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?

**

candlelights and skylines

I just realized there were no candles at my birthday this year, which means I can't do the traditional corny candles post. In a desperate attempt at a substitute metaphor, I will turn to city lights. There's just something about New York City's skyline that everyone falls in love with. Chicago. Los Angeles. None of them hold a candle (bad pun intended) to my newly adopted city.

I tried really hard not to talk New York up to myself. In some ways, I was successful. I'm realistic about its grime, its narrow spaces, and its isolation, but really, all I have done is accelerate from a crush to a love affair. Because one sees nothing and the other sees everything yet loves despite the seeing. It's like New York has taken place of the friendships that should be blossoming. It's much easier to love a city than a person.

I suppose that's what I miss from the past life. The last two years were filled with a pleasant buzz of satisfaction, grinding into the crevices, getting comfortable. Those were the candlelight years, warm, yellow, and small. Now, the lights are colder, bluer, and infinitely more powerful. The wheel has been re-invented. Granted, the beginning is always more exciting, but also more exhausting. So for one day I wished candles were back in my life again. I wished the coming revolution could fast-forward just a little bit. I wished we could skip to the next candlelight period. But then, maybe I'd be missing the bigger picture. The much bigger picture. Maybe even a whole skyline's worth.

**

stuck on B+

There's an episode of How I Met Your Mother, where Barney has a moment of rare clarity after a scotch. And he says: "I'm an B+."

That line resonated with me long after it should have been forgotten. In my elementary school, our grades (and in turn, our self-worth) hinged on one test each semester. I was always 2nd in my class. This became a joke for everyone in my family except my mother. I was always met with a slightly crestfallen face after coming home. No reprimands. No ecstatic exclaims either. Just B+.

The very last grades I had ever received in China, I was number 1 for ten minutes, until a kid yelled out his tablemate's scores, who was sick and wasn't there--the absentee had scored 3 points higher than I did. My teacher instinctively looked at me with protective pity. At that time, my dad was mere weeks away from leaving for America. And I was not to be far behind. Did it matter who was number one? Moreover, did it matter if my parents would never find out?

Still, it didn't occur to me to tell my dad anything but the truth. But when I got to the part where I had seemingly taken that elusive title, he interrupted me. "You got it!", he said gleefully. His face was pure happiness. It was so unadulterated, so simple. I did not want to dilute it.

"Yes!"

What happened next deserves its own story. To sum up, my parents found out when my friend came over and spilled the beans. I received the most memorable beating of my life, while my friend watched from our worn, blue couch. Suffice to say my lies decreased drastically after that. Lesson learned.

The other lesson, the murkier one, is that I resigned to my fate a little that day. My high school grades consisted of unblemished good grades save one French class. Then, three out of the five ivy leagues I applied to waitlisted me. Next up, law schools. Second tier. Without a first tier school, it is 99.9% certain that my dream job five decades down the road is also out of reach.

Over the summer someone said if my GPA had been better, I'd be at a better law school. Others are appalled upon hearing this, but I received it with mostly indifference. It is true. It is also too late. Not only in the sense that I cannot change my college grades, but in the sense that in the fifth grade, part of this fate had already been woven into place.

At twenty-one years old, I am too young to think anything is sealed. Consciously, I don't allow myself to think this way. But once in a while, a Barney moment escapes. And I get stuck on B+.

**

Postscript: I just reread this post and it sounds terribly whiny. I run around accusing my mother of thinking anything but the best is crap, when I am guilty of it myself. This is exactly why I found Holden from Catcher in the Rye intolerable. Is there anyone more hypocritical than the one who has everything?

**

side effects

You know that feeling when you know you’re having a great time, and you sort of leap out of that moment, float above yourself for a while, while sounds of the scene seem to have their volume lowered? And you--this floating you--think: this is happiness. When this moment is over I will remember it as happiness. You know that feeling? Of course you know it, every Lifetime movie exploits this.

I wonder if anyone's recognized happiness without dissociating this way, without separating themselves by time (memory retrieval), or by perspectives (feeling someone else's joy). It seems that happiness, that flighty temptress, must be viewed with one degree of separation. Like it's an explosive we must wear protective goggles for. Like looking directly at it would be blinding. Like it is sunshine. Or a basilisk.

I wonder what happiness, pure and unfiltered, would taste like. When someone first discovered pure oxygen, he inhaled it and found it so delicious he said it must be what the gods breathed. Of course, as a human, it also made him highly flammable. I wonder if there could be a similar ambrosia for happiness. I wonder what its consequences would be.

**

dobbin

I’m reading Vanity Fair. There’s this character, honest Dobbin, who loves another girl unconditionally, but she has given her heart away to a man who treats her like dirt. I just finished a scene where he leaves for a long time, and she doesn’t even ask where, because she, although a nice girl (perhaps the nicest in a 'novel without a hero', is too wrapped up in her good-for-nothing husband and the child he left behind. Here, Dobbin comes to bid goodbye to kind Amelia and her son.

“The cruellest looks could not have wounded him more than that glance of hopeless kindness. He bent over the child and mother. He could not speak for a moment. And it was with all his strength that he could force himself to say a God bless you. “God bless you,” said Amelia, and held up her face and kissed him.”

Thackeray always manages to distill human nature to only the essential. Who hasn’t had a Dobbin they’ve passed up? Who hasn’t been a Dobbin themselves? My heart breaks for him when she kissed him not knowing how important it was, how even the best of us get so absorbed in their own egocentric ignorance! How one-sided even the most intimate moments of life can be.

**