3.18.13

Some days you just hear a really good song and it rocks your world.

Some days your nine year-old brother asks you what he should give his girlfriend, and you're like whaaaa?

Some days you have to spill out grand soliloquies detailing your recent epiphanies when no one is around and inadvertently burn your sandwich.

Some days are Mondays. And somehow, they kind of don't suck.

I cried in French today.

And not even because French "sounds like people trying to gargle marbles".

Today in my French class (which seemed like a romantic idea to take at the beginning of the year), someone made a remark that was worthy of a Texas bumper sticker. "I think everyone in America should be fluent in English." Mme La Prof* stopped her lesson on how to say our nationalities and ethnicities en français and gave a much needed lecture on such ignorant statements. It went something like this:
"I don't care what political party you align with, you could be the most conservative person in the world, or even on the opposite end of the spectrum, but we all need some empathy. When you see someone standing at McDonald's, struggling to get their order straight, with a heavy accent and a fresh citizenship, think twice before you start judging. You guys are complaining to me about how French people and Canadians discriminate against you when you travel to their homelands, yeah? Because you're not fluent in their tongue, are you? Things aren't so easy when you don't have the upper hand."
The class was silent, and the girl who made the remark was suddenly sheepish.
"Look, there are some countries where women are completely subjugated. You might not understand that because we live in a pretty progressive country, but there are countries where women don't get the opportunity to come to school like all of you." This struck a chord with me, as a huge enthusiast for women's rights, and moreover just fundamental human rights. "So they get the chance to come to this country, to work hard, not for themselves. They never had that primary or secondary education, no, they're here for their daughters. So that their daughters can go to high school, get a degree, find a career they're passionate about, and get married, if that's what they choose, because they want to. Not because they have to."
I cried in French today, and it wasn't even because of how much I hate conjugating verbs.

My mother's parents immigrated to America from Mexico. Neither of my grandparents had the opportunity to get a secondary education, as they were forced to work as child laborers. They came to the US just before my mother was born. I can never express how grateful I'll be to them for taking such a huge step for the sake of their daughter, and futhermore, their grandchildren. I guess that short little lecture woke me up a bit. I've always considered myself to be a feminist, but that small moment where we were all just listening to my teacher was profound for me. It solidified everything I believe in, and as Sylvia Plath might say, it touched a human string in the cat's cradle of my heart. It made me realize how lucky I am to have the things I have. I've never considered marriage, as it's not really a priority to me. I've never wanted kids, simply because I feel that sort of life would never equate to happiness for me. I've always thought of myself as a freethinker, but today I realized just what that meant. I have the opportunity to do the things I want-work hard in school, study the things I'm passionate about, become what I wish to be, and seek happiness (whatever that turns out to be). I have that opportunity and I'm not letting go of it. I just wish that everyone had that same chance to pursue their happiness.

And let the record show that by crying, I mean a few tears escaped. It was merely a physical reaction to an emotional stimulus.
Illustration credits to Nick Lu
*my teacher

Get Louder

A while ago, I brought home this really awful book, Are The Kids All Right?; something I found in the free section of my library. It's this patronizing, indignant novel cataloging the "satanical", "brainwashing" effects of kids being exposed to hard rock. It was written in the 1970s. I have now realized that it's a bad idea to get books from the free section...UNLESS you're in the mood to turn something disgustingly bad into something kind of, sort of awesome.

Said book in all its glory

I decided to start ripping out pages and turning them into banners, paper cranes, etc.

I'm thinking I'll do some sort of stop motion with all these cranes soon.

As I was skimming through the novel, I stumbled on this really great quote. I read it completely out of context so it was probably just something a guitarist said to a drummer, but I took it to mean something kind of profound.

"Our eternal goal in life is to get louder." How great is that? Maybe I should give the ranty book a second chance? I think I'll just continue belting out Arcade Fire whilst ripping out pages.

Friday Nights with Bill and Ray

This is the sort of thing that ensues when I get bored in English.

(In a bar somewhere in Chicago, two men in their late twenties lament about their mundane problems. All over a few beers.)

Bill: She was the type of person that got tattoos that said "peace" or something in Chinese. 

Ray: You're kidding me. (has a tattoo of marijuana on his neck)

Bill: Not even. And you know what's really rich? 

Ray: Hmm?

Bill: She said she was a Sagittarius within ten seconds of introducing herself.

Ray: HAHAHA!

Bill: That just about made me get up and leave and make her pay for her damn tempeh, but, you know...

Ray: I know. But you're a nice guy.

Bill: Something like that. 

Ray: (shakes his head in frustration) Working at the burger joint is so tiring, man. It's like every day there's gotta be somebody that 's gotta take it out on me because they caught their boyfriend cheating or they got laid off or they dry cleaner screwed up their favorite suit. It's like, all I wanna know is if you want fries or onion rings, you know what I'm sayin'?

Bill: (nods sympathetically and takes a drink) I feel ya. The office is a drag too.

Ray: I get home, man, and it's a different side of me. At work I'm all smiles and "would you like ketchup with that?", but I walk in that front door and I gotta let it out. Try being quiet for once, calms you down. I've gotta relax sometimes, you know? 

An Evening of Awesome

Looking For Alaska was the first book that I read. I mean really read. Everything before that had just been stories and strings of words, but Looking For Alaska was truly deserving of the word beautiful. Since I first read that book, John Green has become something of a hero to me. During the summer of 2011, I discovered nerdfighteria and the phrase that has been a constant refrain of mine,"Don't Forget To Be Awesome". On the surface, this was just a weird online community that wrote songs about homo-erotic watercolors of Sherlock Holmes and had a name suggesting that it was a street gang, but it's become so much more than that to me. 

I guess I can't accurately express my feelings about John and Hank Green and the community they've created without sounding ridiculously sappy, which is why I've avoided writing anything about the Evening of Awesome. John and Hank created an expansive community for people to be unabashedly enthusiastic about the things they love. Through endeavors like the Project For Awesome, they've helped decrease world-suck and encouraged people to spread positivity. But the thing I love most about nerdfighteria isn't the shared love for Doctor Who or John's books, not the nerdiness or even the inside jokes shared with thousands. No, the thing I love best about nerdfighteria is that it's a community based on an idea, not characteristics. I know so many people who don't watch Sherlock or make references to Star Trek or even play ukuleles, and they're still nerdfighters. There are no "requirements", no liking or disliking things on principle-only the need to spread a little awesome. 

The Evening of Awesome was incredible, needless to say. I was literally twenty feet away from John and Hank. The Mountain Goats performed and scenes from The Fault In Our Stars were performed, the wonderful Kimya Dawson sang and NEIL GAIMAN WAS THERE. I was twenty feet away from Neil Gaiman, guys. And it's hard to think of anything more precious than hearing Neil Gaiman say "I would literally suck donkey balls." John talked about whether the meaning of life is something constructed or inherent, something I've talked a lot about, and Hank performed his endearingly quirky songs. 

The best was the end, though. The Mountain Goats came out and performed "This Year", a song that I've been listening to on repeat since, and everyone backstage came out. I don't know why, but seeing John and Hank with their friends and family, singing along and dancing made me smile uncontrollably. There was a warmness and enthusiasm in Carnegie Hall that night that I won't forget. 

We create our own meaning.

I was writing an essay about hope for a class of mine and realized that there was a lot I needed to say about the subject. It turned into this. Enjoy.

For me, hope can be found almost everywhere. I found hope in the books my parents gave me at the age of four when I found that there is so much in the world begging to be discovered. I found hope in the stories of stars and science, dinosaurs and adventures-stories that filled my head and heart with a burning sense of yearning. I find hope in the knowledge that I am an inconsequential, unimportant, insignificant collection of atoms thrown into a life that was created by luck. This may be confusing to some, but I find comfort in the feeling of being small. Because though, as a whole, the universe does not care about me, the people here do. I find hope in knowing that energy never leaves the universe, that when something dies it is born into something new. On days when gravity seems to be working overtime, I remind myself that my atoms came from the stars I admire so fervently from my bedroom window at night. It is a comfort to me that nothing here was created with a purpose, part of some intricate plan designed by a deity in the sky. We create that meaning. When the universe goes on without us, turning its back on us callously, we can begin to care for each other. We can see that our lives are just a series of happy accidents, and to me, that makes them even more beautiful than predestined stories. 

They say that all human emotions can be broken down into one of two ultimate emotions: fear or love. Every other emotion merely stems from one of the two. And I know which one hope is for me. 

Illustration by Yoshinori Kobayashi
Special thanks to Abhishek Shivkumar, who inspired this discussion of the insignificance of humanity in relation to the universe. 

To Create is To Destroy

I've recently discovered the greatness that is blackout poetry and I'm kind of in love with it. The whole idea of destruction and subtraction becoming a form of creating is very appealing, and in some ways reminds me of Keri Smith's books. It's been a lazy Saturday, and what do you do when boredom is threatening? Make things, obviously. Most of these poems were created from passages from a horrible book called Are the Kids All Right?, a novel from the 80s about how rock and roll is "evil". It felt good to destroy that batshit crazy propaganda.

A lot of these turned out much darker than I anticipated and the one about divorce has a certain dark humor to it. What's up with that? Maybe I should lay off the Woody Allen movies for a while.