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.

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.

A letter from myself

Before, I always laughed when my mother would tell me that a boyfriend would be endlessly time-consuming and dangerous, but now I know why my parents tell me the things they do tell us - because they went through the same experiences and same desires, and they know how enjoyable these things can be. I don't mean to tag that adjective, enjoyable, with any unpleasant connotation - because that's just the thing. Dalliance is a dangerous thing only in that it's so enjoyable and easy to practice for longer than need be - not because of the moral stain it would have on your character.

Take two pianists

One composes fairly well, and one plays well.

The innovator plays on and on, with a different emotion each time, leaving an imprint on his song. Every piece is another piece of the innovator, at one specific moment in time and space and life, captured into notes on a piano.

The pianist is admired, but...

...the innovator is loved.

I'm still learning that there are different types of love.

...and different types of people, and feelings, and people. I don't understand why I'm here and why I'm doing what I'm doing, but it feels different and lovely in its difference.

can flowers have preservatives in them?

cause this bouquet of flowers has long outlasted its expected life-span of two or three days. what a persevering set of bright orange lilies. i'm convinced that they're made of wax and love.

it's a wonder that so many things, like ever-lasting flowers, exist in some corner of the world. maybe we can have ever-lasting childhood too, or ever-lasting friendship. i'd put some preservatives in it and call it a day.

it's like a race against time

trying to type things out before a laptop battery hits 0%. and there it goes - 17 minutes left, 18% remaining - but then again, laptop battery life fluctuates so much that nothing really means anything.

maybe i've gone crazy this summer, but it's a sweet sense of craziness that you can only get once every four years, once in every transition between lives. i'm glad. in a way.