nostalgia ruins

De-dandelioning. I cut my boyfriend’s hair today, effectively de-hooliganizing him. I also did his eyebrows a few days ago. He no longer looks like an unkempt dandelion. He has, as I have fondly been saying, gone from the streets to the walkway.

Nostalgia ruins. I wish somebody had taught me how to use the delete button in 2012, 2013, 2014. I organized my photos from the past 10 years, from 2008 to 2018, and every year has racked up at least 15 GB in data. Many of the photos are silly, blurry, repeats, meaningless, or all of the above. I’ve taken it upon myself to de-folder these macro folders and delete any images I wouldn’t deem scrapbook-worthy. It’s just too much to have 20,000 images per year. My life was certainly not exciting enough to warrant tens of thousands of photos. A few hundred, or a few thousand, might be apt. But tens of thousands is just overkill.

Rabbit love. I’m seriously considering buying a rabbit. This morning I scrolled through reddit r/rabbits and watched videos of bunnies saving kittens. I’d get a cat, but I’m allergic; I’d get a dog, but they smell and require too much effort; I’d get a hamster, but their lives are far too short. The amount of love that’s brought to an abrupt halt is just overwhelming. I love the way rabbits flop and do little happy binkies. I became familiar with the baby bunny in the backyard, whom I would frequently visit, and who would flip and turn when she saw me. She’s all grown up. I want a small creature to love! Later, I will go look for bunnies to peer at and learn about.

Futurama. I took the GRE yesterday after three months of prep. My brain was scrambled, a little during, mostly after, but I did fine, so I won’t be taking it again. The test was designed by IO psychologists–studies indicate that oftentimes, people score within the same range, anyways. Anyhow, it’s exciting to recognize and (gleefully) point out the ways IO psychologists make their mark within corporate, government and academia. Who knew they designed the army test, ASVAB, and made waves from there?

Recurring film obsession. It’s back, it’s back, it’s back. The film obsession I couldn’t shake off four years ago. I’d really like to travel and take photographs, but I’m just recovering from a severe desire to stay put. So I think it’d be a happy compromise to explore some artsy neighborhoods and photograph those, and to simply keep my film camera on hand.

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Medley | Photo Diary

Right now I’m perusing the Internet for places to develop color film. Last year, I ordered four rolls of film; that, along with my two disposable cameras, meant I had six rolls to shoot through. I have barely gotten through one. Film is expensive; I am cheap. In comparison to digital, film is pricey–each shot must be worth it. It’s time-consuming, too, sending the rolls to the lab and waiting weeks for it to arrive, if ever. (I lost a roll last year, alas) But while I peer over digital images, I value my film ones. I hang them on the wall. I milk them, post by post. I have loved film for years, and yet I have been so stingy with it.

Photography and I have had a rocky relationship the past few years. Long story short, I’ve always loved photography, dreamt of being a paid photographer, became a paid photographer, stopped liking photography. It felt corny. People would always bring up photography in conversations, ask about photography–photography, photography, photography. It felt cheap. But now I miss it. Well, not the paid part. I miss wanting to take photos, and feeling compelled to do so. I wish I’d taken more photos when I was in DC, New York, Philly, but I was on that strange photo-taker’s block. Now I’m in a still city and aching to take more pictures. Maybe I’ll just start with film–I’ll carry my film cameras around.

——

I’m really happy to be working towards this particular career path in Psychology. It’s do-able. It feels right. As much as I love creative pursuits, I’m not willing to eke out a paltry living for the rest of my life. And while I enjoyed aspects of Communication–interviewing, writing and transcribing in Journalism were rather useful skills–I was continually led towards a primary, unwavering interest: Psychology.

Now, in the interim, I’m teaching, working with a Professor who studies literacy and development, and getting to better understand this field within Psych (For any or all Psych nerds, it’s IO). I’m eyeing the Master’s; I never thought I’d pursue graduate school. But the more I learn about IO, the more crucial it seems to know. Ah! It is useful; it is fascinating; it is lucrative; it is meaningful.

——

A hodgepodge of more unrelated thoughts:

• Bojack Horseman’s rolled out a Season 5–tissues are at the ready.
• Identity V remains alluring, as usual.
• I’d like something to celebrate, just so I can drink more Bailey’s with the boyfriend.
• My student gave me pumpkin tea the other day, and ever since, I’ve been hooked.
• Boyfriend and I stumbled upon an artsy street the other day, which housed indie shops and rooftop restaurants and a Trader Joe’s.

——

One of the things that initially drew me to blogging 10 years ago was old-school style blogging, like web-logging, like jotting down journal chunks of your day-today. The online web-log, shortened to a blog. But I turned from Tumblr to WordPress, which I set up like a small artsy hub of creative expression. From time to time, though, I simply want to revert back to the old-school blog style, where my entries cover the mundane, the intangible, the thought-y, the daily. I’ll try it. Again. And again. It’s been a long time since I have written.

Bittersweet

 

It’s a bittersweet day.

Exhaustion’s hitting me in waves. At work I wrote stream-of-consciousness poems in my yellow fineapple notebook. I wrote about the way the sunlight filtered in, the way I let our presence expand, the way the green fabric folded, how I held onto time and just listened. There wasn’t much to say.

You’d think that saying goodbye would get simpler, faster, easier with time. It doesn’t. There’s that saying about being grateful for having something in life that’s difficult to let go of, and it’s true:

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

But then bittersweetness just sort of snakes its way up up up, rising like bile. And there it is again: the melodies, the memories, the abyss.

August 2017

City

The city is tired, the city is alive. The city is moving, the city lies still. A stop motion. A slow motion. When the light turns green I cross anyway, counting down the milliseconds, swiveling my sight in circles.

The city, from far away, sparkles and sprinkles and glitters and glows. Juxtapositions sit at every street corner. The homeless slump by the chatty elite, carry cardboard signs by their fine wine glasses. Angry bright lights glare. Still cold lampposts hang. I play the streets by ear, following the crowd, hoping to god that I’m moving southeast, not north.

The city overwhelms. Screams, honks, turns right because it’s right on red. Showers rain like a garden hose lite, like a childhood treat on summery southern days. Spinning and laughing in a one-piece, now cold and shuddering in jorts, jean shorts.

The city is zha. A mess. Tight cold fear plus high strung steps. I quicken my pace as the alleyways add up and it’s no longer hipster city. I hear there are Cambodian gangs by sixth and that it ain’t pretty up North but in the South it’s just fine. Just fine. Except at home, I whisper–like it’s a curse word and I’m a clean-mouthed spiritual believer–this would be the ghetto.

The city houses nail salon after nail salon. Our nail salon’s next to the gas station. Open doors. First breeze of summer wafts in. A woman with acrylic stuck in her nail drifts in, “you can remove this?” You don’t want new nails? A new coat? “Nah, just get rid of this.” Five minutes later she leaves muttering under her breath because she doesn’t want to soak them-she wants to rip them off.

The city is gritty, the city is loud, the city is terrifying, the city is striking, the city is cold. I skip down the steps to the train, slot in my coins, smile at the receiver who seems unusually patient and friendly. I pace my way back and forth as I wait stonily for the trolley.

The city is a million breaths at once, all breathing, breathing, breathing. And I’m afraid–once in love, but now just afraid.

April 2018

Reverie

There is no fine line between loneliness and solitude, only a clunky, black-Sharpie-esque streak that delineates both. Even though there are many nights I wonder if I know how to be alone, now is one fine, humid afternoon where I seek solitude. For now, I will pretend that I am the only one here surrounded by people, but not. Not in my own little head, at least–let us play make-believe.

Do you remember when that was the highlight of many days? Make believe: let’s pretend we’re this, let’s pretend we’re that. Let’s pretend that there is no now that’s now, only now that’s tomorrow, next month, next year. Let’s pretend that all the molecules in my body are melting from the dragging boredom that is time, that instead of electron-grounding it is flesh-grounding, that now it is a change of phase! melting, melting, melting into the cement floor, and nobody will ever notice.

And then: when living in dreams was once a thing. When everything felt so real in your head–the grass, the dew, even the way things smelled–you turned into a zombie. You’d vie for the next bout of sleep just so you could fall into the rabbit hole of dreams. You’d spend your waking hours wishing they were sleeping hours, of REM, of dream-state, of somebody whispering your name across a party and you hearing it.

September 2014

100 Books Reading Challenge

Started a reading challenge project mid-spring. The goal: read 100 books by summer in a year. I’m inching along, albeit at a slower pace than I’d like. Figured posting the list on my blog would hold me accountable–also, I get to share cool books!

So here’s a list of books I’ve reading; I plan to update every 10 books or so. If you have any book recommendations, I’d love to hear them! 🙂

1. One! Hundred! Demons!, Lynda Barry
2. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
4. Here, Richard McGuire
5. Zombie Survival Guide, Max Brooks
6. Burned, Ellen Hopkins
7. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy Kaling
8. Walking Dead 1, Robert Kirkman
9. Walking Dead 2, Robert Kirkman
10. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelous
11. Milk and Honey, Rupi Kaur
12. Partner Track, Helen Wan
13. Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen
14. Kafka, R. Crumb
15. Project Jennifer, Jill Rosenblatt
16. Dignity, Donna Hicks
17. Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant, Roz Chast
18. Ginny Moon, Benjamin Ludwig
19. Autobiography of Barefoot Gen, Nakazawa Keji
20. Meow Meow, Jose Fonollosa
21. Beautiful Darkness, Fabien Vehlmann
22. Phenomenal Woman, Maya Angelou
23. The Skin Above My Knees, Marcia Butler
24. Essential Poems (To Fall in Love With), Daisy Goodwin
25. Sailing Alone Around the Room, Billy Collins
26. Future Tense, Paintings by Alex Gross
    
27. Why Not Me?, Mindy Kaling
28. Thirst, Poems by Mary Oliver
29. Global Street Art, Lee Boffkin
30. Men Without Women, Haruki Murakami
31. Vintage Cisneros, Sandra Cisneros 
32. Have You Seen Marie, Sandra Cisneros
33. Woman Hollering Creek, Sandra Cisneros
34. The Quiet Eye: A Way of Looking at Pictures, Sylvia Judson
35. Blue Nights, Joan Didion 
36. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
37. This is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
38. The Embassy of Cambodia, Zadie Smith
39. Love Mad Poems, Rumi
40. The Wolves In The Walls, Neil Gaiman
41. Forms of Distance, Bei Dao
42. 73 Poems, E.E. Cummings
43. The Love Bunglers, Jaime Hernandez
44. Little Book of Little Stories
45. Shoplifer, Michael Cho
46. Rick & Morty Comics
47. Fresh Complaint, Jeffrey Eugenides
48. Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg
49. White Teeth, Zadie Smith
50. South and West, Joan Didion
51. Dear Dumb Diary
52. Stories Julian Tells, Ann Cameron
53. Stitches, David Small
54. Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
55. Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka
56. Pretty: Stories, Greg Kearney
57. Night Watch, Malin Lindroth
58. Constance and the Great Escape, Pieere Le Gall 
59. Rapunzel, Paul Zelinsky
60. Jane and the Fox & Me, Isabelle Aresenault 
61. I’ve Loved You Since Forever, Hoda Kobb
62. Corduroy, Don Freeman
63. Buck, MK Asante
64. Chemistry, Weike Wang
65. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
66. Soviet Daughter, Julia Alekseyeva
67. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
68. LIFE 70 Years of Extraordinary Photography
69. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder
70. SHOCK
71. Beijing: Imperial and Contemporary
72. Abandoned America, Matthew Christopher
73. The Polaroid Book
74. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
75. Cats, Jane Bown
76. The Photographs of Carl Mydans

中文

I’m relearning how to read and write Chinese–this time not as a stubborn child, but as a vaguely determined adult.

I’ve been Americanized beyond repair, I noted half-jokingly to my boyfriend. I have. I think English; I can only read English; I speak English. My primary language, a primary avenue of thought and communication, has been hijacked by my second language: English.

By the time I became cognizant of this (and dismayed), I’d reached the point past psychologists’ hotly debated critical period. Based on this theory, people have a limited gap during their childhood in which they can easily learn their first language. Beyond the window, however, learning languages became incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

I hadn’t learned enough about developmental psychology at the time to realize that the ability to learn language is more nuanced than that. Recent studies suggest that the window to learning language extends through adulthood.

This isn’t the main motivator for relearning Chinese, but it’s a mental block I’ve removed. It’s not that I can’t learn the language–it’s that I haven’t been trying. As time wears on, though, I can feel the demarcation between cultures becoming darker, more delineated, skewed towards Americanism. Americanism and its flat accents and clunky words; Americanism and its hot dogs and violent pride. Americanism and its wealth, its comfort, its clean-paved roads.

You can take an alligator out of a swamp, and put it in the desert, but it’ll always have come from the swamp. Said alligator can acclimate. Said alligator can learn. But said alligator will always be slightly out of place. This is a way for said alligator to murkily recall the murky swamp.

My goal is to be able to read a Chinese newspaper–eventually, to read Chinese poetry. It’s a lofty goal; I can barely recognize a handful of characters, let alone understand a headline. But I’ll learn the most common 1000 words, and chug towards my goal. The next time I go to China, I hope the signs will morph, from unrecognizable images to decipherable words, and guide me.