This blog is a collection of posts and/or random writing I've done in the past that I consider either worth preserving or sharing with the world. As you can tell, I either don't write much, or don't write much that I deem to have value... and the true value of the latter is entirely questionable to begin with.
That said, in order to keep this blog from devolving into a stagnant pool of self-pity*, I've established the following ground rules:
1. The amount of emo must, at worst, be kept to a minimum. At best, there should be none at all. Therefore, posts about my love life (or its lack thereof) are generally prohibited.
2. In fact, posts about my life should generally be discouraged, unless it is used to tell a story, illustrate a point, or discover something new (see 4).
3. Posts must show creativity of some kind - short stories, descriptive recounts of dreams, and other involuntary spasms of inspiration. That said, creativity for the sake of being creative tends to not be very creative at all. Or at the least, it sucks. A lot. Which is really why I don't have that much to show even after ~14 years of writing on and off.
4. Posts that don't fall under 2 or 3 should be explorative. Wait, I suppose if it doesn't fall under 2, then it's not explorative by definition.
5. No emo posts allowed. See 1.
6. Ironically, this post fails to fulfill 2, 3, or 4. Oh well, at least it's not emo!
And to explain why this post is more recent than, say, all the other posts to this blog at the time of posting... well, that's because I'm writing this now while I'm totally stealing my own previous work to pre-populate this blog. It's sort of cheating, but at the same time, collecting them all together was half the reason for creating this in the first place.
Which might not bode too well for the frequency of any future posting.
* Like all the other blogs or journals I've kept so far, excluding the one I made about WoW.**
** Yes, I have a blog about WoW. But since I quit WoW a long time ago, it's pretty much defunct. And no, you probably don't want to see it.***
*** Yes, this footnote thing is an unashamedly stolen device from kidchamp, who is awesome, takes damn good pictures and keeps a damn fine blog.****
**** After you use it a couple times in a row, "damn" sounds like a really odd way to describe something positively.*****
***** I am now completely abusing this footnote thing and should really, really stop.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
roots
Having the first quiet and eventless Sunday in a long time today, I grabbed the book* I’ve been reading and headed over to Fantasia in Milipitas Square this afternoon. After spending a good 30 minutes reading and sipping bubble tea in front of the shop, I dropped by quickly to the Ranch 99 (Chinese supermarket) next door to buy some assorted fruit before heading home. As I walked out of the store towards my car in the parking lot, I was struck by a feeling I’d often felt while leaving that place.
It’s difficult to describe, but my best approximation of it was a sense of leaving home, despite the fact that I was actually about to go home. As I drove out of the parking lot, my mind started chewing on something that I had unconsciously been aware of for a very long time in my life now - specifically, about my Chinese background, and particularly, my background rooted in Hong Kong and Cantonese people.
As many of my friends are already aware, I’m a second-generation Asian-American whose parents immigrated here during the 70s. Thanks to their hard work - the kind of “hard work” that surpasses anything most people of my generation are capable of understanding or perhaps even imagining - I lived what could be called a charmed life of relative luxury. Though from a young age I already knew just how fortunate I was and understood the value of living a life of thrift, my parents made sure that my sister and I were never left wanting of any basic necessities, and more.
The shelter my parents had thus provided meant that I never needed to worry about anything outside of what was happening in my own life. I could, and for the most part did, focus exclusively on living what could be described as an American childhood - doing well at school, participating in various clubs and activities, fitting in with my classmates, and assimilating as much of the American culture as I was capable of doing. And I did pretty well. As a friend once put it, I was sort of the classic “American dream” child that all Asian parents hoped their kids would become - being the first in the family to go to a college like MIT despite having parents who had no real education, and now having the wonderful and well-paying job that I’ve got.
But all this meant also that as I became more and more American, I also became less and less Chinese. I don’t recall exactly when I made the switch, but it was well before first or second grade that I had already begun to think in English. And even from a young age, I identified much less with peers who had recently arrived from China or those who weren’t born here, and more with the “American” or ABC crowd. My circle of high school friends reflected this: my closest friends were white and second-generation Filipino-Americans, and the few Chinese friends I had were mostly ABCs who had relatively American/white lifestyles and could only speak broken Cantonese or Mandarin to their grandparents (at least, in comparison to the crowd of kids who spoke mostly Cantonese to each other and went to Chinatown all the time). In fact, I was the only person within my high school’s circle of friends who actually spoke their native [non-English] language fluently.
Which brings me to the point that despite my very American tendencies, I grew up heavily influenced by Chinese culture, and the fact that I speak Cantonese extremely well attests to this. I remain particularly proud that when I was at MIT, a lot of my international student friends from Hong Kong would frequently ask me if I was planning to return to Hong Kong for the summer or after graduation and then give me surprised looks when I told them that I was born and raised in California. It was close to unfathomable to them that someone who spoke as well as I did had only visited Hong Kong once or twice in my life for very short periods of time.
I explained to them that I grew up in a household that spoke only Cantonese. It wasn’t until around 4th or 5th grade that my sister and I switched to conversing with each other primarily in English, and even then we would occasionally find ourselves using Cantonese without a second thought. Throughout the greater part of my childhood, my best friends were my cousins, who were all born in Hong Kong and came here at a relatively young age. We grew up together playing Chinese games, watching Chinese movies and TV series, albeit with an increasing dose of American cartoons, TV shows, and most importantly, books. I also had another pair of cousins who, despite moving here at ages 13 and 7, respectively, have to this day remained very close to their Chinese roots, and from them I learned a lot about the Hong Kong culture from which I had increasingly gotten disconnected.
And yet, despite these heavy influences, I live a mostly American life these days. In my culturally diverse company, I find myself more at ease in the presence of white and international coworkers, and unlike a good number of people there, I never converse in my native language with anyone else at the workplace. My musical tastes lean towards songs whose lyrical complexity typically confound Chinese people (my parents, bless them, have found a way to love some of my favorite artists despite not understanding a single word or phrase being sung). My literary background is exclusively American. In general, I can go on for weeks or even months without being in a Chinese environment outside of my family and not even think twice about it.
Perhaps it is precisely this that makes moments like today’s that much more special and important to me. My life lately has been lacking in Chinese culture more than usual - outside of the brief periods I spend with my family, most of my free time has been dedicated to my primarily white/European friends from the dojo - we typically dine Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Mediterranean... but rarely Chinese - or with my circle of MIT friends who are for the most part almost as assimilated as myself. I haven’t watched any Chinese TV or listened to any Chinese music at all for almost half a year, and I’ve been reading a whole lot of wonderful books and visiting worlds that are decidedly non-Chinese. In a way, because I’ve grown up without having to deal with much racism towards me or my culture, I’ve more or less come to take my Asian background for granted in my day-to-day life.
So this afternoon, walking out of Ranch 99 and breathing in the very Chinese atmosphere, it was as if I had been reminded by my Chinese side, “Hey, I’m still here, and I’m still very, very much important to your life. Do not forget that I am ultimately, unchangeably your roots, your foundation.”
I thought about all the times when, infused by the cultural blast of a Hong Kong TV-series I fell in love with, I would almost long to move to and live in Hong Kong for awhile. I realized right then that perhaps much of my enjoyment of these series was simply from connecting back to Hong Kong and its culture and people. I thought about how, during my first year at MIT, I found a home away from home among the club of Hong Kong students there. I thought about how, during my short time together with S and in the midst of our conversations about our supposed future together, I was deeply terrified at the prospect of losing my Chinese side. I thought about how I often felt simultaneously at home and alienated in a room full of Cantonese people, and on the same token, how my bouts of longing to live in Hong Kong were accompanied by the recognition that I would never enjoy actually doing so.
I thought about whether my sister has faced this same problem, and how she’s dealing with it, especially with having a Japanese boyfriend who looks and acts more white than Asian. She’s always maintained a circle of very Chinese friends with whom she speaks Cantonese a lot of the time, and she’s always been in more touch with Chinese music than I have - so perhaps that may be her way of hanging on.
I thought about whether my other American-born or American-assimilated Asian friends face a similar problem, and how they choose to deal with it, if they do so at all. I thought about my friends from the dojo and how our various cultural differences often reveal themselves in the subtlest of ways, though I have never been bothered by them or in some cases even noticed them except in retrospect.
There’s an oft-discussed (and dismissed) belief that we have limited space in our minds, that for every single thing we learn, we do so at the cost of forgetting something else. And while this may be disproven scientifically, I get the occasional reminder that as I continue to improve myself and learn more things relevant to modern-American life, I am giving up a part of who I am in order to become the person I want to be. I may not exactly be forgetting who I am, where I’m from, or even how I could live as a Chinese person, but my increasing sense of alienation in a Chinese environment, albeit balanced by an equal amount of comfort that I find there, seems to signal a continuing loss of something that is at the same time substantial but intangible.
* Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. kidchamp is right. That book is truly marvelous.
It’s difficult to describe, but my best approximation of it was a sense of leaving home, despite the fact that I was actually about to go home. As I drove out of the parking lot, my mind started chewing on something that I had unconsciously been aware of for a very long time in my life now - specifically, about my Chinese background, and particularly, my background rooted in Hong Kong and Cantonese people.
As many of my friends are already aware, I’m a second-generation Asian-American whose parents immigrated here during the 70s. Thanks to their hard work - the kind of “hard work” that surpasses anything most people of my generation are capable of understanding or perhaps even imagining - I lived what could be called a charmed life of relative luxury. Though from a young age I already knew just how fortunate I was and understood the value of living a life of thrift, my parents made sure that my sister and I were never left wanting of any basic necessities, and more.
The shelter my parents had thus provided meant that I never needed to worry about anything outside of what was happening in my own life. I could, and for the most part did, focus exclusively on living what could be described as an American childhood - doing well at school, participating in various clubs and activities, fitting in with my classmates, and assimilating as much of the American culture as I was capable of doing. And I did pretty well. As a friend once put it, I was sort of the classic “American dream” child that all Asian parents hoped their kids would become - being the first in the family to go to a college like MIT despite having parents who had no real education, and now having the wonderful and well-paying job that I’ve got.
But all this meant also that as I became more and more American, I also became less and less Chinese. I don’t recall exactly when I made the switch, but it was well before first or second grade that I had already begun to think in English. And even from a young age, I identified much less with peers who had recently arrived from China or those who weren’t born here, and more with the “American” or ABC crowd. My circle of high school friends reflected this: my closest friends were white and second-generation Filipino-Americans, and the few Chinese friends I had were mostly ABCs who had relatively American/white lifestyles and could only speak broken Cantonese or Mandarin to their grandparents (at least, in comparison to the crowd of kids who spoke mostly Cantonese to each other and went to Chinatown all the time). In fact, I was the only person within my high school’s circle of friends who actually spoke their native [non-English] language fluently.
Which brings me to the point that despite my very American tendencies, I grew up heavily influenced by Chinese culture, and the fact that I speak Cantonese extremely well attests to this. I remain particularly proud that when I was at MIT, a lot of my international student friends from Hong Kong would frequently ask me if I was planning to return to Hong Kong for the summer or after graduation and then give me surprised looks when I told them that I was born and raised in California. It was close to unfathomable to them that someone who spoke as well as I did had only visited Hong Kong once or twice in my life for very short periods of time.
I explained to them that I grew up in a household that spoke only Cantonese. It wasn’t until around 4th or 5th grade that my sister and I switched to conversing with each other primarily in English, and even then we would occasionally find ourselves using Cantonese without a second thought. Throughout the greater part of my childhood, my best friends were my cousins, who were all born in Hong Kong and came here at a relatively young age. We grew up together playing Chinese games, watching Chinese movies and TV series, albeit with an increasing dose of American cartoons, TV shows, and most importantly, books. I also had another pair of cousins who, despite moving here at ages 13 and 7, respectively, have to this day remained very close to their Chinese roots, and from them I learned a lot about the Hong Kong culture from which I had increasingly gotten disconnected.
And yet, despite these heavy influences, I live a mostly American life these days. In my culturally diverse company, I find myself more at ease in the presence of white and international coworkers, and unlike a good number of people there, I never converse in my native language with anyone else at the workplace. My musical tastes lean towards songs whose lyrical complexity typically confound Chinese people (my parents, bless them, have found a way to love some of my favorite artists despite not understanding a single word or phrase being sung). My literary background is exclusively American. In general, I can go on for weeks or even months without being in a Chinese environment outside of my family and not even think twice about it.
Perhaps it is precisely this that makes moments like today’s that much more special and important to me. My life lately has been lacking in Chinese culture more than usual - outside of the brief periods I spend with my family, most of my free time has been dedicated to my primarily white/European friends from the dojo - we typically dine Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Mediterranean... but rarely Chinese - or with my circle of MIT friends who are for the most part almost as assimilated as myself. I haven’t watched any Chinese TV or listened to any Chinese music at all for almost half a year, and I’ve been reading a whole lot of wonderful books and visiting worlds that are decidedly non-Chinese. In a way, because I’ve grown up without having to deal with much racism towards me or my culture, I’ve more or less come to take my Asian background for granted in my day-to-day life.
So this afternoon, walking out of Ranch 99 and breathing in the very Chinese atmosphere, it was as if I had been reminded by my Chinese side, “Hey, I’m still here, and I’m still very, very much important to your life. Do not forget that I am ultimately, unchangeably your roots, your foundation.”
I thought about all the times when, infused by the cultural blast of a Hong Kong TV-series I fell in love with, I would almost long to move to and live in Hong Kong for awhile. I realized right then that perhaps much of my enjoyment of these series was simply from connecting back to Hong Kong and its culture and people. I thought about how, during my first year at MIT, I found a home away from home among the club of Hong Kong students there. I thought about how, during my short time together with S and in the midst of our conversations about our supposed future together, I was deeply terrified at the prospect of losing my Chinese side. I thought about how I often felt simultaneously at home and alienated in a room full of Cantonese people, and on the same token, how my bouts of longing to live in Hong Kong were accompanied by the recognition that I would never enjoy actually doing so.
I thought about whether my sister has faced this same problem, and how she’s dealing with it, especially with having a Japanese boyfriend who looks and acts more white than Asian. She’s always maintained a circle of very Chinese friends with whom she speaks Cantonese a lot of the time, and she’s always been in more touch with Chinese music than I have - so perhaps that may be her way of hanging on.
I thought about whether my other American-born or American-assimilated Asian friends face a similar problem, and how they choose to deal with it, if they do so at all. I thought about my friends from the dojo and how our various cultural differences often reveal themselves in the subtlest of ways, though I have never been bothered by them or in some cases even noticed them except in retrospect.
There’s an oft-discussed (and dismissed) belief that we have limited space in our minds, that for every single thing we learn, we do so at the cost of forgetting something else. And while this may be disproven scientifically, I get the occasional reminder that as I continue to improve myself and learn more things relevant to modern-American life, I am giving up a part of who I am in order to become the person I want to be. I may not exactly be forgetting who I am, where I’m from, or even how I could live as a Chinese person, but my increasing sense of alienation in a Chinese environment, albeit balanced by an equal amount of comfort that I find there, seems to signal a continuing loss of something that is at the same time substantial but intangible.
* Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. kidchamp is right. That book is truly marvelous.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
relationships, ukemi
Throughout my life I've had relationships with people who I want to become closer friends with, who do not necessarily feel the need to do the same. I've long since come to understand that it's simply a matter of my not having much to offer that's of value to them, but it remains challenging at times to keep such a perspective in mind.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about how being a good friend to these people is sort of like being a good uke; in fact, perhaps this is the way one should approach all relationships (IMHGO - in my humble gokyu opinion).
A good uke is present, attentive and stays connected no matter where nage goes.
A good uke respects the boundary set by nage; he does not try to push past that. It is nage's choice to respond to uke's presence - so until nage chooses to do so, the most uke can do is to remain present and connected.
A good uke is relaxed, energetic, and flexible.
A good uke offers his center and his balance to nage so that nage may be able to learn the technique. As a result, uke necessarily puts himself in a vulnerable position for the benefit of nage.
A good uke is prepared to have his balance taken by nage; he is prepared to fall. A good uke knows that while he sometimes has to take the fall, it's of utmost important to do so in a way that preserves himself, and more importantly, to get back up after the fall.
A good uke is honest. He does not fall unless he has to. He does not resist unreasonably or break his connection with nage just to avoid falling.
Most importantly, a good uke learns something about himself and about nage from each and every fall he takes, so that every future exchange is an improvement from the one before for both sides.
Recently I've been thinking a lot about how being a good friend to these people is sort of like being a good uke; in fact, perhaps this is the way one should approach all relationships (IMHGO - in my humble gokyu opinion).
A good uke is present, attentive and stays connected no matter where nage goes.
A good uke respects the boundary set by nage; he does not try to push past that. It is nage's choice to respond to uke's presence - so until nage chooses to do so, the most uke can do is to remain present and connected.
A good uke is relaxed, energetic, and flexible.
A good uke offers his center and his balance to nage so that nage may be able to learn the technique. As a result, uke necessarily puts himself in a vulnerable position for the benefit of nage.
A good uke is prepared to have his balance taken by nage; he is prepared to fall. A good uke knows that while he sometimes has to take the fall, it's of utmost important to do so in a way that preserves himself, and more importantly, to get back up after the fall.
A good uke is honest. He does not fall unless he has to. He does not resist unreasonably or break his connection with nage just to avoid falling.
Most importantly, a good uke learns something about himself and about nage from each and every fall he takes, so that every future exchange is an improvement from the one before for both sides.
Friday, May 14, 2010
a childhood lesson
When I was a kid, one of the things I really looked forward to at the beginning of each new school year was buying new school supplies and stationary. Our school would send us "shopping lists" that basically spelled out all the materials we would need to get through the school year. Armed with these lists, my parents would bring my sister and me to Office Depot (or the time's equivalent) and we would stock up on brand new pens, pencils, notebooks, rulers, and everything else. My sister and I would go crazy looking for the coolest new stationary, be it fancy new mechanical pencils or folders with pictures of lions or eagles on their covers. Sometimes we would find an organizer that we thought looked really cool, and we would beg our parents to get it even though we didn't really need it. And we usually got what we asked for.
On my 6th grade year, my cousin transferred into my school. After one of the first days of our classes, her mom picked us both up, and we went back to their house for the rest of the day to do our homework and have dinner until my parents got off work to pick me up. As I pulled out my fancy new stationary from my backpack, I noticed that my cousin was using old, beat up notebooks and supplies that looked worn from frequent use. Almost immediately, I felt my cheeks burning in shame, and in that same instant, something heavy settled right on top of my heart and stayed there for the rest of that day... and for the rest of that year as well.
From that moment on, I stopped asking my parents to buy me new school supplies every year; I would take the school list and cross almost everything off, saying, "I already have that" or "I could just use what I used last year for this." In fact, since that day, I stopped asking them to buy me anything that I didn't need. And from that, I learned to conserve and maximize the value and utility of the things that I did have. Sure, there were things that I really, truly enjoyed that I still indulged in (in particular, my DragonLance collection), but I had begun to understand both the virtue and the value of thrift.
No amount of teaching or lecturing from my parents or any of my teachers could have had nearly the same effect as a moment like that in my childhood. There's really nothing quite like a first-hand experience to really teach you a lesson that you'll remember for the rest of your life.
Though I never told them this, I am eternally grateful to my cousins for both this lesson and all the other lessons that they've unconsciously taught me throughout the years that I spent growing up with them.
I guess now is better than never.
On my 6th grade year, my cousin transferred into my school. After one of the first days of our classes, her mom picked us both up, and we went back to their house for the rest of the day to do our homework and have dinner until my parents got off work to pick me up. As I pulled out my fancy new stationary from my backpack, I noticed that my cousin was using old, beat up notebooks and supplies that looked worn from frequent use. Almost immediately, I felt my cheeks burning in shame, and in that same instant, something heavy settled right on top of my heart and stayed there for the rest of that day... and for the rest of that year as well.
From that moment on, I stopped asking my parents to buy me new school supplies every year; I would take the school list and cross almost everything off, saying, "I already have that" or "I could just use what I used last year for this." In fact, since that day, I stopped asking them to buy me anything that I didn't need. And from that, I learned to conserve and maximize the value and utility of the things that I did have. Sure, there were things that I really, truly enjoyed that I still indulged in (in particular, my DragonLance collection), but I had begun to understand both the virtue and the value of thrift.
No amount of teaching or lecturing from my parents or any of my teachers could have had nearly the same effect as a moment like that in my childhood. There's really nothing quite like a first-hand experience to really teach you a lesson that you'll remember for the rest of your life.
Though I never told them this, I am eternally grateful to my cousins for both this lesson and all the other lessons that they've unconsciously taught me throughout the years that I spent growing up with them.
I guess now is better than never.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
drive
The guitar has seen more use this past weekend than it has for the entire year++ that I've had it, and the stinging feeling in my fingertips are starting to feel good rather than painful. The strangers who call themselves chords and shapes have seemed to finally decided to sit down and stay awhile - perhaps out of amusement at my attempts to befriend something so foreign to me. And I can almost reliably pull off the beginnings of an easy song (ignore the creepy videos - there's a play button next to the song title).
I just ordered a book on Amazon that would raise the eyebrows of those who know my lazy ass well. And I'm already trying to build up a list of more to come. The trick, of course, is finding the time and the place along with the right amount of motivation, but this time around I'm not giving up so easily.
I went to my first non-basics training two weeks ago, and the second one last week. The second class was both fun and intimidating - I was paired with so many shodans that night that "relax" was probably the last thing that I was able to do. One even kept vigorously shaking my arm to loosen it up before proceeding with a sankyo. And it didn't help that my pinky toe left a bloody mess on the mat that night (all better now; I didn't even feel it). I haven't gone since then, but I hope to return tomorrow night, and if not, I'll be there Thursday night for the New Year's training from 11:30-12:30. Will be the first New Year's Eve in awhile that's not spent at home acting all emo about being alone too.
And this weekend I am going to cook - though I wonder if it's really considered cooking if the end product doesn't turn out to be edible. Any suggestions on what a complete newbie should start with? Perhaps I'll even make some miso shiru that Jane-sensei has been talking to me about for quite some time now.
For now, that will have to do. Don't spread yourself too thin, I warn myself. Start small, focus, and go from there, lest you lose interest from making little progress on many rather than faring decently on a few.
I realize that my newfound motivation stems from a foolish dream, but it's motivation nonetheless. I also know all too well that I've been here before, with the same motivation and the same dream years ago. But this time around, I say to myself, it's going to be different. This time around, I am following through; I am not going to let reality break my spirit. I am not going to simply get over it and fall into complacency. Even though I'll never make it a reality, I will come out of this much richer from the experience.
And just in time for the new year too. Totally coincidental, but I suppose these could be the first New Year's resolutions that I've ever made in my entire life.
2010 is the new 2007. And I've got so much catching up to do.
I just ordered a book on Amazon that would raise the eyebrows of those who know my lazy ass well. And I'm already trying to build up a list of more to come. The trick, of course, is finding the time and the place along with the right amount of motivation, but this time around I'm not giving up so easily.
I went to my first non-basics training two weeks ago, and the second one last week. The second class was both fun and intimidating - I was paired with so many shodans that night that "relax" was probably the last thing that I was able to do. One even kept vigorously shaking my arm to loosen it up before proceeding with a sankyo. And it didn't help that my pinky toe left a bloody mess on the mat that night (all better now; I didn't even feel it). I haven't gone since then, but I hope to return tomorrow night, and if not, I'll be there Thursday night for the New Year's training from 11:30-12:30. Will be the first New Year's Eve in awhile that's not spent at home acting all emo about being alone too.
And this weekend I am going to cook - though I wonder if it's really considered cooking if the end product doesn't turn out to be edible. Any suggestions on what a complete newbie should start with? Perhaps I'll even make some miso shiru that Jane-sensei has been talking to me about for quite some time now.
For now, that will have to do. Don't spread yourself too thin, I warn myself. Start small, focus, and go from there, lest you lose interest from making little progress on many rather than faring decently on a few.
I realize that my newfound motivation stems from a foolish dream, but it's motivation nonetheless. I also know all too well that I've been here before, with the same motivation and the same dream years ago. But this time around, I say to myself, it's going to be different. This time around, I am following through; I am not going to let reality break my spirit. I am not going to simply get over it and fall into complacency. Even though I'll never make it a reality, I will come out of this much richer from the experience.
And just in time for the new year too. Totally coincidental, but I suppose these could be the first New Year's resolutions that I've ever made in my entire life.
2010 is the new 2007. And I've got so much catching up to do.
Monday, March 16, 2009
it's been awhile
two cups of boba in my hands and i'm on top of the world. hope my friends don't mind me ditching them halfway through our workout. hope they don't suspect a thing either. as i cross the soccer turf, i'm grinning to myself at how much of an idiot i must look, grinning like that. but let the world laugh, i say to myself. they're just jealous.
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collapsing onto the frozen field, i find myself buried in nearly two feet of snow, surrounded by bags of leftover 2-liter bottles and party snacks. home is a mere minute's walk away, but i feel completely lost in the dark. and i'm tired... so, so tired. more tired than i have ever been, and in likelihood, than i ever will be. i had spent more energy than i could afford to borrow, and the sinking feeling that it was all for naught is just too much to bear right now. for once in my life, i feel entirely without resolve to get back up. i want to just lie here in the cold forever. and so i do just that. time passes. get up, I tell myself. you've got to keep moving, even though you don't know why.
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driving home on the 101, going probably too fast to be remotely considered legal. if i crash and burn, at least this joke of a life will be over with. wonder how the cop would react when he sees me breaking down in front of him, should i get pulled over. what had i done wrong? where did i start screwing it all up? never before had i had felt so confident, so sure of myself. for once in my life, i knew what it was like to believe in myself. to think that i was worth somebody's attention. and then to have it all come crashing down on me. a large part of me is still in shock from it all, but deep inside i know - i had seen it coming. good things don't happen to me. why would this time be any different?
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sitting at the back of the lecture hall, watching as the initiation ceremony proceeds. there's hardly a face i recognize in here. i really should be more social with people my year or below me. but what's the point? i won't be here for much longer. it's great to be an officer who doesn't have a part in the ceremony - i can just chat and surf the web on my laptop. all of a sudden, something... no, someone enters the room and catches my eye, and i find myself paying closer attention to the ceremony. i message my roommate, saying there's a cute girl being initiated, and he jokes that we should all sit next to her during dinner and hit on her. they start calling roll, and the next thing i know, i'm typing excitedly into my laptop. "holy shit. her name's also..."
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curled up in a hotel bed that's too large to be comfortable, far away from home. far away from both homes. one helluva dream, i tell the empty room. so far from reality. "was it worth it?" stop kidding yourself. you were expecting too much. wanting too much. everybody else is fine with it, so why shouldn't i be? get your head out of the clouds, and stop dreaming about silly things. i'm just another normal human being, no more deserving of attention than the next awkward idiot who comes along trying to be friends. but i'm different, i say. i'm special. yeah you are. special. so's everybody else.
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collapsing onto the frozen field, i find myself buried in nearly two feet of snow, surrounded by bags of leftover 2-liter bottles and party snacks. home is a mere minute's walk away, but i feel completely lost in the dark. and i'm tired... so, so tired. more tired than i have ever been, and in likelihood, than i ever will be. i had spent more energy than i could afford to borrow, and the sinking feeling that it was all for naught is just too much to bear right now. for once in my life, i feel entirely without resolve to get back up. i want to just lie here in the cold forever. and so i do just that. time passes. get up, I tell myself. you've got to keep moving, even though you don't know why.
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driving home on the 101, going probably too fast to be remotely considered legal. if i crash and burn, at least this joke of a life will be over with. wonder how the cop would react when he sees me breaking down in front of him, should i get pulled over. what had i done wrong? where did i start screwing it all up? never before had i had felt so confident, so sure of myself. for once in my life, i knew what it was like to believe in myself. to think that i was worth somebody's attention. and then to have it all come crashing down on me. a large part of me is still in shock from it all, but deep inside i know - i had seen it coming. good things don't happen to me. why would this time be any different?
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sitting at the back of the lecture hall, watching as the initiation ceremony proceeds. there's hardly a face i recognize in here. i really should be more social with people my year or below me. but what's the point? i won't be here for much longer. it's great to be an officer who doesn't have a part in the ceremony - i can just chat and surf the web on my laptop. all of a sudden, something... no, someone enters the room and catches my eye, and i find myself paying closer attention to the ceremony. i message my roommate, saying there's a cute girl being initiated, and he jokes that we should all sit next to her during dinner and hit on her. they start calling roll, and the next thing i know, i'm typing excitedly into my laptop. "holy shit. her name's also..."
-------------
curled up in a hotel bed that's too large to be comfortable, far away from home. far away from both homes. one helluva dream, i tell the empty room. so far from reality. "was it worth it?" stop kidding yourself. you were expecting too much. wanting too much. everybody else is fine with it, so why shouldn't i be? get your head out of the clouds, and stop dreaming about silly things. i'm just another normal human being, no more deserving of attention than the next awkward idiot who comes along trying to be friends. but i'm different, i say. i'm special. yeah you are. special. so's everybody else.
Friday, February 20, 2009
i will post this
The ratio of drafts to actual posts in this blog is approaching 10:1. The lengths of those drafts vary across the spectrum of one-line thoughts to pages written and then tossed aside. Some of them I'm too ashamed to actually release into the wild, for fear that it gets read by people I don't want to read, and others just never came out in the way I meant them.
Part of the problem is that my thoughts seem to collect together just fine as I'm driving (or, back in Boston, walking) around or as I'm about to drift off to sleep. But the moment I try to put it all down into concrete words, everything sounds silly, tiredly repetitive, trite, or otherwise pointless. Half the time I'm just copying what someone else has already thought of or said anyway. The rest of the time I'm just copying the way they've said it.
Not that originality matters, but when it feels like nothing I can come up with on my own is worth posting, I just stop trying.
Part of the problem is that my thoughts seem to collect together just fine as I'm driving (or, back in Boston, walking) around or as I'm about to drift off to sleep. But the moment I try to put it all down into concrete words, everything sounds silly, tiredly repetitive, trite, or otherwise pointless. Half the time I'm just copying what someone else has already thought of or said anyway. The rest of the time I'm just copying the way they've said it.
Not that originality matters, but when it feels like nothing I can come up with on my own is worth posting, I just stop trying.
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