a stand-still summer

Summer is standing still
on a bed of dry grass and dry leaves
and dry eyes.
And I, eyes shut against summer sun,
sleep in a constancy of orange heat.
Forgotten are the cries of winter
and difference. In summer,
there is nothing to move another
to tears or otherwise.
So I stand still in a summer with no ending,
dazing in a series of days in increasing indifference
a world tilting away into a too-long drought
A rotting orange.

But it is in this summer still as a fallen dream
and on this bed of dry grass and dry leaves
Where you rise to stand, demanding
"Why are we standing, when it is so still in summer?

"A drought is but a warm welcome to a brother rain
and oranges are sweetest when ripe
and when we stand upright it is sweetest, too,
to fall
From summer into a whirling bed of leaves
made warm and tender with orange kisses and warm sheets
Come, fall--

Just because summer is still
does not mean that we are still
asleep when we awake."

But I wake and I look and I discover
that the world is still standing
(then I say to myself, in slow understanding)
Even though I and others fall,
"Summer is standing, still."

Empty pages

There are times when I look back and see empty pages, and I wonder where my drive to write and create decided to go.

Where and when does it all begin? It's difficult to identify a story's beginning. Things meander their way into a moment. Yesterday effects what happens today, and yesteryears shape years to come. To understand what makes a person, we look at his shadow. His footprints. Everything that he's stepped on to get here, and everything that has in turn worn the soles of his shoes. What he wears and what  wears him down, step after step.

This is a story that begins sometime four years ago. My story. Names are redacted. Events are disguised. I don't want you to look too carefully at what has shaped me as a person, because I'm afraid that you'll see into and wander down other stories that you're not supposed to see. You can decide what's true or false.

Today is a day when I wander through the gates of Princeton University to see it for the first time in ten years. This is the place I will spend four years in, and I am convinced that it is a wonderful place. I am in Forbes College, what used to be the inn of the township, Princeton. It is on the outskirts of the university campus. A mile away from the Gothic spires that grace postcards and brochures about Princeton. There's a street, traffic lights, a dirty convenience store in between Forbes and the rest of the world.

I love it anyway.

---

I don't know when to slow down or speed up.

---

[Boy blog] Waiting

[i]A maybe-real story from three years ago[/i]
And for anyone who knows me, the people in this story, or how this story ends, please be a dear and use spoiler tags.

In 2008, I met a boy under a tree.

"Phil," he said, reaching out to shake my hand.

"Mona."

It was a chance encounter by Fitzrandolph Gates. It was one of many encounters that I had that year -- a flurry of freshmen, faces, and forgetting those faces. I exchanged names, majors, aspirations, insecurities. Handshakes. With each handshake, I categorized: someone I might like. Someone I have no understanding of. Someone who might play StarCraft (in those early days, I profiled Asian males on campus and asked if they played StarCraft).

I don't remember which tree it was. All I know is that when I saw him, I calculated. I put on a face -- bright, cheery, and outgoing with just enough sprightliness to say "Nice to meet you! What's your major?" -- and thought, "It wouldn't be bad to date him."

---

The funny thing is - when you write about yourself, you want to hide all the ugly truths that come with your thoughts and actions. So many ugly truths. No one ever wants to air them out.

Confidence

I've always felt so invincible, and now that people expect me to fall (with perfectly good intentions and concern), I feel myself falling into the pattern of falling.