, foreboding---and you could be braced for one form and completely fall apart facing another. It's okay to be scared, you just don't want to show it."

In other words, be a good actor, in everything: love, life, and death. Mask your emotions. Your face must be an empty, serene, unaffected indifferent, uncaring, disinterested, blank expression. If you can do that, you have finally figured how to live, how to interact with humans. Yes, you cam show your true emotions with your dog, but never with humans because a dog would not betray you. Humans are unpredictable and don't always value loyalty and gratitude. Most  have an easily understood attitude of putting their own interests above everybody else's, and in the process they fuck real good old- fashioned values like lotalty and gratitude. Trust me. I know what I'm talking about, having been many times the receiving end of that attitude. Now you probably understand why I have an insouciant, blasé, I-don't-give-a-shit-if-you-drop-dead-right-in-front-of-me way about me. Last night, I had two bad dreams one after another. The first one about the last job I had. I was fired and then rehired and some assholes co-workers behaved strangely towards me when I showed up at my old desk. The other dream involved my standing up to my elder brother who used to beat the shit out of me. In the second dream I was shouting and was about to fucking hit him over the head with a two-by-four. Of course, the dreams were gravid with meaning. I was glad that I didn't dream about past girlfriends. Those dreams are getting old. Come on, I am 63 now, practically not a spring chicken anymore. If I dream about women, it should be about "find them, fuck them, and forget them" since almost all of them are all bullshitters and liars. However, I must admit that Peachy is really different from most, if not all, women I've met. In her, vivaciousness rules supreme and resides an intelligence that is immeasurably delightful. I must further confess whenever I'm around her, I can't help but be possessed by a lusty and lustful urge to hold her tight and squeeze her tiny behind and suck on her shapely tits. But dreams are all I can have. Silent dreams and secret dreams that she never knows about. 

I was amused by the stupid behavior of certain assholes who were old enough to know better. Note that I said I was amused, not angry . I just finished reading a cheap, preposterous, but well written tear jerker novel called "Dear Joanna"  and I cried like a baby after I reached the end, despite the fact the author is a mercenary of words and a trafficker in human longings. 

Anyway, I am reading a report about the miserable war in Afghanistan. A journalist spent fifteen months with an army platoon at an outpost in a hostile territory and was lucky enough to live to write about it. Reading it is making me feel numb, cynical, blessed with luck, and appreciative of life. I am learning to act strong and generous. Acting is but a short step towards actuality. Everyday I sit down and have a few minutes of meditation during which I thank fate and chance that I am still alive, and remind myself that respect (or pretense of respect) for others costs me nothing while disrespect to them may cost me my life. I only need to reflect on a simple fact I cannot bring myself to love some assholes and bitches because these jackasses have smart mouths. Sarcasm brings temporary satisfaction but lifetime enmity.

A slow consciousness is taking shape: I must do the right things without getting self-conscious and smug about it. Bragging is a sign of weakness and self-doubt. So does constant harping about lost loves. I mean Laura and many others frankly don't  give a fuck about me, so why should I keep feeling soft and mushy of long-gone puppy love memories, right? Fuck, when will I ever grow up?

I was very lucky of not being drafted into the army during the Vietnam War, but I always thought what I would do and act if I ever got conscripted and was forced to kill to defend myself. I have always had a nagging fear that I don't much courage and that deep down I am a coward. This fear has stayed with me throughout my life, ever since I was a little boy. All my acts of irrationality stemmed from a desire to prove that I don't fear death and I don't fear failure. 

That's why the remark that a human being is a material object that know  itself from inside resonates deeply with me. There is something awesome about this fact.  That also explains why I am attracted to tales of violence and thriller novels. I live vicariously through the characters and will myself to be like them: cool, resourceful, and fearless.

If we dig deep inside ourselves as deeply as we can , the ultimate being that we come to is some sort of will to live, to survive, just to be. And yet we see the also the ultimate futility and meaninglessness of our existence because we know we all die someday and all those things and people that mean a lot to us cease to have a hold on us, so why bother to fight, to struggle, to have a moment in the sun.

Early this morning when he tentatively asked her if she still loved him, she exploded with pent-anger and frustrations. She brought up all his past sins and mistakes while forgetting all the nice and generous things he had done for her. He prompted retreated into his shell and vowed to himself that henceforth he would be silent like a stone that lies deep in the sea. 

Schopenhauer saw the intellect as being the servant, not the master, of the will (as, for that matter, did Hume) and thus our inner lives as either consisting of or being dominated by will in one or other of its manifestations.

Schopenhauerw does not say, and does not believe, that the knowledge we have of ourselves from inside is knowledge of the noumenal. He gives three reasons why it cannot be.

First, Kant taught, and Schopenhauer agreed, that time is the very form of inner sense. Time exists in the phenomenal domain alone. 

Second, knowledge of any kind at all can exist only in the realm of the phenomenal. This is because, knowledge as such is inherently dualistic in nature: there has to be something that is known and something that knows it.

His third reason is derived from empirical observation. His investigations of inner experience and of our knowledge of ourselves from within have led him to the conclusion that most of our perceptions and wishes and h opes and fears do not present themselves to conscious experience. Before Freud was even born, Schopenhauer expounded what is normally thought as Freud's theory of repression, a theory which Freud himself pronounced to be the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. Furthermore, Schopenhauer provided all thef necessary connecting links I the argument: he spelled out the greater part of our inner lives is unknown to us; that it is unknown to us because it is repressed; that it is repressed because to face up to it would cause a degree of disturbance that we could not handle; that it is so because it does not fit with the view of ourselves that we wish to maintain; that this incompatibility is caused by high levels of such things as sexual motivation, self-seeking, aggression, envy, fear, and cruelty whose presence within us we do not wish to acknowledge, not even in the secrecy of our own thoughts; and so we deceive ourselves about what our own characters and motivations are, allowing only such interpretations of them to appear in our conscious minds as we can deal with. This means that we are exactly as far from knowing our inner lives as our inner selves are unconscious, and we would be so even if such knowledge were theoretically possible on other grounds; and moreover that we would be unable to cope with it even if we had---we would indeed, many of us, break down under it.

This means that within ourselves as well as without there is an underlying realitythat remains hidden from us and can never be met with an experience. What it is in itself we shall never know. Knowledge of any kind at all,  knowledge as such, can come to us only through the apparatus that we as phenomenal beings find ourselves embodied in, and in forms whose nature is determined by that apparatus. Unless we are in some way the creators of all the phenomena thus experienced---a proposition which most of us find incredible, though it was believed by Fichte---those phenomena cannot be all there is apart from us: there must be a sense in which they are manifestations of something other than themselves or ourselves, something whose existence accounts for them, but something with which we can never make direct contact.

It has been said that often that the more powerful an experience, or the deeper an emotion, the more likely we are to feel we need to resort to metaphor to give it adequate expression. Metaphor, it would appear, goes deeper than literal speech. That must be one reason why poetry can penetrate depths inaccessible to prose. And perhaps also it is why there is such an important element of "as if" in great philosophy. What I understand, near the end of my search for meaning of my existence on this planet is this:

Truth/reality is not really conductive to expository prose; it must be felt and apprehended via the totality of one's experiences and being. And since everybody has his own level, his own depth of life experiences and of the experience of his being, his grasp/comprehension/feel of reality/truth only makes sense to him and to others who have similar life experiences/exposures or self-study. Essentially, what I am typing here as well as all the words I have written, prose or verse, are my efforts to understand the meaning of my existence and thus to prepare myself for the end of my life. That's why I find most sensuous pleasures boring and prosaic and are indeed an hindrance to my quest for knowledge and peace. I mean to say that I don't really enjoy good food or material comforts while knowledge and creative efforts turn me on tremendously. Even the sensuous pleasures associated with sex bore me if the woman I am with is not spiritual or unselfish. Selfishness reflects a still sub-human development. And I am fully human, unlike most assholes I know (cont.)

Storyteller

Of course we all know everyone of us is a storyteller. To live is to tell stories about ourselves and others for fun and/or profit. Most of us do so orally; others opt for the printed words or other medium. I consider myself an accidental storyteller. I was forced into it. And I am doing it with no motive of profit, very little fun, and a great need for survival. I simply want to make sense of my haunting, harrowing, and hellish existence. I have tried so many times to tell my life chronologically, but never had the energy to get to the finish line. I always ended up short, stopped at the cusp of my reaching the work force. Meanwhile I take meandering detours and try to put on a voice of unflappable insouciance layered over a faux cynicism in my overworked, tired attempts at poetry and short story writing. But prudence be damned. I just want to write, to dwell on junks of my heart and pieces of my mind. If any artistic merits come out of these sessions of "literary masturbations", somebody would surely let me know soon enough, don't you think? What do we find about ourselves when we think we have fallen between the cracks of life and cannot get out? Should we give in to despair or make the most of our experiences? I know we should live one day at a time, but if we find we are being attacked by several days at once, what should we do? I humbly submit that do as I do, stay calm and prepare to die but fight as hard for your life as you can. That's what I'm doing with the words at my disposal. They console me. They keep me company. They calm me down. I'm carving and chiseling the words on the walls until I die. If one day my body (or my bones) is discovered in the crack, at least people would know that I didn't die in silence. Silence is overrated. I was born with a voice and I want to use it.

There once was a man who was afflicted with a fascination for facts and the extremes. He thought by staying with facts and the extremes, and not with the banal and the prosaic, he would understand himself and the world better. So he constantly put his survival on the line, besides deliberately going against the flow in choosing romantic interests. Incredibly he managed to survive well into his 60's until one day he put a bullet through his mouth after leaving a farewell letter to his surviving son which reads as follows:

" Dear Son:

By the time this letter reached you, you had ready known that I had decided to leave this world in a dramatic and gruesome manner. Please forgive me if that upset you, but I didn't want to leave things to chance. I was firm with my decision and had no wish to appear as a sissy even in death. The purpose of this letter is to impart some hard-earned lessons for whatever values they may be to you. Most, if not all, of them may come across prosaic and banal to you, but as I said, i didn't wish to leave things to chance.

1. Most life's problems can be avoided if you stay away from greed, anger, and mania.
2. Cultivate patience, forbearance, and forgiveness.
3. Love is important but not indispensable. You can still have a good life without it. So don't be stupid in your quest for a mate. Keep your head together, and your wallet in secure place.
4. Finally, we all have to die someday. Thus, you must live your life with dignity and purpose.

Your Dad"

When the letter was handed to me after the funeral, I was consumed with anger and grief and contempt for my father. I felt he was weak and cowardly. I was in my second year in college and was discovering Nietzsche. I felt that if Nietzsche could combat migraines and stomach ailments and poverty and lack of recognition for his genius, then my father could have fought for reasons to live. To give up on life would be so damn fucking easy. My father should have tried to grapple with the "why" of living as Nietzsche did, and he would have found the "how" of doing so. So I vowed silently to myself that I would never as weak and cowardly as my father as I was kneeling in front of the coffin containing his corpse, together with my siblings who were wailing over the stupid and nonsensical chanting of the Buddhist monk who was hired by my mother to ensure my father's self-inflicted passing of this world would not encounter encumbrances.

I have kept the vow. I don't have thoughts of self-destruction or flirtation of doing myself bodily harm. On the contrary, I have struggled against homicidal urges. The longer I live, the more powerful the urges become. I have had dreams in which I acted out my urges. The dreams were vivid and seemed so real that they invariably woke me up and I had to spend time double-checking my surroundings to make sure that I was dreaming. I know that I am living in borrowed time and at any given time I may flip out and act on my long-suppressed urges. Nowadays I am no longer garrulous and gullible and glib. I am quiet and slowly getting rid of lingering vestiges of humanity and human kindness inside me although I do routinely hand out small changes and food to homeless folks. It is toward the assholes and scumbags that I am preparing myself for.

You probably wonder why I'm ignoring my father's advice about unsolicited forgiveness. The answer is that I don't suffer fools gladly and I have a deep thirst for vengeance. On the other hand, if the offenders are sincerely remorseful and contrite, I would gladly let bygones be bygones. We all make mistakes. And we all deserve second chances. It is our stupid pride that prompts us to do and stay stupid things and prevents us from apologizing to those we hurt. You probably don't believe this, but I am very quick to offer apologies the moment i reaize i have stepped out of line.
(to be continued)

Death of a Marine Major

I read in the news that a certain Marine major shot himself after suffering from PTSD resulting from serving two tours of duty in Iraq. Suicide has been a subject dear to my heart and never far from my mind. When I was a teenager and then a young man severely despondent over a stupid love affair, I seriously contemplated killing myself. When I got to be in my 40's, I finally realized taking one's life is an act of supreme cowardice and weakness. Thus I have found reasons to live despite all the trials and tribulations. Now the struggle I'm having with are the impulses involving the polar opposite of self-destruction. You can tell how far down

(to be continued)