Yearly Archives: 2002

Buddhism

I just fin­ished watch­ing Shaolin Temple with Pita. It had a good sto­ry and amaz­ing fight scenes, but the dub­bing just killed any act­ing or tak­ing the movie seri­ous­ly. The mas­ter was a very for­giv­ing man though, as all Buddhist peo­ple should be, I’m assum­ing. It changed my per­cep­tion of Buddhism in gen­er­al. I always believed that it was an extreme­ly strict belief sys­tem. And, I believe, it should be. After all, if you break one rule, why not break them all? However, I do believe that there is a bal­ance that must be tak­en into account. If you are aware that you sin, and you sel­dom do it, then it should be alright.

I dab­bled in Buddhism once in first year. It was enlight­en­ing, but incom­plete. It just did­n’t fit in with my life well at the time. Of course, the belief that suf­fer­ing is inher­ent in life fit com­plete­ly, but I was still a child (well, I still am, actu­al­ly), try­ing to under­stand myself and the things around me. I think that I am bet­ter adjust­ed to some­thing like Buddhism right now. I’m just not sure how close­ly I should fol­low its’ teach­ings.

I mean, I think I could live on rice. But celiba­cy?! I mean…I’m human. And to make things worse, I’m male. I think it’s some­thing that I would real­ly have to work on. Practicing Buddhism would def­i­nite­ly stop me from being such a good hater. I’m always wor­ried that peo­ple will think that I’m con­ceit­ed from the way I hate peo­ple. I know I’m no bet­ter than the rest, but do oth­er peo­ple? It just wor­ries me.

But it would­n’t wor­ry a Buddhist.

Two Things You Didn't Know About Me

God, I love praise. I think it’s some­thing that I feed on. It boosts my con­fi­dence ever so slight­ly (and tem­porar­i­ly).

It creeps me out when peo­ple touch my chain. Only three peo­ple have ever touched it (includ­ing an ex), and it real­ly does­n’t make me com­fort­able. I guess I see it as a child­ish fas­ci­na­tion when peo­ple feel the need to play with it.

Assumed it would be Easy

I saw an inter­est­ing inter­view yes­ter­day on Vicki. A man and his team had been the first to boat down the ama­zon rapids in a par­tic­u­lar path. They all took turns pad­dling, while they all ate, slept, and cooked in rota­tion, in the boat. It became their life for at least two months (I remem­ber it as six, but I can’t con­firm). When they final­ly fin­ished the trek, and emerged from the base of the riv­er, they had mixed emo­tions. They were hap­py that they fin­ished a very life-threat­en­ing jour­ney and sur­vived, hap­py that they had the ener­gy and tal­ent enough to com­plete it. However, they were also sad that their life was going to become a lot more com­pli­cat­ed again. That they would now have to answer phone calls, reply to e‑mail, get stuck in traf­fic.

It made me won­der if I would ever be able to feel that way. If I could stay away from my plea­sure box long enough, that I would for­get about it, and actu­al­ly regret hav­ing to delete my spam, or hav­ing to answer mes­sages from extreme­ly annoy­ing peo­ple. What could pos­si­bly make me for­get my beau­ti­ful music, or my com­fort­ing inter­face? I’m sure that there have been times where I left my apart­ment, for home, and I nev­er once thought of my com­put­er. This could­n’t have been more than two weeks, to be sure, so I haven’t actu­al­ly been able to test the lim­its of my depen­den­cy. Of course, one should always have more than one pas­sion, and I believe that I do, though some are more in prac­tice than oth­ers. Without my pas­sions, I am with­out being, and with­out my com­put­er, I am with­out my main pas­sion. Pita asked me if I would join him in ball­room danc­ing, but I refused when he asked (though after some care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion), cit­ing time con­straints as being too much of a hur­dle.

I believe, or hope at least, that I am cos­mopoli­tan enough to be able to pick up anoth­er pas­sion, should the need arise. Passions are my drug; some­thing that I can get into, be good at, stand out in, make a dif­fer­ence at. I’ve always need­ed that form of recog­ni­tion. I’ve always need­ed to know that I’m good at some­thing. Perhaps this need will go away when I gain some much need­ed self-con­fi­dence, when I can accept my past, and choose to be the per­son that I am.

No one said it would be fast.

Anger Management

I FOUND IT. I can’t believe I fuck­ing found it. By the slimmest chance, I was able to search on the skimp­i­est lyrics (I could bare­ly under­stand any­thing, the record­ing was so bad, so I went on “in all my dreams, I nev­er thought I’d see”) and found a ref­er­ence to it on a Portishead site. The thread had the title, Anger Management. A search for that end­ed up with an album by Nathaniel Merriweather called Lovage. It turns out that Nathaniel Merriweather is an alias for Dan the Automator, and the song on the album is called Anger Management. I was final­ly able to down­load an excel­lent qual­i­ty record­ing of the song. I guess I should sup­port the artist. I haven’t enjoyed a song this much since Dance of Eterniy by Dream Theater, which was in fuck­ing first year. It feels like this is my new song, an under­score track to my next phase. I’m proud of myself for find­ing such a rare song, and it’s even rar­er that I’m proud of myself.

Lyrics:

my inner demons com­pel me to be here
your cheeks are flush like rose petals
you’re con­sumed with rage but i’m con­sumed with you
our eyes inter­twine through the haze
intox­i­cat­ed by your blood­shot stare
in all of my dreams i nev­er thought i’d see
a face that could launch a thou­sand ships
and the music was like wind in your hair
the moon­light caressed your sil­hou­ette
the kiss of ocean mist is in the air
why must god pun­ish me this way
lay down my hand, the next move is yours
as you undress me with your frozen eyes
in all of my dreams i nev­er thought i’d see
an end­less love to share my blue lagoon
and the music was like wind in your hair
the moon­light caressed your sil­hou­ette
the kiss of ocean mist is in the air
why must god pun­ish me this way
hap­i­ness is hard to come by
but i’ve had my fair share
the satin sheets, the lemon peels
the minor keys, the major pills
we’ve climbed the moun­tain, saw the top
and plant­ed the apple seed
and can’t you see we could’ve had it all
and the music was like wind in your hair
the moon­light caressed your sil­hou­ette
the kiss of ocean mist is in the air
why must god pun­ish me this way
and the music was like wind in your hair
the moon­light caressed your sil­hou­ette
the kiss of ocean mist is in the air
why must god pun­ish me this way
why must god pun­ish me this way
this way, this way