How do you be in the right place at the right time?

Right choices, right suppression, and right mindset, to have the thoughts and feelings go the right way. Inhibitions, and other puzzle pieces that are inhibited to fall into place because I don't know how to put them together. And all along, some clarity.

Be kind,
Be true,
you are blessed.


Mothagesso.

I didn't get what I wanted to get. Now there's more work to do to get something I want. But it's okay. I learned. I never was really all that upset about things I didn't get.

I am always good at moving on.


Mothagesso.

I've never had any in-person experiences of racism being a prominent problem.

Whenever I meet a person for the first time, I am quick to find a moment to make a light-hearted self-racist joke. You ten-out-of-ten get a chuckle. Fifteen-out-of-ten if it's about someone else who was humorously racist, and I know a lot of them. That's the only socially suave way to respond to a light-hearted self-racist joke, no matter how your views and sensitivities are. For those occasional that's-not-cool-ers, I simply apologize, "Yeah, that was a little base for me to say. (I thought it was funny.) I apologize," because I was, to him or her. Usually I just qualify it and make it even softer before even they conjure up a response, "Hah, sorry, I had to, I'm racist against asian people. (Yeah, so wha'chu'gunna'say.)" But most people chuckle. Good number of people add another joke on top of that (I like them immediately then).

It's cool, in many other places. It seems like, when people are tourists, everyone seems to be pretty chill; but when they become neighbors, the 'other race' soon become the target of mockery, if not hatred-the source of unease. Because of social welfare and whatnot. I don't know how long the time will be, or what way is the right way to do it in a country, or which country is leading in that. Then we consider the countries that are pretty homogeneous. Any country where different cultures don't really coexist, is usually chill; ignorant, or carefree, about racism ('Zambian Africans love fried chickens, like black people in America do!' All Zambians laugh at this in surprise. Any 'Americans' would twitch a little, although I've told this to many black people, and they were chill. Maybe it was because I'm neutral, man, I'm asian.) Hope we can just sort of adopt that with a click. But they, too, may just well become very racist when it starts to become multicultural and coexisting/competing, and struggle to jump the hurdle like the U.S. But you know how I think we'll jump that hurdle?

I never agreed with polite education about racism. Polite is too bright, and could make shadows. It's so uncomfortable, all that formalities. This unease projects to how comfortable and open we are in our communication and contact with another race; but consider the best friends, who always lift the burden by racist-joking to each other, because they know each other purely as that person, not any other categorizations.

I feel like, if anything, we'll have to end up laughing enough to get over it. Humors are always a little ironically dirty, never polite-polite. Polite education will make shadows of taboo-racism, which will then become humor. Humor, I think, will just take over, and breeze by the pages of whatever the textbook will continue to mumble.

We do look different, you know. Kids know that, and don't care. They just have a lot of fun and become good friends liberatingly being racist to each other. Yes, soft hearts will cry and tear, but in due time, we'll probably soon be over the marks of initial contact by bleaching them with humor (No white supremacy intended there, take it as a 'colorless' metaphor, hah).

I think as such, so I always joke about it. Prod it more and more, there's always an opening for a discussion, or more laughter, which ends civil (and I usually pitch my argument well! It's good asian skills (should 'a' be capitalized?)). Admit that it's funny, man. I know how much it's liberating and reassuring when you find a minority dude being racist to himself.

So why not laugh? (All the more so since your eyes won't disappear like mine when you're laughing. I call it, the 'thin moon,' thanks.)

Yes, this is not about the fact that there is miles-deep gap between standards of lives. Social science will remind us well of the all the socio-politico-economico-anthro-problems. And it will press for all the official, artificial, and political changes, that are always bound to happen eventually (if you don't, you know your country is going to implode, man, people don't like it like that).

This is about a more simple conversion. In-person experience. Racist jokes are great (you learn about how to be racist to yourself, which is, I tell you, useful!). Only laughter crumbles the wall between people. It's a deep sharing, euphoric feeling, isn't it?

Maybe America just had a really rough start on it, with slavery. But other races came later, though? Maybe if racism roots once, it grows well. It will grow well, until when things start to be funny, like it is, in Europe, where countries all assimilate, self-distinguish, and don't care at the same time. It's like we all say to each other, 'hey, you're cool and our skin colors are different. Maybe that's partly why you're cool to me.' I'd love to be blonde or brunette, have a fro, and a little tanned asian look with a Grecian stature or hispanic physique.

So just, in the meantime, laugh with me and relax. Don't feel tense. I'll go vote or donate if you convince me, but before that happens, re-lax.

Shut the fuck up and chill the fuck out,
Mothagesso.

Two weekends in a row, I ventured out to the field of snow encircled with dark shadows of pines with two different friends. The serenity surrounds you with contemplation. The company creates simple feelings of intimacy, lucid because of the serenity of everything else,  The communication requires coherence, and stops the contemplation going loose, as well as allows one to receive new ideas. This list of why it's nice makes it sound like a beautiful experience, but it's ridiculous in practice. Every step is a win or a stumble, wind is cold, snow is cold, socks are wet, and it is ridiculous, ridiculous and ironic. Sort of funny.

'Even when I was very young, I always thought of... there is just, no meaning to life! ...so I should just have fun, be happy.'

The irony of existence, I talked about it, simple idea I found also close to my heart, and my brain was suspicious if there isn't anything more behind the one-line summary, wanting for the chance to intellectualize.

'... and I hope I can do it well. Like, I like it a lot, but will it- will I-'

Are you worried that your love will die away?

An object that we set as a central objective, that we decide as, not the purpose or meaning, but content of our existence, could die in our hearts. Passion isn't everlasting.

'I think it's like a candle, it burns but it burns out. I used to think that when it does, it leaves a great aroma which is beautiful in itself. That logically made sense but it didn't do anything but conceal the longing for what has gone before,' the joyful inanity. 'So passion is great, and you know, if you have love for it enough, I think we live in a world that there's enough stimuli everywhere and accessible.. so you can rekindle it so easily, if not move on.'

'Do you guys think that, art and artists could have progressed to this point, as a whole, if we didn't give them deadlines? Some people just did it because they just needed to, they could, and wanted to. But collectively, I feel like without patrons and deadlines, we may not have gotten to where we are. We're lazy things sometimes, you know? Also, that moment of urgency definitely would have stimulated some sort of creation, distinct in itself-'

By creating responsibility (which usually also gives us some remuneration), do we suffocate the passion, or barely suscitate it? They don't seem to be opposed, necessarily. Maybe the final calculation is just down to happy and unhappy-

Mothagesso.

When a hobby becomes an obligation,

Guichanaso

Snow, wet, cloudy out. It looks like now it's raining. I just looked out the window.
But guitar, but breakfast, but chairs and room, more room, new room, and their cozy hug
that lets me not worry about the trip back. Time wafts through this room like a little haze.


Mothagesso.

"...and I just wanted to tell them, you know, like-"

"Chill the fuck out and shut the fuck up."

"Yeah, exactly."

"That's a prescription that can be made to many a problems that I encounter."

In moments and in life.


Mothagesso.

Race

America is funny about race. When they bring it up, it always takes me a second to decide if I want to be honest or not. Usually the friends who bring it up are white because Northwestern is primarily white or Asian (I have no numbers to back this statement; I generalize), and Asians don't want to talk about it until white kids bring it up. Also interesting is when white friends bring up race in an especially careful manner, as if not to offend me, an Asian immigrant, who must surely hold an outside perspective. It's like a diplomacy test where I have a bunch of memorized answers ready, and I know others do too.

I spent half my life growing up in America, and half my life abroad--and I can say from personal experience that America is in a special position that resembles that of no other country in the world. It brings together people from everywhere who come to this chunk of land into all types of positions and circumstances, who would otherwise have never met nor had any reason to understand each other. This should have birthed an environment comfortable enough for people to discuss race, but weirdly enough, America suffers from an idealized vision of diversity. Like when I was taught early on that I shouldn't call black people black, but African-Americans, and then met an African cab driver that I mistakenly called African American. "I'm not African-American, I'm Black," he corrected me. It was very confusing for me at the time because that's what I'd been taught all my life. Now I understand.

America preoccupies itself with achieving what it thinks that a world capable of celebrating all kinds of people should be like. It's done such a good job of preoccupying itself with achieving that ideal that, rather counterproductively, too many Americans have become obsessed with being "politically correct" and scurrying from what makes us different. It shies away from stereotypes. It shies away from culture. Most importantly, and maybe even most effectively, it shies away from talking about it. In elementary school, my friends used to ask me if Buttercup from The Powerpuff Girls was Asian because she had black hair and pale skin. At the time, which was second grade, I cheerfully told them I had no idea but that I wished she were. Were my friends racist, or just inquisitive? Maybe observant? Should I have been offended?

People throw eggs at difference and throw race-themed parties and write about affirmative action and bam, viral response. But when things like that happen what catches me by surprise is how willing people are to simplify such complex matters. One person exclaims, oh hey, that's an act of racism! And sometimes that declaration as an act itself can make the action seem more racist than it innately is, because the next day news of an act of racism has already spread all over campus. Student groups, especially those that supposedly promote multiculturalism and diversity, feel an obligation to speak out about the event. So they do. Faculty feel an obligation to make some public statement. So they do.

As a result, students are reminded once again that racism is wrong--that to characterize someone by race is wrong, to identify someone by race is wrong, to differentiate someone by race is wrong. But it's only wrong because we think it is. A few weeks ago in one of my journalism classes, our professor explained that identifying a person by race is important for the reader to visualize events. Either I imagined it or I didn't, but there was an air of discomfort spreading throughout the room and I knew everyone was thinking the same thing: isn't that racist? It's really not. Can everyone remember what racism actually means? Is it just me?


I understand it is easy to be offended, especially when the events lead one to believe they were meant to be offensive, rather than to let it go or try to understand. But it's hard to hope for a world of open discussion about race when people keep upsetting themselves over matters that are perhaps insensitive, but not racist.

Some scribbles from my notepad, on which a friend spilled chai tea all over this afternoon.

1. I am embarrassed to admit I am embarrassed
2. Only the shallow know themselves - Wilde
3. I notice my strengths as limitations on my growth - John from painting
4. Symbolize yourself
5. "Oh that's so granola" - girl in IMC class
6. How can you balance doing well and doing good?
7. Doodle doodle
8. You're inquisitive, you're idealistic. It keeps us fresh - Al Cubbage to students
9. Do the things you did to get you here, and keep doing them.
10. Respond to emails right away because otherwise you'll forget
11. I wanted to do something someone in a story would do.
12. When you're reading, you build a house, you build a street, you build a school. No two people hear the same story. - Rives Collins on how storytellers are magical
13. What has changed? Think about that.
14. Your generation has given us the ability to laugh at ourselves - Mango
15. We giggle at pictures of kittens online while eyeing our debt and wondering if there are enough dreams to go around - Nick Castele
16. Crises
17. "A metric shit ton"
18. Stories are important because there is far too much shouting in the world.
19. We are not telling them how to think.
20. "I think that added a really interesting dramatic irony, well, in addition to normal irony" - kid in class
21. It's funny when people start out a sentence with "obviously." What if it's not obvious to me?
22. They are nostalgic for what they never had
23. "Bleeding ulcers? Doesn't ulcers mean they're already bleeding?" -Kotlowitz

Guichanaso

I'll drown my beliefs

To have you be in peace

I'll dress like your niece

And wash your swollen feet

Just don't leave

Don't leave

I'm not living

I'm just killing time

Your tiny hands

Your crazy-kitten smile

Just don't leave

Don't leave

And true love waits

In haunted attics

And true love lives

On lollipops and crisps

Just don't leave

Don't leave

Don't leave

Don't leave

This is "True Love Waits", an unreleased track only played live by Radiohead.

Mothagesso.

1. Hi, I'll ease back into it. What I thought a while ago about indulgence applies here. I indulged in not writing, did not stress over much about it. I didn't force anything out of myself, although on the other side of the token, I didn't make myself stay on track. Some thoughts and hearts are lost into my goldfish of a memory, but some pieces and shards remain, and all throughout the indulgence, I was happy, or at least stable (stasis?). I was happily indulging.

Now I want to ease back into it, and I am excited to write! What a nice way to keep an interest going. My fragile commitments usually break and evaporate for everything I liked and did, but not like enough or like solely. With no obligation to write constantly and none other to stress out about it, it was able to welcome me back to it. No bad memories were created, and so no repulsion at all ever, I just walk right back in. I wonder if parenting should work like that.


2. "When I was young there was this grass near my house. They were onion grasses. They taste like onions. You never, I guess you don't, yeah, no, but these were just onion grasses, so I would eat them and just taste grasses."

"When I was young, first or second grade, I would get these 'yogurts' that were in these small polyethylene bottle with a ton of sugar. It's like this drink that's been around in Korea forever. They are like 10 cents each. So I would poke a little hole, and drop it on ants outside. They would go for it because it's sugar-packed, and then because it was summer and sunny, it would dry and get sticky and get all the ants stuck and kill them. It was a weird.."

"That's a weird sadistic and cruel activity." "Yeah, it was something that made you think like, 'wow, I'm doing this, but this is sort of fucked up."

"Sophomore year, spring, when the snows were all melting and grasses were coming back out, I saw bunch of ant holes one day walking down the street. I passed by the first ten or something, and then I looked everywhere going like, 'what the fuck is going on,' and I dragged my feet everywhere covering the holes up. Kicking up dust. 'No, what are you guys doing, it's a conspiracy!' " " 'No, they know, they know!' " (Note to self: A way to translate piece of reality into letters and words; parentheses could have been another interesting option.)


3. Some stories only come in time. You only share them in due time. You can dig for them with shovelfuls of interesting questions, but somethings you will find out later about a person than other things, so with time you always find more new things about other people, no matter in what order.


4. If someone unabashedly went on a passionate rant about what they found interesting, I would find themselves so interesting. If then that person humbly and self-consciously noted, 'Sorry for going on a total rant. I'm always like that when I, ugh, talk about that stuff,' I wouldn't know what to do, because, no, no I found you attractive, humility is not the right response here, only I can feel humble towards a passion, no matter how rudimentary. I just did a bad job expressing my fascination, excuse me I was caught in awe. I have nothing better to talk about, not as interesting as what you were just saying. 'If you know enough, you know enough to teach, and if you can teach, you don't get into a fight, you approach the conversation differently. It's nice.' I would love to continue to talk about what you were talking about, although I would now love to talk to you about so many other things as well.


5. I also shouldn't let the jokester nature in me to get too mischievously and mistakenly offensive. Be uppy, interesting, biting, refreshing.

Friends help us do that. Prevent the gaffes, practice the stories, prepare the personality. When you're depressed and introverted and stuttering and unwilling and lethargic and bummed out and your head seems like it aches for no reason, or when you're just thinking, 'here's to feeling good, all the time.'

6.

Mothagesso.

Self-reflection

What are your greatest strengths?
Flexible. Understanding.
Observant
Creative
Interested in people
Can get along with most
Introspective
Visually conscious
Ambitious
Sensitive, empathetic
Patient
Easygoing
Great memory
Can prioritize

And what are your weaknesses?
Self-critical
Emotional
Can be passive (uneasy with confrontation)
Disorganized, haphazard
Defensive
Lethargic
Hedonistic
Can quit being nice on command
Not great at dealing with stress
Conniving
Needy
Sneaky
Indecisive
Actually not easygoing at all
Confused
Immature

Guichanaso.