I’ve been shifting around my room this past hour doing nothing in particular. One minute on the bed, the other minute getting water, another few minutes reading the web and ignoring the tons of work I have to do. The mood here at Casa de Eric is simply melancholy, and I guess I can attribute it to a handful of things:

- I’ve been reading the Metafilter 9/11 thread; it’s eerie and frightening both imagining what it was like to have been in downtown New York when it happened and reliving what it was personally like on the other side of the country that morning. Of course, I remember all the details: getting in the car at 6:15 am, turning on the KNBR and hearing Tim Kurkjian talk about the Dodgers. Halfway to the Caltrain station the interview ended and the host (can’t remember who it was), thanked Kurkjian and I hear from him for the first time that there are reports that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers. As I made my way into the parking lot, the news reports slowly began to reveal the enormity of the situation, and as I stumbled onto the train car I was a zombie about to be cut off from the all media for the next 50 minutes or so on my commute to Santa Clara. I remember calling Jean’s cell phone several times, unable to get through, and with nothing to distract me I could only think horrible thoughts. What was I going to say at her funeral? What would her parents be thinking? See, I told you they were horrible thoughts. And yet they are just one amongst millions that rattled in millions of other heads that morning, and they’re all on display in that thread.

- I anxiously await for Sunday evenings here in China, because that’s when the New York Times Magazine online version gets published on the website. This past Sunday was also 9/11, and most of the issue is devoted to that day and that day’s extant consequences. This article by Cal School of Journalism professor Mark Danner is one of the most superb and disturbing pieces I have read since that day four years ago. It makes me so angry and frustrated and helpess to read such a crisp and clear argument about why we never should have gone into Iraq. I’ve been away from the States for two years, long enough to expose myself to a lot of the negative sentiment non-Americans feel towards the U.S., and at this point I don’t even argue back anymore. I don’t really know how these guys (Bush and Co.) can live with themselves. I wouldn’t be able to, knowing the kind of shit I set my country up for for generations to come.

- All of these grand feelings of impending doom and nihiliation have also resulted in sadness at my own personal life, which at first I reacted negatively to as a selfish impulse, but I realized that thinking about loss and tragedy on such a huge scale also highlights what we all have and own and posses and should cherish, but often take for granted. I normally am I very happy person, open and cheerful, but perhaps because my life has been sustained on such a superficial level for so long, and perhaps because I live by myself in an area not convenient for my few close friends to come visit (or vice versa), I’ve been dealing with more and more frequent bouts of loneliness. Not depression, but just a feeling of absence. I think that Jenny’s visit a few days ago and her call yesterday before she returned to Singapore also highlighted that a bit; who doesn’t notice the bright yellow daffodil in a field of dingy brown moss?

I’ve always treated this blog as a form of self-deprecation sprinkled with some interesting discoveries and thoughts along my journey through both adulthood and China. Every now and then, I do as many others do and treat it as an actual diary, a way to express what I feel most deeply inside. I don’t like it when I do it, because it’s not a terribly exciting read, so if you’ve gotten this far I appreciate your commitment, and as a reward I’ll tack on a joke that I find both tasteful and appropriate, and hopefully you’ll get either a shit, a giggle, or both for your efforts. Cheers…

A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog vendor and says “Make me one with everything”. The hot dog vendor gives him his food and accepts payment. The Buddhist then asks him “Where is my change?” And the hot dog vendor responds, “Surely you know that change must come from within.”