Category: writing from college

the ontological origins of vulnerability

I feel like a splash of runny shit against a newly washed linen robe. I did a thing, and now I feel vulnerable. I want to not feel vulnerable because vulnerability is not a good feeling to feel. I’m not even sure if vulnerability is conducive to growth. If anything, I think it just makes me more intolerant towards myself for making me feel vulnerable all of the time. It is a feeling that exists. What the evolutionary origins for such a feeling to exist? Sometimes, I wish that humans weren’t social creatures. Then, I wouldn’t feel the need to feel vulnerable when I do a thing that would make me feel vulnerable. How beautiful would that change be.

I find vulnerability to be an interesting concept in the sense that you are most vulnerable when you least want to be — and that’s kind of the point. The idea of vulnerability revolves around the idea that the more you are attached to the idea of security, the more your idea of security is subject to erosion. Like finance. If there is no attachment to the idea of vulnerability, then there would be no need to fear being vulnerable. It is only when the attachment to vulnerability exists in the first place that vulnerability can consecrate.

Vulnerability is an sentiment that is created through thought. Specifically, a strain of negative thought that I will refer to as vulnerable thought. The existent of vulnerable thought introduces the sentiment of vulnerability to the consciousness. If there is no thought to introduce vulnerability to the conscious mind, then there would be no vulnerability that exists at all. Therefore, it would seem that the act of reducing vulnerability has some basis in reducing vulnerable thought. If thought is the direct cause of vulnerability, then it would seem that the reduction of the cause should lead to the reduction of the creation of the cause. After all, if the magnitude of vulnerable thought is the cause of vulnerability, then it would be true in a logical framework that the reduction of the magnitude of vulnerable thought would also reduce the magnitude of the vulnerability sentiment.

The logical framework, however, only applies to thoughts that follow the logical framework. Namely, as logical beings, all thoughts that are within our consciousness follow the logical framework. Since our self-destructive tendencies do not manifest through conscious thoughts, it is the unconscious thoughts that contain our aptitude towards creating vulnerability. Unconscious thoughts, unlike conscious thoughts, cannot be evaluated using a logical framework. Most unconscious thought acts in direct opposition to conscious thought, which would be acting against the logical framework that our consciousness privileges.

There is thought that exists in accordance to our conscious direction. There is the thought that willed into existence by our consciousness. But then, there is also the unconscious that exists in opposition to the conscious thought. Since the mind is a space where thoughts can interact with each other, the conscious thought and unconscious thought will inevitably mix with each other, breeding new thoughts. There is the byproduct of thought, which takes form as an additional conscious and unconscious thought that exists in varying degrees. The creation of the new thought is dependent on the causation of the thoughts that caused its existence. The classification of the new thought would also be dependent on the covariates between the various causes of the thought in addition to taking account the nature of the two existing thoughts. Since conscious and unconscious thoughts are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive in defining all thoughts that can exist, the covariates of these two thoughts in a thought system are also subjective the the existing covariates of other thoughts, creating an infinite feedback that alters the tendencies of all of the existing thoughts in the system in addition to the new thoughts that are created within the system.

But, to understand the shifts of equilibrium in the the thought system, is important to understand the relationship between conscious and unconscious thought and the thought system is dependent on the contradictory relationship between the two. To put it simply, the nature of the conscious and unconscious thoughts are different, and the system shifts in accordance to the contradictions found within their natures. Since it is irrational to desire vulnerability when evaluating rational self-interest in a logical framework, the conscious thought, in this context, is the force that denies the existence of vulnerability. At least, the conscious thought intends to deny vulnerability because it follows the rational framework that is its nature. It is logical to deny vulnerability its existence in the mind, and the conscious thought follows the logical instruction of the happiness instincts to not be in a state of distress.

It would be unfair, however, to characterize logical thought as the end to the conscious thought. This would be a one-dimensional characterization of conscious thought. But, because thought is an attribute and not a mode, it would be inaccurate to characterize the thought as an attribute that cannot be further meta-examined to reveal more details about the essence of thought that would not be captured through a one-dimensional characterization of thought. There is the conscious thought that follows the stream of consciousness, and then there is the the undercurrent beneath the stream of consciousness that is the unconscious thought, such as the vulnerable thought.

It is irrational, of course, to breed negative emotions when following a logical framework of that determines the optimal distribution of conscious and unconscious thought, so the conscious thought actively attempts to suppress the vulnerable thought. The rationality of the consciousness cannot tolerate the irrationality of the unconsciousness. But, similar to an undercurrent underneath the current, the existence of the undercurrent is a direct challenge to the current itself. But, when the two are in opposition, the negative sentiment overrides the positive sentiment. It is, at least, among most individuals, like me, who have developed destructive behavioral tendencies as the result imperfections in development. Within my mind, which I will take as a framework for the irrational tendencies of the human mind, it is the negative unconscious thoughts that overrule the positive conscious thoughts when the two are in conflict. The act of conscious thought attempting to suppress unconscious thought inevitably cultivates an more intense version of the unconscious thought. The self-destructive impulse feeds off of the irrationality of rationality. The rational instinct of the conscious thought believes that it is acting in accordance towards positive sentiment.

But, in such a scenario, the conscious thought is only acting in terms of rationality in terms of an instinct and not rationality in the form of meta-rationality. Through evaluating the rationality of rationality to one degree, it would be evident that the most rational act would be not to challenge the unconscious thought. The analysis of one degree of meta-rationality would reveal that the act of challenging unconscious thought would not be in the interests of rationality. But, because the stream of conscious thought is an instinct, the consciousness cannot distinguish between acts that seem rational and the acts that are actually rational.

If the rational instinct could truly evaluate the rationality of its own instinct, then it would be able to mitigate the effects of the self-destructive impulse. But, because rational thought cannot separate the rationality of its thought from the instinct of rationality, the absence of seperation would mean that it would be impossible for conscious thought to mitigate the self-destructive impulse, much less suppress unconscious thought altogether. In such a situation, it would seem that once vulnerable thought is introduced into the system of thoughts, it is inevitable that it multiplies and consumes the space in which it occupies. The rational instinct of suppressing unconscious thought would negate any possibilities of the reduction of the vulnerable thought before it had entered into the system in the first place. The spread is inevitable.

The consumption of a thought system into viral breeding ground is ontologically certain. Like epidemics, the spread of the negative thought is extremely fast. But, just like epidemics, there reaches a critical point where the infection has reached the pinnacle level of exposure. The system adapts and shifts into an environment that is unclear. There are other thoughts that are introduced into the system.

The mental space in which the negative thought habitats morphs given the direction of the stream of consciousness. The rational instinct that had sustained the negative thought in the first place no longer holds its ground. Even the instinct can be challenged by other instincts and the inevitability of change. The new environment is no longer conducive for the original negative thought. Without nourishment, the vulnerable thought will die. There are also negative thoughts that counteract existing negative thoughts. Similar to the interaction of the herpes virus and some tumors, the instinct of some negative thoughts challenges the existence of other negative thoughts. Before the herpes virus would attack an organ, it would sometimes first attack a tumor, slowly crippling an otherwise malignant force. The tumor dies, then the herpes does the destructive work it had been engineered to do. Like herpes, before long, the original negative thought is reduced to effectively non-existence.

But, before then, all I can do is wait.

what it seemed

Which is more real — the experience of love or the memory of love?

It’s a trick question. Nothing is real, especially not feelings. At least, as long as I do not believe feelings exist, they don’t. I came up with this idea in my senior year of high school, when I wanted to will myself to be less sleepy by convincing myself that sleep deprivation was not real. When I had originally applied to Penn intending to major in the Biological Basis of Behavior, it was the subject of an independent study that I wanted to do. I wanted to convince myself that nothing was real except the internal.

So, in the context of love, how should we differentiate between the internal and external experiences of love? Is there a difference at all? What should be the guiding principle in dictating what is considered a real experience in the experience of love? What is ever real, and should we even be privileging the idea of realness to be better than a state of non-realness? Why should we even think about which temporal observation of love is considered to be more real than the other? After all, they are both observations to the same experience, if not in temporal continuity.

There is this song I found on my Discovery Weekly playlist:

I’m better off without you, I’ve been tellin’ me
Everything we thought we had was never what it seemed
Better off without you, you’ve been tellin’ me
Don’t know why we always end up lost

Faime, “Lost”

What it seemed. 

I don’t know why I keep on listening to this song. I never thought I was better off losing people. If anything, it just leaves more disillusioned than I was before, and I don’t like the feeling of being disillusioned. But I still listen to the song. Perhaps, there is some part of me that believes if I listen to this song enough, then I will, one day, convince myself that there is a purpose to losing people. Otherwise, I am just losing people for the sake of losing people. And while for most of my life I had believed that the loss of connections had been inevitable, I still cannot conceive of an existence where the familiarity of existence can be reconciled with the inevitable end of that which grounds existence in familiarity.

Of course, I am living in the present, which is, in perspective, located in the future of my past. But the past is a time in which I had experienced love, and the present is a state in which I do not experience love. Because I am not experiencing love, I often reflect on the times when I had experienced love to relive the feeling of being alive through a memory. Because, at the moment, it often feels as if I am not living a real life. I have a life that happens to me, ordained to happen in such a way that cannot be escaped. I am just living that life that is and will be. The was is already gone, filtered through the distinction of experience that will ultimately inform my future experiences.

I am often reminded that I am not wanted in this world. There the is the world that I want, and then there is the absent of want that I feel from the world. Although I frequently do not feel attached to my own life anymore, sometimes, there would be something in the world that catches my attention. In in those moments of attention, I realize once again that I do have some sort of attachment to this world. But then, as per usual, the object of my attention turns away from me, leaving me slightly hurt and more disillusioned than I had been at the start. Every time I have find something that grounds me once again to this world, it slips past me once again. This is the way of the world.

It seems that so long has my existence been sustained by a sense of longing. It is mostly for something that can never be the object of my possession. The act of possessing, after all, negates the sense of longing. We can only long for the things in which we do not have. That is the idea that sustains us. And, frequently, this longing takes the form of the past. It is the nature of time passing that time cannot be reclaimed. Once a moment in time passes, it becomes the subject of longing, never ever to exist as in a moment of possession ever again. It is for this reason that time is simultaneously fleeting and arduous. We can possess time. But just for a second. But once we seize the moment (or perhaps the moment seizes us?), it becomes washed away back into the past. And we struggle to claim that which cannot be reclaimed.

Once time passes, it can only exist as a memory. The memory, being the subject of idealization, exists in a form that cannot be mistaken except as a possession of the self. The memory exists in relation to the self. But, because memories can only as long as we continue to will the memory to existence, memories can also be altered. Experiences can be misguiding. This is frequently how I conceptualize the idea of being in love. It seems that the more I attempt to articulate my feelings of being in love, the more I realize that I am erring in the space of the unreliable narrator. The act of telling and reflecting is an act of inaccuracy. But, on the contrary, the act experiencing and remembering is not an act of accuracy either.

It seems that the moment an experience happens is the moment that it is no longer able exist, at least, in an accurate manner. The experience, for the duration of an experience, has the capability of existing on its own, independent of our abilities to cause it to existence. It is in those moments that it is the experience that is seizing us. To lose the will to act — how long has it been since I have been able to lose myself to an experience? It must have been a different period in my life, when times were different. Now, it no longer seems like I have the capabilities to lose myself to a moment that is greater than me. I have reached a sensitivity to my sense of self that is no longer reconcilable with happiness. I have been chosen by Milton’s Lady Melancholy, and I cannot reject my calling.

If the experience can exist in its own temporal dimension outside the construct of seconds and hours, how is it that experiences contain some sort of power over us? What is it about the experience that transcends the ontological outlines of its metaphysical good? Time and space. Time and experience. Does that mean that experience can only exist in the purest form in the past? What is there to say about prolonged experiences? After all, there is a difference between the short experience and the long experience. A short experience could be an act spanning a couple of minutes. Like sex. A long experience could be an act spanning a couple of months. Like a relationship. But, between the two, where does the validity of experience come in?

The act of reflecting requires the absence of being. Or, more accurately, it requires the disassociation from the act of perceiving into an act of thinking. The thought navigates our mental faculties towards a dimension that is no longer existent to others in the same way the extension could be perceived regardless of the placement of thought. And so, by nature, the thought cannot exist simultaneously with the perception. This is why changes in the physical world will inevitably interrupt mental processes and changes in the mental world will inevitably interrupt the perception of the physical world. This is why we space out in the subway and miss our stop whenever we are having ourselves a think or why we immediately stop thinking whenever a cockroach crawls on our feet.

I frequently think about love similarly to how I think about experience. It is a moment that passes, and for the rest of your life, you are just attempting to replicate this experience that can no longer be reclaimed. That is the will of the world. It is the suffering that has been dictated within the definition of experience. Because, once experience happens, there is not an opportunity to re-experience. There is only more experience, but experience that is the subject of longing can never be replicated. That is the nature of experience. And, for those experience that can not be replicated, the only option is to continue to experience experiences that are similar to the initial experience or accept the suffering caused by an understanding of the impossibility to replicate experiences.

There can only be so many experiences in the world. There can be only so many times a piece of tape can be used before it becomes a used piece of tape. Seeing as though I have already become a used piece of tape, the only lifestyle I could accept for myself is to elevate the state of being a used piece of tape into something that is beautiful. But, seeing as though I am not beautiful, I find it very difficult to convince myself that I am beautiful. Much less others. This is the way of the world. I have not been chosen to be beautiful. I have not been chosen to be happy. I am just existing in the world, like I have come to realize all of those years ago. I am just existing. I am here to experience but never experience until after the experience.

How else would I be able to contextualize my life relative to the existence of time? The infinite time that is also not infinite. It is time in the sense that it is time, but it is also not time in the sense that it is immune from time. It is time that exists outside the scope of an understanding of time constructed from the understanding of time that is inherent within the understanding of time. It is an understanding of the complexities of time that are simultaneously rational yet illogical. But the illogicality of the problem of time is one of rationality because the irrationality is the subject of rationality. This is the way of the world, one of irrationality in the face of time. This the irrationality of the rational. Time and experience.

lust for life

I’ve been wanting to die lately.

I always want to die, of course, but especially lately.

It is interesting. I think about dying on a regular basis. I know how I would want to die, if I actually wanted to die, but it seems lately that I don’t actually want to die. Dying is just a thought that occurs to me. It passes, like other thoughts, and I continue to live my life until the thought of dying passes by me again. But, now, I am in another moment where I want to die. But I am writing about wanting to die, so I already know that I am not going to follow through with it. Dying would actually require the effort of dying. And, seeing as though there are very few things I can will myself to put energy into, it seems that I am not going to die today. Because I can’t be bothered to.

My thoughts of dying have been occurring more than usual lately. Of course, there are plenty of moments when I thought about dying more than I think about dying at this moment. But I would say that this is a relative high, in terms of my thoughts about dying. I thought about dying for quite a bit last semester, and I probably thought about dying more last semester than I do now during the summer. But, for some reason, I never felt the need about writing about wanting to die then. I wonder why. I’m actually experiencing a mellow desire for death compared to last semester, but I somehow have more of a need to write about it. Perhaps it stacks up, slowly, like the piling of Jenga blocks against each other until one wooden block collapses the entire tower.

It is summer. I used to think that it was the summer that brought out a happier side of my personality. I believed this so much that I would tell people that I was a different person over the summer. Now, I realized that this is an example of omitted variable bias. It is the summer now, and I am certainly not any happier than I had been in the spring. It is not the season that has affected me moods. I thought it was, but it is not. It is just by coincidence that most of my romantic encounters happened during the summer. It is just by coincidence that the seasons change along with my romantic partners. And, now, since the only love I have felt is from the indifference of the universe, I tend to also feel alienated.

I had relied on the summer coming to ease some of my intense sadness. But, as of late, it seems that this resolution is not destined to happen. Summer is not my salvation. Summer has never been my salvation. Just now, from a walk back from my friend’s flat in East Village, I understand that the summer itself has nothing to do with my feelings of happiness. There were so many happy people on my walk back. I don’t like the sight of happy people, especially when I am sad. The sight of happy people just reminds me that there really are happy people in the world. Even though I have only experienced sadness for some time, my view of the world is not the universal view of the world. There really are happy people out there. I don’t like thinking about it.

I was sad, so naturally, I was also listening to Lana Del Rey. Only Lana Del Rey can redeem my feelings as something that is beautiful. Otherwise, I am just being sad for no purpose other than to be sad. Seeing as though being sad does not feel very good, I sometimes don’t really want to be sad. But, of course, sadness is never a choice, and I end up sad anyways. Because, of course, I am sad. Of course, when I see happy people, I become sad. I am weird like that. I am so, so weird. I never understood why anybody would ever want to talk to me, much less actively want to be around me. But it is one of those mysteries of the universe that I have accepted, along with crop circles and the pyramids. Perhaps it was aliens that brought my sadness.

There was one song that popped up that captured much of my feelings. It is not that relevant, if I were to actually close-read the lyrics. But, at that moment, the song made sense to me. Before, I never quite understood what Lana meant when she referred the “lust for life” as the force “keep[ing] [her] alive” in the chorus to her title track of her album, Lust for Life. The choice of ‘lust’ had intrigued me when I had initially listened to the song. Lust, after all, refers to a physical sensation to gratify sexual desire. Sex is just one part of living, so how could a connotation of sexual desire be equated for the desire to live? I didn’t get it. But, right now, at this moment, I get it.

When I was in approaching the end of senior year of high school, as the weird kid that I was and still am, I kept on asking people to tell me the meaning of life. It is a stupid question, and I was a stupid kid. The meaning of life, after all, is not an idea that can be expressed through a means as imperfect as dialogue nor does a structure of a conversation do justice to individual sentiment. But, it is a question that continued to follow me as I continue to create new connections and understand their take on the meaning of life. But, within the three years that have passed by since my senior of high school and now, I think I finally understand the meaning of life. At least, what the meaning of life actually refers to.

The term meaning of life is linguistically flawed in many aspects. First of all, it implies that life has a meaning, which has been the subject of debate in quite a long period in literature and philosophy now. If I have felt anything in the past three years, it is the absence of meaning that life I have felt. The silence of the void. The indifference of the universe. Whatever you want to call it. The ability to perceive meaning is felt, which is, of course, an imperfect medium in assessing an idea that is supposedly objective. But, like most things in life, it does not have to be an objective statement of truth. Meaning is, inevitably, informed by past individual experiences, and because past experiences inform perceptions of meaning, then meaning is ultimately subjective by nature.

So, when I refer to meaning, in truth, it is just my meaning that I have been able to parse together within these past couple of years. It is the only thing real that I have felt in my otherwise meaningless existence. It is the only thing continues to drive me to convince me that life is worth living. Because, isn’t that all that meaning is — a justification to live?

And, seeing is that I want to die, a lot, I tend to think about why I still want to live quite a bit. After all, each question of dying is met with an implicit answer. Even if I do not reason out the exact rational for which I want to live, the answer is still implicit in my subconscious. I choose to not die because, for some reason, I still have a reason to live, which means that there is at least some facet of my life that I find meaningful, whatever that would mean. It seems to mean that I have found a part of my life that is meaningful, in theory, but there is no part of my conscious thought that would indicate so. Every string of thought seems to indicate that I do not find life meaningful, that I am ready to die. But, for some reason, I still choose to live.

I like coffee. I still drink my coffee. I still live.

Even if the answer to the question Why life? is a resounding silence, there seems to be some instinct in me that continues to will myself to live. But, where is the basis of such an instinct? All instinct, especially behavioral instincts, have origins. So where is the origin of my instinct to continue living? Was there some part in my life, perhaps in the distant past, that convinced me that life was worth living? And, if that were true, has all my life been since then just a continuance of the justification that I had forged some distant years in my past? The thought goes: Why life? Why not life? Why not, not life? And, so it goes. It is the question that questions more than it answers.

I look back in my past and remember the sensation of being in love. I miss the sensation of being in love. It seems that the only time that feel truly alive is during the times that I had been in love. It was the only time in my life when I did not think about dying. Especially during sex. I don’t think about dying when I am having sex. Or cuddling. I don’t think about dying when I am cuddling either. Only with people I love though. Sex with people I don’t love always leads to intense feelings of wanting to die. Cuddling with people I don’t love leads to even intenser feelings of wanting to die. But, in those short moments when I found myself in love, I remember the feeling of wanting to live.

Seeing as I am not in love at the moment, I no longer have the desire to live. It is just an instinct at this point. Sometimes, when I walk the streets of Manhattan, I question whether I am walking at all. It seems more appropriate to say that the streets pass by me than it would to say that I am walking through the streets. I am moving, but the world moves past me faster than any movement than I could muster. I am the snake in the ground. The world is the contorting wind that shapes me into its image. I no longer am the object of my self, and the world re-creates me in the image of its indifference. Only through the act of loving can I escape the grasp of the world. Because, without being in love, I am just slowly calcifying at the thunderous palm of the universe. Slowly, become stone. Slowly, becoming less than I was before. Slowly, dying.

Seeing the smiles of strangers would simultaneously incept feelings of envy and disgust. But, despite feeling a feeling of repulsion towards the world, even my own emotions do not feel real. That would require feeling alive. Feelings belong to the living. I am alive, of course, technically, but I suppose this is a matter of identification. I do not identify with being alive, despite being alive, because I have always thought of being alive to be more than simply having a pulse and prefrontal cortex activity. Since I do not identify with being alive, I also do not identify with facets of being alive, like feelings. I do not identify with feelings, even if I am feeling my feelings. My feelings are my feelings, but my feelings are also not my feelings. They are mine. They are not mine. They are mine. I do not accept that which is mine.

I ask myself, what is my drive to live?

When I had been a child, I was driven by earning good grades and improving at violin. When I had entered adolescence, I was driven by the desire to be admitted to a prestigious university. It seems as if all those goals were lifetimes ago. There is very little that I want from my life anymore. The resting state of my life had always been a state of indifference. I have been wandering in this world for some time now. I drift with very little substance to cling onto. Sometimes, an accomplishment would happen to me within a sea of failures that would allow me to experience the gratitude of existence for a moment. I would feel appreciative… and then, the same problems that had bothered me my entire life would come back: the loneliness, the inadequacy, the emptiness. It would seem that the sole time in my life that I consistently feel the full spectrum of life’s fulfillment is being in love.

There is very little in my life that happens when I am not in love. I go from one state of being in love to another state of being in love. There is very little substance that exists in between. Most of the time that I am not in love is dedicated towards reminiscing the times that I was in love. It is a transitory state dedicated towards the remembrance of the previous state or the realization of the next state. Between the two moments in time of being in love, it is a perpetual wait. I cannot force love. Love does not accept being forced. I continue to wait for love to happen to me. Will love ever choose me once again? Defaulting to the same principles of indifference that have defined every other facet of my life, I wait to feel alive once again.

I wonder how much of my life is just waiting for love. I am waiting for love to choose me. I don’t want to want to die. It is just a feeling. It is not just a feeling. It is not a feeling. I don’t want to die. I want to die. I want to love.

two rocks in a river

I frequently find myself drifting in a river. I move where the river wants me to move. The current swells besides me during particularly uneven terrain, and the surrounding landscape changes around me as I further progress down the river towards a waterfall that will eventually be the death of me.

I can hear the bubbling of the cascade and the frothing on the impact. It is there. I cannot arc my head forwards to look at it because of some instinct in myself to keep myself afloat at all costs, but I am aware of the existence of the waterfall. Sooner or later, I will find myself drifting in the same river, except at a time when the easygoing passage that I have taken as a source of comfort for all my life will cause my death. That is the end, and by refusing to look up, I force myself in a situation wher I do not know enough about the end to perceive its distance to me but do know enough to know that is there waiting for me to fall into its grasp.

Along the river, I take all sorts of measures to try to keep myself from falling into its mouth. I cling onto objects around me, hoping that I can slow my fall along the way. Or, at the very least, to convince myself that I am doing something to keep myself occupied as I wait. Literature, music, friendship — they are all meaningless, but they allow me to believe that I am filling my life with some sort of purpose before I am swallowed by the void. Or, as of late, my career prospects.

I have two friends who are rocks. When I reach to cling onto them, there is an actual connection that is formed. It is a connection that challenges the will of the river and my spatial relationship to the flow of water. By holding onto them, I can temporarily liberate myself from the flow of the river into a motionless stasis. There, I would attempt to hold on for as long as I can. The rest of the people in my life are pieces of driftwood. They happen to approach close enough where I am able to cling onto them for a little bit. The connection is not real, but it is satisfactory enough to convince myself that there was something of substance… for a second. Before long, the driftwood, like me, is once again determined by the will of the river, and the will of the river dictates that driftwood cannot stay near me forever.

For the last couple of years in my life, I have always thought the source of my alienation was that I did not have enough rocks in my life. I wanted to add another rock to my rock collection. But I ran into two realizations on my quest to do so: the first is that it is impossible to increase the number of rocks in your life after a certain age, and the other is that increasing the number of rocks in my life will not do anything for my feelings of alienation. 

Similar to the creation of apps to address income inequality, my clinging to rocks and driftwood only alleviates the pains of loneliness and does nothing to challenge the system in which I find myself condemned to experience the same repetition of alienation I have felt all my life. And, like the majority of people including myself, I tend not to conceptualize the world relative to oppressive systems, instead focusing more on the lifestyle changes I can make to navigate a system that cannot be changed. For so long, I have navigated the world through thinking that I could genuinely change the flow of the river if I found enough rocks to cling onto or enough pieces of driftwood to create a dam. But I cannot.

I cannot “power pose” a river away.

I find it very human to refuse to see the truth. It is human to be irrational (or is this even irrational?) While the truth had been available to me all my life, I turned it down because it would shatter the illusion that had constructed my entire life around. And, being human, I do not like change, especially one that would leave me significantly more unhappy than I had been previous. It has never been that I did not know and now I know. I have always known it was there, but the truth was so frightening that I constructed another lens to see the world so I did not have to look at the unfiltered truth. Even now, I can only look at the truth with tears in my eyes, another layer of distortion so I could see something more real than whatever I had created before.

I have stopped looking for rocks along the ride to the waterfall. I have not yet replaced this lifestyle of mine with an alternative. At least, not yet. I’m sure that my abilities to rationalize irrationality will kick in some time soon. But, until then, there is no point in searching for more rocks. It is the same river with the same end, and regardless of how I live while I am drifting in the river, I, along with all that represents I, is subject to the flow of the river, however it wishes to contort and compel me. Until I discover how to alter the flow of the river, I see very little points in adding more rocks to my collection. I have seen, and accepted, that I am drifting along the river. And, now that I have seen it, I cannot unsee it.

Besides, I only have two hands for two rocks. 

the chainsmokers test

So often would my high school used to get sued by its own residents that it employed its own personal team of full-time attorneys. That was the type of high school that I went to, a high school with a large population of parents who found quite a bit to complain about… and who also happened to be acquainted with a of lawyers… or happened to be lawyers themselves.

I would arrive at this high school, Monday through Friday, as a responsible high school student, at 7:20 AM, when my bus would arrive. I would take a beeline to the cafeteria, where I would fill my Contigo thermos with coffee from the school coffee tap. I would sit down, occasionally with my friends, if I happened to have friends that morning. And, within this high school, in this cafeteria, at 7:30 AM, when I have just woken up from my 6-hour nap, when I do not have the heart to go to classes nor the heart not to go to classes, so often would I find myself sitting, drinking my coffee, and someone would come up to me, and, unsolicitedly, say to me something along the lines of, “Eww, the school coffee tastes like piss.”

Hmm…

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Like… what does that even mean? This is high school. None of us even drink coffee regularly. Except #edgy me. I was the only person I knew of that drank coffee. Not even my teachers. But I added one part milk for every part coffee. It’s more like coffee-flavored milk at that point. So, I really don’t understand. Sorry I’m bothering you with my “piss coffee”. What does it meant for the coffee I drank on a regular basis to “taste like piss”? What does coffee taste like? What does piss taste like? Have you tasted piss? Does any coffee that is not a caramel frappuccino with added sugar and substituted with soy milk taste like piss? Did I ask for your opinion on my coffee? Did I implore for your expertise? What. Does. That. Even. Mean?

Yes,
We are all entitled to an opinion, ethically speaking.

No,
Just because you have an opinion, doesn’t mean you should express it.

Especially
when
not
asked.

Using platitudes such as “good” or “bad” or “tastes like piss” does not offer any substance. Of course, it is quite elitist for me to say that because I am placing a hierarchy on what is considered to be quality conversation. But, when I hear individuals tell me (not explain to me, tell me) what is good coffee and bad coffee based off virtually no substantive insights except an entitlement to an opinion, I cannot help but to shred my soul, aggressively, into the open air.

Coffee can be burnt. There would be a sour taste without any notes that would overwhelm the entire palate. That would be bad coffee. Except, coffee is usually not burnt. If you buy coffee at a coffee shop, chances are, it’s not burnt. It is quite hard to burn coffee. You would have to really fuck up, but considering everyone (except the trainees, who are shadowing) who serves as a barista is trained in making coffee, there is very, very little burnt coffee in the world. Yet, it seems there is an overwhelming amount of “bad” coffee in the world. I would venture to say that some think the majority of coffee in the world is “bad” coffee.

They would, however, say that Wawa coffee is good. Wawa has that #brand, after all. And, in response to this idea, someone did an AP Stats project asking randomly selected students to differentiate between Wawa coffee and school coffee. They would also ask students which coffee they preferred more. It was a cool project. I followed up on this project after it was completed. I asked if there was a statistical significant bias. There was, surprisingly; people preferred the school coffee better.

I remember there was a part of my life when I would ironically talk about beverages to satirize the elitism associated with wine and coffee, discussing the “floral notes” or “earthy tones” or whatever bullshit I could come up with that was vaguely true according to a flavor table. In retrospect, I do realize that even this satire is elitism in itself, as I am constructing additional hierarchies even within the elitist world of tasting beverage. But, it is quite an undertheorized version of an aesthetic that I have been cultivating throughout my entire life: namely, that I hate elitism.

Making opinions on drinks. Of course, there is the small talk portion of it in the sense that many people drink coffee and beer, and it is easy to make a comment about coffee and beer considering that many people drink coffee and beer. I get it. No, I really don’t get it, but I can rationalize the motivation out in my head, and I find that sufficient enough.

There was a chapter in Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class titled “Pecuniary Canons of Taste”. Within this chapter, there is a part that describes his reasoning for why people make opinions on drinks. I don’t have the book with me at the moment, so I don’t have the exact quote, but to summarize, eloquently:

Rich people make opinions on drinks to flex on poor people.

The reasoning goes: rich people like to dominate society in all facets. They like to dominate society economically, they like to dominate society politically, and they like to dominate society culturally. Economics and politics is pretty straightforward. Exploit. Just do it. Sponsored by… you guessed it, Nike. There are different avenues to dominate culture. One avenue, for example, is appropriation. But, in the context of taste, the another avenue is dictating what is considered to be good taste and what is considered to be bad taste… such as, without any sort of evidence, telling people what is good coffee and what is bad coffee.

It is not a surprise that money and aesthetics are deeply linked.

It makes quite a bit of sense. Innit. Of course, my sample is quite biased. I have been exposed to rich people all of my life. There was the first half of my life, when I lived in the main line, which is one of the richest places in the entirety of the United States, attending a rich school, and then there was the second half of my life, right now, when I live in University City, attending another rich school, where the median family income exceeds $100,000/year, and the average family income exceeds even that, putting most of the student body as dependents of families the top 5% of income in the United States, given one or two standard deviations. So, yes, I am surrounded by rich people. Quite a bit.

At the end of the day, it is a matter of entitlement. To your own opinion.

Some people feel as if they deserve to speak. Some people feel as if their opinions matter, as if they deserve to be heard regardless of the actual quality of their contribution. I notice this frequently. In GBMs. In classes. It is when people feel entitled to saying something that needs to be heard. Sometimes, it takes the form of beverages. Sometimes, it takes the form of music. There is one thing to have a discussion about drinks or music. There is another thing of throwing around opinions as if your opinions mattered. Yes, you are entitled to an opinion, ethically, but that doesn’t mean you should have an opinion, necessarily. Not everything in the world requires your input.

I’ve devised a little test, as of late, to assess someone’s entitlement towards their own opinions.

I ask them, “What do you think of The Chainsmokers?”

There isn’t a correct answer. I don’t even like The Chainsmokers anymore. They still have a lot of sentimental value to me, of course. The song “Closer” had been played at every frat basement I have ever gone to during my freshman fall, and the song “Paris” captures a summer of identity restructuring with a friend that is no longer friend. But, in terms of the music I listen to nowadays, I no longer have favorable thoughts to offer to their music. Even if the album Memories…Do not Open has sentimental value to me, I no longer view the music with the same positive lens as I had before.

There is, however, a wrong answer to the question.

It goes something along the lines of, “The Chainsmokers are objectively bad.”

…as opposed to, what I consider to be perfectly fine, “I don’t like The Chainsmokers.”

Of course, there is such thing as objectively good music and objectively bad music. There is objectively good coffee and objectively good wine and objectively good beer. I’m not denying the existence of the objective. But, for vast majorities of people who lay a claim to the objective using their subjective lens, how accurate is such a statement of objectivity?

There are the music critics, whose entire careers are dedicated towards understanding music in context of other music and evaluating music through its objective metrics. They can be wrong, of course, but they can understand their subjective judgement through objective metrics. Then, there are the music aficionados, who do not necessarily write music criticism for a living but have listened to enough music and studied enough music theory and criticism to understand how songs could be studied. They can also be wrong, but they can also be right. Then, there are main-line high school students who listen to hip-hop and say the n-word when singing along to Kendrick Lamar. The question then becomes not so much when they are wrong as opposed to when are they not wrong.

The question, “What do you think of The Chainsmokers” is not a measurement of musical taste; it is a measurement of entitlement to opinion. It is a measurement of how entitled you feel to your opinion. And, if you express your opinion as if it is a fact, then you are entitled to your opinion. We construct sentences to communicate sentiment. Diction and structure construct sentences and is indicative of sentiment. When diction and structure privileges an opinion to a fact, however, it is revealing that the underlying sentiment is one of entitlement. The belief that justifies such a framework is that your opinion on topics such as music and coffee is universal fact that is considered to be true, regardless of other’s opinions. The reasoning goes: you are right, therefore everyone else who disagrees must be wrong.

An expression of opinion such as “I don’t like” or “I like” understands the subjective nature of opinions. The usage of “like”, in this case, frames the sentence as one of subjectivity. The underlying assumption of your opinion being fact is no longer present. The statement is one that understands the limitations of the individual in creating objective measurements of concepts that are limited to subjective interpretations. The statement understands that opinions are created equal with other opinions and that one opinion does not have the right to dominate over another opinion. It is frame around the I, which is an objective anchoring to the subjective thought. The entitlement is no longer present. And, if the entitlement is no longer present, then I don’t get triggered to pieces anymore.

Sorry, I’m a bit snowflake-y like that.

the roses

That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
“Save them for my funeral,” I’d said. 
My mother’s face puckered, and she looked ready to cry.
“But Esther, don’t you remember what day it is today?”
“No.”
I thought it might be Saint Valentine’s day.
“It’s your birthday.” 
And that was when I had dumped the roses in the wastebasket.
“That was a silly thing for her to do,” I said to Doctor Nolan.  

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Roses are a very powerful image to me, particularly, a powerful, sad image.

My grandparents, in their 11th story condominium next to 五棵松 subway station, had a greenhouse overlooking a field of a high school. In the distance, you could see the Beijing television tower looming over a plane of smaller buildings.

When I had been a toddler growing up in this condominium, my grandfather meticulously tended the greenhouse. Before I would wake up, he would water the plants and flowers. It was his morning ritual. Right before he would go outside to dance with his squad of other old men, he would spend some time in the greenhouse to admire his flowers. I imagine he was at peace.

There would be all sorts of flowers. All of them vibrantly shining in the humid air. Viewing the world as a child, I thought that these flowers were the most colorful things in the world.

I would ask him about the flowers. He would describe them in great detail, with a sort of pride as a poet would describe his poems. I use the metaphor of a poet because he was a poet. But, in particular, he glamorized his roses. He used metaphors I do not remember. Even though I had learned to speak Mandarin at quite a young age, I still could not conceptualize the concept of a metaphor at the time. He described them in the context of love. In retrospect, this conversation had been quite formative in terms of developing my interests in understanding love. While love is generally understood as one word in English, there are ?? words in Chinese to describe love.

He would never let me touch his roses. He said that he was afraid that I would prick my hands on the thorns, but I secretly believed that he felt too much pride for them to let me touch them.

I remember, when I had gone back to Beijing for my internship in the summer coming into sophomore year, I lived in this condominium once again. I arrived late into the night. Just landing from my direct flight to Beijing from Newark, I was eager to catch up on the sleep that I should have gotten on the plane. I found my way to the bathroom, where there were a couple of dead cockroaches laying in the sink. I was alarmed but not surprised. Then, I made my way to the furthest room from the door. It had been a three-bedroom condominium with only my two grandparents occupying it. When I had lived here as a child, the room had been designated to me.

The room had been next to the greenhouse. Although I had been tired, I still was not ready to sleep, so I opened the glass door and let the humid air wash over me as I walked into the room. Outside the window, the bright floodlights illuminated the soccer field, and there were a couple of high schoolers playing soccer below. Their shouting could be heard through the closed window. I opened the window, letting in the high-elevation summer breeze of Beijing air. Coming from being in a pressurized metal tube for the past 18 hours, I was appreciative to have any unrecycled air at all. But, I have always thought of Beijing air at night to be the cleanest of them all. I was appreciative to have that moment to myself.

The greenhouse had also doubled as the space of drying laundry in the past, and lying immediately next to the door was a metal stick with two hooks at the end used to elevate hangers with wet clothes. I used to pretend that it was a sword. I may have stabbed my grandfather with it at one point. He may have scolded my two-year-old self. I fiddled around with it once again, as I had in the past, making lunges and slashing movements into the air. The memories washed back in my mind, possession my attention. For a moment, I had been convinced it was daylight. All of my childhood memories had happened during the day. Then, I looked up. I saw the plants. Or, at least, what was left of them.

There are a few moments of intense emotion that I have felt in my life. This was one of them.

The plants were dead. All of them. I do not blame the plants. The garden had been untended for quite some time. No matter how resilient, house plants are destined to die without human care. My grandmother had passed away from cancer. My grandfather has a stroke and is now living in a nursing home. The condo in which I had spent the first couple of years of my life had not been occupied for almost a decade. And, I suppose that this was the result of the negligence.

where home is

The first restaurant that I had gone to when I returned to the main line was Sabrina’s at Wynnewood Shopping Center. I was getting brunch with a friend I haven’t seen in six months, and when we had went for brunch once in the past, it had been at the Sabrina’s at Wynnewood Shopping Center. As someone who craves comfort after being an unfamiliar environment for the past semester, I chose Sabrina’s because I wanted a source of consistency in my life. I knew, from experience, that Sabrina’s had the ability to launch me into the past.

When I had returned from London, I wanted to explore these areas that I have not willed myself to explore, such as the main line. I had quite a lot of time in London, compared, at least, to other phases in my life, and I had used a large amount of that time to walk around London to kill time. It was a phase in my life where the idea of transportation had not been defined through getting from one destination to another. While my schooling days had been defined by efficient car rides from my parents, I learned in the past semester to walk without the worry for making a deadline.

Despite defining the my life from age 5 to age 18, I do not know the main line that well. Namely, I never bothered to explore because my schooling days had been defined by hyper-efficient allocations of time. The prospect of wandering had not been present in my life until after I had gotten into colleges in my spring semester of my senior year. This space in my life had been filled rapidly, with little regard for the completeness of the discovery. It was just me experience the novelty of the world around me with my high school friends. Such was the nature of discovery.

It was not so much the act of discovery as much as the act of sharing novelty, and there is only so much novelty that can be experienced in our lives. It seems so long ago where I could view the world with excitement. Now, it seems the same to me. Everything. There is only so much more novelty that exists in the world for me, if I can find them at all. Even as I leave to spend my summer working in Manhattan, I do not view the city with the same glamour as so many people do. Similar to Esther in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, it seems quite dull to me. I should be grateful for the opportunity of living in New York, but it is all the same to me. One phase in my life transitioning into another same phase.

  • vegan brunch @ sabrina’s

When we had settled into Sabrina’s, the restaurant had been filled with… well, white people. As the only two minorities in the entire room, I found the experience to be simultaneously familiar but also illuminating. This was the main line. I had gone to restaurants in the main line since my childhood, but this was the first time that I had genuinely noticed it. The location is supposedly very liberal, but these are the “limousine liberals” that I have read about in the past. It is only liberal to the extent that liberal policies do not affect their comfortable suburban lifestyle. It is only liberal until the desire for equality of opportunity starts to affect them. It is only liberal by name.

The waitress went up and asked us if we wanted any drinks. I ordered a coffee. I craved a coffee from an American diner. She had ordered an Earl Grey tea with milk and sugar. When she came back to us for our drinks, I ordered the vegan brunch, which came with a seitan wrap with vegan cheese, pico de gallo, and fruit. I was not vegan, but I find myself more incapable of eating heavy things in the morning any longer. It seems that I am more and more incapable of enjoying the same foods that I have enjoyed in the past. She ordered a vegetable omelette with a side of turkey sausages.

The meal, with tip, came out to $20 each. It was, by far, the most expensive meal that I have had in the past 6 months. I should not have been surprised, as I had eyed the prices of my food on the menu before I ha ordered, but I did not expect the coffee I ordered without finding it on the menu to be $3. That jarred me, but I really should have expected the total to be the way it was. After all, this was the Main Line.

After brunch, I drove to Narberth Park, and we walked around the Narberth area for a bit. It is interesting. I have been to this area before a couple of times, but the same emptiness that had defined living in the suburbs of Philadelphia bothered me in a way that it had not previously. I have not been able to experience true emptiness for quite a while, where a relatively popular area does not have people passing by for hours at a time. The area is quite developed, with a movie theater that I had watched Coraline in over ten years in the past. But, walking around this area on the Sunday before Memorial Day, it was absent of people. Why is it absent of people?

I expected my perceptions of a given area, following the tradition of Romantic subjectivism in Jane Eyre, to correspond to my mental states in a given time period of my life. This area was not an exception. Coming from a place of feeling alienated, I continued to feel alienated in this region of Narberth. It was so empty. This was something that I was not used to. This is not something that I want to become used to. This was the novelty of a past that is no longer novel. This is dulled version of the excitement that I had felt in the past, in one of the few moments I felt home. Such is a moment that has passed by, leaving only me saddened by the prospect of what once was.

There is so few moments in my life where I had been truly comfortable in my surroundings, where I felt genuinely at home. But that raises the question that I have been asking all of my life: what is home?

Is home where my friends and family are?

Is home where I had fallen in love?

Or is home just an elusive dream
I have been chasing

all

my

life

?

a semester between two costas

The first meal that I had had went I arrived at London had been a bacon sandwich from the Costa Coffee next to Euston Station. It was, quite literally, a slice of bacon between two pieces of buttery bread. That was the first time that I had been proverbially pissed on.

I learned from my mistake. This is my second to last day in London, and I am now sitting at a Costa Coffee at Victoria Station. Instead of ordering the bacon sandwich, I went to the Pret upstairs to buy an almond croissant before returning to Costa to buy a coffee. It is not that I enjoy Costa’s coffee more than Pret’s coffee; they both have a sort of airy and warm quality to it that invites memories of joy, but Pret did not have an outdoor seating area. Costa did have an outdoor seating area. It is 61 degrees (F) in London with a bit of its signature overcast, and I am not about to squander such a beautiful opportunity to be outdoors.

I am currently waiting for a train to Sussex. I had forgotten to bring my collection of Sylvia Plath’s poetry, so I am quite bored at the moment. There are four tables that are occupied in this little outdoor area in front of Costa, not including me. Three are occupied by people in business formal. There is the man all the way down that is on his phone. I had asked him a couple minutes prior where I could find a Pret in the train station, and he pointed me towards the right direction. Now, I am back. He must have thought I did not find it. Then there is the table in front of me. One woman was on her laptop, one man was scribbling on a notepad, and another woman was on her white legal pad. The table besides me were speaking in French, not in business formal.

It reminds me of when I had still lived on 16 Albany Street, Troutbeck, when I had walked past the Santander London branch every morning for my classes. I had seen many vape clouds on those walks to class. I expect to see more vape clouds over the summer. Although I have not been to midtown Manhattan for about a year now, I assume that the vibe has not changed that much. It is full of the same business professionals in the same business casual. I would have to be one of those individuals in business casual. It’s not a choice in attire that I look forwards to. There is some sense of self-importance that wearing business casual invokes that I have never been able to fully articulate. It is just not a choice of clothing that I would ever pick for myself. I would hate myself if I started vaping.

Although the area where I am sitting is outdoors, it is an outdoors that is created through man’s capturing of the outside. I am covered by a curved metal semi-cylinder with three large striped windows placed in in thirds apart. The circles located at the ends of the cylinder were not present, leaving a gaping hole on either end where the trains would go through. I could feel the sun beating on my forearms through the glass above. I was not wearing the women’s Karrimor ski jacket that I had purchased at the beginning of the semester, which was probably one of the most affordable and efficient purchases of my life. The sun continues to beat.

I had started the semester at a Costa Coffee, and now I am about to end my semester at a Costa. It was a lonely semester, and I am not sure if I have grown from it. I never approached the novelty of a new city with excitement, and it seems that I have not been able to feel that excitement for some time now. It all just seems the same. I arrived here eating a bacon sandwich at a Costa, some time has passed, and now I am once again here at a Costa without a bacon sandwich. It suppose that has some semblance of learning from my mistakes. But, the more time I stay here in London, the more it seems that I am just passing by. There are points that I could remember, of course, but everything else just seems to fill the space.

So it goes. So it goes. So it goes!

It all seems so void… experience. It is an accumulation, but it is also absent. I imagine it a bit of taking an integral of f(x) = 0. Regardless of the bounds specified in the integral, it is void of substance, and that is quite similar to how towards the trajectory of my life. Regardless of how much time has passed, I am only living in accordance to f(x) = 0. Sometimes, I could have a discontinuity where I could have a point completely outside the scope of the function, but without a continuous set of points, these points can only exist independently. The integral, regardless of how many discontinuous points I can accumulate, is still void.