5 strawberries before 20 (& 3 after)

I cannot believe how close I am to having lived for more than 19 years. Anticipating the (maybe) justly-due wrath I may incur from the upperclassmen/even older people by saying this but deciding to say it anyways, let me just exclaim:

I am so old. I   A M   S O   O L D.

Actually, that's not true. I know it's not true. I am actually probably closest to the peak of my physical, mental, emotional health, being, whatever, that I've been in my life thus far - an exciting thought (yay). But it's just that relative to me and my life history up til now, I am also the oldest I've ever been, and this craziness even more exacerbated by the fact that I'm entering the next decade of my life. Which, I realize, has already happened once (maybe even twice, if you're being technical), but this is sentient me. Almost adult me becoming almost-almost adult me. Soooo significant because I will officially no longer be a teenager. The number of times I say the morpheme "-teen" as a part of my introduction (Hi, my name is Madison and I am nineteen years old) will probably decrease drastically!

And there are 5 days left. I wish I knew at what time of day I was born so I could dramatize this even more, but alas, I only know the date. So there are 5 days left, and I decided today that I will do something distinctly immature or kiddie to celebrate each of those 5 days...and then continue to do more things for the first three days of my life as a twenty-year-old so the total will be 8 (because it's symbolic, you know? A continuation of kiddiness, leaning a little more heavily on the 19-side because that just makes sense. And 8 because that's my favorite number (because that's my birth date and also once I won bingo cause of 8 (hah))).

(Read the first part of this, if you don't understand what the strawberries are all about. My mind just jumped to this thing - sorry if it was too abrupt!)
So,

Strawberry #1 (3/3/11): 
swinging on the tree-swing outside of Brown with Beks. 

real picture to come later, but LOOK IT'S A STRAWBERRY ON A SWING!

Strawberry #2 (3/4/11): 

A piece of leftover cake for breakfast (thank you for the surprise party!) - skipping real breakfast to try to finish up a take-home exam before my day begins.

again not a real (my) picture...but I forgot my camera cord at Maups

Strawberry #3 (3/5/11):

Was reminded about being a child of God. Spring Retreat 2011!

googled: gcf spring retreat, and this came up!!! I see...Yekyung, possibly Grace Pyon and Joyce Min, and Ed Bahng...! okay so it's from the gcf website, but still coooooool

Strawberry #4 (3/6/11):

Went puddle-splashing in muh rain boots in the muddy moat m-around Maupin. Didn't think to take a picture cause this wasn't on purpose; it just happened haha

my splashings weren't nearly as picturesque as this persons'^

Strawberry #5 (3/7/11):

Spent the morning reading (left-handed) cartoons, i.e. 

some immature buffoonz, like me.

Strawberry #6 (3/8/11):

Okay not necessarily child-like or immature, but kinda related to old and young ness - looked through past emails in search of my xanga and found a string of emails between me and a good friend. Forwarded him our silliness and reconnected by laughing over how embarrassing and weird we were.

just a little snippet of what I wrote to him - profoundly confused about this new, hip, personal site thing called facebook and whatnot...hahaha

Strawberry #7 (3/9/11):

Broke Lent on the first day. No pictures, no mo words. Sighz what a baby

Strawberry #8 (3/10/11):

Took a nap. Well it was like 3 hours long so you decide if that's a "nap" or a mini-sleep. I know grown-ups nap all the time, but I usually don't, no matter how tired I am. I'm just not good at it - I know I won't wake up in time for the next activity I'm supposed to be alive for...People who can power nap are one of the biggest mysteries to me. I need a good 3 hour chuck at least. So when I fell asleep after lunch and woke up to dinner time today, it was a special occasion! Haha

 What if you fell asleep and didn't wake up for twenty years?

alone and together simultaneously

Sitting in a sea of people. All taking up similar amounts of physical space. The long, sturdy wooden table divided into chocolate squares of eight beings' elbowrooms, punctuated by two lamps and endlessly expanding bubbles of private thoughts and non-thoughts. We're all existing here, together and next to one another, but also so far apart and deep away, tucked snugly in our respective worlds of gchat, blogging, and wolfram alpha (that's me in the middle of Mr.GChat and Calc-2 Girl).

We're together and alone. 

This is something I noticed a lot over my summer spent in Korea - especially in Seoul. People are so good at tuning the world out when forced to share a certain quantity of air with other beings. They exist all pressed up against each other without even seeing - without even noticing that the girl whose outer thigh area is slightly touching their outer thigh area across the continuous metro seat looks like she's about to cry. Without ever seeing the soldier-man in camo, riding the bus standing up (cause he's a man - no need for comfort of the butt or feet!) with a package next to his combat boots-ed feet, wrapped in pink-hearts-galore wrapping paper (the package, not the boots). So many small tragedies and sweetnesses of lives pressed up against yours that you never pursue to investigate or care about...!

But I mean it must be a matter of survival, too. Yeah, we're all social beings, but everybody's minds need alone time, albeit in varying degrees. In big cities where you're always hustling and bustling and jostling with other people doing the same right next to you, it's hard to have alone-in-the-zone time. When you can just stare blankly and think about blank things, which is just a fancy way of saying "nada nada limonada" (which is just another fancy way of saying "nothing") - crucial for sanity. So we zone out of the physical world around us and zoom into ourselves, our computers, our daydreams, our Things To Do lists - create our own thought-bubble-existence worlds, while everyone else does the same. Exist all together and completely alone at the same time. What a weird, weird thing.

Apparently, if you gather all the people in the world and get them to stand shoulder to shoulder and face to face, we would all fit into the city of L.A. (source: fun fact shared over Sunday lunch - MK, also known as michiecream). ...le WOAH. If this happened for real, the world would probably explode in a metaphysical way or something, due to the concentration of so many big and small and medium sized thought bubbles. Imagine all the different trains of thought that would be going through the airspace above our collective heads! Imagine all the same ones! And everyone lost in their own worlds...

...until someone across the table from you accidentally nudges your foot because she was readjusting herself and you were readjusting yourself and both of your feet met in the same space at the same moment in a tiny collision that brought you back to the real world of Clark Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, U.S.A., Earth.

God's provision for Carrie the Casual Camel

Today I ate a strawberry.
No, I'm just kidding - but that's the sentence I always think of whenever I find myself wanting to start a post with "Today,..." cause I don't want my blog to be about wee little things that happen to me each day that people don't want to read about. I mean personally, I love reading those kinds of posts, too, and there's definitely merit in the realizations that exist in the little "Today I ate a strawberry" moments that may have lead you to think of how many little seeds exist in this tiny body of a fruit and what if all those seeds could've become strawberries but nope cause you ate them all, probably in one chomp oops sorry try again...you know?! And I mean you gotta have these realizations during some "Today," so I guess I'm really making no sense, but that's not what this post is about anyways.

It's just that...
Today,
for some reason (alright, not "some" reason - there's actually a concrete reason, but I just don't wanna tell you), I just felt God's provision for me so much. Keeping with the vague theme, here's the generalized story: I've just been really scared about lots of things lately, and God keeps proving himself faithful. A faithful God. A good God. Today especially. I keep trekking through literal and figurative uncharted lands these days and it's scary and weird because I just never know what to do or expect or think or feel about all this. But today, for some concrete, abstract reason, I just felt that all was right with me. Alllllllll iiiiiiis riiiiiiiight wiiiiiith meeeee hmmmmmm - just reassured in the most mysterious, wonderfully unreassuring way, because it's not that the scary things are gone, I just know that whatever happens with whatever I have or don't have, it's all in God's freakishly awe-inspiring plan. But the thing is, that it's like . . . DUH. Why so silly, Jaehee Madison  Lee? All these things my brain knows, my heart and mind need to be reminded of so often, in the weirdest ways (how demanding).

I mean even camels are provided for in this wonderful design. Did you know they have three eyelids? Apparently "the third lid is extra thin and see-through, so the camel can pull it down in sandstorms" according to a very credible source (MMR, text message 9:24 pm 2/24/11). SWEEET, right? And so amazingly created - so wonderfully provided for. And this isn't even about their humps...wutttt!

Carrie the Casual Camel

So...Today,
I'm just rejoicing in God's provision, and in camels, for their humps and their tri-eyelids, and in blogging about the insanely mundane, and the beauty of the fact that God's love is sometimes simply insanely mundane. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. Insane, insane, insane. How can I keep from singing?

Did you know that earbuds are magnetized? If you try to push them together, they will repel each other gently.

eugene the mean writin' machine

Eugene is my favorite 5th grader. During our tutoring sessions, I make him write poetry under the guise of "fostering his imagination" haha... But really, he is the smartest, funniest, most unwittingly romantic fifth grader I know. He always protests when I demand love poetry out of him as the next week's homework assignment, but I think he secretly enjoys it...maybe. Haha anyways here are some of his best bits of literary genius. 

Oh, also, we enjoy madlibs quite a bit.

"In fact, in about 38 years, the air will be eighty percet sunshine because we are cutting down all of the kisses in the Brazilian rain forest." These are not such bad prospects for the Earth, huh?

yeah, your group project partners are people, too. don't be mean.

Eugene's preferred writing utensils...obviously.

Um. Swoon. Haha lucky Jennygirl.

Learning about metaphors i.e. "Her fingers on the piano keyboard were lost ducklings...like they didn't know where to go!"

What a guy, this Eugene. He totally makes my Saturday afternoons.

vday thang

Love closes the door suuuuuper softly at night because someone is sleeping inside.
Love is my dad "tucking" us into bed aka actually just fluffing out the blanket cause he's kinda bad at tucking.
Love <==> understanding. knowing (noun, not verb).
Love forsakes sleep (varying degrees).
Love has magic conversations in circles with its loved ones.
Love squeals; is stoic.
Love exists wayyy out of the comfort bubble.
Love is like zomgmindexplode (?)
Love exists all over your sleeve and stuff.
Love makes lumps in your throat, headaches in your heart, smiles...on your face haha.

Dear world,
Happy Valentine's Day. woah funny how the word "love" hasn't started looking like a non-word yet. love love love love love.

to know, know, know her is to love, love, love her

S O R R Y

"désolé" - français

- desolate

- disconsolate

- bleak

- stark

- woebegone

- sorry

"mi dispiace" - italiano

verb: dispiacere

- to displease

- to mind

- to hate

- to be sorry

"lo siento" - español

verb: sentir

- to feel

- to sense

- to regret

- to be sorry

These are three ways to say "I'm sorry." In every day usage and found in conversational French/Italian/Spanish phrases books as, simply, "I'm sorry." But if you really think about the literal meanings of the words composing these different translations of this little sentence, each is really unique and impressively more sorry-seeming than its English counterpart.

The literal meaning of a French person's "désolé (sorry)" to your sorry-inducing story is: "(I am) desolate." "I'm hungry!" "My cat is overweight :(" "The state of the world economy today makes me worried..." whatever your woes, I am desolate for you. What a show of sympathy - &what an adjective, right?! Thanks for being so expressive, Frenchmen.

so desolate.

In Italian, to say "I am sorry," is actually a bit of a grammar feat. "Mi dispiace," though it is one of the first phrases anyone learning the language will learn, involves indirect object pronouns and third person conjugation of verbs in the present tense. wowzas!! Haha anyway, the verb from which this phrase derives is "dispiacere" - the antonym of "piacere," I guess, which means "to please." So dispiacere means "to displease." And the little "mi" means "to me," so all in all the whole thing says to you, "(Something, it, that, the fact that your toe is stubbed, etc.) displeases me." Ultimately, empathizing with your worries. Dang yo, I really hate that this bad thing happened to you. That really bothers, bugs, irks me, like it does you. I'm really sorry.

empathy, according to google images

Spanish speakers are feeeeeeeeling you when you're down in the dumps - "lo siento" is similar to the Italian one in the grammar feat department, except it literally means "I feel it." So it's not exactly the same as the Italians' saying that empathizes with you, but this one still expresses that the speaker knows what you're feeling and feels the same way about it. This is like AH I put my figurative hand over my figurative heart and literally say I am so sorry - I feel your pain. 

YOU WHAT?! WOW THAT SUCKS; YOUR PAIN MY PAIN

I know all this makes the English "I'm sorry" seem boring, too normal, whatever, but sorry derives from "sorrow" which is pretty dramatic and sorrowful, too. Haha so no need to hate on English.

hey man i'm really sorry

All of this I will mean the next time I tell you "I'm sorry."


P.S. Koreans on the other hand...

to the lefties of the world:

First of all, a special hello to you!
Secondly, are you even there? Is anyone even reading this? Because I realize the viewer population of my blog is probably pretty small and I'm not sure that any of you will be left-handed enough to be intrigued by the title of this post. I would probably read a post entitled "to the lefties of the world" even though I'm definitely a righty, but that's only because I really just enjoy reading blogs.

But okay - if you're there, HULLO. I've been thinking about this for a while, so let me know if you have an answer or resonating feelings or thoughts:

Dear left-handed people, do you feel slighted by this righty-dominated world? Turning the knob left to make the volume go down and to the right to make it go up (something seeming inherently bigger and better and greater about turning the knob to the right), looking for the "before" picture on the left side of the TV and the "after" on the right (they always have them "before"-->"after" if they're side to side, resulting in sort of an "uhhhgg..hh."-->"ooohhwoahhh" reaction), when talking with your hands flailing in sync, having to use the left side of your airspace as the "yesterday" and the right side as "today" and "the next day" and "the future" just in general, having to take extra care to write un-smudgily because our society demands that you read and write from left to right?...being bombarded by a bunch of buffoons thrusting out their right hand when you introduce yourself and wanna shake hands to make the meeting official??...sitting uncomfortably in those tiny right-handedness-adjusted seats with the mini desks attached???

Woah here's some more stuff from wikipedia:

Many technological devices are made primarily for right-handed people...refrigerators, scissors, microwaves, cameras (ARGH that must be annoying!), can-openers, computer mice, padded kitchen mittens (padded only on one side ARGH), many musical instruments, military rifles (many injuries have resulted from spent cartridge casings hitting left-handed users in the eye and head!!!!). 

We right-handed are righteous, moving right along, going right ahead and getting things done right away so that everything is right as rain, you guys always seem to be being left behind, left in the dust, popping up out of the left field and throwing salt over all your left shoulders and eating leftovers...sigh!!

And WOAH look at the wiki page for left-handedness (the above link was for righthandedness)!

The  Latin word for sinistra originally meant "left" but took on meanings of "evil" or "unlucky" by the classical Latin era and its double meaning survives in European derivatives of Latin, and in the English word "sinister." ... The right hand has historically been associated with skill: the Latin word for right-handed is dexter, as in "dexterity," meaning manual skill. Even the word "ambidexterity" reflects the bias. Its intended meaning is "skillful on both sides." However, since it keeps the Latin root dexter, which means "right," it ends up conveying the idea of being "right-handed at both sides." ... In Chinese culture, the adjective "left" sometimes means "improper" or "out of accord" and in Korean, the word for "right" (오른) and the word meaning "morally proper" (옳은) share the same pronunciation.

?!WUHHH!!!!!


But maybe it's not this way - maybe you don't feel jibbed at all. Though the world is, in fact, dominated in number by right-handed people, you have - even if unwittingly - put on a brave face and endured and adjusted. Maybe you have become stronger of character and pleasant-er of disposition because you have been put through all these extra troubles and are surviving, pushing through, livin yo life anyways. I just don't know...I'm only a young right-handed girl!

awkward left handshakes by some cartoon characters - not real people

loverain

Listening to my m.m.m.m.m. playlist (bloggin' music) with just one earbud in, which I never do because I like music to fill my brainspace entirely and from both earholes, but this night I make an exception because it raineth outside right now and I am enjoying the rain noises and blogging and listening to one earbud because I love the rain...eth. Like mmmmmmmmmm lovelovelove...mmmmMMmmmMMMMm.

I think I must've been a fish (omg-g-g-guh..I'm a pisces....just realized this) or...maybe an aquatic mammal

"weehr!"

in my past life, because I get so easily parched without rain in my life. I love the rain. I love the rain. I love the rain. I love "forgetting" my umbrella when it raineth outside and having an excuse to walk around with the droplets falling all over the place and on me. I love college because it makes me walk places all the time and some of those times, it is raining and then I can walk in the rain with a purpose and not look like an insane person. I love being inside when it's raining and hearing all those rain pieces falling and splattering and making a ruckus. I love listening to this thing combined with this thing and being myself, being dreamy sleepy on my bed or swaying by myself ballroom dance style, even though I do not know how to ballroom dance. I love raindrops that fall on my nose and iLashes. I love the way rain makes the world beautiful in a way so underappreciated - redder bricks, greener trees, blacker pavement, albeit the grayer skies. I love the moat that forms alrededor el Maupin when it rains a lot at night and then you wake up in the morning and walk outside to find that you are a princess because castles are surrounded by moats, you know. I love so many more things about the rain but I am afraid that it will stop raining before I finish this post and I want this post to be created and born all, completely, in the time of rain so I'm gonna just say -- I love the rain. I love the rain. I love the rain.

It rains in Charlottesville tonight.

"Smiles, Winks, and Words"

"The relatively involuntary nature of our smiles and gesture calls means that we are in constant danger of revealing ourselves...Our calls and gesture sometimes convey our true emotional state considerably more faithfully than we want them to...Photographers may ask us to pretend to smile, but they know better than to ask us to pretend to laugh." -Burling

Reluctant to share in words, but impossible to avoid sharing in smiles and frowns. Sorry if I ever put on the frowny face and made you feel bad. I'm trying to be better about that.

the news

JJ, you so right.

Watching the (Korean) news with mom and dad at dinner and found myself constantly in panic. Dying livestock, dying regular stocks, monster-sized icicles, mini icebergs floating down the 한강...sigh. There was one good thing after 298234 bad things - apparently the report (made 12 years ago) about the flu vaccine causing autism was made up. And in a way, for somebody out there that piece of news is a horrible one too, I  mean for that scientist person who did the initial study, wrote the report, blahblah.

Makes me feel so helpless. And makes me think of how every banal moment of my life must be, for someone else in the world, is the worst, most frightening, life-changing, wonderful, etc. moment. Every moment, around the whole world, is something special and ultra significant. How little I am, and how big the world is. And how much bigger the God behind the happenings and healings of every moment everywhere! wuhhhhhhhhhh so global.

365: Week 2

1/8-1/15

1.8
new skill acquired over winter break: fire stoking!

1.9
cupcake clinks! a night of many kitchen adventures...

1.10
New Year Resolution traditions with Eliz

1.11
ate something off of favorite winter themed plate

1.12
LOTR marathon. dad abandoned me half an hour into the first one!

1.13
we got a new fridge, so the old one hits the curb, out in the cold

1.14
downtown frolicking (SHOPPING SPREE) with siiistre! planned since Thanksgiving break, finally accomplished YAY

Woah last full week til it's back to school. Gbye, winter break!!

"After you!"

There are friends who are always opening doors for you and waiting for you to step in first and then there are friends who you're always opening doors for. I don't know what makes this difference, or if it even means anything significant, but it's just something I've noticed.

Some people are infinitely patient with me, and others somehow make me uncharacteristically patient with them. I am honestly not that patient - my sister can tell you the best - and I get easily annoyed by little things if they somehow seem unjust or selfish or whatever bad trait of my own I'm seeing in other people that day, I guess. Then, once I've pin-pointed some "bad" thing about one person, it's gets progressively easier to keep finding examples of that flaw and generalizing so this person becomes "the friend who only texts me when she needs something" and that person becomes "the girl who never opens the door first when we go places so it's a little awkward for a moment at every door if I've forgotten to actively go for the handle." I guess a little resentment goes with each of these labels, right?

But I don't know - with some people, somehow these labels exist with no bad feeling. Or no bad feeling that isn't easily overcome, easily forgiven. Maybe it's because I feel a certain level of karmic powers at work - a sense of what goes around comes around kind of a thing, cause there are definitely people in my life who always open the door first...Haha, if this is really the reason for my own uncharacteristic patience for others, I hope we never run out of enthusiasm for door-opening. And also hope I'm that-girl-who-always-opens-the-door-first-inspiring-better-behavior-to-others kind of a person for YOU or somebody someday!

seemingly unrelated, but this was the fourth picture for the google images search "opening doors for others"

365: week 1

OKAY so I'm documenting life, too, with the 365 challenge blahblah. I'm not gonna try to post every day or even every other day, but once a week with 7 pictures every time...not necessarily one from each day, but I'll try my best. whine whine stomp wah wahh for giving into fads...hahaha I think I'm whining extra about this because I didn't want my blog to be like meh mehr this is what I ate today and this is where I sat eating it! Yay! Not that diary-type blogs are bad, I actually love blogstalking those a lot -- it's just not what I had in mind for my blog......but! To document is natural and fitting for my forgetful nature anyway and this is a challenge and an attempt to record my 2011 that will make each day special and more meaningful through rememory in these pictures. And also this is MY BLOG, who cares if I bend my own unwritten rules. Right? Right. Okay then let's carry on.

1/1-1/7:

1.1.11
New Year's Eve cupcake making bonanza/sleepover at Rachel's. Note the hipsterman cupcake with facial hair and single, left-eared earring. 

1.2.11 at church
Sassy Lana with my scarf: "I look like an old woman!!"

1.2.11 downtown, urban outfitters
Alyssa, so beautiful. like a model or something 

1.5.11 @ Five Guys
burger date with mama.

1.5.11 past midnight, so technically 1.6
texting hao all night long

1.6.11 past midnight so technically 1.7
sum stockingz and sum feet

1.7.11
bath day for binky

Hope you had a good week, too! :)

The Namesake

Because of this book called The Namesake, I am here (there's a wikipedia link, but it's probably not enough to explain what I'm really here about, unless you've read the book/are a second or 1.5th generation immigrant from not Europe etc.).
Here, sitting at my desk instead of in bed
Here, hunched slightly toward this blog entry instead of watching the Sound of Music as I had planned, as if the thoughts will run away from me if I don't concentrate.
Which, I guess, they could - in a sense.

Anyways, so I am here. Here because I am bothered, reassured, relieved, scared, whatever - all at the same time. And I'm not sure if all those emotions will be conveyed coherently, so I'm tagging this post as "incoherent" and that's your warning.

It's about this boy Gogol-Nikhil, who has a big problem with his name. He is American-born, but Bengali by heritage and his parents yearn for their home in Calcutta and throw huge Bengali parties to which they invite every Bengali person they have come to know in their years in this foreign country. The whole problem with his name is long and complicated and unfortunate - having to do with "pet names" and "good names" and mail getting lost and the confusion of a scared kindergartener. And although it sort of serves as the crux around which the whole story evolves, it's only a small (well, however "small" a hated name can be for any person) example of this guy's life as an in-between. Always wanting, and eventually (to a large extent), relishing in a life so different from his parents', which he sort of despises for its backwardness, "unnecessary worries," and general un-suave-ness. After quietly rebelling for years through his choice of life in the city (in NYC, away from his parents' seemingly suffocating address on Pemberton Street), career choice (distinctly not medical, engineerical, or economical), and girlfriends (basically, not Indian), he eventually marries an old family acquaintance dredged up from his old life of attending those giant Bengali parties when they were both kids despising their parents' America-noobishness, at the urging of both mothers. They are no longer the overtly insecure kids they used to be - both have grown up to be city-savvy and proficient in wine knowledge - adults living a more or less glamorous, young life in the city, and find each other attractive and comforting and exciting all at the same time. Comforting because both are hurt from previous relationships that couldn't stand the difference in cultures, families, secretly really Bengali lives. Exciting because neither had imagined a future with "an Indian boy/girl;" because for the majority of their lives they had both been so inherently opposed to marriages like the ones through which their parents had lived so obediently and complacently.

And in the end, they fall apart, too, because of insecurities - of being complacent, of being predictable, of being defeated in a sense. Of being too...Bengali (? I'm sorry if this makes no sense. It makes sense to me, except I have to insert Korean in place of the Bengali).

It was a well-written book with a story that moved along quickly and seemed to move quickly even when it wasn't. Personally, for the majority of the time I was reading, it was a depressing experience that I felt like I had to endure - partly because of the fact that I like finishing books, even if they aren't a super happy-dandy yayayay of an experience the whole time, but also because it was so accurate in the descriptions of guilt, shame, embarrassment in all the little things that come with being a ______-American, owning enough of both sides of the hyphen to feel all those emotions about one's heritage and place in the world. So weirdly close to my own experience as a Korean-American living in Charlottesville, Virginia.

...basically, because Gogol-Nikhil's words and feelings so closely resembled similar versions of the same things in my life:
A heightened sense of the other-Asians-in-the-vicinity radar.
The slight embarrassment of finding myself in the midst of a loud group of fellow Koreans in a public place - my voice getting louder and louder somehow, too, although...I feel like maybe I kind of just talk really loudly a lot of times.
Having to explain a certain weird aspect of my culture, my heritage, in words that usually don't elicit the sympathy and understanding it deserves. Finding myself ineloquent and too jokey or oddly defensive.

But mostly, and ultimately, the loneliness of not really belonging in any one slice of humanity, except maybe the small one (well...relatively small) occupied by other 1.5th generation Korean-Americans who grew up in the States but understand Korean and eat 미역국 on their birthdays (listening to k-pop doesn't count - sorry. too globalized.). Not belonging truly to America as a native, because I cannot claim this place as my "MATERLAAAND" and because we eat kimchi with our Thanksgiving meals, but also unable to be Korean in a way that I would've been if we had never moved out of the country. There is a distance, and a difference, and I belong in neither place. Neither culture. I just exist in the weird overlap.

Mulling over all this in the shower after having finished the book, I was sad. Because this story, so similar to my story, had ultimately been a sad one. And even worse, a realistic one. I was forever (forever = the 14 minutes that I spent in the shower) doomed to this sad destiny of letting my heritage and family and chance for true happiness in life slip by because of the selfish and self-destructive desire to fit into something I will never really be a part of.

But then I realized something - something so stupidly clear that I had missed because maybe I enjoy moping and dramatizing my life and relating to book characters too much (Holden Caulfield, OMG).

H.C.

I am not Gogol-Nikhil. In so many senses of the sentence. Not only am I not a skinny but attractive male Bengali architect living in New York, but also I...love being Korean. Maybe I've never said those words together arranged like that before, but I do. I am proud of my heritage and my family and my parents who have survived this thoroughly American experience and were open-minded enough to let us have sleepovers and get real Christmas trees, but still quietly, passive-aggressively want me to marry a Korean guy. I guess this is where all those aim usernames were coming from...(krnpridexoxo, aznluvr123, krnbabie_love, etc. ohhh aim in 6th grade...(note: mine was candyluver something something, though)) But yeah all in all, I am not Gogol-Nikhil.

Wow. What a relief. And a new regret that I've made such a long post that no one will want to read. Oh well.

1.1.11

This is almost as good as 11.11.11, but that one is not happening for a while, so today, I am celebrating 1.1.11 - though I was busy decorating cupcakes at 1:11:11 a.m. and then at the p.m. time I was busy guffawing at this fifth grader's funny and lovely essay, so I didn't get to make wishes. It's okay, though, because I'm celebrating today as a whole. 1.1.11. More numerically special than any other first-day-of-the-year of my life. So January first of 2011, YAY YOU. May you be full of wishes made and wishes fulfilled and love and joy and opera, and small sadnesses to remind us of the goodness of the good things, too.

My wishes are usually small. They are unassuming and superstitious, and may or may not also be made at other, less well-known but still very valid, times of 12:34:56 (woah so magical!!), 2:22:22, etc...MAYBE...While others may say those times are not the conventional wish-making times and therethusforthly "not valid," I am prepared to defend the validity of these non-11:11:11, but equally effective and magical wish opportunities. Not that I make wishes at those times or anything...

And I don't know why people refuse to make wishes - it usually only takes about a second (you'd be surprised how much you can say under your breath in a second) and it's not stupid. Did you know that

"Great love and great achievements involve great risk"

? Well, they do. And sometimes, even if your heart breaks a little/a lot, you have to jump in the wishing pool and take a risk, if anything is to happen. I know, I know - I know that by making a wish, you're setting yourself up a little bit - you're putting in a piece of your heart in the hands of fate, or the double rainbow, or 11:11 (or paws, maybe - not sure that fate has hands? bleh personification) and then you can't control it anymore. You start to hope and maybe even expect things, and if you let it, that piece of your heart grows into something you don't recognize anymore, like a dream or something. And sometimes, it gets kind of crushed. And depending on how big it had gotten by the time it got destroyed, it hurts - a lot or a little or a medium amount. I know that.

And yeah, it's nice to be surprised by a wish fulfilled when you hadn't been consciously wishing it via an 11:11:11 wish opp. But how will you ever get things like great love and great achievements if you don't accept that risk? Making wishes is an act of courage, if not useful for anything else (besides all the wishes granted duh). And don't be afraid to take every opportunity - 1:11, 2:22, 3:33... they might be building up somewhere. Who knows.

So this year, 2011 (woah WEIRD), among losing those 23847239 lbs. and drinking more water and learning Japanese, I hope you take time to make wishes, and not be so scared, and don't be hurt too much if every wish doesn't come true - there are a whole two 11:11:11s every day, which is like...so many 11:11:11s in 2011.

O.K. ttyl, g2g make wish soon cause it's 11:11:11 in about 16 minutes+11seconds!!! or something!!

Mr. New Year Snowman bids "happy wishing!"

how to be alone

Just finished posting all my documentary-ing pictures of first.semester.of.college on facebook. Still trying to recover from the too-many hours spent captioning, rotating, organizing, explaining. Obviously unable to form complete sentences as of yet.

Haha actually I'm just trying to refrain from using so many I statements.

Looking through this semester in the pictures I took, documenting everything, really made these past few months seem like "my" semester. Gave me some weird sense of ownership over this experience that hundreds of first year UVA students had this fall-winter too, but was also amazingly, magically, unique to each person. Haha I know it shouldn't seem like magic that "everyone had a unique experience," because, well, ...duh everyone lived something different, but I don't know - it seems kind of magical to me, all these different perspectives lived and sights seen and pictures taken by so many different people put in the same place, living the same sorts of experiences in terms of the big-general stuff.

And it turns out that my first semester at college was full of solo adventures. Exploring the Rotunda in search of a bathroom ending up in a symmetry photoshoot, sun-basking in the amphitheater because the warm stone steps are the best for warming up cold bodies, library hopping, walking everywhere and wasting substantial amounts of time in transit to far-away places like the Corner and the hospital. It's not that I didn't want to hang out with people - I actually spent a lot of time doing useless things with other people too, and it seems that you're never really "alone" on a college campus anyways. It's that I just happened to spend a lot of time with myself, and in doing this one day even discovered my intro-extroverted self (hah).

So the conclusion is: "being alone," for all the subtle social insecurities the phrase may be stuck with, isn't a bad thing. Haha let's be active about it: lots of times, being alone is good - even preferable to having your moment full of people and voices. Enjoying alone time doesn't mean you're antisocial or independent in an off-putting way like a cat. So don't be insecure girl and work dat up-do! (Woah sorry for being so bossy)

Here are some helpful tips to begin with, because I'm really no expert and because she can say it so much better:

Happy alone-ing! Haha for all my talk of casting off socially-placed insecurities and labels it still sounds a little depressing. It shouldn't though! Hopefully the video convinces you, too - it's really nice.

"such a bad person"

So many Christians I know, me included, so often say this phrase in the same context of "me" or "I" or "myself" or "madison," if his/her name happens to be Madison (except me, cause talking about oneself in the third person is "funny" in the weird way...said Madison to herself..(uh what kind of weirdo narrates her own life? not me)). It's a different kind of self-deprecation than most of society is used to, I think. Subtly, but definitely, different. First of all, it's not a humor thing, and it's admittedly way holier....and I am kind of already regretting my word choice of "holier" but really it's hard to find a replacement at this moment and I am probably over and beyond my quota of commas and conjunctions for this entire post, I think. aargh.

And (sdf#fr!) I know it's kind of inherent to many, if not most, of Christian denominations' beliefs in the Original Sin, Jesus' redeeming death on the cross, our need to be saved...and constitutes, basically, the very foundation of our faith.

But truly, honestly, I find myself questioning it so often. I know I'm a bad person - I am selfish and thoughtless and hypocritical, in subtle ways that make it all even worse. I know that, and am in the process becoming more and more perfect, because He tells us to "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (in Matthew 5:48) (thank goodness). But I have a hard time reconciling the beauty I find in humanity with this original schmoriginal sin idea (is this heretical schmeretical..?sigh). I want to believe people are innately good. Honestly, I don't yet know for sure if people are indeed innately good, and probably never will, but nevertheless, I want to believe it. I want to think the best of people and wish to trust everyone to have the best intentions always.

But I can't - I'm not supposed to, right? If not according to "reality" according to realists (stop snickering, you realists), at least according to Christianity...right? And solid Christian doctrine shouldn't really be subjected to an "at least" kind of qualification anyways.

Don't even go into predestination; I'm a romantic-realist.
Hm. Send me words. Hellllllpppp

Mozart, mensa, and mediocrity

I am the most mediocre person (eh.. the "most" mediocre? the "middlest"? yeah, it exists). But wait wait, before you get all worried, it's a.o.k. Pahaha it's a-okay - I'm not writing a whiny post about how sad and "just okay" at everything I am. I am pretty "just okay" at everything, that part's true, but it's not necessarily sad or whiny, so hold on.

I guess (hope) everyone goes through childhood always being told that they are, simply thinking and accepting that they are, believing that they are, indeed being (!) special. I was. Enough, at least - like, a moderate/normal amount. Enough that I didn't end up with  either an inferiority or a superiority complex (whew &hurrah).

But then you reach a certain point of being a bigger person, bigger than a small kid, when you realize that you are pretty average. Right? Except for a few special individuals who are really gifted, like Olympic contestants and best-selling novelists (though a lot of times, even those people are told they're no good at what they do, by editors, publishers...), and like, Mozart and MENSA geniuses and master bakers or something.

Mmmm...geniuses

Anyway, so unless you fall into those categories mentioned above, you are a pretty average, normal person - and you eventually realize your normalcy. And it's not all about you necessarily "not being exceptional" at something, either, because everyone's relative worlds are always changing - as we learn to grow and deal with harder and harder things, the bar set to define excellence is jumping higher and higher. Being great at Pee Wee soccer (this is real; you can even coach it!) doesn't mean you're going to be a star player in the World Cup someday. Being an awesome artiiiiste in middle school (or even high school. gasp.) doesn't mean you will be the next Picasso. Just thinking about the difference between high school and college sports teams makes this clear.

But this isn't a sad thing. Mediocrity, as a whole, is not a sad thing. Here's why this post isn't a wehr-wehr kind of a post:

1. Mediocrity is full of hope. Because you're in the middle of the awesome-terrible scale, you can always move to either end - which way you go, or even staying in the same place, is at least partially dependent on you. How empowering is that?
2. Mediocrity gives you a choice. It's either glass half-full or half-empty. You don't have to be gung-ho about it if you don't feel like it.
3. Mediocrity in shoe size means you usually have the biggest variety of shoes to choose from. Ask anyone with size 5 feet. Or size 13. Or...both. That would really suck.
4. Mediocrity is necessary - we don't really get a say in whether it should even exist or not, cause what kind of awesome-terrible scale doesn't have a middle? That wouldn't even be a valid scale, at all - like even less valid than just being a random made-up thing in this little person's little blog post. 

Big/tiny feet are difficult to accommodate, you know.

P.S. I love geniuses. Of the musical variety and the sensitive sweater variety and the expertise in Mario Kart-playing variety. AHHH

companion to four fingers?!

hrmmmm

What an understatement of a definition.
Thumbs are great...

• because their foot-counterparts, big toes, help us stand upright
• for holding chopsticks...and the other utensils, too.
• because they are so expressive. They are the only specific digits that can say "yea" and "nay" and "I feel pretty ambivalent about that." I guess they could even express halfway emotions, if you use the angles cleverly or something.
• because they are stout but proud. Even though they only have two segments, they don't have a complex or anything about it all.
• with kids. haha
• for hitchhiking purposes. You don't even have to have one of the hitchhiker variety.
• when you're painting your nails because of the relatively formidable surface area. What a relief to be able to start out on such a large palette.
• because it can be green. No one has a "green pinky."
• for playing the piano with extra force, or when you're trying to play octaves, or when you just feel like playing the piano with just thumbs.
• for opening doors and ovens like civilized people. 
• for holding pencils!
• to type with on a computer keyboard with expertise. Can you imagine how much longer/how much more effort it would take to move some other finger down to the space bar every single time you had to insert a space? ...I am tired just thinking about it.
• because it would be really hard to hold open stubborn paperbacks with just your four non-opposable digits. Dang.
• when you're picking out a piece of candy from the candy bowl

But you're right. There are some really important things that the other fingers do, too. Like pinky-wave at your friends and lovers, dip into sauces and soups to let you have a taste, pick nose holes (okay I guess you could pick your nose with your thumbs but...hmm), flick things off your blanket, wear the marriage ring on the marriage/love finger, press all the other keys of the computer keyboard and piano keyboard,  and close the clasps of necklaces/button buttons (yeah the thumbs need help a lot of times, but they're not ashamed of that). And other stuff. I guess it's the cooperation of all the fingers and their adjoint (is this even a word? Oh, oops.) friend the palm that makes up the whole magic of hands.

Yay for hands. Yay for thumbs. Yay for...all the fingers?! Oh no, generalizations wreak havoc once again.

privateface

I've only been home for like...not very many hours but I've already spent so many of those hours on the computer. Staring at the screen. With my face. Looking at facebook stuff or blog stuff or email stuff, instead of my fambly or my Binky or all the books I want to read this winter break.

And this made me think of privateface:
http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1278174725798&id=1414260910
especially the second half of the video, from like 0:21 onward,
where syang is typing furiously the videocaption of this

"pointless video of you watching pointless video and then writing on my wall and then writing on my wall

again"

It's such a private part of someone's facial expression repertoire. Everyone has their different-occasions-faces, mostly for the outside world - smiling for pictures, smiling f'real, being outwardly sad, cute little asian face (cause asians are so prevalent in my life), blahblah blah. Even staring off into space thinking nothing  (or maybe something, but you're not gonna tell anyone about it) isn't necessarily a private activity, because it's most often noticed and noted by other people.

-"whatcha thinking about?"

-(waves hands in front of face) "HELLOOOOOOO"

-"ahahaha you're staring off into space."

I mean when you're staring off into space in private, no one is there to point it out so you don't ever notice your own silly looking face.

But this staring-at-computer-screen face that everyone has is so private. Well unless you're skyping or making videos or...I guess even watching videos or something, when you're laughing or crying. I don't know. Haha but otherwise, when you're just doing normal, not-immediately interactive computer activities like typing out an email or googling something, online shopping, learning to play the ukulele, whatever, that expression you're making during those activities, probably very few people have seen. Or okay, with that face, you have probably not given active attention to anyone, because no one is there to ...appreciate it, react to it. And you're not expected to give the computer non-verbal cues with your eyebrows or mouth corners, because its feelings will not be hurt by your stoicness. You know?

Did you just get really self-conscious about your expression at this moment? Hahaha cause I did, and now I'm smiling at nothing. Oopth.

THERMODYNAMICS

The ENTROPY of the universe is INCREASING.

... 

All change arises from an underlying collapse into chaos.

The deep structure of change is decay;

What decays is not the quantity of energy, but the QUALITY of energy.

Energy's quality, but not its quantity, decays as it spreads into chaos.

High quality, useful energy, is localised energy.

Low quality, wasted energy, is chaotically diffuse energy.

Things get done when energy is localised.

But energy loses its potency to motivate change when it becomes dispersed.

-Peter Atkins: The Creation

(jacked from a chem handout, weird CAPSLOCKs and Britishy English and all. more thoughts later....maybe.)

madisonstheoryofrelativity.net

"BUTTERFLIES = SUGAR SQUARETON RAINBOWS"

Nope, that's not the theory of relativity.
Neither is THIS. Not the one this post is going to be about, anyway, though that's a pretty important one by a pretty special guy. I GUESS. Anyways...(it's hard to focus when Maddie the roomster is being so hyper without me/listening to her hippy-dippy musicz eyy shoutout)

Anyhow --
zomg I cannot believe this, but this is something I always "zomg-I-cannot-believe-this" at whenever I feel that a major time span has been covered in my life. Year-ends, birthdays, the beginnings and ends of summertime, the Russian national day of reproduction...all the important timespan-milestones. Though it has never been too significant in my life before, since the only classes that changed in elementary, middle, high school semester by semester were P.E./Health (blech/blech), the end of this semester is freaking special so special too special. I'll never live another first semester of first year ever again. I know, I know - on that kind of specificity level, it's pretty unlikely that anything will ever be unspecial blahdi-blahblah, but really what a huge milestone we have all just lived. WE ONLY HAVE SEVEN LEFT AH (oops just generalized the whole world as experiencing the same things that I experience. selfish.) Ahh first semester. I can't even talk about it right now, not yet. Ask me a semester later.

ANYHOW ---
so first semester classes are done! Done like turkeys, all of them (guh I keep forgetting about finals but yeah).

Let's have a conversation right now (sorry, I know you don't have much choice in agreeing or not agreeing to my whims of having a conversation with you right now or not):
me - can you belieeeeeeeve first semester is already over?!
you - oh I know - it's so crazy! it went by so fast
me - yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeah...yyyyy

After having that same (stunted, kinda-one-sided) conversation over and over after all the time milestones listed above &etc., I came to the conclusion that is now madisonstheoryofrelativity. Hm I've actually never thought of it all as one word before, but it seems kind of catchy. Hmmmaybe.

SO THERETHUSFORTHLY ----
here's finally the explanation. I think I need another conversation.
me -  (cont. from above yyyyyy)yyyyyyeah. SO I HAVE THIS THEORY.
you - oh rearry.
me - yeah it's called the theory of...eh heh...relativity.
you - ah. hah.
me - so when you're two years old, one year is half of your life, right?
you - yuss.
me - and when you're nineteen, one year is...one nineteeth of your life, right?
you - yusss.
me - SO. RELATIVE to you and your life experiences, that "1/19" year is much shorter than the "1/2" year you spent as a human being. RIGHT?! And every year that passes by is relatively shorter and shorter -  a smaller and smaller segment of your life as a whole!


you - oh. yeah. mhm.


me - yap that's it.

Haha so there's my theory of relativity. Man I really hope I didn't mess that up with my general incoherency. And I was hoping to make the 'you' end of the conversation more easily applicable to whoever ends up reading this by making it as generic and devoid of personality as possible, but I guess that's sort of a contradiction, too - more widely applicable generality...no one is "devoid of personality. And if someone is, that's sort of a personality on its own anyways. Oh well.

And I don't know what big thing I think I am, but I was honestly surprised when someone told me that other people have had this thought before me. Oh hey... What a fool I am pahah

hello how are you how has your day been?

hello how are you whattupppp are often taken so lightly. It's definitely not always this way, but so many times, greetings are in general such...space fillers. Because you happen to be standing in front of one another at the same moment in time and everyone else seems to be greeting others.

And the responses are taken just as lightly - there's never enough space between the 'how are you' and thePRETTYGOOD.

"hi! how are y-""GOOD"

Haha I know this is a little sillyfied, obviously, but sometimes that's how it seems. Not many people ever truly answer the question. It's just a conditioned response, filling the air in between two individuals and not accomplishing any of its word-potential in finding out about anything, really, until (if) the real conversation starts.

So it's no wonder that people so often just skip this whole asking 'how has your day been' business altogether. And even if the question is asked (haha sounds like marriage or something. the question!?), no real answer is ever expected.given.

But it's important to ask about people's days.

Lots of people never mention their terrible days, full of inadvertent fall-asleeps and consequent stressful popping out of beds and raspy-voiced presentations in Chinese classes. People are suffering mini tragedies everyday, which are really only mini in retrospect and when zoomed out to the big picture (But what human being is good at doing that for every mini tragedy ever?SLASH what would really be the point of being human if we didn't suffer from our mini tragedies and rejoiced in the mini moments of....joy?).

Reading about my friend's popping-out-of-bed-so-many-times-AH-so-stressful-day on her tumblr post a few minutes ago, I realized that I saw her at the end of that day. And never asked how her day had gone.

OOOPZ.

Haha so the point is to say hello and how are you and mean it sometimes. People need to be asked, more often than we're accustomed to thinking!

GOODBYE HOPE YOU HAVE A WUNDERFUL DAY 8-)

nightswimming

the door to our room is being pulled and pushed by the wind from outside the window - it sounds like someone is trying to get in. not slammingly but gently, consistently, once in a while. the pressure from the winds and the constant volume of the room, i guess, makes all the difference in the world. like the road less traveled and night swimming. night swimming - deserves a quiet night. rain rain and wind and windows lit up far away close outside of my window and phantom hands bodies trying to get inside the room, but not scary-ly. the recklessness of water. they cannot seem to make it. like catherine's ghost and heathcliff(e) longing for his lover, their souls were made of the same soul-material. same silk, same cotton, same polyester, but probably not polyester. something older, and not as stretchy. and not very soft. are you hearing this rain outside? so much water - there will be a moat outside of maupin tomorrow morning. the maupin mote for madison and maddie princesses and being kind to others and using nice words and not being careless with other peoples' things and hearts, though not backspacing. well backspacing a little.

nightswimming. deserves a quiet night.

generosity

Some people are generous with money. Some people are generous with their belongings. Some, with their houses, letting anyone and everyone be their guest, and yet others are generous with

facebook 'Like's

and 'HAHAHAHAHAHAAHA's

It's kind of nice, this culture of freely giving affirmation for the tentative commenter. Makes you feel like your comment on that one picture wasn't THAT awkward and people are indeed laughing at your half-joke. 

Yay for kindness hahahahaahaHAHAHAAHAhhaahAHah

intro-extro romantic-realist

I was hoping to limit my indecisiveness to just the romantic-realist nature of my soul, 
but I'm afraid I may be an intro-extrovert as well.


uh-oh.