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june 15, 2021

i am going to become sunset

that is where i am going

when the shadow of a tree

stretches across all souls

and watch them on the beach

at moonstone and trinidad

with my warm glowing light

calm their minds and hearts

that is when i am going

it is always sunset somewhere

blend my mind in there

at now o'clock

soul disembark

from the body's platform

inhaling dissolve all things

exhaling all fear

i first rooted in gravity

today the roots are energy

and bright angels like butterflies

and people previously enemy

all dressed in white and smiling

with the great polar bear in the crisp night air

yesterday i tried to make my fantasy a reality

tomorrow i will make my reality a fantasy

those two sides of the same moon

which looks flat from here

i know they're one

i

i will go when i know myself

to be everyone all at once

when i replace this habit

with a new adventure

adventure fantasy carried me here

another one will carry me there

if i can remember to breathe

in one habit the mind is the eyes

in another the mind is the heart

the brain is overwhelmed by eyes

which uses the lungs to calm the heart

Feb 20, 2021

the problems of depression which i described in previous journal entries are solved.

i had forgotten about the journal, which was one expression of the problem, until today. and that's human nature: problems solved are quickly forgotten. except that i have not forgotten the cure, because i practice it every day.

depression and anxiety are emotional states which are connected to ideas and thoughts. my behavior was a collection of thoughts which i repeated frequently with predictable results. have the thought and trigger the emotion. the way to resolve that problem is to replace those thoughts with others ideas which cause contentment and satisfaction.

the solution began for me in 2017, walking along the river in kampot, when i suddenly noticed that my anxiety feelings occurred and i was not breathing freely and smoothly. it seemed that an idea in my head triggered an emotion, which in turn caused the physical reaction of short breath. i immediately forced myself to breathe smoothly, and as a consequence, the anxiety emotion disappeared.

the next day i set up a plan to monitor my breathing and make each breath intentional. although that may sound impractical to most people, i was at a point in life where it was difficult to achieve anything because of the anxiety. this is also the point of scraping bottom as hans called it, where business as usual is no longer possible and some people get to that point before they start searching for answers in meditation.

so the next day i did the breathing focus the entire day. the result was life changing. i did not experience the pain in my chest nor any depression. and i was amazed that it took 25 years to figure this out. but i am now aware that the habits of my mind previously made me effectively unconscious. i could not objectively observe myself because everything i saw was recursively subject to my warped perception. selective ignorance, reductive logic, i have many names for it. the best one is unconscious. like i'm sailing a boat but i am actually dreaming, and the boat roams into random reefs and weather. when the pilot wakes up she can steer the boat consciously and make more objective decisions.

there were still years to practice and many more revelations about awareness to discover. i fixed the physical symptoms of depression but remained unaware that my daily life was the expression of thousands of automatic habits and reactions. programmed behavior, so deeply programmed that i could not see the program. like the movie matrix... the people don't know their bodies are asleep in a tank. it's very much like that.

there are too many such habits to list them all. but i will mention two. one is the deeply conditioned habit to look for women and sex. i found one in borneo and got into an unconscious sexual addiction. when that ended in disaster, i practiced serious meditation for 2 months just to figure out what was happening. that was the discovery of the ego. as i see it, the ego is a set of deeply trained, pre-conceived, biased, prejudiced thought patterns which are connected to emotions and physical reactions. in fact, the habit of anxiety and the habit of sex addiction are similar in this way.

however, in meditation i was seated in the theater of my mind, where i could see every habit. this is the value of sitting in meditation for me: forcing myself to sit there for an hour prevented me from expressing any of the ego habits. instead i observed them rise and fall without incident. it was the next important step after learning about breathing.

but really amazing things happened in meditation. there i could see ALL my thoughts and realize "these are just ideas - they're not the truth" just as yongey minyur rinpoche states in his book. and moreover, i can directly replace any idea with another idea. and then i began to see amazing assemblies of ideas. and i could change from one train of thought to another instantly. and i could see the connections between ideas and emotions, and dissolve those connections. then, i could see the ideas floating across the sky of my mind, not affecting the peace of mind.

that's where i am today. after five months of meditation i learned to bring it with me as i walk around the forest or the city. i can walk around the theater of my mind instead of sitting there. i have reached a limit for the moment in terms of what ideas are. for example, when i ask, what is having this idea? what is this made of? i cannot see the physical structure. maybe because it's just energy like eckhart tolle says. maybe energy cannot feel itself? i don't know anyway that is the frontier of my discovery at the moment. i did confirm that deleting stress in one part of the body makes the energy available for healing. but i cannot direct the healing at this moment.

the current challenge is people talking to me, which i call othertalk. my method at the moment is to capture spoken words in a glass jar and close the lid, as a kid captures a cricket or a spider. and there i look at the words and determine the value and if there is a reply. previously, othertalk was a problem for me because it was like other people could insert their ideas directly into my mind without filtering, causing explosions or weight. that problem is not totally solved yet. maybe 95% solved.

i still have some impulses which are difficult to diffuse. however, this is part of the joy and fascination of meditation and cbt or mindfulness... that is watching the change and letting it flow. the mind is best when it flows in tandem with the ever-changing world which it seeks to follow.

peace is a high point of view where i can see that everything is one. of course people are all family, but this goes deeper. everything is one.

and i can really enjoy the stories jesus tells in the new testament, because meditation dissolves judgement, and the instruction to be like god whose sun shines equally on good and bad people... it makes sense when you see the world as god instead of as a separate entity! :)

november 7

adroitly, he shuffled toward the travel agent thinking, "my favorite drug is al-zheimers-ka-seltzer," as the junior travel agent crossed the threshold several steps ahead of him, extending one arm above her head and ringing the good luck chinese ding-a-ling bell to bring prosperity upon herselves and her colleagues, good luck which would apparently expire soon, hence the frequent suspicious good luck chinese doofus bell ringing.

but as his own foot attempted to cross the same threshold it impacted the aluminum door track on the floor which clacked loudly and startled the junior travel agent and she jumped and her eyes closed and she rested her left palm on her chest as he wanted to do, as she realized that he was not yet her assailant and began to calmed down.

"passive-aggressive. do you know that term?" he would sporadically confirm familiarity with a word for malaysian people who apparently spoke english but with harshly constrained vocabulary, while his own fruity vocabulary generously entertained himselves. "are you passive-aggressive?"

"yes i know passive aggressive. maybe." she replied. her ribs were gentle under oceanic flannel and she smelled of fish head soup, although his olfactory corpuscles were haphazardly misaligned.

"you never reply to my messages. your company server is down or unpaid and your email was returned instantly, but that doesn't explain why you don't reply to whatsapp."

"i will reply."

"do you have a therapist?"

"i don't need one."

"do you want to have lunch with me?"

"auuuuuh........"

"are you a lesbian?"

"uuuuuhhhhh...."

"i can understand if you are. i would be a lesbian if i were a woman. instead i languish as a demisexual man. but we could still have lunch and chat since we're stranded in the same building."

ocktowbur the deathteenth (chinese 14) 2019

dear kitty,

nor in borneo where i now piddle away a day, and i am divided almost equally between inspiring ideations motivated by tibetan buddhists like the 9th gally wang caramel pappa and the craving for the spontaneous interactive fun i've had recently with this moribund hope-slashing pre-bar candidate lawyer. i've trained myself to automatically create positive explanations for situations in which i would previously react with negative effect. i see the sunny side of life and the silver lining and that keeps me floating gently above the surface safe from sharks, but at the same time i have moderate cravings for adventure.

M is moribund. every romantic gesture i make she dismisses with the same reply: she has heard all this from other men. she feels nothing when i touch her hand or massage her tense shoulders. it's a dystopian andy griffith episode in which helen crump determines all existence is a pointless machine. still i have this unquenchable enthusiasm for adventure, especially romantic comedy adventure. but M persuaded me today with one last "NO" that my efforts are futile, so i reactivated the app and immediately got text from people far away fillipinas. that really is futility since the flights are absurdly circuitous and off course. anyway, here i am writing an entry to anne frank's secret friend because i need someone to talk to.

call me when you are home and i will run across the highway like an undocumented person.

not todayrow, i have to work.

monday, a repeating label for a nevertheless 100% unique sunrise which will never occur again in this universe, an irrational construct to organize time, originally created by people fearful of uncertainty, a tradition carried forward by the throng of reductive bureaucrats. and so entrenched and intransigent are these dullards that they have set up the obstacle course of life so that activities also repeat like clockwork every absurd seven days. and those who don't participate in this tedium will suffer socially. the original bureaucrat (OB) foisted this drudgery upon us with such heavy dull gravity that ordinary people now foist it upon themselves.

japan left her undies on the laundry balcony and i was fairly certain that was intended to create a shopportunity until her partner said that she had not departed. when i venture out socially i am aware of the plethora of strictly sex-based romances. i would rather romances include a richer set of interests to share, and above all a mutual curiosity which does not peter out with familiarity.

if kids achieve any benefit from wealth it's only paradoxical: they have the benefit of knowing that money cannot buy happiness or even contentment; in fact money cannot even prevent the difficulties inherent in life. worse still, the ability to purchase solutions to problems prevents people from developing creativity and adaptivity.

1/2/19

wonderful world. when i awoke this morning, i realized that everything is possible in the mind. the mind is a place of infinite of possibility.

watch the stream of your ideas without resisting or reacting. it's possible to create new ideas like planting seeds and cultivating them.

i relearn everyday to open my awareness and acceptance to every event. those which at first appear difficult eventually reveal wonder.

when i arrived in kota kinabalu my house had no water and the man asked for more money. but i told him i would carry a bucket of water up to my room for a shower and not give more money. so he replied that he would book me as a malay person. then we laughed and got to be friends. every situation contains a seed of wonderful potential.

(of course the seminal journey began with doug's kind nurturing rescue operation at the little white cottage in milledgeville... that was almost 3 years ago. now i am recalling the whole journey since then, because it is new year for the gregorians and for me too (jan 2nd). the first seed was planted in kampot after doug went to germany. i just want to recall the fun travels).

travel. november i was in poodan's room under bokor mountain with the annual gastroenteritis. so i moved to soapy' aunt's house in takeo and she made soup for me for two weeks until i was better. then i was still struggling to relearn my computer programming skill. and i thought that i needed to find a "permanent home" back in the usa. i started with a notion that i wanted to have a white christmas after 7 years in cambodia... i went to stay with now grumpy married mr. hans and his critical wife mrs. hans in the delux west island of no-yoga-studio-in-the-residentialz montreal canada. i had the intense white christmas but mostly alone as i walked among grumpy shut-in people...

back to soapy's aunt's to redesign my plan. another semi-smooth attempt at brian's and yet another curious marriage situation with the wife of a murder victim and her psycho-pson "a-hole" who threatened to destroy my computer and prevent me from ever working again (he was 8). although that was not ideal i discovered that i love to live above with a view of the countryside. got the shoes and the bank account and the phone and ready to roll.

went to meet mom at myrtle for a week and scrabble and that was really nice!

but i decided to go on to tucson to explore my old hut but it was full of bees and rat midden and treasure seekers had unearthed many heavy structures. very odd. so i rented with ocd dave and sold the hut to the man with an abe lincloln beard and several muslim name appendages. much delight and relief and enjoyment followed the sale and riddance of that mess. i did enjoy walking about sam watson nayborhood. met brittany at the park with cat on a leash, went to albersons for much chattel and my bike was stolen but i replaced it several times during that month plus bonuses.

back to soapy's aunt's house the refuge. and they built a booool arena and made it nearly impossible to live there. i designed a new plan to tallahassee. taxi to bike shop, bike to airbnb (and this was one of the improvisations - airbnb turned out to be less expensive than renting an apartment and a lot less complicated). and set up with evie at shay's airbnb and made my awesome journey on bike down the st. mark's historic trail to carrabelle and st. george island and rented that tall condo just before the hurricane hit and destroyed things that had never previously been destroyed, and i now have a PO BOX 4 and a "permanent" address, and i biked to sunset at carrabelle beach every night with a bottle of knight's something from napa. and made pictures which people accused of photoshop. and that was a miracle of finding my "permanent home" and nan and mark next door and the IGA bonuses. love it.

but this time when i returned to soapy's i rented rachana's place with AC and i could really focus on work. but she went to singapore and i went to kuala lumpur and stayed in william's tea shop and then tran's high-scraper with pool at kl sentral and ate paneer butter masala every night and stuffed potatoes at aaiya bhavan. and stayed also at durgesh who has a better balcony and pool, but less arm's reach convenience and i walked every day at KL botanical garden and one full evening at the bird park. and then to singapore and a sequence of airbnbs starting with attari's precision muslim guesthouse at pungoll park and the cold barbq fake chicken. and then to andy's and andy's other and then caihua.

and it was time to go but i couldn't manage the complications of palawan so i went to kota kinabalu and this fancy plastic box and then to the borneo gaya lodge and quickly to mamutik island for sunburn and cute fish chasing.

now i am caught up. today i go to jack's elsewhere in kk.

although there is nothing permanent, the closest i have is most comforting: my mind is home. it's a great place to live!

transformation

11/6/18

you can make it true by believing. there is no doubt.

yongey tells the story of a general who earns enough wealth for a lifetime in one day's work by assisting the king. whether he really got that wealth or not, you can see that the general feels great because he believed that he would receive the wealth. now we know that we can believe what we choose. so we know that we can choose to feel great!

that's a very quick way of getting to the point of the story. in brucE almighty everyone wins the lottery, but because god made everyone win they all divided the total and each got $17. you see?

whether your prayers are answered or not, you can believe that you have the wealth. then you will feel great.

a wallet full of cash was laying in front of the market. i picked it up, and there is was the wealth. but i actually felt better giving it back to the owner. because i don't need the actual wealth. because i have a better "wealth" in my mind. one that cannot be lost:

belief that i am the universe.

i am everything. i already have everything.

are people just now becoming aware of their infinite mind? no. it is that i am now noticing those people because i understand them. before i thought they must be crazy.

in your mind is the universe. everything is fine! you will have everything you need so there is no reason to fear or worry.

just believe it and you will see it.

you will lose the distinction between your body and the other material. you will see that you are everything.

all these words that make no sense now, they will make sense. even the time between now and then is not important.

a tree is aware of itself through me

actually the tree is me

i am all, the tree is all

we are all one

10/29

i smiled and even laughed: sadhguru

"not an attainment... a realization of what's already there."

don't jump from balcony:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-omrSwN3Ho

volunteer women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxoQdEhHaT8

stop your mind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNyJgNjCDuU

talk to lawyer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e4ltxBZZCA

10/20

carrabelle

i survived the hurricane last week and nearly all services are restored. yesterday i caught up with my freelance writing on upwork. today i am planning the next adventure a bit early.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED !!

i answered the primary question which was the purpose of this journey: where will i live and call home ten years from now? the answer is that i will get a medium to smallish RV and live along the gulf coast, hopefully in this neighborhood of the "big bend."

this area has lots of infrastructure for RV living. there are numberful RV parks and skadz of them are only $25 per night. you could probably just stay one or two nights a week at a paid place for the hookups and then spend the other five off the grid, depending on travel and budget plans.

the state park at st. george island is $26 per night but that includes electricity and so it's cheaper than most rentals.the people are friendly and there is great swimming.

so that's the short answer. i served my purpose coming here. over the next few years i hope to continue to develop my writing and coding career to support this future possibility. i am open to other possibilities of course. but i found myself in cambodia earlier this year with the realization that i don't have a specific place to call "home" anymore. so now that's settled.

carrabelle is home now. i might even rent a po box before i go traveling again!

9/11 atlanta - blessings today. made two nice friends on the flight, and now have sunny moderate weather for my arrival. i was able to refocus on every occurrence of a negative ideation. in particular, i resolved to catch uber to the bike shop and go ahead and get a bike to explore the area of tallahassee and eventually the beach.

much improvement in the long flight. i could catch every deleterious distraction within a second or two. and return focus to clear, beneficial breathing, and beneficial ideas. truly this is a skill which improves with intentional practice.

i catch deleterious ideas such as the stop for customs in atlanta. i think delta will collect a checked bag fee. i immediately caught this line of thinking and returned to breathing smoothly and positive ideation.

such as dreading an aspect of american culture like the 12 month lease. before i react, i convert to the meditation subject. i love it. i am quite literally becoming a different person!

the deleterious ideation is a habit. it's a habitual creation or anticipation of problems. i am replacing this habit with a new paradigm of intentionally constructive, alternative interpretations - often simply requires seeing another person's point of view and needs.

prejudicial ideas are being replaced with constructive ideation!

9/10

my purpose is to increase and improve my new awareness. my awareness is like climbing up the fire lookout tower at crater lake! i can see my skirmishes and choose not to react. it's a view from a high place which gives me the advantage to eliminate unnecessary emotional upheaval.

most challenging at the moment is to stay up in the tower longer! often i wake up in the morning and find myself in a loop of thought that is not fruitful, sometimes even worrying. then i remind myself to go up the tower! i begin the breathing exercise and discover positive alternative interpretations for the subject of problem.

9/2/18

success is mixture of intentional effort and random stabbing in the dark.

through trial and effort, if we don't die in a lab experiment, we may emerge with a grasp of a new concept. a new way of perception that is refreshing.

i realize that it is only my perception, but it is the one i have to live with: that is actually not entirely true. i have discovered that i can alter my perception intentionally. that perception is amorphous and more flexible with practice like a gymnast.

one of my perceptions was that people are caught in habitual loops, repeating not only action, but also repeating emotional reaction. that perception looks ominous to me because i enjoy new and creative potential. actually i was using creativity to avoid arriving at the dead end which appears to be the destination of everyone who is caught in the repetitive loop. in fact i had my own repetition and it included a very painful emotion which manifested physically in my chest!

the story of using rhythmic smooth deep breathing to eliminate emotional pain began somewhat as a sudden partially random desperate response to emotional pain. this seems odd now, because now i can prevent the pain systematically with the breathing. but at the time i started, i had no control over my emotions.

i was walking to the river one day in kampot when i realized that i needed to somehow solve the problem of the strange emotional pain in my chest which i'd lived with all my life. taking a desperate measure, i decided to force myself to remain continuously aware of my breathing for an entire day! my plan was to breathe deeply, and rhythmically, and to hold my focus on breathing for a full day. i succeeded, and the result is a personal miracle which made a new life possible for me.

as i write this, i am breathing by volition, intentionally. breathing smoothly, evenly, deeply, as an intentional exercise, enables me to relax body and thought almost completely. the result is refreshing. no anxiety, fear, or anger can occur during this breathing, as i have noticed through much experience.

i became aware during a tense moment that i was not breathing freely, that my breathing was short and irregular. i began to think that perhaps fear and other problematic emotions tend to interfere negatively with breathing. i would experience ideas like this, but then quickly descend into pain and emotional chaos again, losing the thread.

in california on long rainy days indoors i would experiment with guided meditations which often focused on breathing. those exercises planted the seeds in my mind, but i didn't know how to use it, and again i would disappear into a habitual sequence of action and emotional reaction.

in kampot, with the feeling that i had followed every possible avenue with only momentary resolution, i would began to feel at a dead end. my old tactics to escape my emotions did not work anymore.

i would notice during a moment of tension or anger that my breathing was short and irregular.

i had fleeting moments of insight and clarity. i began to suspect that irregular breathing in return exacerbated the tension!

if so, then the physiological reactions create a feedback loop!

i experimented with intentional breathing to intervene and exit from this feedback loop. i call it breathing meditation, and it is intentional focus on maintaining rhythmic, calm breathing. and i reached new kinds of awareness during this meditation.

awareness as i define it, is a state of mind in which i am cognizant that i need not respond to sensory inputs. awareness enables me to observe and disregard potentially upsetting, painful, and useless inputs. these inputs may be incoming comments from friends, weather that might ruin a picnic, fear of failing an exam, or even the memory of a fight with a family member! (a memory is thus an input to consciousness ).

applying this in daily life means that i step out the mundane pattern of habitual action and reaction which defines the behavior of most people. let me explain this in terms of ordinary daily life.

prior to a year ago, i would ordinarily have an emotional reaction to a condescending comment from a friend or family member. awareness is like a guard at the sensory input gates, one who evaluates incoming stimuli and very often decides to discard them

the entry to awareness became accessible during a breathing meditation. i learned to practice the breathing meditation to resolve a painful sensation, an emotional pain which seemed like a sinking weight on my chest. i began to experiment with the idea of replacing a painful action with a nurturing action.

perhaps you have experienced road rage. when you react to the insult from another driver, perhaps you will notice that your breathing is short and irregular. apparently, this breathing promulgates the tension. it appears that this tension quickly escalates to anger. there is substantial evidence that this sequence of action and reaction is habitual. the response of anger is a habit.

i read a book, "the general theory of love," in which the authors made a clear point that human emotional reactions are habitual. i believe their concept is useful because it offers access to the behavioral causes of anger, and with access the ability to change the behavior.

i currently endeavor to reinterpret negative ideas in a positive variation. here is an example. a loud truck outside disturbed my peace and my first reaction might have been to feel annoyed. instead i recognized that it was the garbage truck and i intentionally envisioned gratitude to the workers on that truck for their service, and also some empathy for their hard work. i endeavor to create such a new interpretation every day. it is surprisingly easy to do when i am determined to accomplish it.

i believe that one reason i am writing this entry now is that i heard the story of a woman from the netherlands who was euthanized because of severe depression. during that story i heard it said that her application for euthanasia was approved because there was no hope of improving her condition. this i now believe to be incorrect. i suffered sever depression and pain, and i found a solution which i believe can work for anyone. i also believe the solution can be done alone, which is why i would like to reach people who are isolated in depression and hopeless. perhaps this story can be discovered.

here is the kind of sensory input that brings me a moment of hope and joy:

"we are all astronauts."

it was the title of an ambient music track i listened to this afternoon.

it reminded me that we are all on a spaceship sailing through the universe and that any wondrous occurrence is possible. we should stay tuned for the future is infinite and full of awesome awakenings.

well, that is the journal entry today, and i do not have time to proof or correct it.

8/5/18

the dry switch story. i drove up in front of chieng lee, which means motorcycle repairman named lee's repair shop, but his young apprentice was there, and i said that my left side turn signals did not work, at which point the young man abandoned his task at hand and picked up a steak knife and was about to pry the switch plate off the turn signal toggle, when mr. lee put his head through an orifice to look in on the operation and asked the apprentice to pause, because he said, "sngu'et!"

"sngu'et" means dry in khmer, and he immediately injected engine oil into the toggle switch, tested the switch, and noted that the turn signal worked perfectly again, and i was surprised but lee was not. i was also relieved. it is a miracle and a pleasure to find a clever person who wants to do the best possible work and to be honest in the transaction. he would not accept any payment. he also injected a second type of oil from another bottle. i pressured him to accept $2000 riel for the oil to be supportive.

he said that he had worked as a mechanic since he was young like the apprentice.

in the usa people in a car blew their horn at my grandparents' RV and flagged them to pull off. they told my grandparents their engine was leaking old and advised them to go to their shop. they ripped off my grandparents for some pretense that their transmission was faulty. that's the opposite end of this spectrum. i'm glad to know the range of possibilities.

5/19

free trade, fair trade, cruelty free, organic, gluten free, non GMO...

american people are estranged from strange, foreign to suffering, and cannot image more than a speck of pancake batter on the edge of a plate without an ocd meltdown and a trip to a gratifying self development counselor.

american people cannot buy a jar of molasses if it was produced by a person who ever experienced any suffering.

if a person is not sure about they's gender and suffered emotionally because there was no gender neutral restroom during a gender crisis and then if that person ever participated in the manufacture of molasses you can be sure that no american will ever buy that molasses even if the molasses is certified organic and otherwise cruelty free and completely free of gluten and other things we've eaten without consequence for ten thoooooooooouuuuuuusaaaaaannnndddd years.

if that gender neutral individual was mechanically gay then we're going to have a one hundred year candle light ceremony to realize and purge that person's woe.

3/21/18

remembering where i came from recently is useful to mark progress and determine what is beneficial or detrimental in my plans and actions.

only a month ago i was living in cambodia watching permits and licenses expire. today i have recharged everything.

a lot can change in a month.

dearth of details.

2/2/18

i've had many good days since i wrote last july. the thing i call "anxiety" or depression, i don't really know exactly what it is, but i have learned new ways to manage its effects. one today i will call "awareness."

AWARENESS

what do you need most right now? what would satisfy you most right now? i am setting up a bit of a trick question.

what i need most is to breathe oxygen.

the realization came again today, the awareness, that my most important need is something i often forget about in a moment of anxiety. we do breathe automatically, but our breathing is often irregular because of situations causing fear or anxiety. even a conversation can make breathing irregular.

i feel now that, no matter what the situation is, i can become aware of my breathing and make it smooth and even. this is a great power. this is a superpower.

so now i ask again, what do you need most right now?

i was feeling depressed a bit this morning, not terrible, but reminded me of previous years when i had not developed any awareness, and i was just at the mercy of these unpredictable emotions.

i was not thirsty. i was not hungry, the fridge is full of food. you might say those things come next on the list of needs. i was sitting in a comfortable house, no one was attacking me. i had everything i NEEDed, but old mr. depression came to visit. was it because my uncle died? i talked to mom after uncle died and she told me a lot of sad stories about how the families were fighting over trivial matters and not speaking anymore. you see, once again, i fell into the old habit of looking for a reason for this thing that wells up inside me. it's internal. it's not coming from some external cause. and i know a lot of people who have this same issue.

i feel stuck sometimes. i want to change the situation, but i don't know how. so i looked at this picture i made last year which i designed to remind me how to change my ideas toward awareness:

sometimes i have to actually push myself through this mental stream. focus, and take a few long smooth breaths. stand up and stretch out my arms and legs. have a big glass of cool water. this is a stream because i want to develop the habit of flowing easily around this course every day.

so the big realization this morning was, as shown in the picture, if i keep in motion, keep my mind focused on this natural stream flowing along, i don't worry about other things. if i do it's just a brief distraction rather than anxiety.

i was born with everything i need.

if the bank transfer is late, if the ticket is too expensive, if i am tired of my clothes, if my family don't want to meet me, all these supposed causes of anxiety disappear when i take a deep breath and count the many things i have to feel fortunate for. the long interesting life i lived so far is something extraordinary: taking care of the kids in my little cambodian village for 3 years and exploring that ancient place. 6 years of whitewater kayaking and sailing and snowboarding in california. myriad other rich things to be grateful for.

i can change my emotion to positive!

progress and regress.

a man was trying to scare a cow to move out of the road and shouted something which i guess would be scary to himself instead. that is 1D thinking; it's habitual, presumptuous, nearly automated gestures. the cow ran away, probably because the man was hideous, but i realized that the apparent cause and effect is usually misinterpreted. if that man just said something innocuous like, "hi cow, how are your cowbabies doing?" the cow would be equally afraid and run away in exactly the same frantic manner. the cow does not know what the man said. it is afraid because of the context. but people do not know that other cows (and people) do not understand what is being said. instead, people simply react to the context of their preexisting emotional situation! that is a hot mess. it does not bode well for human communications.

July 24 2017

I use a breathing meditation to calm my emotions and sleep. It works well when there are many ideas like popcorn in my head.

i have two specific exercises which i do at the same time. one is the breathing.

the idea is to breathe smoothly and deeply. i count about six seconds inhaling and seven exhaling. i set a goal like 100 breaths, and actually count.

Initially the counting is a focus, but sometimes I get distracted and need a more engaging focus exercise. 100 breaths takes more than 20 minutes.

the second exercise which i combine with breathing instead of counting is, on each 13 second breathing cycle, i imagine a good thing happening to a person i care about and especially people i had trouble with in the past. i can imagine you finding harmony with other mark. it builds creativity to exercise the imagination this way.

A part of this exercise most beneficial to me is replacing negative ideas with positive ones. And it also serves to calm us when we worried about something. And allows us to see an alternative to the problem or crisis that we worry about. If we tend to imagine a difficult situation I find that with practice it's as easy to imagine a positive outcome, a happy and rewarding outcome.

It's sometimes overwhelming when anxiety has more emotional power than happiness. Research shows we are more deeply impacted by negative experience. This is a hole to climb up from. But it's possible with effort.

And things accumulate and get difficult as people get older, I think that people develop habitual ways of thinking and perceiving. Some call this "set in your ways" for example. But it is possible to change the habit, as I suggested in the beginning, somewhat difficult to encourage yourself to imagine positive alternatives to situations that you worry about. I mean positive outcomes.

Although we are not in control of everything, with a bit of initiative and influence you can steer a difficult situation in a positive direction. And you should credit yourself for doing so no matter what the outcome.

I do believe a lot of this begins with intentions. And we can set good intentions during this meditation process. Meditation the word makes some people annoyed associated with new age ideas that sounds silly. So I call it breathing meditation because it really does work for me.

I believe we can develop positive habits of thinking. Including openness.

I've noticed that people are deeply persuaded by the painful difficulties in their lives. Persuaded that their experience is "truth" when in fact it's only one of many possible truths. We have some choice about which truth we live in. Or we can freely abandon the myth that there is truth at all.

Those experiences are persuasive and emotionally difficult to change. You really have to want to change it.

Trying to change seems artificial because it's like trying to ignore the painful experiences that are so real to you. But we have to take advantage of the fact of the knowledge that we have about human psychology. It is unfair and a sense that negative outcomes leave a deeper impression than positive ones, but we can use that information to restructure the way we think.

It comes as a surprise to learn that you are in control of what you think and believe. when after a lifetime of being tossed about on your emotional sea, it does not seem like we are in control of that.

I have heard people say it like this, we are not in control of what happened to us but we are in control of the way we interpret it.

This is where it may be valuable to compare people and realize that every person has a unique set of challenges, problems. We're all together in this sense, and becoming aware of this might lead to greater compassion.

When someone does hurt us we can choose the way it will affect us in the future. It's possible to forgive with meaningful reasons. We each get hurt but at a different time. Therfore, we each need forgiveness at a different time. I mean that when someone hurts you they may be reacting to having been hurt by someone else previously. So this is the time when you need to have patience for that person who is lashing out. Of course if it's habitual and there's a chronic source to it this needs more evaluation. But in any case you can see how we can begin to have control over the way we react. For example by choosing to replace those painful idead with positive ideas.

For you it might be art, singing in the car, hiking, pottery, for reading articles about brain surgery and looking for new methods in neurology. It could be anything. You can use positive and happy ideas from those activities as Focus points during your breathing meditation.

You can use a mental paintbrush to paint a mental picture of your own design containing all of the most wonderful features that you can imagine. And the focus on this will be surprisingly up listing. And it will be a great exercise for your meditation.

Perhaps the next step is action to take internally, in your emotional world. Where you can take a similar kind of positive action, but perhaps you will need to develop some new techniques. New ways of thinking. Perhaps keeping a journal of your personal discoveries. What works and what does not work.

Love yourself. That is something we hear a lot but it's difficult to do it. I have one idea to share about that...

Seems like we are trained to think that love has to come from other people. But I am a person too. Although it is counterintuitive technically I should be able to love myself.

At the very least I can do some things take some specific actions to take care of myself in the same way that another person who loved me might take care of me. And I do that now because I spend most of my time alone.

Enduring, so I passed through a stage which I would call feeling sorry for myself. Seemed a little bit sad for me to be taking care of myself and having compassion for myself. And I have some very analytical friends who enjoy laughing about this when I talk about it. But here is an excellent way to practice finding an alternative interpretation, a happier interpretation. And mine is that it is not feeling sorry for myself at all but in fact truly having compassion for myself as would a person who truly loved me.

In real terms this requires practice and repetition as any sports or engineering or medical practice for example.

Just one more quick thing about this. The breathing meditation that I do I find it is physically difficult and requires a lot of concentration and it reminds me of swimming laps at the University. even though it has positive outcomes and benefits it's still is requires work every morning that I do it.

Just to give an example of the difficulty, I set the task to make a list of positive memories and experiences, and I find that is quite difficult to do I cannot summon up positive memories happy experiences on demand like I'm turning on the lights. So if you do try this meditation process I hope you will not be discouraged. oh whoops just one more thing,

The concept to say a little prayer of positive hopes for a loved one, that's just one possibility of focus point during meditation. You can invent your own.

Repeating the idea of one method of focus ...The easiest focus point for me would be to paint a picture in my mind like with a mental paintbrush where you envision a beautiful landscape or whatever you love to paint. And actually draw the painting in your mind it's surprisingly effective as a meditation technique to stay focused. Okay now that's the end of the lecture haha

That's the end of my discussion, but I want to tell about a story that I received in reply to the above discussion. A single mom who is discovering the wonderful companionship of her daughter and the strength in independence and freedom of life wrote this:

"I'm lucky to have a constant reminder right in front of me. My daughter reminds me every day that I am here for a reason. When she was 3, she told me that she picked me to be her mom, she said that she knew that I needed her!!! How crazy is that coming from a 3 year old? I love it! And she has taught me patience and understanding and how to really listen."

Isn't that a wonderful alternatives to Modern scientific attitudes about biology and life. The idea that there are little Spirits roaming around out there choosing parents who need them. What a great story about how we are chosen by our children because they have arrived to teach us something important about life and to share.

Thanks for reading. I hope this is beneficial to you!

breathe first

intentional breathing is best

attentive breathing

smooth rhythmic breathing

extended inhaling and exhaling

"extended" while learning

fill the lungs with air gently

with effort and purpose

then relax and let the body

breathe out the air

fresh new ideas

emerge from breathing

muscles are flexible

blood flows

skin tingles

stress is relieved in this way

problems and pressures

dissolve and disappear

all ideas come and go

easily while breathing

smoothly and fully

every possible event

is acceptable

fascination and freedom

reside in every leaf

and every pebble

everything is fine

all things are as they should be

breathe

as you encounter people who add stress and pressure to your day, remember to have compassion for them and for yourself. take every possible opportunity to breathe freely. take a deep breath before you reply to another person. your reply will be compassionate. this will become your normal way.

collect your positive uplifting ideas and learn to keep them close and dwell on them. build on these ideas and color them and flavor them to inspire yourself and other people.

i don't always have a reason for what i do, and that's perfectly fine. human reasoning is limited in scope and function. it is not the ultimate determining factor! follow your preferences to fruition. there is no need for rationalization.

i manage my emotions as a swimmer manages the water around him. and now i have discovered that the best way is to FLOAT. floating on these emotions. reclining on a cloud as it drifts above me and my world. i can see the whole.

if you find something interesting here, write to me at: sunsetologist@gmail.com

When does the past begin?

i feel increasing pressure to forget about the past. should i forget all of it? to be technical about the subject, the end of this sentence is one place where the past can begin. at the point which signifies completeness.

if i choose to forget about the past before i type the period then i might close the computer in the middle of my journal entry? perhaps a practical definition of the boundary where the past stops and now begins should be the point where one endeavor is finished.

when i click "save" this entry is done, it's history.

and i need to accept the continual flow of new experiences. like this one, in which someone reminds me of a past i would rather forget: i worked many years to improve the tin can mailman bookstore in arcata california, a bookstore which belonged to my former partner. i wrote a lot of software for managing credit and website. i also did a lot of physical work at the store. built custom shelves and went on book buying trips with my partner. even hung the christmas lights in the windows every winter. but my partner decided to end our partnership. that was eight years ago (now) and i moved on.

but last year she wrote and asked me to work on the software again. i was glad to work with her again. i must have missed some experiences with my partner and the store. but the balance was generally painful and so it was not difficult to let it go. so i completed another chapter with her and the tin can mailman, writing updates to her store programs.

but today i received an email from her announcing that she is selling the store. no one but me can have any idea or concept how that final blow feels.

but i will take it as a more powerful reminded to live and enjoy today. i will not waste anymore energy on this subject.

and here is one more subject i will not waste more energy on: my current partner informed me today that she will not call me anymore because when i am very busy i don't answer my phone.

all the time that i have lived in cambodia i have heard people blaming me for not answering my phone.

at the same time, i am in a meeting and i cannot politely answer my phone. but i also see at least half the other people in the room will interupt the meeting and answer the phone. we all have to wait for that person and the next to answer the question, "where are you? when are you coming home? have you eating yet? don't let anyone steal your motor. don't take the east road by the temple because that's where the ghosts of that woman and her baby are who were killed in the crash last year. get some prohoc on the way home. your father is no good. don't forget tomorrow is a holy day. buy incense. get a bag of soup....."

i have been in a boat for two hours where i could not bring my phone, or swimming at the beach.

i have talked to my partner twice per day on average for more than a year. but today she is not satisfied with my phone performance. now it's all up to me. she is waiting for me to call. and i am going to the beach to live my life, at the end of this journal entry, at the point where the past begins and now begins.

likewise i have noticed that i do not feel disappointed if another person does not answer my call. sometimes people are in the shower, or standing outside the house talking to neighbor, or there is a loud wedding party and they cannot hear the phone.

these things are so obvious to me, and yet all the other people i see around me do not remember the same experience. they had the same experience because they were sitting with me in the meeting. but they act as if they can't remember.

now i will act as if i can't remember. people make me tired.

and they do not comprehend and perceive the world as i do.

and that is why i feel alone. i don't feel lonely in a difficult way. i have accepted the realities of life, and i am content.

i am content with being alone.

jooon 30

28 days after the last entry! absorbed by the beach, ocean, sand, sea, sun, fresh air.

still searching for the most inclusive view of everything i can perceive.

to reset openness each morning

to recall the best first priority

and let it guide my plan and action

today i realized that i did not meditate properly for a week or more.

and the result was impulse to buy a ticket when i have no destination!

fortunately i caught it before following it.

now i have a more relaxed order: research the destination diligently, locate possible residence, purchase ticket (eva), all the while keeping upwork apps open and running.

meditate to keep focus clear

twists and delays:

interview job

cannot find americans in otres

get skype recorder to interview people back in usa

first recorder does not work

suggests add firewall exceptions, done

still not working

updates to fix, still not working

power failure

wifi stops

shower to cool off

no power to pump

dip water from bucket

2nd recorder would not install

now on 3rd installation

talkhelper bogus site shows links for all other recorders but all links point to talkhelper

joon 2 2017

“Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” Attributed to Buddha.

today i find what matters most: being of service to the needs of other creatures including people, that is the moment when i feel happy and think of nothing else. i found an injured bird, "strawberry", because his head was scraped and bloody and really looked like a little wild strawberry. and made a little sleeping bag from strips of cloth and tucked him inside and put some milk in his beak. and he died about 20 minutes after i found him. and i stopped to greet a woman who said her house flooded during the night's rain, and i offered to make a little wall of brick to keep out the water. and another neighbor offered some bricks. but the lady said that if i put a little row of bricks then she cannot put the scooter in the house at night. and so the balance of advantages and disadvantages to an act was equal in this case by her opinion. although these two examples do not have the desired happy ending of novels they show the intention and the goal, which is to always find what matters now.

i did something new! (see 5/20 entry)

and converted an ugly "genetic father" email

into a positive review of progress! here it is:

i'm learning to be flexible. i hope you will read all this email. even though it's long. i hope you will accept that new things appear under the sun, because that is what happens whether you hold tightly to old ideas or open your self to new ideas. people do change. consider this:

i've lived with an emotional disturbance most of my life, and this was a tricky problem. when people would urge me to seek counseling or therapy, i would reply that this is much like telling a person with a broken leg to walk to the hospital.

and then the leg remains broken.

and a lot of people live their entire lives in such a state, unfortunately, without awareness that peace can be learned. i can reset my own bones!

a cycle of action and reaction develops which delays real awareness. family who meant to help would say that i had bipolar disorder and recommend lithium. i would react harshly and go another lap on the roller coaster. the suggestion that i had bipolar at the time was just insulting. but i don't see it that way now.

there are limits to how much we can help each other, whether limits of volition, ability, or value judgement. i don't blame anyone; "everyone has something", as mom says. in cambodia there is no psychiatic counseling available, but it is partly because of living in cambodia that i was able to make progress understanding my emotions.

emotional problems skew our perception of reality, and in my case this was expressed as frequent and erratic changes in priorities, goals, actions, leaving everyone near me confused. the feedback from cambodian people about my actions was somehow unprejudiced, and i was able to find more self awareness in the reflecting pool of their comments.

i recently read that this particular problem often presents special challenges for therapists, who may get entangled on an empathetic level in the patient's reasoning and anecdotes. in this case going to the hospital even does not guarantee the broken leg will be fixed! i had my share of wrong diagnoses, including the famous ADHD, and a prescription of ritalin from a doctor in greensboro. like everyone, the doc had good intentions, but did not get to know me. i didn't really know myself, nor what i should tell him.

but he did say one classic thing that stayed in my db of useful concepts: "each situation seems different to you, but after years, you will see patterns beneath. this will eventually lead to awareness of what is going on." that may have been the most useful feedback, and so in a sense the ADHD diagnosis was just one trial and error required along the journey.

yet in spite of blunders and mayhem, i have made a surprising breakthrough. thanks to caring feedback from people included in this email, i have achieved a specific and useful self awareness.

what i have learned during the recent six months is a method of seeing my own emotions from a safe distance, in such a way that i can make a new kind of choice about whether or not an emotion or impulse needs action, or whether in fact it is another roller coaster ride. and this is my favorite analogy.

my life often felt like a roller coast ride, and now i envision it like this: i am watching the roller coaster from a hundred meters away, rather than actually riding it. the ups and downs, highs and low, i can observe rather than react. sometimes when i am swimming or kayaking i may have this terrible emotion. in the past i would have a reaction, change a plan, alienate a friend. once i quit uga in the middle of a term and flew to france!

now i am able to effectively see the emotion, label it, and disregard it when it's disconnected from my actual circumstances. a fear or extreme sadness which occurs while doing an enjoyable activity. i can now disregard that. the cumulative benefit of this new ability and awareness is already showing benefits. relationships of all kinds and jobs.

i am now freelancing with Upwork, and just received a 5 star review for a long research paper i wrote for a business in the us. this is a more established prospect than the freelancing i did in the past, when i would terminate a job because of an emotional spike.

each time i observe an unnecessary negative emotion and choose to disregard it, i get a feeling of accomplishment - personal accomplishment - something rare to me until recently.

and something very nice is now emerging. i am able to enjoy life without the fear and pain that wrecked things in the past. i am living at a peaceful resort town on the coast of cambodia and continuing online work here. and so i can swim every morning and evening.

this new method is a cognitive restructuring, and it takes a lot of practice to do it right. occasionally an emotion will catch me off guard like a cat waiting quietly to pounce. because emotions are SO REAL that it is nearly impossible to disbelieve them! but now when i have such a sudden sporadic emotional spike i quickly realign my awareness of this, and make a clear evaluation of the situation at hand. the results so far are very positive.

for example, i just read an unpleasant email from my father, in which he requested that i delete his email address from my phone and computer, and that we end our relationship. it is one of the results of many years of difficult interactions. it is understandable. to that email i am replying, "as you wish". and along with my reply, i would like to show how, in the past, these interactions often fueled an unfortunate cycle, in which i would become upset and then lash back with an ugly reply.

things have changed. i don't expect everyone ever outraged by my behavior to suddely forgive and forget. i am simply taking the time to acknoledge a new horizon to people i care about.

over the years, many people did their best to help me in various ways. as hans would say, we did the best we could at that time! i am grateful for this.

i am aware that my problem made people tired for ages. the worst of it came at the end of 2015, when i quit the drug diazepam which i was using supposedly for sleep. i had a very difficult and long withdrawal.

but the strange side effects of withdrawal forced me to rediscover my own life. i imagine that it was like being born and not even knowing what my own senses were telling me! paresthesia was the weirdest of all. i guess it must be very weird for new born babies to discover their own senses. what a shock, and how difficult to interpret it all. that is the effect of withdrawing from a medication that alters the way synapses work. information to the brain gets distorted. fortunately it has past with excellent results.

i am hopeful for the future. there are exciting discoveries ahead. life is new and fresh.

please keep in touch and keep the conversation alive.

On May 7, 2017 9:21 PM, "Ron Moore" <rlm@triad.rr.com> wrote:

Hey Mark

I have continued to communicate with you for 55 years because I am your genetic father and I have always felt that it is my

unending responsibility to encourage your to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave,

clean, and reverent. To live your live based on the Ten Commandments and the Fruits of the Holy Spirit (in the Bible). When

I am deceased I hope you will remember that.

Now I am 76 years old and I am tired of the type of conversation that flows back and forth between us. And I am tired of the

heartache that all of that causes between your mother and I. And I am tired of hearing Wendy say "Why do you keep on

doing that." So let's stop this forever today. Please remove my email address from your phone and computer.

Good luck and best wishes for a happy and productive life.

Dad

----- Original Message -----

From: mark moore

To: Ronald Moore

Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2017 8:55 PM

Subject: Warren

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-idUSKBN1820J4

Did you check yourself into a good rehab program?

(end of joon 2 entry)

5/20 phuck dis entry. i am incredibly bored with this life in kampot. i need to do something new. And now for a test of the typing speed. i disabled several startup programs. there was a lag or delay as i typed before about once every 30 secondssdfnsdnfsdlknfsdklnfsdlknfsdlknsfnsdfnds still happening. phuck dis computer.

italian surfer's right leg arm and hip were severely scraped about two acres of flesh removed and he told of the accident in which a khmer family of four people on a motorcycle struck him. his injuries appeared the same as russian revenge lady's. we are generally in agreement that no matter how safely we drive khmer people are going to hit us. this is one of the reasons i did not buy a moto as planned. many people i know have healing injuries and stories of such accidents. i witnessed an accident in which two young khmer men crashed their moto into a row of six rental motos parked in front of a cafe knocking them all down. the men fell on the road injured lightly. i rescued one man near chisor mountain with severe head injuries and bleeding. i saw a man crash into a bus which then crushed one wheel of his moto.

regularly there will be a large tree branch rising from a hole in the road where the pavement collapsed into a broke pipe or an erosion gap. if new pavement is installed a huge truck carrying a thousand bricks will drive right across it depressing the saft blacktop into deep grooves. but it's not a disregard for safety; people here have no training, no skills, and apply no analysis.

you can see a man on a skinny homemade bamboo ladder leaned against high power electrical lines with another man down below supposedly holding the ladder steady. electrocution is a frequent source o accidental death here. most of the dearth of safety measures here is obviously a result of nearly zero training and cost cutting.

oun12 answered, then either turned off the phone or the battery died. she probably does not know her phone is off. whatever happened, this type of event is so commonplace in cambodia as to leave me feeling that nothing really works here. infrastructure is unreliable and everyone contributes to this quality

as i walk about observing behavior of drivers, i realize that people here really have no knowledge base of experience to draw from. it's not just lack of training today; there are a million people on the road of all ages who learned to drive by TRIAL AND ERROR. in the usa it's the opposite.

for example, my grandfather taught me how to drive when i was 14, and he had been driving for 30 years. that's a lot of experience to combine with a clear set of driving regulations, and a solid infrastructure in the usa of good roads and also enforcement. a lot of features go into this highly functional system. and if you drive incorrectly you will get a lot of negative feedback to put you in line. police everywhere, signs indicating special conditions, driving tests, and by special contrast to cambodia, severe penalties for drunk driving. in cambodia there is basically no penalty; it almost seems that people are not even in clear agreement that driving drunk is a cause of accidents! as a result of this the few smart people stay home, especially at night.

now for the the contrast. i guess about half the cars in cambodia have the driver on the left and half have the driver on the right side of the car. we're supposed to drive on the right side o the road. what a mess. people turning left across traffic regularly veer into the opposite lane diagonally up to 50 meters early. they seem to have no concept that this creates problems, the "turn" lasts a lot longer than if they went up to the point of turn and made a 90 degree right angle turn. but these people drive by habit, not by training or skill, certainly not by forethought.

i shot a chunk of garbage into a blue barrel a split second after the boys in green evacuated it with macyay shouting choppity slopa trapok, walked hardly a lap and straight to ellie's, "chargrilled" chunks "coooscooos", C-N visit, Will's interview at 2 plpus a stout reward...

and a day later...

shoes to chan (cozmetiks!) chat with debbie, oil on the water at tek chhou, and a lot of consolation detritus from the almond store and the motto rental lady.

phart and psuck

5/17

this is a long-ass entry, but i realized that it's impossible to know anything about my material existence from reading these abstractions. so here is an email to BlockHandsMan which tells of my current psituation:

extraweird.

anyway, well congrats (on engagement to V), and that's exciting. you must be on cloud 9

with all your chakras igniting into little fireballs and whatnot.

... i myself have lost touch with all formal procedures other than visa renewal.

i reckon you must be quite busy operating the yoga program, or

stranded in a tent on the roof, with a lodger occupying the house? i

confess i don't have much concept of what's going on there; just my

imagination to fill in the white space.

presumably this will not count as a reply to your invitation unless i

mention the possibility of my attendance. at the moment i don't have

the financial resources for a trip to canada (14,000 km).

although i am making progress finding new interests and rediscovering

old ones that were unfulfilled. i've been reading about madagascar, a

place i wanted to visit when i was a kid, and finding it appealing.

just learned that malagasy is an austronesian language, not related to

african languages but indonesian. borneo.

but this was the first result of a new research i'm doing to find a

peaceful place to RETIRE. madagascar appeared first because its murder

rate is better than norway's ('better' presuming you prefer fewer

murders). (after reading about the gangs of honduras i realized some people

prefer more murders). and this single statistic makes is remarkable among

undeveloped countries.

i had a surge of activity on Upwork.com and completed a research

project there which paid better than most programming jobs i've had!

but now it's slow again. i am just making enough money to retain the

savings i have to move to a new place. but i have nearly ruled out

very cold places and focused more on warmer places with great swimming

opportunities. i have not decided yet, and the ability to make a firm

decision is still under construction.

as of today, i am still occupying this small apartment in kampot, have

one or two friends, but spend most of my days doing research. i

increased my physical exercise plan to two episodes of unnecessary

actions, morning and night, doubling my previous set of futile

gesticulations, but i am now fit as a fiddle. you would be surprised,

especially if you continue to compare me to people who have terminal

cancer.

i just read a book on SEO, a nauseating term because of excessive use in job ads. but i immediately pasted the contents of this journal entry into a word frequency counter and got the following result:

and i constructed francophobic toast with cashews and honey in the kitchen, and immediately transferred that to my mouth for deconstruction...

Yesterday i successfully drank no wine. I retrofitted a pillow, ate appropriate food, formed body letters or yoga hieroglyphics, specialized in the subject of yesterday, meaning living for the day, achieved my research work,

now, compare the words laughter and slaughter, only differ by s, but radically diff pronunc, as I speak into this machine I realizedthat laughter and Slaughter are a challenge to speech rec.

how long have you been getting a divorce? we've been getting a divorce for approximately eight years, beginning with a set of unbelievable and wildly exaggerated promises which he made to me during dinner one night. a few months after that we had the divorce party two children, a pound of infidelity, some heated words scalded words actually, boiling words, and then a visit to an official who terminated the entire eight year divorce process with documents, and a rubber (stamp).

3/22/17

almost to phnom chisor, i noticed people circled around a crashed scooter. i pulled over as i saw a young man laying on the pavement and a pool blood. i told soapy to go ask if anyone called an ambulance. as i arrived beside the young man i could see a deep cut on his head and blood seeping out through thick hair. i sat down so that i could apply pressure to the wound and another spectator pointed to a larger wound on the back. a lot of blood was coming out. i asked soapy to get a scarf and she gave me a good long cotton scarf. i wrapped it around his head and cradled his head in a way to prevent him moving and kept pressure over the wounds just keeping the blood in. i asked other men to hold his legs still and prevent him from moving, because he wrestled with the pain in surges. and they had called the emergency vehicle and said it would come soon. sweat filled my eyes and burned but i could not release the man's head. i felt that every second keeping the blood inside was important. 10 minutes passed and other people brought an empty cement bag and covered the young man and leaves of tree branches, and they brought another one and held it over me for shade because it was a hot day in central cambodia and i was sitting on the hot pavement then 20 minutes. i used some alcohol wipes to clean blood from his face. i said again and again please help me keep him still. and they did. after 30 minutes another man came impulsively and suddenly lifted the young man up like a sack of potatoes. i said please keep him still until the vehicle arrives. soapy said they are not going to follow my directions. the vehicle arrived before the impulsive man could do additional stupid gestures. they got him inside and left. and we arrived at phnom chisor a few minutes later.

the next day we were at the food sellers under phnom chisor and soapy talked to them. they said the young man was from their village, and the vehicle took him to "kalumeit" hospital for the scan and surgery. they had not yet heard news. we climbed the mountain and looked at the temple and the inscription about suryvarmandeva 1, and the next day in the evening we heard from them that the man had a successful surgery and would likely survive. they said i probably saved him from dying right on the side of the road. my spirits were lifted. i felt that i came there for a reason.

i never saw that much blood before. i have seen groups of people staring at an injured person before, and blood seems to scare them. soapy says they have no idea what to do. during the last minutes before the impulsive man came i kept my right hand near the young man's mouth because i could feel his breath more easily than his pulse. his pulse was faint. his breath was still strong. i did indeed say a sincere prayer to help this young man. i was determined to see him survive this.

3/26/17 Stacking People

People are easy to stack up.

Although people are strangely shaped, they are easy to stack one on top of the other! You just have to put them in boxes. And stack the boxes. Clever methods of stacking people are deployed in places where the surface of the Earth is expensive, such as in the above photo. Once inserted into boxes and stacked up to the sky, people are are much easier to manage. Why a free person would enter into this situation voluntarily is a mystery to me.

Not only will people climb up into their boxes and do their work every day, but other people will build those boxes and stack them up for you to climb into. If you need to stand directly on the ground and feel blades of grass between your toes, or stand in the river and feel the slippery rock on the bottom of your foot, well, i suggest you remove yourself from this situation depicted in the above photo.

3/20/17

i baptized myself in tekchhou. i threw myself in the crystal clear water. it felt good. i want to do this every day.

I baptized myself fervently one time. I felt so good and happy that I decide to do it again and make a video. But when I returned home to view it, both videos from the river wold not open. If I broke an important rule during my baptism I thought maybe Jesus was telling me so.

i met the pastor of lina's church, myoung jin. she was friendly.

i ate a whole papaya. they just play bingo now. i poot my pants. after.

"chan." no emotion. yes and no and i don't know. black eyes blank face. zero tone voice. human. 13 years old.

sediment oxygen demand. oxygen demand. eating crickets on road 60. fishing with papaw. shor's algorithm. momix and pilobolis. truffles and le borsin. fine slabs of rubble.

new hormones and a wave of unfamiliar feelings. torture inside cool outside. she told me a story which seemed impossible, factually and with absolute certainty, never hesitating, never a smile, no indication of connecting to another person. she hides everything. if she ever cared about anything no other human ever knew. chan, the antithesis of nary.

bbq rubber dash spot.

i came to meet chan's older sister, "oun." to ask if she was feeling better, and bring a present to cheer her up. i was worried. she sounded hopeless on the phone yyyyyyyyyyyyesterday. "where's your sister?" i don't even have to type her replies. they're all in the first paragraph.

chan invented a story. "she went to the city. to work in a factory." she has no phone. no address. we don't know the name of the factory nor where it's located. my mother is buying crabs. she told me to call you and tell you not to come but you did not answer the phone.

30 minutes later chan's mother arrived on a bike with a basket full of crabs. oun did not go to the city. she is at the neighbor's house. she said teacher lie.

20 minutes more she is walking toward us taking every possible detour, hesitating.

she had a breakdown. like mine 10 days ago.

she hid me in the tiny hut and pulled my foot away from the door. don't let the neighbors see. i was on display on the front porch like a spaceship arrived from saturn i think it's too late to hide me from the neighbors.

chan made up a story. i don't blame her.

rikkenoot.

i gave her the gifts. she took the little phone. she asked for the smart phone. surprising. said she was going to stay with me tomorrow. i had to invent reason to delay.

i stopped to buy water on the way out and the neighbor said your girlfriend is already married. the same story chan told me 100/10 days ago. do they live together? yes. they ride to work together every morning. what's his name? i don't know.

what cha? i am lost. can you tell me the way? they lie. they don't want me to marry a foreigner. but they seem to have all coordinated the same lie very accurately. i can't say this part in khmer language, nor can anyone else. these people are not analytical.

one croc under the hut. and other garbage.

the previous week I had an uncontrolled episode.

she told me that Oun left for the city.

i baptized myself in tekchhou

3/19/17

strategies for troubled breathing during meditation:

1. inhale slowly, smoothly, and deeply, and exhale the same way.

( i counted 6 seconds in and 7 out. if an idea is bothering me, i lose my focus and my breath becomes short. it could be a disturbing event from the day or a fear of tomorrow. for me personally, this is an emotional problem which i will discuss more after this outline.)

2. during this 13 seconds i created a new positive concept on each breath. examples:

a. nary says she is not hopeful to study at university because her family are poor. i want to encourage her to find a scholarship because she is smart. the point is to encourage her. not to worry about scholarships, but to promote hopefulness.

b. use every opportunity to spread hope.

c. search for new experiences and new ideas. update old ideas to cancel prejudice.

d. old concepts need replacing with new experiences to keep life fresh and flowing.

e. remember to reward self or credit for achievements. this is important.

f. knowing is not the same as living wisely. repetition is essential to changing habits. reward yourself and recognize your progress. know where you started to see how far you've come. keep a journal or tell a loved one in an email or by phone. don't think this is silly or absurd. we need each other's support. it's natural.

g. practicing breathing correctly improves the ability, like exercise improves fitness.

h. reduces destructive ideas and actions. replaces negative impulses with healthy. (see terrible true story that happened when i failed to manage my emotions.)

*** if unable to keep calm focus, notice if very thirsty or other immediate need. ***

3. i found the breathing combined with the creative challenge very relaxing.

4. i fell asleep. this may not be the goal of meditation, but i wanted to sleep.

5. breathing itself will improve emotional health, even if not perfect, it helps.

1. every action is new, even if it feels like repeated action. but this effort builds healthier habits and replaces negative impulses with more affirming ones.

2. earth and sun have never been exactly here in the universe. everything is new. find the new experience!

3. new info cancels old prejudice.

4. breathing makes feet feel like massage!

(some of these ideas are not in a very clear order. that's ok for now.)

my specific emotional problem - the distinction between average and problematic

i'm going to repeat the same idea in several different phrases to get the idea across. my emotional lanscape is not equal to the situation at hand. i feel disturbed when there is nothing wrong (i would search for something wrong, like environmental pollution, to be upset about, and then it seemed to me that i was upset because of environmental pollution. but that was a mistake interpreting my own emotions. [of course environment problems are upsetting but in this situation i got a chicken hatching out of NO egg.] ) people think they have made me angry by saying something i don't like. it's not the case. i am disturbed, but not because of what they said. i have these emotions no matter what happens.

someone finally noticed an example. i was unemployed for months, but when i got a new job i did not seem relieved or happy. it's rare that another person understands my emotional problem. she could see that my emotions did not match the new situation. i did not feel better. i've gone through many stages of coping and not coping with this emotional problem all my life. i recently read a diagnosis of this problem, but i will not mention the name of the diagnosis here, because each individual must come to the realization of self. others may offer ideas and point in directions of psychotherapy. but one can only make this discovery solo.

i discovered that i can stop the disturbing emotions with deep breathing. with this new freedom from my own emotional upset, i had time to think clearly. i am on the point of recognizing which emotions are appropriate, and how to ignore the emotions that are broken, dysfunctional. however, these techniques do not work every time i try them. today for example, i could not sustain my breathing meditation. so i wrote these ideas to stay aware of what's happening. i wrote the steps above, hoping to improve and clarify them.

nearly two years ago, i set about making a slide show of beautiful relaxing pictures accompanied by soothing music to help me relax, because i was troubled. i could only sleep by taking 10 mg of diazepam. so tricky is my dysfunctional emotional state, that i soon attached painful emotions to those pictures and music! if i have a painful emotion while laying on the beach looking at the sea, it is confusing. it will make me think that laying on the beach is "boring" and i don't want to do that. at that time i was not aware that my emotions are sticky and get attached to things, memories, and people. although i had happy experiences with a person i was in a relationship with, i would generally remember the painful breakup circimstances.

travel is an example where i am face to face with my emotions and there is nothing to distract me. driving for many hours across country to visit exciting places in new mexico, arizona, california, i would have terrible emotional attacks where i feared my grandfather would die while i was out exploring and i would never see him again. i would turn the car around and drive all the way back to north carolina in 20 hours. often times when people tell me i am a smart or intelligent person i reply that if i were smart i would have solved this problem 20 years ago. and then this emotional problem inclined me to self-deprecation. i began to dread the long hours face to face with self, and i began to say that i liked visiting new places but disliked travel, which sounded like a joke to friends who know that i love abstract humor.

to conclude this section, i have sought to illustrate the problem for which i use the above method of breathing meditation. the purpose is to relax from the difficult feelings long enough to get perspective. to see what average looks like. to distinguish average from problematic. on average you can trust your emotions to provide adequate feedback about the environment. i cannot trust my emotions. my emotions tell me there is trouble when there is no trouble.

terrible true story of unmanaged inappropriate emotional impulse!

this is an embarrassing story but i believe we need to share this things to understand each other. fell in love with a girl. fell in love once and almost completely. you know how that feels? that crazy love? it's like a drug they say. i was in love with a woman and i thought my emotions were real about this situation. it was a crazy situation. we were just getting into it when she suddenly told me that her mother engaged her to marry another man. we did not talk for a month. people at work told me she was already married to him. my chest was tense and i did not know whether to be hurt or angry. i was confused.

then one day i met her by chance. she started crying and telling me that she missed me. that her mother knew she loved me and not the other man. then we started meeting secretly. we made a plan to run away together because she wanted to escape her family and the other guy. we had many secret meetings and i got more attached to her. but at the same time i knew something was wrong. her stories did not make sense. because i have a long history of emotions that get me in trouble, i have to analyse information to get clues about how i "should feel." but this doesn't work very well. it's like a kid who has no sense of temperature and is always burning himself because he cannot guess that something is hot.

one day i spontaneously went to her village and as i approached her house i could see her sitting on the front porch with all her family eating lunch with her new fiance. so i said hello calmly and sat down. they were all wondering what craziness was going to be unleashed. i said the new couple looked sharp, and then i asked her mother if she would help me find a new girlfriend. everyone burst into laughter. they were relieved that i came to have fun and not to deliver mayhem. but i could she my girlfriend was not happy.

the next week we met again and she went through all sorts of explanations that he just came suddenly and ate with them. she was not living with him. she loved me and not him. the medicine on his chest was applied by her sister and not by her. she was going to get her last pay from work and run away with me. i was ok for the moment. i was relieved just to hear her say she loved me.

the following week we planned to meet, something went wrong and she didn't show. i went to her village and found on one home. my emotions were exploding out of control.

*** this is the crucial point about my emotions. although it may sound so some readers like i was embroiled in this love madness and my actions were understandable, i think the average person will see that my emotional instability enabled this mess, and that on this particular day i could have gone to the beach and read a book and relaxed, instead of attaching my emotions to the activities at her village, which were not even related to me.

so i sat on her front porch just suspened emotional energy. then her neighbor came down the road. she said, "what are you doing here again, she is married already." then her sister came up on a bike. i said look, tell me once and for all is she married already? her sister said yes. i said are they already living together? she answered yes. i was going mad. i said show my which house they live in. she pointed to a house. i said let me confirm with you (because i am fluent in this language but it's not english i can't believe my ears.) she repeated it and said yes they live together just like married.

then i asked some of the neighbors. they confirmed. then her mother came home and denied that they lived together. she said she did not receive the dowry yet. they did not have the ceremony yet. then SHE came home and was quite disturbed that i came and stirred everyone up. she said the neighbors lie because they hate foreigners and they are also jealous of her because a foreigner loves her, so they try to ruin it. she said her sister confused my question. she thought i meant in the future after they get married because it's a presumption since they are engaged. then her mother agreed to let us be together and to cancel the engagement with the other man. it was like a nightmare. i could not believe so many people could change so many stories so fast. but they did.

i should never have gone there. but my emotions were out of control and i did not know it.

to control the emotions, to manage them, one must know that it's not the situation that needs managing - it's the emotions that need managing!

as of today, i have this terrible memory of going to that village and creating such a weird situation that people just lied out of control to manage it. now i have no idea what the real story is. every week the woman has some new drama to add to the confusion. one thing i know. if i ever have an impulse to follow up i will think about the possibility that my emotions are too strong. i will check it.

3/3/17

if you want to ride Burnt Ranch in a six foot playboat you CAN do it.

2/25/17

i replaced another faucet in my 'guesthouse' today, and thus felt a deep and enduring sense of accomplishment. a few minutes later i was thinking how good a knife in my throat would feel. but while i was installing that piece of plumbing, boy, i was a satiated soul.

today an unreliable lying whore failed to show up for our labial examination appointment, and also failed to achieve the modicum of politeness to pick up a phone and send me an sms that she would blow me off. but hey! that's what blowing people off means right!? here is a peculiar notation used when annotating games of the highest order of fuck-up: a fascist will make a move like 15.Ne2!? and get pummeled. now what? how about a bottle of tequila? yes. that's the answer to all my ho.

i should mention the good counsel of a mischievous mofo. and a kind landlord who extended $2 usd for my brief assistance as pretend plumber for 5 minutes. a neighbor who scraped me for a trinket fell short. dollop of trollop. good evening.

2/24/17

beauty may be in the 'eye of the beholder' but the penis of the beholder may disagree with the eye. men, i am prepared to tell you that it is perfectly natural to find yourself with a woman you are not attracted to. i mean you can go through the courtship ritual only to discover under duress that the staff are asleep at work. although many people have told me that i am an idiot and even retarded, like a person exposed to agent orange (2,4,5-T and 2,4-D, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange), i am still trying to learn life's simple lessons the hard way [sic].

viagra will not save you from this enemy, yourself. don't feel obligated to read this. you can close the tab at any time. no matter how conventionally beautiful your brain tells you the woman is, the truth is going to be a bitch.

and then of course, the woman you have great sex with, your brain is saying she's not 'conventionally attractive.' oh this is horse shit. this is the kind of journal entry i write 'the day of,' and then someone says 'i can't believe you write about that publicly.' i know a lot of 'public' places where no one goes but me, and this website is one of them. i just enjoy writing, but in reality i delete these journal entries almost as fast as i write them.

fuck me.

2/22/17

it's official: the most important information you need is not available. you will have to steal it.

kids, check it out. brave people have moments of fear. the strongest people cry and laugh in measures balanced according to life's hour of pain and minute of joy. loyal people conceal an infidelity, because life is complicated. honesty is an ideal that will distort your concept of reality. it does not exist.

in a rare accident, you will discover what another person really thinks about you. a letter she wrote about you, intended for another person's eyes, falls under your eyes in a twist. people wont tell you; you'll hear it from another. or not at all.

this means every person you fear probably fears you too. when you walk down pub street you see everyone dancing and conclude that all the world is happy but you? nope. 99% of people are home alone, or with family, sick, or exhausted with human bullshit, reading a novel to get lost in another story, or a psychology book to sort out human bullshit, or probing online dating sites for a person to fantasize love with, or just bored. don't be fooled by the drama of others. trust your own intuition. build on your own beliefs, learn and grow. NO other person can teach you, except by unfortunate example.

if you really love her, you are blind. she loves someone else the way you love her. but don't be angry, because that guy she loves... he loves someone else too. it's a never ending tragic ending.

why does all this human bullshit continue? it's call competition, and it goes to the core of every living organism. competition drives every action. if you think i have something to sell, do you see any ads on this page?

fuck. phuck. phuk. fuk.

perhaps some are attracted to science because there is comparatively less bullshit and conniving and misinformation than in fields like politics and marketing. i am reading the indian myth about 'churning the sea of milk' and there is actually more like a sea of bullshit surrounding this story. surprisingly it's not only because it's a religious topic that it warms up peoples' bullshit factories; it's also a matter of 'national pride' to khmer people who seem to think this is their own home grown legend (it came from india, like their architecture, writing system, and everything else except the beer and broken school system.) why be surprised that everything is from india? khmer people didn't even have a writing system until indian merchants came up the mekong. but i digress. today i am on the subject of human bullshit. i am so exhausted with listening to peoples' bullshit and horse shit!

2/15/17 កំពត

+ can i convert the montreal interview into a skype interview? replied email as such.

+ image search app. 'best guess = leaf' not adequate. 'person'

+ danny found, i corrected error in jungle boy site.

+ soapy ride moto to kampot.

+ do:

alan watts lectures, soapy record stories, plant seeds, lnk/start virus,

2/9/17 កំពត

+ working to complete khmer-english parallel stories project. https://sites.google.com/site/englishkhmerstories/

need add pages to jungle boy, and voice rec for speckled and 4-leg

+ nearly finished wa's web scraper project. added to book requests vb.net app.

comm not so good because she is very busy.

+remove dups excel.

+ fiddler proxy debug (used to hack candy crush years ago.)

+ sopheary is in ratanakiri to explore her land there.

+ i have two months remaining on my visa, and need to research new work/residences.

+ topics:

+ priv/pub key encrypt for danny.

+ download movies: the fall 2006, chumscrubber

+ gaea waste co. cambodia. INFO. privat waste $1.5 per house?? SR base.

+ example: http://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_injection.asp

+ metfone is best for sim card internet in kampot.

+ fiddler web proxy was used to crack candy crush.

+ hindi story "chess players" copied to my page

+ martin girl tuberculosis (2 months already on 6 to 9 months meds isoniazid (INH) rifampin (RIF) ethambutol (EMB)

+ rumbling sea of milk book, site with similar content. កូរ​សមុទ្រ​ទឹកដោះ

+ alphabay? through tor only. review site elements.

+

"Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this: you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to societY. "

and now for a quote of my own. "It is the power of a truth, an unequivocal truth which is overwhelming to the senses, and it is not the strength of an honest person, which brings about honesty." by this I mean to say that there are ordinary daily events which are uninspiring. but once in a lifetime or if we are lucky twice or thrice there arises a monolithic reckoning. a reckoning which overpowers the daily trifling of decision making, one which takes A powerful life of its own. One which decides for us, rather than waiting for us to decide for it. And if we are aware, and if we pay homage to this, we begin to understand that our decisions R but standing upon a whale and fishing for minnows. that recognition is a marvelous view into the depth of our reality. And the best example is a love which overpowers everything else in the our lives.

December 2014 update....

life is a puzzle, but only in the sense that people created the puzzle. There is no Real Puzzle. Everything is exactly as it should be. mystery is a matter of creativity.

this website is about my projects, most of which are in Cambodia. At the top of the list in the left hand column is my most recent project. This is a parallel reader which is intended especially for my students who want to study English, but it may also be used by foreigners in Cambodia who would like to study Cambodian language. The format is line by line parallel English and Khmer.

the 2nd heading is sCAMBODIA, and this contains many articabout about corruption, fraud, and an assortment of scams operated by all sorts of people in Cambodia. This is intended to serve as a warning to visitors whether tourists or NGO workers or volunteers of any kind, to inform them that most of their donations of work time money books and other resources are being exploited or stolen and resold. This phenomenon is documented in general and a recent film called povert inc.

next in the column are listed links to my own art and fiction. This is intended for entertainment purposes folly enjoyment mirth weirdness craze and self embarrassment.

finally under the random heading you will find A perfectly random assortment of weird editorial political commentary song lyrics non fiction stories from my life and even a commentary about the Sanskrit origin of the Cambodian language.

June 2014, i was visiting a friend's mother's farm, i met a boy named "sein" (picture below.) while i stayed at the farm he took me along to bring the cows to fields to graze, and to a stream to drink. he told me that he was 13 and that he had to drop out of school in grade 3 to work on the farm. he told me that he really wanted to go to school but had no way. he was strong and had a big smile. at the grass hut where he lives now with his grandmother, i found a grade 3 textbook he brought with him from the far village where his parents live. he was hoping to study again, but found no school at his new home....

along the way sein stopped and introduced me to some neighbors. most of them had a very sad story to tell. their village leader had tricked them into selling their land because the government wanted to build an airport there. it was just another land scam to lease farmland to foreign companies. now all the neighbors are tenant farmers. their kids have no school.

a more regular fraud or land scam is operated by the Apsara Authority around the Siem Reap area. They frequently sell land within their jurisdiction, to unsuspecting buyers who hope and intend to build a house on the land. but after the sale is completed, the builders learn that the authourity has the power to deny them the ability to build a house on the land. Then the buyer has no choice but to turn around and sell the land for a loss because the land is worthless. Apsara Authority perpetrated this fraud on the poor family of a friend recently (December 2014).

what reached me deeply was the positive spirit of sein. the other kids in the area did not look so positive. sein had a very special gift for staying positive. he told me stories on the way and asked me if i could swim before we crossed the stream. he was worried about me!

please contact me at: dinosaur_eggs@yahoo.com

previous update... january 24, 2014

firebugpenalty is my journal, a place where I put my personal creative writing, and random thoughts, as well as writing drawn from my personal history, experience, and research. The "Home page" is now dedicated to my new volunteer project in cambodia, "sein and friends." iI hope to begin this project in early 2015, and i am already beginning planning.

the articles under "sCAMBODIA" are the result of my experience working on educational and humanitarian projects in Cambodia for more than two years (i have now worked and lived as a resident of cambodia for almost a year volunteering only part time.) zRANDOM contains articles about the 2nd amendment, human evolution, and other random subjects. zART contains my recent drawings (mid to late 2013.)

"uncertainty" is an autobiographical story about my experience with the pretense of education and the government's corruption of education in cambodia. coupled with "foreign_husband," these two stories form a good introduction to the other articles under sCAMBODIA. the link titles in the left column are abbreviations of the actual titles.

below this text are some pictures i drew in early 2013, after my main volunteer project ended. it was a time of social isolation in the city of siem reap. what is real, and what is not real? if you dwell in the "field of opposites" as joseph campbell called it, this site will be confusing. i have tried to remain anonymous, but there may have been moments of mental fugue wherein i forgot my plot and signed my name.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013. scambodia

january 35th 2010

why? why?? why???

it's not really a question at all. and no answer is sought. it's a declaration that she does not like what i did. "why did you do this to me?" is exactly equal to "i hate what you did." that is an illustration of how unaware people are of their expressions. but because it appears to be a question i attempt to answer. "because i was afraid you would not accept me." but she does not want an answer and she does not listen to what i say. it doesn't even matter what i say. i could say "because the horse feather glue is not waterproof. if it starts raining up there it's going to be another icarus outcome." she would not even hear me.

i have to work backward because my brain and heart are upside down. today she is blaming me harshly for lying about my age. i told her about my feelings and she asked, "do you even know what you're saying to me? are these just sweet words with no substance?" i asked to meet her for lunch. we agreed on the time and place at 1borneo. 2 hours later i ironed the new pants and showered to get ready to go. i picked up the phone to order a grab car to go meet her and there was a message from her cancelling lunch. while i was trying to invite her for lunch she complained that i am vegetarian and she has to eat meat.

she prioritizes work over me every time. she does not seem to have any compassion for me at all. the truth is she is stressed and her boss has her over a barrel according to her stories. if her miserable boss needs coffee she will cancel me. she cancels our meetings with no apparent regret. for me it's disappointing every time. she cancels like flipping a light switch. no gravity. she does not even call to say a nice word. just sent me a msg cancel. i was really looking forward to meeting her. and this imbalance of apparent interest is disturbing to me, and i can't seem to adapt to it. so i am writing about it. before the meditation came along and resolved so many problems, i used to write about the problems here in these pages. this entry is a sign that the meditation is not working for this problem. i've been seriously anxious and stressed about this woman.

my breath is short again. my mind is distracted. when i contemplate the meditation subjects i cannot retain focus recently. "every occurrence has value. we internally generate the sensation that everything is fine, but usually it appears dependent on an external event. dissolve the illusion of the limited self. observe events without prejudice." i am so scattered that i can't settle on any of these concepts now. i have reverted recently to extreme exercise to beat the anxiety out of myself. and the success is miniscule.

her mother looks miserable. her sister looks fed up. they each have a six year old boy attached to one arm. one has never met his father. the other is autistic and his father lives in the usa, 8 years married and 8 years apart. they are not enjoying life. they are not the creative type. they are the misery type. so i lied about my age and apparently i am now a worthless liar. and she goes on and on about it. she wants to punish me forever.

while i was between shorts and longs she cancelled our meeting at 1borneo the week before. time is jumbled in my head. i can't recall the actual order of any of these events. a month before, i didn't even own any long pants. people complained to me that i always wore shorts. mom said "i guess we're going to mcdonalds." i understand this now and i bought some longs. but now that i have nice pants and shirt, she complains to me that i don't wear something more comfortable. the world is utterly confusing. the first day i met her we planned to meet at noon. she sent a message at noon asking if "we can be flexible." so i said yes and waited another 2 hours. i ate lunch while waiting for her. when she arrived at 2 and we were sitting at around little white pods with unknown stuffing she complained that i was not eating.

the night she msg "do you want to meet?" it seemed to me she meant now or very soon. i wrote back "yes" and waited an hour and half without an update. is she on the way? did she fall asleep? she is "online" but does not reply to my msg. what happened? when she finally showed up 2 hours later she said that she stopped at a friend's house and had vodka and orange juice on the way. why didn't you let me know what was going on? why didn't you reply to all my msg? "my phone was on silent." she always says this. i am so disastrously nauseated by her behavior. it's like the maximized passive aggressive do the opposite of what people expect every time.

there are tedious events in life which defy description. her msg behavior is one of them. i would have to repeat the tedious thing in this text at least ten times in order for the reader to feel the tedium. knowing is not the same as experiencing. description is not reality. she sends me a msg and then disappears. the msg she sends seems to ask for a prompt reply. but when i reply she is already gone. her status is "online" but she is not replying. we've had several discussion about this. if i ask what the plan is for tonight she will reply "i don't know" and leave me hanging. i would like to make plans with another friend, but i feel like i should give her priority, even though she never gives me priority. i know she is likely to cancel any plan. this non committal behavior of hers is the primary source of annoyance. if she would just say "no" i could go on make other plans. but she leaves me hanging.

i say, "when you send a msg like this can you stay there for a minute or two so i can reply and we can make wrap up the subject?" example, i send a msg like, "do you want to meet at noon?" two hours later at one o'clock that msg is no longer relevant so i delete it. then she msg, "why did you delete all those msg?" i explain again as above, "your status reads "online" but i wait several minutes and you don't reply. an hour later i delete the msg because it's not relevant anymore." she looks frustrated.

for five weeks straight she left town for the weekend and i could not meet her. she has an excuse every weekend. nephew's uncle's kindergarten graduation, family BBQ, and she claims that she cannot invite me because i have not met her mother yet. this last weekend. i met her but she left me standing around at the mall with nothing to do because she was afraid for me to meet her. her mother is a miserable grumpy woman. fuck me. why do i want to get involved with these people? it's going to break my financial status. those fuckers made me pay 65 ringgit for coffee?

next two nights are dinner meetings and she cannot invite me.

i asked to visit her house and she has the excuse that her neighbors will see and talk about her. she is a catholic registered as a muslim and this is illegal for her to attend catholic church. and she married a man from egypt and converted to muslim and then she signed a loan and he took all the money and ran away. so her son is muslim by birth and that cannot be changed in this country. so she says that her muslim neighbors will see that she has a white boyfriend and then they will cause problems for her. and so i can never visit her house because of her neighbors???

saturday and this is not in order this actually happened 2 days before the starbucks lie. she coerced me to get an std test. because of you know what. and i had to go alone to this ugly clinic because she has to go to the BBQ and i am not invited. that day i was severely pissed. i could hardly breathe i was so angry.

so this is my question, and it really is an actual question, and i want an answer: "why am i so attached to a person i don't like?" is the power of attraction so extreme that it does not even matter that i hate the actual person? does it not seem that i would be repulsed by a person who is so foreign to my sensibility? shouldn't i gladly separate my interest from a person who five times per week makes me feel like the chinese investor machine made me feel? is this nothing more than mechanics and pheromones?

end of rant for now.