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| So I had a couple more thoughts on New York. Particularly its effect on people (and by people I mean me) as they're here.
I've noticed that the loneliness I was talking about before has a way of making you feel equally distant from everyone; your friends and strangers. Each night you go out for work, hang out with one batch of friends one day and another day the next, meeting random new people all along the way while bumping strangers aside... It makes each strange face seem as likely to be a prospective drinking buddy or lover as they are to be just another strange one. It's an odd feeling, particularly when there are so many people in your personal space that you start to simply ignore them. Only the feeling doesn't pull you closer to everyone by lifting up strangers to the level of your friends. In fact, it makes your friends seem that much more distant. They're like channels you can flip on on a television, or turn off for that matter. Like an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" on Tivo that's waiting for you at home, only you have to get there first and hit play when you're comfortable before you can hang out. Pretty often, instead of watching you just feel like going to bed because you're just too tired. Your friends are a phone call away anyways, out there in all the noise. They can wait.
Incidentally it makes each person a little more self-absorbed I think. Everyone's engrossed in their own lives because in the end, these other people are just characters playing on various channels in their own cable box of a life. Need some education? Watch C-Span with your finance or political junky friends. Need some sex? Hit up some bar and talk it up with some cheeky blond. Really the only consistent thing from day to day seems to be work, making it easier to think of my career more seriously. It's as if I have to achieve something to be noticed when we're not in our little holes, curled up in our apartments. If you're not beautiful, wealthy, intelligent, well-known, or whatever, what other reason does anyone have to peak their head out? Without it you're always alone. Even when you're walking in the busiest crowd down a street, no one notices you. In North Carolina I can be anyone I want and people will still accept me, but somehow I have this suspicion that if I don't keep up with the crowd up here, they'd feel much more free to just leave me by. In a world full of choices, in a world full of channels... what do you have to offer?
Individualistic narcissism. Objectification of the mass of others populating the dull urban reality.
Something tells me, I'll like it up here. | | |
| Hi guys. It's been a long long time, but I was reading over entries from my xanga hay day so I thought I'd get back into this blogging thing. It made me forget how much I miss writing. It's also a shame to throw away something I've worked on so long; I think it's interesting/sad/uplifting/disappointing to see my evolution from six years ago to now, from 21 to 27. ha.
Meeting people.
I think it's gotten a little harder for me to meet people lately for some reason. I like to think that I'd meet new folks all the time in Atlanta when I had the balls to talk it up with a perfect stranger, drink in one hand and my phone number in the other, but here I am in New York for the summer and I've spent all day hanging out in my apartment room alone. Truth be told I was reading old xanga entries for the last 7 hours and it's given me a nice little glimpse into who I was in the past. But anyways, I find that New York is all about being and staying busy. There's a lot of nervous energy about what's going on during the week (or maybe that anxiety is all just me). It's all about what people are DOING. Which isn't so bad I guess, but the pace makes me feel a bit ... spread thin.
Another thing that gets me is that with everyone so busy, you have to plan everything. When you're going to hang out for dinner, when you're going to meet for lunch, when you're going to meet up for drinks, it's a tad exhausting. It's also a little alienating. Your friends aren't ever really just around, they're out and about and you have to be written into their day book and have your own thing to do while you're at it. Any given day you have to have two sets of plans just in case one doesn't go just right, or else you get left floating in the water while everyone else goes speeding by. It's funny that on this small island there are hundreds of thousands of things simultaneously occurring, and getting involved in any of it is like parachuting onto a moving train. I now understand why New Yorkers, more than any other city people I know, feel like they are having the life sucked from their vanes upon moving to North Carolina.
I felt differently in Chicago, but maybe because I had a set of go-to friends that were usually available. There the city was always going on around me but things didn't feel quite as... disjointed. Here, at least for now, everything feels far more ad hoc and pieced together. But it'll come together I'm sure, I just need to find a rhythm. I just hope that happens before I leave in August. | | |
| I've been working for so long that I sort of forgot what stopping for summer vacation is like. Now that I find myself with virtually nothing to do I feel so formless and aimless. And without such a huge chunk of my friends, it's like living an alternate reality for a couple months and then returning to speaking a whole 'nother language entirely.
This clean slate to start what ever I want is pretty refreshing. Like downtime to look under the hood and fix it up for later.
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| Ride horses on the beach.
Two girls. (One cup). jk.
Fly a WWII fighter plane.
Be shot at, maybe even shot, but not too bad.
Kill a wolf with a Greek sling while wearing nothing but a leather loin cloth.
Sword fight for real (and win, obviously).
Be in a boy band.
Kick a door down to save someone gagged up and tied in a room.
Saying, "I obJECT!" in a court room.
Proposing to a girl and saying, "psyyyyyyche"
KY Jelly wrestling with several blond sorority girls with knee high tube socks on.
Skydive naked.
Dive off of a boat in pristine Carribean water with a knife clenched between my teeth.
Getting slapped in the face and then fiercely kissing the beautiful woman that just slapped me.
Slyly passing a note to a pretty girl that says, "you have a booger in your left nostril."
Get busy in an elevator on my way to an interview at the top floor.
Spank my unruly child.
Throw a ninja spike to catch someone's sleeve as they're trying to chop someone's head off.
Cliff dive.
Time travel.
Make straight A's and show my parents and have them pat my back while chanting, "USA! USA! USA!"
Make the game winning three pointer at the buzzer during Baby Blue as a last-ditch substitute for the injured star player and be the man at the after party.
Get into Law Review ad show my parents and have them pat my back while changing, "USA! USA! USA!"
Eat so many fruit loops that I throw up while I'm completely alone in a completely silent house.
Run for President of the USA.
Fall in love and overcome impossible odds to stay together and sell the story to a movie company and live off the proceeds.
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| So growing up I was always pretty much the only Asian kid in a class. With the exception of about 3 or 4 other kids in the entire school it was really just me that people had to paint their picture of what an Asian is. Sadly most typical Americans, even in big cities with tons of ethnic diversity, don't see us as American, which extends their perception of what Asia is to us and vice versa. This effectively made me the ambassador of all of East and South East Asia to the people in elementary school all the way up to high school, and perhaps beyond.
I've lost some of this sense of scrutiny over the years. The environment changes as you get older and people understand that I'm not actually from China or Mongolia and I don't have a conical hat in my closet. (It happens to be in my attic. ha!) But seriously, somewhere along the line people stopped overtly behaving like I was a representative of my entire race instead of an actual person. Though... I'm not sure if they're just a little scared to show that they still think it.
All those years people asked me if I was related to the random Asian
dude they knew in another state, I wished that they'd see me as the
individual I am. I have a suspicion it's not too different now, still
the same scrutiny just not the same well-meaning naivety to it.
I'm still in environments where Asians are few enough that people take away what we do as being some indication of what the rest of us are like. And as unfair as that may seem, it's just a natural part of being a minority, anywhere. Go to New York and suddenly I represent the South to those that only meet me superficially. Go to England and I represent America. Go to school and people tell me about their Korean friend back home and how I'm like him... but it all made me a better person I think. It made me understand that no one's alone in this world, and you're in a group whether you like it or not. It taught me that instead of selfishly doing whatever I want, I have to think about how my actions impact people I don't even know.
Just some food for thought.
Music: "Better Love" by Anthony Hamilton
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