guilt / books, books, books!

Quick book update before it gets entirely too overwhelming to do this.

The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi

I think it’s beneficial for these two books to be read together. Taibbi paints a clear picture of systems of inequality in the United States. Hinton’s reflections as an innocent man on death row show how these painfully unjust systems can affect individual lives.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris

This, like many Holocaust stories, gets to the core of hope and survival. I thought it was a well-told true story, but perhaps lacked a layer of reflection lost through a third-party retelling. Still, it’s a book I find myself thinking about fairly often.

Sula by Toni Morrison

I’ve heard great things about Toni Morrison, but this might not have been the book to start with. It’s an interesting story and it’s well-written, but I found it difficult to get through. I kept asking myself, “Why am I reading this?” Clemantine Wamariya references it a few times in her memoir, and I was glad to have read this in order to understand those references, but otherwise it was fairly unmemorable.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

This book could've ended on the first page and it would have been equally impactful. Morrie Schtwartz lived a meaningful life and his bits of wisdom are worth contemplating. For that, I would just look up his quotes. Morrie's diverse experiences are cheapened by Albom's syrupy, depthless writing; his stories are ruined by Albom's self-centered, shallow reflections. Morrie deserves all the stars. Albom gets none. This is perhaps the most overrated book I've ever read.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya

This is a beautifully written memoir by a survivor of the Rwandan Genocide. I appreciated chapter by chapter contrast between her years as a displaced refugee and her attempts at creating a stable life in America. She is brutally honest about the ways in which she was or was not able to reconcile the events of her past, and how she was able to move forward from her experiences of war. One of my favorite memoirs that I’ve read this year.

Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

Not sure if this was the best place to start with Chomsky, but it was quite a ride. His attention to detail and ability to build compelling arguments is inspiring, even as he conveys disaster after violent disaster. I appreciate that Chomsky doesn’t simplify his arguments by providing a hopeful conclusion at the end of the book, as many similar books often do. He lets readers sit with the emotional cost of the events he describes, and while a little bit devastating, feels appropriate.

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

Please see prior post because I cannot encapsulate all my feelings about this book into a paragraph.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

An incredibly sweet (not sure if this is a good thing) and sentimental historical fiction novel about Japanese internment in Seattle during WW2. I was a bit bothered by this one because the romance seemed to override the pain, humiliation and injustice of the actual process of internment. Maybe it’s because it’s told from the perspective of a teenage boy who is more worried about losing a friend than the problematic nature of the entire situation? I can’t quite identify the cause for the underlying feeling, but it kept the book at an emotional distance that seemed out-of-character for a book like this.

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

A thrilling mystery novel that relies more on character development and subtleties than dramatic events. I really enjoyed the suspense and explorations of human psychology through this whodunit. It’s the third book of a series but I didn’t read an of the prior books so I assume they’re all standalone books.

There, There by Tommy Orange

Don’t read this if you like conclusive books, because this book ends quite abruptly. It reads almost like a series of short stories, but all the characters are linked in various ways. The stories are so intimate, the characters are well-crafted. Orange does a beautiful job of creating complete portraits of people in a limited amount of words. I really enjoyed this book—the prose is phenomenal.

Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink

A full account of the events at Memorial Hospital after Hurricane Katrina. I started this book while taking a medical anthropology class a few years ago, but finally decided to finish it. A thoroughly-researched book and heartbreaking look at how systems can deteriorate in disaster situations without planning.

Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital by David Oshinsky

This is a detailed history of Bellevue Hospital in New York City. I gravitate towards microhistories that focus on a specific person or place throughout time because it helps give me context for the ways in which society shifts around the subject. This book was great at doing that, and helped me better understand the American medical system. The parts about epidemics were particularly interesting.

America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System by Steven Brill

Another micro-analysis of a particular subject—in this case, the Affordable Care Act. It was a bit lengthy and tedious, and I’m not sure that I gave it the attention it needed at certain points. I’m also not sure how I feel about the author’s ultimate argument that a possible solution to American healthcare woes could involve insurance plans provided directly from mega-hospitals, but that requires more research on my end before I form a real opinion about it.

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

I think I would honestly read anything by Lahiri even just to understand how she can invoke such strong feelings in readers through her inclusion (and exclusion) of the most minute details. I’m in constant awe of her writing ability, and The Namesake is no different.

Known and Strange Things by Teju Cole

This is a broad collection of essays—I really enjoyed some of Cole’s cultural analyses, particularly on American international relations. The way he writes about photography has also made me reflect a lot on my own relationship with images, as I touch on briefly in the post about time. Some of the essays were a bit too abstract for me, so I ended up skipping a lot towards the end. Enjoyed “Disappearing Shanghai”, “Touching Strangers", “The Atlas of Affect”, “Memories of Things Unseen”, and “The White Savior Industrial Complex".

more thoughts on time

It seems evident throughout my blog and website that nostalgia is a feeling I grapple with on a regular basis. My mind spins around ideas of time, nostalgia, fear, gratitude, and loss, and how my experiences with these concepts have affected and influenced my personal growth.

Teju Cole writes in Known and Strange Things (“Memories of Things Unseen”):

"Photography is at the nerve center of our paradoxical memorial impulses: we need it there for how it helps us frame our losses, but we can also sense it crowding in on ongoing experience, imposing closure on what should still be open.”

I have been increasingly aware of the links between my desire to photograph and my attachment to the past and present. I started taking photos, back in 2009, because I felt a strange sense of loss at the gaps in my family's photo albums. It was a foreign feeling to me at the time—a new awareness of time's passing, of the irretrievability of tender moments lost forever. I carry a camera with me every day because I have no idea when I'll encounter even a fraction of a second that I'll find captivating. Yet, I've been wondering, is it a preservation of a memory that I seek? Is it attachment to the present? Is it fear of the future? Is it sadness? Appreciation? Perhaps I photograph as a method of mourning the transience of time which passes so quickly I cannot ever give each moment the attention that I want to. Perhaps some moments are so overwhelming that I try to preserve a shadow of them in hopes that I can feel more gratitude for them later.

One of the most enjoyable things about consuming so many books is that I start to notice patterns in concepts or references to different texts. Time is a concept I’ve been more interested in intellectually since I read A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki in November, which I wrote about in a prior blog post in January. Since then, I’ve been aware of the ways in which time comes up in the books that I read, from Teju Cole, who writes about time in the context of photography, to Anthony Ray Hinton, who writes about time in a cell on death row as an innocent man. In Ken Liu’s short story, “Mono No Aware”, he writes:

“Everything passes. That feeling in your heart: it’s called mono no aware. It is a sense of the transience of all things in life. The sun, the dandelion, the cicada, the Hammer, and all of us: we are all subject to the equations of James Clerk Maxwell, and we are all ephemeral patterns destined to eventually fade, whether in a second or an eon.”

Sally Mann, known for her large-format documentary photographs of her children, writes about the same concept of transience in her photographic memoir, Hold Still:

”As for me, I see both beauty and the dark side of the things; the loveliness of cornfields and full sails, but the ruin as the well. And I see them at the same time, and chary of that ecstasy. The Japanese have a phrase for this dual perception: mono no aware. It means ‘beauty tinged with sadness,’ for there cannot be any real beauty without the indolic whiff of decay. For me, living is the same thing as dying, and loving is the same thing as losing, and this does not make me a madwoman; I believe it can make me better at living, and better at loving, and, just possibly, better at seeing.”

This sense of transience, this mono no aware, is a feeling that I have recognized for several years now, although I never had the vocabulary for the feeling. I've tried to describe it as a form an instant nostalgia, an awareness of present beauty so visceral I sometimes only recognize it as a physical pain in my chest. In high school, I read Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and although this quote has been beaten to death, it was the closest thing I had found to an accurate description: "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." Perhaps it's simply a distinct awareness of the movement of time, that each moment is a moment that will never return. It is a feeling that makes me feel completely insignificant, but profoundly grateful for my own existence and capacity to have such ethereal experiences. I wonder if my tendency towards hyperawareness is tied to my fears of taking things for granted, which in turn is tied to childhood experiences of loss. I am aware that my father was only in my life for 1,831 days, so insignificant when compared to the 8,759 days that I've lived so far. I am aware of time because time revealed it's capacity to cause pain before I had even had a chance to take it for granted, and that is a lesson I live with forever.

I read The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli this week, which was mind-bending and profoundly fulfilling at the same time. He provides an overview of the history of time theories, and then dives into a more abstract/metaphysical discussion of time. Rovelli is a quantum physicist—the first half of the book hurt my brain, but the second half was worth the pain. I was most taken with his thoughts on why time matters to us as beings that exist. It is what makes us, us. We are guaranteed to change through time, but the passage of it ensures that the past follows us to the present and to the future.

“It is memory that solders together the processes, scattered across time, of which we are made. In this sense we exist in time. It is for this reason that I am the same person today as I was yesterday. To understand ourselves means to reflect on time. But to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves….

This space—memory—combined with our continuous process of anticipation, is the source of our sensing time as time, and ourselves as ourselves. Think about it: our introspection is easily capable of imagining itself without there being space or matter, but can it imagine itself not existing in time?….

Because [time] is nothing but a fleeting structure of the world, an ephemeral fluctuation in the happening of the world, that which is capable of giving rise to what we are: beings made of time. That to which we owe our being, giving us the precious gift of our very existence, allowing us to create the fleeting illusion of permanence that is the origin of all our suffering.”

I don't know if I'm afraid of my death, but I unwillingly imagine the death of loved ones frequently. It used to make me panic, but I have been consciously trying to address these fears in the last few years. My mother, a strong believer in fate, tells me there is no point worrying about things outside of our control, because well, they're outside of our control. We must try to be safe and responsible for our own well-being, but that is all we can do. I try to internalize these lessons, but it is difficult. Death is so easy for me to imagine. But I realized, through this book, that it is not necessarily death that comes into my mind so easily, it is loss.

“Fearing the transition, being afraid of death, is like being afraid of reality itself; like being afraid of the sun.”

I am constantly aware of certain dualities in my life. Gratitude and fear often come together. I wrestle with vulnerability and distance. My gratitude for people pulls me towards them, drawing out a consistent desire to want to tell and show people how much they mean to me, how much I appreciate them, how much better my life is with them in it. Fear pushes me away, because vulnerability means that I have something to lose, and the possibility of loss can still leave me paralyzed. But, it is not just the possibility of loss that makes me uneasy, it is the possibility of my words or feelings losing meaning, numbed by time. I'm often caught off guard by the things I hear around me when I am steeping in my visceral reactions to beauty.

"What's the big deal? I see this every day."

"This is nothing compared to *INSERT TRAVEL STORY*"

"I wish there were less people here and it was 5 degrees warmer and I had a prettier cocktail to take a picture of for Instagram." ***possibly a fabricated quote.

I don't know how to react, because comparison, when it comes to gratitude, does not come naturally to me. Of course, I will perceive things to be more beautiful on certain days or in certain situations, but that never detracts from the appreciation I can feel for the current state. I often wonder, whether by revealing too frequently the depth to which I feel certain things, my words or actions will lose meaning to the people around me, like how beautiful scenery can lose their magic to the people exposed to them each day. Slipping into someone else's swamp of indifference or complacency over time is one of my most realistic fears (I have many unrealistic fears, like being tipped over in a portable toilet or someone jumping into my open car window while I'm driving, but that's besides the point). I've dealt with this by rationing my expression of feelings, which is perhaps the most socially acceptable way of handling an overload of emotions. I’m well practiced in a persona of sincere aloofness, a candid coolness—the direct result of many internal battles.

Rovelli made me realize that my fear, gratitude, nostalgia, memory, love, and fascination with time are thoroughly entwined. It is impossible to address one without attempting to untangle the rest. It can be messy, but it was deeply comforting to understand that these feelings arise from having people, moments, and experiences in my life that make my life meaningful. It is a privilege to fear absence. Time is suffering because it forces us to acknowledge the things we have the capacity to lose.

“A precious miracle that the infinite play of combinations has unlocked for us, allowing us to exist. We may smile now. We can go back to serenely immersing ourselves in time—in our finite time—to savoring the clear intensity of every fleeting and cherished moment of the brief circle of our existence.”

this life / more books / podcasts / skill-building

“If you once believed that everything always turns out well in the end, you can be persuaded that nothing turns out well in the end. If you once did nothing because you thought progress is inevitable, then you can continue to do nothing because you think time moves in repeating cycles.”

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

BOOKS

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors

This book really got to me. I was in my first year of college when the #BlackLivesMatter movement broke out after the killing of Trayvon Martin and acquittal of George Zimmerman. The first protest I ever went to was a Black Lives Matter protest in Roxbury, MA in 2013. I don’t remember exactly what compelled me to go to that, but I remember thinking it felt wrong to sit in my dorm doing problem sets when humans were out there fighting for a right to not fear being killed on a daily basis. Looking back on my childhood, a lot of my early role models were black—Michael Jordan, Ray Allen, Alicia Keys, Will Smith, LeBron James. I don’t remember when I became conscious of race, but I realized very early in adulthood that I wasn’t conscious enough of it at all. I’ve spent a significant amount of time trying to educate myself on race issues beyond the perfunctory knowledge gained in high school history classes. James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hanif Abdurraqib, Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Michael Twitty, Jesmyn Ward, Maya Angelou, Trevor Noah, and Michelle Obama have provided so much meaningful context, and Patrisse Khan-Cullor’s memoir adds another strong voice into the mix. This is a heartbreaking account of how a lifetime of suffering and pain led to the birth of a movement, and I highly recommend it.

“What is the impact of not being valued?
How do you measure the loss of what a human being does not receive?”

— Patrisse Khan-Cullors, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

As someone who claims to love food, I’m embarrassed to say that I was sadly unfamiliar with Anthony Bourdain prior to this book. To be fair, my interest has always been more on the health and policy side, but it is difficult to imagine someone who loves food more than Bourdain does. His openness to the world is inspiring. Rest in peace.

Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

This is the sequel to Beartown, which I wrote about in the post below. This one is a beautiful book in its own right. I recommend both of these books to anyone who has a desire to read. I’m still in awe of how Backman was able to fit so much of the world into a little town.

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder and Call Them By Their True Names by Rebecca Solnit

The official description of this book is: “A historian of fascism offers a guide for surviving and resisting America’s turn towards authoritarianism.” It is succinct, but I found it a fitting accompaniment to Rebecca Solnit’s Call Them by Their True Names. Both books made me think critically about complacency and hopelessness. Solnit often talks about the beauty of the unknown—that the future is not inherently doomed nor will problems fix themselves. Hope for the future involves taking actions to make the future better. Hope is not complacency. Timothy Snyder writes in a similar vein. We must understand our past to make better decisions about the future.

“History allows us to see patterns and make judgments. it sketches for us the structures within which we can seek freedom. It reveals moments, each of them different, none entirely unique. To understand one moment is to see the possibility of being the co-creator of another. History permits us to be responsible: not for everything, but for something.”

— Timothy Snyder, On Tyrannny

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

This is a memoir by a Korean-American adoptee who reconnects with her birth family. She learns of the circumstances and secrets that led up to her biological parents putting her up for adoption. Her writing is honest. I don’t really know how else to describe it. It is thoroughly genuine. I really appreciated this book. My first friend in my life was an adoptee, and adoption was perhaps the first “social issue” (I put quotes because issue doesn’t seem like the right word) that I was ever aware of. Many of the questions she struggles with surrounding abandonment and “what if’s” are the same ones that I watched my friend battle growing up, and for that, it hit close to home.

Hold Still by Sally Mann

I honestly thought I would like this one more than I did. Photography and memoirs are two of my favorite things, but this one just didn’t quite capture my attention. I think the first few chapters are worth reading. Her reflections on the art of photography are insightful, but she couldn’t get me to care about her family history and her perspective on backlash to her work.

“I tend to agree with the theory that if you want to keep a memory pristine, you must not call upon it too often, for each time it is revisited, you alter it irrevocably, remembering not the original impression left by experience but the last time you recalled it. With tiny differences creeping in at each cycle, the exercise of our memory does not bring us closer to the past but draws us further away.”

— Sally Mann, Hold Still

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

A tenderly heartbreaking story that thrives in simplicity and authenticity. It is an incredibly slow book, but the characters are amongst the most realistic of any fiction book I’ve ever read. I wish I read this earlier in my life. I think it would have resonated more in my late teens, but I’m glad I read it anyway.

“Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first time or last time: Then your time on earth will be filed with glory.
”

— Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Americanah is beautifully written, and I’m consistently blown away by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s ability to hit on emotional notes through the inclusion of the most subtle details. I noticed that in her short story collection, The Thing Around You Neck, and Americanah is no different. Through her characters’ journeys through Nigeria, England, and the United States, Adichie gives broad perspective on important race questions. The main character, Ifemelu, has a blog on her observations of racial issues in America. These blog posts are funny and incisive, and were some of my favorite passages throughout the book. My only complaint is that the ending felt too neat, and some plot lines veered into the slightly unrealistic. Still, a lovely and important novel worth reading.

“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

PODCASTS

I also wanted to write about some of my favorite podcasts. I alternate often between reading books and listening to podcasts, and often the books that I choose stem from topics I’ve heard about in some of these podcasts.

On Being with Krista Tippett

It’s hard to describe what that podcast is “about” without saying it’s about life itself. One of my friends calls it food for the soul. I aspire to be as thoughtful and insightful of an interviewer as Krista Tippett is in these discussions with prominent scientists, artists, religious leaders, writers, etc. The podcast goes back years and years and each conversation brings such beautiful insight into living. Many of the books I decide to read are referenced in these conversations. I loved the recent episode with Teju Cole, the one with Anand Giridharadas, and an older episode with Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Ologies

An amazing combination of entertaining and educational. Alie Ward is hilarious and surprisingly, so are many of her guests. They talk about a specific -ology each week, and I’ve literally never come across a boring episode. Fun way to learn about niche science topics. The “Etymology” episode was great, as was the episode on “Food Anthropology”.

99% Invisible

The first podcast I ever got addicted to! This podcast is about “design” in the broadest sense of the word. I would describe them more as origin stories to very specific and seemingly mundane things. I started listening to this podcast in 2014 and it completely changed the way I view my surroundings. I remember loving the episode about the butterfly ballot from the 2000 presidential elections. 99PI made me a lot more curious and conscientious, and I still try to remain as up-to-date as possible on new episodes. More recently, I enjoyed the episode on Chinatowns and the mini-series, “Articles of Interest”.

Potterless

I basically started listening to this podcast when I had the urge to re-read the Harry Potter series. Mike Schubert is a 26 year-old reading the series for the first time, and his commentary and analysis is hilarious. He brings in hardcore Harry Potter fans to discuss each chapter with him. This is my favorite thing to listen to when my brain is burnt out from trying to learn and I want to be entertained/feel nostalgic.

Throughline

Relatively new podcast from NPR. It basically retraces specific events through history. There was a recent one on the opioid epidemic in America which was really interesting, as was the one about planned obsolescence. Well-researched and well-produced.

Gastropod

This one is pretty niche but it discusses FOOD so I automatically love it. I’ve also emailed them before to ask for book recommendations and they actually responded to my 389719384719 word email so I’m grateful. Don’t know if most people would be interested in this, but if you want to learn more about specific food histories, it’s all here.

The China History Podcast

Just started this one, but enjoying it so far. Some are multi-episode series discussing a particular era of Chinese history, while others are standalone episodes. I’m looking forward to learning more about the history of tea.

SKILLS

I’ve become more conscious in the last few weeks of the balance between learning and building more concrete skills. I am happy with how much I have been reading, but want to be mindful of the ratio between creation and consumption. I am toying with the idea of picking sewing back up to design and make some backpacks, which has been a goal of mine for many years now, but we’ll see. As always, time is the constraint. Maybe getting more sleep should be more of a priority. For now, I have started playing piano, guitar, and pipa again.

For the unfamiliar, a pipa is a Chinese lute. I played this for a few years in high school until periodic hand injuries pretty much made it impossible to practice while playing basketball.

While looking for old sheet music, I found this ancient piano recital video of me and a piano buddy playing Liu Yang River. Enjoy 15 year-old me being enthusiastic about Chinese music (and also sorry for the obnoxious sounds at the end, my teacher liked kazoos I guess??).

Response prompt:

What is something you are looking forward to in the next few months?

a completely disjointed reflection on curiosity, reading, high school sports, friendships, and beartown

I believe that curiosity is my most defining trait. As a kid, I directed that curiosity towards the outdoors, spending countless hours biking, digging in my backyard, wandering through trees, or trying to perfect my layup. I took apart things (and rarely put them back together), memorized maps, and tried to find ways to make LEGOs functional. My curiosity extended to trying to figure out whether I could be good at things, and in certain areas of my life, an exacting self-discipline took over where curiosity left off. I remember, as an eight year-old, feeling a need to make 100 shots at my neighborhood basketball court before going home for dinner. When I was thirteen, I spent hours in my basement for weeks on end, battling with a sewing machine because I wanted to make my friend a Pikachu hoodie for her birthday. Sophomore year, I spent weekends watching and dissecting movies, analyzing the composition and color balance of specific frames, because I wanted to make my own movie one day. The summer before my junior year of high school, I planned out every single day of my summer vacation so that I could read all the chapters of my history textbook, write all the needed book reports, study for the SAT, play basketball, practice photography, pass my piano exams, spend time with friends, and go on a family vacation without missing a beat. Summer before senior year of college, I spent hours playing guitar after work every day because I wanted to know how well I could play “The A Team”.

Books have always played an important role in my life. Like many 90’s kids, I was obsessed with Harry Potter growing up. Other favorites included Eragon (Christopher Paolini), Holes (Louis Sachar), Red Scarf Girl (Ji-Li Jiang), anything by Roald Dahl, The Series of Unfortunate Events (Lemony Snicket), Yao Ming's autobiography, and Ichiro on Ichiro. I regularly snuck into my brother's room to steal the books from his more advanced reading list. I read less frequently in high school after basketball, track and field, piano, yearbook, and photography took over my life, but I remained tied to stories. Books helped quench an insatiable curiosity and imagine new worlds I never thought possible. Invisible Monsters (Chuck Palahniuk), Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut), Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky), Nine Stories (JD Salinger), Between Shades of Gray (Ruta Sepetys), and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson) stand out as favorites from that time. In college, Haruki Murakami captured my imagination, but otherwise, I did not have much time to read. The 2016 election made me acutely aware of my lack of knowledge about the real world, and I started down a path of understanding the numerous issues of our current time. That journey is fairly well-documented on this blog. In 2017, I started a reading project in an attempt to understand the environmental consequences, political influences, and health implications of the American food system. After about a year into that project, I realized I wanted to spend more time expanding the breadth of my knowledge before diving specifically into a single subject (I know that the food system in itself is a vast subject, but I think you know what I mean).

Since then, my reading has been much more impulsive. I have a general list of books that I want to read, but am open to picking up anything that sounds interesting or diving into recommendations from friends. It is through a whimsical exploration of literature that I've learned the true value of reading. I move between memoirs (perhaps my favorite genre), fiction, psychology, political science, nature writing, and history, but at the end of each book, I feel like I've learned something important about myself and my place in the world. I've learned to ask myself new questions, to perceive my life in a new way, and to challenge my assumptions about the society I live in. I’ve made connections between books that seem completely unrelated on the surface. Building empathy with characters, real or fictional, is the invaluable gift of storytelling. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's quote at the beginning of this post feels incisively relevant. Books can be as much about the things that didn't happen, the words that weren't written, the characters that didn't exist, and stories that were untold, as much as they are about the things that did.

In a rare attempt of trying to encapsulate what a book can mean to me, I'm going to spew some thoughts about Beartown by Fredrik Backman, perhaps my favorite out of the 55 books I've read so far this year. Here is the description on the inside cover of the book:

"People say Beartown is finished. A tiny community nestled deep in the forest, it is slowly losing ground to the ever-encroaching trees. But down by the lake stands an old ice rink, built generations ago by the working men who founded this town. And in that ice rink is the reason people in Beartown believe tomorrow will be better than today. Their junior ice hockey team is about to compete in the national semi-finals, and they actually have a shot at winning. All the hopes and dreams of this place now rest on the shoulders of a handful of teenage boys.

Being responsible for the hopes of an entire town is a heavy burden, and the semi-final match is the catalyst for a violent act that will leave a young girl traumatized and a town in turmoil. Accusations are made and, like ripples on a pond, they travel through all of Beartown, leaving no resident unaffected.

Beartown explores the hopes that bring a small community together, the secrets that tear it apart, and the courage it takes for an individual to go against the grain. In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world."

Perhaps needless to say based on my strong recommendation, I find the story captivating. I read A Man Called Ove a few years ago by the same author, and while I recognized his ability to craft a truly multi-dimensional character, I was unprepared for his capacity to build a whole town of them. I found myself falling in love with multiple characters at once—I cried with them and celebrated their victories. My heart broke with theirs. I've read many books this year with well-crafted characters—Americanah (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie), Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith), and A Tale for the Time Being (Ruth Ozeki) come to mind, but Beartown is unparalleled. I think it would be difficult to write about the book holistically without spoiling anything, so I will write by themes. Please excuse my disjointedness.

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It’s incomprehensible because there’s nothing to compare it to. It’s like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who’s lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”

Reading this book made me acutely aware of the sacrifices of parents. I've talked to some of my friends about this recently—that we're reaching a point in our lives where we're much more conscious of the fragility of our parents and the risks they took to make our lives better. Despite having been a recipient of a lifetime of this love, I cannot imagine what it feels like to love a child. Even the unconditional love I have for my mom seems to pale in comparison to the capacity she has to love me back. The variety of parental love expressed in this book is honestly breathtaking. I don't think anything I've ever read has portrayed the fear parents have of their children being hurt as thoroughly as Backman does in this book. Each parent has a different parenting style and relationship with their child, but the overwhelming need to do what they believe is best for their kid is a universal and powerful force.

“You never have the sort of friends you have when you’re fifteen ever again. Even if you keep them for the rest of your life, it’s never the same as it was then.”

I met my best friend when I was a freshman in high school. We were fourteen, lost in a world that scared us both. The most astounding part of teenage friendship, for me, was everything that could be conveyed without words, and the complete selflessness that ensues from a blinding love. It was not about solving—or even understanding—each other's problems, but the capacity to make each other laugh in spite of them. It was knowing that no matter what was happening in other aspects of our lives, a wink, smile, hug, or dumb joke awaited to relieve the pressures that were built up in each other’s absence. It was wishing desperately to be able bear the burden of each other's pain, even knowing that it would never be possible. Backman represents all of these sentiments in the friendship between Ana and Maya, and it truly ripped my heart to shreds.

“Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”

At the core of this story is a youth hockey team. Hockey is a sport I've never watched, never attempted to play, and know nothing about. I did, however, play varsity basketball through high school, and Backman truly captures the spirit of what it's like to be on a young sports team. I think it's pretty much accepted that nobody really cares about girls' sports. My high school basketball team was competitive—we broke school records, played in regional tournaments, and occasionally attracted recruiters. Our games were radio broadcasted on a local network and covered by local newspapers. None of that really mattered. The boys team received the majority of attention and turnout at games, despite the fact that they were thoroughly mediocre. My basketball team probably did not matter to anyone except my teammates, coaches, and our parents, but nothing will ever come close to the experience of being part of a team where every single person cared more than we ever thought possible to care about a sport. When we played, each game felt like a matter of life and death. When opponents hurt one of us, they hurt all of us, and we fought back. Every practice mattered. We held each other accountable for nothing less than giving each shot, layup, dribble, sprint, defensive stance, and box-out every ounce of energy we could muster, even in practice. I cannot count the number of times I cried in the locker room with my teammates after a disappointing game, nor can I describe the bond that forms through experiences like that. There was never blame, only a shared sorrow. I played high school basketball through plantar fasciitis, shin splints, a broken tooth, a torn thumb ligament, and a concussion because the need I had to stand with my team was stronger than the desire to take care of my body; my responsibility as a leader was more pressing than the pain that left me in ruin at the end of each day. I don't think it's possible to explain what it is like to play a team sport to someone who has never played a team sport, but Backman captures the essence of it. Reading it made me nostalgic for those types of bonds, but also sheepishly aware of my own recklessness at the time. Still, it is hard to regret the decisions that gave life meaning.

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”

Questions of morality take center stage at critical points throughout the book. The dialogue in those moments was difficult to read because the statements are hurtful, but also because we all probably know people who would say things like that. It's hard to talk about these points in the book without spoilers, but if you do end up reading it, we can discuss. Although the book is about small town disagreements, I found a lot of the rhetoric surrounding the decisions they make relevant to our current politics. The tribalism of sports is easily extrapolated to the tribalism of political parties or social issues. The above quote on hate is disturbingly universal.

“People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. Anything that grows closely enough to what it loves will eventually share the same roots. We can talk about loss, we can treat it and give it time, but biology still forces us to live according to certain rules: plants that are split down the middle don’t heal, they die.”

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”

It is often easier to write and talk about books that I don't like rather the ones that I truly love. It is easy to pick apart narrative structure, character development, and poor writing. It is easy to find words about how much I disagree, but difficult to find words to express how much a feeling can resonate. It is the things that alter my life, even in the slightest way, that leave me speechless. This book is about a small town hockey team, but I cannot disagree that, "In this story of a small forest town, Fredrik Backman has found the entire world." I think I have completely failed in my attempt to try to describe the experience I had reading this book, but I hope you read it anyway.

so close / joshua tree

“The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood.”

— Rebecca Solnit

Joshua Tree National Park, and the areas surrounding it, will always hold a special place in my heart. A little more than a year ago, I flew to Palm Springs from Boston for a field research project. I took the opportunity then to take a weekend trip home, and it was during the drive from Twentynine Palms to Orange County that I realized I needed to move home. I wrote about it here, in the context of one of my favorite movies, Lady Bird.

I returned to Joshua Tree this past weekend to camp for the first time since returning to California. I was accompanied by a dear friend I met a few months ago through sheer luck and the courage of sharing. We reflected on shared experiences and existential questions. I have been constantly reminded of the power of the internet, social networks, and the access we can have to people when we're open to vulnerability. Since sharing my piece, You Were Too Young to Remember, in November, I've connected with a wide variety of people, many of whom would not be in my life in the same capacity had I not had a split second of reckless fearlessness and thrown a little piece of my story into the world. This blog has also been an ongoing exercise of vulnerability, and I appreciate all the ways that my ramblings on here have fostered or enriched conversations in my daily life. I'm still constantly surprised by the various people in my life that have found a way into my little home on the internet, but if you're here, thank you.

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another lifetime / light leaks

Happy First Day of Spring! Thank you to all those who have left me subtle or not subtle messages about reading my blog.

“Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s an informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we might play in it. Hope looks forward but draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not fetishizing the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us.”

— Rebecca Solnit, Call Them by Their True Names: American Crises

I accidentally light leaked the roll of film I shot at Big Bear, which was disappointing but also resulted in some intriguing images, like the one above. These were taken with the Leica M2 and 7Artisans 28mm f/1.4 on Fuji C200 (pretty much my go-to film) over the past few weekends. I’m still obsessed with the colors and textures of California, and I sincerely hope that I never get over it. Also, mountains, lakes, and my grandma are basically my top 3 favorite things, so it’s been a good time.

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The last 2 weeks in books:

Educated by Tara Westover

It feels like everyone has heard of or read this book by now. It’s one of those memoirs that reads like fiction because growing up in a Mormon fundamentalist household in Idaho probably won’t be too relatable. Westover’s life is incredible, and she writes about it incredibly.

1984 by George Orwell

Slightly ashamed to not have read this book until now. I’m not really going to try to write a review of this book because that seems daunting, but I’ll say that it was unnerving to read because it is disturbingly relevant at times.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan

I have so much admiration for Michael Pollan. The way he is able to engage readers in the food/plant world is incredible, and I owe much of my interest in the food industry to the first time I read The Omnivores Dilemma a few years ago. This one was a fascinating history of potatoes, apples, tulips, and marijuana. It’s about plants and food, but it’s ultimately about the symbiosis of life.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

I read this after some reviews of Wild by Cheryl Strayed suggested this book. Bryson is amusing, but it felt more like a long, entertaining trip than the epic physical and emotional odyssey that Strayed took. Still worth the read for anyone interested in long-distance backpacking. Oddly motivational.

Where Reasons End by Yiyun Li

This book is an imagined conversation between a mother and a teenage son that committed suicide. I think it’s important to know that Li’s child committed suicide, and she wrote this the months following his death. It’s a lot, but it wasn’t depressing. It’s a confrontation of loss and unanswered questions, but it’s also a fascinating discussion of language. Li has such a unique voice.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

I don’t think I’ve adequately digested this book yet. I don’t know how to talk about it. There’s so much within it’s pages about family dynamics, regret, racism, trust, afterlife, and the unbreakable bonds of reliance and gratitude. I’m not sure how I feel about the way the characters developed (or didn’t develop), but Ward crafts an unforgettable story.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

I was honestly a bit disappointed by this one given how much I’ve heard about it and how many “best of” lists it’s been on. At its core, this book makes you think. There are so many sides to take, so many perspectives to consider, and I love that there are no clear answers. Everything is a little bit of a debate. It’s a complex web of moral ambiguity. Beyond that, I wanted a little bit more out of the characters. Maybe I’m placing unreasonable pressure on Ng, but as a woman of color, I wanted her to make her Asian characters more interesting. I wanted some sort of indication that this wasn’t written by another white author, but she never really got me there. For that, I was disappointed, especially because she does make the effort to Chinese characters. They fell flat. Still, it’s a very well-written book, and definitely worth a read.

Response prompt for you if you’re still reading this:

When was the last time you felt pure happiness (even for a split second), and what triggered that feeling (if anything)?

california grids / romance

Apparently the lead singer of Daughter released a solo album at the end of 2018 and I didn’t know this. I am upset but I am also blessed by her voice now, so I’ll be okay.

Here’s a little grid from the last few weeks. I am captivated by California’s light, gradient sunsets, golden hour, beaches at night, beaches in rain, and the magic of home.

I’ve realized I don’t have a good sense of who reads my blog anymore, so I’m going to put out a few question prompts here. Shoot me a message/email/comment in response if you want me to know that you read my blog. ;)

• What is something that you have been particularly grateful for this past month?

• What is something that you’ve been worried about?

• What was the last compelling book that you read?

Take your pick. I would love to hear from some of you.

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“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

— Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

nights like this / book updates

Since last time: 

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

An interesting life and outlook on motherhood and loss, but I found it difficult to empathize with Levy. She swerved into whininess or cultural insensitivity at unfortunate points in the book.

How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future by Steven Levitsky

Feels like a general historic overview of the fall of democracies, but I think it provides good insight into our current political situation and various risks that may arise. I would definitely recommend it if you have an interest in the future state of our democracy and understanding past scenarios in other countries that have toppled established democracies.

I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections by Nora Ephron

Interesting stories of a well-known writer. I honestly didn’t find most of them that memorable, and so, a week after I read it, I don’t have anything to say about it. The title seems appropriate.

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

I probably should be more familiar with Angelou’s poetry, but unfortunately I am not. I think additional background would have made this even more of a worthy read, but I thoroughly enjoyed her outlook and reflections on life. 

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami 

Nothing groundbreaking. Perhaps it would be of more relevance if I was a runner. I enjoyed the insight into his writing process as a longtime fan, but otherwise it was not the most engaging read. 

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

This woman is crazy and this story is crazy and I thoroughly enjoy her craziness. I don’t know whether her utter lack of preparation for the PCT is inspiring or not, but definitely made for an incredible story. One of my favorite memoirs that I’ve read so far. I read Tiny Beautiful Things by the same author a few years ago, and I felt that it gave more context to this book.

the last lecture: a review, of sorts.

I just finished The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. The book, published in 2008, is a sort of accompaniment to Pausch's last lecture at Carnegie Mellon, where he was a human-computer interaction, design, and computer science professor. I remember watching the lecture a few years back and being touched, and wanted to go through the book since I've been interested in memoirs lately.

Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer a month before giving the lecture and writing this book. He talks about childhood dreams, lessons he's learned, stories from his life, and things he's learned from teaching. The book is really moving. It's evident that Pausch has a sincere love and appreciation towards his life. He's acutely aware of what his death means, but is able to maintain a deep sense of optimism. I found that incredibly admirable.

I also found the book difficult to get through because of the various parallels I found between his life and mine. Pausch's oldest son was five years old when he passed away, which was the same age I was when my father passed away. The difference, it seems to me, is that Pausch had the mental and physical capacity to prepare for his death in a way that was unimaginable for my family. He had financial security, a strong support network, and an abundance of resources at his fingertips. He could hire someone to help him write a book about his life. He could spend money to swim with dolphins with his son and go to Disney World. He could spend time crafting and curating the image of himself that he wanted to leave with his children. Dying young is always a tragedy, but of all tragedies, his was the fairytale. He said all of his goodbyes, witnessed the glory surrounding his own life, and left his mark on the world. 

His message about achieving dreams, gratitude, and making the most of life are universally relevant, but by the end of the book, I felt resentful. The things he left his kids with - stories, security, entire pieces of himself - were things that I would not ever get. They were things that my father couldn't prepare for, and for that, the book wounded me. 

At one point, Pausch leaves a specific message for his kids - that he wants them to pursue their own interests, and that he would never want them to feel obligated to become something because that's what they thought he wanted for them. Those were words that I needed to hear and to fully believe. I cried when I got there because I didn’t know how much I had wanted to hear those words in a different voice until they hit me. 

This book drips with privilege, but it is a genuine celebration of life. It is a love letter to his family, Disney, academia, and the opportunity to say goodbye. It is a complete collection of everything I wish I had received from my own father, and for that reason, I cannot love it. 

book updates / emotional rollercoaster

Thank you, Spotify Discover.

Time for a little book update before I forget what I've read.

The Defining Decade by Meg Jay

I think this book is a must-read for any 20-something who is confused about their life direction. I fall very neatly into that category. This book won’t solve all of your problems, but it was a much needed reality check for me about what I’m going through and also concrete steps to find a direction. It hasn’t necessarily changed my day-to-day life because I think I’m pretty proactive about learning, but it’s made me think about my fears and how they are potentially becoming detrimental to my development.

You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie

Memoir by the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene-American writer. This book is heartbreaking, but I also feel like it was a bit ruined for me because i learned of his sexual misconduct allegations halfway through it. I won’t really comment on it.

Lab Girl by Hope Jehran

Hope Jehran is a geobiologist and geochemist who has done dope research with isotopes (and many other things). The language in which she uses to speak about trees is breathtaking. She also describes one of the most fascinating friendships I have ever read in a memoir. Worth the read, especially if you’re a woman in science.

Woolly: The True Story of the Quest to Revive One of History's Most Iconic Extinct Creatures by Ben Mezrich

I really didn’t like this book. It felt overhyped and overdramatized and the writing sort of made me distrust the author, which isn’t great for a nonfiction book. Pass.

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

THIS BOOK IS ADORABLY HEARTBREAKING. Read if you want to read a young love story layered with stories of domestic abuse, body image, and bullying.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This is about a multiverse situation. I don’t even know what else to say without ruining it…a professor wakes up in a different version of his reality?! Very fascinating and plot-twisty and I basically consumed it in a single day because it is TRIPPY.

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See

Chinese ethnic minorities, adoption, tea. This book basically follows the unfortunate young life of a Akha woman named Li-Yan who is forced to give up her daughter for adoption, and their parallel lives that follow. I really enjoyed this book for many resonant themes and stories. Highly recommend if you love tea culture or if you want fictional insight into the adoptee experience.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

“But home isn't where you land; home is where you launch. You can't pick your home any more than you can choose your family. In poker, you get five cards. Three of them you can swap out, but two are yours to keep: family and native land.” 

A very poignant look at the true messiness of human relationships.

We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Just read this. So insightful and important about the Obama years and our current political and cultural state.

The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett

This book is very long and potentially a bit dated, but anyone with an interest in the history of infectious diseases would love it. That’s what it’s all about. I am scared. We’re all gonna die.

In other news, finally got my wisdom teeth pulled. The scariest thing is apparently being awake for half an hour after general anesthesia and having normal conversations people with no recollection of it at all. I’m sick of soup and smoothies already but glad to not have jaw pains anymore.

Finally sent my beloved Leica M2 for a CLA (cleaning, lubrication, adjustment) and shutter curtain replacement. I realized in Hong Kong that there were holes in the shutter and that shutter-speeds beyond 1/250 were completely inaccurate. Super excited to get this back and keep shooting. :)

“Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.”

— Hope Jehran

perspective shifts / (sweet music)

I started a new job last week. It's taken a lot of mental work for me to be comfortable talking about it.

I felt like a failure when I moved home. I felt ungrateful. I felt lost. But mostly, I felt like a failure. I had graduated from a top university, landed a decent job, rented my own apartment alone, and gained independence in every sense of the word. And yet, I was miserable through the core of my being in a way I'd never been before. I couldn't even identify it at the time. It is only in retrospect, now, when I am aware of the happiness and gratitude I can feel on a daily basis, when I notice how much more easily smiling comes to me, that I am aware of the darkness of the past year.

I've been reading a lot. Books are what I gravitate towards when I am lost. I seek guidance from authors whose words have the power to embrace and heal me. JB MacKinnon's The Once and Future World provided a healthy dose of optimism and perspective-shift about the changing planet. In They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib's exploration in music and culture gave me a deep appreciation for Carly Rae Jepsen and the power of essays. Both he and Michelle Obama (Becoming) revealed the deep confusion and uncertainty they felt in their 20s, and I've held onto their words with great hope. They made my confusion feel normal, maybe even positive. Ken Liu has inspired me to write, although my struggle with fiction seems eternal, as my own true stories constantly push themselves through.

I felt like a failure for moving home because I was afraid that it seemed like regression. More accurately, I felt like a failure because I thought of it as a regression. It took a few books, but I've finally realized that the decisions I've made in the last six months have led to more personal growth than I've experienced in years. I feel more open and vulnerable to the human experience, to questions of history, identity, and purpose. I feel compelled to learn about a variety of subjects, take on personal projects, write, exercise, and engage in my community. In the context of a logical career, perhaps I've regressed, but I've gained so much more.

I went from working at a design consultancy in Boston to working at as a film processing technician at a small photography lab in Irvine. The former required a degree from a top university, internship experience, and a significant amount of luck in timing. Landing that job was difficult, and for a few months, I felt spoiled and ungrateful for walking away. The job that I have now requires a high school diploma and a passion for film photography--both things that I had before I left for MIT more than five years ago. This fact alone makes it difficult for me to explain what I'm doing now to other people, particularly those who I don't believe will take the time to understand my decisions (or are unable to due to their own life experiences).

For now, I've given up a nice salary, a sense of independence, a clear career trajectory, and the status of a steady corporate job. I've gained proximity to family and friends, knowledge about an aspect of photography that I'd otherwise never be exposed to, experience in a job that requires mostly physical capability, comfort of living at home, time to pursue my own hobbies and passions, and an increasing sense of clarity about what matters to me in the world. I've been able to spend time with friends, old and new, in ways that challenge my perceptions and intellect. I love being able to eat dinner with my mom on a daily basis, to see my grandma every weekend, and to hike in the mountains whenever I want to feel sunlight on my skin. Maybe it sounds like I'm running from real life. Maybe I am. But maybe I've just decided to choose a slightly different path than the one I thought I was meant to take, and maybe that's okay.

Mary Oliver wrote in Upstream: Selected Essays : "The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time." For the first time since high school (when I promptly squashed it), I feel the call to creative work, and for the first time in my life, I'm allowing myself to give it both power and time.

time beings and psychedelics / shrike

I need songs that better segue into post content. Anyway, Hozier is always lovely.

I'm going to try to be more systematic about getting some thoughts down about the books I'm reading. They won't necessarily be "book reviews", but maybe more thoughts, questions, and bits of resonance that I find.

A book that I read during the first week of the Asia trip was A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Reading that book was a magical journey (so lovely that I read Ozeki's first novel, My Year in Meats, as soon as I got home), but it is Dogen's concept of time that has stuck with me. Basically, if you haven’t read the novel (which I highly recommend), it’s about a 16 year-old Japanese American girl named Nao who keeps a diary, and Ruth, a Japanese American writer who finds the diary on the coastlines of British Columbia after the 2011 tsunami. Time, and the concept of time, plays a pretty integral part in the story. Ozeki’s magic realism reminds me of Haruki Murakami, whose work I fell in love with in college but grew distant from as his characters starting feeling redundant (lonely male narrative). Anyway—the important thing here is Dogen’s concept of time. Here is a translated excerpt from Dogen’s work.

"The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time.

Things do not hinder one another, just as moments do not hinder one another. The way-seeking mind arises in this moment. A way-seeking moment arises in this mind. It is the same with practice and with attaining the way.

Thus the self setting itself out in array sees itself. This is the understanding that the self is time."

The complexity of this concept is not something I feel like I have enough grasp on to explain, but is something that I've been thinking about a lot and trying to make sense of. I finished reading Michael Pollan's How to Change Your Mind today, a book about the history and scientific revolution of psychedelics. There's a lot to unpack with that one, but the dissolution of ego is a phenomena that Pollan discusses extensively. A sense of detachment from the self is an experience that many have while on psychedelics, and it is that phenomena that is said to change the way people perceive and experience the world post-trip. The book goes on to discuss ways in which psychedelics can be used to help users cope with death, addiction, and depression (with many supporting studies and interviews with people who have sought psychedelic treatment through pilot research projects at NYU, Johns Hopkins, etc.).

The part that I found fascinating was a brief explanation of the "default mode network"—the part of the brain that becomes active when we are daydreaming and self-reflecting.

"If a researcher gives you a list of adjectives and asks you to consider how they apply to you, it is your default mode network that leaps into action. (It also lights up when we receive 'likes' on our social media feeds.) Nodes in the default network are thought to be responsible for autobiographical memory, the material from which we compose the story of who we are, by linking our past experiences with what happens to us and with projections of our future goals."

I have pretty much zero knowledge of neuroscience so this may be an oversimplification, but I took the default mode network to more or less be the part of the brain where the ego lives. And interestingly, this is the part of the brain with reduced activity during psychedelic trips where users felt disconnected from self and experienced ego dissolution.

However, while psychedelics are one way of reducing activity in the default mode network, meditating can also have a similar effect. And then suddenly, it made sense why this idea of a universal "time being" would spring up in Buddhism, a religion rooted in mindfulness practice and the transcendence of self.

Basically, my reading came full circle today. I still have many questions about the brain functions of the default network, about the science behind meditation, and about the philosophy of a universal time being. As someone who has meditated almost every day since I was around 7 or 8, I wonder about my own ability to manipulate activity in my default network and whether the detachment of self that I experience while meditating is at all similar to that of a psychedelic trip. I love when things that I perceive to be so different come together like this.

“Normal waking consciousness feels perfectly transparent, and yet it is less a window on reality than the product of our imaginations—a kind of controlled hallucination.”

— Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

someone crimson

I don’t know how I found this artist but this song is making me feel lots of things.

Basically just posting to say that I updated my about me section. It’s taken a bit of time for me to acknowledge my confusion and current lack of direction in my life right now, but putting that out there was pretty therapeutic. For whatever friends that don’t know, I moved back home to Orange County a few months ago. I was struggling mentally in Boston and wanted to be closer to family. I liked the work that I did in design, but want to take the time to learn more about myself, explore other possibilities, and develop a stronger sense of what I want to tackle and accomplish in my 20’s. It hasn’t been easy. There’s many days where I wake up and feel utterly useless. It’s taken a while to detach my sense of self-worth from my job title. I still don’t think I’ve completely reconciled the work it took to get my degree and what I’m doing now. I tell myself repeatedly that it’s okay to be confused, to be lost, to be young and a little clueless. A lot of the times, I don’t believe it. Today, I did.

inconsequential / 2019 goals?

I suppose there is a question mark after goals because I have no sense of what 2019 brings. I changed my website up for the new year—I’ve had the previous theme for about 3 years now, and decided it was time I refined some of my photo collections and strengthened some aspects of my website (this is still a WIP). I’ve added a “writing” section because writing more is a major goal for 2019. I started by submitting a piece to 35mmc, a film photography blog that I’ve been following for a while now. I think that will be the last definitive “non fiction” type of writing I’ll do for a while—I’m interested in blurring the lines between fiction and reality and experimenting with how hazy those lines can get. I also integrated the Medium post I wrote a few months ago into my website here. I like Medium because it’s accessible for people who would otherwise never go on my website, but it feels much less personal. I changed up some photos from that piece and added a few more.

Back to the topic of goals—reading, as always, is part of my goal list. I attempted to read 40 books in 2018 but only completed 38. This year, I’m aiming for 60. Since New Year’s Day, I’ve read My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, The Once and Future World by J.B. MacKinnon, Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, and Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. I was trying to do a book a day but that seemed like a path straight to burnout. Here is my tentative list for the year. Leave a comment if there’s anything you think I’d like!

• Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

• A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

• Becoming by Michelle Obama

• Becoming Wise: An Inquiry Into the Mystery and Art of Living by Krista Tippett

• Call Them By Their Names: American Crises and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit

• Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

• City of Segregation by Andrea Gibbons

• Draft No 4: On the Writing Process by John McPhee

• Educated by Tara Westover

• Feel Free by Zadie Smith

• Florida by Lauren Groff

• Hold Still by Sally Mann

• How to Be a Good Creature by Sy Montgomery

• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela

• Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

• My Own Devices: Essays from the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love by Dessa

• On Writing by Stephen King

• On Writing Well by William Zinsser

• Once and Forever by Kenji Miyazawa

• Ongoingness: The End of a Diary Sarah Manguso

• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

• Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by Soraya Chemaly

• So Far So Good by Ursula K Le Guin

• Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang

• Tell Me How it Ends by Valeria Luiselli

• Telling True Stories by Misc

• The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard

• The Archipelago of Hope: Wisdom and Resilience from the Edge of Climate Change by Gleb Raygorodetsky

• The Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Andurraqib

• The Devotion fo Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

• The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass

• The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit

• The Good Immigrant by Nikesh Shukla

• The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene

• The Lonely City by Olivia Laing

• The Mirage Factory by Gary Krist

• The Most Wanted Man in China by Fang Lizhi

• The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti

• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

• The Once and Future World by JB MacKinnon

• The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

• The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

• The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Stephen Brusatte

• The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks

• The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

• The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

• There Are Little Kingdoms by Kevin Barry

• Upstream: Selected Essays by Mary Oliver

• Watchmen by Alan Moore

• We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver

• White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo

• Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovera

• Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker

• You Don't Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie

“Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world.
”

— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

are you okay?

Thank you Spotify Discover Weekly playlists.

New bike! It’s a singlespeed cyclocross bike from Bike Nashbar that I got during Cyber Monday sales for about 60% off. Very worth it. It’s the third bike that I’ve assembled now, and I love the process every time. I’m still getting used to the geometry, and it’s a bit heavy for a singlespeed since it’s a cyclocross bike, but I’m excited to go on real bike rides again. I swapped the 32mm Kenda tires for some Continental Gatorskins, and replaced the stock saddle with my Brooks Cambium. Everything else is stock for now, but I think the pedals could use some replacing, and maybe a different gearing ratio eventually. Will update with bike adventures soon. :)

smoke signals

Too many feelings, too many pictures. Here’s a song I’ve been obsessed with lately, and a few shots of Xiamen, China. I’ve shot over 700 film pictures over the course of the last month, so I’m still trying to figure out what to do with them…

older / next adventure

I’m leaving on Monday for another month-long adventure in Hong Kong and China. This is my first time doing winter travel with a 22L pack (I did 19L for a month in Southeast Asia in the summer, and 50L for my last trip to Europe and Canada), and also my first time shooting exclusively film for more than a week. I’ll be off of all social media for the duration of my trip, so hit me up on WhatsApp, WeChat, or good old SMS if you want to reach me.

Reading list includes:

• From the Ruins of Empire by Pankaj Mishra

• How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan

• 21st Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

• Very Good Lives by JK Rowling

• Gweilo by Martin Booth

Will probably toss in a few more things depending on my mood, but I’m excited to just disconnect for a bit, think about life, write, read, and absorb the world around me.

Yay, packing pics:

moonlight

A beautiful song and some of my favorite pics on Fuji 400H and Portra 400 over the course of my travels this past month. I am constantly falling more in love with the process of film, and will attempt to do a month in Hong Kong/China film-only this upcoming month.

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untitled

I wrote something.

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hot heavy summer

(New Ben Howard song - absolutely in love with this one.)

Sometimes I don’t know if I write because I want to convince myself to feel a certain way, or I’m actually writing about the way I feel. I suppose it doesn’t really matter. 

Tomorrow is Friday, September 14. In two weeks, I will be moving out of Boston. It’s hit me, sort of. I’m counting down the days, but I’m not sure the reality of it has truly set in. 

Boston is the only place I’ve ever lived in as an independent adult. It’s the place I learned to take care of myself and a place that has forced me to grow faster than I ever imagined possible. Each year in Boston has felt like a distinct adventure. I love Boston for it’s size, it’s intellect, it’s autumn colors, and it’s spring breeze. It’s a place that can be painfully beautiful and utterly depressing, sometimes within days of each other. 

I know that I’ll miss it here. Despite all the hate I give it for it’s terrible weather and it’s distance away from most of the people I love, everything else about the city is genuinely lovable.

I’m scared to leave. I’m nervous about living in a place that isn’t so walkable, so small, so safe, so convenient. I’m nervous that I won’t fit in with the culture of Los Angeles anymore, or that I’ll lose some of the values I’ve had instilled in me here (an intense curiosity and desire to learn). I’m scared to leave, but I know that it is the best for me. Boston, despite all that it’s given me, has also been the place I felt the most trapped. When I moved here, I gave up a lot of what I enjoyed and wanted for things that I thought I needed, or things that I thought I should be doing. Moving to Boston, or more specifically MIT, is when I started falling into the traps of peer pressure. It’s the place where I started devaluing myself, and constantly wishing I liked different things. Sometimes, even wishing I was a different person. 

I don’t feel that way anymore, but I’m still living in the aftermath of many decisions I made under the pressure I felt at MIT. I haven’t given myself any opportunity to reconsider myself, what I want out of life, and what I have to give to the world. I’m fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do that now, and I’m taking it. In two weeks, I’m leaving for Ireland, London, Toronto, Jasper, and the Pacific Northwest. I’m taking that time to read, observe, reflect, write, and potentially rediscovering parts of my brain that I have left dormant for the past several years. I’m scared of what my brain will come up with without bounds, but I’m also incredibly excited.