collateral damage

I once wrote that being at home is the bread and butter to my writing. And that will continue to be true...so long as my writing remains angst-driven and teenage like. A regular Twilight novel, sans glittering skin in the sun. Being drafted into and allowed back from the war of first semester law school, it felt like a homecoming was the exact right remedy, and its sweet syrupy-ness should have lingered longer. But it wasn't. And it didn't. Again the protagonist is reduced to furious, incomprehensible salt drops in a locked bathroom, as only living with blood-bound relations can conjure. Over a fight that she wasn't even a part of. How can kids from divorces, the mother of all such fights, survive it? The spoils of a different kind of war, the children sit unnoticed amid the canon fumes. After the battle. After the conquer and divide. After the newly-minted declarations and anthems. Someone notices the kids again. Their silence the loudest all along. I wonder how they survive it. Because like a vaccine, these little bursts of regular, self-introduced venom keeps the real thing at bay. So tonight was only a decimal of what the true veterans have come back from. How do they survive their Vietnam when I can barely survive the empty words of the Cold War?

**

trial at chrismas time

I haven't written in a while, let's blame it on law school, which is, let's be fair, much more intense than undergrad, especially as we hurtle towards first round of finals. The other factor is that life has been boring as of late. But it's Christmas time, so I will do a blog post with what holiday cheer I can muster after expending much energy stressing uselessly about exams. Despite everyone's sighs over corny Christmas music, I happen to love the Christmas atmosphere. A Michael Buble rendition of a Christmas song, a hot cup of latte warming cold hands, it's hard not to smile about that picture. Santa Baby has been on replay in higher and higher frequency as I approach finals. It's the only thing that keeps me sane, that and talking with friends who are not in law school.

And let's face it, I haven't exactly let my guard down with anyone in law school yet, there haven't been any friendships that would allow me to talk about something non-law school related. I must confess this process is very very slow-starting. Maybe I'm too picky with friendships. Maybe I'm awkward around new people. Maybe I don't pick the right times and places. And it doesn't help when other people admit to running into the same blocks. (Well, it helps a little.) Because then what are we doing? We want the same things. We are in the same place. We have been whipped by the same cultural expectations and social handbooks for twenty some years. What more could there be besides motive, opportunity, and means? In law, they add up to misconduct beyond a reasonable doubt. In law school, they add up to no conduct plagued by self-doubt. When will the trial be over? Has it even started? Santa baby...bring me a winning verdict. I've been a very good law student this year.

**

red plastic cups

Sometimes I find myself longing for sparkling good times that belong to the other side of the spectrum. It was a club I couldn't crack into for a long time. In college, I did. In my giddiness, I soaked up the parties, all parties, all parties with stale beer stained air, laced with over-applied cologne and smoke from amateurishly lit cigarettes. Strobe lights whirled and gave me a headache, I whirled with them, sometimes strangers whirled with me. The moments were heady as promised. Then something happened, the fun became the same. Whenever Kanye's Stronger played for a second time, or said strangers moved on to my porcelain-skined friend, or the sticky floor had finally claimed the better part of my shoe, it was time to go home. But the more novelty slipped from me, the later I stayed. Like an addict, I needed larger doses to sustain the same high.

The next day, friends with much more sense would ask what they missed, their eyes widen and crinkle at all the right moments. As I finish with a satisfying period (a kiss, a fumble, a line that went one too far), they answer with a laugh and a head shake. With each shake, I was pushed into the sparkling world I had desperately tried to crash.

One night we were the last ones whirling on the sticky floor. 3 a.m., in an overworked, floaty white skirt, I had finally reached the end. Stronger had already been played four times, or was it five? In the haze of a lone, purple light, we plummeted toward the other end of the arc. The couple in the corner started to leave, her hand in his. Two guys sluggishly went around the room, stacking used red plastic cups, pouring dull, yellowish liquid out. I looked around. The red cups were everywhere and identical. There were so many of them. What was the point? I exhaled. I could no longer smell the beer nor the cologne. The air had infused and merged with the air in my nostrils. I desperately wanted a drink to quench a thirst (of what, I wasn't sure), but I could not pick out my own red plastic cup. They all looked the same.

**

falling fall

Two years ago I wrote about seeing leaves falling from a window, followed by a recognition of fall. And today there was a deja vu moment when I saw the same colors and motions through a window, while a cutting breeze shot through an open door, and I suddenly re-realized fall, circa 2011, New York, where grass and trees are seldom around, let alone seen.

For me, fall is so much more complicated than simple summer, which consists only of lush greens and constant chaos. Fall, on the other hand, has varying paces, temperatures, and colors, a blanket of melancholic calm that is both welcome and deflating…

For our ancestors who reaped, fall was probably much simpler, both rewarding and inviting of work. We the privileged, (circa 2011, New York) must deal with an existential crisis borne because we reap nothing at all. Occupiers have sprang up in this appropriate season, perhaps feeling an agitation to match nature, who has produced rich, multi-colored beauty, while we circle on bleak, grey concrete, fighting against fall falling upon us, fighting to deserve its scarlets and golds.

**

zero to infinity

I've stumbled upon a beautiful writer, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (coincidentally, daughter of Steve Jobs).

"In my life, I am between landmarks" she writes, "after childhood, before a book, before marriage and children, all potential."

I, too, am immersed in this period, all potential. Like the moment when you're atop a swing, poised high above the ground, about to swoosh back to earth. The feeling is so universal and curious that imitators have popped up everywhere: roller coasters that pause before a plummet, doors in horror movies that take forever to open, blowing on dice before casting them on the table, closing our eyes before an impending kiss. We love to reproduce the feeling. It's not one of objective pleasure, because it is, by definition, neutral. Before the outcome is known, it is at once good and bad, yin and yang. It is Schrödinger's Cat. A moment of pure absence, not only of physical events but of intellectual knowledge, and emotional reaction. Besides, for the risk-averse like myself, the unknown might even carry a negative value.

For all these reasons, I am not sure what the allure is behind this moment. The most obvious answer, I think, is that we have a subconscious (irrational or otherwise) belief that the future is more likely to be good than bad. For the most part, I'd like to think the outcomes do tend to our favor. Projections of our futures, happily, mostly fall within the range of realistic expectation. But I'd like to offer another reason for our fascination. I think there is inherent value in this thing masquerading as pure emptiness. In math, we are taught that Positive and Negative add to zero. But in ancient folklore, we are taught that yin and yang is what the entire world is made of. It is not nothing, but everything. It blends what normally cannot co-exist together. We exhilarate in this rare symmetry. I fancy mathematicians secretly do too--there is undoubtedly a mundane history behind the symbol for infinity, but I prefer to look at it as two, perfectly symmetrical, zeros.

**

iWait

I once wrote that if there's anything closure needs, it is the element of surprise. Let me revise that. What closure needs is actually a beginning. The beginning of Y will help you tread backwards toward X. There is nothing we do so well as putting up tremendous resistance, especially in the face of our own fate. When life drags us forward, we dig deep into the ground, leaving trenches behind the heels of our feet, we can't help but look backwards. They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill...sometimes that side of the hill is the one we just came from. Even if what we face could be cultivated into something great, who wants a fresh field for plowing when we had one that already guaranteed harvest? Even if the reaping is done and we must wait a long, long time for the next one, waiting takes such little effort, and beginning anew takes so much.

There is a crop of Steve Jobs' quotes on the internet right now, one of them is, appropriately, from a commencement speech: "… You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future."

I'm not good at connecting the dots. I venture to guess that I'm not the only one. One by one, we have to pick our feet up from the trenches and move with the wind instead of against it. We the diggers of dirt all know this. Think of the time wasted in our futile and quixotic protests. We all know that too. Yet before every cycle's beginning, I stand still for a while. Some people sprint ahead so fast both feet leap off the ground, and the wind carry them forward in those magical split seconds. They are the Steve Jobs of the world. They fly.

I. Wait.

**

New Age Old Questions

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Why did the chicken cross the street? I have two things to say about these Age Old questions.

1. Why are they all about chicken?
2. Can I add some more questions: is it better to love or be loved? To chicken out and receive love or to risk loving someone who won't love you back? To be (a chicken) or not to be (a chicken)?

People have said that love is about looking. They are right. Is there anything so painful as looking at someone you love? Is there anything so pleasurable as being on the other end? Is it so bad to be in someone else's gaze, rather than being the one gazing? What if you can't have it all, and you must choose? Why not choose to be looked at?

What's so great about crossing the road anyway?

**