Bio

I am a fourth-generation San Antonian born and raised by the most incredible parents in the world. I saw my father teach himself how to be a successful technician. My grandfather was a tinkerer and inventor of all types. My mother was an artist, stay at home mom, and my grandmother made everything possible through passion and love for family. When I was around five years old, I experienced my grandfather's passing. It took some time for me to realize that the man I loved as my grandfather was only a memory through his belongings. His blue velour recliner chair where we played guitar, the stories of all his inventions that were now gone, a time of my history foregoing an end towards the present. My grandmother passed away a few years later when I was a teenager. That hurt me differently because I grew to understand my grandmother as invincible. Her loss created a conflict in my world that led me to further question why these things continue to happen. It all felt like a deepened mystery that transversed into something extraordinary about the order of time, which was the idea of reincarnation.

Considering I was only a child at this time, concepts like spirits or an after-life were something I had naturally insisted on through personal experiences. I certainly did not expect to know where life takes us after this place. Still, the only answer I could imagine at the time was that there is something about my thoughts that are indeed indestructible against time. Ever since I could remember, I wanted to know the boundaries of reality, and why the universe works the way it does. I’ve was one of those who would play a video game only to figure out ways to go under the map just to see the geometric gridlines of the space reveal itself. I wasn’t trying to gain answers once I figure it out, I just want to simply observe it all and experience my curiosity through a series of unknowns.

Sometime during my youth, I began questioning my understanding of the concept of indestructibility in relation to thought. A rational part of me disagreed with its apparent simplicity. This led me to ponder the origins of thought, considering various theories and perspectives on thinking. At times, I even attempted to think about the function and dimensions of space within my own mind, particularly exploring the processes during sleep. I vividly remember being around 8 years old when I engaged in circular thoughts about infinity before drifting into a dream, attempting to influence the parts of my brain responsible for creating dreams.

Being very young, I would eventually drift off to sleep while contemplating the mysterious concept of death. I wondered whether it is a gradual process or a sudden event. Is it akin to seeing bursts of colors and flashes of light against a dark background when one's eyes are closed? These profound thoughts often left me in a contemplative state, keeping them to myself as a child. These ideas were beyond my ability to articulate at that age. Even if I could have expressed them, I doubt that any answer from others would have fully satisfied my curiosity.

When I was 6 years old, me and my brother were playing out in my grandmothers yard, where we snuck inside the garage, which was a rare place to encounter for us since this place was always closed, but this time the door was open. I halted our pursuit and cautiously approached, finding myself at the entrance to a new enigmatic realm. It was like peering into an intricate puzzle, with my gaze darting in all directions. Eventually, I fixed my eyes on a corner of what seemed to be a board game peeking out from a high shelf. Intrigued, I yearned to investigate further, but first, I needed to build a base for climbing up.

This garage is also where my grandmother performed the laundry duties. A washing machine pushed against the wall, along with bags of clothing would be my ladder; with the help of my brother who was not so brave but gave me his full support, or perhaps he just insisted I be the one to unlock whatever mystery lay beyond our grasp, and in return for my sacrifice of going first, he would promise not to let me get hurt.

I climbed upon a pile of boxes to get onto of the washer, then stepping on the bags of clothes, inching higher until I got to the shelf. I can see the surface of dust just at my eye level. The wood creaked just a bit as I reached for the game board. In one overreach, I brought it closer to me. A tiny wooden piece shaped like a heart, known as a planchette, dropped to the floor, bringing down a heap of dust that scattered into rays of sunlight streaming through the door frame — I glance down at my brother, seeking his confirmation.

Eager to see what I found, he nods to confirm my safety to climb down.

I bring with me a Ouija board, something I’ve never seen before. I see symbols I recognize of the sun and moon, yes and no, and the word goodbye. Whatever reason we didn’t say much out loud, but we both knew this game, wasn’t a game. There wasn’t any instructions, or bright characters with smiling faces. No fun shapes or colors, it was flat and kind of big, like a placemat, and it’s brownish or yellowish color, felt like really old paper. It had all the letters of the alphabet in a big circle, and there were numbers at the bottom too, from 1 to 9, and then a 0. The little heart made out of plastic with a window in it, started to make sense to us. It’s like the board was giving us answers to how to use it, but we still weren’t sure how we should understand it.

My brother will reflect upon this story of us to describe how he will always remember my true spirit from when I was a kid. I would see ghost, and things would just happen around me that felt supernatural. Like meeting people who had passed on in my dreams, and telling my mom about them as if they were trying to pass on a message.

I may never have truly discovered a definite answer about what happens to our thoughts when they are not aligned with our physical body. However, this concept expanded into various viewpoints on time and memory stemming from these inquiries. It presents an alternative framework beyond just the symbolic aspects of contemplating past moments, which rely on our ability to recall them.

If the future somehow sends messages back to the present— how does time enter the memory itself? With respect to these questions, I like to think I began to live a meaningful life when I used intuition to guide my thinking about memory and temporal understanding -and this is where I am now with my practice. 

Before I left for college, most of my later discussions were gained by researching different consciousness and self-consciousness projects. Academics such as Shelly Kagan and his philosophy based on death and experimental psychology research by Christoph Hoerl supported my arising theories and shaped my thoughts in this area.

Respectfully, I come from a long line of laborers, and in a sense, people who are outside academia. As I recall my family's beautiful memories and unique cultures, I am grateful for their openness and stories over the years and for helping me see the ideas I like to discuss and develop confidently. The experience was and continues to be an extraordinary one.

At the young age of eighteen, I embarked on a 4-year journey in the United States Army to help pay for college. All I had to do was sign up immediately following my graduation from an online high school. Upon taking the aptitude test before enlisting, I had high spatial comprehensions, with near-perfect scores in identifying meaning through objects and electronics, which is how I became a radio signal specialist for an airborne infantry unit, pairing my knowledge of time with radio signals. Within a few months, I deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, where I worked closely with foreign and domestic government agencies to design communication networks using radio systems.

Engineering and programming became my guiding principles by reason-- nothing spectacular, but I really feel this is where I started to create a kind of dialogue of immanence with time. Even after I had left the Army, I kept an interest in radio signals through my passion for art, philosophy, and science. However, my deployment experiences made an everlasting impact on me, one I can never forget.

A year after I got out of my second term, I started having nightmares of apocalyptic disasters related to my deployments, sometimes in the form of flashbacks, vivid dreams of places I've never been before, and long moments of Déjà vu. It was hard to comprehend what was happening to me during this time, and my relationships with my family, friends, and co-workers became challenging.

I noticed I wasn't able to fully be present with my emotions. I was scared, nervous about speaking, alone— fostering a lack of interest in the everyday duties and responsibilities. My personality began to detach and cluster thoughts to the point of different personality types. I realized I needed to examine my mental health through a channel of healthcare providers. I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic stress disorder and told I will forever struggle with Schizoid Personality Disorder. I felt stunned, confused, ashamed, and never told anyone except the one I had lived with as an attempt to further close myself off and better cope.

Unfortunately, it affected a lot of my close relationships and family connections. Some of those raw emotional experiences eventually made us stronger as a family, but I ultimately wished to turn back time to redo those moments where I struggled most. In that atmosphere, these ideas summoned me back to a deepened curiosity of doubt about perception and time, but in a way, having the ability to see patterns and synchronicities was how I got to become a radio operator in the first place. Ironically, these things started to transcend during random and harmonized moments with hyper-awareness, feeling like I already lived in the present situation. 

What I felt and was capable of experiencing through these conceptions of episodic memories did not resemble what was happening in the world's intersectional issues with social objections about liberation. The more I looked around, the more I noticed other paradoxes of society that seemed out of place or lacked the same context as the experiences I felt correlated to the origin of thought and time.

To this account, a memory I have from my grandfather's lifetime of working on his contraptions is of him gazing up at the night sky. His blue skin and silver hair sparkled in the moonlight as he pointed to the stars, showing us a mapping of the constellations. It felt surreal, but the process of recalling information from a feeling outlined my sorrows, thoughts about death, and realizations of consciousness, while also recognizing the temporality inherent in it all, a truth that I will realize one day.

In that moment, as I stood there with my grandfather under the vast expanse of the night sky, I couldn't help but marvel at the depth of his knowledge and the profound connection he seemed to have with the universe. His weathered hands gestured gracefully towards the stars, each twinkling light a piece of a larger cosmic puzzle that he had spent a lifetime studying and deciphering.

As he spoke of the constellations, his voice carried a sense of wonder and reverence that was infectious. It was as if he was not just pointing out patterns in the sky, but weaving a quilt of stories that stretched back through time immemorial. The twinkling of the stars mirrored the light in his eyes, and for a brief moment, I felt as though I too could glimpse the mysteries of the universe through his teachings.

Yet, amidst the beauty and awe of that night, there was also a poignant reminder of the fleeting nature of life. The impermanence of our existence was laid bare before me, a bittersweet truth that lingered in the air like a whisper. In that moment, I grappled with the weight of my own mortality, contemplating the legacy I would leave behind and the legacy that my grandfather had already forged through his work and wisdom.

As I reflect on that memory now, I am reminded of the profound impact that one individual can have on those around them, how a single moment of connection beneath the stars can spark a journey of self-discovery and contemplation. My grandfather's legacy lives on not just in the constellations he mapped out for us that night, but in the lessons he imparted and the questions he inspired us to ask about the nature of our existence and the mysteries that lie beyond.