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.

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

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[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."

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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.