Ducks, a lake sonogram.

Guichanaso.

Yue Minjun

 

I thought, I wouldn't mind being a boy-toy, being a rebounding launch pad, being of help, being a support system, being a wall, a floor, being a really easy love, being some sort of pitiable victim, being someone vaguely remembered and infrequently recalled. Wouldn't mind it, for the people I know now, and for the people I will get to know. Just that much, I don't really imagine getting too many things. I think I am afraid of damaging anyone that I would rather be damaged. Rather be the passive one free of blame, than the actor responsible for all the regrets.

I'm a sucker.

Things don't stick with me long these days. Everything is sort of, popping, parting. A little groundless, a little free, a little light, a little grim.


Mothagesso.

Guichanaso.

On the top left corner, displayed: "Get-Into-College Free Pass"

I looked through my 2009 notebook today. It's no wonder I'm so drained now. Actually contemplating taking a year off, but knowing me, I'll probably succumb to staying.

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself."- Miller, Blue like Jazz

‘Here! and here! ’ replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: ‘in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!’- Wuthering Heights, possibly the only classical novel I enjoyed. Still haven't fallen out of love with Heathcliff


"Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives? What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of relationship would that be?"- Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami

잊었던 날들의 슬픈 추억도
다가올 시간의 아픈 기억도
그냥 여기 남겨두기로 해 내 마음을

"They couldn't dominate Death inside the hospital, but they certainly made her behave. They had taught her manners." - Joseph Heller, Catch-22

but I've got to think twice, and I know all the games you play because I play them too, oh but I need some time off from that emotion

"The reason death sticks so closely to life isn't biological necessity, it's envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can." -Yann Martel, Life of Pi

기억에 대한 집착을 하기 시작한게 언제지. 오늘은 유난히 머리가 아프다. 지난 수첩들을 보는데, 친구의 옷가짐, 나의 마음가짐, 앞으로 할 일 등등 별의 별게 다 기록되어있다. 재밌게 읽으면서도 한편으론 왜 그나이에 그렇게 다급했을까 라는 생각이 든다.

"I'd forgotten my aptitude for inner persuasion. Sometimes it is better to be left wondering than to be left knowing." 11/19/2009

싫어하는 것: Time. 제약. 무능한 것. 미천함. 차별. 가식. 노력만 할 줄 아는 사람. narrow eyes. umbrellas. 정전기. 입술 틀 때. old habits. the word "idioms." pretentiousness. 어쩔 줄 모르겠는데 어쩔거냐고 물어올 때. when two people talk at the same time. 돼지코. judgmental old women. 단골 미용실이 있는 남자. 쫒기는 거. fear. grammar. 기다림. 인내심. 헤어짐. 부족함. 어두움.

"I didn't negotiate with the neighbors before submitting my plan, because I am bull-headed, I want to do what I think I have the right to do, and I don't like being told what to do." -Chip Pigman, The Collapse

Writing is such a habit.

Guichanaso.

Remember how it felt to be somewhere for the first time?

Guichanaso.

The common "sincerity" does not necessarily work in my favor. It may not mirror what I truly want. "Sincerity" may not be sincere. Because it gets stretched with the structural constraint as well as altered by the environmental factors. Because it gets muddled with the voices of others, that thing that he said amidst a cup of coffee. Because it gets overlapped with memories, the things that the cardiovascular muscles must remember, since the heart beats and aches. And because the droplets of time will eventually wear everything out, make it unrecognizable. Just that much, we cannot trust ourselves, when we say we're "sincere."

It may win hearts and resuscitate love. It may get you to places with people. But know that the spirit might just leave one day. Making the hearts uninteresting, love burdensome and untrue, people not in your mind, and you left cold and guilty. Sincerity screwed you over. It will leave you astray.

It's a powerful tool to move people, and it is abused as it is put into words, most often. Words are not responsible for its consequences. So you shouldn't trust it, be wary of it.




All this, do I sincerely mean it? Or am I writing this in defense of my lack of support for sincerity. My lies to myself.

 

Well, I need you to help me out, Seussfish.

A lot of advice that I give others is actually advice that I should give myself.


Mothagesso.

After an entire day of trying to explain our case theory to seemingly retarded judges who didn't understand what they were being told, I fell into bed from physical and mental fatigue. What a long day. We had judges comment on NASCAR trivia and open-toed heels, we had judges favor fictional objections (i.e. Objection, "Confusing." Your honor, I'm confused!) over real ones, and we had the usual lot of Mock Trial assholes that were complete bitches without substance. Maybe I'm just being snobby, but I really can't care at this point. It is now 1:53 A.M.

What a pain in the ass explaining can be.

Explaining obligates you to assume certain things about the other person. His or her level of understanding, intelligence, interest in the topic, cultural contexts, et cetera, but mostly (for me) the level of involvement with the person and whether I feel interested enough to commit. Yes, I dare say explanation is a commitment. It is a freaking chore to have to sit with an unknowing person and enlighten them into a foreign perspective; it takes care to sit through that nonsense. And what if, only after that long duration, you realize the other person to be a complete and utter idiot? Or what if you start explaining one thing, and because you have such cultural differences, it leads to you having to explain five more things, then ten more, then to hosting an entire discussion of your cultural venn-diagrams? Or what if the other person doesn't want to understand? Why such tediousness? And, doesn't the inability to deliver an explanation entail a certain air of failure? Though it is strange to say one has "failed" to explain, we live in a world where a discrepancy of understanding could lead to a judgment regarding success or failure, and therefore, right or wrong. Realizing you can't explain certain things through communication, realizing the limitations of disclosure, realizing the futility of effort. It takes courage to explain.

Practice. It also takes patience, and love, and devotion, and a flare for education. My mom has lots of that. But I cannot always reciprocate, because I can't always bear to deal with my own mother being so different from me. Our different childhoods and educational experiences and families and languages and ways of thinking, all things that I know are there, she knows are there, and come to think of it, we don't actually have anything in common... I feel. Explanation intensifies our contrasts, creating ins and outs. It's palpable. Isn't that strange? I could do without that for now. And oftentimes I stop myself from sharing, because I feel I could use that time for other things, like imagining our similarities, the ties of our worlds, pink ribbons and rainbows, fantasyland of parellel likeness. What an ideal setting! I'm just a little girl.

Not all things have to be spoken, not yet. Irony will suffice for now.

Guichanaso.

Hands are fascinating creatures.

Guichanaso.

The sunshine woke me up. I saw the little dust speckles peacefully floating around and thought, "they're like fireflies." I don't know if they knew that I could see them. Last night I was walking back home. Thanks to the low buildings in Maine (where the highest one is less than 20 floors in the entire state), the sky is always in your vision. The sky was sheer. The stars were, too. Oh, they are light years away. The light is from the past reaching you. They are ancient, they are transcending, as they gently shine upon you. Thanks to Discovery Channel, these typical thoughts make me feel tiny. Like a speck of dust.

We didn't lose our wonders. We just are distracted from them.

Mothagesso.

No man is an island.

From a pillow conversation an hour ago.

"He's too nice for you. You want someone who's confident. Not a pussy."

"Not a pushover?"

"Not a pushover. Lets say he got a burger with cheese and lettuce. And he didn't order lettuce. The kind of guy who'd go back to tell the lady he didn't want lettuce."

I found this super amusing. Nighty night, weekdays.

Guichanaso.

"Summer Feeling" taken by Yiannis Issaris on 500px.com

I visualize myself in different ways. I see myself as a little kid, giddy and excited as well as easily sad and disappointed, only to be followed by a quick recovery into smiles and jumping around. He wants to be a cool-looking grown up, like that sleek button-down business professional with a cup of Hennessy on the rocks, or to be a messy dude with a long beard who seems to know everything and has healing chuckles, or to be a quite person who is so chatty only with a gentle consoling smile like a wool blanket you want to wrap yourself up in. But he's just a little kid. Not too eloquent, uncoordinated with his artistic and athletic attempts. He's sharper than you might think, look at him thinking of all these things, but oh, he doesn't know. In all his naiveté, he just thinks his the sharpest of them all. But he barely even thinks about that as well, because he is so giddy and excited to tell all the stories that went on in his life, all the discoveries that he has made, the drawings that he drew, the love that he has felt. He likes to talk, talk, talk, and never grow up. But he has been, oh cruel nature, all the while.

I wonder if any kid wanted to remain a kid.

Mothagesso.

Servo ieuvenis

School, in between engagements. Today!

Guichanaso.

I feel like a little boy sometimes, trying to pack all the things into my luggage, or looking at all the books in the shelves, or finding lumps and dumps of paper and other debris under my bed. So I fold my clothes and shove them in the luggage and sit on it and barely zip it. Worrying that the stitches of my cotton bag will pop while being handled. I take the books out and pretend to read them for a bit, and if I like it, leave it behind the toilet so I will read on in the near future. And I get all the papers together, and neatly categorize and organize them, justifying why I will need them in the future. Hoarding. Home-shopping advertisements. Amazon.com. I am lucky enough to be able to buy most of needless shit that I say I need. It's not my Louis Vuitton luggage or the Audi that I purchased. These are real stories of consumerism.

Everyone knows coffee is overpriced.


Mothagesso.

I've looked upon whining with an eye of disdain for way too long to have just acknowledged--I love to whine. I think it stems from high school, when camaraderie was pretty much built on mutual whining. "Ugh the SATs" "Ugh that guy again" "Ugh we have so much in common", things like that. But what is it people look for when they whine? Is it for the consolation, or to just hear themselves talk about it, or to release the tension that builds up when one holds something in for too long, or for a reality check, What Is It? And why do we feel the need to share that with someone else, who probably can't relate to us to begin with?

This encapsulates my feelings toward Wednesdays

On days like this is when I realize that coffee is actually a genius invention geared toward making people grossly dependent on it to carry themselves through days and weeks and months, because COFFEE (pause) makes going to sleep significantly more difficult and, thus, makes getting up more difficult, and then you're left needing coffee in order to wake up, and the coffee you have during the day stays with you till nighttime, which makes going to sleep even harder than the day before, which really just only kind of distorts your sleep schedule, a teensy bit. Am I annoying you with the qualifiers? Good, they're intended to be. I also miss my room when it was clean. And I've been meaning to clean it for awhile but I almost feel like its out of my grasp now. Its an eerie thing, to feel overpowered by a room that's meant to revolve around you. I have to tiptoe around its...... traps? Obstacles? Limbs???? I feel like I've created a monster.


Something I've been thinking about:

Guichanaso.

Guichanaso.

The blue wrap-around on a red coat is brilliant.

I once heard that the nation of Britain uses four times more words in English than does the United States of America. And I'm sure the British average wasn't including Bill Shakespeare's. One reason could be because that the British and the commonwealth countries highly value oratory finesse, which naturally requires more vocabulary as well. Whatever the reason, the lack of vocabulary doesn't mean that people just communicate less. (Perhaps less intelligibly. See "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell.) But to communicate people would not necessarily relearn the language. And using the formal words would not be, almost by definition, "conversational." So rather, they create more language by altering the use of a word from the past, or a word that wasn't used as much. "Legit" would be one. "Hipster" would be another. "Swag" would be one. "Word" can be one. And all of them come in plethora of colorful intonations. Just think about how many ways all these words can be pronounced. "Word." "Woôord." "WORD!" That is another way to create language with limited vocabulary. They are tailored to our sense of humor and the need of such terms and are versatile. In time, these words go, and new ones are found, smithed, circulated, and dissipated. Although I think vocabulary initially expands the gamut of emotions I am able to feel, I also think that the power of vulgar and vernacular words, combined with its intonations, have their own appeal. It makes things lighter, it becomes more easily communicated, and it rolls smooth in sound. I think it's pretty legit to leave this shit as is.


Mothagesso.

Today I went out to downtown Evanston to photograph strangers for my journalism assignment. The assignment was "features", which was defined as "unstaged scenes." Embracing the vague definition, I trekked down south to Barnes and Nobles, first approaching a lovely high school student who sat down to read across from me... and there it began! It wasn't that hard after the first, as cliche-ridden as that sounds. Eventually I found myself complimenting a clothing store lady for her "attractive, strong facial features" and the man at J.K. Sweets for "looking 40" when he was actually 70 years old. I did not know me. The desperacy, and I think a tinge of hypocrisy, was something I never knew I had in me. An ambivalent surprise? Yes? Today was a day filled with realizations.

And More:

1. I like the feeling of hands thawing in warmth after a cold, cold day out.
2. People should use better vocabulary. "Like" "Chill" "Cool" "Legit" "Awesome" won't suffice for long.
3. Vanilla ice cream is an unattractive flavor unless topped with hot fudge.
4. Tylenol is useless!
5. I've been using more and more exclamation points!
6. It becomes easier to ignore emails because there are so many. Frequency pushes you away, rather than pulling you in, I think.
7. Shiojima sennsei doesn't believe in compliments. Last week I wrote my first Japanese Narrative Essay and had it handed back to me today. I was ecstatic to see compliments written on the comment sheet.
8. Talkativeness is contagious. Awkwardness is contagious. In fact, it's hard for a feeling to not be shared. It's also hard for a feeling to be perfectly mutual.
9. People are fun to watch.

On that note, the young and talented Nicholas Hoult.

About A Boy, 2002

A Single Man, 2009

Guichanaso.

Do not do this because usually there are storage spaces there and you'll hit your head.

One of the many distinctive characteristics, powers and perks of being one of the human species is our ability to imagine feelings that are not ours. We are capable of imagining what he or she or that organic being or even that inorganic being would feel. And consequently even feel good or bad ourselves.

Most of the times, it is not a capacity, but more a condition. We don't have to want to use it. The "sympathy" feature just inconveniently goes on by itself. We imagine the embarrassment of someone committing a serious gaffe on TV shows and feel awkward for them. (Like when their lies are being revealed. I can't watch that.) We imagine the sorrows of someone who lost their family member and feel sad in front of the news. We imagine how a dog would be cold in the winter (despite the fact that they are covered with fur, and probably pretty warm) and feel so bad that we decide to make clothes for the poor thing who now has to adjust to walking with fleece jackets on.

But sometimes, it's an ability. We can click on the button at our will. I think I do it less than I should. We actively try to sympathize and find things to say to a brokenhearted person. Sometimes I find myself actively personifying nature or technology in order to do more environmentally-conscious things. Oh, the tree must be having a hard time breathing, I should drive less. Oh, the light bulb must be worn out, I should turn the light off.

Emotions like that fuel us to do things.

With just a few spoonful of reason in the bucketful of emotions, we would have the potion of understanding. The potential to understand. We can sketch out the contexts and calculate the impacts with a pencil of reason, then color it with a paint of emotions. And I guess bigger the paper, the more possible understanding. I don't know what paper stands for here.

I started writing this in defense of egg yolk. I always accidentally squeeze the over-easy yolk all over my food. And I used to hate it. All my eggs were over well. But eggs in my school's dining hall were always over easy or over medium if not ordered separately. So I got used to getting them, and always popping them. But the inflicted food doesn't taste that bad. I don't mind. I almost prefer it now. You're a surprise, but at least to me, yolk, not a bad one. I imagine you don't enjoy this either. I imagine you feel scattered (you are). I know that I accidentally popped you, and things were not under your control.

I understand. I like it.

 With just a little help. I wouldn't mind a toast with that though.

Mothagesso.

No man is an island.

Carey Mulligan

Things I really really dislike often involve a certain "uncookedness." Something premature. Hasty. Rash. Like when you pop the yellow part of an egg too soon and the yellow gushes out over onto the white, covering centimeter by centimeter, slowly taking over the plate with its ineffable lack of poise, so untimely, so presumptuous! I don't like that. I prefer selection to inclusivity. Uncooked things have a way of including everything in its path without really knowing the consequences of its actions. They're just bad surprises, really..

To even out the negativity, things I like right now: milk tea, yogurt chips, iCal, late night texting, Casker, heated blankets, grey, Lee Mortimer, chamomile tea, hot showers, smudges, privacy, Indian snacks, crossing my legs.

Guichanaso.

An interesting dialogue about understanding.

Guichanaso.

My life is jetlagged.

Fourteen hours. It's your night suddenly becoming day, while you have no idea what's going on in a plane. Fourteen hours is gaining or losing a day, arriving in the United States one hour earlier than the time you left. Fourteen hours. Any little trick to deal with it means either sleep deprivation or excessive sleep and headache.

There is no precise guessing of when the melatonin secretion is scheduled in your brain. Snap, you're out. You cannot fall asleep, but you cannot stop yourself yawning. Closing your eyes don't help, but opening your eyes is terribly difficult. You're awake, then you're not. You're up at 6 AM, asleep at 9 PM, up until 3 AM. You know that you're jetlagged.

Knowing that you're not yourself.

It is hard to sharply pick up on how you are feeling. The little chemical and hormonal imbalances probably shape the tracks in which the neuronal electric signals will travel. Most of the times the psychology is subtle. The little irritation at that guy who stared at you. And you might never think about how you normally wouldn't have taken it so offensively. Oh, how I am so trapped in my body.

Being jetlagged is a stark example of how you are so completely not yourself. "I am jetlagged." So please, I beg for your understanding. I beg you to understand how I can be inattentive, insensitive, unresponsive-- just as much as usual, I guess, but I am jetlagged. I know that I am, I know what the consequences are, I am feeling them right now, and I cannot correct them. Self-conscious and yet a little irresponsible. But foremost helpless. So just understand me, understand me.

 That might be how I am most of the time. Jetlagged.

 

Except the drowsy part.

"Nosce te ipsum." How hard it is to fall in love with myself the more I learn about myself.

Mothagesso.