In this simulated quest for a sense of self, I seem to have forgotten

Technolust.

The main motivation for having majored in comp sci in college... I remember mom showing me a poster that I drew when I was somewhere near sixth grade, showing a timeline of my life as I hoped I would live it. As my profession when I "grew up", I wrote 'computer programmer'... it wasn't _movie star_ or _astronaut_ or something glamorous and stereotypical. I think ever since the family Apple IIc arrived at the house, I was glued to the computer.

And that really hasn't change much as the time passed. The hardware changes, the programming language changes, the interface changes, but here I am.

It's just that my motivations fluctuate as I sometimes knock life around and sometimes it knocks me around... more the latter than the former right now, because I am adjusting to becoming an adult alot faster than I would have liked. It leaves me confused alot of the time and sometimes I even feel like I'm missing something. Alot of something. It's funny how life can suck uttterly at one moment but if you use your imagination, it can become something hopeful and quite beautiful at the same time. Life isn't just life, it's life lived. The question becomes, "is it my life or someone elses? How can I find that sense of being myself, but within the larger human context?"

Enlightenment sounds nice, but I have the impression that its not something to be striven for. Looking at the past year, I realize that I try so hard to understand that I've been living inside the map, not the territory.


MORPHEUS
This is the Chicago you know.
Chicago as it was at the end of
the twentieth century. This
Chicago exists only as part of a
neural-interactive simulation that
we call the Matrix.

We GLIDE AT the television as he changes the channel.

MORPHEUS
You have been living inside
Baulliaurd's vision, inside the
map, not the territory. This is
Chicago as it exists today.

The sky is an endless sea of black and green bile. The
earth, scorched and split like burnt flesh, spreads out
beneath us as we ENTER the television.

MORPHEUS
'The desert of the real.'

The Hacker's FAQ

AntiTrust

O.o

Ok... now that's Scary

New layout bugs have been fixed. I still have yet to create functionality for the << archives >> button.

Update from the previous "UnBlogged" entry:

Still thinking about acting, but also considering the Peace Corps. And other options.

Current thought process: A life lived only for yourself is a very small-minded one indeed.

Current MP3 in the headphones: Massive Attack.Protection

It's raining.

From the "UnBlogged" archives:

Dated 3.04.2001 @ 3:47:00pm

I've been thinking about acting recently.

I like the idea of acting, expanding my horizons by playing different roles in life. But I also think alot about the need for money.

Just like everyone else, I need to find an occupation that will allow me to live well enough so that I don't have to think about surviving from paycheck to paycheck. But to me its more important to have a lifestyle that is in harmony with your inspirations and dreams.

I know that I don't want to spend my life sitting at a desk, earning my pay as a wage slave. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, if I have to sit in one place, breathing recycled air in the same building for the rest of my life, I might as well be in prison. Give a man a toy and he will be your slave. My toy is a computer and the game is web design. But I feel the chains locking me into my chair from ten to six oclock every day. It chafes at my mind constantly.

So back to the idea of acting, I find myself concentrating on more of the actors' expressions of characters, the camera angles and the difficulties that certain roles might present to the average person who has to step entirely out of their "normal" role as a human being in society.

It's refreshing to take a more interested eye to acting, especially considering that when I see other people watching television or movies, they seem not to notice that the actors are nothing more than people who are expressing themselves as human beings rather than as a certain static personality. By "human beings" I use the idea that humans are intrinsically similar, but have differing circumstances and experiences in life and build their personalities on those experiences. An actor, as far as I can see so far, moves outside of him/herself and "puts on the suit" of another person in order to express that person/character to the fullest extent.

It seems that the best actors don't just "act", they "become". I remember Jim Carrey saying that after playing the lead in one of his movies it took him something like six months to fully come back to being himself.

That, to me, is reason enough to act. To use acting as a tool for self-examination and the exploration of avenues that otherwise would be closed, and to do that for a living? Yes!

As an actor, I think that the most challenging aspect would be to learn how to open myself to the other actors on the set, and to interact with them as honestly as I would if I were interpreting a character alone. To cast away the pressure to perform is something that I live with constantly; society has artificial rules against which one must always pass inspection. In fact, it would be a goal of mine to becoming truly free in my acting, as a doorway to freedom in my life offstage.

The only problem is that there are thousands of actors who have plenty of talent and skill, but go relatively unnoticed. I have met two young men so far who tried to become actors. Both have been forced to act on the side, keeping their day jobs so that they can eat. The question that emerges there is, "how to get the opportunity to show myself as an actor?" Many of the biographical accounts that I read about successful actors involve a rather heavy dose of chance in their success. So is success in acting more a matter of skill and motivation or a mixture of skill, chance and luck? I think that only experience will answer that question.

--

I'm not so sure that I'd even like to act professionally, though. It's the same concept as being a professional martial artist [I do practice martial arts, by the way]: If you make martial arts into your profession, you have to go to the tournaments, you have to compete, and you have to win to get the prize money and/or sponsorships. By the same token if you are running a martial arts school, you have to to teach the snot-nosed five year olds for whom you are little more than a babysitter, you have to teach the high school-aged Bruce Lee wannabes who really aren't very good, and you have to to teach the forty-year old, established-in-life-with-2.5 kids-types who are just doing it to stay in shape. These people don't care about self-understanding, or even how to execute proper technique. They become your customers, and you have to serve them or else you can't survive.

I think the same goes for acting. A professional actor, an actor by trade, has to take low-quality roles if it's between low-quality and nothing at all. The actor has no choice but to obey the economics of his or her profession. The current entertainment market trends dictate what roles professional actors can pursue. For example, Vietnamese-American actor Dustin Nguyen started out on 21 Jump Street, playing the role of Harry Ioki, a young Japanese guy. It was a well-researched, substantive role and from what he's said about it, Dustin thrived.

But after his time on Jump Street, his acting career was relatively sparse. Only now, with the spoof television show "V.I.P", has he been able to obtain a large role as a regular character. The problem lies in that Dustin wanted to do serious roles. Instead, he was cast in VIP as a wise-cracking Chinese martial artist who throws shurikens [ninja stars] and is basically an Asian superman. He even sometimes makes those "wazaa" sounds while fighting that Bruce Lee made all those moons ago. Not to detract from his martial arts experience, though -- Nguyen definitely has moves. He has considerable time spent in Tae Kwon Do and [I think] now studies Jeet Kune Do [studying JKD doesn't mean much in my book, but that's another story entirely]. Martial arts skills aside, guess what: outside of the martial arts genre, Asian actors are few and far between.

At first, Dustin was adamant about taking serious roles. But over time, he was forced to bow to market pressures. It was his luck that he and Pamela Anderson are friends and that she is [producing?] the V.I.P. television show. Nguyen is a perfectly fine actor with ample skills; he just doesn't seem to have the right face for the mainstream marketing machine. He is being typecast just like Sylvester Stallone and many others.

I wonder if there is enough time to be a martial artist, actor and web designer all at once. I suppose I'll just have to do it and see how it feels.

how's that for fast? The redesign took approx. one [actually two] day[s]. There are still a couple of bugs, tho.

TV turn-off by way of UGS.

Good thing I don't watch TV... but I am an internet-head. Got reality?

Underground Source

Quote for the Day

Buddha did not teach anything to believe in.
He was not a teacher in that sense,
because he did not teach.
He was, on the contrary, an anti teacher,
he took away all the teachings that
people were carrying.

- Osho Rajneesh

Ugh. This page is ugly. Redesign=sooon.

I had a dream last night.... actually it was this morning, the last dream that I had before waking up. I was living in the old house [our family moved from a house to an apartment after my dad lost his job] and I got word that a group of swordsmen were going to arrive and assassinate us all. Remember the ninja from The Hunted? It was that type of a hit. They were targeting either my brother or my father.

So I remember taking up my own sword and waiting until the car pulled up in front of the house. I heard them entering the house, quietly turning the doorknob and moving silently through the foyer. Everyone was upstairs, so the swordsmen-assassins began a sweep of the downstairs region. I was waiting in the family room, the entrance of which is opened and closed by two sliding doors that meet in the middle of the doorway.

The doors slid open; I waited. As the first man stepped through, I waited. At his second step, he was fully in the room. He turned to look directly into my eyes. His masked face could not hide his surprise as the blade of my katana swept cleanly into his midsection, ripping through cloth, skin, abdominal muscle, vital organs. He fell to the floor.

The next man entered. And the next. And the next. One by one, a sword battle, man to man, short and brutal. I had been transformed into an efficient agent of death, one of the tengu of old Japan whose wrath was manifested in the blade of the sword. The seventh man stood before me.

His sword rose above his head, he stepped forward silently, slowly. His eyes concentrated on my eyes, my eyes concentrated on his whole being. In a flash of folded steel, his katana moved as lightening down to split my head in two. I dropped to a position in which one knee was three inches from the floor, simultaneously raising my sword to meet his five inches above my head. Shifting to the side, I brought my blade down across his knuckles, severing nerve, bone, blood vessels. My sword continued downward. Ichi! Ni! Down and up again, I swept upward and in while taking a step forward, using my legs to power the slashing movement deep into his abdomen. Hiatsu! The shout of spiritual power rose from the depths of my self as I struck through his body with my sword, my entire self vaniquishing the enemy.

---

Even more interestingly, there was no blood in this dream. Every cut would affect my opponent... he would react, but there would be no blood. Hm... a great dream to wake up to, regardless. Especially since I've been considering starting Iaido over the summer.

[32] In the Japanese martial arts of long ago, one motion meant death, and that was the reason for the great deliberation and concentration in the movements preceding attack. One stroke and it's over; one dead man -- sometimes two, if there were two strokes and both were as they should be. It all happens in a flash...

[40,41] ... the Japanese samurai and masters knew that before a person became worthy of killing another he had first to be able to kill himself: with their swords they learned not only to cut their foes in two, but even more to cut their own consciousness in two. If they could not do that, the could not win a fight.

How to die, how to live? Kendo, the way of the sword, asked that question again and again; and in that sense it was close to the way, close to the spirit of Zen.

* Taisen Deshimaru. The Zen Way to the Martial Arts.

From Love In the Scene?

"Relationships based on fun usually do not last (fun only). Also, sleep deprivation prevents a stable lifestyle, which will affect any relationship. Then there is some lack of reality and normalcy. The rave scene should be a temporary escape from real life, not life itself. It is a tool you can use to make your life better, but if you take it too seriously, it tends to overcome you swallow you up and eventually spit you out... Not permanently damaged, but set back quite a bit in life."

Chris aka Smurf
Atlanta, Georgia

hrm.....

I speak Engrish!

Note: I also speak English.

From dailyzen:

"If where you stand is reality, then your actions have power."

Ever since antiquity, with excellence beyond measure, the saints and sages have experienced this Great Cause alone, as if planting great potential and capacity. Without setting up stages, they abruptly transcend to realize this essence alone. Since before the time when nothing existed, this essence has been ever still and unmoved, determining the basis of all conscious beings. It permeates all times and is beyond all thought. It is beyond holy and ordinary and transcends all knowledge and views. It has never fluctuated or wavered: it is there, pure and naked and full of life. All beings, both animate and inanimate, have it complete within them.

If you can turn fast on top of things, everything will be in your grasp. Capturing and releasing, rolling up and rolling out-all can be transformed. At all times remain peaceful and tranquil, without having anything whatsoever hanging on your mind. In action you accord with the situation and its potential, holding the means of discernment within yourself. Shifting and changing and successfully adapting, you attain Great Freedom - all things and all circumstances open up before your blade, like bamboo splitting, all "bending down with the wind."

Therefore, if where you stand is reality, then your actions have power. Turning the topmost key, achieving something that cannot be taken away in ten thousand generations, you see and hear the same way as the ancient buddhas and share the same knowledge and functioning.

Zen Letters; Teachings of Yuanwu translated by J.C. Cleary and Thomas Cleary (1994)
Yuanwu (1063-1135)

How does a person live his entire life in the pursuit of security?

I see life as living, doing. Not just breathing.

I read recently that Jackie Chan risks death if struck with a percussive blow to the right[?] side of his skull. This is due to an accident on the set of Armour of God [1986] in which he fell from a tree and his head smashing a rock cracked his skull. He still has a "thimble-sized" hole in his skull from the impact.

But Jackie still risks his life for every movie, performing all [or at least 95%] of his own stunts. His absolute lust for life is obvious in the way that he shows the mastery of his unique on-screen martial artistry. Despite increasing back problems and the admission that he can't keep up the continual assault on his body that has become his trademark over the years, Chan clearly acknowledges the risks that he takes, and promptly forgets his limitations.

The rumble in my mind is coming to a crescendo these days, and I know that either I will be back in school by this fall [2001] or doing something else with my life. Desk jockeying is the art of a peacock in a cage, doomed to strutting proudly within an impregnable structure without ever being able to shake out and display its shimmering iridescent plumage. I have fallen into the trap of waiting, that omnipresent sense of "in the future, I will..." and "if only I was in the right environment, I could do so much more..."

Luck is the combination of preparation and opportunity.

I feel almost as if opportunity ends when responsibility begins. That is, responsibility is limiting if not initiated in response to the possibilities of opportunity. Too many words there.

When I was younger, I would dream and explore. I could write code, play soccer, fight, and think twice or as many times as I felt like it. All this happened either before the age of fourteen [when I received my working papers and started working after school] or during summer vacations. Time was mine for the taking, and I took as much time as I wanted to. Inspiration is not constant for me, so I took my time just to do what I felt at the moment. Not right, not wrong. The resource that is time was apparently endless and therefore rarely the source of emergency.

Now, as I begin to age from childhood to "old youth", I suddenly feel as if time were oxygen, and I am being choked slowly but with firmly increasing pressure. In a metaphysical sense, the sensation reminds me of being choked out in Gracie Jiujutsu. Not an air choke, where the pressure lies across the windpipe -- that is painful, but relatively slow and unwieldy. This feeling is more analogous to an existential blood choke, in which the carotid artery and jugular vein are forcibly obstructed. The result is that your head feels like it might explode, depending on the choke, for every single one of the three to six seconds it takes to lose consciousness. I feel this every day, unless I am sleeping, meditating or otherwise cognitively preoccupied.

The strangest part of it is that I have felt alive in the past, as alive as could possibly be and absorbed in the moment. This was during martial arts training, and "becoming one with the moment itself" was my goal. The idea sounds like mumbo to read it on the page, but when I work out, the intellectual aspect really doesn't matter. The body and mind both coorespond to create perception. I suppose that I had internalized the concept of reaction time and given it a dimensional meaning, one of accelerating the entire self to catch up with the moment instead of lagging behind to process "reality". I was trying to bring myself out of the past and into the present. That, to me, is truly being alive; there is no boundary between "now" and "later", because now is the only non-fictional state. Everything else is jaded by the machinations of the intellect, to an increasing exponentially as the time between action and reaction increases. Eventually, as you remove life from the moment, it becomes a onerous chunk of thought rather than an dimensionless expression of existence. The ultimate abstraction of "now" lies within the realms of philosophy and religion. Somewhere in between lies the artificial world of business protocols and planned social "occasions". Even a timeline can be seen as the stretching of the moment into a chart of linear distractions. This is why history is always colored by the imagination [distortion] of hindsight.

I need to stop waiting and find a way to distinguish patience from negligence.


The essence of aikido is zero. -- Morihei Ueshiba

Maybe Ueshiba-sensei can give me some ideas.