Every blog seems to have an obligatory list of things to be thankful for, not necessarily always at Thanksgiving. I've never made a public one, mostly because I often write when I'm happy for something and I assume that comes across. Lately though I've been feeling a bit of an ache. While there has been as much to be happy for as always, instead of appreciating those things, I've entertained that ache more than I'd like. So here's to being grateful (though nowhere near adequately) instead of self-pitying (whose threshold of validity has been surpassed long ago).
I am glad for:
public transportation
It's not so alarming to get lost on a subway, because there are really only so many places to go and there is one map with solid lines and colors and only so many directions. You have little responsibility once you get on except to remember when to get off. I spent a fourth of my time in Chicago on trains and buses, and walking short distances, and count all of it as seeing the city. Thank you for keeping me still and taking me places.
things that keep you warm
Tea. How the flavors can be a intricate mix of spices and things but still taste smooth and simple, and thereby, comforting. How it holds lovely things like milk and honey and sugar. Fireplaces, books by the fireplace, and winter music like RHCP's By The Way and Radiohead's In Rainbows and The Cure's Disintegration. Large groups of people you love in one place. Coffeeshops. Winter accessories that you lose, mourn, and never quite replace. Blankets borrowed from friends. Hot pies.
the uniqueness of people
As I re-meet old friends and make new ones, I find each one to be irreplaceable. It's overwhelming to think of what each one offers, how each person gives me something different and compels to give them something different. I miss my friends from home. I miss how Victoria is part of home, how Aud understands my introversion, how Tanvi laughs at everything and makes me laugh at everything, how Kristina speaks with a fiery passion that somehow brings out her core gentle kindness, how Sarah lets me be whatever I feel like. I miss my college friends. I miss Andrea's questions and listening, Jackie's genuine caring of everyone, Jen's sensibility to things around her, Amy's honesty, Melkis's quick propensity to laugh and cry, Steph's warmth, Chris's elusiveness, Henry's love which he extends so naturally, Frank's contagious positivity, Courtney's love of quality things like NYC and coffee. Hi Albert, I miss you too and your empathy. On Thanksgiving break I missed my classmates--Allison squatting in my room and how easy it is to talk to her about whatever, Bibhav's silliness cheering me without fail, Don's nightly milk stops and how he seems to appreciate those few minutes, how Guson both echoes my thoughts and makes me consider new things, Macdale's tangible humor, my awesome PCC group. And everyone I see in class and don't even talk to regularly, I missed them too. Thank you for Andy and Connie and Gina who I saw in Chicago and make me think once people enter your life they stay in some form. And I miss you; I think I will always miss you. You are in everything beautiful, and there is much beautiful.
having things to miss
Thank you for things and people so worthwhile that I consciously miss them.
yale
Thank you for keeping me busy and fulfilled but not too stressed, for being an unexpected fit. You're not without your flaws but neither am I and I think we understand each other okay. Thank you for making me feel this is a privilege and that I need to keep deserving it each day, and understanding when I can't quite do it because I'm a bum. Thank you for the amazing financial aid that makes me fear less postgraduate debt and gives me some leeway to pursue what I want.
loves
Thank you for the joys and pains of the first, and for the formless idea of an unknown second. Thank you for the constant ones: Mom, Dad, Hoang, Bao, Duy and Binh (all the names for those of you who try to remember those brothers of mine)--for how I don't have to miss you because you always feel close.
my memory
I know it makes me think too much and things linger longer than they should and it makes things hard for me. But thank you for letting me keep everything in one place.
I feel the need to say thank you rather than to just give thanks, just because it's nice to think of directing all this toward someone/something. To think that there's something out there enveloping the thanks we give, like the catcher in the rye that Holden Caufield imagines catching those bodies as they're thrown. Some things for you to catch.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Monday, November 5, 2007
afternoon
It was a mildly cold, sunny day and after just two hours of class, lunch and errands, a long Monday afternoon stretched its limbs for me to follow. I packed my bookbag and walked down York Street with Radiohead's newest because I'm addicted; it's so delicious. The up and down I routinely take on York reminds me of how we felt like we'd been in Luang Prabang (Laos) forever because there's one main street and we walked it multiple times a day. The intersection with Elm Street reminds me a little of Cambridge, with Au Bon Pain on the corner and the expanse of brick becoming evident as you stand in the middle, a triangular intersection on your left and half of a cross on your right. I saw several girls wearing brown knee high boots. I have fond memories of Amy and I finding ours for $30 at a Nine West outlet in Atlantic City.
I went to Koffee Too to study. I don't like its structure--two adjacent rectangles separated by a wall--as much as Koffee which has two adjacent squares flowing into one another (more angles but open ones so that it feels like one big place with lots of corners). I usually choose it over Koffee for proximity's sake, but today it was also for the busy street view.
I ordered almond steamed milk but the order was wrong and they gave me peppermint instead. I told the guy it was okay and that I'd try something new. I've only had vanilla and almond before, and peppermint wasn't better than those, but it made me want to try all the flavors (there's maybe thirty). Which I can probably do because I always get steamed milk. I thought about how Toscanini's has closed in Harvard Square and how I can never get Vietnamese coffee (coffee with condensed milk, lovingly sweet so you don't need extra sugar) from there again. Steamed milk, which is also warm and sweet, isn't better or worse, just different.
I opened my biochemistry text and began reading about glycolysis, which we started learning a couple weeks ago (um, I'm just a little behind). I've tried looking at it before but it all seemed like mindless mechanism and I didn't think there was any point in memorizing details I'll just forget. But our biochem conferences have been pretty interesting and I find myself with a funny desire to want to understand conceptually the breakdown of glucose and all the related processes. Today it fell into place more and I decided that glycolysis (and all the pathways we've learned since) is an acquired taste, and I believe in letting things grow on you (probably because I'm the type of person who needs to grow on people). There's certain satisfaction in being able to follow a system. I read in more detail about how glucose synthesis isn't the exact opposite of glucose breakdown because breakdown requires some irreversible reactions. You can't just go back; to make glucose you have get around those irreversibilities, make up some new reactions. And there are all sorts of ways your body tells you to make or break down sugar. It's pretty cool.
I took breaks to read Kafka on the Shore, which came in my mail today. Haruki Murakami is like an old friend, immediately comforting. His language pulls you in so swiftly, you don't even notice except that so suddenly you realize you're content. The main character in the book runs away to Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku: "Shikoku, I decide. That's where I'll go. There's no particular reason it has to be Shikoku, only that studying the map I got the feeling that's where I should head. The more I look at the map--actually every time I study it--I got the feeling that's where I should head. It's far south of Tokyo, separated from the mainland by water, with a warm climate. I've never been there, have no friends or relatives there, so if somebody started looking for me--which I kind of doubt--Shikoku would be the last place they'd think of."
During my solitary trek south to get to Aud's island this past summer, I went to Takamatsu and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, partly because I felt the most alone there than anywhere else. From my journal that day: "The train getting here was shaky and lacked signs. Getting off at a station, there was one person manning a run-down booth...The train only comes every half hour. It might be the typhoon but everything is empty and desolate, and the air is a bit ominous. I found groves and a small nursery on my hunt for bonsai. There's almost no one around, and the landscape here is so different. Very few buildings. Just sharply shingled rooftops, train tracks, narrow streets, and green and brown, plant and dirt."
While studying, an English teacher began holding office hours with her students at the table next to me. It was so representative of the kind of meetings I'd have back in college. I miss the kind of thoughts that writing essays forces you to consider and develop, but am also glad that I'm free to think without need to commit to a structure and thesis. I eavesdropped on two different students' ideas for their papers (the role of women in proposal scenes in The Importance of Earnest and how language interacts with social context of separate plays) before I decided I needed to move if I wanted to study anything.
I moved to a window-side cushy chair and while I got some work done, I found that my studying requires a hard surface and space to spread my things. It wasn't too long after that that I headed back to campus, darker out now, especially with daylight savings disappearing. Another day over that in retrospect, will be the filler between significant events, but that in the moment is all you have.
I went to Koffee Too to study. I don't like its structure--two adjacent rectangles separated by a wall--as much as Koffee which has two adjacent squares flowing into one another (more angles but open ones so that it feels like one big place with lots of corners). I usually choose it over Koffee for proximity's sake, but today it was also for the busy street view.
I ordered almond steamed milk but the order was wrong and they gave me peppermint instead. I told the guy it was okay and that I'd try something new. I've only had vanilla and almond before, and peppermint wasn't better than those, but it made me want to try all the flavors (there's maybe thirty). Which I can probably do because I always get steamed milk. I thought about how Toscanini's has closed in Harvard Square and how I can never get Vietnamese coffee (coffee with condensed milk, lovingly sweet so you don't need extra sugar) from there again. Steamed milk, which is also warm and sweet, isn't better or worse, just different.
I opened my biochemistry text and began reading about glycolysis, which we started learning a couple weeks ago (um, I'm just a little behind). I've tried looking at it before but it all seemed like mindless mechanism and I didn't think there was any point in memorizing details I'll just forget. But our biochem conferences have been pretty interesting and I find myself with a funny desire to want to understand conceptually the breakdown of glucose and all the related processes. Today it fell into place more and I decided that glycolysis (and all the pathways we've learned since) is an acquired taste, and I believe in letting things grow on you (probably because I'm the type of person who needs to grow on people). There's certain satisfaction in being able to follow a system. I read in more detail about how glucose synthesis isn't the exact opposite of glucose breakdown because breakdown requires some irreversible reactions. You can't just go back; to make glucose you have get around those irreversibilities, make up some new reactions. And there are all sorts of ways your body tells you to make or break down sugar. It's pretty cool.
I took breaks to read Kafka on the Shore, which came in my mail today. Haruki Murakami is like an old friend, immediately comforting. His language pulls you in so swiftly, you don't even notice except that so suddenly you realize you're content. The main character in the book runs away to Takamatsu, on the island of Shikoku: "Shikoku, I decide. That's where I'll go. There's no particular reason it has to be Shikoku, only that studying the map I got the feeling that's where I should head. The more I look at the map--actually every time I study it--I got the feeling that's where I should head. It's far south of Tokyo, separated from the mainland by water, with a warm climate. I've never been there, have no friends or relatives there, so if somebody started looking for me--which I kind of doubt--Shikoku would be the last place they'd think of."
During my solitary trek south to get to Aud's island this past summer, I went to Takamatsu and it was one of my favorite parts of the trip, partly because I felt the most alone there than anywhere else. From my journal that day: "The train getting here was shaky and lacked signs. Getting off at a station, there was one person manning a run-down booth...The train only comes every half hour. It might be the typhoon but everything is empty and desolate, and the air is a bit ominous. I found groves and a small nursery on my hunt for bonsai. There's almost no one around, and the landscape here is so different. Very few buildings. Just sharply shingled rooftops, train tracks, narrow streets, and green and brown, plant and dirt."
While studying, an English teacher began holding office hours with her students at the table next to me. It was so representative of the kind of meetings I'd have back in college. I miss the kind of thoughts that writing essays forces you to consider and develop, but am also glad that I'm free to think without need to commit to a structure and thesis. I eavesdropped on two different students' ideas for their papers (the role of women in proposal scenes in The Importance of Earnest and how language interacts with social context of separate plays) before I decided I needed to move if I wanted to study anything.
I moved to a window-side cushy chair and while I got some work done, I found that my studying requires a hard surface and space to spread my things. It wasn't too long after that that I headed back to campus, darker out now, especially with daylight savings disappearing. Another day over that in retrospect, will be the filler between significant events, but that in the moment is all you have.
Sunday, November 4, 2007
hunger
I'm always hungry. It's not always I'm-starving and it's not like I can't go without food during my cravings. Sometimes it's just a slight hollow that shifts to different areas of my stomach and mind, making me think I'd like something sweet one moment, salty the next, ooh maybe sweet and salty.
Today I told Albert that I think I'm leptin-deficient with a super metabolism (kidding, but this is a scientific possibility no?). Leptin is related to satiety; without it you feel hungry even after eating and this can lead to obesity. He said that in this case I should be grateful for my deficiency because without it my super metabolism would kill me. I hadn't considered that. My abnormalities, a lack of one thing and an excess of another, balance each other. The fetal heart comes to mind again, how sometimes when you have multiple defects, one abnormality keeps you alive in the presence of another. Science is an endless source of unoriginal analogies and I've been studying all day, somewhat to catch up and mostly to be alone.
Also today I told D that he's peculiar, not so much because his individual qualities are peculiar but because the combination of them is. All this got me thinking about qualities in general, how they communicate and interact within a person.
People always say that when you arrive to a new place, you can reinvent yourself, offer whatever representation of yourself that you'd like. But we also know that even if you attempt that, you inevitably fall back into yourself. I've been lucky to grow up appreciating what I can offer and also knowing full well the wide expanse for improvement, and being comfortable with both.
But with each new place, there is still that inner desire to transition from quiet to loud. I use these terms not to necessarily describe literal volume, but more as a way to classify people whose selves come across with ease (loud), versus people whose selves are below the surface (quiet). And this doesn't correlate to superficial versus deep. There are people who are deep that immediately come across that way, and I'd classify them as loud.
The process of knowing yourself and other people here has been interesting, because it's a dynamic I haven't encountered before. A hundred of us, with the same schedule and routine of work and play, half of us living and eating in the same space, the other half barely dispersed in a two-mile radius from the rest. There's only so much room for difference in what we do, and maybe because of that, there's also a lot of space to draw upon individual characters and qualities. You see yourself being unravelled and digested by other people in the same way that people have unravelled and digested you before. There are the few more invested encounters that have their unique nuances but where you place among the larger population often follows a similar pattern.
Here I'm one of many because I'm from California and went to Harvard. Here I'm distinct for being an English major and the only Vietnamese girl. Most everyone knows these superficial details, and while they're superficial, it's nice that we know them about each other. It's nice to have a baseline, so that certain things come across despite quietness. And though I feel the time may have passed to get past baseline with some because friends have formed and niches carved, there are many opportunities for those things beyond baseline to come across.
Even with the potential, there sometimes feels like something is missing, something I can't quite share because of my quietness. Because of the stillness that arises from fierce deficiencies and stormy excesses. Maybe it's not solely me. Maybe the quiet of connection is the result of not just my own quietness but of a serendipitous balance between the quirks of interaction. One means of communication working in high gear masks the inability of another to function, leaving a neutral line of understanding. Maybe the intricate compromise struck between abnormalities and oddities within a single person is also characteristic of interaction among people, lying in the space in between. The only way you can tell if this is true is if you feel that slight hollow that's fed and then needs to be fed again.
Today I told Albert that I think I'm leptin-deficient with a super metabolism (kidding, but this is a scientific possibility no?). Leptin is related to satiety; without it you feel hungry even after eating and this can lead to obesity. He said that in this case I should be grateful for my deficiency because without it my super metabolism would kill me. I hadn't considered that. My abnormalities, a lack of one thing and an excess of another, balance each other. The fetal heart comes to mind again, how sometimes when you have multiple defects, one abnormality keeps you alive in the presence of another. Science is an endless source of unoriginal analogies and I've been studying all day, somewhat to catch up and mostly to be alone.
Also today I told D that he's peculiar, not so much because his individual qualities are peculiar but because the combination of them is. All this got me thinking about qualities in general, how they communicate and interact within a person.
People always say that when you arrive to a new place, you can reinvent yourself, offer whatever representation of yourself that you'd like. But we also know that even if you attempt that, you inevitably fall back into yourself. I've been lucky to grow up appreciating what I can offer and also knowing full well the wide expanse for improvement, and being comfortable with both.
But with each new place, there is still that inner desire to transition from quiet to loud. I use these terms not to necessarily describe literal volume, but more as a way to classify people whose selves come across with ease (loud), versus people whose selves are below the surface (quiet). And this doesn't correlate to superficial versus deep. There are people who are deep that immediately come across that way, and I'd classify them as loud.
The process of knowing yourself and other people here has been interesting, because it's a dynamic I haven't encountered before. A hundred of us, with the same schedule and routine of work and play, half of us living and eating in the same space, the other half barely dispersed in a two-mile radius from the rest. There's only so much room for difference in what we do, and maybe because of that, there's also a lot of space to draw upon individual characters and qualities. You see yourself being unravelled and digested by other people in the same way that people have unravelled and digested you before. There are the few more invested encounters that have their unique nuances but where you place among the larger population often follows a similar pattern.
Here I'm one of many because I'm from California and went to Harvard. Here I'm distinct for being an English major and the only Vietnamese girl. Most everyone knows these superficial details, and while they're superficial, it's nice that we know them about each other. It's nice to have a baseline, so that certain things come across despite quietness. And though I feel the time may have passed to get past baseline with some because friends have formed and niches carved, there are many opportunities for those things beyond baseline to come across.
Even with the potential, there sometimes feels like something is missing, something I can't quite share because of my quietness. Because of the stillness that arises from fierce deficiencies and stormy excesses. Maybe it's not solely me. Maybe the quiet of connection is the result of not just my own quietness but of a serendipitous balance between the quirks of interaction. One means of communication working in high gear masks the inability of another to function, leaving a neutral line of understanding. Maybe the intricate compromise struck between abnormalities and oddities within a single person is also characteristic of interaction among people, lying in the space in between. The only way you can tell if this is true is if you feel that slight hollow that's fed and then needs to be fed again.
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