The Lukewarm Perspective

I’m so excited!  College.  Life is going good.

Even though paying for college is becoming a bit of a problem, I think it’s going to be fine.

I’ve pretty much forgot any sort of disappointment at not getting into Columbia.  It’s things like this I get over quickly, even if I’m miserable at first.  I’m so stoked for Cal.  Minus a little inferiority complex about getting rejected from the Ivy League, I’ve got only good feelings about going there for the next four years.

I’ve already got my roommates figured out, two good friends of mine, and there are so many people from Foothill going to Cal.  I can’t wait to be back in the Bay, and all our family friends there can’t wait for me to come back home too.  Great people, amazing culture, delicious food, excitement, happy memories, it’s all there.

Speaking of memories, I just got back in touch with one of my oldest best friends from Oakland, Ethan.  He’s at the University of Oregon right now, and it seems like things are mostly working out for him.  It brought back all these random scattered memories.  It’s funny how sometimes you need something to trigger it, and then all these little things will come rushing back.  Even though we moved apart a long time ago and have since both moved a couple times, and I haven’t spoken to him in forever, we developed literally the exact same taste in music.

But getting back to Berkeley.  Besides figuring out how to pay for it, which I’ve spent a lot of time trying to do, I’m insanely excited about it, and the thought of college in general.  All the interesting classes, the incredible campus, living in the dorms (even though after a while it will suck, at first it should be fun).  I won’t have time for everything I want to do.  I’ve already got five friends going, and I’m especially happy about going to school with Jeff, Kolya, and Megan.  I’ll be living with Jeff and Kolya, and Megan’s already found her roommate.  Although I can foresee all kinds of potential problems of living with your friends, I think it’s better than the risk of a completely neurotic roommate.  Plus there’s so much to do and I know so many people that if I need to, it’ll be easy to get out.  And I’m not worried about not meeting enough new friends.

So in other exciting news, I was invited to speak by the superintendent of my school district at the annual local Democratic Party fundraiser in June.  This was after my kickass speech at the Save Our Schools rally protesting Schwarzenegger’s $4.8 billion proposed education budget cuts.  I got so many compliments; it made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  I hope success in the adult world comes this easily– you get a little bit of a break for being young, so we’ll see how this kind of thing works out for me in the future.

I think the rest of this school year is going to shoot past me in a blur.  I’m worried about my time for the summer.  I really want to continue and even expand my volunteer work teaching science to kids.  It’s a fun volunteer project and it goes along with some of my strongest beliefs in equality in education.  But I also have to work.  And then there were all these trips I wanted to go on, most of which I won’t be able to.  And naturally I’d like just a little tiny bit of time to spend with my family, friends, and girlfriend this last summer of high school.

Oh well, I should calm down.  It’s all going to work out fine.  Mmmm life.

I knew I would get in.  I was sure.  I planned everything on it, thought about the future as if it were already set in stone.  I told my family out in New York that I would be coming back East.  I told everyone to come visit me in the city.  I always said “but I’d be perfectly happy at Berkeley too”, but I guess internally I never really thought it would come down to that.  I knew without a doubt it would happen.

But it didn’t.

Maybe I didn’t even fully realize just how much I wanted it until I found out it wasn’t going to happen.

I painted an imaginary future, the next four years of my life, and I guess more after that.  Every day I added another detail, envisioned it more clearly.  It went from dream to hope to goal to reality.  Every other possibility was ghostly and ethereal.  It was all the more real after staying there, seeing it, living it for a day.  And in an instant, it disappeared, faded away.

We’ve all experienced that moment when the rug is yanked out from under us, leaving us stumbling for footing and a firm grip on reality.  All our expectations, hopes, and assumptions.  Everything we believed to be true, the foundations of our reality, even if it wasn’t a rational belief, crumble away.  I built it all up.  I didn’t realize how fragile it was, how fragile I was, until the disappointment came.

And then I had to tell the people who told me to let them know as soon as I found out, assuming I would get in, probably because I sounded so confident myself.   At some point I’ll have to tell my dad, the fucking asshole who got me into the mindset that anything not Ivy League was a second rate school anyway– to him, even Columbia was a disappointment, not being Yale or Harvard.  I’ll have to call Waipo and Auntie Primy in New York and tell them I’m not coming.

I worked so damn hard for this, all my fucking life I’ve been working for something.  People usually don’t realize how hard I work because I make it look like I’m not.  Maybe I didn’t know what it was I was working for until the end, but I finally found what I wanted and there it went, down the drain.

Maybe I was too cocky and should’ve taken the SAT multiple times.  Maybe I should have started looking at colleges sooner so I could have known I wanted Columbia and applied early decision.  Maybe I just looked like yet another overachieving Asian.

Well fuck the Ivy League, fuck dad, fuck all the stupid prep school pricks who don’t deserve this more than I do.

Shit happens.

Where do I go from here?   Clinging to the present but burning to get out of here.  I guess that’s typical.

It’s incredible to think of how much of my life I still have ahead of me.  This step between high school in college seems so big, so momentous.  I know people who are excited beyond belief that this possibility opening up to them has finally become real, and people who are crushed and feel as if they’ve hit a dead end.  But it’s strange to think this is just one step in a long, long road.

True, it’s the next four years, at least for most of my friends.  And that’s a long time.  But if you live to be 80, that’s only 1/20th of your life.  Life takes so many strange turns, you never know where it will lead you in the end.  And anyone who knows where they’ll end up already is, in my opinion, a little bit dead inside.

Some people are trying to escape, some people are trying to be invisible.  Some are just barely getting by, struggling to stay afloat.  Some people chasing a dream, some just chasing a high.  Some are running from what they have, some running from the decisions they’ll have to make.  Some aren’t going anywhere, too afraid or too tired or too trapped to be anywhere other than where they are right now.  Some are trying to find themselves, some running from themselves, some think they already know who they are.  Some want to cut it all away, burn it down and start again, they’re so discontent they want to make a clean break with everything they have and everything they know and everything they are, create a new self and a new world.  Some can’t bear to let go, to face reality screaming in your face the deafening words “life goes on”.  Some can’t see past this horrifying moment, when they’ve built it up for so long to come crashing down with disappointment.  Some have simply stopped caring.  Some are nothing but utter confidence, unquestioning, striding forward undaunted by the enormity of a lifetime before them.  Some are stubborn, determined against the odds stacked against them, gritting their teeth and digging in their heels, pushing their shoulder against a world that seems to press down on them with heavier and heavier burdens.  Some are unsure, lost, each day drifting in a gentle constant tide towards the next, don’t know what they want and perhaps never will.   Some hate where they are, some hate who they are.  Some stand on the brink of an immense decision, torn between the futures and fantasies they run through endlessly in their minds, halted at the fork in the road.  Some feel as if they are standing at a dead end.

Love it or hate it, that’s us.  That’s who we are, where we are, right now.   But we’ll figure it out eventually.

They are old.  And we are young.  And while we’re young we’re gonna have some fun, right?  Ain’t got no time to grow old.  Life is now, tomorrow is an illusion.  Fake it till you make it.  It’s all just a game we’ve got to pay to play, so put it all in and shoot the moon.  It’s spring fuckin break.

Break.

I wonder where all my time went…

I think something ate it.

I think it was my life.

Bitch.

Life’s a bitch and then you die.

But I wish my life would slow down on eating all my time.

I need to put my life on a diet.

My life is a fat bitch.

But I love that fat bitch.

Life is a lovable fat bitch.

Not that I have a thing for fat women.

But not that I discriminate against fat women either.

Damn this is getting complicated.

Life is a complicated lovable fat bitch.

What was I getting at?

Right, put my life on a diet.

I need to do less stuff.

Stuff like this… what a waste of life.

The dumb things I do are killing the complicated fat bitch that is my life that I love.

Oh well.

The difference between:

What people want and what they need

What they love and what they understand

Who they want to be and who they are

Who they think they are and who other people see them as

What they think matters and what really does

Look around and take notes.

I’m not as misanthropic as I sound in this post.

I just wanted an excuse to use the word misanthropic.

But really, I mean this post in the most good-natured way possible.  I’m not criticizing anyone here (much), sometimes people just make me laugh.  But I don’t take myself any more seriously than I take anyone else.

The weight of the past is heavy, stifling

Think about every moment.  Every place you’ve been and gone, everyone you’ve known and lost, every instant that was so real, in its pain or pleasure, everything you knew and loved and hated and wanted and wished for in that exact point in time, every instant that is now a memory, dim with the hazy distortion only time can bring.

Everything that was your world and now has faded, ceased to exist, without trumpets or curtains or dazzling lights, but a disappearance of an old reality as the world spins on, unobtrusive and unannounced.  Replaced by the new, like an old blackboard where what was once written is barely visible beneath in ghostly letters.  A zen garden, the intricate patterns carefully raked in the sand, wiped clean to make room for the next design.  On the walls, new coats painted over the last.  Reality replacing itself endlessly as we drift idly towards eternity.

Have I left it behind? Is that wrong?  Am I even the same person anymore?  What would I have been like, having stayed, or taken another course?  Have I lost who I used to be, somehow betrayed who I used to know?  What have I forgotten?  Do I not look back enough, did I not learn the lessons I should have?  Should I go back?  It’s so different now than it was before… things change, but am I changing too fast?

People and places pass in and out of our lives.  Or maybe we pass in and out of them, choosing which doors to open, which hallways to walk down, where to turn, or pause, where to journey towards and where to leave behind.  We can physically try to retrace our steps.  But when it comes to time, the timelines of our lives, we find it’s impossible.  All we have are those hazy memories, the ghostly old writing staining the chalkboard.

That’s the way my life is going… no hitches, no bumps

I’m busy, sure, maybe not as much sleep as I should be getting, maybe a little too much work.  I’m a little worried about paying for college, a little concerned about my mom at the moment, a little sad about probably leaving everybody for the East Coast.

But everything that bugs me is a steady, slowly rising obstacle ahead, nothing to shake me or knock me off course.
Everything else is smooth.

Life is going well.   Things are, almost entirely, working out.   I’m content.

It feels strange, to be honest.  Contentment hasn’t been in my emotional range for a while.  I’m a calm person, no doubt, it takes a lot to rock my boat.  Even at times I’m stressed I can usually relax myself easily.  I’ve been emotionally steady since I was much younger.

But for the past year or so I spent most of the time snapping back and forth from depression to elation, even if I don’t always show it.  Other times I’ve simply been discontent, a slow burn of wanting what I can’t have and wishing I was what I’m not.

Now I’m at peace.  Perfectly happy with where I am, how I am, who I am.

My only worry is that sometimes I’m stretched too thin.  Not enough of myself to do everything I want to do… I’m always busy, I have a little time for everything, but not quite enough time for anything.  I see my friends but I wish I saw them more.  I spend time with my girlfriend but I wish I had more.  I hang out with my family, but I wish I was able to give them more.  I work a little, have a bit of spending cash, which is enough for my modest lifestyle, but I could always use more.  And I know this is going to be the rest of my life.  Oh well, be prepared, right?  I’m like a fuckin boyscout.

I’ll rest this summer.  Or even if I don’t really rest, I’ll decompress.

I’m not really sure what to do with myself.  I usually feel myself being pulled in one direction or another, with some overall drive, some aim, either forcing myself away from something or pursuing something.  Now I’m sort of just… here.  And I’m happy with that.  But times are strange.

I’ve been really irritable lately.  I don’t usually let it out, since I’m a fairly thick-skinned person.  But I think occasionally it shows through.  I just have less of a tolerance for people all of a sudden.

Maybe it’s just lack of sleep.  For some reason I’ve been constantly busy the past month or so.  It seems like I never get a moment to just sit and chill.  I’ve always made a point of keeping some time for myself, spending a certain amount of time sleeping or lying in silence or sitting and staring at nothing.

I don’t know why my senior year has been so busy, it’s not even really school so much as just everything.  I’m not overwhelmed, my schedule usually isn’t too much, it’s just that it’s exactly at the limit where I don’t spend the time doing nothing that I usually do.

I think doing nothing is one of the most important parts of daily life.   You need a certain amount of doing nothing to keep yourself alive and able to care and function in everything else.  If you never do nothing, all the doing everything just burns you out.  And then you can never do anything, or at least never do anything with your own full energy and willpower.  We all need time to de-stress and decompress and clarify and just step back for a moment, slow down, and see where we are and where we’re headed.  Speeding through life is every bit as hazardous to your health as speeding on the freeway.  When you move too fast you can’t think or see clearly.

Now I don’t mind living and working at a lightning pace at times.  I like the rush and bustle through most of my day.  But I need moments of dull calm to keep me sharp for the moments when I need to be at 100%.  I need a little time and space for myself to be able to be friendly and accommodating.

So I think I just need to recharge.

But what I’m worried is that maybe that’s not enough.  Maybe I’m being irritable for more than just lack of relaxation.

Oh well.

The beach today was incredible. It was more clear than I’ve ever seen it, the water a vast and dazzling blue, the warm glow glittering across the endless sheen of the calm waves. The islands stood as silhouettes against the horizon, negative space in the canvas of the painted sky, a canvas of red and orange brush strokes caressing outstretched clouds. Behind us, a little city curled up against an embrace of low hills that seemed purple in the dimming light.

Before going to the beach this afternoon, I finally submitted my application to Columbia University in New York City. It’s my first choice, and since I’m a self-assured cocky little shit, in the thoughts and plans that roll around inside my skull, I always assume I’ll get in.

The beach brought back another hint of something that’s been working its way around the corners of my consciousness for a little while now: I’m going to miss this place.

I’m really a California boy. Despite having been born in New York City and living for a couple years in Washington State, for almost all of my life I’ve lived in California. My childhood was the urban Bay Area– diverse, vibrant, a chaotic jumble of everything and everyone, culture, conflict, craziness and rebellion against authority. I love that place and it was what made me who I am, but as a twelve year old boy leaving Oakland, I tied it in my mind to everything I wanted to get away from in my childhood, and was excited and relieved to start a new life. Of course maybe that’s how everyone leaves childhood– a short break for my awkward years in Washington State, cold and alienated, angry and alone, feeling stranded in the middle of nowhere and frozen to the bone. Then back to California, this time the warm and comfortable suburban south, palm tree lined streets and endless stripmalls, blocks and blocks of little houses, hamburger joints and Mexican restaurants. These were the years of coming to comfort with myself, being happy in my own skin, letting down the guard and distrust I had always held and not being afraid to make bonds, beginning to accept close friendships and close relationships.

Home is a strange thing. But California is a nebulous concept that represents a larger idea of home for me. The laid back relaxation, the crazy rebellious streak, the narcissism and insecurity, the cosmopolitan sprawl of haphazardly arranged cultures, the need to be and know and experience everything at once, the eagerness to appear more than you are and buy more than you can afford, the golden veneer of a state not-so-shiny beneath the surface. It’s all California. And it’s all become a little bit of me.

I’m going to miss this place, the people in it, and everything it means to me. But it’s a part of me, so I’ll just bring it wherever I go like a big fuckin sunny hermit crab.

But like everywhere else I’ve been, New York will represent the next phase in my life. Even though maybe I’ll be a little homesick, I can hardly wait.

Get me the fuck out of here.

Let this house of cards collapse

Around the space I used to be

It’s all old and twisted, overgrown into itself

Turning in circles, wrestling with its own roots

Always the same, doubling back again,

It’s an ingrown world,

Infected,

Screaming and creaking and ready to fall

Somebody get me the fuck OUT of here

Won’t ask where as long as it’s now

Slip away, under, out.

…

Everything changes

But in the same direction

Down a one way road to a dead end

Lined with stop signs you just keep on ignoring

With the funny feeling like you’ve been there before

We’re walking down that road together

Long story short, it turns out we’re stupid.

Life, huh?