I struggled with this for awhile, abandoning it midway through, but I finally got it to work. Most of the instructions for installing typo 4.0.1 on dreamhost by Aiden Bordner worked for me, except you need to edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb as described by Chris H.

To summarize:

1. Download Typo using Subversion:
   svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo
2. Setup a new host and set the directory to /home/username/typo/public and enable FastCGI support.
3. Setup a mySQL server.
4. Create config/database.yml:
   login: &login
  adapter: mysql
  host: mySQL server hostname
  username: mySQL server username
  password: mySQL server password

development:
  database: typo_db
  <<: *login

test:
  database: typo_db
  <<: *login

production:
  database: typo_db
  <<: *login

5. Edit config/environment.rb and uncomment the line that says ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] = ‘production’
6. Edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb and comment out or delete the line b.settings['canonical_server_url'] = b.settings['canonical_server_url'].gsub(%r{/$},'')
7. Setup your database by running rake migrate RAILS_ENV=production. Note that this step will fail if you don’t edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb
8. Edit public/dispatch.fcgi and insert the following code before the line that reads RailsFCGIHandler.process!
class RailsFCGIHandler
  private
    def frao_handler(signal)
      dispatcher_log :info, "asked to terminate immediately"
      dispatcher_log :info, "frao handler working its magic!"
      restart_handler(signal)
    end
    alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

9. Make sure that both public/dispatch.rb and public/dispatch.fcgi are executable.

Typo can sometimes be excruciatingly slow to load up, you may have to reload the page a couple of times.

So what has really twisted my mind is the fact that habeas corpus has been suspended and the Authorities can basically disappear people, just like in corrupt developing countries. I really didn’t think I would see the Republic of the United States of America fall within my lifetime, but I guess I was just in denial.

The Great Experiment is over. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, please forgive us.

In this shadowed hour, I find myself contemplating the nuances of timing.

Something as simple as this: it is 8:30 pm on a Friday night, and I can’t help but wonder how many fools will be driving up from San Diego to Los Angeles trying to catch the night life. Given the fact that the average club closes around 2 am, what will the optimum time to try to drive up there without getting stuck in a buttload of traffic?

It sounds too much like an SAT question, frankly.

The other thing I worry about, not so much because I worry about it that much, personally, but because my mother who worries about everything in the whole wide world keeps reminding me about it, is that around 2 am or so, all the drunks find their way onto the freeways, so I clearly do not want to be out too late lest I find myself roadkill.

(I find it bizarre and disturbing that drunks always seem to survive car crashes, even when the car they hit explodes and incinerates all five people inside. But I digress most macabrely.)

I don’t know if it’s just the fact that summer is clearly over (this despite the fact that I’m sweating like crazy right now because of the lack of air conditioning in my apartment), but I’m starting to feel a little blue. Then again, it could just be the whole turning 30 thing that is finally catching up to me.

I feel adrift and purposeless.

(No seriously, more so than usual.)

Mostly, I just want to sleep. Maybe it’s just the fact that I didn’t do much of that [sleeping] for the past four weeks. I suppose my body just wants to catch up.

But it is interesting what sort of low level misery the body will adapt to. I didn’t realize that I really couldn’t breathe through my nose until I got allergy skin tested yesterday. Then I discovered that, in addition to a bunch of trees, I am allergic to dust mites (not to mention cats and dogs.) So afterwards, I decided to take an antihistamine, and suddenly I feel better. My head feels lighter, and I didn’t have the usual number of headaches today. Ridiculous.

I realize that, despite the nominal fact that I am employed in the health care sector, I don’t take very good care of myself. For the longest time, I’ve been hoping that I’d drop dead young, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the messy ordeal of growing old. But as my lower back begins to ache and all sorts of weird twinges take hold of me, I realize that I may not have a choice. I might still drop dead relatively young, but not before my body grows old before its time. At least, if I continue in my self-destructive ways.

I suppose that might be enough to keep me going for now. Just taking care of my simple needs. Simple pleasures. That is, I guess, the lesson that I’ve learned from my oldest friend B (and from my dog A, who, despite my whopping wheal and flare reaction, I don’t really think I’m allergic to.)

This crippling feeling of isolation and abject loneliness will have to wait awhile before I seek some sort of resolution. I guess what I really should be working on is making sure I don’t have my first MI before I’m 40.

(And, no, aging has not improved my sense of pessimism and dark humor.)

gonna buy me a spaceship powered by dark energy take me to the outermost reaches forever chasing infinity

losing myself in improbabilities a googol light years out and still caught in this gravity well, unmoved, unmoving all the eons wasted in regret

and she sang to me once upon a distant dream I wondered at the sweetness of her voice though I lay still, tied down and unmoving a doomed fly on a spider’s web confounded by the looping weave of time and chance

do I remember, or do I dream? do I hope or pray or deceive myself and is anything I think of even real?

Lying beside her, less than a finger’s breadth apart I swear fast accelerating, the gap becoming a yawning chasm my breath escapes into the merciless vacuum igniting galaxies and superclusters in between spawning light, and the flickering shadows that follow and mesmerized as I raced towards infinity and time’s arrow pointing to entropy

dark energy don’t fail me now

It’s 2am and I can’t sleep. I’m not feeling well, physically speaking.

So Mireya* actually called me back and like a fool, I said, no, I can’t go out tonight. Stupid.

Instead, I went out with J and Company, got ridiculously drunk, and found myself embedded in high drama, which is never good when you’re ridiculously drunk.

I still have to call J back in order to debrief myself about what the hell happened that night. (Which was nothing exciting, at least for me, although there were people at the party who were getting some action.) Mostly it was about dragging skeletons out of the closet for all the world to see. Drama.

*names changed to preserve anonymity

Summer is officially over (despite the fact that today’s high was 76°F and I went out in shorts and flip-flops) and I can’t help but wonder where all the time went. Of course, I don’t know if it’s an artifact of getting old, but it also seems like it’s about a decade since it was June. (Yeah, I’ve been noticing this strange paradox ever since I started residency. The recent past seems simultaneously like it was just yesterday, and like it was 100 years ago. Go figure.)

And then there is my growing phobia of September.

Sure, maybe it’s logical. There was, after all, the trauma of September 11 five years ago, but it really goes much deeper than that. September was the time of year that I broke up with Grace* in a rather cataclysmic fashion (mostly related to the fact that she had slept with some other dude.) It was also the time of year that I told Cara* how I felt about her, and ended up leaving it at that, once and forever. September was the part of the year when I finally came home from college in defeat, with all my plans for the future in disarray. It was also the time of the year when I found myself completely marooned out in the middle of nowhere, without anyone around to celebrate my 23rd birthday with (by far the worst birthday ever.)

I continue to be fearful of the future.

*names have been changed to preserve anonymity

I stumbled upon this blog post about how most of the time spent developing code is actually spent rewriting rather than actually writing, which actually fits the aphorism about how most of writing in general is rewriting. But the thing that he discusses is that this is a function of the fact that most developers can’t immediately grok what code is supposed to do just by reading it, and a lot of them end up trying to rewrite what has already been written, which, in my estimation, is a glorious waste of time.

In my mind, this is simply another example that most developers can’t properly comment on and document code to save their life, although perhaps it is also a sign that the particular high-level language they’re working in is not human readable. (C and C++ comes to mind, although I come from a background of learning to code in BASIC, Logo, Lisp, and Pascal and, God help us all, assembly, and the only thing that I know how to do these days is write perl scripts, although I sometimes delve into the atrocity known as Javascript, so take that as you will.) Whether or not this is applicable to real-life development these days, I grew up believing that if you can’t read your code, you’re simply not doing it right. Supposedly, well-written code is self documenting, and all you should have to do is read the procedure/method/variable name, and figure out quite easily what it’s supposed to mean and/or do. If you actually have to rewrite the code, that means that the guy who came before you really fucked things up, or that you are completely illiterate when it comes to this particular high-level language.

Of course, this may all be bullshit, because I don’t code for a living.

What I do do, however, is practice medicine, and I find that there is a lot of similarities here. Because most people who have medical illness tend to have more than one doctor, you’re forced to dig through old notes and lab tests that you didn’t order and you have to try to figure out just what the hell some other guy was thinking without necessarily being able to talk to him or her. And, let me tell you, the human body and human pathology is far less documented than computer architectures and high-level languages, and, frankly, we don’t run into this problem of having to reinvent the wheel each time. Sure, there are some that rewriting is done, in the sense that sometimes the plan has to be modified, but most of the time this is because new, unexpected data comes in, or because the patient just doesn’t want to do what you told them to do. (Imagine coders trying to deal with non-compliantadherent computers.) But even the most inexperienced physicians (such as myself) can rifle through some chicken scratches, glean what medications someone is on, and maybe even talk to the patient themself to figure out just what the heck is going on without having to start entirely from scratch.

Sure, the notion that reading about something is not the same as doing something is valid, but sometimes you have to make do with the reading (because in the beginning, all I ever really knew about heart failure was what I had read,) and you don’t have time with the doing (because recreate all the experiments since Galen figured out the cardiovascular system would be just a tad time-consuming), so ultimately, whatever is practical tends to win over whatever may be theoretically correct/proper, and practically speaking, you don’t have time to grok code by rewriting it all.

But I grant that the connection between writing code and treating patients is tenuous at best.

But again, a brief note: it always seems that whenever I get a new blog engine working, I find myself typing about all sorts of crazy minutiae. Eventually I will settle down some and not blog. I promise.

On some Saturdays, I head out to the Mission Cafe in North Park before it gets overly crowded and buy myself an L.A. Times (because, frankly, the San Diego Union-Tribune is not fit to wipe my ass with.) On the front page, I found two rather depressing stories: (1) the beleaguered Charles Drew/Martin Luther King, Jr. Medical Center in South Central L.A. has failed a “make it or break it” federal inspection, thereby losing funding from CMS and (2) this character piece about a guy named Ronnie Wise who has been fighting illiteracy in the Mississippi delta for the past 30 years in the face of institutionalized racism, uncaring politicians, arsonists, and weather, and who has decided to retire early.

For all you nitwits who continue to insist that racism is a thing of the past and that we now live on a “level playing field,” here’s what I think of you:

The King/Drew debacle has been going on for years upon years, and for some reason (and the L.A. Times itself was the publication that exposed, once and for all, that it wasn’t because of a lack of money) they have been unable to come into minimal regulatory compliance. It is notorious for being a place where it is not safe to go if you ever get sick or injured. It had already failed to obtain JCAHO certification and CMS had already threatened to pull funding multiple times.

A good part of this disaster is the fault of corrupt physicians who were taking advantage of the situation, and these bastards earn my utmost contempt. And naturally, there was all sorts of political corruption, hiring corruption, nepotism, and gross incompetence.

I feel angriest because of all the patients (all of whom are poor and/or minorities)they’ve let down. I hope these bastards who contributed to this mess never get another job in health care.

The other thing is that the ripple effect will be all little hair-raising. Guess where all the county patients have to go now? L.A. County/USC and Harbor/UCLA, naturally, despite the fact that these aren’t exactly underutilized hospitals. We’ll see if the EMS system in Southern California can actually continue to function.

---

But the article about illiteracy in Mississippi was just as depressing. I can’t believe what it must be like not to be able to read. I guess I’ve taken it for granted. According to my parents, I could already read a little when I was two years old, and I’ve always been able to read above grade level since, and I always have to have a book I’m reading. The idea that all these words and sentences floating around everywhere should be indecipherable scares the crap out of me.

Now I know that reading is not a natural human function. I know people who are actually quite high-functioning but who are dyslexic or otherwise challenged. And then there is blindness, which happens to be something that I am at higher risk for than the average population. The inability to read is the main reason that I fear going blind. So I’ve had people tell me that they really envy my ability to read quickly. Reading fast is something more natural for me than, for example, making friends and fostering human relationships, something that other people seem to do quite easily, but this is neither here nor there.

So I guess I found myself identifying with this Ronnie Wise character. He appears to be someone who is quite reticent about himself, a little gruff, a little off-putting, who has few acquaintances and apparently no friends. And yet, somehow, he manages to find a woman who loves him (which is mentioned almost as an aside in the story, although it may be a big contributor to his reasons for deciding to retire early.)

If I had any hope left… but I don’t.

In any case, he is an object lesson in trying to do the right thing in the world, getting beaten down and persecuted for doing it, and ending up burning out and unappreciated for it. At the very least, he didn’t get crucified or shot, I suppose.

Sometimes my Catholic (though slightly heretical) upbringing rears up its ugly head, and I can’t help but wonder if this isn’t actually Hell already, and have all already been condemned.

I was happy for about 15 minutes when for some reason the dark clouds of despair overcame me, leaving me a little pissed off, and very bitter.

The main problem is that, these days, I really don’t know what I want. No, that’s not strictly true. The problem is that I know exactly what I want, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get it.

We will, of course, leave specifics out of this.

In many ways, I feel like I’m emerging from a fog. I have been buried in work for the past month, literally up to my arms and knees in it, and I haven’t had any chance at all to live even a quasi-normal life. The last time I had a coherent non-work-related thought, it was still summer, and now all of the sudden, here we are at the break of autumn. I am beginning to hate how quickly time goes.

At the same time, I realize that my anti-social tendencies will get me nowhere fast.

I don’t know. Ultimately, the problem seems to be that I can’t find the path to least resistance. I feel (and I know this is odd) like a river that has been dammed.

---

The other thing is that I recognize a lot of my insecurity lies in the fact that, even at this late stage in the game, my life is still provisional. Oh, sure, I’m kind of doing what I want to be doing with my life, but it still isn’t it (whatever it maybe.) Fact of the matter is that I have no fucking clue what I’ll be doing two years from now, except that it won’t be what I’m doing now.

This feeling of transience, this sensation of being unmoored, is really getting to me.

---

I’ve been reading Many Worlds out of One which is about how the Theory of Inflation basically leads to a universe so expansive that it contains not only everything that we can observe, but every possible variation, combination, and sequential history of everything that we can observe. (In other words, there are 10¹⁰⁰¹⁰⁰ versions of any one thing, each one marginally different from the other only due to the vagaries of quantum uncertainty.)

I had this bizarre moment where I sensed that every time I moved, all googleplex of my clones and quasi-clones moved almost exactly like I did, each in their own particular region of space. This quickly made me tired.

I remember going to sleep with this creepy feeling that all this infinity is out there, and it’s populated with different versions of me (not to mention everybody else who ever existed.)

Although I suppose this has always been my pathetic fantasy. Somewhere out there in the vast infinity that is our universe is a version of me who is actually happy. I guess knowing that will have to suffice.

It’s been a long time since I’ve hoped for anything, and I’m not about to start now.

I can taste autumn in the air. Septembers have always been bittersweet. Since I turned 30, I haven’t really had much of a chance to reflect, although I find that regret frequently colors my reminiscences.

I am tired and both physically and emotionally aching, and the speed at which everything seems to happen is so bewildering that all I can really do is sit here and gape at the folly and the madness swirling all around me.

I have been trying for the longest time not to give a damn.

Still, there is this emptiness.

Whatever. It never does any good to wonder about these sorts of things when your tired, exasperated, and maybe even a little angry. Tomorrow, as always, promises to be better. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least.

So here I am, the last hours of my 20’s, and there are no answers, really.

B_s brings up the idea of feeling out of place amongst our friends who have families and romantic relationships, and, yeah, that’s been my life for a good long while now, this sense of utter alienation, to the point where I doubt my own humanity.

Because I know that it’s not normal to live life like this, cut off from any sort of intimacy.

Floating down this particular relativistic reference frame, I have no one.

There is the all-consuming void also known as the Internet, where I type out my pathetic screeds, with as much effect as screaming into the wind. No one gives a flying fuck, and why should they?

I do not seek pity. I do not seek consolation. There is only one thing I want to know, and I know all too well that there ain’t no answer to this one: why the hell am I here?

What is my purpose on this planet?

I have been given gifts and I have this general sense of understanding that these gifts are to be used in service of humanity, but the specific details escape me.

It’s easy to think of myself as worthless. It’s easy to think of myself as this pathetic sad-sack who has got nothing to offer the universe at large, and by and large, this is probably true, at least when it comes to touching another person’s heart. But aside from that, I’ve got something inside of me that demands to be expressed. Even if I tried my damndest to kill this inexorable flame burning within my heart, I know I would fail at that. Because what would it serve me? What would it serve this universe?

It’s (almost) all as pointless as trying to thread a camel through the eye of a needle.

---

What I am is afraid, really.

There are people in this world I would like to be with. I’m not just talking about the romantic kind of love (although there is a part of me that I have long tried to smother—a part of me that I cannot destroy no matter how hard I try—that longs for this, that wants to be in love, and to be loved in return.) There are people in this world whom I want to see change and grow and become more than what they are now.

And maybe that’s the only thing keeping me here, this damnable urge to keep turning and turning the page, no matter how heart-breaking and soul-crushing. No matter how it lacerates my innermost self, no matter how deep the wounds.

A part of me just wants to see how this all turns out, to see triumphs and defeats, the endless cycle of seaons, and of tides ebb and flowing.

And yet—what part do I play in all this? Am I just a passenger? Some sort of psychic parasite, supping on the fragments of other people’s dreams? What happened to me? Why is there this soul-shaped hole inside of me, sucking out any desire to keep on going?

I have known despair, and yet despair has still not been enough to kill me, at least not yet.

There is much more I can suffer, this I know, although I do not wish to suffer (even if my actions belie my words.)

---

Look. I don’t need an oath of everlasting love. I don’t need anyone’s undying devotion. All I’m looking for, all that I wish I could have even if for only a brief moment, is to talk to someone and spill all my awful secrets to. Someone who will listen to my story and not judge. Someone who, when asked if they’d like to travel this road with me, swears no oaths, promises nothing, but only says “OK.”

Because I’m weary of trudging down this shadowed paths by myself, finding myself locked away in labyrinthine mazes, fearing that I’ll never get out. (And yet, somehow, through the blood, the sweat, the tears, through the heartache and awful sorrow, I’ve still managed to get out so far.)

I just want to have someone around who will say “OK, sure, why not,” who will travel these roads not because of their hopeless devotion to me, not because of their self-sacrificing love, but because they want to. Because this is the road that they’re meant to take. Not because of expectations and demands and obligations and utang na loob. Not because of martyr complexes or pity for pathetic creatures like me. But because this Way might be fun. Because this Way might turn OK after all.

In this shadowed hour with my brain whirling, twirling, grinding, spinning, I long for something that I cannot do anything about. Because this sort of thing that I’m pining for is not something that I can do anything to achieve. She just has to be, and if she isn’t, then I’ve got nothing.

I’m tired, tired of these Septembers that offer nothing but disappointment and disillusionment. There have been so many of them, end upon end, that I don’t even really know what I want anymore. All I want is to stop hurting, to lie here under the open sky, and to know nothing but peace. In the end, all I want is tranquility and rest, and I wish I didn’t have to want what I cannot have.

---

I wanted to be optimistic, as my youth ends definitively, and the next stage of my life begins, but there is just too much woe that I can’t seem to be rid of. I can’t seem to drop all this weight from my heart, and so I end up dragging it along with me.

What I’d love to be able to do is start anew, and fulfill simple pleasures. Forget the big picture. I just want to be content with tending the garden, and doing my work, and not wanting anything that I can’t have. If I could just excise this aching desire from my heart, maybe I can find rest in this world.

Maybe.

All I can really expect is that tomorrow is another day. Opportunities abound, and, sure, it will always be interesting to see where I end up. But I don’t know if I can wander around in the darkness all by myself any more. I’m too tired and too scared, and while I have friends who I can trust to the ends of the earth, I just don’t want to burden them with the vast extent of my despair.

I like to pretend that the world would be better off without me, but deep inside I know that’s not true. The world could give a rat’s ass whether or not I was in it. I am an infinitesimal dust mote floating around a vast empty chamber, nothing more.

And yet, I can’t just hide my light under a basket.

There is something in this life that I was meant to do. I guess the trick of it is to figure out just what exactly that something may be.

Until then, there’s really nothing else for it but to keep turning the pages, and to keep tending that garden, I guess.

It’s natural to look back, I suppose. We are the stories that we tell, after all. But the beatification and fetishization of this particular day by the media—blogs included— is kind of disgusting.

Who the fuck cares where you were “that fateful day”? You’ve obviously lived through it, survived. It’s time to move on.

The failure to move on, though, partly explains why the U.S. is as messed up as it is. Thanks to Bush and company, we seem to be trapped in a Groundhog Day-esque vortex, forced to live through 9/11/2001 over and over again. I can’t listen to the dolt that is our president speak simply because of the number of times he interjects “September 11th” into his speeches.

The irony is that 9/11/2001 is a blatant stain on neocons, a sign of their complete failure to understand the changed world we live in, and a sign that they have no conception of how to keep this country safe. This tragedy happened on their watch and I marvel that people are so stupid as to think that these jokers can protect us from anything. Instead, they’ve got us fearing bottles of water. Bottles of water, people! Idiocy.

I say, fuck Bush and his cronies. It’s time to take this country into the future, out of fear, out of medieval darkness, out of ignorance. If Americans don’t want to fade into historical inanity and obscurity, overtaken in terms of business and science and technology, something which we are on a trajectory to do these days with our out-of-control budget deficits and trade imbalances, our failing school systems, our refusal to accept basic tenets of the modern science-driven economy, then we must take up our mantle of leadership once again, remind everyone that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” and start innovating.

Don’t stay mired in your fear, in those memories of darkness and evil. The sunlight has triumphed, the sky is clear. Fear serves us nothing. We must face the future courageously.

This should be self-evident, but it seems that the media is hellbent on having us forget, that every time we are afraid, the terrorists win. Instead, be a soldier in the real war on terror. Refuse to be cowed. Prefer to face danger on your own terms rather than trying to hide behind the paper-tiger that is security-theater. Remeber that we are Americans. Live free or die.

There are approximately 3 days, give or take, until I turn 30, and I’ve basically hunkered down and accepted the inevitable. My life will not be visibly different in any way, no major milestones will be reached. It will just be another godforsaken Wednesday that will blow by faster than I can think.

These past few weeks have come and gone, leaving me a little bewildered. I haven’t really had much time to think about what I’ve been doing, much less what direction my life is going. Sure, I’m taking it one day at a time, but it’s starting to feel like I’m accelerating blindly down an alley at night without streetlights, and my headlights are broken. I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to make a turn eventually if I don’t want to slam into a brick wall, but which direction and exactly when I should turn are questions that I certainly haven’t got the answer to. And I’d love to hit the brakes, but that doesn’t seem to be a viable option as of late.

What I will do, though, is bury myself in music. Despite the big, fat pipeline leading vast quantities of data from the Internet to my LAN, I still buy CDs, but together with the MP3s I’ve downloaded, I have a good week’s worth of continuous new tunes. I figure that will ward off the specters of regret that have haunting me lately, at least for a little while.

---

For some reason, I feel like summer has come to an end prematurely. I can already smell the autumn smoke, and I can practically taste the chill in the air. Usually, summer puts up a fight at least until my birthday, and it doesn’t usually feel like autumn until October rolls around. I don’t know. Stupid global warming.

August seems like only yesterday, and right now I’m reminiscing about that night when it was 105° F even though it was already 8pm.

---

But whatever, nothing lasts for ever, or some such shit. Time waits for no one.

You scored as Beast. Beast is an intelligent, politcal spokesman for the X-Men. He has a Ph.D in Genetics and is well versed in literature. He may look like a blue fuzzy monster, but deep down he’s very benevolent and logical. Powers: Enhanced strength and agility Beast 85% Jean Grey 70% Colossus 65% Storm 60% Rogue 60% Wolverine 60% Nightcrawler 55% Iceman 50% Emma Frost 30% Gambit 30% Cyclops 20% Most Comprehensive X-Men Personality Quiz 2.0 created with QuizFarm.com

From my cousin J

If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning. — Catherine Aird

The idea was that I was actually going to sleep early today, but somehow that failed to happen. I’m going to try yet again to wake up in time for work, although I’m not all that hopeful.

I find myself driving aimlessly around San Diego at around this time of night a lot. Well, maybe not aimlessly. I did have errands to run, such as dropping off rent at my landlord’s, and buying a t-shirt from Old Navy. And in the end, I ended up eating, even though I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t eat so late, and that I should just go to sleep.

There are just a million, billion ideas flitting through my head, and I can’t help worry about my sanity.

And I thought once again about the imaginary landscape that fills my head: a world that is like and yet unlike the world I’ve traversed thus far. I had yet another dream about it last night, except this time it was filled with existential dread. I kept thinking my dad was having CHF or another MI, and I guess that’s what I’m worried about these days. I just don’t want to get a phone call out of nowhere telling me that something is wrong, and I think that’s what I fear the most about tomorrows.

Accepting the inevitable is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

In any case, I figure I ought to write a story about this world I keep on dreaming about. It is, once again, September, and it always brings me back to The Lord of the Rings which starts off in September. Somehow, if I traced the convoluted tracks in my mind, I would find that my impetus to write is linked to this magnificent piece of fantasy, and I can honestly say that I’ve been working on my own Tolkien clone since I was 12 years old.

But, other than scraps of so-called “poetry” and maybe these demented confessions that I spew upon the ether, my productivity is about as close to nil as you can get and still possibly call yourself a writer.

And these days, I wonder “what if” a lot.

I also dreamt of M the other day, whom I seemingly have lost touch with, and dreaming of her made me think of Chicago. And I kind of wonder if this weird kind of nostalgia I’m feeling is simply the fact that that is a part of my life that is done with, already a relic of my younger days. I wistfully remember all those snow-filled days, those crisp winter mornings, and I can’t help but think how ludicrous it seems that I would actually want to experience them again.

And still, still, I wonder “what if” a lot.

Then there is a particular September I recall some six years past, and I guess it really didn’t make a damn difference, I don’t know why I perseverate about impossibilities.

The problem with my memories of love, or of what I think is love, or of what I misunderstand as love, is that almost all of it is mostly in my mind. I am the master of the unrequited, I guess. And the small fraction that wasn’t unrequited ended in such glorious disaster that I really don’t have anything positive to say about the whole experience.

I recently made up a playlist chronicling the summer, with songs that remind me of my recurring journeys up and down the coast of Southern California, and two of the songs—“Looks Just Like the Sun” by Broken Social Scene and “Little Thoughts” by Bloc Party—are from my cousin’s wedding slideshow, and I just think of his wife J talking about the evolution of her relationship with my cousin, and I can’t help but wonder, is there any chance in heaven or hell that someone might feel even a fraction of that for me?

Not the aching drama of unrequited love that I’m all too familiar. Not the melodramatic and almost perverse intensity with which N pursued me after it all fell apart, leaving me always wonder, “What the hell?!” I’m talking about that purity of spirit that I witnessed between R and J, that wonderful clarity of having found that person who is willing to journey through life with you.

Now, I recognize that I haven’t been the best friend to anyone lately. I’ve been too wrapped in my own world, in work, and in my mental instability. But as the summer begins to fade, marked with the passing of the Labor Day Weekend, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been abandoned.

And yes, this is an overly melodramatic thing to say, but I can’t help it, I’ve got to ask: would anyone give a flying fuck if I died tomorrow? I figure there will be the generalized sadness that people feel when someone they know bites the big one, and I’ll have a decently attended funeral, but will anyone miss me? I figure, not for long. Whose life do I touch these days? What difference am I making in this universe? Bah.

I don’t know why I’m feeling sorry for myself these days. I just got done resolving to grab the future by the balls, and take each day as they come, and here I am moping.

And still my universe contracts, and maybe I’m just doomed, and damned, to spend my life alone, and not just alone in terms of never having a romantic relationship, but alone, as in there is no-one around who cares anyway, and this is just fucking dispiriting.

I would like to change, somehow. I wish I knew what it would take for me to become a well-adjusted human being. Times like this it just seems like this awful impossibility, and maybe I just have to accept the fact that I’m only quasi-human—human in form and function, but likely subhuman when it comes to relationships and emotion.

There is something seriously wrong with me, and I wish there was a way to fix it, but I fear there isn’t, so I’m just going to spend the rest of my life bungling around like an idiot.

Feh.

I had thought that I’d experienced the worst that life has to offer, in terms of loneliness and despair, but at this very moment, I have to honestly say, I don’t recall ever feeling this calamitously shitty.

The thing that I’ve been mulling over is the fact that there have been so many Septembers in the past where I’ve been ever hopeful, with the intent of making a change in my life. And while I know it would be hard to convince many of you, there have been times that I’ve actually acted upon this impulse, only to be rebuffed, or even worse, only to be faced with puzzled indifference.

So I face this particular September with just a little trepidation, fearing that the buoyancy I feel in my spirit is the exact same misguided feeling: thinking that things are going to change, only to be faced with exactly the same disappointment and sense of failure as last time.

And I recognize, perhaps for the first time in my life, that this is the exact feeling that I need to overcome, this sense of déjà vu, this sense of fatalistic futility, that it’s all going to turn to shit anyway in the end.

I don’t know that. Maybe it could, and maybe it won’t.

Who knows?

So what I’m trying to cultivate here is this sense of possibility. No matter what happens, bad or good, things will be different, if only for the simple fact that I am a different person (I am channeling Heraclitus right now, I suppose, you know, that saying about the river and the man and all that.)

And I think I know exactly what’s bothering me: I’m afraid of facing the unknown. It’s easier to face guaranteed failure than unpredictable success, I guess.

What I have to tell myself is this: tomorrow is not only going to be different, it will be better than today. Because tomorrow will be the sum of today plus even more new experiences, and maybe those experiences will be shitty, but I guess it all comes down to Nietschze after all. As long as it doesn’t kill me, I can learn from it, and if I can learn from it, then I’ll be a better person for it. Or some rationale like that.

Bah. This is just sophistry, endless, unexhaustable sophistry, and too much mental masturbation.

Tomorrow will come whether I want it to or not, whether I’m ready for it or not. I say: bring it on.

I stopped to think about all the people I know who are married or are in fulfilling romantic relationships, and I realize that I’m jealous, but what are you gonna do. If it’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen, and I’ll slog on by my lonesome, trying to keep fighting the good fight.

I’m not sure if I’ve always been running at capacity like this, or whether it’s only because I decided to start using an RSS reader and I have like hundreds of blogs I subscribe to, but I started noticing that my hard drive was thrashing like crazy. Peeking at Activity Monitor, I found that almost all but a few megabyte scraps of RAM were filled, and I was having to go to swap continuously. After a few hours of the sound of my read/write heads going clitter-clatter, I decided that I had enough and resolved to brave the Fry’s Electronics in Murphy Canyon.

After plunking down a Benjamin, I tore open my Mac Mini (and I literally mean tear, considering what you have to do to pop this baby open) and popped in a sweet 1 GB module, and now the computer (A G4/1.25 GHz model) is running as smooth as buttah, baby.

Of course, now I am tempted to just sit in front of this thing for hours on end today instead of venturing outside to see the bright world, but I am once again hunkered down in an existential funk. I think I’ll be OK once I get over this horrible sense of desolation.

I don’t know if there was ever a time when I looked forward to the future. Some of this is probably depression clouding my mind, by I remember quite early on in my life that I was afraid of building for the future. As early as elementary school, I was always afraid that Reagan would press the shiny red button and effectively erase history, but somehow, it never happened. Among other things, I am afraid of falling in love, because love can always be lost. I am afraid of bringing a child into this world, because the world is such a fucked up place run by clearly evil human beings. I am afraid of trying to succeed, because there are always fuckwits out there who have nothing better to do than to see you fall on your ass, and point and laugh. And I am afraid of trying to succeed, because, ultimately, human beings tend to be selfish, and however noble my intentions are, they will likely fuck someone else’s life up, and the only rational thing for them to do is oppose me.

And I know, in the coldest, calculating part of my brain, that normal people don’t have these sort of hang-ups, and the cynical side of me thinks that this is because most people couldn’t give a fuck and don’t have enough brains and imagination to realize the pitfalls of their lives, but the logical, emotionless side of me recognizes that a lot of this is, again, my depression, and, essentially, that I am quite abnormal in my fears and anxiety.

(And the irony is that I’m not all that afraid that some brown people are gonna hijack the next jetliner I’m on. The odds of that happening are infinitesimal compared to the probability that I’m going to die in a flaming car crash someday.)

And I know a lot of people would say that I’m just pessimistic, and that I need to look on the bright side of life, but all I can seem to do is dwell on the bad parts of the last 30 years, and wonder what the hell I have to show for it all.

OK, I lie. I have exactly three things to show, all of them pieces of paper: one saying that I’m an M.D., one saying that I’m licensed to practice medicine in California, and one saying that I can prescribe dope. But, except for those three things (only one of which can’t ever be taken away from me, no matter how criminal or insane I become), I’ve got pretty much diddly-squat.

I realize that a lot of this is my fault. Over the past two years, I’ve managed to lose touch with quite a few friends. Part of this is the insanity of my schedule, and another part of this is my rampant depression which keeps me from doing the things that I’d like to do in oh-so-many ways, but the brainwashed, Catholic part of me keeps feeling guilty for all the things I haven’t done, and the guilt leaves me in a never-ending spiral of depression, more guilt, and even more depression, with the only way out of this existential hell being the fact that I am way too chickenshit to actually off myself.

I think if I actually kept the friends I have (because they are really good people, and I’m lucky to have them), I’d probably be OK. If I had someone in my life that I could have coffee or a drink with maybe once a week or so, to shoot the shit, and to let them know what the hell is going on in my life, if only there was someone I could decompress to once in a while, maybe I’d find some kind of balance. But here we are again talking about “what if.”

Instead, every week that passes is another millstone around my neck, and I’m trying damned hard to keep my head above water, and I think that maybe I can keep this up for another thirty years if I had to, but, damn, it’s kind of a dismal existence. The only real thing that’s keeping me up is the fear of drowning, and I have a feeling that that’s not really what life is about.

So, tell me, how do I do more than just survive?

Voltaire, through the character Candide in the book of the same name, talks about tending the garden, which honestly makes a lot of sense to me. I’m not going to save the world, I’m not going to cure cancer, or find the solution for world peace. The world is far too complex for any one person alone to have that kind of impact. (And I say “one person alone,” not “one person, who inspires another person, who inspires yet another person”—this is the way change occurs, this is the way revolution starts.) I do fantasize about being that first domino that falls, but, as I get older, the nearest domino I can tip over is becoming farther and farther away. As I grow older, I become more and more isolated (and yes I know it’s my own damn fault)

But what I want to know is how to plant the garden in the first place, because the weeds and the vermin are already infesting the field I’d like to plant it in, and big agribusiness and big developers are coming my way.

(Man, I’m so cheerful. What the hell is wrong with me?)

But it all comes to simple goals, and the way I’m feeling tonight, I’m still afraid of failing even these little things. Despite continually lowering my expectations of myself, I still feel like I’m going to fall short.

My wish: to be able to go sleep one night and say to myself, “I can’t wait for tomorrow to start.” If I can get myself into the habit of doing that, maybe this solitary, one-dimensional life of mine can still be salvaged.

So maybe all Republicans aren’t religious fundamentalists, but I kind of wonder if there isn’t some sort of congruence between the two mind sets—namely, the kind of ignorance and stupidity that makes you so sure that what you know is absolutely right and anyone that disagrees with you is absolutely wrong.

And it may not have been a Republican or a religious fundamentalist who gave Mayor Nagin the smackdown for calling the ruins of the WTC a “hole in the ground”, but, give me a break.

I don’t think that place is holy or sacred at all, that it should be revered so. I think Ground Zero is an abomination, and I’m glad that they’re building on top of it so that we can begin anew. That place, that event, will always be a memory of abject horror and death, of the evil that human beings can commit. And frankly, it is also a monument to the ineptitude and incompetence of the government, for failing to protect its citizens (and the 9/11 commission shows us that it was indeed preventable), and, in the aftermath, feeding the flames of fear and terror instead of reassuring the American people that terror shall have no power of us, and that we will continue to brandish and wield our freedom in the face of those who would commit such crimes against humanity. If anything, Bush and his cronies and the stupid homeland security terror-alert colors and the incompetent handling of airports for the sake of ”security theater” are all sops to the terrorists, and every day we allow these things to impinge on our freedom is another day we surrender to these evil bastards who, by the way, happen to be religious fundamentalists.

And since that day in September, I’ve recognized who the real enemy is: these toxic human beings who are religious fundamentalists. Like I’ve said before, it doesn’t matter whether they’re Christian or Islamic or Zionist or atheist. Anyone who thinks that they’re completely right, that nothing they do can be gain-said by human wisdom, anyone like this should be locked up and pumped full of anti-psychotics, at least if we can’t just outright kill them (Oh sure, killing would be wrong, but some things are less wrong than others.) These fucktards aren’t in it for anything but raw power over their fellow humans, and their devotion to their God (or non-God, as the case may be) is pure sophistry.

(To explain the workings of my personal morality, I think that anyone who kills another sentient being and thinks that they will be rewarded has got another thing coming to them, and if there is such a place as Hell, I hope they’re having a good time down there. Sure, people will bring up the justification for killing someone else in self-defense, or in defense of those you love, and, sure, anyone who has to do this is definitely not in the same classes as the murderers who slammed planes into the WTC, but to think that the act of killing, however justified, even if it means that a million other lives would be saved, to think that killing someone should be completely free of guilt, now that is base self-deception. But I digress.)

In any case, I’m almost finished with His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, and it basically comes up with the same message: religious fundamentalism is the anti-thesis of civilization, and it must be resisted, whatever brand it may be. Fundamentalists would have human beings reduced to nothing but machines, operating under rules and algorithms that make it easy for us not to have to think, and these rules have over the millenia allowed humans to oppress, violate, degrade, and kill other humans. And frankly, this is pure evil, because it is thinking and reasoning that make us human.

And I got to thinking about that old canard that the world is supposedly going to shit because people aren’t religious any more, and that they have no morality. And if they used the word “religious” the same way that I use it—meaning someone subscribing to a philosophy (for example, maybe Taoism or Buddhism or secular humanism) that promotes goodness and connectedness and belonging and all the positive things that make us human and allow civilization to work—if they meant these things instead of by-the-book Christianity or word-for-word Islam or any other rote algorithm that precludes thought, then I might agree with them, because, yes, the world is full of thoughtless people who never consider their action’s effects on others. But what I really think is that the reason why the world is going to shit is because Western society has allowed the principles of capitalism to outweigh morality.

What I find interesting about early American history is that society was not all about laissez-faire capitalism (as if that really exists anywhere.) The early American economy (both pre- and post-revolutionary) tended to run on a moral economy, meaning, that, sure, you could make a profit, but you shouldn’t gouge your fellow human beings who were depending on your product to survive. Prices and wages were negotiated so that citizens could actually live decent lives. (OK, so there was also slavery, but there is no such place as utopia) Contrast that to the world we live in, where anything goes when it comes to making a dollar, and screw the people who can’t afford to live decent lives, they’re just lazy or some such idiotic slogan like that that is completely devoid of thought. And people will refuse to condemn companies like Exxon and Walmart for baldly exploiting their workers and the environment and making record profits for their CEOs and shareholders, never mind the damage that they are causing, and people fail to see that this kind of lifestyle is unsustainable.

Something will eventually break and throw everything into chaos, and there has surely got to be a better way to run the system. Surely sustainability ought to be a goal of any business.

And people will also say that regulation is evil and it’s better to let business owners do whatever they want, but this is pure bullshit, because anyone with half a brain knows that even in our supposedly capitalist country, the government pretty much decides who gets to make money and who gets crushed. I mean, all you have to do is say “Halliburton” and “Enron” and follow where all the dollars are going. And how this is different from a communist economy driven by a centralized bureaucracy, I really don’t know, except maybe the U.S.S.R. didn’t have to waste money on P.R. and marketing.

And, sure, people will bring up extreme counter-examples: what if I have to lie, cheat, and steal in order to feed my kids? C’mon. We all know there are plenty of ways to make honest cash, even if it is pretty much diddly-squat. For someone to surrender their morality in order to have creature-comforts earns no sympathy from me.

And I’m not advocating espousing communism, getting rid of the stock market, or doing away with money. All I’m saying is: everything you do has consequences, some of them good, and some of them evil, and in a capitalistic country like ours, the choices of what you buy and which companies you support become an expression of your own morality. Lying, cheating, exploiting the weak and powerless, destroying the environment, and fomenting war so you have someone to sell your bombs to (to choose a few choice examples) are wrong no matter what, even if it turns a profit and makes the shareholders happy, and it’s really disgusting that our society can actually make excuses for companies that do these things.

And, despite my raving rants at times, I’m no extremist. If anything, I’m all for moderation. And given that the government already has to interfere in order for our economy to even work, then they should interfere in ways that advocate for sustainability. While a complete implementation of a moral economy at the scale of the globe is clearly impossible in this lifetime, at least people should aim high. If you want people to do good, the best way is to set an example.

I was lying in bed, warm and comfortable, except somehow I had lost my pillow, and I thought I should just go to sleep and find it when I wasn’t so tired, but then I quickly found it to the side of my bed.

For some strange and bizarre reason, I felt really happy after finding my pillow. I felt really content. I guess it really is about the simple pleasures—a warm comforter and a soft pillow.

But it’s now September and there are only 11 days left before I reach that arbitrary crossroads, 30 years out of my mother’s womb, and in I know I have been fretting about it for a long time, but now that it’s close, I welcome it. I feel like there are new horizons opening up. I know I’ve felt like this way before, and have been terribly disappointment. Despite everything, there are a lot of things that haven’t changed at all, and sometimes I feel like Sisyphus rolling his damned stone up that hill only to watch it roll down, but you know, maybe that’s life, rotating through infinitesimally different cycles, like seasons, maybe, and there will always be winters, but winter isn’t always exactly the same every year. And maybe life is filled with a lot of insignificance and deadening sameness, but it’s crucial to live through that as well.

I’m blathering and not making sense, and maybe I’m just brain-damaged at this hour after working for 33 hours without sleep and then sleeping for 13 hours after that, but it all makes sense to me for some reason right now, and I guess right now is all that matters.