what is an English major

What's in a name? that which we call a rose 

By any other name would smell as sweet.

some more ideas:

There's love and computers and good old reading, writing, thinking,
Soulstuff.
Lines and connections and disparate things coming poetically (or not) together.

And people, too, trying to figure all of it out.

Kinda like life.

ba-bump

God, thank you for letting me study these things. Thank you for being infinite and learnable at the same time. Thank you for the collision of connections, for religion in literature, for Judaism and the New Testament, for heretical love. You make all things good for those who love you.

God, blow up my brain and piece it all together with your hands, your glue, puzzle by puzzley bit; start your work of re-Creation and let everything be of you, make everything shine with your presence. Let me love the world as you love it, and let me pray same words with different convictions.

God, I want to hear your voice. Let me seek it fervently and without tiring, and guide my brain and my heart together; let those be just two pieces of a great, mysterious soul. Make me choke up with emotion, re-wire my brain synapse thingies; and in all of this, keep my soul aligned and directed toward you so that everything else is secondary, in their right place, without my own strain.

God, I love you. God, thank you for holding me. God, I want to love you more.

Amen.

;

In certain academic ways, it's very mysterious, but I feel very stupid. Like everyone else in the discussion is getting it gettting it getting it but my brain is just unable to process correctly and all I can do is grasp at wavy-vague brainstrings and go mmmmmmhmm mhm ...mhmm yeah.

And in certain social ways, I often also often feel very stupid. Whether it's the feeling-out-of-place and sorta bewildered in a large party setting because there are too many people to be able to concertedly hear the person I'm wanting to be concentrating on in front of me, or feeling jealous or self-conscious or both cause I'm tiny-hearted and evil sometimes.

But then I mull over all these things in the car ride home, snuggly in the carseat and singing out LOUD to all the right songs that come on, shufflin', and pray to God about all the fun things that happened, thank you, thank you, and for all the beauty and for my car that runs well and for school and for uncertain futures and all these things in my present. And re- re- re- realize that my ultimate identity lies in Christ, and this causes all the beauty; this makes all the happy; this redeems all my mysterious stupidities.

happy naturalization cake

congrats! congratulations!

What for? Without taking away from the happy, kindly congratulatory feelings of the congratulations -- I really didn't get it. Is it indeed something to be congratulated for, this change of nationality? I didn't pay any part of the application fee, pass any particularly difficult test, or indeed, choose to come to this country in the first place. I didn't do any of it. Choose any of it.

But maybe it's not really about me anyways; what I've done or haven't. It's more like "congratulations for this great piece of luck" kind of deal. You're in the group, now -- may you officially and freely partake in Social Security (contributions). Even if you didn't know what you were getting yourself into (the most momentous life decisions get made this way, I feel). And it's true that I'm so thankful to be here, honestly. Not because I fled from an oppressive political regime or because my home country is war-torn and tattery now, but because I was free to think and to dress and to study and to dream the way I got to here.

And to eat celebratory Kroger cake and homemade pho in the same meal, surrounded by a rowdy bunch of hyphenated-Americans singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

America the Beautiful indeed.

How Proust Can Change Your Life --Alain de Botton

My legs were uncomfortabl(ly warm)e so I slipped them out from under the covers.
Then my teeth were uncomfortabl(ly tight)e in their retainers so those got slipped out, too.

the following quotations are from here
(what the...there are youtube renditions of this)

How to Put Books Down:

"...we should be reading for a particular reason: not to pass the time, not out of detached curiosity, but out of a dispassionate wish to find out what Ruskin felt, but because, to repeat with italics, "there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one feels oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt." We should read other people's books in order to learn what we feel; it is our own thoughts we should be developing even if it is another writer's thoughts that help us do so. A fulfilled academic life would therefore require us to judge that the writers we were studying articulated in their books a sufficient range of our own concerns, and that in the act of understanding them through translation or commentary, we would simultaneously be understanding and developing the spiritually significant parts of ourselves.

And therein lay Proust's problem, because in his view, books could not make us aware of enough of the things we felt. They might open our eyes, sensitize us, enhance our powers of perception, but at a certain point they would stop, not by coincidence, not occasionally, not out of bad luck, but inevitably, by definition, for the stark and simple reason that the author wasn't us. There would come a moment with every book when we would feel that something was incongruous, misunderstood, or constraining, and it would give us a responsibility to leave our guide behind and continue our thoughts alone...

It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books (which allow us to see the role at once essential yet limited that reading may play in our spiritual lives) that for the author they may be called "Conclusions" but for the reader "Incitements." We feel very strongly that our own wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off, and we would like him to provide us with answers when all he is able o do is provide us with desires... That is the value of reading, and also its inadequacy. To make it into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it. 

It obliges us to read with care, to welcome the insights books give us, but not to subjugate our independence or smother the nuances of our own love life in the process.

Otherwise, we might suffer a range of symptoms that Proust identified in the overreverent, overreliant reader:

.........

Symptom No. 2: That we are unable to write after reading a good book:

Reading Proust nearly silenced Virginia Woolf... "Proust so titillates my own desire for expression that I can hardly set out the sentence. Oh if I could write like that! I cry. And at the moment such is the astonishing vibration and saturation that he procures -- there's something sexual in it -- that I feel I can write like that, and seize my pen and then I can't write like that." 

"I detest my own volubility. Why be always spouting words?"

"This is the worst time of all. It makes me suicidal. Nothing seems left to do. All seems insipid and worthless."

"[In Search of Lost Time] which is of course so magnificent that I can't write myself within its arc. For years I've put off finishing it; but now, thinking I may die one of these years, I've returned, and let my own scribble do what it likes. Lord what a hopeless bad book mine will be!"

The tone suggests that Woolf had at last made her peace with Proust. He could have his terrain, she had hers to scribble in. The path from depression and self-loathing to cheerful defiance suggested a gradual recognition that one person's achievements did not have to invalidate another's, that there would always be something left to do even if it momentarily appeared otherwise. Proust might have expressed many things well, but independent thought and the history of the novel had not come to a half with him. His book did not have to be followed by silence; there was still space for the scribbling of others, for Mrs. Dalloway, The Common Reader, A Room of One's Own, and in particular, there was space for what these books symbolized in this context -- perceptions of one's own."

--------------------------------the application:------------------------------

These are layers and layers of genius to grapple with, learn from, and irreverently throw aside after having ingested their healthy juices. As healthy and addictively refreshing as regular bowel movements, a happy colon with a diet full of fiber. 

I feel like I am learning how to read from this book. The best kinds of teachers are the ones you can leave behind, aren't they? No matter how good their handwriting, no matter how ingenious their analysis of To the Lighthouse, no matter how inferior you feel in their presence -- actually, the best, the most effective, the most truly inspirational of all teacherly beings are the ones who allow you to stand on their shoulders and look into worlds beyond their own scope. Teachers with teachings that are great enough to cause those heart tremors, but humble enough to allow for the possibility of greater, fiercer vibrations. 

Those who equip us with the real tools, of believing in the distinct realizability of our loftiest dreams. In made-up words and over-hyphenization, allll included. 

"Lord what a helpless bad book mine will be!"

There 

are unbreathed, disquieted rumblings on the insides of my insides. I can't wait to read A la recherche de temps perdu. I can't wait to finish it and to put it down and then to poop out my own poop (...sorry; stop thinking about it...now!). But for now, it's legs-under-the-covers and retainers, back on: getting prepared for the good work of tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow's tomorrows.

travel

여행
-윤성택

여정이 일치하는 그곳에 당신이 있고
길이 생겨나기 시작 한다
시간은 망명과 같다 아무도 그
서사의 끝에서 돌아오지 못한다
그런 끝끝내 완성될 운명이
이렇게 읽히고 있다는 사실,
사랑은 단 한 번 펼친 면의 첫줄에서
비유 된다 이제 더 이상
우연한 방식의 이야기는 없다
이곳에 도착했으니 가방은
조용해지고 마음이 열리기 시작 한다
여행은 항상 당신의 궤도에 있다.


This is just to say

that the tra-
vel bug
is coming
back

and I am
quietly
ecstatic ab
-out this.

Let's go together.

record of grace

The following is a transcript (preeeetty much) of my notes from the GCF Spring Retreat, March 2nd through March 4th. They are lengthy, choppy, personal, confusing. As much as I believe that probably no one will read them (so please don't tell me tl;dr - I already know...haha), I wanted to type them out and put them here as a record of grace and just to read through my own notes again and process them in this way and also to maybe serve as jumping off points for discussions, if anyone wants to talk about any of this stuff with me; wants me to explain myself. They're kind of lacking, because I can't include all the little drawings and stars and various font sizes and exact, scribbly formattings of the actual {non)words in my notebook, but I did my best! I am actually amazed at how many of the sentences are even coherent!! The huge-lettered things are titles of each new entry. Imagine these notes as speaking to you against the background of brown-y, recycled paper, with a gold spiral running down the middle of two pages, in green ink, of scrabbly messy handwriting.


March 2 GCF Spring Retreat PASTOR BYUNG Ham

Living Water vs. Tall Glass of Toilet Water

• Jeremiah: drinking from Living Water of JC vs. gutter water cisterns
• this THIRST has been with us for a LONG time. (from the time of Adam and Eve!)
• Adam & Eve! NEKKID!!
• always thirsting, b/c we're looking for glorifyglory
• always trying to decorate, to justify, to self-glorify...because we're THIRSTING for the living water
• why does the world constantly tell us to stay thirsty, stay hungry?
• b/c it's our nakedness that keeps the economy, the consumerism going
• woman at the well...most famous ex. of THIRST in the Bible.
• JC was only able to REACH THROUGH to her b/c she confessed, opened up of all her sins.
• *we need to be honest w/ God, too *
• *we need to stop snacking on the world to satisfy the thirst with temporary znax...*
• Luke 19 "Zacchaeus the tax collector"
• "Zacchaeus was a CHIEF tax collector and was WEALTHY"
• Z was a traitor...tax cheater...against his OWN ppl, Jews

[1. Identity                                2. Motivation                        3. Idols]

• Zacchaeus' idol was $... Greed = stealthy incognito ninja
• Pastor B: "너는...욕심이 하나도 없어." 
• greed=ambition}woah. $is what Pastor B's [parents] came to Am. for.
• $ is not GOOD or BAD. Being rich or poor is not a moral alignment. It just has this tendency to blind us, b/c of our already-fallen nature.
• When we're around homeless, disabled people, the DISCOMFORT comes from...the fact that they reflect what we are...INSIDE
• $ is a wonderful SERVANT, but a horrible MASTER.
• broken people...do broken things.
• Zacchaeus was a broken man.
• When you're serving the Ggod of ______ <-- [$, sex, career, love, romance...], you'll always listen to and obey that.
• and then that Ggod says it will justify you...
• Zaccaheus: the seeker was being sought <--> JC on a tree.
• JC 说: come down from there! I will give you righteousness.
•                                                I will make you pure.
•                                                I will justify you.                    } ==> new purpose!
• and he (Z) DIDN'T have to contribute...
• Micah 6:8 "justice, mercy, humility"
• 2 ways to fail at understanding this msg:
• superiority complex: "I'm not that bad; don't need JC!"
• inferiority complex: "I'm too bad to be saved..."
• HOW MUCH DO I GIVE? It's just money. My God is You."
• if you say "how much do I have to give?" You're still trying to work off your salvation.
• with Christ as your idol, you should be able to give up ANYTHING ELSE, BECAUSE of freedom.
• God is jealously pursing. So go drink the living water
• sex, money, career, beauty...They're all just gifts. They're great gifts! But THEY ARE NOT LIFE. JESUS IS LIFE.
• When Jesus is life, you're a slave to:
• righteousness, love, kindness, gentleness, forgiveness, peace, patience...

Small Group

the general trend is positive. don't be discouraged. 

[drawing of a squiggly graph with a general positive trend]

• When you learn smtg new, it won't stick if you're living 
• THE SAME LIFESTYLE & just trying to add the new thing into it. the LIFESTYLE must alter to fit the new learning!
• * * * * * * * * * * *  * * [lots of hand-drawn five-pointed stars]

3/3/12 SPRING RETREAT Sat. Morning

• you can read all the stories and...miss the whole point of the Bible
• Luke 24:27 - knowing the Bible & missing Jesus
• reading the Bible like Aesop fables, reading the Bible like a self-help manuel. about...US, fundamentally
• if not focused on Christ, all this Bible reading could just be fueling our narcissistic, self-help usage.
• application is all good, but...INSUFFICIENT
• scripture is a portrait of Christ. Tells the story of how God rescued a broken world, and how Jesus was the hero

[[ "The Word of the Lord reveals the Lord of the Word." ]]

• The Bible is about the broken human race and how God saved it.
• COVENANT:
• vow, promise, secure contract
• no need for reciprocating!
• 2 parts! Anticipation        The take back  GENESIS 22 (!) Abe&Sarah --> Isaac "HAHA"
• the thing is, not all idols begin as idols...
• if that were true, God would be a teasing God! They are gifts...
• family, children...
• "sin" = despairing refusal to find worth, self-identity in God.
• You must ultimately place your self-worth in CHRIST, because the force of your THIRST to fill that "God-shaped" hole will crush that idol. If your idol is:
• your family: you will be resented, for putting too much pressure.
• your career: you will do unethical things to get farther ahead
• your cause: you will lose sight...!
• your church, morality, religion: you will be proud, pompous, ...GUILTY
• and when you FAIL, even if God forgives, it won't be good enough for you...
• What do I love more than anything else in the world?
• What are you working for/looking to to bring significant?
• What would it look like to give up that idol?                      EVERYTHING IMPLODES
• *The best things are the most prone to become IDOLS *
• that's why ISAAC had to be give up.
• everyone has a LIFE STORY. suffering turns up the volume of that Broadcast.
• often, that process Reveals what you're living for.
• it's a continuous process of being SAVED...It is a process of revealing and strengthening...

What is my Isaac? What do I pray the most about, cry about, get super super super excited about? dream about.

• Abe had to go thru this, b/c he loved Isaac too much.
• It was a custom-made test for Abe
• i.e. Pastor B refrains from Dating, b/c of sexual temptations. --> so your testimony is not ruined. so you can be used by God, b/c it's about God and his story. NOT yours.
• Because a one of a kind test --> a one of a kind, custom-made worship.

"I see that you're calling me to live without the one thing I thought I'd never be able to live without...many of us don't see that Jesus is all we need until Jesus is all we have."

JESUS + Nothing = Everything

Everything - JESUS = Nothing

• Isaiah 53: God did this. crucified his Jesus.
• "God damn" = "I could do this better than God!"
• *THERE'S FREEDOM in JC, when he delivers you from your ISAACS.
• *GREATEST FEAR as Christian =/= failure
•                                                    = success at things that don't matter.
• *When we give JC our everything, our thirsts will be quenched
• (!) dying to self. JC as protagonist of our own lives

Small Group: my cross...a gross monster combo of selfishness + self-image

What will my test be?

What do I place my God-like expectations in & will be disappointed by?

Are you more glad to be the end pt. of his grace, or a tunnel through which it flows?

3/2/12 actually should be 3/3/12 post-discussion journalings

Why is it so important for us to have something to die to, something to lay down everything to? That's all that THE WORLD caters to - that desire, that unending need to be filled...the GOD-SHAPED hole. Who am I? Where do I belong? What can i devote my whole self to? ...A love? A child? A cause? A career?

It's a God-shaped hole. It must be filled with God. 

And Jesus transcends culture. Age barriers. 

"everything is empty"

"life is meaningless"

so many people say stuff like this. Tis a ubiquitous experience.

Must remember that IDOLATRY reigns over everything.

We need to devote ourselves to a 

nourishing, healthy, loving, self-sacrificing, ultimately-fill[ing] IDOL, CHRIST.

• Charismatics
• take it case by case,
• I believe that the Spirit does work powerfully in unfamiliar ways
• build relationships with those "charismatic" around us
• make sure to distinguish between worshiping God and worshiping theology. THAT can become an idol, too.
• IDOL traps
• legalism
• morality
• theology
• community
• feeling...Hedonistic Christianity??

3/3/12 Saturday Night

"Outside-IN vs. Inside-OUT"

                                                  -conditional love         -scandalously unconditional

                                                -creates insecurity         -I obey...BECAUSE he loves me.

                                  -I am good --> God loves me.    -DAILY presents/presence = ULTIMATE GOAL!

                                        I obey --> God loves me.      -death to self => fading away into eternity.

                             -We just want God's xmas presents

• greatest enemy of the best =/= the worst
•                                         = the good enough
• remember the giant carrot story. What separates the sacred from the secular is MOTIVE.
• am I a "SO THAT" Christian? Yes :( showing others

[Obedience & Trust vs. Cost-Benefit Analysis]

of Adam and Eve's demise:

• if Adam and Eve had been told of all the bad tings that have happened because of the Fall, they certainly 

would not have eaten from the tree... But God/Jesus would've been NO part of that decision. That would've been a

SO-THAT DECISION

It would've been a result of recognizing God as THE measure of all that is good.

• Do I refrain from _______ because I love Jesus?
• No. It's because of ___________ consequence.
• If we do certain good deeds and refrain from certain bad ones, FOR the purpose of being a good person, righteousness itself becomes an idol.
• Luke 18: 9-14 Pharisee: "I'm so good! Phew good thing I'm not them"
• but hey, evil isn't anywhere far. It's inside.
• So wen people ask, "how can you believe in a good God with so much evil in the world?"
• say hey, look in your own heart (b/c WE believe to be saved..)
• Mean Girls: everyone's just looking for a bunch of -tions. validation, justification, ...and thirsting for it, and there's only one waterbottleful of glory...
• And when there's only one bottleful of coveted glory, you're gonna disgrace, deface, the image of God in all others to gain artificial righteousness.
• rappers = justified after jail
• "DOES MY FORM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS HURT OTHERS?"
• stomping others DOWN to become higher.
• But when you're in Christ, you don't need the justification the world offers. and you can...
• stop being jealous
• start loving your enemies
• stop the competition
• start honoring others without needing their justification
• serve others, pray for others, because I don't need anything from them!
• To be friends? To be loved? To be wanted? Yeah, I want those things. But I don't need them.

YES, THIS IS THE IMPLICATION OF THE GOSPEL!

• justification: JC died for us, and forgave us of the $5 trillion of debt. NOT ONLY THAT, but added $5 trillion of his own righteousness!
• and then you are HOLY because GOD says so. B/c of JC.
• Identity determines ACTIVITY
• if you believe you're a sinner, you'll live like one
• if you believe you're a justified, beloved person, you'll live like one

you spread what is the deepest inside your soul

• Why won't God justify the NONbelievers who are morally better than us? To GLORIFY himself. To make himself famous with our lives.
• if we don't make him famous through our POST-justification life, we're 又 just making ourselves famous, 又 putting down anyone else who doesn't fit our definition of righteousness.
• Pastor B's mom...justified by her husband and children taking her back. but still, she tries to regain justification by working off her past shame, avoiding more future shame. That is a life guided by, run by [fear, disgust, avoidance of shame].

live in freedom. live in righteousness,

• think of all those people who were told they weren't good enough and worked all their lives to prove those people wrong. --> "what are you gonna do when the haters are gone?"
• we're all looking for criticism from somewhere
• this is what Joy G (7th grade, Kammerer no friend girl) knew...from such a long time ago, isn't it? That she didn't need to be justified by anyone but JC. Only He can make us whole.
• All we need is NEED. All we need is NOTHING.
• If we don't have Christ, all the "good works" are done in vain. in fear. we must burst into his presence and ask, "Daddy, do it again. Tell me who I am."
• Identify = defining. Jesus tells me who I am.

The cross tells me who I am. Jesus tells me who I am. After sinning, we run to him and repent and ask him to define us. There's no more shame because that was all done at the cross. And he'll never speak of it again. 

"I don't want you guys to go all out because it's the last night. I want you to go all out because God is GOOD. Because God is so worthy. Because he is so good."

9:07 pm 

Grace Bible Camp

Lexington, VA

It doesn't mean the thirst will be gone. But it means we'll know where to drink from until Heaven.

Playing: "O the Wonderful Cross" 

Today 9:25pm is my spiritual re-birthday. My August, 6th grade spiritual birthday was a birth of emotion. I do believe that birth, that awakening of Christ's love was indeed genuine, and that it was that time that God used to place the Holy Spirit in me. That was indeed genuine. Yes. But, emotions on their own were obviously not enough. They fueled me for a little while at least, and that fueling was real...just not enough for long sustenance. There was no logical, thought-revelation revelation of THE FREEDOM OF CHRIST in m life!! So all my actions were so ME-driven. Almost empty (not completely). But now it's complete. My identity is in Christ, and I finally get that FREEDOM. 

How silly that it took my so long.

How silly how seriously I took myself.

How difficult it was for me to live without the foundation of that knowledge in my life.

And how thankful, how excited I am to begin this new, beautiful, empowered life. & this new page.

Thank God!

How my heart beats!!

My life has ALWAYS been about making a big, bang-y impression. I was equipped with a spunky personality and a shiny smile that, when flashed with the right timing and combination, often made some kind of an impression. And to a certain extent, I think God equipped me with these things as survival tooks. To survive - and in many ways, truly, thrive - all the moves my family transitioned through. So, so much of my identity was planted in how others would react to me. How others looked at me. I lived for it, that flash of surprise in people's eyes - the glimmer of imbalanced reaction. Rocking people a bit with an unexpected juxtaposition of words, an unnerving flash of smile, a snarky comment just cause I was the mysterious, brightshiny new girl. All the time. Because I had to SPARK(LE) at every new school. But that became an idol. Always looking to others for some secret, subtle, maybe even unintentional, recognition and attention and approval. 

9:55pm

• the line (btw. idolizing ____ vs. using _____ for his glory): minset. mindset. motive. motive. your kingdom or his kingdom?
• God made us for himself. God didn't save us for mission trips
•                                                                     for pastoral duty
•                                                                     but for himself.
• Even non Christians! They all wanna be more patient
•                                                             more kind
•                                                             more affectionate
•                                                             more giving        }what are all theses qualities? => JC
• don't just stare at the cross and feel bad, or be scared into doing good works; into not staring anywhere. THAT'S NOT THE POINT. take your eyes off yourself, put your gaze on Christ.
• The only thing that can CHANGE people = beauty. not the grotesque.
• STOP looking at yourself in the mirror. Look at JC. and the undercurrent will take you away.
•                                                                                             undercurrent
•                                                                                            undercurrent
• Xtianity is the ONLY truth that makes humility, and whose truth doesn't suffocate. whose truth is genuine.
• Tim Keller - Counterfeit Gods
• how do you keep communities from getting suffocating?
• confess more. you start.
• No one is holy. JESUS is holy. And we're only holy at the expense of JC.
• fruit =/= gifts
• fruits are born because of our choice to be under the presence of God      
• fruits define maturity
• in the face of forgetfulness, in the face of being disillusioned...remember that God is a God of creation. Don't look for recreations of past experiences.

11:40 pm

This message is ultimately fulfilling. The me-centered message was running out of fuel, because it's...well, me-fueled, had been me-centered! There's not much substance in that. The "OMG Jesus lahvs me so much" takeaway just wasn't enough anymore. THIS is the first time I've had this natural urge to share. 

evidences

• first instance of desire to SHARE this
• right message --> right register/grid. overcame the barriers! to 听懂!
• finally provided with conviction that Christianity is absolutely the only one.
• God-centered. makes sense. I have no objections here. <-- though it's NOT about that ANYWAYS

just keep breathing, silly.

The sky keeps holding its breath. Or maybe it is more accurate to say that it keeps making me hold my breath, because it keeps looking like it's gonna snow but it just keeps raining and not snowing. And holding my breath for snow is strangely self-defeating and self-deceptive and self-blinding (errmm self-noseplugging. METADUH) anyways because if I would just give in and take that swoosh of air into my lungs, my nostrils and my nostrils' little hairs and my nostrils' little hairs' sensory things (MMM SCIENCE) would be like oh! hay it doesn't smell like pre-snow atmosphere at all! and let my silly brain know.
But alas.

Only Wednesday and it has already been (half) a week full of breathlessness and "But alas"s.

1. Derek Walcott, lovechild of Yeats and St. Lucia, catches me off guard and leaves me confused because I don't get it but I love it, his poetry.

2. Jonne Dohn, who makes me feel like I'm choking. A terrible kind of breathless.

3. New Cabell trek up to the fifth floor that inspired a moment of community among three strangers this morning at 8:59am, commiserating and urging one another on, onward, onto the next floor! you can do it! - we were a makeshift sports team for those few moments of walking up those steps. Six coordinatedly burning thighs, three pairs of lungs running pitifully out of breath, one collection of random individuals who shared that connection and just as quickly parted ways, wishing each other well for the the rest of our days.

4. This, which I didn't even fully read for class today. which makes my heart beat faster. which was written by a man whose full-time job was in investment banking. which catches my breath, but which inspires me to breathe on.

In other news, I anxiously await Thanksgiving Break.

Heeeheeeehuuuuhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

please play us both at the same time!

art, art, i want you; art, you make it pretty hard not to

First, click the play button on the video below and listen while you read. Then after you're done reading, listen to the words again carefully. Sorry if you feel bossed around - you don't have to if you don't want to heeheee

There are many things that make me feel like a nobody, a noob. n00b. Taking the bus. Crossing unfamiliar crosswalks. Talking about nice and not so nice cars. But most of the time when that happens, it's okay. I actually kind of like feeling small - like I'm just a teeny piece of something bigger, something greater and more purposeful, like yeah I don't understand what's right in front of me but zoom out and you'll see a more coherent, make-sensical picture and ultimately everything really does make sense, at some level - that's nice. And it's good to be honest about one's noobishness and unashamedly so, sometimes (um yeah I'm having a little trouble figuring out which way to go in this FOUR-WAY crosswalk, but hey it's like only my 4th time here and there are so many cars and persons all around and this thang is complicated!), cause it makes for a good learning experience.

But the thing is, sometimes I feel like a noob about things I claim to love - things I know I do love. Things people think I'm good at (eeeeeep!), just by virtue my appreciation of them, combined with the semi-obscurity of said topics. Poetry. Art. Conversationing about human hearts. Blabbering words and sentences and not being sure I make sense, and even worse, experiencing someone else's elegant eloquence - extremely excellent - and being dwarfed by their genius. Don't misunderstand me - it's not about being jealous or bitter that I'm not smart enough. It's more like...being reminded about how much genius is truly out there in the big world, outside of my own head and feeling kind of scared because I'm supposed to "be good at this," cause supposedly, "omg I luff poetry!" you know? But do I dare even utter these things? Do I dare declare myself an English major? Who will care about what I say, do, make, write, synthesize, create? Am I even worthy of claiming that I love these things, when I know so little and am so inept at even expressing my love? I have no idea.

Art

For those of you who will not click the play button above:

"Art, art, I want you. Art, you make it pretty hard not to.

And my heart is trying hard, here, to follow you

but I can't always tell if I ought to."

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.