an incomplete picture (closer)

Melkis and I saw Closer in the Square the weekend before we left for break. We loved it. Right after it ended I clung to Melkis's arm and all I could say was, "That was so good. That was so intense." I can compare it to no other movie experience. I've seen a lot of intense movies but none that made me hurt in quite the way that this one did. Not that it was more valuable than the other kinds of strong feelings that movies in the past have evoked, but just that this was singular.

It was painful and fascinating to witness how deeply and how effectively--and how efficiently (that word seems to convey the tone of the movie fairly well)--people can and will hurt each other. There were moments when I literally hurt. Why is this unusual? That always happens when I see people being cruel to one another. In some cases, it's a simple repulsion by inexplicable unkindness; in others there's a more complicated empathy involved; the actions may be cruel but the intentions can be understandable. The kind of things Closer depicted were more of the latter sort, but for some reason they scared me in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Because they were so real, so understandable in the context in which they were placed. The things that were said, and that were done, were things I would never have imagined people actually saying and doing, but when they were said and done in the film, they seemed so natural. And that was scary. And even scarier that the original source of these incredibly hurtful things was love. Love is powerful, most movies optimistically tell us, love can surmount all things, they say. Closer doesn’t deny this but it makes distinctions between love and compassion and kindness—love is in fact so powerful that it can destroy any inclination to practice the latter two virtues.

I mentioned some of this to Andrea and she asked me whether I've seen/experienced that kind of hurt in real life, and I said yes, but in real life these incidents and feelings are diluted over long passages of time, place and experience, so witnessing them full-force on-screen, you recognize and feel them much differently. Particularly in this movie, which was so compact. So concise--every word or lack thereof meant something, and lifetimes and a million musings fit easily and comfortably into four characters--four bodies, really--and a plot that could be summarized in a few sentences. Maybe this is where my vague dissatisfaction with real life stems from; I want that level of intensity, all the time. I think I talked to Sarah about that once and she said something along the lines of, why would you want that, you’d be drained and exhausted. This is probably true, and reminds me of what Foucault says about never being able to experience things fully and directly, using the example of the sun—you can never experience the sun as it really is because our interaction with it is too intangible and even if it were tangible it’d be too intense; you can only see its light reflected onto other things and feel its warmth, diluted by distance and particles in the air.

Most of the time I’m more than content with that, even incredibly grateful and happy for that because there are moments when even as it is things are too much, and so beautiful (a la American Beauty). But I wonder sometimes whether that is sufficient, or we only think so because it’s all we can have. I like to think, though, that maybe things are beautiful because even only a fraction of the whole can have such impact, and we’re left to imagine how amazing the complete image would be.

inarticulation

Two people in the past two days have made fun of my inability to articulate exactly what I mean. And I get that all the time. Someone told me that I say “I don’t know” a lot. This is true, and not just in the context of answering questions but more importantly in trying to explain things. I never noticed it much until I encountered a certain person compelled to ask “why?” Not many people have pushed me to explain myself fully, and I rarely voluntarily do it. I think ninety percent of the time I have no idea how to express in words what it is that I feel and mean. It’s harder than people think to translate from individual to individual. English is a lie. People don’t really speak the same language.

Cold sunny days have this weird, almost endearing physically-numbing mentally-stimulating effect on me. I've been thinking about a million things today--no time to write about them. I will when the week is over, if I can still remember. When will the week be over??!

Walking back home from class my iPod malfunctioned. Silence for a few cold seconds, then I was unexpectedly and serendipitously warmed by The Cure.

you were stone white/so delicate/lost in the cold

adams winter formal

In getting ready for the formal, I concluded that I indeed have never learned to be a girl. How does mascara really work? Why are there different powders for blush and eyeshadow when you're just putting color on some part of your face? Why do I not care about lipstick when there's food to be eaten? Why is there no dress that fits me exactly right and does not require some sort of adjusting? Why do 90% of the girls wear black to winter formals? Next year--bright yellow, once I find that perfect yellow dress. Why do I look just as ordinary made-up and dressed-up as in my Friday sweatshirt and jeans? Why wear heels when girls taller than me are also wearing heels? Why not just dance barefoot? It's a confusing system, and these are the important questions, evidently.

Anyway, it's still fun.

Song highlights: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, Heaven on Earth, I Touch Myself, Total Eclipse of the Heart, (hint of the 80s anyone?), I Like That ("This song's for Melkis"), CRAZY IN LOVE (that was pretty damn crazy, I must say).

Pictures of crazy people I love. Sorry for the disarray, and the lack of elaboration. I'm sleepy. And for those of you who complain that I never post pictures of myself...too bad.

a journal within a journal

I was three-fourths done with an entry about what and how much writing means to me. Two faulty computer clicks and it was all gone. Five seconds of a daze and a fury later, I start again.

I, like anyone else who reads or writes a public journal, wonder sometimes about public versus private writing. A lot of people argue that you can't judge someone by their blog, that inevitably the writer is more complex and multidimensional than the writing. I definitely see the truth in that--the selectivity that comes with choosing words will always impose limitations on what you can express and in turn what the reader can perceive. But I also think that often you can get more from entries than from direct communication. Not that this should necessarily be the way it is, but the nature of relationships and personal interaction makes it so.

I think this applies to self-perception too. I haven't written in my own journal since the beginning of October. The other night I was organizing my book shelf and came across it. It's amazing how long two months can feel, how distant I feel from the last thing I wrote, how easily I forget things that I felt so strongly at one point. I don't know what's more valid, my memories (or lack thereof) of actual experiences--memories that change with each day--or the writing that records and encapsulates them at the time. Either way, I'm glad I wrote them down. I recognize that writing as a medium is just that--a medium, a catalyst--that can't relay experience directly, but I also think that it can be an agent for more than that.

June 7
I'm finally back home.
...
Everything here is the same, and I'm not. At every point in my life I think I know myself more completely and accurately than the last.
...
Something Barnes said resonated with me. He said when you're young you live for the fullness of the seasons whereas when you grow older you appreciate the in-between moments because you've recognized--resigned to?--the uncertainty of life. It seems reversed for me right now, though. College definitely cemented the presence and reality of uncertainty in my life forever, but I'm not afraid of it anymore and I want those full seasons to come--why should there ever be in-between moments?
...
This is solely for me; no need to explain or show anything because I will know what I meant, and reinterpret, in the future.

June 9
How funny and fitting that so far "May" is my favorite chapter in The Jane Austen Book Club. It's about Prudie hosting the book club meeting on Mansfield Park (but never actually doing so). Prudie never knows what's real; it's blurred by false and imagined memories, fairy tales, images. Loves France but never wants to go there. Maker of lists, but not a prisoner of them.

June 11
When I'm with others, I feel so ordinary. Does recognizing the possibility of the extraordinary make an ordinary person any less so? If not, what a life this person leads, to be able to see possibility and to never attain it. Capote says that with the gift comes the whip for self-flagellation. Maybe I have only one or the other, more likely neither.
...
It's good to be back home. Amidst traffic today I saw the most breathtaking view of Fremont's brown hills against Northern California's wispy clouded skies. Stephen always thinks Fremont hills are only beautiful when green. His eye for beauty is much more selective than mine. The brown touches me in a different but equally powerful way. They're always there, and that's my favorite part about them. What I do miss about the East Coast--the walking. I liked walking places. The trade-offs, I suppose.

June 20
He's the one who's made me so afraid of being selfish, so much so that I made my number one goal to become more selfless.

Deep down I know how hard it's been for him.

July 14
I waver between using my interests to define who I am and hating being defined by my interests.
...
So much easier to write than to speak.
...
He is one of those people who makes me feel so good because for some reason I've made an impact on his life, one of those people whose lives I feel genuinely include me. I don't see or talk to him all the time but somehow he always remembers me, has managed to still want to talk to me after all these years. In that respect he's the most loyal person I know.
...
A six year old girl told me today, "You're a kid too."

August 15
Even though they're both unusually emotional, whenever they talk about love, it's so analytical. It's about the girl's qualities, rarely ever simple, pure feeling--the kind of inexplicable emotion that doesn't need and actually resists analysis, no explanation, no reason. I wonder if that's the kind of love most people feel, and I wonder which I will encounter, if either.
...
I just want to go back to school and move my life forward instead of simply organizing for change here.

September 5
Home from Hawaii. Exhausted. Mixed feelings. Only one week left, wish I had at least two. As anxious as I've been for school to start, something's suddenly brought my heart back here. I don't know what it is. I still can't wait for school, but now I wish I could be in two places at once.

September 10
I want to soak up the last remnants of home with as little introspection as possible--just my parents, the couch, good food, packing, tv music and movies. Is it possible to miss things before you leave them?

September 14
So much has been racing through my mind this past week--I know now why we were made to sleep.
...
I love being a couch potato with my dad, such closeness in that silence.
...
I've been thinking a lot about what it means to know someone. I wish sometimes there was someone who wanted to know the stupid little details of my personality. I wonder if those kinds of things will change over the years. It seems like the most insignificant components of ourselves are the ones that endure the longest.

October 4
"He had all the bones and joints of other men, without any of their proportions."
-Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

harvard-yale

I don’t think I’ve ever danced so hard in my life.

By the end of the week we were all completely exhausted. After churning out two papers, I began the insane memorization for the biology exam, which meant doing the bulk of my chem problem set the afternoon it was due and turning it in fifteen minutes before the deadline. This probably doesn’t sound that bad to most college students, but I’m not a procrastinator. I hate being behind and last minute. But it all got done, and though I have to essentially go backwards and forwards now, catching up on old work and moving ahead with new material, this weekend was enough (maybe too much) of a break to compensate. My point: this weekend was well-deserved.

On Friday night I abandoned the plan to start my junior essay and went to Lansdowne for the pre-game party with the girls instead. We loaded on to the shuttle (which was really a yellow school bus that made us feel like elementary school kids, which was a little strange in that it felt natural). The gimmick is that they open five clubs and you can go from club to club for the price of one—but when we got there the only one open was Avalon, which isn’t that much fun. But we did fulfill Amy’s lifelong desire to dance atop a table (well, it was really a stage meant for dancing, but any elevated surface will suffice). When the others finally opened we went to Embassy, which played really good music but was too hot (temperature-wise…haha). We ran into Maciej, who is such a cute dancer. I will forever think of him as our little freshman buddy (despite the fact that he’s a foot taller than us and now a sophomore). After Embassy we encountered bathrooms, exits, and abandoned bars, trying to find the connecting clubs. We finally made our way to Axis, which was nice and cool (again temperature-wise) and whose DJ said he hated Harvard because he was broke (at which point I thought…so are we). After Axis we took our hip school bus back to the Square. I somehow mustered the energy to read Little Women before heading to bed, so instead of going to sleep with remnants of the sketchiness of the whole Lansdowne experience in my mind, I was left with wholesome images of the sisters knitting and acting out scenes from Pilgrim’s Progress…

The next day was anything but wholesome. Melkis and I got into the tailgate around 12:15 and didn’t leave until 2:30. Those two hours felt like two minutes. The first thing we did was get food—clam chowder, chili, sausages, hamburgers…warm food in cold weather has a wonderful capacity to make me incredibly happy. Then we found Amy and Jen, already intoxicated, at the Adams tailgate. The atmosphere and energy of the tailgate is so amazing. Thousands of people are just swarming over the fields; strolling outdoors among so many people is such a simple pleasure. Clubs, houses, organizations had their individual setups, food, drinks and music. Once we got our fill we danced nonstop for about an hour and a half. In a moment of impulse we climbed a high wooden table, where I got some nice aerial photos of the crowds, and where we got to dance on yet another elevated surface (to Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems too!…Sigh, favorite dance songs) before police officers made us get down. That was a first. Also for the first time in awhile, I didn’t find myself thinking that I could make a better music mix, because they played my favorite Britney Spears song ever (Crazy)...and BILLY JOEL. Who else but us would go crazy for We Didn’t Start the Fire? And a lot of junior high and high school dance music, which everyone knows I have a soft spot for. I must say that we were the craziest dancers there; I don’t think we cared that most of the time we were surrounded by people who weren’t dancing. At one point Amy backed up on me so aggressively that she spilled punch all over my jacket. And proceeded to yell repeatedly, “I’ll wash it with SHOUT!” (with loud emphasis on SHOUT). And so it was that we were able to keep quite warm in the 40-degree weather. I had five upper layers, two lower layers, three pairs of socks, two scarves, and three pairs of gloves (overcompensation for freezing every part of my body freshman year) but I shed most of this after a little while. I would post pictures of the girl-on-girl dancing action but I’m afraid Amy and Melkis would kill me.

It was perfect.

Oh and…yes, we made it to the actual football game…briefly. We watched five minutes and saw our team score a touchdown, then went home to recover (in case you’re curious, we beat Yale 35-3). Later I went to Amy’s to try to do work, though we ended up talking about everything from minesweeper and eggplant pizza to friendships and college experiences. Tailgating in the morning and trying to write about Kafka at night—not easy.

Tonight was the Bob Dylan concert. None of us were too familiar with his music and his voice has been going downhill for a long time now, but it was worth it to see that woman in her thirties, way in the back, totally alone, and dancing like mad to every song, no matter how slow and mellow it was. I don’t care if it was drunk or sober frenzy; that kind of unrestrained passion can be so admirable.

Friday afternoon in stats section, before all the excitement and while I was still bogged in the long stretch before relative freedom, we were comparing the happiness of students during childhood and their happiness after coming to college. The inspiration for this was a hypothetical situation where a girl just celebrated her birthday and starts talking to her friend about how they’re getting older and how things are just not as simple and carefree as they were when they were younger. Melkis and I read about this, looked at each other and said, “This is exactly what we talk about all the time.”

So yes, we had to go back to studying after all the fun and there’s so much work ahead…but I don’t think what comes before and after matters as much as I feel sometimes. Sometimes these moments can be purely carefree, untouched by what you need to accomplish the next moment.

I love this picture because no one looks normal.

how oddly things coincide

It feels so nice to wake up in the early afternoon from napping to mellow music and then to have some (relatively) free time to write.

So this picture summarizes my weekend: the Jimmy Eat World concert and "studying" for the organic chem exam I had this morning. On Saturday night Melkis, Steph, Jen, Amy, Jackie's friend Zach and his roommate Richard and I saw Jimmy Eat World at Avalon. I was running on very little sleep and food, but once they came on, I didn't care at all. They played such a good mix from Clarity, Bleed American and Futures. Midway they sang "For Me This is Heaven," and the background lit up with those twinkly star lights. I think those four minutes of bliss will last me for a long time. The rest of it was wonderful too. Their music reminds me of that girl in the Coke commercial who hands out Coke bottles to people she walks by. I want to be that girl, but instead of soda, I'd like to somehow package bits of JEW songs and pass out bottles of Jimmy Eat World goodness to strangers on the street. Little cures for troubles.

For the rest of the weekend I tried to maintain that feeling while cramming for orgo. I've never spent so much time in the Adams House library before. During the many study breaks I took I had a lot of time to just look at it, and enjoy how pretty it is. I like that it's just one room, like it would be in an actual house. I like the creaky chairs, the wooden panels, the old books. I forget sometimes how un-modern our campus and environment is, compared to California. There's something about being in an old place that makes you feel like you know more about the things around you, even when, like in my case, you don't.

At around 11 yesterday night Henry came in and joined me at one of the single tables at the end of the library. I don't think people realize half of the time how much their company matters. The first thing he did was make me laugh by informing me that he had a seven-pager due the next day for Helen Vendler's poetry class, and that he hadn't started. I spent a good ten minutes just listening to him type and wishing that I was writing an essay on poetry instead of figuring out how to synthesize organic compounds. But it was the same way last year, in reverse...when I was inundated with English papers I found myself actually wanting to do chem problem sets with the girls. I'm so difficult, mostly because I really resist specialization; there's too many things out there. After going back and forth for awhile, I feel this is the best balance. And now that chemistry's over, I can catch up on novel reading and paper writing.

A little later Henry asked me to read the first page of his paper (he writes crazy fast). I love reading essays written by people I know. It sounds stupid, but something so endearing comes from connecting every interesting phrase and grammatical choice to the person who wrote it. I don't think you can write anything and not have it say something, no matter how little, about you. This is why, even though I know they don't mean it that way, it makes me feel trusted when people ask me to read their writing.

I think I'm going to nap again...

sigh

There are ten million and one nothings that I want to write about.

halloween

What a crazy weekend. I have to give a disclaimer here: this is going to be purely a long recollection of events. I have no thoughts about anything other than it was all hilarious. I also know I’m going to use millions of superlatives because everything this weekend was the best.

Friday night was Adams House’s annual Drag Night. For weeks we’ve been looking forward to our tutor, Chris, performing Crazy in Love as Beyonce. Right before the show he knocks on our door and asks Melkis to be his Jay-Z. We convinced her that she couldn’t miss out on dancing on stage with Beyonce. So she frantically borrows some baggy clothing from guy friends and practices not cracking up while trying to look ghetto. She and Chris were set to perform in the middle of the show, so we had a few acts to watch before theirs. Before it started we saw baby Ethan in the most adorable pink outfit! He even had a little barrette in his cute wispy hair. The best part was that he was oblivious to it all and was as happy and charming as always. Oh, Ethan.

So Richard started the show with a gown whose slits were quite scandalous. Then a guy with better moves than most girls danced to Nina Sky’s Move Your Body. After him, the guy who was Catherine Zeta Jones-singing-Mariah Carey last Halloween came on as Christina Aguilera-singing-Celine Dion, and was even better than last year. Now I’m starting to forget the order of performers, but soon Chris came out as Beyonce with his tiny tube top (Melkis: Is that a bandanna?) and short skirt. I was getting really anxious to see Melkis go up and watch/hear everyone’s reactions because no one else knew she was performing with him. Then the Jay-Z rap started and she ran up to the stage; it was so so funny because Chris is about 20 inches taller than her, and at one point in the dance he whipped her around so that he could dance in front of her and she looked so tiny and fragile next to him. But she pulled it off really well and none of us could stop laughing.

After that there were some other really good performances, including our house masters singing A Whole New World as Aladdin and Jasmine (Melkis kept shrieking that it was her favorite Disney song). Their costumes were beautiful, and they sprinkled glitter onto the audience. It was so sweet; they are the most wonderful couple in the world. Afterwards we mingled with the other beautiful ladies, including Michael, our senior tutor who never fails to wear the best red dress; Bert, an awesome tutor from Claverly; and Bernard, who is the sweetest person ever. He’s our security/mail/everything man in Adams and he knows everyone’s names and is never not smiling. He also laughs at everything; I love people like that.

After Friday I tried to get as much work done as possible on Saturday so that we could celebrate Halloween. Instead, I slept in and took sporadic naps between lunch and dinner, and after dinner we went last minute costume shopping. We went through all the typical stuff—nurse, Marilyn Monroe, schoolgirl—before Melkis grabbed a fuschia wig and convinced us to get wigs instead. We couldn’t afford much after choosing wigs (Steph got electric blue, as you can see, and I took lavender) so we just got super long and gaudy fake eyelashes (Steph got blue to match her wig, Melkis got silver, and I took black with silver studs) and decided to wear our new stuff with all black outfits. Getting ready is always half the fun. We helped Steph bobby pin her super long hair under her wig, and she helped us put on our eyelashes. Jackie, as a quite bewitching witch, and Yonina, who also went the way of the wig (Amy: Yonina, I like your wig; it’s so messy. What were you doing?!), dropped by and after the obligatory camera-clicking we met up with Amy, Jen and Andrea.

Amy looked so fabulous; she was the self-described femme fatale from Chungking Express and was decked out in a tan trench coat, shiny knee-high black boots, sunglasses (which she wore all night, indoors and outdoors) and curly blonde wig. She completed the costume with a garter gun (I didn’t even know that existed…Amy: Wanna see my gun?) and a cigarette that she carried until the end of the night when it broke. I think she was already somewhat tipsy because twenty minutes after she first commented on our matching wigs, she exclaimed, “Oh! Matching wigs!” She’s hilarious.

We took the five minute trek over to A-entryway where the Heaven and Hell parties were. Hell was on the first floor and you pass Purgatory as you ascend the stairs to Heaven (I’m taking this description straight from my memory of Schmooze emails). We went to Hell first and stayed there for awhile; it was pretty fun except that the music wasn’t loud enough and I kept thinking that we could have compiled a much better mix. We stopped by Purgatory and Heaven but didn’t stay at either for very long. So after we left Hell Theresa helped us find the Crimson (I think I was heading in the wrong direction) but we didn’t get into the party because there was a guest list. It was worth it, though, to see Melkis tugging on the closed door, crying “I don’t have my ID!” and a guy coming up and simply knocking on the door to have someone open it. Melkis’s laugh is normally funny and prolonged as it is but she was pretty hysterical on Halloween; she just could not stop laughing. Then we ran into a guy dressed as Scooby Doo on the street, and for some reason I got into an argument with him about how he wasn’t the real Scooby Doo. And everyone else started singing the theme song. By that point we’d had enough of Adams’s Hell so we thinking of going to Currier (yeah...the Quad...) for their Heaven and Hell. On our way out we ran into some of the house tutors, who apparently told us to go home and I apparently said to the girls that of course they were going to tell us to go home because they were tutors, which I don’t remember saying at all, and apparently I kept insisting that I was sensible…which I think came about because everyone kept saying to me that I made sense. Which is a weird thing for people to keep saying to you, if you think about it. Anyway, in the end Melkis convinced us to go back to our room because it was too cold outside to make the trip to the Quad.

So then we had a mini-party with the five of us in our room, and I doubt I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. Jen and Amy requested that I blast Weezer and we were singing on the top of our lungs, with Amy impersonating Rivers at one point. I told them to take off their shoes because it was more fun to dance barefoot and Jen and I had to help Amy take off her boots, which was quite the difficult task. If there was anyone in the room below us, they probably hate us now. Then Melkis put on Beyonce, at which point I think we reached the height of our craziness.

[Amy dancing strangely but happily]
Melkis: Amy, what the hell is that dance move?
Amy: Oh, I'm frolicking in a field.

Throughout most of this Steph was so serene; she had the cutest floating, dreamy expression the entire night. I would put up photos of all this but there’s too many good ones and also I think I’ve embarrassed us enough.

Oh, an aside: Amy and I saw Rivers Cuomo today. Just walking along on a lovely, warm fall day. Sighs.

on the way to something else

It was such a gorgeous day today.

There are a lot of scattered concrete events to look forward to: Drag Night, Halloween party-hopping, Jimmy Eat World, Bob Dylan, Thanksgiving, Harvard-Yale, showing the girls NorCal over intersession...but images like these make the in-between flow of days just as worthwhile.

Thank you to Amy for Voyage to India and to Henry for Acoustic Soul--India Arie is perfect fall-weather music.

happenings in bulk

The past few weeks have flown by, and thank goodness because last week was not fun. But maintaining sanity is my number one priority this semester, and so far I've been mostly successful, despite what some might say about momentary lapses…=]

On Columbus Day I saw Interpol at Avalon, and though I'm really happy I got to see them, I'm not sure it was so good for me at that time. I was a little moody that day, partly because I'd been studying chemistry all weekend instead of having fun, and Interpol made me moodier. They were characteristically aloof—few words, crisp suits and cigarette smoke curling in the dark. But that was probably the point, and worth it.

Later that week we surprised Jen for her 20th birthday (such a young one). We were supposed to hide in her room but her roommate forgot to leave us the key so we staked out in Henry’s room. When she came by, eager Amy sprang out first while the rest of us lagged behind (she left us the left-over surprise factor) but fortunately we didn’t miss the what’s-going-on expression on Jen’s face. We went to Blue Fin for sushi. Since we had time to kill before getting a table, we cruised the narrow aisles of a Japanese supermarket, where we were amused by super size Pocky, “sweat” water, and the Asian obsession with light skin and plastic surgery. When we finally got a table, we ordered lots of sushi rolls, tempura and dumplings. My stomach’s growling now that I’m remembering the tuna, eel, avocado, salmon, shrimp…sigh. I can’t remember anymore exactly what we were laughing so much about, but I know that laughing comprised the majority of the night (the eating took about ten minutes). Andrea has the best facial expressions ever. She also showed us the “I-want-you” handshake which literally put us all in hysterics. People are so funny. Humor is like beauty, in that sense; everyone has it, I feel. There are of course varying degrees but I don't think that's so much important as the varying degrees in how long in takes you to realize it in a particular person.

Last week I had a chem exam on Monday, English paper due Tuesday, and bio exam on Wednesday. So I pulled my first ever all-nighter before an exam, for bio. Well, I got three hours of sleep, from six to nine. Chris told me that doesn’t qualify as an all-nighter, but that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get. I’m never going to do that again. Thankfully Melkis was up too. By the middle of the night, we would just randomly stare at each other, blink, and then look down to our notes again. And I became even more inarticulate than usual. That Wednesday was a horrible, horrible day…but then the Red Sox beat the Yankees, craziness ensued, and it was better.

Last Friday night we went to Mr. Bartley’s. I pass by the restaurant every day, and the warm burger and french fry smell makes me shiver in my winter coat, which I’ve already started wearing because it’s been so cold. When we got there it was packed, as usual, and the compactness made it all the more distinct from the cold outside. I had a Tony Blair with the famous Lime Rickey, Melkis and Frank had Jesse Venturas, and Chris had a Colin Powell (I just realized we all went for political burgers). Soooo good. Afterwards we went to the Square theater to see I Heart Huckabees…where I was carded! That hasn’t happened since I was 18. And no one asked Courtney, Frank or Melkis. Okay, so they do look a lot older than me. But I was still slightly miffed. Anyhow, the movie was good. Some very, very unnecessarily strange moments, but overall I liked it a lot. Frank came over yesterday night (and as Steph said, brought music and poetry with him). I think Frank is the only person who has ever made me feel even slightly like a pessimist, because he’s such an adamant idealist (in a good way). So we were talking about the movie, and I said to him that it wasn’t exactly optimistic. He replied, but it wasn’t pessimistic either. And we agreed that it was just there. Which is the best part of existentialism. I got so teary-eyed when Albert sees his face in Brad’s image; that was my absolute favorite part of the movie. It was surprisingly touching, and sweet.

I always start out thinking I have so much to say, and I do, but by the end of it, it doesn’t seem like much at all. I wish I had time to write about these events in isolation rather than in bulk. They come off—not exactly unimportant—but not as strongly as I feel them. Emotions begin so intensely and sometimes descriptions dilute them. Or maybe it’s just my descriptions. Something Frank said yesterday prompted me to finally begin this entry. He said, someone asked him why things have names and he responded that things need to be classified; and the person replied that that’s not the reason, that the reason things have names is because they’re important. So I start out writing about these things to prove that they are important, if only to me. But I end by realizing that there are a lot of things important to me that I don’t have names for.

bostonian hysteria

A million people in the square. Blocked streets, church bells, drums, cops wearing vests with reflectors, streakers, honking cars and trucks, screams, music, stampedes, drunks, anthems, years and years of pent up craze.

So amazing to see so many people happy about the same thing. And I don't even care about baseball.

work and play

No more lazy summer days.

And it seems like New England's decided to skip over that listless autumn phase I love so much. Maybe it's just coming late.

Anyway, things have been busy and good. A rundown of work first...I've been thrown (or, thrown myself) into the pre-med English mix again. So far it's been pretty much what I expected. I'm taking five classes for the first time--

Magic Realism: My junior tutorial for English (a tutorial = small class/reading-writing intensive). The smallest class I've ever taken here (4 people including me). It hasn't gotten to the cozy stage yet but I expect it will. It's pretty laid-back and the reading list is great. There's a lot of South American literature, which is nice because since I didn't take Spanish in high school I haven't really read much Spanish lit. Half of the syllabus is open, so I was able to choose to have Like Water for Chocolate on the reading list.

19th Century American Novel: I'm taking this class with Steph, so it's nice to have someone nearby to talk to about the books we're reading. The reading list consists of all those books you're supposed to have read at some point in your life but usually haven't until you're in a class that assigns them--Moby Dick, Uncle Tom's Cabin, etc--though there are some others that most people have read, like Huck Finn, Little Women, Red Badge of Courage. We're supposed to read the Last of the Mohicans next, which is great because I've seen that movie about twenty times. Victo also got me the book for a dollar at our Notre Dame library so I'm glad I'll finally read it. I've always wanted to take a class with Professor Stauffer but I can't pass too much judgment on him yet because the first book we read was incredibly boring and I don't think anyone could have made it interesting for me. But Steph and I do think he's funny/odd because we believe his motto is "The book made me do it!" He keeps telling us stories about how books he's read have induced him to do certain things. I always thought I lived too much in fiction, but he's in a whole other category.

Evolutionary Biology: Okay, so I like worms and frogs and penguins as much as the next person. But there's really nothing interesting to say about this class except that we get to dissect things tomorrow. The lectures aren't very good, and I've stopped reading the book. The best thing about the class is that Melkis, Amy and Maciej are in it and all we do during lecture is laugh, at everything from the professor saying "rectangular square box" to Amy mispronouncing "oocyte" to Melkis's freakishly neat notes.

Organic Chemistry: The professor is as good as everyone says, and so far nothing's been totally over my head though it is pretty fast-paced and I definitely need to review my general chemistry. I still don't like the sensation of sitting alone in that big pre-med-filled class; I'm not used to that freshman feeling or that pre-med feeling anymore. But I've met people to work with more quickly than I thought; I'm glad I managed to get over my initial reluctance and anxiety about that. And though Chem 17 isn't as structured as Chem 5/7, I like it so far. Orgo doesn't provide as much support as the general chem classes did, but I guess that's the point of advancing. And so it continues that chem classes are way better than bio here.

Statistics for Behavioral Sciences: Okay, so I could tell you that I'm taking this class because the social worker at my volunteer program is working on a research project to evaluate the effectiveness of our program and therefore uses this type of stats, and because we work a lot with psychologists and read about studies that require these stats. But really, there are three main reasons why I'm taking it: 1) it's easy; 2) Melkis and Jordan are in it; Jordan's pessimism is the only kind that can make me laugh so much, and in the morning, of all times; 3) the professor is adorable. He's short and skinny, and has a lisp, and he likes motorcycles and the OC. And he somehow makes lectures about statistics pretty interesting.

Okay, so on to the fun stuff.

Garden State for the second time: Even better than the first time around. I love how everyone watching it for the first time had the sniffles at the end. Isn't it nice to happy-cry? I've never cried because I was happy, but I like to imagine that someday I will.

My first Master's Tea: I've never been able to go to tea because last year I worked all day on Fridays. So this year was my first, and mmmm the food was so good. The bruschetta! I love how everything on the plates disappears less than 2 seconds after they've been put on the table. It was also during this time that baby Ethan said my name! Yeah for having a monosyllabic, three-letter name.

Shoe-shopping: It's so nice to be able to walk around where I live and have stores right there--so different from seeing everything from a car window (which is nice in its own way). I don't miss one or the other mode of getting around; I just enjoy each as I'm experiencing them, and it's so rare to feel that way about things. Anyway, the important thing is: 4 pairs of shoes for $40. It's compensation for my lifelong shoe deprivation.

Club night at the Roxy: Soooo much fun. The Roxy's really pretty and equipped with all the novelties, like cool lighting and foam. And the DJ was DJ Scribble from old school MTV! And they played Mo' Money Mo' Problems...only the best rap song ever. And as everyone already said, Frank was our awesome bodyguard (because we're the unfriendliest girls on the dance floor). The Roxy was also a lot better than Avalon because it's in downtown, not the sketchy Lansdowne area...not that downtown's not sketchy, but late-night crowded Boston is so much fun. Even though we were freezing and couldn't find a cab for twenty minutes, it's nice to be in the streets with so many people at that time. That never happens back at home.

Motorcycle Diaries: Landscapes in film always make me weepy. So beautiful. So many moving images. A little slow, but intentionally, I think. Suprisingly funny. And we've all agreed that Gael Garcia Bernal is aesthetic perfection. What eyes.

Painting: So what you see above is our masterpiece, an original Alvarez-Chang-Nguyen. Inspired by Andy Warhol's Flowers (suggested by Victo) we split our square canvas into four squares and each took one, and did the fourth square (the one with the butterfly) together. We stayed up till four to finish it and it's going above our fireplace. None of us paint though Steph took lessons as a kid, but it was really fun. Stay tuned for our next project, the gigantic watercolor.

Keane Concert: Yay! I'm glad we decided to go...I went with Jen and her friend David. It was pretty crowded but we got a good view. They sounded really good live, exactly like on their album. And the pianist and drummer were absolutely nuts. Especially the pianist. He was banging on the keys and his hair was flying all over the place and every limb he had was flailing. It was hilarious, especially because their music is kind of mellow. The singer was also really corny. He introduced his songs with lines like: "This song is called sunshine. I hope you find sunshine as the winter comes." It was funny, but sweet because he was so unabashed. We concluded it was a European thing.

And kind of in between work and fun is ASK. Coordinating fall semester has been a lot more work than spring semester, what with all the new volunteers and the 2-day retreat. Which, by the way, was so much fun. We stayed in one of the campus coordinator's 17th century house in Connecticut. It was one of those things I was dreading because it seemed like such a long time to be talking about our programs, but it really did prepare me for the semester and got me really excited about the things that we're doing and all the improvements we're hoping to make. Plus, some of the people are just so funny and crazy. Steph and Lara went crazy with corny jokes, we had some scary-movie moments, and I saw a camel! We saw one at the county fair, which we didn't actually enter because it was too expensive, but the drive there was fun and I saw my first ferris wheel at night. And we could hear a band playing Beatles songs, and it was all so small-town. Too many memorable moments to list.

Well, I wanted to get back here because I was growing restless in California, so I can't complain. And even if I hadn't asked for this crazy busy-ness, I'm glad it's this way. I don't think I've completely gotten over turning 20 yet, and I still believe (probably falsely, but when does that matter) that the faster my life is moving, the faster exciting things will happen to me. So you can wait for them with me.

our new home

Enter B-entryway through the Bow Street entrance of Westmorly Court.


Walk down the hall and enjoy the angular views as you climb two flights of stairs.


Arrive at B-37, occupied by these three silly girls.


Where life is beautiful, because we own the four Adams House dorm room staples: a comfy red futon, a pretty Urban Outfitters lantern, a please-flop-down-on-me chair for the unofficial roommate (Frank, in our case), and a fireplace.


My room has three windows, none of which have very nice views but nonetheless create a nice atmosphere.


My walls sport the best poster in the world (thanks to Amy) and other tidbits (thanks in large part to mailings from Victo). Because it's hard to really show what my room looks like, the second poster represents what it sometimes feels like.


Navigate the art of the tunnels.






To reach other rooms, where the best girls living in Massachusetts gather.

the top ten of hawaii

A delayed update, but here it is nonetheless.

10) Hearing and seeing "Mahalo" everywhere. Everywhere.

9) The service is not the greatest because

8) Everpresent tourists (like me) have made people jaded and

7) Everyone is slow. The pace in Hawaii is amazingly slow, even compared to California standards. The speed limit on the freeway is 45 mph, for example. My brother: "People here live like they have a hundred more years to go."

6) Mark Twain is quoted everywhere. Everywhere. Apparently Twain spent a lot of time traveling in Hawaii and he loved it. Everything he's ever written about it is publicized somewhere in the state. Kind of odd to imagine the author of Huck Finn and Connecticut Yankee soaking his toes in the Pacific.

5) Guavas. My parents came across a guava somewhere, and it was the most delicious smelling fruit ever. You could smell it from across the room. Later my parents came across guava trees and made my brother climb them to get some. The bag full of fruit left our rental car forever guava-scented.

4) Paradise is not immune to family arguments.

3) Heat + humidity + hiking = ice cream practically every day. Ice cream is the best food ever.

2) Locals like to share their life stories. A woman sitting next to my dad on the airplane told him how she and her husband honeymooned in Maui and wound up spending the rest of their lives there. At a farmer's market on the Big Island, the woman from whom my mom wanted to buy a jackfruit told us about her seven brothers and sisters, and her various moves from island to island, and her life before and after "the war" (she didn't specify). Another time my brother and I were just standing around when a lady came up to us and asked us where we were from. We said Northern California and she said her daughter went to college there. She told us that her daughter, who's mixed, had chosen her school based on location, and proceeded to tell us how every other place in the US is racist. Complete with anecdotes.

1) Enough pure blue to last a lifetime.

Now in Boston, all of it seems pretty distant. Busy, hectic, a little worried, pretty excited, very tired. The days have been incredibly long. Despite missing the amenities of Clav, our Adams room is awesome. I need more time to settle in before I can even think back to the fun-frenzied craziness of the past week. It feels really nice to be back. But why is it so cold?! It's as if nature's making sure my body knows that it's in Boston, not Fremont, to encourage my mind to make the same distinction. It's working.

the month of august

The last few weeks have been full of scattered incidents, connected only by the fact that they were experienced by me. So as much as I like to categorize things, this summary is going to lack a theme. Which is actually probably a good thing, because I'm starting to realize that my worst moments arise when I want to do two things at once--to experience things, good and bad, that are beyond explanation, and to make sense of things. I think I need to loosen my grip on the second to ever come close to the first.

So, things that happened...

Collateral: My dad fell asleep, but I loved it. There are so many good movies about New York City, but until this movie I couldn’t really name one about Los Angeles. I love that it drew on negative aspects of the city—its disconnectedness, traffic, crime, darkness—to somehow make the city more appealing than the typical sunny California depictions. As rarely as I really become consumed by things in my own life, it’s so easy for me to get swept up in fiction. I was so immersed in the floating, detached atmosphere that the movie created. When the characters connected under both natural and unexpected circumstances, I felt such relief. I didn’t even realize until then that I’d been tense (maybe because when you feel a steady flow of any one emotion for a long enough time, it all ends up feeling the same—numb). And purely visually, Los Angeles has never looked so beautiful on screen.

Kristina's Annual End-of-Summer Birthday Party: My fifth installment of the running series of Kristina’s parties. I think it all hit us that we are really moving in different directions now, because everyone was out of town and who knows where the three of us will be next summer? But the dynamic is such that I don’t miss the old but I don’t long for the new either. I’m just happy with what we’ve been, how we are now, and what I think we’ll be later. Even though we talked seriously about what’s been going on in our lives, we fell back comfortably into the same conversations we’ve always been able to have, about the Real World and music and people, and into the same things we’ve always done. Ate ice cream downtown, sifted through pictures, drove around, watched a movie, and ate her mom’s famous dip.

Movin' Out: The show itself was really disappointing, both un-musical like and un-Billy Joel like. But the best part was racing through the streets in our semi-formal wear to the theater (why do we always end up running whenever we’re in San Francisco?). The storyline was nonexistent, but the idea of moving out reminded me of something I recently saw on the highway, that I told Victoria and Richard about in the BART station after the show. In the traffic heading home from work, I was driving in the next lane behind a compact family car, fairly normal looking—except for the woman stretched horizontally in the back, sleeping next to a fully open rear window. She was atop a bunch of mattresses and blankets so she was nearly touching the roof of the car. When I noticed this, that’s when I realized the car was stuffed in every corner with the family’s belongings. Then I moved ahead alongside it, and I saw two pairs of kid-sized feet pressed against the window, also close to the roof of the car. Apparently the children were also lying on top of the possessions they had in the car. I don’t know why, but long after I passed it, I couldn’t stop thinking about that car. Sometimes it’s still disorienting for me to have one life on the West Coast, and another on the East Coast, which I think everyone experiences with home and college. I’m not more or less materialistic than the average person. I’m just used to thinking of myself and my life in terms of locations, and in terms of the things I have in these locations that recall experiences I’ve had. But here’s this family, with everything they have in just one car. Everything that matters to them is with them—this would probably be true even if their car weren’t full of things, but that image just made it visible. I wonder what it feels like to go anywhere and feel like everything you own is with you.

Garden State: One of my favorite movies of the summer, and tied with The Professional as my favorite Natalie Portman movie (I still can’t believe I didn’t know that was her until this year). Everything came together so beautifully—the characters, writing, scenery and music. I loved how Natalie’s character felt so much and Zach Braff’s character felt so little, so opposite but somehow I related to both of them.

What’s more interesting about the movie, though, is that it confirms a running theory of mine. Remember how the black cat in The Matrix signifies the matrix because Neo saw it twice? Well, I’ve decided that in real life, Audrey is a sign of the matrix. I’m going to get to how this relates to Garden State. Before we saw the movie, we had lunch, and Audrey talked about how a 35-year-old millionaire paid for lunch for her entire Japanese class because he’d made a fortune in his twenties off something connected to Amazon and is now retired. So now he does things like take summer classes to learn Japanese. I said that I didn’t think I could handle going through something like that because I’d be so bored and directionless with all of that money and nothing to do and to work towards. Then, in Garden State, there’s a character who’s gotten rich by inventing silent Velcro, and who now lives in a big house with no furniture and is feeling exactly the way I had just told Audrey I would imagine I’d feel in that situation. When Zach Braff asks the rich guy what he’s been up to, he says, “Nothing. I bought a lot of stuff, but yeah…nothing.” So, maybe that was a coincidence. But then, in the car on the way to the movie, I mentioned that I didn’t know how to ride a bike, and Audrey said that that made her feel better because her boyfriend had said to her that every normal kid grows up riding a bike. And I replied that I don’t know how to do a lot of that normal stuff—for example, I said, I also didn’t know how to swim. Then, in Garden State, Zach Braff’s character can’t swim and by way of explanation he says, “There’s a lot of normal kid stuff I missed out on.” And something else less direct—a few days before the movie I was listening to Coldplay’s Parachutes album, which I hadn’t played in awhile. So I was listening to “Don’t Panic,” and I was reminded of something Audrey said senior year. She was upset or stressed over something; I don’t remember whether it was an actual incident or just a general feeling, but then she said she drove to school listening to Coldplay, and their singing about how we live in a beautiful world made her feel all right again. When we went to the movie, Victo went to get seats while Aud and I went to the bathroom. When we entered the theater the movie had already started and the first thing we heard was “Don’t Panic.”

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. One time, during lunch at work, I read an article about writers finding their voice, and later that very same day, without my bringing it up, Audrey talked about her voice in writing essays for school. And in LA, she asked me whether eye color was a Mendelian trait because she really wanted her kid to have green eyes. A couple of days later, at work, the people at my lab randomly start talking about the genetics of eye color. Not only that, but they were trying to figure out how green alleles are passed down because one of them has parents who both have green eyes but her sister has blue eyes. So I’ve concluded that Audrey—the person who said that The Matrix stole her idea—is the black cat in my make-believe reality.

Since I brought up Coldplay, something I just noticed—maybe it’s just because a lot of people like them, but they remind me of so many people. They remind me of my brother Stephen because of our mutual love of “Yellow” when it first came out, and of Vicki because of the night drive to her house that I talked about before, when Aud was playing it. I also gave Steph the guitar tabs for that song for Christmas. They remind me of Victo, who gave me both of their albums the day right after I’d been trying to download all their songs. They remind me of Sarah, who briefly visited me in Boston freshman year after going to their concert, and who told me that "In My Place" was my song long before I fell in love with it. And they remind me of Amy, who played their CD in Peter’s room in the beginning of sophomore year, when we were still settling in and no one was really busy. Another reason why I love Coldplay on so many levels.

The Olympics: I’ve been faithfully watching NBC’s nightly coverage for the past week. I have no idea where I was during the Sydney games because I don’t remember watching any of it, and I’ve always loved the Olympics. I was especially excited for this year’s games because classes like Alexander the Great and Rome of Augustus have endeared me to Greece even more (for awhile Melkis and I contemplated abandoning all else for Classics, haha). It just seems so distinct and apart from anywhere else in the world. The gorgeous aerial views they keep showing on TV convince me all the more that someday I want to spontaneously pack up and live there for who knows how long.

Work: For the past month it’s been intense and exhausting. But even without the hoped-for results, it’s been really good, continually interesting and challenging. Only one week left, and only a little over three weeks before I go back to Boston. I want to spend the last week before heading back blissfully bumming around, but administrative details keep coming up. I have to get my eyes checked, my teeth cleaned, and my hair cut.

But in exactly one week I will be flying to Hawaii. I’m still sad that the Curiosa Festival is on the same day I leave…but I can’t wait to see my brothers, to see Hawaii for the first time, to wade in warm ocean water, and most of all to just be somewhere different.

empty house

Coming home to my empty house this past week has not been much fun. I've never been so bothered by solitude before. Thank goodness for best friends, older brothers, and cable television.

I saw the second half of Crazy/Beautiful on TV the other day, and I didn't like it very much, but after Eternal Sunshine and this movie, Kirsten Dunst has won me over. Her natural innocence really contrasts with the emotional experience she gives to the characters she plays. Her face used to seem bland, but she does so much with it and sometimes, at certain angles, she's really beautiful. Her plainness is deceptive, which makes her more interesting than someone who is obviously not run-of-the-mill. I like that people are complicated in such a way that it's really possible to change your opinion of them. I've never wholeheartedly believed that people can change who they essentially are, especially after a certain point. But I do think that some characteristics tend to overshadow others, and it's nice to re-see people when this proportionality of their personality traits changes, and they seem completely different.

Real comfort, though, at least for me, comes from re-seeing things I liked and connected with the first time around. Sarah is a continual presence, and I never question whether I'll still be talking to her twenty years from now. The same goes for everyone else I've seen this summer; I'm just mentioning people I've seen during this somewhat lonely week. Since high school ended, my friendship with Victo has continued and grown as it always has, and spending time with her is always natural and comfortable. I like that we can take care of ourselves and each other at the same time. We saw Pieces of April which was really good and made me want to live in New York City even more. The scenes of Bobby riding through the city were so real and surreal at the same time. And I love dysfunctional family stories. We also saw Love Actually, which overall I didn't think was memorable when I saw it in theaters but I enjoyed the same little things about it as when I first saw it--the minor frustrations and feelings that only seem to matter to yourself at the moment. It's comforting to see the same stupid stuff you do acted out on screen--the Prime Minister's slap-on-forehead moment after giving a dorky wave to Natalie, the guy walking and stopping and walking after Keira Knightley realizes he's in love with her, Sarah's giddiness after she and Carl kiss for the first time, Colin Firth's jump and stomp after he gives the cab that he desperately wanted to an old lady (I obviously don't remember the names of all these characters).

And yes, I like Ashlee Simpson's first single. It seems to suit my recent mood, as I'm half-enjoying the up-in-the-air quality of the current state of things and half-waiting for these things to finally fall into place.

socal adventure

Friday:
Arrive at Richard's house. Attempt to parallel park next to the curved curb. Encounter his relatives. His sister shows me embarrassing photographs of him that we've all seen. Little boy offers me a lychee jelly drink. Nearly permanently damage another child. Jeopardy. Precautions, goodbyes, and reminders from Richard's parents. Big fat map. Aud is a robot. Nonstop talk one second, sound asleep the next. Music requests. "Do you have Christina Aguilera's Dirrty?" "I DO!" "...I was kidding." The mystery of idle construction workers with cones. Aud goes to the bathroom often but scarily fast. Britney Spears's Toxic. Snack bag. Peanut butter crackers turn out to be cheese crackers. 10 PM traffic. (F)alicia Rice. Why calicos are female. Malcolm's fur pattern. Peachy colored apartment.

Saturday:
Slightly complicated shower. Bagels and cereal. Self-realization becomes self-parody. The Passat. Parking for Mr. Lee only. Sunglasses. Sushi and tempura green tea ice cream. Kristen's work. Aud reads Japanese. Black Eyed Peas. The Getty. So California. Irises. Pictures. Three dollar kid-size T-shirts. Drop Richard off at frat house with messy front lawn (styrofoam cups and beat up couch). "The Row." Winding hills and roads to Topanga Canyon. Topanga Canyon. "I'm going to pee." "Okay. Does anyone have napkins?" Persistent bee. Serendipitous hummingbird. Close toed shoes (flip flops in trunk) and photographs of closed toe shoes. "Did we all take pictures of our feet?" Invisible Man. Third Street Promenade. La Salsa. Crazy crowds. Anthropologie. Santa Monica beach at night. Wet jeans and sandy toes. Kristen on starting a water fight: "I don't know...would you guys get mad?" Chimes on the pier. Wayside stories. Hollywood drive. Dead end. Tattoo shops. Coldplay. Green eyes. Cynthia Street (Victoria: "Let's see where she goes.") Life after college. Drunken phone call. "So what'd you guys do today?...Where'd you go today?...What did you guys do?" No more apologies. Topanga and Cory. Outkast's Roses. Kristen and Aud sleep horizontally.

Sunday:
Sleeping in. Subway sandwiches and Popeye's. Victo's workplace. Venice Beach. Venice Beach Recreation Center. Finally find college roommates and friends. Three-person Frisbee team. Melkis's fingernails. Steph and Jey's sand crabs. Neil/Lance Armstrong. Head back north. Richard sleeps. Aud takes over and promptly gets on the wrong highway. Quality friends. Japanese song. Kaze means wind. Details of Aud's life: gymnastics, remarriage, religion, calling to live on a boat, her mom's life. Parental stories. We know you're not irresponsible or spoiled. Fight Club (Now what should I do? Go to college. Now what? Get married). Life after college, again. I Love the 90's. Bad movies. Super personal question (Answer: No). Shrimp chips ("Geez Kim, this bag was at least half full!"). Aud on night driving: "It wasn't like we were in a different place; it was like we always did this." Spotting five different car accidents. Lending Aud's sister the ND cap, gown and perhaps diploma ("Congratulations...Muto"). Phone calls from Richard's dad ("Hello?" "Rich?" "...No, this is Kim." * "Hello?" "Kim?" "...No, this is Audrey.") Melted chocolate raisins. Richard looks lost. Richard finds the squigee. Simultaenously sudden laughter. Richard demands that we stop laughing. Milk or dark chocolate? House sitting for Joni Mitchell or Joan Baez. First CD's. Making memories mode. Missing the bandwagon. Good, good conversations that flowed into one another in such a way that I can only remember the feelings and none of the words. Home, and sleep.

***
One road trip. Two and a half days. Five friends. Four girls and a guy. Two cars. Two iPods and many songs. Two full size beds and one sleeping bag. Two In-N-Out stops and numerous bathroom stops. Two breakfasts, and three eat-out meals. Two beaches. One high school and five colleges. Two long drives and several short ones.

How to end the counting? Not at all.

today and relativity

So I know I'm a bit behind, but I just realized the importance of relativity today, at least as far as how it affects my own life. During the first weeks of work, I felt a bit young and useless because everyone else was so experienced and all I did was read as much as I could to catch up. Reading being a very inactive activity, I didn't feel like I was doing much. I still haven't started my exciting experiments yet (my cells were dying...more on cell death later...) but I've been taking care of my cells and other things, so I've been doing a lot more, but it didn't feel like much of a difference until a new high school student started working at the lab. Watching her read and do all those things I had to do in the beginning made me very much aware that I've at least gotten past that stage, and that for once I'm more familiar with the lab than someone else there.

Then, the postdoctoral fellow who I work with wanted me to help her transfer some mice to other cages. My main project deals with cell cultures, not mice, but I've been taking care of her mice while the person who usually does that is on vacation. In the beginning, I have to admit, I was wary, as I was scared by the mouse in Clav and I'd never seen so many mice in one room before. Plus the other person who was training me to take care of the mice (not the same as the postdoc) had been working with them for years so it was nothing to her. Needless to say, in comparison, I again felt a bit inexperienced handling them (though they brought back bittersweet memories of my pet mice). And, when the postdoc trained me in other procedures, she's so expert that I was bewildered at first. But today I was really surprised to find that she is extremely nervous around mice and left all the transferring up to me. We had to weigh them, and one of them jumped out of the very high container onto the floor (mice are amazing; that container's height was three times the mouse's size). The prospect of this happening has been a fear of mine since I started, but being with a person more scared of them than me made me much less so, and though it took about ten minutes, I caught it and without any anxiety. This role reversal made me feel much more useful, even though it's not really a big part of my work there.

Just when I was feeling responsible and old, everyone in the lab started talking about our beach outing tomorrow. We're going to Santa Cruz to celebrate our boss's birthday. People were talking about how they didn't want to be out in the sun, running around all day and someone mentioned bringing aspirin. This discussion all came after I was thinking about how excited I was that Richard, Aud and I have finalized our road trip to LA and how we'll be meeting up with everyone at the beach, and how I love being in the sun all day, and how much fun our previous energy-draining beach outings have been. Back to feeling young, this time in a good, unjaded way.

After work, I went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for the food I wanted to bring to the beach tomorrow. We don't do much grocery shopping during the school year since we have the dining hall, so I experienced that on-your-own feeling that grocery shopping gives you (the one that's replaced by the I-hate-this feeling after you've done it enough times). Then I went home, remembered that I can't cook (it took the actual failed attempt to remind me), and I realized that there are still things that are independent of age, and that are just me.

before sunset

A little while back, Richard told me that it was strange to read my entry describing work because he wasn't used to me talking about science. He's right; I don't talk about science much. But, outside of work, I also rarely hear anyone else having conversations about science, "science people" included. People associate me with the humanities because that's what I like thinking and talking about. Up until very recently, I distinguished between humanities and science by feeling that I like studying the former and I like doing the latter. Having experienced both departments in college, I didn't think the two could be any more different. Now, outside the context of academics, it's amazing to see how one way of thinking that's fueled by a belief in objectivity and explanations is so closely tied to a mode of perception that's based on subjectivity and interpretation.

I remember learning about apoptosis, aka programmed cell death, in genetics freshman year. Individual cells commit suicide for the sake of the larger system. I'm a sucker for good stories about sacrifice--Casablanca, Tale of Two Cities, that sort of thing--so of course this all sounded heroic (on the most microscopic level possible). Then, while reading for work, I learned about necrosis, aka accidental cell death. It got me thinking about the analogous system of people, and not just the cells that comprise them. What's programmed and what's accidental? It seems simple to divide people into the same categories, suicide and accidents. But--thinking about it like that on a small scale in terms of cells is logical, yet thinking about it like that on a large scale in terms of people is a little scary. What I mean is, it makes sense that some cells need to be sacrificed to keep a person living. It's just as rational to imagine the same happening to people to keep the world running (to maintain stable population and competition, if you don't want to think about it with feeling; to give purpose to those who attempt to prevent it and those who offer consolation after the fact, if you do). But if you think about suicide as programmed, by whom or whatever, this means that the experiences and emotions of the individual person don't really matter. Potentially there could be no reason or cause for a person's death by unnatural and deliberate means--Aud mentioned this when she talked about Elephant, and Sarah brought up United States of Leland. Things just happen to keep things going while ending certain lives. None of these thoughts are new to anyone but they just never entered my mind via science before. One of my favorite lines from Fight Club comes to mind: "If you wanna make an omelette, you gotta break some eggs." It's interesting to think about, but despite all the theory and explanation, it still makes me a little sad.

So as nice as this mind-consuming work has been lately, the fact that it has been intense makes me really guard and love the time away from it. Hiking Mission Peak for the first time (after 18 years in Fremont) was really good for me. I haven't walked around an isolated outdoors area in the dark since TASP. Even though we never quite figured out where the top was supposed to be, the views were beautiful; I've never looked at my home from that perspective. Sarah pinpointed the nicest thing about it, though, when she said that it was a nice change of pace from school and work.

And of course, the walk-and-talk atmosphere reminded me of Before Sunset. I liked Before Sunrise a lot, but I really loved Before Sunset. I should relate more to the first movie since the characters are in their 20s and everything is hopeful, romantic and slightly idealized, all adjectives that describe my predominant outlook. But the setbacks, the experience, the anger and resentments of the second movie make it so much more poignant, and it's living through fiction like that that makes me want to go through the whole teen angst, broken heart, deadbeat job thing. I guess I tend to idealize all of the that, too.

What I really like about the movie is that the dialogue consists of things that you think all the time but wouldn't normally say because they're the type of things you believe are undeniably true one minute, then just as adamantly refute the next. It's hard to be spontaneous and honest with what you say aloud, because you think you should say what you believe in general rather than what you feel at the time. This hit me when Ethan Hawke says, "It's okay to want things as long as you don't get pissed when you don't get them." It's something I totally feel at certain moments but not something I entirely believe when I really think about it.

Mmm...I'm so ready for this weekend's road trip.

july 4th weekend

Instead of making the road trip down to Southern California, my dad decided he wanted to stay home for the July 4th weekend. I was disappointed at first because I'd been looking forward to San Diego beaches, but I had a good time anyway. My oldest brother, from New Mexico, came home. I love spending time with him because he's the most laid-back person in our family. We went to Napa Valley, where my dad blatantly offered me wine in front of the bartender who subsequently went ballistic. We didn't bother explaining that we used to manage a wine store, that I've never been drunk in my life, or that wine is good for you. Anyhow, it was beautiful. As much as I love the ocean, if I absolutely had to choose, I'd take the hills.

On another day we went to Monterey and Carmel, and took my parents on the 17-Mile Drive, where I visited Pebble Beach for the first time. I love the tacky names people give their houses on the shore and cliffs: "Sand and Sea," "Seahorse," and the like. There was one, though, that I really liked that was less obvious: "Periwinkle." I wish I could remember if I thought that word was cute before or after I knew what the color looked like. If it was before, I'd finally have a word to use as an example during the times that I think that the feelings we associate with words can just come from pure sound and aren't necessarily a result of what the words describe. I guess, though, that periwinkle could be associated with wink, twinkle, and other words that have "cute" connotations. I'm giving this way too much thought.

Anyway, driving around NorCal made me realize again how much I love it here. I've wanted to live on the East Coast for the longest time, and now I have, and I enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but I can't really compare it to home. And I know, everyone is attached to their hometown, but I honestly think that even if I had grown up somewhere else and then come here to live, I'd still feel it was the best area to live (at least for me personally). It has the laid-back environment characteristic of California, without the superficiality also associated with the West Coast. It has the intellectual atmosphere of the East Coast without its stereotypical boarding school snobbery.

If only it snowed every so often here.

I heard on the radio awhile back that some magazine surveyed 200,000 people as to the "most rockin' city" in the US, and San Francisco was number one. So this assertion has no validity because I don't remember the radio station or the magazine, but I CAN tell you that I agree. And what I like most about the Bay Area is the conglomeration of small cities that are all individually so interesting, all in one concentrated area of California. Practically everything is within two hours or less of Fremont. This isn't as true of the East Coast; though the different states are a close enough drive to one another--which is something I love--they are, after all, different states. But I have to admit that when you've lived long enough in an area, you find yourself loving it for the details that you haven't had the time and experience to find in other places. No one comes to the Bay Area to go to the Stanford Theater, downtown San Jose, or Mission Peak, and those are the kind of things that I've become attached to. I'm sure these details lurk in other places I claim to know but really have only visited. So impossible to see everything, and so natural to want to do so.

Movie update: Spiderman 2 was good. The Notebook was not.

I'm looking forward to seeing Before Sunset this weekend. Like Before Sunrise, it has no action whatsoever, just "intelligent conversation and lovely scenery," which--if you subtract the adjectives--I think reflects real life more than most movies. The more I think about it, the less I view life in terms of plot and more in terms of dialogue and places.

You'd think that with all this introspection that I indulge in, I'd be more pessimistic. Like Aud, when I read over my entries I felt they were one-dimensional in tone, but for the opposite reason. I tend to want to write (at least for public reading) when I'm happy, or when I've reached a point where I feel positive again. I've been telling people lately that I've never wallowed. A part of wallowing is feeling that what you're experiencing is unique to you, so you deserve the right to brood. I just can't think of a burden that any one person could bear that doesn't weigh on someone else, somewhere else. Not that I think people shouldn't wallow; I understand that it's not about actually knowing that you're alone but just feeling as though you are. It's just odd. If I had to say that I was "too" anything, it would be too sensitive. I get angry, upset, and annoyed really easily. But I can't ever seem to let go of that last bit of rationale that prevents my emotions from completely taking over. When I was younger, during the time when the expectation was that I was going to succumb to uncontrollable angst, I was proud of this, of what I thought was maturity. Now I regret that I've never experienced something strong enough to make me wallow.

But as those older than me tell me, I'm only twenty.

the elusive "work" explained

For anyone who's been wondering, I've been at work long enough to be able to describe it a bit. And since I'm posting this during my pre-lunch break at work, I might as well talk about it.

I work at Stanford, in the Pediatrics Department of the Center for Clinical Science Research. My lab works with pulmonary vascular diseases, specifically pulmonary hypertension (increased blood pressure). I'm studying BMPRIA, which is a gene that, when mutated, contributes to hypertension. Essentially, it allows cells to proliferate and migrate into arteries, clogging them (or that's the hypothesis). One component of my job is phenotyping and genotyping transgenic mice. The phenotyping consists of examining and characterizing cells from control mice and mice who are heterozygous and homozygous for BMPRIA mutations. That part, thankfully, is over. The genotyping involves DNA isolation, gel electrophoresis and polymerase chain reactions--basic techniques that are fun but not directly related to experiments or data (similar to my last summer job).

The most challenging and interesting part of the job is my individual project. So far, the lab's only studied the effects of BMPRIA knockout/mutation in mice. This summer I'll be in charge of studying it in human pulmonary artery cells. This first involves culturing, feeding and generally maintaining the cells. Then, I will transfect them with short interfering RNAs, which will disrupt the mRNA activity of BMPRIA, which will then reduce the gene's protein levels. I'll have to extract the RNA to examine the RNA levels, run western blots to assess protein level, and conduct microarrays to study the gene expression. Once it's confirmed that the gene has been knocked down, we can study if and how the gene knockdown affects the migration and proliferation that leads to hypertension. This requires a slew of other experiments.

If you think all this sounds like I know what I'm doing, you've been deceived. I have less than two months to accomplish all of the above. So while I'm learning a lot in very little time, it's also more responsibility than I'm accustomed to, at least in the academic realm. If I don't exactly do the right thing in my classes, no one is really hurt except for me. Now I have tiny cells and real people depending on me.

Enough about work and onto driving, which is somewhat related to work, at least as far as how my life is set up right now (drive-work-drive). When I'm driving with other people I always prefer to be the passenger (unless that means that my mom will be driving), because I hate having to pay attention to the road. If you need directions and navigation, I'm useless. I'm only good for sleeping, daydreaming and controlling the music. But when I'm on the East Coast, I often miss driving alone. So a few unconnected thoughts concerning the two hours I now daily devote to driving. #1: The other day, I was actually "driving down the 101" while listening to Phantom Planet's "California." I've wanted to do that ever since Chris recommended the song (I've never actually seen the OC opening theme). #2: My car is about seven years old but looks and feels like it's fifteen. Every time I look at it, there's a new dent or scrape (I swear these occur spontaneously, induced by no action on my part). I used to be able to lazily drive with one hand, but now it feels unstable enough for me to have to grip the steering wheel with both hands (but not unsafe enough that I worry about it). It's not really my car because everyone else uses it when they don't want to drive their own cars (to avoid long distances from clocking on their odometers and those dents from appearing on their cars), but I use it the most so I claim it. And since I view cars as solely functional, and since it's always gotten me where I needed to go with a sufficient amount of comfort, I don't give its beat-up state much thought and actually it's become endearing. It would be too easy to make my car a metaphor for my life. #3: I hate that people use the carpool lane when they're driving BY THEMSELVES. And why, why do people insist on tailgating you when you're already miles and miles beyond the speed limit? It'll only make me go slower. Antagonism doesn't change my ways.

Things I'm excited about: #1: Ryan Gosling tonight #2: The drive (as a passenger) to LA and San Diego this weekend with half of my family #3: LA and San Diego for July 4 #4: Spiderman 2 with my family (I'm neutral towards the first Spiderman, but my parents rarely go to movies so I always enjoy any chance to see something with them. And the second promises to be much better than the first).

Back to work.

high school friends

I had dinner with Kristina tonight. We went to Santana Row, and she saw Dena Wang working in a restaurant and I spotted a girl I knew in elementary school. Why I bother to mention that may or may not become clear as I go on. Afterwards we drove through downtown San Jose--and Kristina was driving! After all those times I drove us to dances--what a role reversal. It was nicely strange to be taking in familiar sights in an unfamiliar setting. Talking about college, careers and jobs (and reality television and cheesy movies) with my high school friends has been so easy and natural to do, and I think it's not because our friendships have remained the same but because they've evolved in a way that complements the changes in our individual lives. In high school we became friends because of the things we had in common, which is always true in high school but even more so at a small one like Notre Dame. We were in all the same classes, we liked doing the same things, we enjoyed similar conversations (and we all knew Richard--though who didn't?). I felt lucky to have found a group of people whose qualities and interests aligned with mine. Now I'm amazed at how diverse we are. From a small group of people comes such a wide range of paths and ambitions--architecture, marine biology, psychology, academia, medicine, art/graphic design, law. It's a lot like driving together by the Tech Museum, Il Fornaio, the art museum, Notre Dame, and Johnny Rocket's in downtown--things we all still remember and appreciate--but now with Kristina in the driver's seat and me in the passenger's. The things that brought us together in the first place persist, but we're not in the same places anymore. It's nice to be able to feel that there is a still core experience that we share, and that the fact that this experience occurs in different locations and contexts for each person doesn't detract from our friendships but makes them stronger.

And to know that I can always count on Kristina to make me weepy and corny, when I'm not already.

nothing, really

I like finding intimate details about the real people behind fictional characters. Not necessarily the actual people who play the characters, and not intimate details of the tabloid variety. For example, Mike Newell must really love the song Love is All Around, because he uses it in Love, Actually and Four Weddings and a Funeral. The writers of Friends must have some kind of attachment to The Velveteen Rabbit and lilies. Chandler's girlfriend Kathy loved the book, and a few seasons later it's his favorite book and Monica has him dress up as the velveteen rabbit for Halloween. Phoebe's mother's name is Lily; at one point she wants to get a tattoo of a lily for that reason, and it's Rachel's favorite flower. Director Neil Jordan and actor Stephen Rea may not have a high profile Q & U relationship, but they must share the same mutual respect and talent because they did two great movies together, The Crying Game and the End of the Affair. Such are the wonderfully useless observations that leave little room for so-called matters of consequence.

father's day

father's day

The Godfather Part II was on television yesterday, and I watched the last hour with my dad, which is so odd because an incident occurred on Father's Day that reminded me of the movie. This led to a chain of memories, traversing through last Christmas, our family photograph adventure, my brother, and this picture of my dad and Al Pacino. The connections, both natural and self-created, have occupied my thoughts for the past week. My brothers and I got this poster for my youngest brother for Christmas because he mistakenly believes that Scarface is the best gangster movie (and the second best Pacino movie; he wasn't ashamed to admit that Scent of a Woman was his number one). I like this picture because of the parallel between Tony Montana and my dad. My dad's nothing like him, and our family is not affiliated with the mafia. But it's like playing six degrees of separation with the characters Pacino has played. Tony Montana reminds me of Michael Corleone, which then reminds me of the conversation my family had likening ourselves to the Corleone family. I took this picture during Christmas, which is also when we went to take our first family photograph in which every member was present. It was amidst the attempts to coordinate seven (at least somewhat genuine) smiles that we had this discussion. Obviously, my dad had to be Vito, the original head of the family, my mom was...the mother, and being the only girl I was relegated to the least interesting character of the sister, Connie. No one wanted to be dim-witted (but lovable, I feel) Fredo; everyone wanted to be cool-headed Michael even though I insisted that they were all different versions of hot-tempered Sonny. I love the memory of this argument because it is one of the few we've had in pure jest and fun, and because besides Christmas presents and the Lakers, the Godfather is the only interest my family shares.

But one of the things I love about the films are how honestly and accurately they show that a strong familial structure can actually contribute to barriers between the individuals in the family. When the family as a unit protects itself from everything else, it seems that all that's left to fight is itself. Not that my family is immune to whatever "everything else" may be, but sometimes our dynamic is so reminiscent of the way the movie depicts family--stronger in concept than in practice. As for how this relates to what happened on Father's Day, I was ready to write this after the incident, when I was still angry about it. It is harder, but probably better, to write now because I'm less angry and more hurt. So, my parents, my brother and I drove to San Francisco for dinner. The fight between my brother and me began over air conditioning. As usual, this exploded into larger issues, issues that I've never been naive enough to think were resolved but I did think they were at the very least forgiven. I was sitting in the back seat, he was driving. He was wearing a coat and blasting the air conditioner, so I asked him to turn it down. He told me to put on my jacket. I told him to take off his jacket, which he understandably felt was an unreasonable request since he was driving. But it was just so typical of him to wear a winter coat during a California summer and then to expect me to accommodate his thoughtlessness. Somehow this made him so angry that he turned a fight about air conditioning into a tirade on how I always get what I want (all the while it was still freezing). The least profane but most hurtful thing he called me was a selfish, spoiled brat. I've been called spoiled all my life, mostly as a joke when people discover that I'm the youngest and only girl in a family of five kids and often as a real accusation during arguments like this one. It bothers me because I see two interpretations of the word and most people only see one. There's a difference between being given a lot and expecting to be given a lot without reciprocation, without cause, or without awareness of what's being given. In some ways the former is true about me. The support, friendship and company that my other brothers have given me are not things everyone is lucky enough to have. But I hope that I've grown to deserve all of that and that I provide the same things rather than just blindly accepting them. And to be fair to my family, they have always known the importance of being well-grounded even during the rare opportunities to betray that virtue. So I can honestly say that the double faults involved in being spoiled--the one on the part of the people who perpetuate the act and the other on the part of the person being spoiled--are, for the most part, lacking. Still--deep down, I can understand why he resents that he didn't receive the same, and I can't claim to know exactly how it would feel if I hadn't been raised this way and how I would then act towards a sibling who had been.

As far as hurtful adjectives go, spoiled is only second to selfish. For awhile I was just in shock that he could so easily call me that. Not because I'm selfless; I'm as far from that as anyone. But he's the one who made me so afraid of being a selfish person in the first place. All this time I've been thinking that I was a horrible sister because I couldn't forgive him enough to build a strong relationship with him. But really, he doesn't think he needs my forgiveness or that there's anything to forgive; he thinks it's the other way around, that there's something I should apologize for. Even if he's right to some degree (not about his lack of fault but about the presence of mine), I still feel that so much of his anger is unfairly misplaced upon me. Though, as I'm writing this, I realize--people naturally want to associate emotions with concrete people, incidents or situations, if only to make them a bit easier to understand, a bit easier to cope with, a bit easier to express. I can empathize with that, and this was never intended to be a complaint or an accusation though it might resemble one or the other.

Yesterday I told Audrey I'd gotten into a big fight with my brother; she asked me what it was about. When I replied, "Air conditioning," we both cracked up. Somehow just talking about it in passing put it in better pespective, and I'm past it now. I also think that when arguments arise past resentments will always resurface, and maybe I shouldn't take that as a sign that they still persist. After all, I do feel that we've come to appreciate each other more as siblings; it will just be a long way before we can understand each other as different people.

life soundtrack

Kim: Joni Mitchell

1. are you male or female: woman of heart and mind
is it all books and words/or do you really feel it

2. describe yourself: blue
blue, here is a shell for you/inside you’ll hear a sigh/a foggy lullaby

3. how do some people feel about you: fiction
elusive dreams and vague desires

4. how do you feel about yourself: straw-flower me
could you love a blue straw-flower/with no mystic magic power

5. describe what you want to be: cold blue steel and sweet fire
sparks fly up from sweet fire

6. describe how you live: both sides now
moons and junes and ferris wheels/the dizzy dancing way you feel/as every fairy tale comes real

7. describe how you love: a case of you
you taste so bitter and you taste so sweet/i could drink a case of you/still i'd be on my feet

8. share a few words of wisdom: talk to me
any old theme you choose/just come and talk to me/you could talk like a fool--i'd listen

the arrival of summer

I've been in California for a week now. I came back late last Friday night, spent the weekend with my friends, and started work on Monday so I haven't had a chance to get really settled until now. It already seems like I've been here for months. Nothing ever changes in Fremont, except for the occasional new restaurant or video rental store. I still remember the drama of the video/liquor store half a mile from my house struggling against the new Blockbuster around the corner. My brother and I miss that little place so much. For a store that sold beer as well as rented videos, it had some really good little-known movies. That's where we got "Oscar and Lucinda" for the first and only time. As indicated by numerous neon colored fliers around the store, it was "open until midnight--365 days a year!!" This personally attached me to it all the more; it was comforting and sad at the same time--on the one hand because we could come there late Christmas Eve to get un-Christmas-like movies like the Godfather, and on the other hand because, well, we could come there late Christmas Eve to get the Godfather. At that time my parents still had their store, and though my dad usually did come home by eight or so on Christmas Eve, the video/liquor store reminded me of his tired, workaholic ways. What I've been getting at is that when I think about changes in Fremont, that's what I think about--the closing down of a family run video/liquor store.

Speaking of deceptively inconsequential changes, Au Bon Pain doesn't sell the Thai chicken sandwich anymore!! That was practically the only thing there I was willing to shell out five dollars for. It's what I ate the first time I went there; it's what I ate that time Amy and I spent the day in the library, mealtimes included. Well, with this coupled with the fact that I'm not on the East Coast anymore, at least I won't be tempted by the convenience of buying expensive pseudo-Asian food at a pseudo-French cafe.

This also seems like ages ago, but the DC-NYC trip with my parents and Duy was wonderful. It was a strangely patriotic trip, for many reasons. I only say this is strange because I wouldn't consider myself very patriotic or the extreme opposite either. It's not even about America; I suppose it's more about the artificiality of grouping people into countries in the first place. Anyway, so many things have happened (most notably, I've grown older) since my first DC-NYC trip five years ago. I've always loved DC's Vietnam Memorial; it's so simple and touching. This time around, it was even more so because it was Memorial Weekend; the crowd of veterans, tourists and locals in tears was amazing. It made me wonder what incited my own response besides the natural sadness of lives lost. After all, it's a monument to something most of the people there lament but also something to which my family is indebted.

Then we went to the Arlington National Cemetary and saw the Eternal Flame for the first time. Down the steps from where Robert Kennedy lies, I saw Tom Hanks! I actually first looked at him not because I thought he was a celebrity but because he was dressed up in a nice suit. In sunglasses and outside the context of other celebrities, he looked so "normal" that it took me awhile to recognize him.

After DC we took road trips to Philadelphia and Atlantic City. Duy then went back to Boston and I went to New York City with my parents. I love that city so much. It reminds me a lot of Montmartre, obviously not because it looks anything like it, but both cities provoke a similar feeling. I remember I loved Montmartre because we visited the really elegant Sacre Coeur and the Place du Tertre with all the French artists painting outdoors, and then we walked just a couple of blocks to get to the red light district and Moulin Rouge. How many places exist where you can find things so completely different but so equally beautiful right next to each other?

NYC was also patriotic. The first time I visited it I went to top of the World Trade Center, and this time we saw Ground Zero. The thing that struck me most was that there weren't many elaborate memorials around the actual area; on the fences surrounding it there were names of people, pictures and things like that, but nothing substantial. This made the emptiness of the place all the more noticeable. Right afterwards, we went to the Statue of Liberty which I've never visited (I've only seen it from afar--from the top of the Twin Towers, actually), and I don't think it could have possibly been more poignant than at that certain time and in that certain context. I like to think I'm immune to these things but I'm such a sap, most of the time.

After that, I took the Chinatown bus back to Boston and then flew from Boston to home. The summer has started with some really good books and movies. On the way to and during DC, I finally read "The Da Vinci Code" (which Melkis got for me for my birthday). It lived up to its reputation as a page-turner, and I loved the descriptions of all the art and Paris. Honestly, I don't have anything new to say about it so I'll stop there. In NYC and on the way back to home, I read "Winesburg, Ohio" by Sherwood Anderson (which I gave to myself for my birthday). I've wanted to read it for a long time now but somehow I kept managing to put other books before it. I think the main reason I put it first this time is because the copy I found had a picture of Wyeth's "Christina's World" on the cover--the painting that Steph bought a poster of freshman year and the one we always argued about because she thought it was really depressing and I thought it didn't necessarily have to be. I think our different interpretations would apply to the book itself, which is now one of my all time favorite books. I'm also glad I read it at this particular time because I don't think it would have meant as much at another time. Bill Murray said that the conversation Bob and Charlotte have during the bed scene in "Lost in Translation" is the moment when the viewer realizes he likes the movie. I enjoyed "Winesburg, Ohio" from the beginning but I can pinpoint the exact line I was reading when I realized I loved the book: "Deep within her there was something that would not be cheated by fantasies and demanded some definite answer from life." Can anything better describe my own outlook right now? I think I was talking about this with Sarah--about how we admire and envy at the same time the ability of writers to articulate exactly what we're feeling and can't ourselves express. Also on the way home and then at home, I read "Flaubert's Parrot" by Julian Barnes, a book I bought because we were supposed to read it for 20th-century Fiction but then didn't. Yesterday I finished the "Jane Austen Book Club" by Karen Joy Fowler (which Victoria got for me for my birthday). I'm going to sound like the book's back cover, but honestly, for anyone who's read all of Austen's books and is looking for something reminiscent but also entirely different, it's a good choice. Each chapter deals with a particular book club member and the Austen novel that the club is currently discussing, and it's fun to see how the plot of the Austen book replays itself, with new twists, in the lives of the characters.

Sarah and I have started our weekly movies. Our first was "Slaughter Rule," which I think Sarah chose because Ryan Gosling is in it. It has some good moments but overall a little inaccessible to both of us, although I think that might be the point. Anyway, I wanted to mention it because I wanted to say again that Ryan Gosling is the most beautiful, most talented, smartest young actor I've seen. Which is why we're going to see "The Notebook" despite that it's based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can't say enough about how much we love him, but I doubt anyone wants to hear it. So our second movie was "All About My Mother," which was amazing. It fulfilled the high expectations I had for "Talk to Her" which I didn't enjoy nearly as much. It's described as a "screwball drama." That it requires a new genre just goes to show how incredibly unique everything about it is--plot, character, writing, cinematography; everything was so good. Looking ahead--I don't usually look forward to any summer movies since, more often that not, they're not very good. But there are some this year I'm excited about--Ocean's Twelve, Before Sunset, and Bridget Jones's Diary 2 (although, I'm not sure, is that coming out this summer or later?).

I'll write about work next time, as this is long enough, and I also haven't started at City Lights yet so I'll wait for that to report on both jobs. For everyone who's reading this who's not in or near Fremont (most of you), I hope you're having a good time and I miss you.