are you under the impression that this isn't your life?

so college has come to an end. there's a lot to talk about, but no right words. now i'm sitting at home, and like i suspected, the past 4 years feel more like a dream than anything else. if not for the detritus of the experience, i could really convince myself that i've been in some kind of coma.

it rained on graduation. i had meant to write something poignant about it, but all it really did was give me a terrible cold. and then with all the packing, and the lack of proper goodbyes, it's so easy to feel like i was being rushed out the door.

words are really not coming; thoughts are too fragmented to be put together. i've been confronting the question of how i feel, and been hitting a real wall. am i proud of what i've done? not really. do i miss being in chicago? i think i'm too close to feel that. and right now there's something nice about being home. getting away from chicago, despite all the good things and people i'm leaving behind, feels like a new start. perhaps i need that.

what is left then? the friendships maybe. but it's so difficult to base a friendship on nothing, and now that i'm so far away, it's easy to just let them disappear. i'm a little numb about all of this, as if the past has been decisively left behind, and there's no reason to ever revisit.

the memories have begun to fade already. there's simply no other way. i'll be taking a break from writing. this blog was always meant to end at some point, and i think this is it. i'll be back to bore you with my life at some point, with a different look maybe. i'll keep you all posted. but for now, it's goodbye to a past life, and time to deal with the new.

taking it hard just like you knew i would

i should feel happy about this. when i didn't want it to end, you couldn't wait to leave. all of this, this pain and anguish, all just fuck all. goodbye chicago, goodbye to wasted days of youth, goodbye to foolish hope, and goodbye to you, whether you want to hear it or not. i can only assume it doesn't matter, and i should have given up caring long ago.

i apologize for the malice. if you're reading this, it's probably not you i'm saying this to. there is a bit more to come, more level-headed stuff.

having the space to know the way it's coming down

i've always meant for this blog to accompany me throughout my college years, and now that that is drawing to a close, this blog has also run its course. it hasn't been a coherent narrative over the past few years, but in the end, i suppose it has been an accurate a reflection of what was going on in my head as i could have made it. there's a part of me who feels like i need to start collecting my thoughts, to start summarizing, or at least to try and make things make sense.

last night i was struck by the overwhelming thought that everything we choose to have we must also be ready to lose. this is something i must have always known, but never quite experienced so acutely. choosing to come here meant choosing to one day have to leave, and the latter has become so difficult. i've chosen to have a life here, which means in the end, i must be willing to put it behind.

it's the same with people to. every friend i've made in the past 4 years was made knowing that after these years, i might never see them again. perhaps a part of me never quite imagined that i would find that so painful. part of me thought that i could simply just let them go. after all, i've done the same with a lot of people before. but somehow, it all just feels different.

it should have gotten easier. in the course of a discussion with a friend, we came to an agreement that being an adult meant that we weren't suppose to be as badly stung by emotional things. we're supposed to be better at dealing with them. if that were true, then what is it that i'm feeling. perhaps it's precise this transition, this fear that after this, everything else will somehow become less profound and more literal. losing the emotional attachment we have made in our youth somehow pushes us more rapidly into adulthood, and that is an unpleasant thought.

part of me wants to simply fall off the face of the earth though, resurfacing only when all the adjustment has been completed. does it not seem so much easier if i could simply be away from everything for awhile, and figure out how to cope with being a different person?

no matter what i do you know i do it to death

if only because i don't want people visiting this to have to see my stupid commentary about current affairs that i don't really have that great of a grasp on, i'm going to write something to push the previous post off the top. which is not to say that i have nothing to say:

firstly, i saw 'art', by yasmina reza, at the steppenwolf last weekend. it's quite a marvelous little piece. not very long, not particularly deep, but it really takes a hold of the few themes it has decided to concern itself with, and digs in deeply. the characters are relatively flat, but in a way that somehow makes them endearing, and makes you associate parts of yourself with them. the conflict playing out on stage is more akin to a conflict that plays out in your mind, except with a better grasp of philosophy and artistic jargon. nice set also, in that it felt like a room that i wouldn't mind living in.

second, i've seen quite a few movies of late, old and new. a quick run through: 'wolverine' was disappointing, in that it never really seemed to engage with the title character. 'star trek' was entertaining, and reminded me of 'iron man', in that it reviewed well and received tremendous word-of-mouth publicity (i'm guilty in this case), but is clearly flawed. 'dr strangelove' is as scary/funny today as it probably ever was, and quite delightful on a big screen. 'we own the night' needs to be seen by more people, because it's really quite good. ditto for '25th hour', though the clash in narrative voice between the novelist (i've actually read the book) and spike lee does get a little distracting. 'taken' is absolute trash, and only barely tolerable due to liam neeson's amazing accent. 'herr lehmann', a film that i saw in german class, reminds me again how irritating hollywood is, in that films that are not encumbered by the hollywood system are all somehow more charming than those coming out of it. oh, and 'notorious', the old alfred hitchcock movie, is pretty good as well. that's 8 films in about 2 weeks.

third, i've been toying with this idea of late. well, clearly it isn't mine, but i've been thinking about it quite a bit. it's this idea that we determine who we are and who our friends will be simultaneously. it's really quite obvious if you think about it: you can't choose to be a certain type of person, and then also decide independently who your friends are going to be. you decide who you are, and then certain people are going to find you acceptable, and these people will be your friends. or, you could decide who your friends are, and make yourself acceptable to these people. either way, you can't resent the outcome; that's just how things are.

thinking about things this way has made me feel a lot less burdened by the need to be social. i'm pretty comfortable with who i am as a person, and i'm pretty satisfied with the friends i have as a consequence of that. i know i'm not the most popular person in the world, but i know i don't want to be. we can't be liked by everyone, it's just not possible. we just need to avoid feeling like we're somehow inferior because certain people are unwilling to accept us, because there is no benchmark for how to be a person.

so watch me separate myself from what i've separated everything else from

well recent events in singapore seem to affirm an idea that i have (which i think i stole from the framing literature): people find it so easy to latch on to world views that are not their own when it's couched in combative terms. this whole entire issue with AWARE in singapore and the conflict between "feminism" and "fundementalism" has really inspired a lot of debate.

setting aside the actual specifics of what's going on, i'm really really suspicious of all "-isms". i really don't care what the agenda is, and how universal you believe your cause to be. it's at most an institutionalized set of opinions, but just because it now has a convenient name to reference it by doesn't make it any less of a set of beliefs.

and i don't really have anything against beliefs. people should be free to believe whatever they want. but there are two problems: 1) when people use their beliefs to define who they are, 2) when people assume their beliefs make them somehow better than others. all these "-isms" make that so easy to do. it's easy to say i'm a "feminist" and somehow that means my views about a certain issue are more valid than yours. likewise with "fundementalists".

i prefer a world where people just stated their opinions, instead of hiding behind some sort of institutionalized construct. all these "-isms" make good relaying cries, but is that really what this world needs? more sources of conflict? as long as people stay behind these combative stances, the only thing we're going to get is conflict, not consensus. it's so much easier to coexist when we choose to engage each other on the same level, as humans, rather than by drawing imaginary lines in the sand to constantly subdivide what little we have into mutually exclusive units.

i don't believe in either feminism and fundementalism. women in the workplace is a reality, but so is the belief that women should stay home. homosexuality (which i also feel is somewhat unfairly tacked onto this whole thing) is also a reality, but so is the belief that it is wrong. what is there to be gained by having a shouting match over something like this? do we honestly expect someone to "win"? that's the problem with all these "-isms": like all institutions, they tend to stick around.

i accept that there is something simultaneously naive and cynical (if that's even possible) about what i'm saying. am i expousing a "why can't we be friends" philosophy? no, i don't really thing so. what i'm saying really is this: don't hide behind what you believe. don't let that fool you into thinking you know exactly what's right or wrong. all of the world is in shades of grey, and we would do so much better if we stopped trying to make things black and white.

as an aside, and to tear apart any credibility i might have: i sometimes feel that my resentment towards people who are exceedingly sure about themselves is simply a means of deflecting what i feel about my own life, which is that i've consistently failed to figure out what i want and what i should be doing, and have let all of that cause me to feel failure at every step.

it's all the same, only the names will change

haven't written here for a while. my thoughts have been coming in dribs and drabs, and they have ended up elsewhere, fragmented and difficult to make sense of. i have been writing something else too: my thesis is almost done, which gives me at least a modicum of satisfaction.

but i do have an interesting subject to bring up today. i was wondering what i would tell my 12 year old self if i met him. it's all perhaps inspired by the time traveling shenanigans on 'lost'.

i will tell him, first of all, not to worry about his vocabulary. by the time he's 16, he would have picked up a perfectly serviceable number of words that he could put to use. by the time he's 22, he'll be effectively using words like 'modicum', 'eviscerate' and 'facetious' in both writing and speech. despite the suggestion of his teachers, he will become a decent writer, and be pretty good at other academic areas too.

i would tell him to exercise more. even now i'm paying a price for my childhood sloth. i'll tell him that by the time he was 22, he'll actually enjoy the pain that comes from exerting himself. he won't believe me, but i'll try. i'll tell him that if he held back on the snackfoods now, he'll one day have a good enough metabolism that it won't matter.

i'll also tell him not to worry about not being cool. one day he'll grow up and realize it doesn't matter. he'll end up doing better than most of the kids that would make him miserable, and in his own way, figure out that he's alright. he'll become less awkward, and more interesting. less helpless and more confident. if only he believed in himself, the world had plenty of pleasant surprises waiting.

i'll tell him not let other people decide who he was. it won't be easy, but he should try. i'll tell him he'll have friends that he can count on, if he'd only stop trying to impress people who he can't. i'll tell him exactly who to watch out for, and who he's safe with. but i won't help him avoid all the unhappiness of youth, because he'll need all of those things to figure out who he was.

i'll tell him how things worked out quite alright for him. by the time he's 19, he would have traveled halfway around the world. by the time he was 22, he would have visited most of the places he'd ever dreamed about. he will be able to drive a car, cook a meal, and make intelligent conversation with members of the opposite sex. he'll fit decently into clothes, and have appropriate shoes. he'll be able to calculate a tip, and fix slightly broken toilets. he'll be able to change lightbulbs of all sorts, hang pictures and mix martinis.

he would have loved a little and lost a little. saw a little and missed a little. i will tell him he'll be happier than he's ever been, but also sadder. i'll tell him to get ready. among all the millions of little things i can tell him, nothing will be more important than this: i might not know who i am, but i get the sense that we're getting there.

well that's done. in other news, my mood has taken a turn for the bizarre. unhappy things happened, and i feel more callous about life. strangely though, i'm happy about that.

it's something that i do that make the getting through a little more painless

something that might make it to the highlight reel of this year: listening to travis play 'humpty dumpty love song' right after some guy proposed to his girlfriend on stage. she said yes, of course. i mean, who wouldn't after fran healy tells everyone to shut the fuck up so your boyfriend could propose?

anyways, travis is a much better band than i remember them. they have so much energy and enthusiasm, most of which seemed genuine. fran has just the coolest voice. it's so... scottish... and it just puts everyone at ease and in a good mood. andy is a hard rocker beneath the love songs that he mostly plays, and it really shows during the few good solos he gets. the bassist, doug, looked really cool (like all bassists seem to be) in his peacoat, while neil plays drums like a man who didn't nearly die from a spine injury.

the set list is a great mix of old and new. the j smith stuff, which i'm not too keen on, is actually really good live. the old stuff was performed with great gusto. they did 'writing to reach you' very early on, which really set the tone. 'turn' was the real sing-along song of the night, coming right at the end of the regular set. the encore was short, but ending with 'why does it always rain on me' was clearly a great choice, especially since it was actually raining outside by the time the show ended.

a great show all in all. there is a lot to be said about a band that has a decade of touring experience. they know how to show up, do their stuff well, and deal with fans. and they know when to put in just a little extra to get people coming back. i would see them again if i ever had another chance, that's for sure.