Boston JASC Reunion, Part 1

What's this I see?


Five JASCers in one room! Yoshi with his Pooh-san towel, Aya in her pajamas, Sunyoung smiling like a goddess, Nancy as our gracious host, and me as the photographer.


After moving in and making a big mess out of Nancy's room...


... we had a late dinner of Japanese food (because Yoshi reaaally wanted rice!).


It's been so wonderful to see everyone--Yoshi's crazy stories about JASC behind the scenes, talking with Aya, Sunyoung's laughter. It's like JASC again, running around getting lost and being inefficient and talking about love and staying up late and getting up early.


More updates on Boston JASC reunion soon!

state of life

It's an indication of how much of a child I still am that I find the unhappy clutter of life to be exhaustively all-consuming. Or you may choose to call it by its other names: self-absorption, intense narcissism, myopia.

In any case, there is no perspective when my sun refuses to shine and my world refuses to turn. And I will be obstinately petulant until this unhappy clutter goes away.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

This is my redux of Rachel's post. Here follows a partial list of things that bring joy to my life:

• blank notebooks
• graffiti
• a well-fitted coat
  
• mass transit in unfamiliar cities
• skipping class on Fridays
  
• the produce aisle
• people with obscure interests
  
• lists
• Sherlock Homes
• accordion music
• Monopoly game pieces
• folding shirts still warm from the dryer
  

Potential

It's such an ugly word. To use the word "potential" is to indicate a gap between that and reality. It's moralizing, condescending, and totally oppressive. The next time sometime tells me I'm underachieving my "potential", I am going to tell them that I could "potentially" be a crack-whore on the street, dragging my five-year old malnourished child behind me.

Unless it's my thesis advisor. In which case I say, "Yes Ma'am."

Brrrr cold!

Monday was sunny; Tuesday was cloudy. Then Wednesday and Thursday inexplicably descended into wintry despair. It's better today, the expected high is in the low 50s (degrees Fahrenheit).

I am devoting a post to the banalities of weather in part because I came across this picture of a snow monkey (also known as a Japanese macaque, though I tend to think of them as spa monkeys). I also happen to believe that weather is far from banal. It determines what I do and colors how I feel; to say that it's mere backdrop to my life is to ignore just how often it intrudes into the foreground. I didn't realize this until I came to college, when the vagaries of New England weather made a wreck of my winters. I thought about investing in a sun lamp.

When it's cold -- not so much that I can't think of anything but the ache in my ears but enough that I instinctively hunch inwards -- I am reminded of home, the familiarity of a brick house and the warmth of the kitchen. I think of Thanksgiving, Cowboys game on the TV, and my parents' cooking. I'm idealizing, of course: my parents routinely turn the thermostat down to save money and energy, so our house is often punishingly cold, the Cowboys haven't been worth watching since their glory days in the early 1990s, and I have spent every Thanksgiving in the last three years away from home (each time building on this nostalgic longing).

This year, though, I'm going home on November 26th. So, each day I walk through the Yard, shivering and kicking fallen leaves, is one day closer to home.

Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

I am occasionally (often) seized with the desire to abandon intellectual pretensions and be utterly frivolous. So here is a non-exhaustive list of things that make me happy for no particular reason:

--moving walkways in airports

--the way valve oil smells and the squeaky sound it makes when it gets on my fingers
--the cheerful sounds google and skype make when someone chats me
--sunshine in my room in the afternoon
--lady police officers
--doing everyday things with my eyes closed
--licking old-fashioned stamps
--watching other people play video games
--grapefruit
--writing with colorful pens
--being barefoot in inappropriate places
--street and subway musicians

Shame!

I was assigned to read Persepolis, 1 and 2, for class tomorrow. Only the first half is on reserve, and all available copies in the library system are out. Class is tomorrow, two hours of discussion with the professor.

Compelled by the exigency of my situation, I found a copy of Persepolis at the Harvard Bookstore, parked myself in a corner couch, and read the second half of the book while legitimate patrons and store staff drifted around me. Petty, gracelessly cheap, and, worst of all, I felt as if I had violated the sacredness of text and authorship.

On the other hand, the paperback costs $25, so my conscience isn't terribly tortured.

Thanks to the economy, I have no future

My last post was a bit abstract, so here is a very real speculation on the state of my life after graduation.


After four years of learning, privilege, toil (however you choose to describe my college education), I am finally ready to enter society as a theoretically functional individual. In June 2009, I graduate. In my Panglossian fantasy, my parents and I celebrate, I receive a fellowship to study in China for a year, and then I move onto law school.


Given near-paralysis of the credit market, however, many of my fellow graduating students that would have entered the investment banking industry are now considering other options, like graduate school or fellowships. All of a sudden, my idyllic little pasture is overcrowded with starving sheep, as it were. Competition drives evolution; it drives the market. What emerges is a more efficient equilibrium. Competition is, essentially, a "good" thing.


But competition also causes profound instability and dislocation. And my lizard brain is intensely insecure about my survival. What is the back-up to my flimsy plans? The prospect of going home to live with my parents is frightening: disappointment and shame within an enclosed space would invariably lead to madness. I could find odd jobs here and there (assuming that Barnes and Noble would even hire a simultaneously overqualified and inexperienced college graduate), apply to law school, and wait out the year. I could pack up, move to Shanghai, and eke out a living tutoring English in China's new Gotham. Or simply live overseas as one of those disaffected young expatriates that populate Hemingway's novels.


Clearly, my speculation has reached the realm of fantasy. It got so bad that, while trying to have the same conversation with Rachel a few days ago, we ended up talking about launching crime syndicates -- planting poppies in the power-vacuum of post-war Afghanistan and the kind -- in lieu of legitimate post-graduation plans. We kid, of course, but it's a rather dark sort of humor.


And alright, I acknowledge that ultimately I am speaking from a privileged position, and that this rant veers on the melodramatic. My problem is not at all unique; it's one that all college graduates face. After investing so much (of my parents' money) into my (questionably productive) education, what do I do with my life that will validate my parents' sacrifice and my self-worth?