Chronicles of JP

It's been about 2 months and a half since I went into total hiatus. Since then I haven't felt bad about losing contact with the outside world. I've been to several conferences on the Access Grid (mostly boring visualization studies that most here wouldn't understand), I've written a few papers (both official and on Wikis), I'm about to finish wrapping up version alpha of the OpenSceneGraph Open Dynamics Engine plugin and I'm trying to get as much of the aesthetics of my game done.
All in all not too bad but somewhat lacking in my original projections. I have proven to myself that I am overtly distracted since my attention span to work and to important things has greatly improved over these two months.

What has dramatically increased is my guilt complex. I can't see anyone of my old friends without feeling I've embarrased them to the point that I should just get it over with and commit suicide. My Guilt complex is my only window to reality without actually asking people what they think about me.

I know it's low self-esteem, but I'd rather push myself than wait and see if anyone cares any little bit about me.

Certain side-effects of this:
1.- I'm a very mean person...and I think I enjoy the misery
2.- I can abandon anybody without thinking about it
3.- I live on pure pride
4.- I've realized that no one, save for myself and my immediate family, truly loved me...no one has called in just to say hello or to ask me how I'm doing (only when they happen to bump in to me)

All this time I've gone more than half-way to see other people, get their interests, and then I get a terrible surprise - if I died yesterday, most of them wouldn't know until about a couple months later (that being the soonest any of them would get to know).

Being yourself is more than just a lonely journey, it's a revelation of just how much you've effected the lives around you. So far I haven't made a dent in the lives of anyone, let alone the universe (like Apple did when it released the macintosh). Nobody wants to call back, and that hurts when you're stuck between nowhere in your life.

I don't know if I have a future (because it all depends on how strong my will is) and I know I certainly don't want to look into the past anymore (no more answers to be found there). The present is pretty much all I have now - it's a rather confusing place.

If I press on, I suppose I will eventually find grace, but my faith is certainly starting to wane. All I have now is a sense of adventure and the comfort that whatever I do only affects a few in a very small way.

If I can make it to England to study my masters, I think I can think less kindly about my ambitions and welcome death and defeat with more maturity. Literally I've lost everything else that would've mattered to a normal individual (which I'm not).

Question is: What do I have to lose in order to come to a total nervous breakdown (like a normal person would in my current situation)?

How embarrassing is the progress of my thesis? Anyone else would've shot themselves months ago.
How embarrassing is effort I've put into the project at the supercomputing center? I wouldn't have hired myself ever.

Did I ever truly, in all these 14 years in Mexico, deserve to comeback home? Dozens of people at Caltech alone are far more intelligent and deserving of that life (and they come from India, China or Korea).

When I think that only 4 months ago I thought I could measure up to James Blinn, Carl Sagan or Hironobu Sakaguchi (just to be their friend)...I feel so embarrassed about myself that I feel like I know why everyone who ever knew me is terribly embarrassed about ever knowing me.

It's a miracle nobody (who so far has to see me everyday) doesn't just up and abandon me. Given everything I have and everything I'm capable of...I'm the laughing stock of the entire republic.

I really should just go to England with my tail in between my legs and hope that the memory of me over here gets lost in obscurity while I'm over there.

Worse than actually listening to creationists (I don't care how much they dislike it, they are in the same category as the flat-earth society)...is to hear your mentor consider going to work for Microsoft - and still consider it yourself.

All my professional life, I've come to tolerate Microsoft products and to absolutely hate the company. It has become one of my principals that I would never work for microsoft, same as I'd never go back to live to the states in the immediate future.

I'm a Mexican American who was born to love the culture of his forefathers, that of the aztecs, the mayan, the toltecs and all those descended from the great mother culture of America, the Olmecs. By extension I can also honor the Inca's and the rest of indigenous South America (for they were just as brutally raped by the Spaniards as we were).

Microsoft betrayed me when they declared on all out war on Linux and tried to fuck up the Unix industry with the SCO vs. Novell case. I don't hate Bill Gates, but I hate what his unrelenting sense of competition has done to the minds of Microsoft.

For a brief moment yesterday I contemplated going to microsoft to save up funding for my own company...but it was just too far out there. I believe myself to be of the old school of Game Design, that is, always do it your way.

I worked very hard to get where I am and I don't need security or good pay to get what I want - I don't have a fucking family that needs me to be someone. Instead I have a fucking conscience that needs me to be myself, above all others and all else.

I understand and can sympathize with my mentors financial situation (a new wife and a second kid on the way), but under this context alone, can I see the rationale behind working for Microsoft - it doesn't apply to me.

Long live variety, long live those who are different.

I don't know what's worse. The fact that I'm so happy that an alcoholic is out of my house, or that I'm very happpy that a visitor (who overextended his stay by too many months) is finally gone. So much of the burden of having to tolerate someone's system of values or customs is finally off my shoulders.

Hell, I think because of this, I've proven I can never live in my own home with others who have different education.

No wonder marriage to me is so frightening to me...I simply don't have the capacity nor the will to adjust to others (at least for periods longer than a month). My home feels like home again, and not like Auschwitz (now I know what the Polish felt when they got Warsaw back from the nazis). I know how the blacks felt during the Segregation. I know how the Shiites felt under the gauntlet of Hussein.

Thank God I'm me again...that old self-righteous and lonely bastard...

Thank God I'm free

I could cry now.

No more future brother-in-law to make my personal day to day miserable. Phew.

God bless me and my blasphemous independence.

Like the first time you were in danger of being homeless or without anything to eat...

Or the first time you your feel you were in danger of being kicked out...

Or that first time you felt that because of your mediocracy, you would get to feel all that nasty hopelessness again.

Life has an odd way of turning the tables when you least expect it...being that most of the time, it's because you overlooked something very important and you didn't even know it was there.

Now I think I'm sleeping...I think I've done all that I can do for one day of reflection.

I'm laughing my ass off at all the commentaries Craig Ferguson throws out at the audience (and his interviews...in which he never finishes his coffee) and I'm marveled at how funny a Scot can be in the middle of Los Angeles...really really far away for Edinburg (or Edinburough...WTH).

The only thing I kinda don't like is that he thinks the Mayans were South American and that they built Machu Pichu (I have to put my foot down because the Incas were a great people...without the Mayans).

Now I'll talk about the real deal at hand.

Why can't I be a total jerk and make asinine comments like I used to? (not that they're really asinine...it's just there is no place for discretion in such a rotten society like mines)

It's like "WTF...something is wrong with me if I can't make myself to be a total asshole who is always right, but nonetheless an asshole"...it really does concern me. I feel like I'm dead inside.

My own society makes me feel like there is need to be a total asshole, because everybody is being so stupidly nice and retardedly inefficient.

I'd first be Adolf Hitler than be someone who wants to think everything in his country is okay. Which is completely questionable if I'm talking about the U.S., but I'm talking about god damned Mexico here.

It's NOT okay to laugh at doom or at a difficult problem. It's NOT okay to smile while the entire northern country is built on top of drug money. It's NOT okay to inconvenience people on a bus just because you're drunk and full of shit in your craneal chamber.

Okay so Germany has the guilt of WWII on their shoulders and Russia has the guilt of being too proud...but that is fucking normal and mature guilt. It's their fucking guilt, not the fucking false guilt the church gives us for being a bastard country full of wanton S.O.B.'s

I'd rather feel guilty for having been authentically evil (I mean evil all the way) than because somebody makes me pretend I should be guilty of my own existence...for God sakes, save that for the child of Brother and Sister that had incest, or for a mother-son, father-daughter spawn (and even then it wasn't the poor kids fault for having sick parents).

I don't belong in the states, because I know that would be running away from my problems. Mexico is the reason I have a life plan at all - I can't go back to that innocent profile of a life when I was a kid in the states. My father made it pretty sure (to his everlasting guilt) that I could never go back to that kind of happiness in the states, though that doesn't mean I shouldn't go back to Maryland to face the demons of my past.

If anything, God made me to be a survivor of something...it could well be the survival of my country's abortive legacy. The past is meant to die and leave ruins - I'm but one of a few children who are gonna have to build his temples from scratch (that is if I ever wanted to leave something behind for my children).

I know my God, and that's all the fucking support I need - Everyone else can just die or follow me - it's my path or their own eternal damnation.

Whoah! Whoop dee doo!

God bless me, I guess I am an asshole after all.

I can't remember the last time I ever wrote here (could be about a month). Since then the temperatute in Mexico has sharply declined, I have carried on in my work and thesis, broken off communications with friends and family...
And despite my willingness to do a superb effort to learn more...I have forgotten what it was like before. I don't remember ever having been so full of uneasiness in the past, but then again, I have never been so alone.
Before it was easy to say I'm alone on a intelectual level, but now, all I have are a few peers who are dwindling in numbers. To some of them, I am growing more hostile (I guess I'm growing tired of them).
I have completely eliminated all forms of social distraction from my life and then...my PS2 decides to stop working.

Every day I grow more tired, yet I haven't changed anything in my diet.

I should be able to push myself harder with ease...and yet I feel all the more hungrier for the little things in life (who would've thought so).

Some vacations in Houston. Perhaps a little perusing in a mall to see what simple people who just want to get a great christmas present for their friends and family, look like again.

I think I just hit rock-bottom.

Even with my monumental achievements in the last couple months, as a programmer...there is nothing to fill the spaces in between.

I don't even know if the people around me are real anymore.

Is there any point in putting everything that was once normal aside?

In fact...is there anything in my life that isn't some effort on my part to recreate the world in my own image?

What is wrong...nothing feels satisfying anymore. Not even the great impossible challenges.

Ever think that maybe fame is about the worst thing in the world?

I think, in a small way, someone close to me, believed that to be true.

I'm tired of proclaiming her passing. I'm tired of remembering it. I just really want to go back home and be alone with my thoughts.

In the wake of her passing, I'm feeling much better keeping her lessons and her memories to myself. It's not for me to give anyone else what she gave me.

I'm not her shadow, I'm no her messenger and I'm not her eulogist...I'm her grandson and she was my grandma. Let her keep her legacy and let me keep mines. Whatever love we shared is between us and us alone.

I don't want to share my grandmother to the world, just as I never want to share the sanctity of my family history with anyone.

You know it's the funniest thing.

All of my memories of the past, good or bad, make me feel bad.

I get dizzy...I have small headaches.

I can only remember when I started to become a winner...someone of integrity. Everything else...feels like it should stay dead.

Ain't that funny?

I can't turn back...ever.

Every so often a peculiar question arises about my preferences in ethnicity...whether I contend myself to be a fully recognized Mexican or admit that I indeed hold an embarrassing majority of spanish genes in my cells. On the outside I could very well pass for any old regular american (even dare say that I could pass for an englishman). But my lack of european 'culture' would pretty much give me away as some strange form of blue-collar mexican-american (ironic, isn't it).

On the one part, nobody in Mexico understands my jokes about southerners (they tend to see everyone north of the rio bravo as just american, save Canada). I've always had the idea that people in Idaho know only about potatoes; that in south dakota (or north), all they do is stare all day at Mt. Rushmore; Down south they speak funny and grow cotton. California (were I was originally born) is the land of all good things in this life: Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Carmel.

I was raised, from age 2 ('83) to age 7 ('88) in New Jersey (which apparently doesn't strike anyone as pleasent). In those years, I was saturated with the cultural identity of the north: New York, Boston, Massachussetts and Pennsylvania. My mother was striving to finish her masters in microbiology in the University of New York (Princeton turned her down)...which all in all makes her a heroine in Mexico (odd). My father dabbled with the digital VAX machine (then the best alternative to UNIX mainframes) when he attempted to solve several differential equations that occasionally appear in Nuclear Physics (well...they're there all the time, just...some of them get real nasty). Everything in my life rounded down to the northeastern united states, someplace called Mexico City, a mythical place called Disneyland California and a quite legendary place called Japan (which I often confused with China - my Grandfather brought back a lot of toys from Japan - I never understood anything printed on the boxes)

Much later, in '88, I moved to a place further south (wow, there be dragons there) called Maryland. I was unknowingly in the heart of the Mason-Dixon line (well, about an hours drive from it - D.C. was some large city far from home). I got to know Maryland's history and was severely bashed on the head by the image of the Plymouth Rock Pilgrims (supposedly the reason why we 'all' celebrated Thanksgiving). By this time I was aware of a state to the west called Virginia and something called North Carolina to the south - never knew WTF with Delaware to the East. In no time I was a Chesapeake bay evangelist - I spoke of the wonders of Washington D.C. and the urban beauty of Baltimore. By then my external and estranged family, back in Mexico, knew that my brother and I were well on our way to being rather unique mexicans.

I was more a Star Wars fan than I was a Trekkie, but my brother always got his way, so I was trekky too (though I was old-school trekkie). I grew up seeing Nintendo as the de-facto form of entertainment (well, there was Sega Genesis too). Jurassic Park came out in Theaters and I knew no more of the great splendors of the American civilization.

I moved to Mexico and my life, as I had contemplated all those 10 years before, came to an end (in reality, a sudden shift in paradigm). Gone were my dreams of working as an animator in Japan...of attending MIT...of living the American Dream - forever.

13 years later I am above and beyond those dreams. I feel more Mexican than anyone in my family could possibly imagine. I deny any heritage from Spain in it's entirety. I don't believe in anything conventional and I am proud of it. I consider myself to be amongst the greatest of all catholics and I am a radical neo-liberalist in the eyes of the Vatican. I can't see what is so primordial about family. I can't fall in love so easily. I understand the world to a much larger extent than the average intelligent american or mexican.

In my life, no phrase is more demoralizing than "Ignorance is bliss". The search for truth is always very painful, but it is always preferable to running away (with an ulcer to add).

A well known alien once said "Time is an illusion"

...well so is security and stability. If you can feel safe in your backyard then you can also feel safe anywhere in the world (it's just the perception that changes).

So going back on whether I would admit I had spanish genes (without first mentioning how they raped my homeland), I would say: I'd rather be a redneck first.

They say the best way to get through a really shitty times is to laugh it off, especially when the hideous mistake happened in the past.
I committed a mistake that is best described as the last nail in the coffin with the bouquet on top (akin to the cherry on top).
I have to say that people in my family are gonna hate my sincerity, my black humour and my sarcasm for years to come (but in a really nasty way). So my plans to go to England could not have been pioneered at a better time...although I don't think I've ever enjoyed pulling the rug from my extended family this much.

The immediate victim of this is my brother. I'm sad for him and his social life in florida, but when it comes to the high and mighty opinion of those around us...I can't help but to think that this is my crowning acheivement in my ongoing quest to get the bugs out of their asses.

I think that my actions have gone quite far in proving a universal axiom in life - if you can fix it, don't worry, if you can't, don't worry.

I've lost everything that was ever truly precious to me - so it's about time everybody starts getting a glimpse of what it means to "live and let die". I really don't care about security or stability - those are just accessories, you honestly can't say you want them.