HanaXoXo's Xanga

5

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:06:07 GMT

1. I'm probably not going to get an A this quarter because I don't speak up in class. Not in the I-must-really-like-the-sound-of-my-own-voice way, anyway, that teachers seem to encourage by making class participation a third of your grade. Last quarter, I made it a point to say at least one thing each time. I went home exhausted; (It exhausts me that no one, no one understands that.) This time around they can shove it. I will absorb quietly and I will write and so what if I don't feel like verbalizing. So what.

2. Remember to love it. I can't recall where I heard this, but it stuck with me. Remember to love it.

3. That class last quarter? Poetry. The professor asked that each time we met, someone bring in their favorite sentence and share why it's a favorite. I had a field day with that one. Every Wednesday evening at 7pm, I fell in love in Evanston.

4. "You wanna know my favorite word?" she asked at the end of class once, adjusting her green-framed eye glasses. She thrilled me. I hung on every word that came out of her mouth. She said: Velleity. The condition of having the desire to do something with out having the actual will. I learned a lot about myself last quarter.

5. Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion. - from Seymour: An Introduction

Comprendes? Comprenda.

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 22:23:01 GMT

He asked each of us to talk about something we've read and liked, and why we liked it. The ice breaker game in the last class was to go around the room talking about where we came from. I liked this better.

My turn.

"-- and the story's so tragic but the writing so gorgeous. I can't imagine how long he took structuring each sentence...so gorgeous—it's gorgeous."

He nodded and looked at me further, eyebrows raised. In what way, he wanted to know.

Explanations.

How do you explain waiting in line for a smoothie, seeing cut up fruits behind the counter, having them remind you of the way your father cuts up yellow-red apples with a squarish knife and leaves them to brown on the plate as he eats them slowly throughout the hour as if forgetting they were there—how do you explain the tears that come of this? How do you explain sitting in the train reading a paragraph of your current book and having to pause to read and re-read that line about birds disappearing into the Yucatan sky, then making your eyes dance over furniture quickly so no one notices how they pool?

How to explain beauty?

In that moment, that bird-train moment, if someone were to ask you why you look intense, could you say, "This line—this one line." ?

Words. They are so much power and yet, there's a limit to what they can express. That or, the limit is in what we can understand about each other.

No one is perfect. Or that's just an excuse.

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:48:02 GMT

It was my senior year of college, a day like any other day except it was a week before graduation, a mixed bag kind of week of glee and regret and nostalgia. I was walking alongside the central lawn, walking like any other day the past four years of walking to and from meetings, friends, class (always late). But it was on this particular day after class, after dinner, that I first saw them—the sidewalk lamps that lined the pathway along the lawn. Planted like palm trees, these tall, iron lamps that made me stop mid-step, look up, bring my eyebrows together. Was that always there? The answer was beyond me.

And I'm like that; I'm like that (always late). I see nothing, and then everything.

When people say they're a good judge of character, that, too, is beyond me. It's like, at first and sixth glance the paint may look black but tilt it a little, offer it to light, and it's actually blue-black; brown-black; deep purple; gun metal; raw red.

And people are like that.

You can't make the call until you see what happens when the light varies, until they're tilted a little, put before fire. When they change color before your eyes you wish, you blink twice and you wish, that it was just your own eyes that deceived you. Deception? Imperfection? Exonerate by semantics?

It's a funny game. Person A criticizes Person B. At some point Person B (or C or D, independently) directs the exact same criticism towards Person A. All behind closed doors, of course, because we all want to seem nice. It's a cycle of deja vu we're not waking from—won't wake from unless we bring in mirrors. But bring in the mirrors and what will happen is, in one collective breath, oh look how nice I look. Deception? Imperfection? Wake me up, it's September's end.

"I feel like a tent that wants to be a kite, tugging at my stakes," he said.

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:02:12 GMT

There was a young man who had arrived at the Northeast Center angry and belligerent, as inclined to take a swing as you as not. He began showing up in Bill's studio and started to paint. Bill watched him become an artist, and gradually he stopped being at the mercy of his rages. He got well enough to leave the center and move to a group home. This is what he said to Bill before he left: "What is art, anyway, except not pounding on walls."

A Three Dog Life

18 Years Later

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:59:15 GMT

My father hoisted me onto the glass showcase even though my mother said not to. There was always new merchandise on display. Earrings were my thing, even at age 6, even if they were, for me, just for looking. I remember the plastic heart-hoop earrings- hot pink with the white outline stenciled along the border. I remember how they dangled from the silver hook, how exciting and adult they felt in my small hands. I remember asking my mother if I could keep them (rarely did I ask for things from her store), save them to wear when I'm 20, because surely I wouldn't come across anything so lovely again. "Pink? How about orange?" and she held up the orange twin so that I could see. I remember the wrinkle of my nose, her immediate laugh at my conviction. I had already made up my mind. I would grow up like her, bold yet unassuming, wear my hair dark and long, never sleep with it wet, scratch names of those I love on napkins while talking on the phone, always take the smallest piece of fish and never take the last ("I'm full," I'd say so no one feels bad, dropping the piece on another's plate), make great spaghetti, remember what each person doesn't eat and plan accordingly, laugh when there's pain. I would grow up and save those earrings- pink- to wear once it was time.

I went home this June. These are some things I found: refrigerator drawings; graded quizzes; diaries; more diaries; tangled friendship bracelets; Keroppi everything; a boxed puddle of colorful beads; heart-hoop earrings- pink.

My reaction was specific. I'm pretty sure I'll experience something emotionally similar on my wedding day, as hypothetical as that may be at this point. I can't explain it, but I'm pretty sure.

People like to tell me, "Just marry rich."

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:02:50 GMT

It always goes like this.

"So you want to be a writer?"
"Yes, but I would like to eat so..."
"Just marry rich."

I am not going to say how that makes me feel. Instead I'll say what it makes me think of.

It makes me think of that scene in Beauty and the Beast where Beast wants to do something nice for Belle, so he takes her to this obscure wing of his mansion, where he pushes aside curtains to reveal this big, beautiful library, the shelves, stories high of stories. "I've never seen so many books in my life," she says.

"Do you like it?"
"It's wonderful!"
"Then it's yours."

And you know what she says? Simply, "thank you so much!"

When I think of it, I like her a tiny bit less.

Every time I'm taken here, back to this scene inside my head, upon this same kind of conversation, the pause of my initial response is like a white bedsheet whipped out in the air to be laid down smooth. Quick answers that are required of small talk are a distraction when I’m still trying to figure out the real one. Maybe I can't think through things fast enough, or maybe some things are just forever pending, changing colors as they go. To pin things down prematurely for the sake of articulation seems hollow. I can't explain it but I'm desperate to find meaning in everything. Clear the weeds, dig a hole and plant until something grows. But then I look around and it's like, why don't we all have dirty cuticles?

I'll spend life watering, regardless of whether or not I can help it, regardless of whether or not I'm meant to be here to see it germinate.

you can be anyone.

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:58:02 GMT

I haven't written anything since my portfolio and I kind of hope it shows. I feel the way you'd feel not having used your legs for a couple months. When I haven't eaten, haven't slept, everyone around me can tell. I'm mean. But who can see through to that other kind of hunger, when I myself don't even know when I'm starved? (Originally "when I don't even know myself when I'm starved," but I knew the double entendre would be lost. I love language even when I have to love it quietly. God.)

I don't know what everyone's smoking- Elizabethtown is a good movie. "In that moment I knew, success, not greatness, was the only god the entire world served." I wonder about all the great interior monologue going on right now, a silent symphony of wit. Thoughts are diluted when spoken, I'm convinced. Can't the tops of people's heads be clear? Can't I float around reading thoughts in their natural habitat? Talk about poetry. It's not about intelligence either. "We got stars, though," said the small town man about his small town. Probably one of the most beautiful lines in the movie, and it had a lot. And there were maybe 4 seconds of this song in it, it was a pretty 4 seconds, I had to look it up. There are only 3 lines in the entire song, it's a pretty 3 lines. It looked me up. io (This Time Around) - Helen Stellar.

I'm walking around Rodeo Drive. Inside Chanel, a woman can't decide between two identical pairs of shoes, the difference only in the stitching, so her man-friend says, "Take both." She does. $800, each. Minutes later I'm in Dior flirting with this ring (purses never did much for me), fighting the urge to buy myself a birthday gift, and I realize, if you put my desire and the shoe woman's side by side, are they not identical? The difference only in the stitching? Should she be judged because [her man-friend] has the resources to act on the desire that is also mine, and yours, and ours? Of course it's okay to have nice things.

But we got stars, though.

A funny game we play

Wed, 27 May 2009 05:14:20 GMT

- I don't know, I'm still tired from that dinner. Meeting someone new? Ugh all the nodding and smiling and sibling listing. What's the upside? It works and you have to have a bunch of sex?
- What DO you want? Do you want to be alone for the rest of your life?
- No. I just wish I could start a relationship about 12 years in, when you really don't have to try anymore and you could just sit around together and goof on TV shows and then go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.

30 Rock

A word I'm looking for

Fri, 15 May 2009 22:38:14 GMT

I love plane rides because it's one of the few times that I think—can't help but think—about things larger than myself. The view out of the little plastic rectangle tells me—look, the world! Look how much of it there is aside from you! Look how much there is to learn and love and look after! Look how much of it is not you. Don't forget don't forget don't forget. But then we land and I pick up my things, double check for them in the seat pockets (training myself to quit losing things), file out the hatched door all reverted and zoomed in to the sight directly in front of me. And I forget.

I could live traveling. What is home, anyway, but what we cobble together out of our changing selves? Do you hear that? That is the sound of gorgeous. I'm quoting Abigail Thomas, who is amazing. Her writing is simple, not plain, lovely, not proud, amazing and amazing. In her memoir she mentions something about her dog eating a brand new litter of kittens. Eating. As in ate the kittens. In the margin I wrote in blue highlighter "WTF." That is enough for me to not like dogs, straight up. WTF.

Lately I've been thinking of God in terms of Ultimate Author. Can you imagine maintaining over 6 billion storylines simultaneously? Each of them infinite in that ancestry and progeny factor into a single storyline (past shapes us) so it's 6 billion simultaneous plots, sometimes with their respective prequels and sequels coexisting (e.g., child, father, grandfather), the sequels themselves an ellipsis into infinity until at least the Second Coming (I guess anything goes thereafter.) Having them intertwine over and under, woven tangled twists of fate at precise moments ("coincidence"), all coming back full circle somehow, each story as unbelievable and interesting as the next, can you imagine?

In a piece I wrote in college, I gave this line to a character—I'm embarrassed to say what it was— and my professor (Tony Earley!) declared it "trite." Trite! You mean to say this feeling has been felt again and again, over-expressed to the point of cliche? It was so fresh and heavy to me (why yes, sometimes I project my own emotion)....their fears so fresh to them; it is inconceivable that everyone has felt them. Quoting Greer now. Why wasn't I able to recall things like this in biology? And my train of thought derails.

If every imaginable feeling has been felt—joy, fear, disappointment, anger, etc.—there's really not that great a range—what does it say about us? Humans. (Go humans go. Quaker Oats now.) I wonder if there are emotions that have never been identified with a word. Sometimes I think I feel something I can't put my finger on (is there a word for everything?), it's just a box of some feeling inside of me that was born of nowhere but me. But I guess everyone likes to feel unique.

Although if you think of it as God authoring 6 billion individual yet intersecting plots, unruffled as vanilla by the feat, maybe it's okay to feel that way. Maybe it's an insult not to feel that way.

Hate and Basketball

Thu, 07 May 2009 06:07:53 GMT

Wash off makeup, hair into messy ponytail, old college sweats, ice cold drink, warm spot on couch, Heat game. Happiness.

Even if I had gotten a phone call warning me about my building potentially being on fire, which I did—thanks, Dancer (Fire truck sirens? What fire truck sirens?)—I think I would've glanced back at the score one or three times before escaping the thick, neck-gripping smoke invading the door cracks. I shouldn't joke about that considering how scared I actually am of being trapped in a fire, but I guess that's what we call overcompensation. I'm the kind of person to whom ridiculous things happen, so while my fears may seem irrational they're not that implausible. I imagine grabbing my cell, laptop, a pair of pants. One time during an episode of Lost, I forget which, I decided that if I'm displaced during a disaster, I'll be wearing pants—not my house shorts—and Vandy sweater. I also decided that I wouldn't be written off as that quiet Asian girl with lots of makeup. I could at least be that quiet Asian girl with lots of makeup in a college sweater who may not be completely mentally vacant.

Lost track. I wouldn't give my dignity to watch the Heat courtside (oh, tested I have been) but I'd consider an extremity. Wade is so much fun; I'm excited to see Beasely grow; I wish I had cared when Jordan was in his day; I hate Josh Smith, Murray's 3-pointers, Bibby's game face; I hate any opposing 3-pointers, badly called flagrant fouls, the Pistons but the Mavericks more; I can't believe Hamilton still wears that mask; I enjoy the fact that the Hawks will be crushed by the Cavs; why such hatred I don't know, but basketball (and roller coasters) brings out Tourette's in me.

My Heat sweatshirt came in today. Just take all my money, Heat franchise! is what sort of happens during game commercials. All I wanted for my birthday was bragging rights. Heat '08-'09! But I must settle for my sweater.

Out of curiosity I looked up what was going on inside my head exactly 1 year ago today. Not quite what's going on here today, let me tell you. 40 minutes ago I was painting my toenails while listening to Chris Brown debating when I should use that KFC coupon. I have my days. Don't judge me.

Visiting my alma mater this weekend. And some of these good people.