The Antlers - Stairs to the Attic

Reminds me a bit of the yearbook post I wrote during senior year.

Jelly Belly

I recently learned that a lot of people actually like the Juicy Pear flavored jelly beans. Apparently, a friend of mine used to buy entire bags of nothing but purified, uncontaminated Juicy Pears from the Jelly Belly factory and munch away while doing her homework.

Now personally, I find them more or less equivalent to artificially colored pills of shit. (pvalue = 0.051)

But no matter. As the next logical course of action, I then turned to Yahoo! Answers to get a definitive and accurate survey on this pressing matter from the best and brightest minds of our generation.

The results rolled in, and it turned out that Juicy Pear was incredibly polarizing. Of course, I found more than a few of my fellow Juicy Pear haters on those sacred Yahoo! threads. Yet I also discovered a shocking number of Juicy Pear maniacs lurking amongst the rest of us. Just what, I asked myself, did such intelligent people perceive in these jelly beans that I did not?




 (Yes, this is a metaphor for our political opinions).

Basketball

Somehow, without my knowledge, I've turned into a basketball player.

I used to entertain a tremendous variety of activities and outlets. But that's no longer the case. Outside of class and friends, my life has slowly grown to revolve entirely around research. I think I might be becoming obsessed.

It's a strange feeling, having a very clearly defined goal for once -- a basket -- just sitting there, waiting for me to take a shot. I don't think I've ever been this confident in what I plan to do.

I guess I better practice my free throws some more.

Summer

I'd say it was a summer well-spent.

1. I met tons of people, as I had hoped
2. I became friends with said people
3. I guess I kind of started dancing again, and want to keep dancing now
4. I started playing ukulele for people
5. I realized that tennis is really meant to be a social tool, not a competitive ritual to establish dominance (hahaha)
6. I didn't worry about girls
7. I finally had the time to goof around Boston, and I learned that it's a damn good walking city
8. I went to a lot of the activities, instead of camping out in my room
9. I let myself loose (see comic below)
10. I pretty much didn't write anything on the blog, which meant that I was keeping myself busy


So here I am writing some filler blog post because I still have too much energy from not having done anything interesting during the day.

 

Throwing stones at the sky

"It's like you're playing the piano for ten years and you still can't play 'Chopsticks,' and the only thing you have to keep you going is the belief that one day you'll wake up and play like Rachmaninoff."

There you were -- a wide-eyed freshman with goals and dreams just like everyone else. Of course, some were genuine while others were externally imposed. But no matter. You were here now, and the world was yours for the taking.

You told yourself that this was your one shot at reinventing yourself to become someone else, and so you did. As the semester continued, you slowly realized that everybody had bought your new personality. But you never really bought it. No, too bad you didn't realize that until you met...well, him. 

You soon met your soon-to-be best friend "Mike" through a service group, and fell into a fever. You wouldn't dare admit to anyone that you had a crush on him since that would make you seem shallow and far too injudicious with your heart. So you allowed yourself to secretly fall for him. Whenever he needed someone to talk to, you enthusiastically obliged. Whenever he wanted to go out to eat, you made sure you were available. And so naturally, you would grow to reciprocate his requests.

But even though you both were asking the same questions on the surface, you knew that behind each invitation to dinner, you were always hoping for something more. And hope you did. You carefully tried to give more signs. He kept spending time with you. You started joking about being a couple someday. He kept doing nearly everything with you.

So one night, you couldn't help but ask -- is there something more between us?

He said no, not right now.

That is your story. And though you're too embarrassed to admit it, that's essentially the singular source of everything you ask me about.

And you keep asking because I'm not giving you the answer you want to hear.

That's why you keep saying that you're screwed and that nobody likes you. Of course, we both know that's a blatant lie. Sure, you make it sound as if you just want somebody to say that they like/love you so that you know you're not a total failure. But in truth, you don't want just somebody. You want him.

So you keep torturing yourself, beating yourself up over your inability to play something as simple as "Chopsticks" on the piano. Yet you still won't give up and pick up a different instrument. No, you've already set your mind on hammering out the same two blasted notes on the piano over and over until the steel strings snap.

All this so that you can continue to believe that somehow, someday, you'll wake up and suddenly be able to play like Rachmaninoff.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't think that day is coming.

All you're doing is throwing stones at the sky and expecting them to come back as diamonds.

Happy endings

I don't think I know how to write a happy story.

For a while now, I've only written depressing and cynical stories because I thought that those were the only stories worth telling. It felt more "meaningful" to write about unrequited love and my worldly insignificance, as opposed to feel-good stories involving people finding happiness. I felt better too: in a way, sad stories are a form of indulgence.

But now I realize that those depressing stories are actually the easiest stories to tell. Everyone has their own problems and everyone has their moments of sadness -- put those moments into writing, and there you have it: instant realism, instant emotion, instant captivating story.

My impression is that we judge stories with happy endings far more harshly than tragedies. Since they always run the risk of becoming sappy and cliche, we set our standards for happy stories incredibly high. But depressing stories? So long as they can trigger some form of emotion within us, the stories seem all too real.

See, we're so much more skeptical of happy stories because we have trouble believing that they ever happen in real life. We shake our heads in disgust at storybook teenage romances, and we deem saccharine any tale of a marriage that forever stays exciting and impassioned. We dismiss stories that travel down a straight, flowery path from point A to B, and we convulse at even the slightest suggestion that there is indeed one true love for each and every one of us. It's no surprise that we do: we haven't experienced these things for ourselves, and so we naturally find these stories to be, well, stupid.

But maybe these things do happen. Maybe they happen all the time. Maybe it's just that when they are about to happen, we're too busy brooding over the depressing stories to realize it.

Sum

Sum - Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

Read it if you have time. It's mindblowing.

Roses

This story ended up becoming a combination of past blog posts, so don't expect much.
(Edit, 2/10/15: In retrospect, it's really quite funny that the name I randomly chose happened to be Jen).
--------------------------

"Tell me a story."

About what?

"You."

I don't have any stories worth telling.

"Everybody has stories worth telling."

Whether anybody wants to listen to those stories is a different question.

"I'll listen."

Thanks.

"You never really told me what happened with you and Jen."

That's not an interesting story.

"Interesting or not, I know it's still on your mind after all these years."

That ship set sail long ago.

"Doesn't mean you don't remember it."

†††

I never really liked social events. It certainly showed.

"Hi, I'm Jen. What's your name?"

"I'm Ryan, I'm from San Jose, I'm going to study biology or computer science, I live on the fifth floor, and I like it here so far."

She raised her eyebrows. "You have a little trouble with this whole socializing thing, don't you?"

"I'd just rather talk about more interesting things than this silly Mad Libs 'networking' bull we're forced to learn here."

"Well, what do you want to talk about?"

"Not sure. Just curious though, is there anyone here you already don't like?"

"Gosh no, it's only been two days, I'm not going to make those kinds of judgments that fast."

"Sure you won't."

"Okay, well, I just might add a certain Ryan to the list now."

"That's a start."

"Why do you ask anyway?"

"Because I just met someone that I didn't like. She's over there, pouring some soda."

"That's my roommate."

"Oh. Well, in that case, have fun."

"...See you around Ryan."

"Before you go: would you like to go for a walk sometime?"

She didn't seem to hear.

†††

"...So anyway, that's what we've been doing in Music 51. I guess I like it -- it takes so much time though. How's your French class going?"

"Eh, it goes. But no, I think it's all right, even though the teacher definitely cares more about the language than we do."

"Well, the only French words I know are 'love' and 'death.' La mort and l'amour."

"I would think that most people would learn how to say their name or ask where the bathroom is before learning la mort or l'amour." She laughed.

"My sister taught me those two words, actually. They almost sound the same when you say them, don't they?"

"I never noticed that. Huh."

"She brought it up because I was talking to her about this one song, 'What Sarah Said.' The last line is Love is watching someone die. So who's going to watch you die?"

 "And what did she say?"

"Well, she pointed out that every successful marriage ends with someone dying."

"That's pretty depressing."

"You really think so?"

"I mean, yeah. Isn't that really sad?"
I shrugged. "I think it's beautiful."

"I kind of wonder though: it usually only takes a few years for people to decide to get married, right? Say you get married when you're thirty and all goes well. Then you've got another forty, fifty years or so with that person. You only spent one-twentieth of your life making a decision that will affect more than half of it."

She thought for a moment. "I don't know if I'll ever be ready to make that kind of commitment."

"Exactly. I can't even predict how I'm going to be in two years. How am I supposed to figure out whether I'll be happy with some girl for the rest of my life?"

She stopped and looked at me. "I guess you just have to try."

†††

"Huh. Didn't think you would be outside this late."

"This blizzard's pretty awesome, I don't want to sleep right now. And my window won't close, so my room's really cold anyway."

"Ah. Well, don't look over at the statue for the next few minutes. We're going to...yeah."

"Not bad, two out of three in freshman year. Primal Scream, then this...that just leaves the Widener stacks...."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure about that last one."

I made my way over to the statue. " Jen, I'll come look at your window when we're done, okay?"

It was 2:30 AM when I knocked on her door. I stood on her chair and tried to shut the window, but it soon became apparent that whatever I did wasn't going to do any good. We started talking, until we realized her roommate was sleeping. So we went to my room. A few minutes passed with idle conversation.

"I'm going to put my head on your shoulder in about ten seconds."

"You really don't have to announce it like that, you know."

A head on my shoulder soon became an arm wrapped around mine. Then, at some point in the night, she turned sideways, leaning her entire body into my arms. Flirting on the edge of unconsciousness, she sank deeper and deeper, dragging me along with her.

We woke up several hours later with a start. It was 7:00 AM.

The room was silent, but our words and feelings and emotions screamed within our minds. I replayed the conversation that we had just the morning before. I was just thinking/"We" are ambiguous/Do you want it to be clear/I don't know/I'm patient I can wait/I like you but I just/But what/I don't know. I thought about the shirt I gave her for Christmas that had nine adorable kittens on it and how she told me she loved  the shirt but was hesitant to wear it because it would represent "us" being an item, and yet she wore it the very next day. I wondered why she just did what she did last night if she wasn't sure, and why I had let her in the first place. I asked myself whether I could see myself with this girl for the rest of my life, despite the fact that weren't even dating yet. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

She broke the silence, saying aloud what we both we knew the other had been thinking.

"That wasn't very ambiguous, was it?" she asked weakly.

"No," I said.

"It sure wasn't."

†††

"You ever read The Little Prince? It's a French book, actually."

"Yup. I thought it was a very beautiful story."

"Well, I finally got around to reading it last night."

"Did you like it?"

"I loved it. I was thinking though: you know how the fox tells the Little Prince that his rose is unique because he has tamed her? What's stopping the Little Prince from taming any other rose? What if two roses showed up on his planet instead of that one rose? Hell, what's stopping him from taming all of the roses in that rosebush?"

She nodded. "I see your point. But if he's already in love with that one rose, I don't get why he would worry about taming any other rose."
"But the Little Prince could have just gone ahead and installed a sprinkler system or something. He could have just as easily killed off those baobabs to save one rose or two roses or twenty roses, and as stupid as it sounds, he could have just built a bigger plastic dome. There really isn't anything different about one rose to the next, and he knows that. The only difference is that she just happened to be the one he tamed first."

"Which leads into why you don't think that anybody is truly unique to all the world," she said.

"Right. There are far too many people on this planet for that to be true. Somewhere, somehow, I'm pretty sure you can find someone else similar enough to take your place in society."
"Well, I think you're very unique. That's why I like being with you."

"I don't feel the same way about that."

"But don't you think there's a difference between being unique to all the world and being unique to a certain person?"

I turned to meet her eyes. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well, I agree that it was just random chance that the Little Prince tamed that rose. Any other rose could have landed there and the Little Prince wouldn't have known the difference. But that's the thing, though; it was by chance that it just so happened to be her. And it just so happened that he was there to take care of her."

"So I guess what I'm saying is, you have to remember that out of all of the infinite possibilities and all the flowers in the world, the Little Prince just happened to fall in love with that one rose. That in itself is pretty special, isn't it? I mean, sure, the people you meet may not be unique. But that doesn't make them any less important."

"I think you're important to me, Ryan."

†††

"So finally I walk in my room, and by now it's 3:30 AM because we had to walk back from Boston Commons. And guess what I see? My roommate is in his boxers with some topless girl that I've never seen in my life, on my bed. I'm beyond exhausted at this point, so I just tell them to do their business in his room. I grab my toothbrush and go to the bathroom, and when I come back, now the lights are off. Someone got up to turn off the lights, but then decided to get back in my bed to do who knows what. Unbelievable."

"Wow."

"Yeah. That night of The Game was pretty insane, but for all the wrong reasons."

We were sitting by the pond in the Commons, holding hands. A massive willow tree swayed its shaggy unkempt locks in the wind, casting its leaves towards the sheet of ice that lay below.

"Why don't we do that kind of insane stuff anymore?"

I chuckled. "What do you mean?"

"I don't know, sometimes I feel like we're just going through the motions, and we're only staying together because it's familiar."

"Familiarity just means stability, and I don't think there's anything unromantic about that."

"It's a lot less exciting though," she said, pulling her hands away.

"You think relationships actually exist that always stay that exciting?"

"It would be nice."

The wind stopped, and the willow tree slowly oscillated to a halt. Near the subway station, a man started playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on his trumpet. It had always been one of Jen's favorite songs. She had played the solo piano arrangement for me before, and I was particularly fond of the slow middle section. It has a very pretty melody of course, but what I think makes it special is how the rest of the piece is so frantic. Somewhere in the urban inferno, that scrambling young man was able to find calm and happiness, however fleeting it may have been.

I closed my eyes for a moment. "You know how every fairy tale always ends with 'And they lived happily ever after.'? Have you ever wondered why they don't ever talk about what happens afterwards? The knight slays the dragon and saves the princess, sure. But that's just the story of how they met. If what you're saying is true, isn't all the good stuff supposed to be about their life together after they get married?"

"Right, ideally marriages can keep getting better and better," she said after a pause.

"But see, I realized something the other day. Those stories always end at 'Happily Ever After' because it's just too depressing to admit that love is a lot harder than just falling in love. The whole point of reading fairy tales isn't because they're realistic and relatable, but because on some level, I think that's how we wish reality actually was."

She looked away, mindlessly running the tip of her shoes along the contours of the sidewalk.

"Do you want to keep walking?" I asked.

"No, not really."

We buried our hands in our own pockets on the way back.

†††

No, I can't keep this. Can't keep that either. No. No. Definitely no.
She wondered as she looked around at her room, the floor strewn with torn envelopes and photos: what does it take to forget someone?
A crumpled slip of paper caught her eye. She walked over to pick it up, momentarily disregarding the mess she had made. It was blank, save for three faded words.

He had lied when he said he loved her.
She meant it every time. 

But then, what was she doing now, falling for another? For in truth, it was none other than him once again; a different face and a different smile, sure, but identical in all the important ways -- the things she had since learned to scrutinize more closely.

So why again?

She wondered as the flames engulfed her frozen heart once more -- does the phoenix possess the knowledge that it will be reborn, or does it relive the agony of dying over and over again?

†††

"I didn't think you would come," I muttered.

She took off her red blazer and draped it over her arms. "You didn't seem to care if I came. So I did."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"When you stop caring, something's wrong."

I looked away. "Let's walk."

We turned towards the statue and made our way towards the gate. A middle-aged woman stopped in front of us, her feet stocked on four-inch heels and her face plastered with powdery insecurity. Her husband scampered along after her, appearing less like a partner and more like a suitcase, slouched over from the burden of her purse and her unspoken frustrations. She gestured to her husband, and he obediently took the lid off of his camera to capture the scene that surely wasn't going anywhere soon.

"Did you like it here?" she asked.

"Why are there always tourists? I don't understand. It's not even that pretty."

"You don't have to take photos of only pretty things."

"It's a statue of some rich schmoe that everyone mistakes as some other famous guy. And you'd only know that if you had paid some tour guide to read you a script from the Wikipedia page, or you're a student here."

"Well, I think it looks nice."

"I hope no one thinks I'm nice."

"That's a strange thing to hope for."

"If the only word you can use to describe the sum of all of my thoughts, experiences, habits, and mannerisms is 'nice,' then you're just calling me boring."

"Believe me, you're not a very nice person, so don't worry."

She briefly tilted her head towards me, and our eyes met. I tried to casually pan my gaze over to the right, as if my eyes had only momentarily rested on hers. 

"How are you?" she asked.

"Fine."

"Okay, but how are you?"

"If you're trying to incite some 'deep, meaningful' conversation from me, we should just stop now."

"Look, I'm just asking how you're doing."

"But are you really? When I used to pass by that cute girl on the first floor while walking to the elevator, the only words that we ever said were Hi, Hello, How are you, Good, See you. Sure, there's a question mark at the end. But I'm not so sure: is she actually asking or just saying that?"

"Well, seeing as you don't feel like talking about yourself, I'm doing rather well. Thanks for asking."

We continued on our way across the yard. I tried my best to keep my eyes glued straight ahead, walking with perhaps a bit too much confidence to seem believable.

"I forgot, what did you say you want to do? You keep changing your mind."

"I want to sit at home and just watch television all day."

She laughed. "I meant for a career."

"Something that will let me retire early so that I can sit at home and watch television."

"You don't think you'd get bored of that?"

"I probably will. Why do you want to be a doctor?"

"Well, because I like knowing that I would actually be helping people."

"Conveniently, those same people have to pay you a lot of money too."

"Seriously Ryan, do you have to be so cynical about everything?"

We came to the intersection that separated the rest of campus from the nearby river. The red light flicked on and the little orange hand stopped blinking as we set foot on the pavement. We kept walking forward.

"I mean, I'm sure when you were younger, you didn't want to just sit at home and do nothing when you grew up."

"I wanted to be an orthodontist when I was in middle school."

"Any reason?"

"It looked like a stable job with good pay."

"And what happened to that?"

"I realized there were lots of other ways to make a stable living that didn't involve cashing in on people's insecurities and fumbling with crooked teeth."

The familiar opening arpeggios of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" rang through the plaza. Some four years ago, I had gathered the ignorant courage to perform that very song for a fundraiser. I was still too embarrassed about that performance to enjoy listening to that song now.

"Let's sit over there."

"Is there a reason you asked me to come walk with you?"

"Because I wanted to. I'm sorry, do I need a reason to go on a walk?"

She drew her hands out from her pockets. "You know, I used to like talking to you."

"So did I."

"There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings.

In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings,
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven."

"Ryan, do you hate me?"

"No. You're not important enough for me to hate."

I thought about all the other times we had walked and talked. I thought about the arguments and fights that had slowly severed our friendship. I thought about the silly inside jokes we had made and shared. How she made fun of me for always getting two cups of water at breakfast when I could never finish one. How we had talked about The Little Prince and all those roses in the rosebush. How she had gone to lunch twice just so she wouldn't have to tell someone "No, I already ate." How she had set afire my frozen tin heart, refroze it, then thawed it once more.

"But I used to think you were."

"What am I to you now?"

"You're one in a million. But there are seven billion people on this planet, and there are seven thousand people just like you. You're just one rose in a garden of beautiful flowers."

By now we had reached the river, and after a couple seconds of silent deliberation, I chose to head towards the left. She went to the right and we bumped into each other. I remembered how I used to "accidentally" bump into her while we were still getting to know each other, just so that I could find a few moments of fleeting joy from her physical contact. But then again, accidents were all I had ever known. Just like our first meeting, or how we became friends, or our relationship of three years, or the end of that relationship, or now our outward appearance of just being acquaintances. It had all been an accident, a freakish chain of random chance. How else could I explain it all to myself?

She paused. "Ryan, I have to go now."

"Thanks for coming."

"See you."

"Maybe."

I wondered whether I would ever build such a strong connection with someone ever again. I wondered how things would have been different had I not gone to that freshman social that August afternoon. I wondered if the Little Prince and his rose ever had the chance to live out their own 'Happily Ever After.'  And then I remembered the answer.

They didn't.

I sat down on a bench by the river and threw stones at the sky.

Death of a dreamer

Growing up is a tragedy.

I look at our backyard now and wonder how I was ever able to spend two hours outside with nothing but a shovel. Somehow, I was perfectly happy to repeatedly dig holes and fill them back in, unearthing stones and what I presume were maggots. It all sounds quite futile and mundane, but from what I remember, it was incredibly good fun.

Then there was the fact that my sister and I had our piano lessons consecutively after each other, leaving me with an hour every week to goof around at our teacher's house. It was always a productive hour; I'd set myself to the task of collecting branches from the giant oak tree, or maybe chopping off a usable bamboo pole to fend off a possible monkey invasion. I even took the time to build a miniature aqueduct from a faucet in the yard to the grass several yards away, like a chute for little rocks to tumble down.

Understandably, your first instinct would probably be to say that I lost interest in nature as I grew up because of technology. With all those fancy toys around me, playing outside would naturally start to seem dull.

Yet even with computers and televisions, I was still able to find entertainment in ways that we would find strange. Nowadays, I lose all interest in a game once I finish it. But I clearly remember how I would replay the exact same dungeon over and over in Zelda, to the point that my mother once asked me if I was even doing anything productive. I would never bother to actually move forward in the plot line of Lego Island, instead electing to build cars and drive around delivering pizzas. And I was able to watch the same episode of The Magic School Bus repeatedly without ever really understanding what was going on, other than the fact that Arnold was a wuss (the most important lesson of them all, undoubtedly).

But I think childhood was more than about having fun. In the larger sense of the word, childhood was about dreaming.

For one, I literally had more dreams (at least, I remembered more of them). My dreams were, on occasion, batshit insane. I still remember a few of them, one of them involving my tennis coach spontaneously catching on fire from yelling at us so much. Another involved a highly complex and intense obstacle course with my friends and family as the contestants -- death awaited all who failed. I also vaguely remember having to face a horde of moblins armed with a guitar and a lightbulb (how I got myself out of that one, I don't remember. I probably just died then woke up or something). Then of course there were the typical naked dreams and flying dreams.

But I also dreamed about my life more. I was a little man with big plans. For instance, I told my mom I was going to become the CEO of the world's biggest company and do whatever it is that rich people do for fun. I also said I was planning on making it to Wimbledon some day, though even I knew at the time that it was essentially impossible for me to actually win.

Fast forward to when I'm 13, sitting in the car on the way tennis practice. I certainly had trashed any notion of making it to Wimbledon by now. My mother is talking to me about the importance of high school or something, and she brings up the topic of having to figure out what it is I want to do when I grow up.

I said I wanted to be an orthodontist.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because it doesn't look very hard for how much money they make, and it seems pretty safe."

The dreamer had died long ago.

He might come back someday, true. Maybe I'll get some flash of idealistic risk-mongering and pursue something that doesn't involve security and stability for once. But more likely than not, I won't. I'll be satisfied with doing what's safe and practical for the rest of my life, because I'm far too aware of the fact that dreaming doesn't get you food on the table.

Satisfied. What a tragic word.

What an ugly word.

"I just want to be happy, Dad."
"Don't talk to me about happiness. You don't know what being happy means."
"I don't. But I know enough to tell that you aren't."

Memento

If I had to choose a phrase to describe Harvard, I'd say "the future."

For the most part, I mean that as a compliment.

I'm not at liberty to generalize Harvard students, but I think it's safe to say that we're always thinking about the future. We build our brains and our resumes for that future in finance or medicine or law or academia or education or journalism or business. We go into hysterics figuring out which of the above we would like to in the future, and predicting our future happiness or satisfaction with said career. We are excited for the future, and we love thinking about all the ways that things can become just a little bit better if we make an effort. And though we're humble enough not to admit it, we like to think that to some extent, we are the future.

It's easy to find a dream of your own when everyone around you has theirs (though it can be quite intimidating).

I just hope we don't forget how we got to where we are and where we're going to be. Because once "we've made it," I think there's a very real possibility that we'll have lost touch with who we used to be.

I understand that the whole premise of colleges like Harvard is that they are life-changing. But apart from the academic part of it and the career aspect of it, I think we tend to overlook the fact that our value systems are also going to change. Things like our political views, our perspective, our social worlds, and our culture are all going to be affected one way or the other. You don't appreciate classical music? You wouldn't enjoy a debate about the origins of morality over jasmine tea? You don't follow what's going on in the White House? Then how can you consider yourself a Harvard graduate?

I generalize and dramatize, of course. But I still feel there's quite a bit of truth behind it.

So here's hoping that when I walk across that stage, I'll still recognize the Ryan of four years past, sitting far away in the back.

I hope he'll be smiling.

a writer

            Son, when you grow up, you can be anything you want.

            Anything?           

            Well, of course. Any kind of doctor.   

            Your parents didn't tell you to study hard and become a doctor because they wanted you to take care of them when they grow old. They wanted you to become a doctor because it would mean security and stability.

            Screw stability, you said. I love writing.

            And perhaps you'll be successful as a writer. Perhaps you won't be – success is subjective, anyhow. So long as you're happy and doing what you love, you convince yourself that it's worth it. You put up with the dingy apartment, and you learn to cope with sleep deprivation. You find ways to postpone paying the rent, and you take all the odd jobs you can fit.

            True, you may very well be the happiest person alive. But it can be hard for the people around you to understand that.

            I just want to be happy, Dad.

**

            "So I take it you want to be a writer. Well, what are you interested in?"

            "I like writing fiction," he responded.

            "I see." He paused.

            "Good luck."        

**

Do

"What makes you do the things you do? Why do you do what you do?"

Mom: I want to make the most of my time here.
Biology professor: Sex.
Lydia: So that one day I can do what I want to do.
Leon: Because I want to, damn it. This shouldn't even be a question.
Me: I don't know. I just want to be happy.

I should try asking more people this question.

the gray

i suppose there is nothing wrong with uncertainty
unfortunately supposing and believing are not the same.
"you only see things in black and white," i've been told
"you can't always expect an answer."
as if i do so because im blind to gray

i probably am blind though, in a way
but not because the rods and cones of my brain
cannot process the duller shades.
i detest mulling for too long in the gray
because im not strong enough to stay.

i changed my mind on the matter at least five times, i realize.
"yes" became "maybe" became "definitely" became "please" became "sigh."
so in that sense, i am no better than you
you who went to lunch twice to avoid a trivial confrontation
you who was so mind-numbingly sure of being unsure.

were i not already so entrenched in gray
i wouldn't have cared whether you were as well.
so perhaps that is what you desire
not a fellow man tracing circles in the dark without any conviction
but a blind man who is boneheaded enough to keep sprinting forward.

i tried to play the part, you know
i pulled out the list of action verbs and the present tense
let's do this, let's do that, do you want to.
but the verbs, while outwardly full of action
were stillborn by our mutual passivity.

that man isn't me.
me is the little boy who worries about irrelevant matters to the point of giving up
me is the newspaper boy who forcibly finds amusement in the obsolescence of his job
me is the foolish boy who interprets everything too much and too dramatically
me is the loving boy who plays with the concerns of adults without comprehending them.

so yes, i lied when i said i was confident things would work out.
i don't believe in myself or you enough to say that
because when two are trapped in the gray
moving aimlessly and cautiously
even the longest of time may not bring them to black and white.

who am i to you, i wondered
"a friend, but not romantically"
or that shoulder and arm you clung to for hours on end?
and so it was that i then decided to offer you the pureness of white
only to have it returned  another dull shade of uncertainty.
 
it's disheartening to have lost something that might have been dear to me
a friendship flirting with the chance of something more
though i guess now we'll never know.
who am i to you, i couldn't summon the courage to ask
a question i possibly never will.

yet even with all this uncertainty and ambiguity
perhaps this is the saddest part of all.
since that time what now seems so long ago
i've stopped caring about the question of who am i to you
not because i no longer wish for one or the other
or because i have already forgotten how.
no, i've given up thinking about that question
because i've realized that i already know your answer.

"I don't know."

TFZ

My computer science homework for this week: TFZ.

Love and death

I suppose it's not a particularly new idea that love and death are connected -- we see this in the phrase "til death do us part," the hilariously melodramatic Romeo and Juliet, the ending line of "What Sarah Said" by Deathcab for Cutie, and countless other pieces of culture that I am too ignorant to think of at the moment.

Evidently, there's something about the concept of love that leads us to believe that it ought to last an entire lifetime -- that is, until death.

I guess that's what scares me the most. Not the loving itself, but the unwritten lifetime contract associated with it.

You can break the contract, sure; some people even go so far as to expect it of others. But the issue is that the contract isn't just about you -- there's another person involved too. And I don't know if I can entrust myself with that much responsibility.

Of course, it's also just as likely that you are that "other person."

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My sister once pointed out to me that in French, love and death sound essentially the same: l'amour and la mort.

It might just be a coincidence.

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Operating under the assumption that couples fall in love before their 30s, choosing your significant other is something that will potentially affect 2/3 of your entire life -- a decision that took maybe a tenth of your life to make.

That worries me.

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The frightening part about death is that it's inevitable; the frightening part about love is that nothing is.

Somehow, the latter seems worse.

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I don't actually know where I'm going with this, "this" meaning a variety of things.

But I'm patient.
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Worries

"To philosophize is to learn how to die. That is because study and contemplation draw our souls somewhat outside ourselves, keeping them occupied away from the body, a state which both resembles death and which forms a kind of apprenticeship for it; or perhaps it is because all of the wisdom and argument in the world eventually comes down to one conclusion, which is to teach us to not be afraid of dying."

-Michel de Montaigne

For a while, I'd fixated myself on the problem of "What's the point of living if we're all going to die?" I had tried and failed to make sense of it, so naturally, I quickly took Camus's argument to heart (see Suicide). Life is meaningless, and that's okay.

Last night though, in a typical state of 2 AM semi-consciousness, I realized that I've been asking the wrong question the whole time. Because that first question isn't really a question at all, or at least a useful one. What's the point of life? There isn't a point. Simple as that. You either learn to accept it and move on, or you continue to wallow in your existentialist crises. 

I think the better question is this: "We're all going to die, so what's the point of worrying?"

Because why concern yourself with something that's coming anyway? It's not as if all the praying and prostrating and screaming and philosophizing in the world will stop you from dying. You might as well just stick your head in your shell and embrace the present (see Head out of shell).

The obvious answer is that we're afraid of death. We're afraid of what we cannot control. But why?  Why is it so hard to cast aside questions of purpose, of existence, of death, when we know that these questions are irresolvable? What good does it do to worry about what we cannot change?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

Granted, philosophizing about life's problems won't lead you to the answers -- those answers just don't exist. Just like how a turtle staring at the horizon will have no bearing on whether the ship arrives or not, there's nothing you can say or believe that will answer these things for sure.

But it's not all to waste, because in the process of asking all of these questions, something very interesting happens: you realize that none of them really matter.

I think this concept is ultimately what Montaigne and Driving with Plato were trying to get at. Not the interesting little details about how our lives are a timeline of check boxes and landmarks with a smattering of internal crises, but instead that the sole purpose of all this philosophizing is to accept the fact that it's useless.

Which, paradoxically, makes it anything but.

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy."

 
My answer to that question, then, is that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether life is or is not worth living, because there isn't actually an answer. And all the philosophizing in the world can't do a single thing to change that.

I think that's a beautiful thing.

Delusional

Probably because it's a straightforward conversation piece, pretty much everyone I saw this break asked me "How is college?"

I usually gave the same answer, though of course with some variation: "I'm really happy there, I like it a lot (feigned exclamation point)."

It's actually a question I asked myself a few times during the semester -- a preoccupation with the question of happiness stuck with me from high school -- and each time, I'd told myself that I was happy. Then when other people asked me, I would again say yes, I was happy.

The thing is, I didn't actually believe what I was saying at first. But eventually I did.

I wonder: maybe happiness is merely a form of self-delusion. After all, if you're deluding yourself effectively enough, it's not as if you would be able to tell the difference.

Dying

Sidestepping the political issues, I'll just assume that life begins upon birth. That means for whatever time you spent inside your mother (hopefully the whole nine months, unless you were Athena, in which case no one knows how the hell you came to be in the first place. Oh, what's that? You popped out of your daddy's head fully armed? I see...), you were presumably "dead."

So in a way, death is nothing new to us. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

Now supposedly, there are people who claim to have had dreams about being born, even as they got older (I personally haven't). Plato argues that this makes perfect sense from a biological perspective; though we may not "remember" being born, it is quite plausible that we have not "forgotten" it either -- sort of like a fossil record of where we've been.

In our case, however, the endpoint of the fossil record happens to be the same as the beginning.

Which leads to a bizarre idea: the way in which we entered the world and wrinkled the dimensions of space and time from  nonexistence is, in a sense, the reverse of dying (maybe we were all given a Max Revive while loafing around inside our mothers or something. Who knows).

Granted, I didn't ask to be born. That much is true -- none of us did. But seeing as we, along with every other living thing on this planet, have already come back from the dead once, there's really no reason not to make the most of it.

It's good to be alive.

I think that will be my philosophy for 2013.