A Time to Fall, A Time to Move On

With the autumn leaves scaling off at a quickening pace, I suppose it's only natural to find myself thinking about all the things I'm grateful for. Being HIV+ has not been without its positives. Perhaps one of the best things to have come about is that I find myself focused on the present. I take my medicines every morning and work out as often as I can. I enjoy the company of my family and friends. I try to learn something new about the world every day. I wonder about God and what heaven must be like. In short, I try to take care of myself physically, mentally and spiritually. But it's also apparent that I haven't evolved to the point where I am free of regrets. A lot has happened since I was deported from Korea for being HIV+. A huge tennis fan, I would have given anything to see Roger Federer and Pete Sampras playing their exhibition match in Seoul yesterday. I never got to take leisurely walks along the fantastic Cheonggye Stream that now runs through downtown (even though I surely earned the right to enjoy it after sitting in countless traffic delays because of construction on the waterway project.) I also never got to zip across the peninsula in the comfort of the KTX, the bullet train that's cut travel times in half and increased comfort levels at least a million-fold. I know some people will say that I have nothing to complain about as long as I've got my health. (My last t-cell count was 1399 and my viral load is still undetectable after three years.) So why is it I still long for the things that have been lost on the road of my past? I guess I've still got a long ways to go.

"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me..."

I'm sitting here alone in my room, but not particularly lonely this cold autumn night. In fact, I'm feeling rather amazed as I hear Oscar Wilde, seated across the room from me with legs crossed, saying drolly, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life." I put down the book I am reading, Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, and find myself forced into humble agreement. I'm about one-third of the way finished, and acutely aware that I'm looking for any excuse to put this book down when I can because I don't think I can bear for it to end. Toru Watanabe is the main character. He and I are the same age, and we are both writing because it is the only way we can understand the things that have happened to us. Toru's life forever changed when his best friend in high school committed suicide--just as my life did when the Asia I loved blacked out of existence and slipped into a coma it would never wake up from. I actually first set eyes on this book nearly seven years ago. My best friend in Korea, Sung, had given it to me on my birthday. I think you would really like it, he said in the artless way he always spoke. Naturally, I put the thing aside and never got around to it. I don't know why I wandered into a bookstore at Penn Station last Thursday. Or why I should have suddenly remembered after all this time. But there it was. My hand trembled as I took it down from the shelf. I felt as if Sung was trying to tell me something--perhaps that we had been best friends for reasons we would never fully comprehend.

Ehren Go Bragh!

For my money, this is the only legal case out there worth watching, one that has nothing to do with O.J., or some nutty astronaut seeking revenge in her Depend undergarments, or a deranged mother who has drowned her twenty three children. First Lieutenant Ehren Watada of Honolulu, Hawaii scored a major courtroom victory yesterday in Tacoma, Washington when a civilian judge blocked the Army's second attempt to court-martial him for refusing deployment to Iraq in June 2006. Believing Bush's spree for oil in the Middle East to be illegal, Watada has been courageous and steadfast, staring down a commanding officer barking out mindless orders from the White House. And if yesterday's ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Settle is any indication--that a second court-martial could violate Watada's Fifth Amendment right to be free from double jeapordy--then Watada may soon be victorious as well. While a court may never rule on the legality of Bush's war, Watada's stand of the past year and a half ranks right up there in American history with Rosa Parks' refusal to stand for a white passenger on a bus in Birmingham, Alabama.

My Real Imaginary Date

Just when I was thinking that 2007 has been an unremarkable year for movies, I'm given a reason to reconsider (and yes, cry) after seeing Lars and the Real Girl, an original fable about one man's loneliness and what an entire town will do to help him out of it. These past four years, I have tried my hardest not to think of myself as a victim of HIV, and for the most part, I think I have succeeded with the help of my family and doctors. But I have also stopped denying that I have become an extremely lonely person, similar to Lars. On the weekends, I get dressed up as if I were going out to meet someone special, as I did tonight. And of course, there is no one waiting for me when I show up at the movie theater. But it's still nice, maybe even essential, to pretend that there is. I recognize the irony--that a delusion is what keeps me going, what stops me from totally withdrawing into myself and shutting out the world. Lars had a plastic doll he called Bianca; I make do with my imaginary date whom I have yet to name. When I walked into the crowded movie theater tonight, there were two empty seats in the back row. And I thought to myself, "Wow, two empty seats just waiting for us to fill them." But while this kind of thinking might be poignant on a movie screen, I'm not so sure it's just plain pathetic in real life. After the movie ended, outside of the theater, purely by chance I ran into Chad, a guy I've asked out and been rejected by countless times, a guy who always said he would call but never did. He was going to see a movie with his group of five friends. Normally, I would have been happy to see Chad. But not so tonight. Tonight I was with Evan.

Life is About Two Things

If George Clooney doesn't win an Oscar for Michael Clayton, I promise to stop blogging and join 5o Cent in retirement. Last year I was so hoping for Peter O'Toole to take Best Actor for his role in Venus, where he portrayed a fading movie star lusting after a pretty young thing. If Venus was about the comedy of raw emotion, then Michael Clayton is about the tragedy of delicate irony. Because Michael Clayton is a lawyer who knows he's a glorified janitor, a man with a corner office who cleans up the shit of his colleagues. He's a father who works the craziest hours to avoid any meaningful time with his son. He's a gambler who can't save his life to play poker, but calls a $5 million bluff to help some poor stranger. He effectively kills off his friend for his job, and then sells off the firm to ease the pain of his conscience. Unlike most Hollywood films with story arcs as predictable as fairy tales, you are never quite sure of the direction in which Michael Clayton is headed. And you still don't know in the final scene when he climbs into the hollow of that taxi cab. The only thing you're certain of is this: in this world, money will get you somewhere, but it won't get you anywhere. Being caring. Being calculating. Truth and Adjustment. These two beasts will ravage each other, leaving you starving to die a slow death. I knew there was a reason I stopped being a lawyer.

The 455 Billion-Dollar Burning Bush

The conflagration in Iraq is about to get worse, with US efforts at damage control going nowhere. Turkey is spreading the killing flames to the north with US weaponry to rid its border of Kurdish separatists, all in the name of fighting terrorists. Once the north goes to hell, all bets for peace are off the table, and Bush knows it. This would all be so pathetically ironic if it weren't so tragic. What radioactive material is Bush's chutzpah made of that he can tell the Turks not to invade Iraq to avenge the killing of 40 of their soldiers? At least the Turks have a reason to invade. Were any Americans killed by Saddam? Were any weapons of mass destruction ever found? This war has been about blood for oil, fanned by the greedy lies of Bush and his cronies. A war started in the name of democracy has been waged by the greatest terrorist of them all. Tens of thousands of lives lost. Hundreds of thousands of bodies disfigured. Millions of families displaced. Half a trillion dollars gone up in smoke and ashes. I wonder if he knows California is burning. Perhaps he's too busy fiddling.

Where the Brother Is Coming From

In New York City it's so easy to get caught up in the broad strokes of the brush that you sometimes forget to step in close and take in the details. It happened in the subway again, a place you're supposed to enter and exit as quickly as possible without getting mugged by fumes or fellow humans. If I had only observed it once, I might not have written about it; but it was once in the morning and once again in the afternoon. The AM incident involved an older looking black man who was standing by the turnstyle waiting for someone--another older looking black man. You got a swipe, the first one asked. Without even giving so much as the appearance of thinking about it, the second man took out his subway card and swiped the first one through. A word of thanks sent them on their ways. It was all so casual, I wasn't sure someone had just been taken for two dollars. Later in the PM, two younger black men repeated the scene. Same question, same swipe, but with a slightly different result: a point of the finger met with a nod of the head. I always wondered why black men were referred to as "brothers." It's not often you feel you understand in New York City. I couldn't understand why I wanted to be a black man in America.