Idiosyncratic Tags!

Hair is always the first thing that I look at in a woman

1. How often are you asked out by gay men?

I am not making fun of gay persons, and have had several friends in my life who were, including one close friend. But given my build, I attract a lot of the wrong sort of attention (given my legs, and solid housing area above from years of running, cycling martial arts, and climbing), and get approached all the time at work. I am considered a real catch. It gets to where I have to promptly drop hints, such as: "Interesting you should say that. My ex-girl friend and I always used to..." Never unkindly. It is almost flattering, but the wrong kind! I can spot it a mile away, as male couples cruise around with their own wandering eye. In New York also (and to this day) I COULD NOT WEAR A MUSTACHE, as it confused men.

2. What sort of women approach you?

Again, the wrong kind! I get approached by obese women. Often large, Afro-American women. I cannot be interested in any large women of any kind, never, but I am find myself attracted psychically to strong willed black women, often to the point of ALMOST subverting or overcoming physical characteristics. But, in the end, I am a thin build male, and if a woman is ten pounds overweight, to me she is fat. Sorry, but every one has his or her preferences, and this is mine by DNA programming.









3. If ever, under what circumstances has a parent of your been arrested by the FBI or been institutionalized to a mental institution?

My father was arrested by the FBI for "Forgery and Embezzlement" when I was only several months old. It was traumatic. My mother didn’t want to show her face outside the house for a year. The judge had pity on my mother, with a six year old, a two year old, and me, so put him on parole, saying to my dad: "Mr. K, shame, shame, shame. I am putting you on parole. But Mr. K., if you so much as step one inch to the left, or one inch to the right, I am going to 'put you away'".

The result was that he became a very honest man, forcibly by my mother, who raised us all first and foremost to be honest. She taught me two things: ALWAYS SPEAK THE TRUTH; and IT IS WHEN YOU ARE MOST AFRAID THAT YOU NEED TO MOVE FORWARD. The combination of these two has shaped my life. To this day, he is a unusually honest man, and it was his big mistake in his perception of himself as financially desperate.

He always taught me "IT IS WHEN YOU HAVE THE INCLINATION TO HELP OTHER PERSONS, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS DO IT".


















Then my mother. In 1988 or so, was it, after much long suffering, she finanally had a complete breakdown, and was institionalized for several weeks. Of course, I was already on a spiritual path--had long since--but so then began my real inner work, therapy, the works, the 'whole nine yards'. And from a distance of some 700 miles, in North Carolina, at the time [and I am NOT subject to PANIC], the evening that it happened, I found myself in a strange experience, and was very upset, very anxious, and won't get into the details, but then the phone rang, my brother, etc. Just as the Tibetan's have their detailed instructions for the soul, to or around the body, after death, so I knew that I had to get to her, and guide her back, and I did. We are spiritually close to this day.

She didn't teach me much but did teach me two things that she always repeated and stay with me to this day, and again, are at my core: 'always speak the truth, even if it hurts'; and 'it is when you are most affraid, that is when you must go forward'. Try living and combining those two. This David has stood, thereof, in front of many a Golaith.














We all, in the end, face life alone

4. What books have been in your bathroom in the last three years?

That one is easy: The Gaelic War by Julius Caesar (look at often); The Art of War by Sun Tsu, The Yoga of Herbs by Frawley and Lad, Healing With Whole Foods by Pitchford (I NEVER LOOK AT THIS BOOK but it belongs there), The Time Trap by Mackenzie, The Odyssey by Homer, Fitzgerald translation (keeps leaving the room but keeps coming back), The Voices of Silence by Malraux, No
Short Cuts to the Top by Viesturs (his 14 climbs up 8,000 meter peaks without supplemental oxygen), All Fourteen 8,000 by Reinhold Messner, The I-Ching, Wilhelm-Baynes translation, and of course Reinfeld, Blokh's Combinative Motifs.

5. What sort of things are inside the spline of any academic books you have laying around on psychoanalysis?

As it is said, the following is 'Classic DK' (trade marked by BDK)':

A friend who new me well once visited me from North Carolina and opened up Schwartz-Salant's treatise: "Narcissism and Character Transformation: The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorders", and inside were all the cat whiskers that I had found on the carpet in the last five or six years (only the longer ones).

He asks me, incredulous: "David, what is THIS?" "Jamie, I wouldn't THINK of throwing those out". This is the real me.












One last image from Burning Man

6. How many cats have you had with Sanskrit names?

Two. The first was named Bhagwan, after the infamous Bhagwan-Shree Rajneesh, who was interred at Charlotte North Carolina, as he landed for jet fuel, seeking to escape the FEDS, and a coworked said to me, in a discussion as to how to name my kiteen: "Whatever you do, DON’T NAME HIM BHAGWAN", to which I said: "Why that is a good name!"

My current cat, of many years, who is a big hunter and loves to be outside, is named Shruti, Sanskrit for the Vedas, or 'the most ancient religious promptings of human kind' as I like to say, and is a line from the Puja, which I learned and was initiated in by my guru of many years, Joy.



















More manly than any football player or military soldier: Nadal at U.S. Open

7. What is the most amount of money you have ever lost in an investment?

About $100,000. Ouch. Once I took $2,700 and bought three options for $900 each, not in a speculation, but as the final cap stone to five years of careful observation in Incyte Genomics, the at the time major genomic software company, which I had made MILLIONS in for my customers, or was about to...

The options went to 100k, but, not a total shame, I was SO FOCUSED ON MY CUSTOMER MONEY, I failed to focus on my own money, and failed to sell them, riding them all the way up and all the way down. FYI, I was an early investor also in E-Trade Financial, and Affymetrics, the Gene-Chip company. Talk about perspicacity!

Oh, the pain of gains come and gone! Mid-life! What then took only weeks to realize cannot now be replaced with ten years of income from work and incapacity to save were the income adequate, in my current circumstance.

Latter on, the exact same thing happened AFTER I left Wall Street. I was massively leveraged 'short' the market, before 9-11, and could have made enough money to last for SEVERAL years, and traveled around the world. I had to take a 'survival job' instead. Why? Despite months of steadfast fixity before that sad day, inexplicably, I changed course, and went 'long' the market. Or, as Nietzsche says, in 'Beyond Good an Evil': "The Sirens flew over my table".














Varanasi, in India, one of the planets great sacred places

8. What is the happiest you have ever been?

I once dated a woman named Monika, whom I truly loved. She was half German, and half French, a former run way model with a smart mind, and a sense for business. We were ardent lovers, but we also had some great chats. In the end, despite my claims of being off and on 'psychic', she had me fooled. She was a compulsive liar, and until you've ever worked for one of those or had one as a lover (I have had it twice, in work and love), you've never seen this one!

But there were times of great joy, and a part of me knew my youth then.

Other times, were in the time of living in the Temple in Korea, when I finally got to Japan, some of the stunning old relics and sacred places. Again, in my youth.

Mountaineering. At the summits of some peaks, Mt. Pugh here in Seattle, at the top of Glacier Peak with my guide. Or leaving the office to train in the mountains wearing a full, artificially loaded pack, in silence, in the forest...

Getting hired as a rookie broker. Passing the architects exam in New York State, finally (I didn’t take it seriously starting out, focused instead on Japanology, Fulbrights, etc).





















God gave me legs

9. What is your favorite food?

Lasagna. I do love potato chips, but try not to eat them. I love pizza, too. I am the sort that is very athletic, who has high cholesterol and must eat low fat. Do you all know, this can occur with my build, yet someone who is seriously obese can have zero cholesterol?

10. What athletic accomplishments do you have, or in physical prowess?

Running a marathon at age 15; resting heart rate of 33 beats per minute back then, 'only 58' or so now... after too much pizza, and hamburgers in the late architect and early Wall Street years.

1000 sit ups in 90 minutes, also in my youth.

Climbing Mount Si twice a week at age 42, for several weeks, wearing 50 pounds, a gain of 3700' feet in 1:42, or 37 feet per minute (that is smoking!). The requirement for The Mountaineers, in qualifying to climb Mt. Rainier, is that someone must be able to do it in two hours with the same weight.

Running Green Lake, in Seattle, three 2.7 mile laps, at age 43, in 1:12 in a very heavy head wind, on a very, very windy day, wearing heavy sweats.
















The terrable menacing depth of Alekhine: a true genius, but--all the same--still disturbed

11. What heavy drugs have you ever taken?

Acid twice, in my twenties. Normal reality is intense enough, without that! I vowed never to do it again, if god would give me back my sanity. I felt very, very paranoid, thinking that 'they were coming to get me!'. The first time, I went to see Apocalypse Now, in Times Square, in New York. The second time, it hit as I was ridding the Subway home to my ghetto apartment, in Brooklyn. Terrable.

12. What are your thoughts on monogamy?

Despite my not insignificant appetite, I am a firm and unwaving believer in it. I never did and never will deviate. I am in all the way, what I am in--Nor would anyone in my family stray or ever has. Quite the contrary, I have been cheated on repeatedly in my 30's, and it stung very, very badly. And, I 'knew'. Sensitive as I am, it was a horror.

I have gotten far better at sorting who is for me, and who is not, and have gotten very selective and hopefully with better discrimination here firmly in the middle of mid age.














13. What are the most number of automobile accidents you have ever had in a two year period? Under what circumstances?

Six in two years, as a rookie broker, on excess caffeine and total craze.

But the last two, happened when a bicycle hit my car, in the dark, and the guy, a Judoka, or judo practitioner did a judo roll down the hill, and avoided a large green mail pick up box, saving his life. AND HE got a ticket, and had to pay for my bumper.

I had reformed my driving, and then stuff still happened. I had to look and say, although I am not at fault, I am the one thing in common all that had! Self Responsibility.

Finally, once I was driving down Fourth Avenue in Seattle, in that same Acura Intrega GS (how fast I drove it!) slowly, as, again, I had cleaned up my act by then, and knew that stuff was all around me, potentially, AND a kid hit my car. He turned right into me illegally. I was driving maybe fifteen, twenty miles per hour. He didn’t have a license. He was driving his pregnant girlfriends MOTHERS CAR. Can you imagine? There I was, back at the auto rebuild place. Six times! I had become a frequent flier.






















All I ever wanted was love, looking in all the wrong places

14. What are your favorite things in this world?

Communication. Naps. I love naps. Short ones are all I need. Coffee. Not all day long, but to start. Order. Clarity. Planning. Integrity. Cleanliness. Being home. To name but a few.

15. Have you ever voted independent?

All the time. Recently, always for Ralph Nadir: "and that government of the Exxon's, by the Mobils, for the Duponts, shall not perish..."

16. What is the hardest thing you have ever faced?

Leaving New York City on short notice, to go to South Korea with Zen Master Dae Soen Sa Nim (or Soen Sa Nim), while working a job, packing, studying Shorinji Kempo (Shao Lin or Buddhist Boxing involving Hapikido, Karate, and Ju Jitsu), having to be at the New York City Temple of the Cho Gye Order, to learn the chants I would be doing, at four a.m. repeatedly on short sleep...

















After getting the better part of the Forty Million Dollars, my best friend within two years stopped talking to me.

Also, both getting into Morgan Stanley, migrating my book of clients from Piper Jaffrey Inc, about six million dollars, one phone call at a time, one client at a time, the Jerry Maguire thing. No amount of alcohol can numb the pain. Mountains of customer forms, and paperwork.

Second, the same in reverse, getting fired from Morgan Stanley, for what were essentially personal reasons, when I was ranked in the top one, two, or five out of TWELVE THOUSAND PERSONS, in iChoice accounts, depending how you measure it. I was really arrogant, and got punished for it, that is the main thing. I told my guru at that time:

"I am willing to pay any price for enlightenment, total self realization" and, I swear by the blood of Jesus Christ, the Lawyers started calling in twelve hours, the next day after I said that, and I was gone in four or five months. Torture.

Then after my termination, I had six hundred people directing their frustration at the enormous decline in the dot.com bust at me, even though I was gone, without choice, and could not help them. It was like being microwaved alive. I could hear them thinking all at once, at times, that autumn of 2000. I ran a lot of miles and drank a lot of beer and wine. Both.

But, in the end, I got what I asked for: if not awakening (not for me to say) then surely a bigger heart--for the aged, the sick, the poor, those in sorrow, those who are mighty but endarkened...

I CONCLUDE WITH A QUOTE, FROM THE EULOGY OF PRINCESS DIANA:

"Time is too slow for those who wait,
too swift for those who fear,
too long for those who grieve,
too short for those who rejoice,
but for those who love,
time is eternity.
















Love to all of you. This is my life. I am not proud. I am not ashamed, but this is the real me. Love dk