short walk

Today I walked from Central to Harvard, a short twenty minutes, but it made me feel so much better. It was my favorite kind of day, sunny and cold. I love the cold, because I’m sensitive to it. I like that it has tangible effects on me, how it makes my face flushed even though I’m so dark-skinned and my lips parched so that every bit of moisture can be felt in contrast, like when I run my tongue over them in the dry air. I’m glad snow has finally come, and that it always remains a presence long after having fallen. The paths have already gotten slushy and brown, but I don’t mind that; that’s the way it goes. The piles of snow in areas where people don’t venture are still bright white, and I’m grateful for being able to see it in its original form, while it makes its way from up there to down here. Nothing else is so visibly untouched, and the after-process of our boots and tires muddying it makes me appreciate it more, and is itself a phenomenon that's valuable, and something I enjoy being a part of.

It was a much-needed opportunity to wander. From Central to Harvard you just walk straight along Mass Ave, which is good for me because I don’t have to pay attention to where I’m going. Listening to songs also made me go from sense to sense, thought to thought. The acoustic version of Matchbox 20’s “Push” must be the most-played song on my iPod over the last two years; I can’t even begin to describe the nuances of why it’s the perfect song for the settings in which I use my iPod (walking, driving, passengering, flying). The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” always makes me happy, remembering how very early on it fashioned the standardly romanticized image of what love was like, and feeling that it’s okay to indulge in that. Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” made me remember the scene in Reality Bites where Ethan Hawke stands in his doorway and Winona Ryder stands on the street (or was it the other way around?) and they just look at each other. Having grown up a bit since seeing the movie, I know how long that short distance feels. Sarah McLachlan’s “Fallen” made me think of Aud, Victo and Kristen and our drive to Topanga Canyon in LA when we quietly listened to her Surfacing album, and made me miss my friends back home a lot. Aud once described the friends she made in high school as “quality” people. You meet quality people at all stages in your life, but in high school it’s not about the people who are going to change the world or who have accomplished a million and one things you’ll never be able to do; it’s just those people who quietly move you, with ordinary and natural qualities that you don’t realize are rare until much later. RHCP’s “Scar Tissue” started playing around the same time I suddenly thought of my dad, which seemed fitting because I’ve always thought of that song as lonely and tough. I thought about how much I really love my dad, and how my anxieties about whether things I do are worthwhile dissipate a little when I think about the ways he found to make his life important.

Thinking about my dad made me think about my family and Christmas and going home. Everyone gets cynical at some point about the materialism of the holidays, and I see the danger of that. But giving gifts has always been the one tradition my entire family adheres to, and maybe it seems hollow that it’s the one thing we do for one another even when some of us are going through periods where we’re not speaking to each other. I can’t exactly explain it, but it’s always been a deep thing for us, and I don’t think giving things has to be superficial and commercial. I really love to think about and to give gifts, and to surprise people with something you remember about them, or something you remember them saying or seeing or feeling. It’s about connection, and it just so developed that this connection arose from possessions because when all else is a mess you can at least turn to the concrete. I was thinking about that during the Kuumba Christmas concert too, where the beautiful beautiful sounds and people and energy remind you that the spirituality that underlies the holidays is just connection in any form. That memory made me think of how pretty the snow looked that night, after that amazing snow thunderstorm. I feel lucky to have the kind of winter that I do.

thanksgiving

My family has never really been into Thanksgiving. In elementary school they make you write down what you’re thankful for, there’s a four-day vacation set aside for the event, Christmas songs start playing in the dining hall, and endless commercials on television depict family gatherings. So even without the actual celebration, it’s impossible for me not to be thankful for the family and friends, and the little and big things, that comprise my life around this time of year. But this year may be the first where I was consciously thankful for not just the things I have but for the things I value that could be for anyone, for everyone, now or in the near future or in the distant future. The moment I saw Seattle from the airplane, scattered lights against mostly black, I felt so grateful for cities, for groups of people in one place. I don’t live in a city. When we drove through his neighborhood in the dark, I could see the vague shapes of the many many trees and piles of shadowy leaves lining the sidewalks, and I was thankful for childhood. I never played outside in the streets of my neighborhood as a kid. We drove up to his house and I could barely take in everything because I was amazed by his front door for a good twenty minutes, after my two-second introduction to it. I can’t even describe or envision it anymore but I remember thinking that it instantly felt right for a home, for a place with stories, with a past, with people with collective experiences. Then seeing the photos on the walls and the old-fashioned bathrooms and the random oddities and the creaky attic, I felt such gratitude for what people put into their lives, and how they turn it into a tangible thing to remember and share. My house is ordinary and a place that I love for its association with good things but not a place that embodies those things, and I’d never seen a house quite like this one, where I could feel so much of what means something to people in each step of the wooden staircase. And that was the feeling of thankfulness I felt most intensely—I was so thankful for home—and I wasn’t even in my own home. It didn’t matter that these things were things I hadn’t experienced in quite the same way as I saw them; I still felt like I had them or could have them someday, and that other people could have it too. That these are just free floating entities that surround us.

With that as both the backdrop and forefront of my experience, the actual things we did were a lot of fun too. I got in late on Wednesday night so that was mostly meeting his family and seeing a bit of the house, and easing into contentment. On Thursday there was driving, viewpoints and outdoors. First we made a stop at the end of 35th (?) Avenue to see one of the floating bridges across Lake Washington. From afar it effortlessly slides into the water. In Viretta Park we saw the houses of Kurt Cobain and Howard Schultz (the founder of Starbucks). Then we went to the Japanese Garden, a small place that we needlessly navigated with a map, and drove through the aboretum. Washington is absolutely gorgeous, and despite hearing much about it from him, I was surprised. I don’t think I ever had any picture of what the state might look like. The trees change color, and I like the presence of water flanked by mountains. We visited the University of Washington campus and from there I saw a faint view of Mount Rainier, and I’d never seen a mountain like that before, nestled atop clouds so that it seems to rise out of nowhere, and glazed with such an ethereal white. From Queen Anne we got a nice view of the skyline, and in West Seattle saw the skyline across the water. I distinctly remember thinking how I like that water is such a part of all of our cities—Boston, San Francisco, New York, Seattle. I think our final stop was a Japanese/Asian market whose name I can’t remember, where we stood before rows and rows of colored packages of candy with hilarious descriptions and images. This amused us for a good bit. I remember thinking that it was good to laugh like that.





Then Thanksgiving at his house—the food was indescribably amazing and without a doubt the best Thanksgiving dinner I’ve ever had. I’ve never sat down at a table like that with all the traditional foods. It was an interesting group of family, and I was relieved that I wasn’t the focus of any conversation. Afterwards we just loafed, and it made me feel what it would be like if we had each other all the time and could revel in nothing-time.

On Friday we did the touristy, mostly indoors stuff. We went to the Experience Music Project which looks strange from the outside (it’s supposed to be a melted guitar) and houses some really cool music relics and paraphernalia on the inside. I liked how their exhibits on particular people displayed things that inspired them—other artists, books, people, anything. You see them interacting with the world just like anyone else would, taking from things they hear and see and incorporating that into their own art. The Northwest Passage focused on all the different movements the area contributed to the history of music, and I like thinking of music as germinating in seeds, pockets of the country. I also liked seeing all the handwritten notes, lyrics, personal writings—the physical and beginning steps of creative acts. After that we had lunch at the Space Needle; it was cloudy at first but cleared a bit later on, and was a nice way to be immersed in the drizzle and grayness that he so appreciates. Then we took the monorail to downtown, and that was one of my favorite parts of the day. It was cold, and there were lots of people on the streets, and you could see the outburst of the holiday atmosphere. An outdoors Starbucks stand handed us free samples of mint hot chocolate with whipped cream and chocolate syrup on top. We breezed through a couple of the malls, everything decorated and festive. Stepping outside of one we encountered a street performing group who sang amazing renditions of Under the Boardwalk and My Girl. We watched amidst a gathering crowd, before having a fun ride on the carousel. Then we went to Pike Place Market, where the fresh fish and seafood reminded me of San Francisco. He’d had a lot of memories there, and it was nice walking through the aisles and imagining him there at other times in the past. Then we saw the Seattle Public Library; with its clear ceilings and walls it must be wonderful to read there on sun-drenched days. We had dinner at his favorite Ethiopian restaurant, and left tired from full stomachs and busy moments.



We prepared for the two-hour drive to their little home in the country. Along the way we passed through a series of small towns, and I liked hearing about them. I like how that kind of thing matters to him, to know about the people and places around him. When we got to the place, I felt the way I did when I entered his house the first time. I stood there and fell in love with the house’s past. It was completely run down when they first got it, and they’ve built and painted and reshaped and fixed over the years. Such devotion, and such desire and potential; to believe in something like that and to stay committed to your changing visions of it, is so representative of what I would like to emulate. The sky was dense with stars, and it was quiet, and our own space. He built a fire, and we played board games and ate soup and crackers. I remember thinking before I fell asleep that I’d lost the sense of where I was situated, in terms of the year and geographical place—not just on a break in between months of school and not in Cambridge, but really, away and apart from all of that.

The next morning serious sunshine flooded the rooms and it was a gorgeous day. We put on boots (initially slightly ridiculous but almost immediately fun) to traverse the trails, and I liked hearing about the stories of the place when he was younger. I like to think of him in that open space. The drive back to Seattle was great, seeing all of the outdoors in the daytime. Snow on mountains, and sun shedding light on them. Later we drove along Lake Washington Blvd., which was absolutely beautiful, and I couldn’t imagine just living there without being constantly amazed. That was one of the nice things about it, the ease with which people lived there, taking the beauty naturally without losing appreciation for it. At night we went to Pioneer Square, a quaint shopping area pretty lighted in the early evening, and briefly visited the waterfront. Then his mother made us a delicious last-night dinner, and we spent much of after-dinner time taking the annual Christmas photo of he and his younger brother. His dad showed me the ones taken over the years (going backwards), and each one was more adorable than the last. It’s difficult to explicate how touching it was, to see how they valued little traditions at the same time that they strayed from the norm with their quirks and humor.




As evident by the driving force behind my last entry, I’ve been, generally, a little down. Thanksgiving was three days of pure happiness. The kind that hits you as you’re experiencing it, the kind that needs no retrospect memory to magnify it. It was impossible to say goodbye.

senior year

Felt the urge to write many times over the last month. After specific events, during walks to and from class, on shuttle rides to Children's (more so than on the way back to the Square. It's too dark on the way back, and a bit gloomier than when heading there). I've stopped writing after every event/outing, a long time ago. People's journals always evolve; even when what drives them to write stays the same, the actual content changes. I think my journal's evolved in a way that forces me to find a balance between finding release and becoming more drained. I haven't written mostly because nothing seems very significant. I always knew that livejournals aren’t the space for significance, and neither are the confines of my daily life. But I thought if something occupied my mind--that fickle place subject to image at hand and whim at fingertip--long enough, it was worth writing down. I defined "long enough" pretty loosely. Even so, not much in the recent past has made it to that unconscious requirement for being write-worthy.

I don't know why. Things have been really, really good. Maybe it's because nothing is related. I have these fleeting thoughts and they stop before I get anywhere. Maybe it’s because I’m tired. Maybe it’s because I can’t decide how I feel and for some reason this time writing isn’t helping me figure it out; it’s only making the confusion more obvious. Anyhow--there have been many small interactions, small thoughts, small moments. Many highlights, almost becoming routine in their frequency but not in their content. Senior dinner, the Navin Narrayan lecture. Halloween, of course. Drag Night was as entertaining as always. I forget sometimes what a strange, lovable community we are until I see the performers going crazy onstage with passerbys on the street glued to the windows, wondering what in the world is going on. I enjoy how many people in one room are laughing at once, and I like recognizing people, even people I've never spoken to. Then the long-awaited Heaven & Hell party, and Steph's arrival. The party was almost perfect (is that possible?) and I love my roommates’ dedication to quality. My angel blockmates were gorgeous, and it was so incredibly nice to have Steph with us again, chatting and dancing and drinking and laughing. It made me miss her more, and made me think of Chris. I remember saying goodbye to him, and saying to him that we'd probably never see each other again. He said that that's what we thought five years ago. I said that it's different now, and it is. He also said that he's known me since I was sixteen and that I'm exactly the same now as I was then. That made me a little pessimistic about my development as a person. Though I also think that there's no accurate way to evaluate another person's change as you're changing too.

We went to Jackie's Collegium concert awhile ago (fittingly--Contemplations). It's been awhile since I've been in Sanders Theater. The dome shape is conducive to becoming happily encased in sound, and it made me realize that I really just needed a break from thought. Sometimes I wish I didn't feel the need to write so strongly. Writing can be lonely. After going to Elaine Scarry's reading on Wuthering Heights I thought about the Brontes; I don't know much about them but I always imagined that only loneliness could have produced their books. Some people think that writing combats that solitude, but I think it must be more complicated and less one-sided than that. Then today we went to Houghton Library, which houses Harvard’s rare and old book collection. We saw contemporary editions of all the books we’ve read for the 18th Century Novel, including Austen’s Northanger Abbey. The paper actually wasn’t as fragile as you’d imagine because back then they used linen, which is durable and feels lovely. You can sense the textured lines of the paper and the work that went into it. Some pages and covers were marbled, most books had ruffled edges from where people cut them loose. The tangibility of the books made visible how much of people goes into the sharing of written words. I wonder if I’ve lost that a little.

This past weekend was Harvard-Yale. The Thursday before was senior bar, and it set the tone for both my past and current perspective on senior year. Sitting, not carefree but happy with cares, and slightly, vaguely aware. It seems to me that I’m very conscious of where these events are situated—that is, the punctuation ending a certain block of time and experience. I realize I should only think of the actual final point as the punctuation but somehow the whole year has filled that space. That point has widened and widened so that there’s very little I can do without thinking that it’s the last of something—my last Cambridge autumn, my last Halloween in Adams, my last Harvard-Yale game. During the game, when we were down 21-3, Randy mentioned that unlike high school this being the last year doesn’t make winning more important. But when we repeatedly came back and tied the game with three minutes left, and then won in triple overtime after false wins and anxious uncertainties, people said—what a way to end. Yes, it would have been exciting any other year, but it happened this year, and for once we were there at the right time and until the time to rush the field. The timing does matter. In this case it made it sweeter, but sometimes it’s harder. Tailgating before (and during) the game was distinctly different from last year—less crazy, more mellow and with that, a certain kind of comfort. Last year we moved around a lot. This year we spent a lot of time sitting in the Adams truck watching people stream by and connecting with those we knew, people we see all the time and some we hadn’t seen in forever. Amy waited impatiently for the warm fried turkey (which fell in the mud but was eaten anyway), it was a gorgeously sunny day and just cold enough to make the drinks’ warming effects appreciated, and it was a spectacle of passing antics. Last year when we were spastically going from place to place and everyone around us was doing the same, the flow seemed natural and it didn’t seem to have a defined beginning and end. This year staying in one place made every part of me feel the movement. It made me a little sad, and a little remote in spite of the nearness of people. And I can’t get rid of this unsettling notion of “last,” in order to enjoy things purely.

Except maybe this bittersweet melancholy is pure, maybe getting rid of it would make the experience less true. I suppose that I’ve always known that, and what really bothers me is that anticipating it doesn’t make it easier to face things and to value them independent of time. The other day I listened to Ben Harper’s “Forever” on repeat for over an hour, and I did something I always want to do but haven’t in a long, long time, just crawled into bed and listened to him. I wanted to listen to him believe in always. I thought then that maybe my realistic optimism had only been simple idealism, only plausible in theory and unappreciative of the elements of poignancy. But I think about how unsatisfied I am with this entry, how things don’t unravel quite right anymore, and how I’m becoming okay with that.

I think of the line I love most in the new Pride and Prejudice—when Elizabeth Bennet explains herself with “I’ve been so blind.” There’s a sudden commotion and she never has the chance to resume the thought but she doesn’t have to. Having done everything as guided by her incredibly admirable character, she still leads herself astray. It is possible to be at once, right and wrong. Things like this entry don’t follow a logical path of connections and transitions and relations, contradictions can be felt and not just known; forever can reside within a year and still lie ahead.

vermont (crossing bridges)

I used to be really scared of driving across bridges. It was fear intermingled with absolute love, or fear because of love, or something. Who hasn’t fallen in love with Golden Gate, with all that it represents and with its fiery hues against all that blue above and below. A lot of the things that fostered my attachment to it scared me at the same time. The slope upwards, the creeping towards the middle, frightened me most. So much water underneath, and I can’t swim. If in the outer lane, so close to that fragile edge. A sturdy structure, but such a short distance from surface to only air. If in the inner lane, the sounds of fast-moving cars going the other way, and sometimes the subtle shake of the road. As a passenger I unconsciously gripped my seat with one hand and the side of the door with the other. As a driver I alternately went fast and slow, never able to decide which was worse (though impatience usually won out). The instability, the unfamiliarity, the vastness, or my perceptions of these things; all of it made me lose my sense of ground. This normally doesn’t faze me too much, I’m not afraid of heights or roller coasters or anything like that. It’s something about the risk associated with beautiful things.

I grew out of it, at least the specific fear of bridges. I don’t know why or when, just one of those things like not talking to my stuffed animals anymore or not expecting the tooth fairy after awhile. But I still think about it sometimes, and the feeling underlying the fear more than lingers.

In Vermont there are hundreds of covered bridges. The question of why they’re covered came up, and I couldn’t think of a good reason. They span little creeks, and you drive through them in about two seconds. You can see through to the other side before you enter the first. All the ones we saw were red. Some of them smelled like paint. You could see every plank of wood forming their structure. You could walk across them without feeling the very slight elevation. They felt like playgrounds.

I can’t remember the last time I felt that safe, and I wasn’t sure where that was coming from. The smallness, the covering, the utter quietness and stillness—it didn’t really matter, just an illusion of safety, except there wasn’t even the illusion of danger. I had a flashback of how I felt standing on the Golden Gate this summer, cold, the wind blowing ferociously, buried in the fog and feet tiptoe on the ledge. And I thought, they’re not so different. The former, the wonder of my conception of beauty, of what’s worth crossing, how large and intimidating and formidable our minds make things, those excited and scared and naïve goosebumps. The latter, the indescribable comfort that comes from dispelling the fear without losing the immensity, or the image. Feeling the safety and the excitement at once.

I would like to hang onto October for a bit longer.

remembering

I’ve told this story to various people and just again recently. I don’t know why it comes up other than I find it amusing. My great-aunt used to make me tea with sugar every afternoon after school. She would boil the water and make a pot even though no one else was around to drink it but me. She would pile on scoops and scoops of sugar because I like it ultra-sugary. She would blow on it to cool it down and warn me that it was hot. Then she would sit and watch me drink it. She put her spices and things in clear jars, sometimes without labels, because she could tell what they were by sight. One time she took the wrong container and put salt in my cup of tea. I think I was ten. My nose and forehead wrinkled with confusion. Then I said, “You put salt in this tea!” She stared blankly at me for a second, and then grinned, and then started laughing. It was so absurdly wrong, and funny. She made me another cup. Maybe one day I will put salt in my kids’ tea, and maybe years later they will remember how sweet the act of caring is.

place

I'm finding it harder and harder to post because at home I have fleeting thoughts, I'm perpetually sleepy because I know I can sleep, there's little structure to my life and I feel little need to impose one. Though that last feeling is waning. I have California for two more days, and I so want to get back to school, and see everyone, and get settled into our room, and start our last year of classes. I can't wait for A-entry, special-meat Wednesdays, Professor Parker, sweaters, Bernard, frozen yogurt in cake cones.

Not to say that home wasn't wonderful. Basically, I saw a lot of movies and a few people. I watched Broken Flowers, 2046, March of the Penguins, Transporter 2, 40-Year-Old Virgin and The Constant Gardener. *Broken Flowers was a little slow and Sarah thought it was pointless, but I liked the concept of revisiting the different people that run through your life, and thinking about what each one says about your own character. It was after she saw *2046 that Sarah texted me, telling me to come home. After seeing the movie I understood that impulse. It was a lot about reaching out, and trying to grasp people who are more like air, smoke even...visible, with presence and movement, but without outline. I don't have the means to describe what it was really about; it would take more expression than I have. Images and lines and phrases come to mind. The line that I referenced once and that both Stephen and Sarah referenced, separately and at different times, was: "Love is about timing." The right time is just as important as the right person, and with that comes the right place because sometimes that's dependent on time. I liked how the main character's experiences flowed into the stories that he wrote, so that you couldn't tell which was informing the other, because it worked both ways. *March of the Penguins was so simple, it was amazing. It didn't need any artifice to convince you of its beauty. This is just the way it works, creation and the affection and sacrifice that come with it are just natural. That's the most optimistic thing I think I've ever seen in a movie. *Transporter 2 was pure entertainment, and fun to see on the big screen since I saw the first one on DVD. *The 40-Year-Old Virgin wasn't as good as I thought it would be, based on its cheesy poster and word of mouth. I didn't think it was that funny, but I can see why people thought it was unique as far as raunchy movies go. It was ultimately really sweet-natured, and about a growing up process, and it managed to support both theories of sex-isn't-everything and sex-is-really-important at the same time. *The Constant Gardener was on par with movies like Schindler's List and Hotel Rwanda, the kind that induce a mixture of inspiration and frustration. You want to prevent and stop such things, you want to help, but the reason you do is the same one that makes it hard to--these are big problems, fueled by the very human tendency to ignore what isn't in front of you. And then afterwards, when you're aware, what do you do? What causes do you choose to pursue and which do you have to leave behind, and will you really help? Africa is so beautiful, and so full of mysteries. That must make it all the harder for those with good intentions to go there.

The people were better than the movies. I saw Richard, ate ice cream with him (Ben & Jerry's, minus the life advice) and drank with him (and got a drunk dial from him a few hours later). I had lunch with Kristina today, and we had our usual updated discussion of the Real World and the actual real world. We talked about her moving houses, and I still can't believe that there will never be another birthday party on Prairie View, no more loitering in her driveway. I visited Steph's new place in Los Altos, and it was so nice to see her again, and strange to see my SoCal rival enjoying and living in NorCal. We hung out with no obligations to study later, and that was also different. I ate sandw(h)iches with Aud before she went back to Portland. Besides the company I like getting together with her because we can stay in Fremont. I know that Fremont residents don't share any particular qualities but there is that natural connection of coming from the same place, especially when we went to a high school comprised mostly of San Josians. It was during our conversation that I started consciously thinking about the role of places. She talked about how home wasn't exactly home anymore, and I told her about my feelings of displacement and the illusion of permanence that I attach to home, and a few days later in her journal she likened herself to water, dispersing to various areas but eventually flowing back to one place. That made me think about how I'm not built to change shape with place in exactly the way I thought. I think adjusting to the East Coast made me downplay the importance of my surroundings. I thought home was a feeling I could assume anywhere that interested me, and I didn't give much thought to how I create that feeling, or how it's created.

When Andrew came to California, and we made our way through San Francisco, I could feel how linked place and not just experience but character are. We both knew we were sharing something different with his visit to my home, and I remembered why I relish opportunities to show people places, college to my friends from home, and home to my college friends. We saw so much of the city, from so many different viewpoints--on the ground, from the car, from the middle of the bay, atop towers and hills, along bridges.

Adventuring with Sarah, in Pacifica and downtown San Jose, made me think about it more too. Driving along the coast to Pacifica, we followed a curve and suddenly, we were driving into the sky. It was just blue, the ocean melted seamlessly into the sky ("where's the horizon?"), and we kept moving and it moved too. Then the completely opposite atmosphere of downtown, a place I should totally feel distant from now--seeing it at the peak of nighttime revelry, seeing the dressed-up and made-up girls, the top-down cars playing loud music--that's not my downtown. My downtown was lines of uniformed high schoolers walking from Notre Dame to the cathedral; it was traipsing around the water fountains and Starbucks and the Tech in summery tank tops and jeans; it was musicals and science fairs and pre-winter-ball dinners. But still, it felt the way the new ND building feels--not mine, but still mine.

The truth is, certain places do move me by nature of more than pretty scenery or tall buildings, or even remaining the same as when I'd known and loved them first. I can't pinpoint all the actual reasons, there are so many and the majority are subtle. I don't have any real questions or definite statements, only that the idea of place is more complicated than I thought, the feeling of it simpler, and my love of it stronger.

san francisco in two days

At Coit Tower, on the ledges that extend beyond the windows, there are a bunch of coins, mostly pennies but also some nickels and dimes, a few quarters and a handful of foreign pieces. We weren't sure whether we were supposed to add a coin to the collection, or to take a coin as a souvenir. Both were difficult to do, and our first instinct was to add a penny. In our attempt we actually retrieved a quarter someone else left in the pile, and were quick to put it back, not wanting to disturb someone else's interaction with the place. After several tries (none of mine were successful) he managed to get a penny on the very edge, just safe enough to remain there, for who knows how long. As we circled around to see the city through these odd openings, we noticed a lot of other people working very hard to get coins from outside the ledge to the inside, the opposite of what we'd been doing. The idea seems to be an exchange, both ways, instead of one or the other, and I thought that was the simplest and sweetest notion for a place like that. I feel the same about the entire experience, and it's one of the few ineffable experiences I've had that I'm content with leaving that way, unexpressed. Some images instead.

moving through and on

My first summer in Cambridge is nearing its end. Trying to decide whether I had a good time is impossible, and I’ve concluded that such an experience can’t be narrowed down that way. I had a lot of good times. Summer here is incredibly beautiful. I was able to do many of the summer-in-Boston things I’ve always wanted to do. Sailing didn’t happen, nor did outdoor exercise, nor did Swan Boats, but I won’t give up on those for the future. Staying here was also difficult, and intense, for reasons that have more to do with my interaction with the environment, my relationship with this place, and my general state of mind as far as where I am in my life and how being here reminds me of it, doesn’t let me escape from it. It was hard. I can’t describe it in less vague terms because it’s all hazy to me too. I just know that I was often happy, often unhappy. I guess I’m still coming to terms with the fact that the proportion of my different emotions has changed, that the things that drive me and fulfill me are changing, becoming bigger and requiring more of me, which almost ironically makes it harder for me to make myself happy.

A lot of the superficial unsettledness stemmed from the fact that I was immersed in physics. I’m sorry to those of you who appreciate physics, but oh my God, I hate it. I know that it’s not arbitrary, I know that it explains many things, and I’ve always valued that about science, but honestly I can’t remember the last time I cared so little about a subject. Chemistry and biology have always offered so many analogies to concepts that mattered to me, but I couldn’t find anything in physics. I’m sure they’re there; I’m just not built to see them. It was a good course, well-taught and well-organized, but I’m glad it’s over. Also because I think being in a class I hated put me in a mode of thinking about other things that I didn’t like. Annoyances heightened, anxieties increased. I told Sarah recently that I write so much about things that I like; I should really mention that there are many things that I don’t like. Like when people are selectively nice, or don’t clean up after themselves, and especially when they’re inconsiderate. I know no one likes these things, but I think I get abnormally irritated by them. My biggest pet peeve has always been people kicking the back of my chair, on airplanes and in movie theaters for example. It’s that complete lack of awareness of another person’s presence other than your own that really gets me. Anyway, I think being in a general state of negativity made me have unnecessarily mean thoughts and made me forget that I like to believe in mean moments rather than mean people.

But like I mentioned, I had a lot of fun too. Dinner with the blockmates happened awhile ago, which was so much fun. Melkis, Courtney, Yonina and I met up with Jackie at Star Market to buy ingredients, and I was amazed by the wide array of bellpeppers. I love bellpeppers, the way they smell and look and taste and feel. They had orange, yellow, red and green…so bright and immediately appealing. They’re also so odd-looking, and have these various quirks and nooks and crannies about them, so that I can’t quite pinpoint exactly why they amuse me so much. They’re so shiny and smooth, and make such a crispy sound when you cut into them, and I really enjoy how the little seeds that had been neatly arranged spill out and stick to your fingers. I like how they look sliced, or diced, or in chunks. Whatever it is, I just like them, a lot. Back at Jackie’s we prepared everything, salad and chicken and tofu stir fry and rice (I mostly cut things, a process that I like in the same way that I like bellpeppers, and put things into pans when Jackie told me it was okay to). It’s very satisfying to eat a meal that you’ve prepared, and even more so to have it supplemented by wonderful people and funny conversation. It was very homey, and comfortable.

We also went to Shakespeare in the Park…specifically, Hamlet in Boston Common. Lara and I staked out spots really early so we had the best possible seats. Then she brought Vietnamese sandwiches and bubble tea from Chinatown, and by the time Rajan and Tim and Maciej and friends arrived there were about twenty of us piled and squished on two sheets and a blanket. The show was good. I’d forgotten how much I love Hamlet, how much I think I’m like Hamlet sometimes—indecisive, contradictory, moody, disconnected, overanalytical and overly emotional at once. The set was more elaborate than I’d expected, and the actors used the space really well—using the high stage, having people up and down the stairs, in the little pool of water in the front. For some reason Lara and I found the line “I find thee apt” really amusing and every few moments she would turn around and tell me that she found me apt. I discovered that that girl gets crazier as the night goes on, without any assistance from external agents…she burns some kind of inner fuel and makes you laugh harder and harder with every minute.

During the dramatic final scenes lightning occurred every few moments, and you could hear the distant rumble of thunder grumbling louder and louder, until it started pouring after Hamlet kills Polonius. A little at first, then a flood all of the sudden. It was cooling, and refreshing after soaking in the humidity. We walked-ran to the T station, and it was so fun to be out in the summer rain. I don’t care what anyone says about East Coast weather, I love it. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t experienced it long enough to become jaded, but I’ll take the illusion. The weather personifies the world, reveals its moods, and makes me feel connected to it and makes me feel a little less silly for being emotionally capricious. The thunder that’s so loud it sounds hungry and the sharp lightning that’s so quick it’s elusive at the same time that it’s so commanding, make it seem like something out there is demanding something from me and from us, and all of that is so crucial to not becoming stale and indifferent, which I suppose I fear sometimes.

Melkis and I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I really loved the first half hour, which probably sounds strange because it’s all removed from the factory itself, but I think that’s what I really liked about it. I liked how they took the actual legends of Willy Wonka from the book and set up this fantastical image of him before they actually showed the factory, and how they contrasted it with Charlie’s bleak but cozy life. I liked how content Charlie was with concepts, dreams and ideas, with his models of the real thing. I found the rest of the movie—the real thing, I suppose—entertaining but in that during-the-moment kind of way, rather than an enduring kind of way. I always envision the book coming to life as such an exciting prospect, but maybe it takes away a bit from the self-guided imagination that’s such a part of Dahl books.

Afterwards we went to the Cambridge city dance party. They basically cut off a couple blocks in Central, in front of City Hall, so that people could dance outside. It was the first dance I’d been to with fellow college students as well as little kids, high schoolers, famillies and senior couples. We found Rachel and Connie, and other Harvard people, and had a good time. It was a warm night, but not stifling and I’d never danced in the streets like that before.

I got to see Andrew relatively often this summer, which was nice. We tried catching the Swan Boats, but apparently it was too humid and the man-powered boats weren’t running. So we walked around the public gardens a bit; I wanted to show him the duckling statues from Make Way for Ducklings. While we were doing that we saw the cutest fuzziest littlest yellow duckling in the water, surrounded by other brownish ducks. Maybe it was because the day was becoming gray, and rain was nearing, but the image of that bright duck in the murky water is so distinct in my mind. It’s so easy to conjure, it doesn’t even seem like a memory. Before we could find the statues it started raining, and we were without umbrellas or any extra layers of clothing. For some reason we thought it would be all right to find cover under a tree and wait for the storm to pass, and this worked for all of two minutes before it began insanely pouring. After the initial shock it was pretty liberating to just get bombarded by the elements. We have so many little associations with the rain that it seemed fitting to get drenched like that together. We eventually made a run for the subway station, where much smarter people had already found cover. But they probably didn’t have as much fun in there.

I suppose that’s the most significant thing I did get from this summer—that sometimes it’s better for me to brave the outside instead of seeking shelter. It makes me feel good that I got through whatever it was that made this experience tough, that though I had to work harder, mentally and physically and emotionally, to achieve what I wanted to, it is probably meant to be that way. Keeping sight of my original goals in the midst of expected and unexpected worries and down moments became a new thing to work for, and to prove to myself that I could do. When I spoke to Stephen during anxious times, he’d say things like, “Of course you’ll get through it but it comes down to the fact that if you had to do it all over again, you wouldn’t stay there. You would’ve gone home.” And without even thinking about it, I said, “No, I wouldn’t have.” Seeing a lot of people close to me go through difficult things this summer again made me think again about how I’ve always romanticized struggles and pains because I see them as part of the full experience I want to have and think that I’ve either downplayed in my own life or really haven’t had. I know that I won’t feel that way when I actually go through them, but I have faith that I’ll see their value in retrospect as people always do. Completeness is just that, and I wouldn’t want to settle for the partial.

self-portrait

I’ve been writing long-delayed emails to people back home, and I got to thinking about people whose lives I think I’ve somehow impacted, however slightly, and wondering whether this happened only because they’re unaware of the full extent of my numerous flaws. This isn’t a get-down-on-myself rant, only I think I’ve been afraid of admitting these things to other people, even as much as I’ve wholly and personally accepted them. I’m not reluctant to downplay these flaws anymore, partly because I hope people who know me well already have a sense of them and partly because I’ve realized how much I value the imperfections in the people I love. It’s not a matter of liking a certain quality, it’s a matter of being thankful for the texture of character. I wonder whether those close to me feel a similar gratitude, not as a means to justify flaws but as a determination of whether I can mean something to them, as I really am.

I can be really petty. Most of that comes from being really sensitive, and attributing more significance to actions and words than people intend. I’ve gotten better at evaluating and deciding which things are really worth getting upset over. I definitely keep more of it to myself and take it out less on other people than I used to. But it doesn’t always change the initial hurt/annoyance/anger. It frustrates me how easily I’m hurt, and maybe even more detrimental than that, I hate that I hate admitting it, I hate thinking of my sensitivity as a weakness. I suppose it’s not an uncommon thing, the desire to be stronger than you are. I have a hard time defining strength. Sometimes I think that if I don’t stick up for that something someone else passes off as insignificant, I’m betraying the part of myself that says it means something. Is it just principle, or is it really the thing, and is it valid if it’s only one or the other?

I’m completely neurotic. I think about things long, long after they’ve passed and shouldn’t matter anymore. I think about things that don’t even matter during the moment they happen. I dislike the fact that I try to prepare myself for everything and absolutely cannot stand the notion of innate failings counteracting deliberate plans. I can’t for the life of me let things take their course without my intervention. In principle I place hope in chance, but sometimes my faith wavers. I’m in love with the idea of things falling on their own, but I can’t sacrifice control for the possible benefits of spontaneity. I don’t like facing the truth of the world moving as it is without my hands in it.

I expect too much from people and I don’t live up to my own standards. I don’t like to think that I demand things from others, but I often do...except I rarely outrightly demand anything. I perpetuate a deceptive mindset that is adamant about self-sufficiency. I hate admitting that I need certain things, so I never express them aloud. Then I’m disappointed when people don’t figure it out on their own, and blame them for it. Along the same lines, I want people to be considerate and compassionate and kind and intelligent and strong and essentially good, when I have no idea really how to go about emulating all those things at once.

My desire to give is often inspired by a deep-seated fear of being ultimately selfish. Is it really that I want to be a good person, or just that I don’t want to be a bad one? Maybe there is a difference, and I worry sometimes that I fall into the lesser category. I too often think about the way I feel, this entry being a perfect example. I suppose it’s human nature to do that, because how can you really think this way about how someone else feels? Still, I think the narcissism can drive people crazy, and it’s not exactly the best thing for me either.

I mask the reality of these things by considering the other side of them. I tell myself there are beneficial aspects to these faults, and I can’t decide if this a healthy practice or just denial. To consider viewing the positive as a negative—this is what I do to myself.

Then of course there are all the superficial things I’d like to change just because everyone wants to be everything. I wish I were smarter, funnier, more outgoing. I wish I could articulate myself aloud. I wish I had real talents rather than things I just like to do and study. It’d be nice to be taller, and to have a different nose, and to look older than thirteen, and to look a little less ordinary. Being happy with yourself doesn’t mean you’re immune to such desires.

Having written all this, it’s more difficult than I anticipated to post it. Not so much because I don’t want to share these negativities, more because I didn’t admit half of everything, so I feel a bit like an imposter. I started thinking and writing about this because everyone constructs a portrait of themselves to present to other people. I know what qualities I’d like to have, and it’s easier than one might think to portray the longing to have as actual possession. You think that it would be satisfying to have people think of you as better or less flawed than you genuinely are, but really, it only makes you feel slightly empty and enormously guilty. In recent interactions, I find myself just wanting to be honest. Having found people who inspire this desire to be fair to them has conversely made me acknowledge my own need for people who prefer this honesty, people who, as I chip away at myself, somehow make me feel more full.

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seeing the city

It's funny how in a compact, accessible city like Boston how often you stumble across small pockets of loveliness. After three years here, I'm still seeing things for the first time, from conspicuous tourist sites to obscure patches of grass. I feel so lucky to have been able to overload my senses with this city over the fourth of July weekend, to see the people and buildings and taste the food and hear the water and crowds and feel the slight not-uncomfortable summer humidity and cool night breeze and so on, and with someone who loves it as much as I do.

On Friday, we went to the North End and ate at La Dolce Vita. The feel of warm crowds and rambunctious, good-natured noise always comforts me, sometimes before I even realize I need comfort. Being in an Italian neighborhood evokes such nice elements of the culture, as stereotypical as they are—family, wine, free spiritedness. Passion. Before dinner we walked down Hanover St. and discovered a teeny alleyway filled with photos and mementos of Catholic saints. The man who had made the space came out to speak to us, and basically knew everything about every saint who ever lived. It made me think, wow, I really do not know that much about anything. I go through phases where I would like to acquire encyclopedic knowledge about a particular subject or person, and then I try, and find that (personally) there’s a threshold of specialized knowledge where wonder is lost and pointlessness seeps in. Still, I admire those who can sustain that level of wonder, and it’s affirming to see that people can find value from unexpected sources. During dinner we sat at a cozy tight table that somehow still made me feel too small for the surroundings, and watched old Italian men serenade unsuspecting customers.

On Saturday, we went to Haymarket to browse the enormous farmer’s market. Government center was so alive, with visitors and locals and just all kinds of people out for the July 4th weekend. People dressed up in colonial wear, people handing out pamphlets, people making balloon hats, people dancing. Haymarket was so much fun—aisles and aisles of fruit and vegetables. After a couple of weeks of ramen and tomato-sauce-based canned foods, the smell of freshness and outdoors was so good. Lots of pushy people, which added to the character of the place, and as Andrew remarked, so many different sorts of people selling and buying and bartering. We bought ten plums, six kiwis, half a pound of cherries and one box each of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and grape tomatos for roughly eight dollars. Afterwards we had lunch at Quincy Market, which was spilling forth with hungry people.

Later we went to the top of the Prudential Center. Whenever I see cities from an aerial perspective, I’m always surprised by how organized things are. From the top of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the miles of tree-lined streets that spread radially from the center, the Arc itself. From the top of Lombard St. in San Franciso, the rows and rows of white houses stretching to the ocean. From the top of El Duomo in Florence, the uniform redness of the rooftops. From the top of Empire State in NYC, the chaotic lights coordinated in a square-based city structure. I get lost so often when I’m on the ground, that it’s always funny to see how it all makes sense when you’re looking from above. The Charles was dotted with sailboats, I could see the brownstones that comprise Copley and the Back Bay, the little forest near Longwood. We returned later for sunset, and while waiting for it we lolled around the courtyard area. We spent most of that time watching kids run around, throw rocks in the water fountain, and generally cause harmless trouble. When we came back to Prudential, the lights were on at Fenway and you could see the seats filled with people. The sun was insanely bright, but we kept looking at it anyway. We could see it in its entirety, as a dense burning sphere, rather than the usual wide expanse of rays. I stared at the space it had occupied for a while after it set, straining to see whether I could still see its waning light. Doing that was less painful than staring at it while it was still up, but it felt a little melancholy. Not in a sad way, just in a moody way.

On Sunday, we walked a bit through downtown and then met a couple of his friends to go to Castle Island near the Boston Harbor. The waves made me miss home for a little bit, but it was nice to see an eastern coastal area. It was quiet, a little windy, and salty. The ocean smell blew at us and around us, and I could feel it stick to my skin and hair, and remain there, or at least in my memory, for the rest of the day. On our walk back to the car, we saw a little playground, where he proved to me that it is indeed possible not to be able to swing. I like how the simple motion of going higher on a creaky swing makes you feel so detached from the physical earth, but so connected to all that makes it worth it to eventually come back down.

We had dinner at Texas Roadhouse in Brockton, quite possibly the essence of so-corny-it’s-great. They had peanuts in barrels in the entrance and throughout the restaurant, and peanuts at the table and on the floors. They also had a jukebox, and we chose one of the only songs we recognized, “I am a Man of Constant Sorrow” from O Brother Where Art Thou. After being stuffed with ribs and cinnamon-buttered bread, we drove back to Cambridge. We packed up our fruit, my quillow and blanket, and my handmade cross-staff, and borrowed a movie from Connie, and staked out next to the river around midnight. I had to measure the moon’s width for physics (hence the cross-staff), and we decided to wait for the moonrise, scheduled to occur at 2:30 in the morning. As we waited, we watched The Red Violin on the tiny screen of his portable DVD player. It grew colder, and the sounds of the violin from the movie mingled with the sounds of cars driving past behind us, and of the slight stream of water in front of us. The sky grew hazy, lone stars across the grayish-black fuzz seemed very distant from one another. The moon never became visible.

We spent Monday in each other’s close, lazy company, and in the evening headed to the terrace of Quincy House to watch the fireworks. Boston’s fireworks are so creative, and you can so easily feel how much this city values Independence Day. There were shapes: cubes, smiley faces, hearts and stars. There were ones that lingered long after exploding, ones that stretched in crystal-like structures, others that fell lazily like slow waterfalls, some that resembled weeping willows.

It took me a long time to write this, considering it was just a summary of events. Each time I wrote something, I read it and thought, that’s not how it really was, that’s just the surface. Each time I mentioned something I could think of ten other related and unrelated thoughts. I can’t find the right way to express what this place gives me and what he gives me, maybe because I still find it difficult to take freely. But sometimes the only way I can think of to give back is to write about it, even when my words are all wrong. The sun is intoxicating, the night relieves me. His presence makes me feel subtle senses so intensely, at the same time that it makes me content to lie without deliberate thought, without conscious feeling. I think it’s time to stop revelling in what’s been so generously given to me and finally learn how to fill the outlines of other lives with the deep blues and pure whites and rich yellows that have shaded my life. Not to say that I don’t still feel like I’m missing something, some core of experience and emotion, but maybe that something comes from releasing and giving rather than acquiring more.

summer in cambridge

For various reasons I decided to stay in Cambridge for the month before summer school starts, instead of going home. It’s been busy, in a good way. The days have been completely full. I’ve had so many first-time experiences in the past month.

Week 1: Dorm Crew
Thrown into a pile of dust and grime, I was told to make it clean. Each day we took off another layer of dirt, moving from the top floor down. The complete procedure consisted of five steps: trashing, sweeping, damp dusting, dry mopping, wet mopping. There’s a lot of cleaning terminology, and whenever our team talked to one another about what we’d been doing or what we needed to do, the vocabulary made me feel like we were playing a game.

I liked the physical process of watching the dust bunnies disappear and making the wooden floors visibly shinier. There’s such gratification in being able to see quantifiable results. There’s almost a false sense of control. Scraping corners with hand brushes and attempting to scoop every last bit of dust made me think of what Steph says about the neverending fight against entropy. We collect dust so that dust could collect again, but somehow there’s slight pleasure in that.

Week 2: Day Counselor
Watching over a group of 9-10 year olds for a few full days was exhausting, but so much fun. I ended up with a group of all girls. Very different personalities, but they got along well together and, thankfully, with me. It surprises me how naturally and easily kids give their affection, and how nice it feels to be on the receiving end, when they hold your hand not because they have to cross the street but because they want to belong to you.

I liked the simple act of taking care of their basic needs. It reminded me of the talks Drew and I had during those five-hour chemistry labs, about that persistent question, why medicine? People never ask me that because there are so many common explanations, but I don’t think it’s at all a straightforward answer. One thing we talked about was how you’re taking care of people on such a basic level. I’m not sure why but it was so fulfilling to have a snack ready when the kids were hungry, and making sure they had enough water throughout the day, and putting on their jackets when they were cold. Not to downplay the frustration induced by constant pleas to repeatedly ride the teacups, inquiries about the time every two minutes, refusals to compromise, and the inability to get along with boys. Tired but not defeated, is how I would describe the counselors.

One of the best parts of the job was that I got to participate in all the kiddie activities. We went to Canobie Lake Park in New Hampshire, saw the Lions of the Kalahari at the Museum of Science’s Omni Theater, Fenway, the Aquarium, the Museum of Natural History, and we had field day and a dance on campus.

Most of all I liked getting to know them. It made me think a lot about what I was like as a kid, and what really happens as you grow up.







Row 1: Lizzy, Grace, Annie
Row 2: Lindsay, Hope
Row 3: Anna, Weezie, Sarah

The girls in one word, and in some sentences:

Lizzy: Independent. She was the most difficult one to watch, because she’d always stray from the group, and wouldn’t understand why she couldn’t walk faster or slower than everyone else. She wouldn’t let me do anything for her. Whereas the other kids were always asking me to do things for them, she insisted on getting her own food and drinks, and she even wanted to walk home by herself. When she did need help—like when she got locked out of her room—she rarely admitted it. She would always say, it’s fine, when it clearly wasn’t, something that I do all the time without realizing how unproductive that is. I feel like she’s going to grow up to be Cora Munro, as played by Madeleine Stowe in The Last of the Mohicans, because she’s so strong-willed and smart. She also had a younger, blonde-haired sister named Daisy who was less mature and more innocent, just like Alice Munro. Anyway…she made me rethink the things people, myself included, do in the name of independence.

Grace: Delicate/fierce. The things I love the most seem to embody this dichotomy, so I have a soft spot for Grace. She had this amazingly sweet voice, as though she was giving you a gift every time she spoke. She told me she liked tunnels; she liked how it became dark and “how you went through them.” She was the smallest one and seemed the most fragile, but she was the only one brave enough to go on the big rollercoasters at the amusement park. She was quiet and reserved, but she was intense about things she cared about. She had a younger brother, and at one point he was wandering off. The other girls tried to get Grace’s attention, yelling her name over and over, but she was so intent on watching over her brother that she didn’t even hear them. The girls gave each other nicknames and Grace was “Shinny,” a combination of shy plus skinny. Needless to say, I empathized with her, not that she ever saw herself as being at a disadvantage, which made me love her even more.

Annie: Tough. She’d broken her arm a week before she got here, and her parents didn’t even know until they arrived in Boston. She was still up for all the games and was really athletic. She never complained when she was thirsty or hungry; she didn’t seem to like acknowledging vulnerability. But being an animal-lover and vegetarian, she was frightened by the images of lions hunting prey at the Museum of Science and clung to me during the entire hour. To feel safe enough to admit your fear—it’s a rare feeling, one that I was grateful she could have, and one that I’m only beginning to let myself experience.

Lindsay: Adorable. This girl must be the cutest thing that ever existed. She wasn’t even one of my kids, but every morning when she arrived at our meetingplace I would wish that she was in my group. I was lucky enough to get a chance to spend time with her at the dance because as I was trying to get some of my more relunctant kids to dance, she happily joined in. Don’t let the cute pixie face fool you—this girl can really move and was my favorite dance partner. Later, when she told the other girls that she lived in London, she consented to saying “cheerio” in a British accent, and I so wanted to take her home to keep.

Hope: Introspective. She lagged behind the others, because she kept stopping to look at a pile of rocks or a random stick or a bird underneath an obscure tree. When I asked her about it, she said she liked “being a tourist.” When we played MASH, she wanted to be a scientist, geographer or world explorer. She only stayed for a day, but the next few days I found myself accidentally stopping the group to look back for her, only to see little things she might have been looking at if she had actually been there.

Anna: Beautiful. She’s a halfie and the prettiest eight year old ever. I told her I could see Kristen Kreuk in her. Amy says the most beautiful thing about people is when they don’t know their own beauty, and I see that in most kids, because they haven’t come to the point of self-awareness yet. Even more so in Anna, because she was the messiest, most accident-prone one in our group. She kept spilling things on her clothes, and the first day at the amusement park she scraped her arm and legs and injured her foot (her nickname was Boo-Boo). She was entirely oblivious to these external blemishes, and she gave no thought whatsoever to preserving an outer appearance, which made her all the more beautiful. She also had really small hands that were wrinkled and looked like they had been burnt. When one of the other kids asked her what happened to them, she said, “Nothing happened. I was born that way,” and smiled. When I think of her beauty, I think of her hands before anything else.

Weezie: Spunky. A million personalities piled into one active body. Weezie was the first of my kids who I met, and she was wearing one blue sock and one green sock when I met her. She spoke a mile a minute, and you had to pay attention because amidst the usual nonsensical kid talk she would say the most insightful things. When I spoke to her, I never doubted that she understood what I was saying. She encouraged me to be a photographer because photographers capture what other people think are pretty but don’t think to capture, and she told me that college is about experiences, and that being a doctor is about being nice. When nine years of life can give me so much, it makes me wonder at how much she’s going to give the world in the future.

Sarah: Precocious. She would pick up on things that adults think children don’t notice, and that’s the thing with kids. They notice everything. Seeing and understanding are different. We think that just because they might not understand something, they’ll ignore it, when really, they’re just taking it in, storing it and unraveling it later.

Week 3: HMS Premedical Institute
So for five days we worked with a simulator named Stan (short for “Standard Patient”) whose heart beat and lungs breathed. Without much instruction they told us to take care of him. We had to figure out what was wrong, and then we had to fix it. It was both an intellectual process and an emotional endeavor. It sounds simplistic, and that’s the fault of my expression, but I’m not sure the mechanics of it would really convey what it was like.

We performed practice surgery (virtual reality), and the idea of having to navigate the human body was simultaneously familiar and foreign (we all thought: Magic School Bus!). It’s funny how little you know about your own physical self. Then I got an ultrasound. How weird and awesome is that, to be able to see your insides on a screen? The doctor confirmed that I didn’t have gallbladder or kidney stones. Then I saw my heart for the first time. I had to hold my breath in order for it to show up, and I almost forgot to start breathing again. It was beautiful, in the way that art is beautiful. You begin to see everything as organic creations and programmatic systems at the same time, and it’s mind-blowing.

The group of people also made it really fun. I got to know my blockmates in a different way, and other Harvard people better, and people outside of our school. Being pre-med means that you’re often categorized by certain mentalities, certain courses of study, certain manners of doing things. It was nice to get at more meaningful ways of connecting people interested in medicine—a particular passion for people, for solving things, for being challenged.

On the last day they gave us a book called “On Doctoring.” It’s a compilation of stories, poems and essays on medicine, patient care, illness, death. The first thing I read was the last paragraph of the introduction: “Henry David Thoreau wrote, ‘To affect the quality of the day—that is the highest of arts.’ Both medicine and literature have the capacity to affect the quality of the human day. Resonances between these two disciplines offer us a unique view of the human condition that neither one alone can provide.” Ever since freshman year, after that brief but significant interaction with Artichoke, I’ve been reading a lot by and about William Carlos Williams. The figurehead for the doctor poet. The book includes a lot by him and by so many other writers I love and admire, and I was touched by how fitting an ending to the week the book was.

WCW writes, “The physician enjoys a wonderful opportunity actually to witness the words being born. Their actual colors and shapes are laid before him carrying their tiny burdens which he is privileged to take into his care with their unspoiled newness. He may see the difficulty with which they have been born and what they are destined to do. No one else is present but the speaker and ourselves, we have been the words’ very parents. Nothing is more moving.”

It’s amazing how long it’s taken me to come to a very simple conclusion, or to jolt myself into consciously knowing what my fingertips have always sensed. I want to take care of people, and I want to write. The how part will come later.

Week 4: Project HEALTH
I moved into Eliot House on Saturday. What a difference a five minute walk makes. Living here feels different from Adams in so many ways. We have neighbors, other houses. My room looks into the courtyard, our common room looks out on the river. It gets so quiet as you walk down Dunster St. away from the bustle of the square toward the cove of river houses. It makes me feel like I’m sharing a secret—with who, I don’t know.

Organizing the Summer Policy Institute for Project HEALTH has been a lot of work, and I hope it goes well. Though a bit intimidated by the responsibility, I like having the control to shape an entire program. Just in preparing for the weekly speakers, I’ve learned so much. There are so many people out there working on ways to improve other people’s lives, and even though the sheer number and immensity of problems that exist is daunting, it makes people’s desire to help so admirable. A bit more on this later, coupled with a movie update (which actually do relate).

It’s nicely surprising how different your life can become even when you remain in the same physical space. Harvard in the summer is nothing like Harvard during the school year, and not just because my classes haven’t started yet. The long days induce warm laziness. With less students you notice a different flow of people through the square. There are so many trees here. I can’t stop looking at them. Of course we have a lot of trees in California, but they’re not clustered quite in the same way. The palm trees in front of my house are always there. Boston trees seem to revive, all at once; they make you aware of their presence, as light and airy as they are. It’s a sudden discovery, but quiet at the same time. I try to think of ways to describe them, but I can only fall back on the simple, familiar, stock adjectives. Green and leafy. The funny thing is, these generic words suffice. Every time a season starts I’m convinced it’s my favorite season, so right now I’m in love with summer. The beginnings are so sweet.

small town new england

Weekend before last Andrew and I trekked to Concord, MA (of Lexington & Concord). Home of Walden Pond and for two years two months and two days Henry David Thoreau, and Lousia May Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson (wrote all that out because I just realized the insistence on middle names). It's only twenty miles from Boston but somehow it took us a few hours to get there. I liked being in a car on the East Coast again. It reminded me of the trips Stephen and I took freshman year to Vermont and Maine. The entrance to a completely different world is so seamless, from buildings to trees. I love driving along those narrow roads with stretches of green trees above and around. The trees arch over the road, so it's shady except for the way the sun makes it through the gaps between leaves, and it feels cozy and small, even as you're aware of the miles of pure woods beyond the bit of pavement you're on.



Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. Here's the reconstruction of his hut. I looked at it and it seemed simple enough. But I think, so many details could still be wrong. I'm sure he described his room quite thoroughly, enough to have the right furniture and items and probably even in the correct general vicinity of the room. But who knows what could've been different on a certain day or even all the time? What if he liked his chair tilted in a different direction? What if he didn't fold his blanket like that? What if that's not how many logs he liked in his fireplace? It seems little, but when that's all there is, it matters a little. I know the point was that possessions are insignificant, but it reminds me of the way King Lear declares, "Reason not the need." People always have needs beyond mere necessity; most of the time we're not aware of them because the line between need and desire is so blurry. For Thoreau, though, it was obvious; he saw what he needed to physically survive and what he didn't. But those other things--the way he arranged things, how he liked his bed made, the kind of view he received from his window--he needed them too.




We saw the Alcott and Emerson houses, from the outside mostly. When we were leaving the Alcott House it was pouring and we ran, sheltered underneath his jacket, across the road to our car. I've never been one to be saddened by the rain, but it's never made me particularly happy either, until various conversations and moments and sounds and experiences and sensations made me value the pitter-patter.



He spotted this sole flower, brightness amidst all green, lonely and defiant. Bittersweet, like that ivory-billed woodpecker that may or may not be the last of its kind. Are they aware, are they sad or are they proud? Like the rose in The Little Prince who thinks her worth lies in being the only one that exists. So distinct and apart from its surroundings, but somehow it defines everything else around it because it's the only thing you focus on.



Maybe it's because he's so separate from my daily life, but when I'm with him I feel like it's just us, like that single flower or those narrow roads. The world is as we are at that moment, lovely.

clutter (before/after)

Written in a fit in between boxes: I’m chewing furiously on my gum, I’m typing furiously and I’m furiously flipping through my music for the right sounds. I’m sitting in the middle of my complete mess of a room, unable to wait until I finish packing to write this entry. There is so much to write, it’s driving me crazy.

Sifting through my possessions makes me wonder at how much absolute trash I own. Honestly. I don’t own a lot of stuff, but damn do I have a lot of junk. Old bills, scrap paper, receipts. It feels so good to purge, to bring myself down to bare necessity. At the same time I realize how hard it is for me to let go of things. The first CD I thought of putting on was the one I played while moving out freshman year. It took me a good half hour before I decided to throw away old wrapping paper. I don’t know what it is about paper—any kind. Wrapping, drafts of essays, post-it notes, magazine ads, junk mail...they’re hard to part with. I think it was during the summer before college when I finally got rid of all my elementary school Valentine’s Day cards. I suppose that’s why I’m obsessed with recycling paper—as long as they go somewhere, I don’t feel so bad. I've been through seven albums, two green apple Smirnoff twists, a pack of gum, one pair of scrubby jeans, and two near-cries today so far while cleaning my room. I could feel the exhaustion build up and seep away, and somehow transitions like these always make me so weepy. I’m going to miss this room. I know we’re moving on to bigger and better, but that doesn’t make this less valuable to me. I’m going to miss being able to have three-way conversations while sitting comfortably in our rooms. I’m going to miss my three windows, the narrowness of my room, my view of Tommy’s.

Now in an empty room with bare walls and glaringly vacant drawers: I have a stretch of alone time for the first time in so long. Not just physically, but the thoughts in my mind have only to do with what I feel, nothing of what I must do, and it feels so good to write like this.

Back when I first started this entry, I wanted to use a winter picture, and I wanted to start out explaining why I was using a winter photo for a spring post. Not to undermine my love of winter and its associated pleasures, but the feeling of displacement—of plain wrongness—that it evokes was fitting for my mood at the time. A bit of time has passed since then, and more than a lot has happened. On the surface, I finished exams, moved my things into storage, and have officially started summer. If that were it, this post would be a lot easier but it never is just that. I’m having trouble sorting things at the moment; things have accumulated to the point that I have no idea where to start and end. But I figure that this will be so long no one will get through it anyway, so it doesn’t matter so much.

After talking about my few days of euphoria and eventual easing into quiet contentment, I managed to experience one of the worst periods of anxiety I’ve ever had. I couldn’t bring myself to post about it while I was actually going through it; I could barely even write privately about it. Andrew and I were talking about denial, and that got us thinking about the five stages of grief, and I said that if I just went through each stage sequentially, I think I’d feel a lot more stable but my problem was that I kept vacillating between phases. At this point neither of us remembered any stages other than denial and acceptance, but I knew that I wasn’t stuck at either one of those. He looked them up, and I didn’t feel like they applied to me: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. These stages of grief seem to be provoked by an actual incident—a real tragedy. Which wasn’t the case. I told him that my situation constituted the five stages of inexplicable anxiety: panic, confusion, indifference/denial, reasoning, and confrontation. I definitely jumped between all of those, sometimes over the course of mere minutes, but always quite consciously avoiding confrontation until the feelings went away.

There were some moments where I honestly panicked, and then I’d feel so overwhelmed I actually contemplated indulging in a good cry, which I rarely do. And there’s my problem. I contemplated these things. I couldn’t ever let myself just do it; I never ended up crying. A few moments later I’d feel fine again, not completely at ease but not completely overcome either.

The real problem is, I don’t have anything tragic to speak of. I don’t feel like I have the right to be unhappy, and that’s what really made me upset. My life is so full of beautiful things and wonderful people, not even in comparison to those less fortunate (the argument your parents like to use when you’re dramatizing the trivial) but just purely and absolutely. I know I don’t need a life-altering reason to be sad, but can’t there be some kind of reason? Can’t there be something I can feel like I could change, or at least recognize and identify? Why was I so self-absorbed that I wallowed in this inexplicable anxiety?

Sarah says, life is reason enough. That’s the way I think about inexplicable happiness—nothing needs to happen, life is reason enough. But somehow I can’t get myself to really feel that way about sadness, even if I believe in it, even if I think everyone else should have that right, even if I know in mind and in heart that sadness is so valuable—why can’t I own it for myself? I really don’t know. There are so few things I am willing to say that I hate, that aren’t given negatives. But I really, truly, absolutely hate feeling unsatisfied with life, when all else reasonable and clear and right points to otherwise.

I only mentioned these things briefly to a few people. I felt like if I talked about it more, wrote about it more, I might have indulged in it and really felt it. It makes me feel so self-centered and vulnerable and absolutely silly. It bewilders me. I would walk through the yard on a breezy, sunny day, listening to something nice, and see how unbelievably green everything has become, and how quiet it is during this time of year. Things that have always moved me, so deeply. This time none of it penetrated this strangeness holed up inside me, and it made me so unbelievably sad to think that maybe none of it mattered as much as I’d previously felt, or else that there could be a part of me that could lose sight of its value. I hate that there is a part of me that no one and nothing—not even another part of my own self—can affect. It makes me feel so isolated, and a little useless, for lack of a better, less negative word. I realize, everyone must go through this so I shouldn’t feel this way…I shouldn’t believe that I can’t or shouldn’t feel this way. But obviously logic has nothing to do with any of this.

Then a series of ostensibly minor incidents occurred that dissipated this bit by bit, and by “this” I mean the somewhat pinpointable cause of being detached from people. I could feel it loosen its grip on me, and this gradual slipping away made me actually appreciate the time that I was so tightly held by that nameless shapeless all-I-know-is-I-hate-it feeling.

First Steph and I had the most amazing conversation about snakes and relationships and elephants and imperfections and settling and love and everything. Steph and I are so completely different in the way that we think about things. Superficially we seem like the same person—small Asian girls from California majoring in English with pre-med aspirations. Everyone confuses us; I’ve been mistaken for Stephanie many, many times. That’s why it’s so ironic that we are complete opposites, in perhaps a more subtle way than most people think when they imagine complete opposites. We differ in our taste in books and movies. We perceive and interpret things differently, from art (Christina’s World) and poetry (life is but a cherry fair) to romance and winter and real life situations. We’re both emotional but about entirely different things. But it’s why I love talking to her, because we know what we believe but we’re open to one another. I like those windows of time and incident when I’m lucky enough to glimpse how she sees things.

She told me about a story she was writing for Spanish, about a snake who falls in love with a man and wants to change so that she can be with him. She has to pass three tests given by the stars in order to do so (our favorite: she has to catch the moon in a bowl, so she fills it with water and encapsulates its reflection). I was impressed by this uncharacteristically romantic plotline, until Steph told me she was contemplating having the snake-turned-human poison the man’s family after she finds out he’s already taken (because she has retained her venomous snake powers). Though a little dismayed by this conclusion, I asked her later how it turned out. She told me that she decided not to kill off the family, but that the snake finds someone else and falls in love with him. I was utterly depressed by this ending. I didn’t think it could be true love if the snake so easily settled for someone else. Haha, I told Steph to title the story “Romance is a Sham.” She literally gasped with shock at this suggestion, a response that surprised even her. She then told me that the man with whom the snake falls in love is an elephant. This elephant was the elephant of the man who the snake originally fell in love with, and he was so in love with her that he spent the next three thousand years changing for her. I thought this was a little bittersweet—the idea that the snake didn’t get who she really wanted, and Steph said that was why it was poignant. We let this conversation go for a little bit, and somehow we got around to talking about real, human relationships and talking about how people so often settle. She mentioned her theory of best fit, that people choose their partners based on this, and how it has the connotation of settling for less than perfect, and how perfection doesn’t exist. I said that of course no one’s looking for perfect, but that I think it’s possible to have I-know-for-sure love, that’s perfect, not in spite of the shortcomings, but encompassing all of it. She kept saying, but how do you know. I kept saying, I don’t know but you do…you must, you must, I keep thinking. We eventually got back to her story, and she said that she knew the ending wasn’t perfect; it wasn’t supposed to be, and it seemed to reflect her philosophy in general. And I thought, but it is perfect. These people (animals) who wanted to change for those they loved, who saw in themselves imperfections they wanted to change—they ended up together, what’s more fitting than that? In trying to prove imperfection, and in successfully doing so, Steph stumbles along perfection. And she felt it too.

Then I received an email from Hussain about displacement. It wasn’t so much that he was going through something similar, but that he wanted to tell me about it. He can feel this intangible act of listening. It means something to someone.

The next day Audrey wrote me, and she said: “I think this every time I read your livejournal entries, but even more so when I read your letters or emails—I'm so glad you think so, too. It's nice to know that someone is thinking like I think and feeling like I feel. When I read your livejournals or your emails, I feel like you're writing about the things I think about, but don't talk about because they're just details so specific to me that no one else could possibly have anything to say about them.” It’s not just that she relates that relieves me; it’s that someone like her relates. It completely amazes me sometimes when I think about the people I’m lucky enough to know. The kind of people who would make you happy even if you weren’t blessed by their company or friendship—but just because they exist. It’s impossible to articulate how amazing it is to see what I love about and believe in people materialize in these actual, real people in my life. People like Aud who really thinks about things, doesn’t let them pass her by, but who doesn’t let this take away from the intensity of just feeling.

Then him, who constantly, unconsciously surprises me. With him I’m finding, over and over, that gradual discovery is possible. He asked me about the poem I posted a long time ago when I was first starting this journal. It was funny (not ha-ha funny but hmm-funny) because I’ve never talked about any of my writing that’s open to interpretation, and I didn’t anticipate how it would feel. He said he tried to figure out if the girl in the poem was waking up or falling asleep. And I thought, I wonder that too, and do I really know? I think I wrote a lot of that based on image and feeling without much thought about what it meant, and to hear it verbalized—I can’t even describe how it felt. Again the idea that something that came from so deep within me that I thought it’d be impossible to share—someone else thought about it, and made me think about and understand it differently. It occupied a small space in someone else’s mind. Maybe I’m not hopeless after all.

Victoria visited for a couple of days; she left yesterday. Despite the hostile wind and rain, showing her Cambridge and Boston was like rediscovering everything I love here all over again. There aren’t too many things to actually do, but there’s a lot to experience, and it was so nice to be with someone who understands that. Who likes seeing places that I introduce with, “There’s nothing really to see, but I just like walking around here.” We talked and talked, we ate in silence, we took pictures, we drank, we danced, we did girly things (shopped, gossiped and giggled). I remembered what it feels like to share so many different parts of yourself with someone else, to know that there is someone on the receiving end.





And the renewal of my love affair with New England jarred me; it was so relieving it almost hurt. Today was gorgeous. Steph and I took on my boxes this morning and moved within an hour. Our triumph set the tone for the day. For lunch we ate at au bon pain, in the outdoor seating area next to the chess masters. The way I can feel the breeze graze my skin here is so different than anywhere else. I love how, when the weather gets warm, everyone relishes their ice cream, and sinks into their flip flops, and slides into their tank tops. The communal shedding of layers and mass movement outdoors make me so aware of the warmth. I love how you can see people slow down, slow down their movements, slow down their thoughts. People smile at you, they offer to help you move their boxes, they don’t get mad if you stop to stare in a window. Most of all I love the street performers and the people who stand around and watch them. I love how different sounds follow you and linger around you for a bit before another kind consumes you as you walk through the square—first seventies folk emanating from Peet’s Coffee, then the strumming of someone’s guitar playing Simon & Garfunkal as you turn the corner, next the jazzy tunes of a trio in the T-stop area, then the sounds of families all along Mass Ave, and finally the quiet as you get to Bow St. to Adams.



Then we got bubble tea and went by the river to feed bread to the ducks. As we walked we talked about nothing; phrases were dropped here and there that touched me, the kind of things that blur in my memory the minute they’ve been said, so that I can’t recall specifics but can’t forget the deep sense of gratitude. We couldn’t find any ducks. Instead we came across a flock of geese who chased us. I can now say I’ve experienced seconds of pure fear. Then Otto’s dog, Pip, came running out and drove them into the water, where we could safely toss scraps without worry of being pecked to death. She gleefully bounded after the birds, seeming to understand she’d never catch them but enjoying the splash and the adventure all the same. She also ate some of the bread meant for the birds. I am so thankful for Steph, for the river, for crazy creatures.



Though always aware that the process of knowing yourself and other people is continual and endless, I’m finding I know so much less than I thought. I thought I’d come to a point of real understanding, flaws and all, of myself and my relation to others. It probably doesn’t come to a surprise to anyone that this is so not true, but that’s the thing about clichés. They always have to be repeated; it’s one thing to know their truth and another to feel their relevance to your own life. More surprisingly…I’m finding that this ignorance is immensely relieving, and pretty wonderful. There’s room. There’s more.

possibility (staples and coins)

I have neither the time nor the mental stamina to be writing an entry, but I don't care. There is something seriously wrong with me.

Whenever I have a thick paper to staple--pages and pages of carefully thought-out, written, proofread, edited words merging into sentences and paragraphs and so on--I stop for a second. Because this is the final product. From another's words in a text, to the drifting ideas in my mind, to the initial scribbles on scratch paper, to stream-of-consciousness writing, to the rearrangement of letters and imposing structure, to making sure the broad themes are bracketed by minutely perfect punctuation. I've printed it out. The staple is the absolute last step. So I position the stapler carefully, but I don't take too much time because somehow if you let it linger over the paper too long you lose the right proportion of conviction and hesitation. Then, it happens and there comes the satisfaction of completion, contained in something you can hold in your hands. The staple is flawless. It made it through the pile of laser printer paper, it's straight, you can see it grasp the last paper firmly and convincingly.

Except I'm never convinced. I always think, what if it comes apart? One staple, even one as clearly sufficient as this one, could not possibly hold all this work I've done. How can I rely on this tiny thing to keep everything together? So I say, one more. It will be just as good as the last one, and then I'll have double the comfort, double the feeling of accomplishment, and I won't have to deal with any residual doubt. So I do it. Inevitably something goes wrong. I hold the stapler longer than I should. The stapler is still recovering from its first exertion. The staple can't quite make it through, and gets stuck somewhere in the middle. I have to wrestle it out. This failure should tell me to stop, but the empty holes the second attempt has left in the paper stare me in the face. I can't just leave it, so multiple staples ensue accompanied by sounds of frustration and thoughts of should've-known-better. Until finally one that doesn't resemble a complete misfire makes its way through. It's not nearly as nice as the first, and it even makes the first one look less attractive. I sigh, and turn it in.

This picture is the fountain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. My most distinct memory of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is when they take the coins from the fountain to fund their adventures. I can't remember if the feeling of admiration or sadness came first, after reading that. Probably as a kid, admiration. That was pretty clever, and it sounds like a lot of fun to wade around in that thing. It's probably a thought most people entertain but something they never do--rules, self-consciousness, silly real things like that stop them. But it seems a little sad, in a way, or maybe bittersweet. The different functions of these coins...loose change in your pocket, a burden almost. Then a source of possible wish fulfillment--to be able to use something you don't really need or want anyway to ask for something you might need or want, or to believe you might someday get what you need or want. And then to be usurped for practical purposes. Your wish now lying in another's pocket. I suppose that circulation is constant, and not just restricted to wishing fountains. Now that I think about it, it's nice to have such thoughts floating around, exchanging hands.

I think, should I throw my coin in, knowing where it might end up? Not shining at the bottom of a clear pool in a beautiful museum but fulfilling purposes I never foresaw? Should I add my penny to the pile of copper, when it's already comfortable in my pocket? Should I risk it? What if the actual act of throwing it in there mars my image of what it would look like, how it would feel? How can I ever reconcile contentment with what is with an infatuation with what could be?

unfinished entries

I'm tired of attempting to piece things together and sorting my thoughts by theme. There are so many files saved on my computer, of unfinished thoughts that never made it here for whatever reason. I kept them, thinking I might flesh them out into real entries sometime. Ending classes, realizing Steph is graduating, that we're going to be seniors--all of it makes me realize putting things off for later just means accumulation of things most likely to remain undone. I'd rather not settle for that.

Last week I experienced these few days of absolute euphoria. I was so consciously, ridiculously happy. It's mellowed into a general contentment, coupled with a vague notion of impending stress, but I think so much of it has stemmed from recognizing that things fall into place on their own. Yes, I still have to exert effort, I need and want to be engaged in the things that are happening to me, there will always be excruciating moments of anxiety and doubt and fear. But watching loose ends go their own way is sometimes so much more satisfying than trying to tie them together.

Unfinished Entry #1: Written sometime last spring, nearly a year ago.

I've wanted to talk and write about this for a really long time. When people ask me about certain decisions that I've made and am in the process of making, it's difficult to know exactly where to start. How can I compress all the factors into an articulate explanation, even into a conversation?

I can't pinpoint the exact moment in my life when I began to feel that the best and worst things about me were one and the same--that is, my sensitivity and introspection--but once I did, I've never stopped thinking it was true. I spend so much (too much) time thinking about who it is that I am and who it is that I want to be that it frustrates me when other people misunderstand these things. It is so simple to dismiss the judgments of others, when "others" comprise an anonymous category of people I don't really know or care about. But it's not about those people at all. It's about those most close to me in interaction but who are still somehow most distant from me in understanding. I've attributed so much complexity to myself and to people in general. When I find people to whom I reveal a significant part of that and in whom I search for the same, and then to realize that they overlook both sides of this interaction--it's one of the worst feelings I experience. Being misunderstood may be hip when you want to distinguish yourself from people for whom you have no feeling whatsoever, but it's horrible when you're trying to establish substantial friendships with people in whom you've invested time and emotion.

Last year, when I told Amy about leaving the pre-med track to devote myself entirely to literature, she compared me to Felicity, who apparently abandoned medicine for art history. The support implicit in this analogy affirmed my happiness with the decision. This year, when I told Sarah about thinking of returning to medicine, she compared me to Felicity, who (as I was told) ultimately decided to go to medical school. And the comparison had the same effect on me as it did a year ago. That doesn’t mean that I made the wrong choice the first time. I don’t feel like I betrayed any part of who I am at either point in my life.


Unfinished Entry #2: Written sometime in the fall.

Jen recently mentioned something in her journal about the things that people value. I thought of it when I was sitting in chemistry the other day. Jacobsen was talking about how these three scientists, all of whom had won the Nobel Prize at some point in their lives, were debating over one particular Nobel Prize, because this particular Nobel Prize was “the big Nobel Prize” (“there are your everyday Nobel Prizes, and then there are your BIG Nobel Prizes.”) One of these scientists died, and after his death, one of the others basically said, “I don’t want any credit, but just for the record, you stole my idea and I deserve that Nobel Prize.” And the debate continues. Everyone else thought this anecdote was pretty amusing, and I guess it was (if only to hear Jacobsen talk about something other than electrons), but it got me thinking about how things that you spend your life working towards can so easily be trivialized—and sometimes, not even unfairly so. How much your self-perception and your self-worth can become dependent on things that have absolutely nothing to do with yourself. And mostly how human Harvard students are. I’ll admit that there are some quantitative ways to categorize and separate them from the rest of the population, but in the end, intelligence—especially as measured the way it is here—is just one factor among so many components that comprise a person. And people here are just as vulnerable and flawed as any I’ve met. They can be just as shallow, they can be just as petty—they can also be just as kind, just as compassionate. There are so many areas of intelligence, and singling people out for a certain kind doesn’t eliminate the endless other elements of who they are.


Unfinished Entry #3: Written shortly after first semester ended, in February.

This is more than a little delayed, but I think it’s been good to get some distance from the past year to really evaluate it. Actually, I can’t really think in terms of the entire year; people change so much from day to day that there is no way that I can assess a year’s worth of myself undergoing those significantly minute changes. I’m just thinking of the fall semester. It was a really, really good one, probably the best that I’ve had here, which is a little surprising because it was also the most academically stressful. But the past two years have really taught me a lot about how to approach and deal with classes here—particularly, my year away from pre-med courses ironically prepared me so well for handling organic chemistry. I’m proud of myself for braving the scary swarm of brilliant, obsessive-compulsive pre-meds (mostly, they only appear this way because they are anonymous to me). So that is one item on my list of things I am glad I did in 2004…

1) Loved organic chemistry in spite of the emphasis on curving, grading and competition. Only indulged in occasional bouts of stress. Maintained perspective. Received a grade lower than all my past grades here, but one that genuinely reflects my relative knowledge and effort, and thus one that I’m proud of. Learned a lot.

2) The fun we had this semester also counteracted the potential stress of my five classes. So: rarely sacrificed opportunities for out-of-the-ordinary-fun in favor of mundane work. Enjoyed tipsiness often. Danced on elevated surfaces, and with my girls. Laughed a lot.

3) Found my opposite, and stepped outside of my introversion enough to get to know him and let him get to know me. Stopped questioning and worrying and analyzing long enough to be purely and simply happy, and to make someone else purely and simply happy. Shared a lot.

4) Recognized and appreciated the fullness of these days, and those upcoming, without becoming too overwhelmed, and without forgetting to record them. Coming to terms with the necessity of growing up, without giving up on the possibility of retaining the past. Wrote a lot.

What difficult and lovely times.


Unfinished Entry #4: I have no idea when this was written.

Just for the record, there is a difference between informed optimism and blind idealism. The only reason to be optimistic in the first place is because you acknowledge that something's not right. Otherwise why would you need to hope that it will be all right later?


Unfinished Entry #5: This is an ongoing entry, but I realize that it would never end, and I haven't even begun to include everyone, but better now than never.

Lately I’ve been thinking about people who have not only had some kind of impact on me but have significantly changed me somehow.

The first and most obvious would be my brothers, except I’m not so sure that they have changed me as much as they have shaped me. So, we’ll leave it at that.

I think the first person who came after that is Hussain, around the time of junior high…maybe a bit later than that; though I’ve known him since elementary school I don’t think the change really happened until much later. He was the first person to show me how much friendship can really mean to a person. For some reason he appreciated my friendship more than anyone else I’d known. Up until then I’d measured the degree of friendship by time spent together, letters and notes written to one another, your choice of partner when doing projects, friendship bracelets and those kinds of immature things. And then here was this person who, despite how childish and unthinking and petty I could be, just genuinely liked me and wanted to be my friend, even after I left Hopkins. For no explicable reason. It sounds so generic and seems like it should be the basis of every friendship, but after all this time, I know how rare it is. We lost touch for awhile, and the closeness that proximity fostered when we were younger will probably never reappear in the same form. But now, when we talk, there’s no sense of a gap; it’s as though we’ve been talking continually even when we haven’t. We still argue incessantly, and there are still moments when the first person I think of wanting to talk to is him—someone I’ve only seen about four times over the last seven years. I have no idea why he still talks to me but I’m glad he does.

Then in high school came Victoria, Sarah and Richard. Victoria was the first best friend I had who, through no conscious effort on her part, inspired me to do and see certain things differently. Before I became close friends with her, a million little things annoyed and upset me, and throughout our friendship they continued to do so, and she knew all about it though she never complained. Just witnessing her genuine kindness and appreciation for everyone and everything changed a lot of that. She is also the most thoughtful person I know. She absorbs everything I tell her, even the mundane things. And that was the first time I realized how much it can mean to have someone remember those mundane things. There’s a depth of caring in that, that I don’t think I recognized or practiced before. Afterwards, I tried to emulate that in all my friendships, and I think it’s made a huge difference in how I connect with people. She also takes care of me, and she was the first friend I really felt that I took care of. Our friendship was probably the first where I admitted that friendship isn’t really about equal levels of independence; sometimes you are going to be dependent.

Sarah...Sarah keeps me sane by reminding us that we’re all insane. She knows the full extent of my neuroticism and she doesn’t care because she is so beyond neurotic herself. I can’t even describe our friendship, it’s so dysfunctional. Sarah was the first person, and still one of the few people, to whom I admit everything good, bad and ugly about myself. Complete and utter honesty. Insecurities, anxieties, self-loathing—she knows it all. I could tell her absolutely anything and she would take it without surprise. And having been typecast all my life for shyness and academics, it was and is indescribably amazing and liberating and inspiring to know someone who has so much faith in your complexity that she thinks anything is within your range of possibility.

Richard. In many ways Richard is the best person I know. How is it possible for a person to be so…good? There’s just no other word to describe him, really. It is a difficult feat to believe in every person’s goodness and yet still be able to make each person feel that their goodness is unique and valuable. To echo Victoria’s words, he makes you feel so loved.

In college, the collective group of people I’ve met have changed how I see people in the same way I suspect everyone changes in college. But I have to say that the one person that changed me most is Melkis. A girl who I may never have grown so close to if we hadn’t been semi-randomly placed in the same dorm room freshman year. Getting to know her has shown me the value of really, truly, honestly spending time understanding someone, how knowing someone absolutely fully, strengths and weaknesses, is so much more rewarding than knowing only the partial.


Unfinished Entry #6: Written last week

Reading over essays from high school, it’s easy to see how my writing has improved. As far as critical thinking goes, I’m not sure if what’s happened from then to now can exactly be called improvement. My claims in high school were very idealistic, very obvious statements that just happened to be expressed in unique, ingenious ways by amazing writers. Don’t be self-centered and materialistic, community is key, keep striving for equality, art can be a refuge from life. Now, things are more complicated, cliches have to be questioned—how to sustain a living without some kind of materialistic thought, how to prevent losing your individuality when thinking about others, is equality ever possible, what about the damaging effects of living through and for art? Concepts are more complex, more nuanced. The first thing I learned about writing at Harvard was to look for complications, for the strange—to then ask why and how—and to finally come to the conclusion that because that’s the way life is: inexplicable, incompatible, contradictory. But sometimes I think, is that really more valuable than a simple faith in the ideals I so naively argued for in high school? Maybe it’s more realistic, and I do believe in the worth of imperfections and paradoxes and pain, but not at the cost of the earlier innocence. It’s like how William Blake would sell his Songs of Innocence on its own, but he would only sell Songs of Experience with Songs of Innocence. Experience doesn’t negate innocence; it’s nothing without what came before.