kainasylum

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface...

When my father was dying, I asked him if he had any plans.
He said he was going to recover and write more articles for the Korean newspaper.
I asked him what he would write about.
He said he would write about important things.
He just wanted to write.  He wanted to be important.  He wanted to be remembered.  He just did not want to be dead.

He did not know that I was asked to sign the paper that would end his kidney dialysis treatments so that he could finally die.

I asked him that question because I needed to know if he was ready to die.
His life would end... but I wanted it to be on his own terms.

I asked him if he had any words of wisdom about life... about his life.  Anything he thought about in the recent months he had been bedridden in the hospital.  He didn't have anything to say about life and was annoyed that I would ask such a question.  He then asked me if I was here to find out about "Operation Jasper" in Vietnam... because he will never talk to anybody about that unless I was his commanding officer.

I signed the paper.  Because he never did.  He died on my terms instead of his.

In the following years, I would ask myself if I did the right thing... if his death was premature... if his life was fulfilled enough to where some part of him may have felt closure about the whole thing.

I began to examine the lives of others... of myself... but especially the lives of old people.  I could not help wonder if the elderly thought about their own mortality a lot.  That concept is horrifying to me.  The prospect and fear of dying quickly consumed me after that day; I am running out of time... and I'm not ready.

The questions I wanted my father to answer on his deathbed were...

1. Are you ready?
2. Why or why not?

I could not get these answers from him.  These types of answers can only come from the self.  It was my father's inadvertent last gift to me... those questions became my personal compass.  I want my answer to the first question to be yes, and I intend to have a solid answer for the second question complete with tangible conditions of satisfaction.

A recent reminder of my mortality brought some things to the surface.  Brandee the unicorn let me borrow her book: The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.  It was a lecture he gave to his students knowing that he was dying from pancreatic cancer.  In actuality, it was a lecture for his children who would grow up without him.  I saw the video last year, and it touched me deeply.  Reading the book revitalized some of the triggers and solidified the concepts I had formed from watching that video of a dying man's last lecture.

Everybody takes away their own things from a lecture.  Here is how I filtered it:

• Get the fundamentals down or else the fancy stuff won't work
• When you're screwing up and nobody is saying anything to you anymore, then that means they've given up
• Focus on people, or else your potential will always be limited
• Storytelling is the ultimate universal context that justifies our actions as human beings and serves as the core of our motivations
• Get a feedback loop and listen to it
• Time is the only resource we truly own, and we have only a finite amount

It is Christmas Eve.  I have grown to dread this part of the year because it reminds me of just how not-like-the-others my world really is.  I am home alone because my only remaining family (my mother) is working today and tomorrow.  Logistics work out easier for her if I visit her at work.  We will most likely have Christmas dinner at some Asian restaurant somewhere in Houston.  This is partially why I left Austin for France... because that way, I would at least have an excuse for being home alone on Christmas Eve.

Time.... we only have so much of it left... and we keep wanting things.  How is it that I am 34 years old, but I still live my life like a kid who just moved out of his parents' home?  Because I keep thinking that home exists elsewhere.  Except there is no elsewhere for me... and that truth only becomes apparent during this one short time of the year.  So I typically just shut down in December... Wake up in January and forget that December ever happened.  This is how I have been able to prevent things from changing all these years.

I realize now that my little idiosyncrasies have manifested in various productive and destructive ways over the years.  I own these idiosyncrasies, now... There is no reason I can't just paint my own picture of the world for myself and others.

I'll start simple:  I want a non-awkward Christmas... The kind that most people dread because they have to spend time with their stressful family.  That sounds like a blast!  I can make it happen.  I can make my house feel like a home.  I can bring it to a point where my mom might even enjoy visiting my "home" when she feels like going on a "holiday".  That sounds like a good goal to have.

Maybe next year, I can introduce my mom to that Christmas feeling in a Christmased house... I don't really know what that means, but I think I can fake it til I make it to be just like the rest of you.

After buying that house, the last few months have been financially rough for me... At the same time, many of those I love have found themselves without income and/or fucked by debt.  The realization is setting in that we live in a system where people will be living in debt for life.  It got me to thinking... I am more likely to remain in debt for life than my parents, and if I have kids, they will be more likely to be fucked by debt than me.

Reasons:

• We live in a society of education loans, car loans, and mortgages.  This has not changed from the time of your parents, and it generally enables a more productive society
• But houses, cars, medical care, and education are getting more expensive
• Average incomes are not sufficiently compensating for the rise in costs
• Interest Rates continue to grow, and
• Fees and penalties continue to become more extreme and numerous with every passing year
  

Summary: Everything is more expensive, but we are not making higher salaries to compensate; therefore, a life of debt will become more prevalent with every passing generation.

A person who makes $50,000 today is much poorer than a person who makes $50,000 twenty years ago.  More and more folks will remain "renters for life".  Retirement is a ticking time bomb.  Banks and credit cards charge poor folks high interest rates and penalty fees for being poor while rich folks get paid high interest rates as a reward for being rich.  The amount of money in the world is the same, but the imaginary money being generated by the system of interest rates allocates resources towards concentrated gravity wells that do not evenly distribute back into the societal ecosystem.  The rich will become richer, and the poor will fall further into entropy.  Differences in lifestyle between the rich and poor will diverge to the point where society fractures into two separate classes even more than it already has.

Those who are stuck paying minimum payments have it the worst.  Banks and credit card companies make their money from interest rates and penalty fees.  It has already become a gambling game to the creditors... debts are an investment commodity that can be bought, sold, and passed around amongst dealers like chips at a poker table.  An entire industry has been created that can sustain itself on the concept of interest and fees and casino tactics supported by our legal system.  That system will not change unless a crisis occurs.  There is nothing we can do, but wait for this crisis to happen.

But on our side, we can evaluate our own sense of entitlement on what we are supposed to get out of life in this world.  What do we really need?  What do we want that we can do without?  We have human needs relating to Maslow's Hierarchy: Physiology, Safety, Communion, Esteem, Actualization, and maybe even Transcendence.  The motivation to fulfill these needs is what drives our spending behavior.

Money was a concept initially created as a substitute for personal time in a bartering society.  It used to equate to direct services or goods.  The system became corrupt when money, itself, became seen as a good that could be traded for more money.

I'm going to try something new.... I am declaring war on those industries that sustain themselves solely on interest rates and penalty fees.  My credit is actually decent at this time, but I've been watching these companies victimize my friends for far too many years.  I can change my living habits and find ways to entertain myself that get me the fuck out of debt as quickly as possible.

AND I am going to take my beloved friends with me!

Been spending the last few nights working on THE song.
The basic layers are complete.

The progression is there, and the chorus and harmonies mix well, but the loops are way too obvious.  After getting some advice from a wise musician, I realize that I need to make that heartbeat star of the song change its identity as the song progresses into new phases.

The craftsmanship is also a bit... rough.  I have a lot to learn about Ableton Live, midi controllers, and recording my own voice to account for microphone lag on the timing.  I don't want to, but it looks like I might need to invest in more equipment as I'm finding the headphones insufficient for proper audio tuning.

There is still a lot of work to do.  Every time I listen to the song, there is something to change, evolve, and remove.  At this rate, I don't see things finishing for at least another two weeks assuming I can continue to work on this every night.

After this one, I will keep my promise to Damien and make him that special ring tone he has been dreaming of.

Initiating secret project #342... I'm going to be off the grid for a while.

But before I do, I want to leave these lenses to start off with...

• Lens of No History: Would I still let this continue if I could only remember the last 8 minutes?
• Lens of Infinite Time: How would being an immortal affect my choices?
• Lens of the Ultimate Badass: What would somebody more badass than me do?

Slicing bamboo stalks with Katana Blade

I'm trying this new thing...

No More Promises

... because we are creatures of emotion.  And emotions are driven by our present situation.  Always.

Promises can either be an easy goal to achieve or they can be a prison of words.  In the case of the latter, nobody is happy.

And happy is what we're trying to achieve.