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.
Friday, May 6, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
written out
Instead of diligently writing my paper, I was going through my documents and reading over the million livejournal entries I started but never finished. As always, there’s so much to write about, but maybe I should stop writing for a bit, to stop that noise for awhile so that I can hear better and listen more.
I remember reading an entry in Hussain's blog about how he just wanted to know who read his entries and he asked his readers to leave a comment letting him know that they were out there. Who reads this? Besides Victo, Sarah, Aud and my blockmates, and a few of my livejournal friends? Probably no one. But still, I think about all the journals I read where I don't leave comments (and how, Richard, you never leave me comments!), and how I think about those people’s lives and how what anyone writes means something, just by the nature of being written for personal record or for the public eye.
From someone else's journal:
"If there’s something you've always wanted to tell me but you've never had the courage...leave an anonymous comment with what you've always wanted to tell me."
Nice and safe comments don't count, especially if you're my friend.
Even if it's anonymous, it's nice to sense your presence.
I remember reading an entry in Hussain's blog about how he just wanted to know who read his entries and he asked his readers to leave a comment letting him know that they were out there. Who reads this? Besides Victo, Sarah, Aud and my blockmates, and a few of my livejournal friends? Probably no one. But still, I think about all the journals I read where I don't leave comments (and how, Richard, you never leave me comments!), and how I think about those people’s lives and how what anyone writes means something, just by the nature of being written for personal record or for the public eye.
From someone else's journal:
"If there’s something you've always wanted to tell me but you've never had the courage...leave an anonymous comment with what you've always wanted to tell me."
Nice and safe comments don't count, especially if you're my friend.
Even if it's anonymous, it's nice to sense your presence.
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Monday, March 7, 2005
i love the nineties
It hasn't snowed in awhile; this picture was taken in January. Not sure why I decided to use it; perhaps only because of the lack of another more relevant one. But winter's almost gone, and I wanted to remember these lights, even if they'll be here next year. The green light in the corner reminds me of Gatsby. Maybe it's apt after all.
Yesterday was the I Love the 90s dance, and it was amazing on many levels. We danced for nearly three hours straight, through slow jams and through early 90s grunge, something we wouldn't have done at a normal dance. Formed a girl circle and sang ourselves hoarse during Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby." Did the Macarena. Got weepy or over-the-top corny during the love songs ("I Love You Always Forever" and "Kiss From a Rose"). Hearts hurt at Oasis's "Wonderwall." Relived my obssession with Ace of Base. Appreciated equally the pop of Britney and Spice Girls, the rap of Biggie and Coolio, and the grunge of Nivana and Nine Inch Nails. Even when the songs were bad or not dance-worthy, we still knew the words, and sang along. There's something about a collective consciousness that's so comforting and appealing, even when--or maybe because--it's coupled with that embarrassing shame of "Wow, did I really like that?" or the bittersweet memories of "I wallowed to this song on repeat for days."
Never thought I'd actually dance to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--we were kind of young when that era was really popular and pertinent, but hearing the mass of people sing it and get so passionate about it--it made me feel how enduring the mood of that song is, how it wasn't just a symptom of the times but something latent in every young person at every time. How it is so simultaneously cleansing and painful, because it's so communal and so personal at the same time, and then such a triumphant emblem of talent and insight and empathy with a confused generation, but also such a sad reminder of how fragile all of that is. How angry and explosive, but touching and tender still. That kind of drained me, in a way for which I'm grateful.
People say, what's there to remember about the 90s? It was just here. Maybe that's a valid complaint, if you think in terms of pop culture, though that's still arguable; you just don't realize what can happen in such a short span of time until much later. But there's a lot to remember about the 90s in terms of personal experience; even if it's something everyone went through, this is the distinct period that you, I, went through it. The first time I was entranced by the radio, the first time I danced, the first time I listened to music when I was sad, the first time music itself made me sad, the first time I saw music set to images and stories in music videos, the first time a song reminded me of a boy, the first time I scribbled song lyrics on my binder, the first time I made a mixed tape, the first time I bought music (Mariah Carey's "Daydream" on tape and Alanis Morrisette's "Jagged Little Pill" on CD).
Funny how the insignificant resurfaces. The nineties, the parameters of my un-noteworthy, absolutely ordinary childhood and adolescence, a life peppered by very little of interest--translated into and remembered as something so poignant by cut-out phrases on the walls, video clips of old TV shows, and silly pop songs.
Yesterday was the I Love the 90s dance, and it was amazing on many levels. We danced for nearly three hours straight, through slow jams and through early 90s grunge, something we wouldn't have done at a normal dance. Formed a girl circle and sang ourselves hoarse during Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby." Did the Macarena. Got weepy or over-the-top corny during the love songs ("I Love You Always Forever" and "Kiss From a Rose"). Hearts hurt at Oasis's "Wonderwall." Relived my obssession with Ace of Base. Appreciated equally the pop of Britney and Spice Girls, the rap of Biggie and Coolio, and the grunge of Nivana and Nine Inch Nails. Even when the songs were bad or not dance-worthy, we still knew the words, and sang along. There's something about a collective consciousness that's so comforting and appealing, even when--or maybe because--it's coupled with that embarrassing shame of "Wow, did I really like that?" or the bittersweet memories of "I wallowed to this song on repeat for days."
Never thought I'd actually dance to "Smells Like Teen Spirit"--we were kind of young when that era was really popular and pertinent, but hearing the mass of people sing it and get so passionate about it--it made me feel how enduring the mood of that song is, how it wasn't just a symptom of the times but something latent in every young person at every time. How it is so simultaneously cleansing and painful, because it's so communal and so personal at the same time, and then such a triumphant emblem of talent and insight and empathy with a confused generation, but also such a sad reminder of how fragile all of that is. How angry and explosive, but touching and tender still. That kind of drained me, in a way for which I'm grateful.
People say, what's there to remember about the 90s? It was just here. Maybe that's a valid complaint, if you think in terms of pop culture, though that's still arguable; you just don't realize what can happen in such a short span of time until much later. But there's a lot to remember about the 90s in terms of personal experience; even if it's something everyone went through, this is the distinct period that you, I, went through it. The first time I was entranced by the radio, the first time I danced, the first time I listened to music when I was sad, the first time music itself made me sad, the first time I saw music set to images and stories in music videos, the first time a song reminded me of a boy, the first time I scribbled song lyrics on my binder, the first time I made a mixed tape, the first time I bought music (Mariah Carey's "Daydream" on tape and Alanis Morrisette's "Jagged Little Pill" on CD).
Funny how the insignificant resurfaces. The nineties, the parameters of my un-noteworthy, absolutely ordinary childhood and adolescence, a life peppered by very little of interest--translated into and remembered as something so poignant by cut-out phrases on the walls, video clips of old TV shows, and silly pop songs.
Tuesday, February 1, 2005
filling in the empty space
Is it really February? January was the month of superlatives. It went from containing the slowest crawling days to so rapidly merging into February, it actually disoriented me a little. A lot. From the most exhausting, the most intensive, the most isolating to the most wonderful, the most liberating, the most laughter-inducing.
This semester's reading period was not much fun. I've never spent so much time in Lamont library before, and I've never studied so long and so hard. The first two weeks of January were devoted to catching up and reviewing organic chemistry. After that was over, I was the happiest kid for about twenty minutes, before I had to review twelve novels in six hours for my English exam the very next day. As much of a relief literature was after all the science, I was so mentally tired that I'm not quite sure how I pulled that off. But it went by fine, and then it was all biology until the end of finals period, since it was on the last day. Except that I went to New York for Andrew's formal the weekend before the exam. Seeing him was a nice blip on my steady library existence, but it wasn't exempt from the category of extreme. Whenever someone asks me how it went, I tell them that superficially, everything went wrong. The one weekend where I was relying on transportation, we were hit by a huge snow storm. Over two feet of snow along the East Coast, which of course includes everything from Boston to New York. I wasn't thinking about that too much, because when I left it was only lightly snowing. It was my first time on a train here, and instead of studying I spent most of my time absorbing the experience. It's amazing how four hours pass when you're just looking out the window. And how much snow accumulates within those hours. So, I got into the city at Penn Station, and I needed to get to Grand Central. I figured I could walk it--ten blocks down and five or so blocks over--and well, I could, but it was not pleasant. I liked walking through Times Square in the snow, but the snow quickly became hostile and the cold made the distance much longer than it initially seemed. So I arrived at Grand Central a soaked snowball, but inwardly triumphant. If only that had been my last confrontation with the snow. Andrew and I took the train to West Point, but the snow kept the shuttles from the train station to campus from running, so we had to wait for his roommate to pick us up. Then his roommate's windshield wipers broke. Then we learned that the actual dance was cancelled because of the storm (the banquet still happened). The next day we decided to push my 12 o'clock train back to Boston to 4. I had to catch the 1:00 train from West Point to NYC, but the trains were only running every two hours, so it didn't come until 2. So I didn't get to the city until 3:55; I didn't think I was going to make the 4 o'clock train so I wanted to change my ticket to 6 o'clock, but because of all the plane delays and such, all trains were booked until 3 AM. So Andrew booked that and I semi-freaked out, but when I got to the station, the 4 o'clock train was still there. Except now I had a ticket for the 3 AM train. And the ticket booth line was an hour long. So I stood there and begged cranky, delayed New Yorkers to cut. It took me five people, but someone let me through and then I asked to get back on the 4 o'clock train, only to find that in the five minutes that I'd relinquished my seat, someone else had taken it. Then I was told I could get on the train with a business class ticket. So I had to pay an extra $30 for a ride that I'd already had just a few minutes before. Then this 4 o'clock train that I thought I'd miss was delayed for about an hour and didn't actually get to the station until 5. It was an express train that was supposed to get to Boston at 7, but we didn't get there until 9:30, and because the subway was also delayed due to snow, I didn't get back to campus until 10:30. And where did I go? Straight to the library. The next day Melkis and I were at the library from 8 AM to 1 AM. I don't think the lost time made much difference; it was just hectic at the time that I was going through it. Physically traveling is stressful because you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything during the waiting time; only the end destination seems to matter and you feel so helpless and insignificant in the process of getting there. Just a victim of the elements. But like Melkis said, on the intrinsic level...it was lovely (extremely so). When we were waiting for the train to NYC, I was looking at the murky Hudson River and the unbelievably vast amounts of slush, and remembered how much I love imperfections. The weekend didn't go as either one of us had envisioned, but I like surprises.
After biology ended, the feeling of lightness was incredible. Absolutely no obligations. I slept--took my first long nap in a long, long while. I listened to music, old comforts and newly bought. I put on decent clothes for once and we went out to eat for once. To Mr. Bartley's...so warm, so good. Then we made white Russians with Melkis's Costa Rican coffee liquor and finally painted our watercolor. We modeled it after Monet's Japanese Bridge, but obviously shaped it according to our own abilities and intepretations as we went along. It was so therapeutic, making the white space disappear. I think its underlying appeal rests in how different it is from the processes of concentrated studying and mindless traveling--these things are hard because it's hard to tangibly see the end result. With the canvas, it feels so nice to actually see yourself create and transform something in such a short amount of time. And of course it was beautiful because my girls are beautiful, and what else would they make. We put it up right away, and then we flipped through the art magazines Melkis got from work and covered the rest of our walls with clippings.
Then we packed for our trip to NorCal, which was one of the best vacations I've ever had, and all I did was go home. I would relay the concrete events in detail, but this entry is long enough, and it really wasn't about the actual things that we did. It was the atmosphere, the feeling of absolute freedom from school, the driving, the food, and most of all, it was these three girls who have been my friends since the beginning of college, who have defined so much of my experience at Harvard, who are so dynamic and funny and smart and fun and silly and talented. I loved showing them the hills, the mountains, the ocean. Highlights include: defending ourselves against angry security officers at Logan Airport, trying on dresses we couldn't afford at BCBG at Santana Row, browsing the scandalous cards at the stationary store, mixing bath salts at Pier 39, indulging ourselves at Ghirardelli Square, watching Million Dollar Baby, baking cookies for the first time, driving through the Santa Cruz mountains, taking in the weirdness of Santa Cruz, riding the oldest rollercoaster on the West Coast, convincing Amy that Northern California does indeed have a beachfront, riding the trolley like tourists, climbing the steep hills to Lombard St., seeing the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful day, finishing the entire 3rd season of Sex and the City. And eating. We went from skipping meals to study to eating everything--dim sum in Chinatown, ice cream in SF and Santa Cruz, Krispy Kreme, Jamba Juice, In-N-Out, snacks snacks snacks. We packed so many hilarious moments, pretty sights and sing-out-loud songs in four and a half days, I can't possibly recount them all. Here are some pictures instead.
Some of the bath salts in SF. The colors were amazing, the smells even better. A very happy Amy on the carousel. Yes, we went on the carousel. We're trying to delay the growing-up process as much as possible.
The girls at Ghirardelli Square, which is so pretty and romantic at night. Amy wanted to hold hands, but the rest of us resisted the temptation. Us baking. Amy and I made chocolate chip--we put all the ingredients together without reading the directions. Apparently, order does matter. Only for appearance though; they were delicious, just a little funny looking. Amy and I decided that they were symbolic of their makers--seemingly abnormal but really okay on the inside. Melkis and Steph, on the other hand, made oatmeal cookies that actually looked like the ones in the cookbook.
In front of the Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz, an 80 year old wooden rollercoaster. A little rickety and lots of fun. The girls gleefully riding the cable car. And finally, at the top of Lombard St., with a view of the city in the background.
Our last sight of the city. Started off painting the most beautiful imaginary bridge, ended by seeing the most beautiful real one. It was good to experience the extremes; now I just have to adjust to settling back into the middle for awhile.
This semester's reading period was not much fun. I've never spent so much time in Lamont library before, and I've never studied so long and so hard. The first two weeks of January were devoted to catching up and reviewing organic chemistry. After that was over, I was the happiest kid for about twenty minutes, before I had to review twelve novels in six hours for my English exam the very next day. As much of a relief literature was after all the science, I was so mentally tired that I'm not quite sure how I pulled that off. But it went by fine, and then it was all biology until the end of finals period, since it was on the last day. Except that I went to New York for Andrew's formal the weekend before the exam. Seeing him was a nice blip on my steady library existence, but it wasn't exempt from the category of extreme. Whenever someone asks me how it went, I tell them that superficially, everything went wrong. The one weekend where I was relying on transportation, we were hit by a huge snow storm. Over two feet of snow along the East Coast, which of course includes everything from Boston to New York. I wasn't thinking about that too much, because when I left it was only lightly snowing. It was my first time on a train here, and instead of studying I spent most of my time absorbing the experience. It's amazing how four hours pass when you're just looking out the window. And how much snow accumulates within those hours. So, I got into the city at Penn Station, and I needed to get to Grand Central. I figured I could walk it--ten blocks down and five or so blocks over--and well, I could, but it was not pleasant. I liked walking through Times Square in the snow, but the snow quickly became hostile and the cold made the distance much longer than it initially seemed. So I arrived at Grand Central a soaked snowball, but inwardly triumphant. If only that had been my last confrontation with the snow. Andrew and I took the train to West Point, but the snow kept the shuttles from the train station to campus from running, so we had to wait for his roommate to pick us up. Then his roommate's windshield wipers broke. Then we learned that the actual dance was cancelled because of the storm (the banquet still happened). The next day we decided to push my 12 o'clock train back to Boston to 4. I had to catch the 1:00 train from West Point to NYC, but the trains were only running every two hours, so it didn't come until 2. So I didn't get to the city until 3:55; I didn't think I was going to make the 4 o'clock train so I wanted to change my ticket to 6 o'clock, but because of all the plane delays and such, all trains were booked until 3 AM. So Andrew booked that and I semi-freaked out, but when I got to the station, the 4 o'clock train was still there. Except now I had a ticket for the 3 AM train. And the ticket booth line was an hour long. So I stood there and begged cranky, delayed New Yorkers to cut. It took me five people, but someone let me through and then I asked to get back on the 4 o'clock train, only to find that in the five minutes that I'd relinquished my seat, someone else had taken it. Then I was told I could get on the train with a business class ticket. So I had to pay an extra $30 for a ride that I'd already had just a few minutes before. Then this 4 o'clock train that I thought I'd miss was delayed for about an hour and didn't actually get to the station until 5. It was an express train that was supposed to get to Boston at 7, but we didn't get there until 9:30, and because the subway was also delayed due to snow, I didn't get back to campus until 10:30. And where did I go? Straight to the library. The next day Melkis and I were at the library from 8 AM to 1 AM. I don't think the lost time made much difference; it was just hectic at the time that I was going through it. Physically traveling is stressful because you don't feel like you're accomplishing anything during the waiting time; only the end destination seems to matter and you feel so helpless and insignificant in the process of getting there. Just a victim of the elements. But like Melkis said, on the intrinsic level...it was lovely (extremely so). When we were waiting for the train to NYC, I was looking at the murky Hudson River and the unbelievably vast amounts of slush, and remembered how much I love imperfections. The weekend didn't go as either one of us had envisioned, but I like surprises.
After biology ended, the feeling of lightness was incredible. Absolutely no obligations. I slept--took my first long nap in a long, long while. I listened to music, old comforts and newly bought. I put on decent clothes for once and we went out to eat for once. To Mr. Bartley's...so warm, so good. Then we made white Russians with Melkis's Costa Rican coffee liquor and finally painted our watercolor. We modeled it after Monet's Japanese Bridge, but obviously shaped it according to our own abilities and intepretations as we went along. It was so therapeutic, making the white space disappear. I think its underlying appeal rests in how different it is from the processes of concentrated studying and mindless traveling--these things are hard because it's hard to tangibly see the end result. With the canvas, it feels so nice to actually see yourself create and transform something in such a short amount of time. And of course it was beautiful because my girls are beautiful, and what else would they make. We put it up right away, and then we flipped through the art magazines Melkis got from work and covered the rest of our walls with clippings.
Then we packed for our trip to NorCal, which was one of the best vacations I've ever had, and all I did was go home. I would relay the concrete events in detail, but this entry is long enough, and it really wasn't about the actual things that we did. It was the atmosphere, the feeling of absolute freedom from school, the driving, the food, and most of all, it was these three girls who have been my friends since the beginning of college, who have defined so much of my experience at Harvard, who are so dynamic and funny and smart and fun and silly and talented. I loved showing them the hills, the mountains, the ocean. Highlights include: defending ourselves against angry security officers at Logan Airport, trying on dresses we couldn't afford at BCBG at Santana Row, browsing the scandalous cards at the stationary store, mixing bath salts at Pier 39, indulging ourselves at Ghirardelli Square, watching Million Dollar Baby, baking cookies for the first time, driving through the Santa Cruz mountains, taking in the weirdness of Santa Cruz, riding the oldest rollercoaster on the West Coast, convincing Amy that Northern California does indeed have a beachfront, riding the trolley like tourists, climbing the steep hills to Lombard St., seeing the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful day, finishing the entire 3rd season of Sex and the City. And eating. We went from skipping meals to study to eating everything--dim sum in Chinatown, ice cream in SF and Santa Cruz, Krispy Kreme, Jamba Juice, In-N-Out, snacks snacks snacks. We packed so many hilarious moments, pretty sights and sing-out-loud songs in four and a half days, I can't possibly recount them all. Here are some pictures instead.
Some of the bath salts in SF. The colors were amazing, the smells even better. A very happy Amy on the carousel. Yes, we went on the carousel. We're trying to delay the growing-up process as much as possible.
The girls at Ghirardelli Square, which is so pretty and romantic at night. Amy wanted to hold hands, but the rest of us resisted the temptation. Us baking. Amy and I made chocolate chip--we put all the ingredients together without reading the directions. Apparently, order does matter. Only for appearance though; they were delicious, just a little funny looking. Amy and I decided that they were symbolic of their makers--seemingly abnormal but really okay on the inside. Melkis and Steph, on the other hand, made oatmeal cookies that actually looked like the ones in the cookbook.
In front of the Giant Dipper in Santa Cruz, an 80 year old wooden rollercoaster. A little rickety and lots of fun. The girls gleefully riding the cable car. And finally, at the top of Lombard St., with a view of the city in the background.
Our last sight of the city. Started off painting the most beautiful imaginary bridge, ended by seeing the most beautiful real one. It was good to experience the extremes; now I just have to adjust to settling back into the middle for awhile.
Thursday, December 30, 2004
an incomplete picture (closer)
Melkis and I saw Closer in the Square the weekend before we left for break. We loved it. Right after it ended I clung to Melkis's arm and all I could say was, "That was so good. That was so intense." I can compare it to no other movie experience. I've seen a lot of intense movies but none that made me hurt in quite the way that this one did. Not that it was more valuable than the other kinds of strong feelings that movies in the past have evoked, but just that this was singular.
It was painful and fascinating to witness how deeply and how effectively--and how efficiently (that word seems to convey the tone of the movie fairly well)--people can and will hurt each other. There were moments when I literally hurt. Why is this unusual? That always happens when I see people being cruel to one another. In some cases, it's a simple repulsion by inexplicable unkindness; in others there's a more complicated empathy involved; the actions may be cruel but the intentions can be understandable. The kind of things Closer depicted were more of the latter sort, but for some reason they scared me in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Because they were so real, so understandable in the context in which they were placed. The things that were said, and that were done, were things I would never have imagined people actually saying and doing, but when they were said and done in the film, they seemed so natural. And that was scary. And even scarier that the original source of these incredibly hurtful things was love. Love is powerful, most movies optimistically tell us, love can surmount all things, they say. Closer doesn’t deny this but it makes distinctions between love and compassion and kindness—love is in fact so powerful that it can destroy any inclination to practice the latter two virtues.
I mentioned some of this to Andrea and she asked me whether I've seen/experienced that kind of hurt in real life, and I said yes, but in real life these incidents and feelings are diluted over long passages of time, place and experience, so witnessing them full-force on-screen, you recognize and feel them much differently. Particularly in this movie, which was so compact. So concise--every word or lack thereof meant something, and lifetimes and a million musings fit easily and comfortably into four characters--four bodies, really--and a plot that could be summarized in a few sentences. Maybe this is where my vague dissatisfaction with real life stems from; I want that level of intensity, all the time. I think I talked to Sarah about that once and she said something along the lines of, why would you want that, you’d be drained and exhausted. This is probably true, and reminds me of what Foucault says about never being able to experience things fully and directly, using the example of the sun—you can never experience the sun as it really is because our interaction with it is too intangible and even if it were tangible it’d be too intense; you can only see its light reflected onto other things and feel its warmth, diluted by distance and particles in the air.
Most of the time I’m more than content with that, even incredibly grateful and happy for that because there are moments when even as it is things are too much, and so beautiful (a la American Beauty). But I wonder sometimes whether that is sufficient, or we only think so because it’s all we can have. I like to think, though, that maybe things are beautiful because even only a fraction of the whole can have such impact, and we’re left to imagine how amazing the complete image would be.
It was painful and fascinating to witness how deeply and how effectively--and how efficiently (that word seems to convey the tone of the movie fairly well)--people can and will hurt each other. There were moments when I literally hurt. Why is this unusual? That always happens when I see people being cruel to one another. In some cases, it's a simple repulsion by inexplicable unkindness; in others there's a more complicated empathy involved; the actions may be cruel but the intentions can be understandable. The kind of things Closer depicted were more of the latter sort, but for some reason they scared me in a way I don't think I've experienced before. Because they were so real, so understandable in the context in which they were placed. The things that were said, and that were done, were things I would never have imagined people actually saying and doing, but when they were said and done in the film, they seemed so natural. And that was scary. And even scarier that the original source of these incredibly hurtful things was love. Love is powerful, most movies optimistically tell us, love can surmount all things, they say. Closer doesn’t deny this but it makes distinctions between love and compassion and kindness—love is in fact so powerful that it can destroy any inclination to practice the latter two virtues.
I mentioned some of this to Andrea and she asked me whether I've seen/experienced that kind of hurt in real life, and I said yes, but in real life these incidents and feelings are diluted over long passages of time, place and experience, so witnessing them full-force on-screen, you recognize and feel them much differently. Particularly in this movie, which was so compact. So concise--every word or lack thereof meant something, and lifetimes and a million musings fit easily and comfortably into four characters--four bodies, really--and a plot that could be summarized in a few sentences. Maybe this is where my vague dissatisfaction with real life stems from; I want that level of intensity, all the time. I think I talked to Sarah about that once and she said something along the lines of, why would you want that, you’d be drained and exhausted. This is probably true, and reminds me of what Foucault says about never being able to experience things fully and directly, using the example of the sun—you can never experience the sun as it really is because our interaction with it is too intangible and even if it were tangible it’d be too intense; you can only see its light reflected onto other things and feel its warmth, diluted by distance and particles in the air.
Most of the time I’m more than content with that, even incredibly grateful and happy for that because there are moments when even as it is things are too much, and so beautiful (a la American Beauty). But I wonder sometimes whether that is sufficient, or we only think so because it’s all we can have. I like to think, though, that maybe things are beautiful because even only a fraction of the whole can have such impact, and we’re left to imagine how amazing the complete image would be.
Monday, December 20, 2004
inarticulation
Two people in the past two days have made fun of my inability to articulate exactly what I mean. And I get that all the time. Someone told me that I say “I don’t know” a lot. This is true, and not just in the context of answering questions but more importantly in trying to explain things. I never noticed it much until I encountered a certain person compelled to ask “why?” Not many people have pushed me to explain myself fully, and I rarely voluntarily do it. I think ninety percent of the time I have no idea how to express in words what it is that I feel and mean. It’s harder than people think to translate from individual to individual. English is a lie. People don’t really speak the same language.
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