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.

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."

Praise

Praise from your family or your friends doesn't necessarily mean anything. They have a social obligation to lie to you.

Rosebush

I finally got around to rereading The Little Prince, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the rosebush story stuck out to me once again.

A lot has happened in the three years since, however.

After seeing an entire wall of roses, the fox tells the Little Prince that his rose is unique because he has tamed her. He was the one who watered her, protected her from baobabs and shielded her in plastic. For that, so the fox says, she is special to him and unique to all the world.

But then I started to wonder: what's stopping him from taming any other rose? What if not one, but two roses had miraculously appeared on his planet?

Hell, what's stopping him from taming all of the roses in that rosebush?

Because if he really wanted to, the Little Prince could have just gone ahead and installed a sprinkler system. He could have just as easily killed off baobabs for the sake of one rose or two roses or twenty roses, and as ridiculously stupid as it sounds, he could have just built a bigger plastic dome.

There really isn't anything intrinsically different about one rose to the next, and the Little Prince is well aware of that; the only difference is that she just happened to be the one he tamed first.

Then again, nearly everything is a matter of chance.

I still don't think that anybody is truly unique to all the world, like the fox suggested; there are far too many people on this planet for that to be true. Somewhere, somehow, you can find someone else similar enough to take your place in society.

With that said, there is a distinction between being unique to all the world and being unique to a certain time and place.

It's safe to say that the rose magically appearing on his planet was nothing more than random chance; any other rose could have landed there and the Little Prince wouldn't have known the difference.

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.

It's for this reason that I no longer think life becomes any less meaningful or precious once you accept that nobody is unique. If anything, the true beauty of it is the fact that out of all of the infinite possibilities, you happened to meet the people that you met.

The people you meet may not be special.

But it doesn't make them any less important.

A great man and a good man

A great man is someone who people revere and look up to.
A good man is someone that people respect because he looks them straight in the eyes.

I think I'd rather be a good man.

Attachment

I don't remember much from my first CTY experience some 5 years ago, but I do recall the director's opening words: that the friends you made there would be among the closest you would ever have.

And just like nearly every other CTYer, after the three week session, I found myself agreeing with him. Post-CTY depression was a very real thing for me; it was painful to accept that I would never see the overwhelming majority of those people ever again - people who had, by far, been the closest friends I'd ever known.

But then I went to CTY again next summer, and the summer after that, and the summer after that. And before long, I found myself questioning the nature of these friendships.

The first three or so days of every summer program, people are all trying to grab a foothold in this new society that they've suddenly found themselves in. For some, that means finding people similar to friends back home. For others, it means laboring to establish a new identity (or refining a previous identity) that allows them to try on a new persona and its accompanying social characteristics and obligations.

It doesn't matter which path you take out of social irrelevance and obsolescence. You are going to get attached. You need that foothold, and you'll grow to depend on it. Then it abruptly disappears. You pass in your room keys, you sign those t-shirts, and sooner or later, you start to miss it. You feel like a part of you has left, and you're right.

Yet this time around, I noticed that I hadn't really gotten attached at all. I didn't feel one way or the other about all these people that I would never see again. I wasn't sad, or happy, or confused. I was nothing.

My heart tells me I should be concerned.

Is it that I've forgotten how to get attached? Have I regressed to the fatalist long-term thoughts that my entire senior year was trying to remove?

Or is it that I'm afraid?

Nothing is ever a goodbye

you fell off of my address bar today.
that little gray downward arrow that I had so often pressed, only to click on your name
now bequeaths me twelve other addresses to twelve other parts of the world.

i've now seen more of what lies beyond
and it is exactly what i hoped it would be.
different, yet still familiar in all the important ways.

i don't miss you anymore.
to tell you the truth, i simply can't.
for how can i miss something that is all around me?

i saw you three weeks ago
for a week straight, specifically.
you were at work again, as usual.

a different face, a different hair style
but all the same motions and candied words
the things that i've since learned to examine more closely.

you said that you don't believe in goodbyes
that, if destiny wishes it to be so, no parting is ever permanent.
there are no goodbye's, you said. only see you later's.

but as true as your words are, you said them with the wrong reason in mind.
it isn't because destiny always brings together those who are meant to be
that nothing is ever a goodbye.

it's because you will find those same people elsewhere
in equally cute outfits, with equally beautiful faces, and just as wonderful personalities
that goodbyes don't exist.

See you later.

A close friend is a stranger

Immersed in yet another new environment, I have inevitably begun to think about my definition of a "close friend" yet again.

A year ago, I considered a close friend to be someone that I could open up to. But I've since trashed that definition.

Because in all honesty, philosophizing is one of the easiest ways to stroke your ego. Give me the opportunity, and I'll throw some of the most retarded metaphorical cockroach shit at you and make myself sound good while doing it. Put me on a platform an inch above the ground, and I'll preach to you as if I was a mile in the sky.

"Someone I can open up to" is total bull, because as I've noticed from my own behavior and the people I've met, you can open up to whoever the hell you want, and no one will think twice about it.

At least for me, I have yet to stop and stare quizzically at anyone who's opened up to me as if I were thinking "why the hell are you talking to me about this." Of course I haven't. Those kinds of conversations are a guilty pleasure for all of us. We're so infatuated with philosophical conversations because at any age, it's comforting to know that we're not alone with our existentialist crises, however idiotic they are.

So a person that I can "really talk to" (as an acquaintance of mine puts it) is no longer good enough.

-------------------------------

Around a month ago, I read a post that said "the reason we care about how people view us over the internet is because they have no social obligation to lie to us." It is from this exact post that Leon chose his definition of a stranger.

Interestingly enough, though, I'm starting to see those exact same words as my definition of a close friend: someone that I don't feel a need to lie to. With that degree of comfort and understanding, I no longer feel that apprehension for approval. I can be however goddam honest I want, and he/she will be okay with it.

And as I've seen within the last year, it's these people that I find myself coming back to.

So in that sense, strangers and friends are one and the same. Total anonymity and total intimacy, it turns out, share quite a bit in common.

Iron molds

Summer camps have always felt like continuations of the school year to me. Not so much in the actual activities or work that I do (hell, I just spent the last week being a crazy idiot), but the people that I see.

We all went to the night market the other day, and apart from the ~1000 NT dollars Leon and I threw into this one ping-pong game (the adorable prizes are shown below), the only thing I'll care enough to remember a year from now is the phallic-pineapple cake store.

We are victorious.

Aaaand here's the pineapple pastry gone wrong.

Turns out this store is a franchise.

"A piece of Gayke"

It occurred to me that at some point in time, someone out there had to ask somebody else to make those iron molds. Must have been a funny conversation.

Then again, we're all from a mold of some sort, aren't we?

There's the strange guy in your English class who does all right in school, but makes retarded noises and sings for no reason as if he was 4 years old (I'm one of these). Then there's the girl who can't resist putting her hands on some male at all times. There's the guy who is so down-to-earth that you look up to him. And there's the huge dude whose intimidating appearance belies his soft personality. I've seen these archetypes at school. And now I've seen them at AID.

I can take every person that I met last week, and connect them to people that I know back in California.

"If you are one in a million, there are 7000 people just like you."

To the inspiration of 9001 words

In all honesty, there really isn't much of a need for me to write on this page. I've been extremely open with you, and there may not be that much left for me to say.

But there are some things. The things that I, no matter how close I am to the person, simply do not have the emotional transparency to say in person. You already know that yes, I consider you my best friend, and in many ways, my only friend. What do I have to say is that, though we both say that yeah, we probably could have found another person to fill the other's place, it doesn't change the fact that, given how all the stars and dots aligned, you were that person for this young man, for this high school, for this time period.

Maybe you joined me on the other side a few years later, but even then, more than my sister and my mother, you've been the most influential in shaping my personality. I guess your peers really do mean even more in terms of maturation than the family you spend all your time with at home.

I feel that we both still have the most dramatic years of change ahead of us, however. Though at the moment, I genuinely feel like I wouldn't have become the Ryan Chow I am today if you hadn't agreed to do 7th grade drama with me, chances are that in the next four years, you're going to build an even stronger bond with your new best friend. And so will I. But there's no sense devaluing the friendship that we've built over the most critical part of our lives so far; though something else is inevitably on the horizon, I'm glad we've come full circle to learn to appreciate the present because of its temporality and fragility.

We've got our feet in the door already, man. We've both worked our fucking asses off to blow past all the bouncers, the assholes, and the thousands of other hard working Asian males to earn our spot in the house. But that's not going to be the end of our journey. We're going to climb up the ten million flights of stairs in that house, and we're going to rise to something greater. By the time we reach the top, the sun will have already set and the stars will have already come out. But shit man, those stars are going to be beautiful.

Thank you for the most empowering and influential friendship I've ever had,
Ryan Chow

column - Thomas and friends

Whatever happened to Thomas?

We used to spend hours together with my Brio railroad set, saving the wooden townsfolk from imminent starvation with the help of a roguish outlaw train (that is, an outlaw guilty of defying the laws of physics by jumping directly off the tracks in a mad dash to the town square). We used to go door to door on Halloween, blowing our train whistles incessantly until the neighbors would shoo us away with extra packets of Skittles. I can barely remember a day in my childhood when Thomas wasn’t by my side; we crossed so many bridges together – literally and figuratively.

So uh, how do you like it in my closet, Thomas?

Toy Story 3 is a brilliant movie. Almost everyone I’ve asked has loved the movie, from my parents to classmates, and for good reason. To most of us, the storybook ending did it for us and our handkerchiefs: it was the perfect ending to such an emotional ride.

Afterwards, I couldn’t help but think of all my friends when I was still a puny kid in elementary school (by friends, I mean toys.) Sure, I felt pretty bubbly inside as I left the movie theater. But at the same time, I felt this strange feeling of guilt.

It must have been good old Thomas the Tank Engine yelling at me through his cardboard box in the closet.

It’s easy to say that kids have to outgrow their toys at some point in their lives, and that’s certainly true. Who cares about their old Barbie Dolls anyway? I know I don’t. There is a reason that toys have age recommendations on them – certain toys just don’t hold any appeal once we get older. As time passes, toys often lose their novelty and just aren’t cool anymore.

Still, isn’t it a bit intriguing that we forget and abandon our toys when we feel it is no longer cool to have them around?

Because even though we’re talking about toys, isn’t the same true for our real friends? Let’s be honest; by now, most of us have already changed our group of friends at least once in our lifetime, and in the process we have disassociated ourselves from old friends, no matter how close we once were to them.
But let me be clear: in no way am I a proponent of staying the course on a burning ship. To be honest, sometimes it’s advantageous to distance ourselves from our past. Many friendships are just not meant to last, for people inevitably change. Personally, I know I’ve since grown apart from most of my elementary school friends. People change. Life moves on.

Maybe that’s the whole point of the Toy Story trilogy: enjoy a good friendship while you can, but never be afraid to let go, as all good things must eventually come to an end.

And so too must this column end.