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.

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.

steph's 21st birthday

[photographs]

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.

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.