|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| I sat and thought about this for a while. It should be something of a plamf-like quality, because a chirp is too untrue, a bang too cliche, a pop too promiscuous, a fizz too completely short-lived. It should be definite enough to reread on cloudy nights, and undefine enough to question on sunny days; it should contain a speckle of wit, two pinches of nostalgia, fifteen tablespoons of salt, and a glimmer of hope. But above all, in the tradition of coming-of-age posts, it should be who I was of who I am now. Perhaps then, a series of small anecdotal entries tinged with the entire kitchen collection of spices will do. A story a day as the big one-eight approaches, recalling memorable moments in time, the lessons learned, the values cherished: the complete chicken soup collection for the xangan soul. But then I found out there were two problems too many with this: Time and Asymptotes. (The former is a minor, yet persistent dilemma that just cannot be shrugged off upon realizing that it's actually quite a major problem on frantic monday-morning car rides, and that it had just evolved into a bigger major problem at two in the mornings of mondays and wednesdays, sitting and staring at the fifth page of the word processing document, angrily wondering that if Socrates was so wise, he would have just used the passive voice to save the 21st century student some headaches and sleeping time. Yet frankly, Time is such an overrated and borderline-run-on being that I refuse to give it any more attention--save the "grr" here and the "blargh" there-- than it already just received. It will only be duly noted that it is a problem, period) The latter issue of Asymptometry is the true culprit. It hopes to be explained in lengthy terms here and magically become the answer to its own problem by the end of this entry. / Backtrack / I realized that night, not quite soon after I came up with the chicken soup recipe, that I completely lack the ability and motivation to articulate the past-past seventeen years of my life, only can I do it for the the recent-past few days. Deep, deep down inside somewhere I'm sure I must have felt the "How-can-this-be?-You've-recorded-down-practically-every-moment-of-your-life-on-paper-or-elsewhere-!" thought, but my staring at the fluorescent light bulb for too long must have hindered that one brave thought's journey to the conscious brain. How can one "feel" numbness? Isn't that an oxymoron?
Ughh, can't sleep. too tired too sleep. too tired to sleep. too sleeped to tire. All this (lack of) noise sure makes one thinks insanely insane thoughts--Oh, an insane thought's coming: I actually wish I was back at my roach infested shithole of an apartment on my gang infested hellhole of a block--You're insane, shut up-- hoping whenever there was a glass shattering noise down the streets, that it didn't belong to one of our car windows--You're insane, shut up-- making frequent angry 3 a.m. police calls and afterwards cursing at the diminishing siren knowing absofuckinglutely nothing's been done--You're insane, shut up. There was an asymptote at the x-axis that kept the function from crossing into the positive quadrants in those years. Sometimes I still wonder whether that asymptote should be named the (0,0) coordinate, as it was the origin to everything else. Not surprisingly, the answer to this mathematical conundrum was a completely unmathematical one. They entered my life, and while two of them were quite the future mathematicians in their own rights, their efforts weren't enough to make the function deviate from its regular asymptotic behavior and cross that x-axis. But for every smile (-854, infinity) every hyped chortle (-2,-5), every bare-foot badminton game (-0.35, -.76), card game (-.0011, -.0048), camera war (-.0000219, -.0000562), the function inched its way closer and closer to (0,0). That Super-Awesome Great Migration (second to the Great New York Migration of course) created the first deviation in asymptotic behavior. Here, in such a school and environment, were books no longer used to block off punches or as convenient doorstoppers, but actually--in fits of unheard-of actions-- read. Indeed, the function didn't just cross, it danced, fluctuated, and oscillated like a crazed trig graph, right pass that x-axis asymptote, right into the fourth (+,-) quadrant, for the first (+,+) quadrant would be too unrealistic of a leap. (The single joy I get out of writing in mathematical terms comes from the fact that a function can actually cross asymptotes and obliterate the very definition of such a being, according to the nonsensical doctrines of calculus, just as long as it doesn't make a habit out of crossing too many asymptotes in its lifetime. Annoying as hell a doctrine to remember on test days, but fun to think about every other day.) /Un-backtrack/ Sadly, being such an obedient and submissive function to the house-laws of mathematics, it did not dare to cross another asymptote--a vertical one, this time situated at x=19--ever again. Perhaps in less than a week, on a midnight, it might. In all its time lounging in the fourth quadrant, its great oblivious leaps eventually had to slow down to be very like the motion of a half-paralyzed snail slugging its way towards infinity when it meets that insidious, looming x=19 asymptote line. It still is slugging, inching its way up slowly by the hundred-thousandths decimal places, but never even contemplating about crossing. If this is what becoming an official, whoopie-doopin-doo adult is like, I will have none of it. (Ah, we lie, we lie.)In truth, all those hundred-thousandth and even ten-millionth decimal places probably matter more to me than any large positive interval gaps I've experienced. The Big Move, the Great New York Migration, that was huge. Learning and unlearning English, assimilating and fighting the capitalist-lifestyle, that was huger than huge. Meeting them, meeting you, and You, him, him, and Her, One, and everyone, that was unequally huger than the last huge. So connectively huge it's hard to feel that hugeness, much less articulate into a series of disconnected anecdotal entries. There is no coming-of-age entry after all. This post was a lie. But I must say, there is a moment in every yawn, every bustling and hustling shuffle, every bored gaze, that our eyes meet and linger for that certain second, when the lightbulb in that 11-year old tutoree's head lights up, and he smiles, there is a moment when infinity holds its breath, when that first raindrop plops onto the puddle and happily floats there until the second raindrop falls down to consume it, only to then be consumed by the third successful drop, there is that moment of remembering the days when asymptotes did not exist. And in those moments, I feel very, very much define, and alive. Hmm, now was this an adequate plamf effect? No? Maybe you'd better destroy that ancient Cartesian plane and move onto the space-time plane. -----------------------------------------------  When I first saw these two pieces of work from the MOMA, I thought as I pressed down the camera shutter, what can they possibly want? Two years later and I still haven't the slightest clue. Methinks another visit to the museum is in order.        | | |
| The "submit" button is generally a neat, quite solid rectangular hyper-text marked-language creation designed to be uncumbersome to the enhancement of the Internet Experience. Never has it been thought of so lowly by me until the last forty eight hours and subtracting. | submit. submit. submit. | error. what? error. how? error. okay, again. I'm standing in the bathroom, stall five with the working bag hook. I love those automatic, no-touch flushable toilets and automatic, no-touch faucets QCollege has. "I seriously need to submit that thesis in by like 11", frizzy hair angel face chocolate skin One said on her phone. I blow dried my hand. (which wasn't automatic, shame). Eleven.. Eleven. Something's happening at eleven minus twenty five minutes. Oh, it's that class that I keep waiting for the teacher to return to. | submit. loading.. loading.. | The creaking sound of the opening door ran behind the water faucet and hid there until I looked up at pony tail weary face creased skin Two who came in with her usual mop and bucket. "Okay, bathroom's closed. Sanitation time. Go to bathroom on second floor. Out, out." System time-out. Please try again later. Upstairs, I am standing in the usual repeating corridors of bookshelves, a labyrinth of academic text. "Why (us)?" Who the hell knows? I want to be happy, no matter where I go. No wait. Unsubmit that. No matter where I go, I just want to be happy. Submit. 1256 characters remaining. Ugh, no good, old kiss-up paragraph it is. Submit. error. I want to be happy. error. Please try again later. I need a nap. . . . I woke up with the great misplaced desire to throw a rather pointy pencil at the Asian guy sitting two study-cubicles away from me. But when I found that the goddamn forsaken ear-deafening beeping wasn't coming from his laptop, I carefully tucked away my pencil and gave him a wtf-is-that-sound-? look. He just stared back. (some people..just do that, I figured). submit. beepbeepbeep. submit. deadline. beepbeepbeep. oh shut it. Like drugged and paralyzed lab rats in a maze, the cubicle-people and I confusedly sniffed at our left and right for the source, occasionally giving one another a someone-make-it-go-away stare at the general direction of the beeping--which was unknown. At last, being the slightly over-fed-up rat of the bunch, I stood up and scuttered angrily out, annoyed and dazed at the rapid warping of the sound into something completely more mind-numbing than before. It was probably the exact moment when I realize that the sound was occupying every square decimeter of the floor combine with the exact moment when I saw that there was not one person present--no computer-inhabitant or armchair-readers or even staircase-cellphone talkers--that I realized, the sound must be none other than, ..the fire alarm (The "wowww-aren't-we-slow" moment hasn't hit yet. I'm quite convinced it won't ever hit because I am definitely convinced that the goddamn forsaken beeping sounded more accurately like the bastard offspring of a successful dial-up connection and a police siren in the process of being burped out by a drunk cow than any legitimate fire alarm I've ever heard in school-- or any other public places for that definite matter.) Of course everyone other than us drugged, drunk, sleep deprived, or otherwise blank-face rats had evacuated eons ago and were standing outside gazing apprehensively at the clock tower building probably wondering when it'll be up in flames. Unshamelessly, the only thought occupying my mind as I begrudgingly make my way back to school was not the uncertain fate of the pretty-wonderful oval library, but whether I'll ever be able to find another quiet place to nap again. ... wowww aren't we slow and something-else-or-the-other... Yes, we are. (of course, the protagonist of the story: the library lives to lend another day.) -----------------------------------    | | |
| The morning bit: I spent two hours sticking rainbow fish on blue papered walls with matching cornflower blue scotch tape. (here's a fish, there's a fish, everywhere a fish fish~) treasure chests, library silence, markers scratching, people remarking, balloons popping, breath stopping. Indeed, what absolute. undeniable Joy. senior hall decorating day was. Through construction papers and the desire to squash underclassmen in a schoolwide contest for tackiest floor, that was our wondrous connection to one another. (everywhere a [paper fish], a [paper fish] yet no [Fish], no [Fish]. ) Outside, the autumn leaf took me back to that June afternoon. "Honey, honey up in the trees fields of flowers deep in his dreamsA day of unsuccessful sweet hunting. Crumbs cupcake shop locating mission: failed. No sweets. No candies. "Might as well make the best of it", M.Cat had said. Yes, let's. No candies, but we'll take Manhattan eye candies in Bryant Park as substitutes. We walked. A flutter breezed by. An angry taxi driver probably honked somewhere down the street and I sped up across the light. "You think it's gonna rain again?" M.Cat looked up. That was probably what she had said, I was too busy looking at my shoes trying to find a connection between the word "shoe" and the flutter. Two minutes and we reached the park entrance, greeted by the hazy lights from the old carousel. Rainbow lights in summer dusk. And Red. "--what's red? the clouds?", she asked. "Red? Nothing's red, should we sit down? Yeah. Let's." "Why here?" She was puzzled at our seating choice: next to the garbage can. I was too. . . "Ohh, I see why." She glanced back and smile. Red. Flutter. "Lead them out to sea by the east Honey, honey food for the bees"The stranger with red shoes had taken a seat on the rain damped park chair diagonally across from us. Glance one, about a 28 degree angle separated our tables. Not too far away either. Brown fitted jacket, straight jeans, tussled hair--dark, probably. "Let me see that?" M.Cat motioned to my recently purchased international idiom book. I gave it to her. Glance two, maple brown hair, tussled still, mid 20's, 'lax face, yet anxious somehow. Why. "Hahaha this is hilarious, 'to drown the fish' means 'to lose by deliberate confusion' in French", M.Cat points enthusiastically to an example phrase on some odd number page. I laughed. She laughed. Some time passed before my eyes wandered again. Glance three, on his phone, head tilted down, anxious still, texting now. Who. "Mmm, gorgeous, seems frustrated though. Been here for a while texting away. who do you think--?" I started, and she read my mind. M.Cat's eyes lit up with the usual string of misplaced empathy. "Ohh, what if he's waiting for someone?", she began emphatically. "a someone or the Someone?" "You know, his girlfriend. and what if he's waiting and she's not coming..." "A face like that does not deserve to get stood up". A superficial fact. "Or maybe she couldn't make it because it's about to rain," she started to make excuses for the imaginary girlfriend of the imaginary scenario we had envisioned for the red shoe stranger. Honey, honey out on the sea in the doldrums thinking of me"Mmhmm, yeah. could be. Or while getting caught in this pre-storm traffic on her way here, she struck up a conversation with her unusually interesting taxi cab driver and felt a stronger connection in that ten minute chat with an absolute stranger than all those supposed heart-felt midnight conversations with her boyfriend" "--and she's texting him a line of explanation each time the traffic light hits red, to let him down easy and all, explaining why it's better she should just continue riding the cab straight to home? Haha." Me on dry land thinking of he honey, honey not next to meWe cracked up audibly over our sweet-deprived yet overactive imagination. If only cab drivers can be that interesting. They might be. But somewhere deep in the recess of my mind I must have still been angry at not being able to find the cupcake shop to delve deeper on the possible wonderful hidden personality of NY cab drivers. "This is fun. Let's make up background stories for all these other strangers here." "Alrighty. That middle age man over there." M.Cat nudged her head to the direction of the 40 something years-old man who had just passed us laughing our heads off. I 'dropped' my book and turned around to pick it up. Well-dressed, newspaper in hand, a grave expression, a bit of a furrowed set of eyebrows sat on top of harsh weary eyes that still held a hint of softness to them. Or so I (over)analyzed. Even if he wanted toeven if he wanted to even if he wanted to "Probably comes here everyday to unwind after a long day from his tiring corporation job. Days after days turned into weeks after weeks which turned into years after years of doing mindless work for a mind-less boss for a mindless paycheck--" "and his children began to compete with Mr. Paycheck for their father's attention, of which he would say that if he were to win a millionaire dollar he would completely quit work and resume his fatherly duties" "Then one day--" I zoned out. The red shoe stranger was looking at us. Then, somehow I was an entity looking at myself and the scene and how our game was getting a tad over-imaginative, and that maybe we should stop before the rain starts to pour and dampen our laughters. But it was fun, I had to admit. I zoned back in. do you think he'll come back?would he come back? oh no..."--those lucky numbers he threw away. Only to see it appear on the newspaper in which he's reading now. So he's very very disappointed in his inability to tell his boss off," M.Cat finished triumphantly. "What lucky numbers? Lucky numbers for the lottery that his wife gave him but he threw away saying he doesn't waste breath on such thing? But now he found out he could have won?" "Err, wow, that works too! That woman and those kids next--" A strong gush of wind rippled over the trees. A scary apocalyptic rush filled Bryant Park and the hazy carousel light became glaring against the darkness. I suddenly realized it was either getting dark quite rapidly, or it was my fast-foward perception of the time that had frozen during our conversation. Glance four, the red shoe stranger had left. "We'll do this again some other time," I promised myself and M.Cat. Honey, honey out on the seain the doldrums waiting for meme in my boat searching for heHoney, honey food for the bees"------------------------------------- Takoyaki Power    Tiramisu power  Antioxidant power  Breakfast power   | | |
| On nights when even that single urge to nod into microsleep would not come no matter what and you stubbornly drag on living out your state of waking exhaustion hoping your body would biologically break and give in--those are the nights when the definition of your life becomes quite entirely unlike fog.
(the only thing definite about the above claim--along with all following second person pronoun statements--is the fact that it is definitely indefinite to every defined beings reading it)
This usually happens on Tuesdays. As I lie on my uncomfortably soft mattress staring into the silence and cursing the Time Tyrant, an apparition of a question would creep out from the subconscious section of my mind, only to flee the second the un-subconscious section begins its thought articulation process. On Fridays, especially rainy ones like today, that apparition revisits and usually stays for lunch. As I'm typing these words, my apparition friend is fading away by the microseconds to wisps of secondary apparitions for another insomnious night. He's no longer an apparition. He's a full fledged, fully articulative question now. He is: who is the Time Cashier?
The concept of Time being relative and tyrannously similar to the dinosaur can be almost entirely defined by conveniently complicated scientific formulas. But the true insidious being behind the time tyrant figurehead is still very much indefinite. He, I'm convinced, must be none other than the time cashier. Who else makes you feel like another customer in the Time Market waiting impatiently for the receipt of your life? Who gains from your drifting moments and makes you feel reduced to a number--double prime on good days--when one mathematically unsound nanosecond of a half minute of a quarter of an hour of a tenth of twenty days blinks away?
All those seconds on CalcBC mornings wondering where my soul dried up and sanked away to, all those minutes on Humanities seminar afternoons observing the funny correlation between the mosquito buzzing in circles around my feet and the buzz of circular arguments over half a line of text written halves of millenia ago, all that hour being distracted by the subtle expressions of One's flick of an eyebrow, One's stifled yawn, One's ever charming hair flips.
All those everything.Wasted. Evaporated. Saving lost. Stress gained. Hair loss. Rogaine.
And the question remains, who makes or loses anything from this, who is it that punches abstract digits on abstract cash registers on abstract dimensions to gain abstract profits of lost time?
The utter lack of sense above and the invading new apparitions at level is befuddling. Once again, the time cashier is punching numbers. I am losing focus, losing time, losing myself. I untruthfully do not know why I take an elective that kills me in every possible way. Because the joy of my undefined existence is CalcBC. Because it's a weakness. Because I owe it to myself. Because I hope self-conquest in this way will create long-run Good from temporary Bad. Because I spend too much time doing what I loathe, rather than what I love: the easy answer is that I am (most indefinitely) my own time cashier.
| | |
| I really wonder why I never write about what I need to write at the right time. At those moments, an inundation of words, thoughts, and screams would fill my head, and I would say: not now. can't deal with this now. it'll go away. there's other work to be done. focus.
of course, it never really goes away, just get buried somewhere under all the bits of once coherent thoughts of yesteryear. And at times like this, at this exact moment, it bursts forth, demanding to be release.
except now i'm faced with an intimidating blank text box, drooping eye lids, and the leftovers of the day's worries. and there's nothing here but trains of forced thoughts.
I hope that one day, when I wake up, as I plant my feet onto the unusually cold floor, the sensation will be shocking enough for me to snap out of this spell I've been living under. And then all those obsessive notions, those messages, those day dreams, filled with unending delusions will cease to plague my mind. I will enjoy that day's breakfast more than any other day; it will actually taste like food, and not just fuel. That day I'll look back at all the journals, letters, cards in that box and close the lid completely, smiling to myself. That day I will go hug, apologize and cry to those I turned away from in my spell. And if that day were to happen as I imagine, then they would accept me back, flaws and all.
that day won't come for a long time. Admitting that hurts, but it's the the first step. the second is being brutally honest with myself. (that is still a step in progress)
sometimes it's forced upon us to be so open and honest; often times that must be written within 250 words or less, or with similar instructional manners. it's hard to train our senses to redirect that passion aimed at formulated temporary success to permanent satisfaction in life. but that's what growing up is all about (probably)
I guess listening more might help, listening and standing still, instead of running away or charging ahead with both hands clasped against our ears. Those of us who throw ourselves at perfect strangers, putting our single battered heart on searing concrete and letting anyone and everyone thoughtlessly trample over it, just for the chance of finding that one person who might pick it up, dust and heal it, are the exact same as those of us who are so terrified we flee far away from anyone and everyone, building imaginary castles and forts in hope of finding that one person who might be brave enough to knock down those high walls and rescue us. It's quite something, beautiful in the sameness of those individuals, tragic in the crossing of their paths.
| | |
|
True
