A kiss, a cry, our rights, our wrongs.

Parents are funny things. We really don't get along, but I do usually enjoy a chat with them. However, in the last weeks or so, I can't seem to talk to my mother without getting upset. It seems that every time she's on the phone, she complains about one way or another that I'm failing at life. Usually by a minute or two into the conversation, I can barely breath and feel like I'm about to burst out into tears like a three year old... There's this fixation of hers on how much my tuition is...and she continuously guilt trip me by comparing my expensive education to her state funded one... and remind me constantly that she was valedictorian of her class. Great. Fantastic. Usually these conversations stresses me out so much that I can hardly think or concentrate for hours afterwards. 

I think the problem is that I really do believe what she says about my general failures at life. I know I could be doing much better, but I'm not. For whatever reason, I've just stopped caring as much as I used to about my studies. As much as I want to care... I just don't.

You know what I need? A transmogrifier. One that will transform me into whatever my mother's perfect version of me will be. I'll let her set the dials. I'm serious. I'm such a disappointment to her that it kills me inside.

You know what, I'll even be ok with turning into a tiger. I like tigers.

I started reading Faulkner's Sound and the Fury yesterday, it's really something to think about... what scares me is that I feel like Quentin... there are just these things that tears me up inside that no matter what I do, they come back and strangles me. On the outside, I can walk around like everyone else, laugh like everyone else and be the sociable, likable person that I like myself to be. But no matter what I do... when I walk down the street, when I buy strawberries for lunch, when I ready... I feel the feeling of anguish tearing at my throat. There's a scream always waiting to be let out. Quentin... Quentin jumped into the Charles River because of his  voices, what about me? 

Faulkner's men all narrates "tales told by idiots, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing..." All three seem to be a temporal catch in the tide of time... Something that really struck me was the way each character dealt with the torrent of time that carries them within. Bengy seems completely unaware of the concept of time altogether. It's as if he simply allows himself to be carried by the currents of time. In fact, his memory shifts between past and present with alarming fluidity. Quentin, on the other hand, seems to always be fighting to hold on to time. He keeps his father's watch with him always, he always inquires for the time... though the time itself does not seem to concern him. Jason, in stark contrast, is deeply grounded in the here and now. His thoughts fly around the minutia of everyday life. In contrast to his two brothers, he is so bond in the everyday that his thoughts never transcend the mundane. So strange how the three are.

So who would you rather be? 

Bengy,  free-flowing in time and memory, a raw bundle of pure reaction; Quentin, introspective, nihilistic and fatalistic; Jason, completely grounded in the concrete here and now. 

The answer is none of them.

Bengy sees everything but cannot derive meaning...

Quentin is stuck in the meaning of everything and could never pull himself away from the abstract

Jason is like Bengy in his myopia, with no thought of the bigger picture beyond here and now...

They are all so miserable, in their own way. None of them are what I would willingly model my life after. Yet the question is, what if those are the natural state of things? What if we cannot escape from those states of minds? What if those are the lives the human condition dooms us to?

Was so depressed yesterday that I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to make myself feel better. As of yesterday, one of my new favorite paintings at the MET: this is Diana and Cupid by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni, an eighteenth century Italian. I was walking around in the European galleries on the second floor yesterday afternoon when I came upon the painting. Its strange, i must have passed it a dozen times in the past, but I have never noticed how beautiful it truly is. That's the funny part, I suppose... but something in the light that afternoon seem to strike the canvas just right. In truth, the pictures below do not at all do the painting justice. Under the warm glow of the light from above, Diana's rosy skin seem to almost glow with an ethereal light as she playfully tease the anxious cupid determined to repossess his golden bow.

The detailing on the painting is astonishing. Though the canvas is highly finished in the usual Romantic tradition, the soft delicate texture of cupid's skin seem to overcome the stiffness of the painter's canvas. 

I do love paintings...
Speaking of which, MET was also doing a Picasso exhibit with tons of paintings and sketches from several different collections. It was by no means comprehensive, but overall quite outstanding. There are prints that I had never seen before (which is pretty astounding since I went through an obsessive Picasso phase like every other art enthusiast). However, some prints of Francesca really makes you want to wince inside. I suppose all lovers have their ups and downs, but is it really necessary to depict her with such subtle cruelty? Either way... eek.
By the way, the Picasso that was torn a few weeks ago (The Actor) is back on display :)
Another current exhibition is the works of the Limbourg brothers, who were patronized by the duc de Berry in the fifteenth century. On display was pages from the manuscript they illustrated for the duke. The pages were simply stunning in their complexity and detail... and very, very descriptive of the "lovely" ways the saints reached the sainthood... I think my favorite thus far is still St. Dennis.

Luck ain't even lucky, gotta make your own breaks...

I had my last final Monday… feeling sick about it.
I should have studied harder during the semester, but I always get caught up in other things that I much rather be doing... especially at night. I guess I really wanted to rely on luck to pull me through... well. Bad idea.
I've spent nine hours studying for that exam the day before and two hours the morning of. I felt tired, burned out and sick. I left monetary expansion variable out of the equation. Anyway, I'm just happy that it's done.On the down side, my best friend just left for his home state today. We hung out all day yesterday...It was a long day. My room mate moved out in the morning and I spent the morning helping her pack and moving her stuff into her dad's car. Now I'm sitting in my dorm with half of my room gone. It's a strange feeling. As much as I love my privacy, it's just weird having half of my life this semester disappear in the short span of two hours. Afterward, I spent the entire day with my best friend. We took the subway to Bayside Cemetery and wandered the overgrown plots for a few hours. Then we took the train to downtown Manhattan and wandered around where we lived last year. Then in a long crisscross, we cut back uptown through Chinatown and Little Italy, stopping occasionally for food and other curiosities.
After breakfast at Gemma restaurant today, we said our goodbyes... now I miss him like crazy. In an incredibly sweet gesture, he gave me a box of sidewalk chalk since I have always been fascinated by the sidewalk artists. I guess I know what I will be doing for the summer.
So to kill a bit of the boredom, I went for a walk along the Lower East Side. On the way, I stopped by the Fusion Arts Museum on Stanton. Unfortunately, there was no show going on but the outside of the building is almost enough to justify a trip there. Appliances recognizable from everyday life are married into an explosive web of blue modernism... the effect is whimsical and unforgettable.

Perhaps I'll add more detail once the next show opens, but for now, pictures of the exterior will have to suffice...

Reminds me of this little house in Olympic View (Seattle). The yard is full of whimsical little wind chimes and water wheels that goes off in the slightest breeze... and the entire wooden house is painted this exhilarating aquamarine that simply thrusts itself into the very center of your sight.

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah...

There are some days that just seem so infinitely beautiful for no reasons... and I think today was probably one of those.

It rained this morning, little drops of dirty water sliding down the window panes at Whole Foods. I sat upstairs in the dining area at Whole Foods on Bowery and Houston and watched it pour down on the sad people scurrying below. The city always has such a funny reaction when the rain first starts coming down. Look at that one guy in they corner, at first, he jerked violently as if bewildered and looks skyward, scanning the sky as if to make sure that the rain was indeed rain. Weather confirmed, he hunch his shoulders, shrink a little deeper into his jacket and walk just a tad faster down the street. It looks almost as if he's convinced himself that he can outrun the rain.

But that's the outside world. Inside my safe study haven, the lights are warm, the tables are clean and the foods are delicious. This place reminds me of Seattle... or more specifically, the Whole Foods that I always at lunch at during high school in Seattle.

From my comfortable table at the eastern end of the dining area, I can look outside into the rain, right into the park...

By noon, the weather had cleared up, I decided I've studied enough Macroeconomics for one morning and started heading home. On the way, I passed one of my favorite places in the world. There is a little park on Bowery and Houston across the street from Whole Foods. For most of the week it's closed and locked, but on Tuesday, Saturday and Sundays the gates are open to anyone who wants to venture in. Unlike the other parks in New York City, this one is full of foliage and and flowers and unpaved roads.

The funny thing is, it's caught right at the foot of an enormous apartment complex and at the intersection between in two extremely busy streets. But somehow, the trees and flowers and little stone paths seem to erase all that. It always feels as if I right back into the wilderness of Ravenna Park...

A good place to set your things down near the entrance, there's even a little Koi pond further into the park.

So much of my life feels like me making absolutes out of the relative things in my life.


 "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed."

 - Prince Philip (during the 1981 recession) 

Speaking of, can someone employ me? Just for the summer? I'm becoming increasingly more broke even as we speak...

Joey Ramone and the Fischer Esterification

Joey Ramone lived in one of these. Seriously, the intersection you see at the very left of the picture is Joey Ramone Place. Now guess which of these nondescript buildings housed the god of punk?

No, I'm not telling, that would be too easy. Anyway, this is the view from my dorm at NYU. I'm suppose to be studying Organic Chemistry as my exam is in two hours... but concentration eludes me.


   In other news, the Mumbai gunman Qasab (a Pakistani) was sentenced to death today, with cheering mobs outside his prison cell courtroom. As horrible as his attack on Mumbai was (174 gunned down in hotels, railroad stations, restaurant and a Jewish center in 2008), you can't help but wonder if this is the best solution to it all. To kill him simply satiate the mob thirst for blood... what he did was horrible, but now to people of his cause, he's probably a martyr. The world doesn't need that.
   In the same vein, the guy who tried unsuccessfully to detonate a car bomb in Times Square was caught yesterday on a plane to Dubai. He confessed... and kept on confessing even after hearing his Miranda Rights. Um, ok. He's aiming for martyrdom too, apparently, though I doubt he will achieve that... New York City will probably just throw his ass into prison... or at least they will if they have any good sense.


All right, that has nothing to do with my life, but those things have been on my mind... OH! I decided what I want to do with the rest of my life... I think. It involves a Economics Ph.D. Darn. Those are hard to come by... if I work REALLY really hard, I think I might have a chance... What I need to do is study...
...and what I need to study right now is Organic Chemistry...

Oh, and the Fischer Esterification? That's this lovely mess:

...again courtesy of M. Jones Jr. Looks a little intimidating, but that's the very least of my worries right now. There are things so much worse on so many levels.

Don't worry 'bout me

Don't worry 'bout me

Oh oh oh

I want you baby, but you always lie

Always complaining or contemplating suicide

I want you baby but you don't even try

Always complaining said a bye baby bye bye bye

- Joey Ramone

I never meant to make you cry, but tonight i'm cleanin' out my camera...

I know I'm (mis)quoting Eminem, deal with it. He makes me run faster.

Anyway, I decided I need to put up some pictures of where I've been recently. We have here Paris, Seattle, San Francisco, Miami, China, and of course New York City!

Need to procrastinate from Organic Chem studying before it dominates my life...

So here's Notre Dame in Paris last spring break... gorgeous. We ended up camping out one night on the river banks right across the river with bottles of vodka and tequila and totally partying it up... like stupid Americans always do :)

The Gum Wall In Seattle, home of the Market Theater.  If you look closely, you'll see that the entire mosaic look on the wall is due to thousands of chewed gum stuck haphazardly onto the walls. Disgusting really, but undeniably cool. Went to a couple of shows there at night...

Fremont (Seattle) Solstice Parade!!! See the beautiful floats (bottom) and the nude bicyclists (top). Yes. That says NUDE bicyclists. Yeah go Seattle.

A little further to the south, in "Sunny" California

This is the view from my hotel in San Francisco, into Japantown. Yup. it's that foggy...

Leaving that cold foggy land, we hit the beautiful Kingdom of Heaven... or Chengdu, China

Chengdu, China. This is supposedly the well in which Ah Dou Drowned himself. Probably not really, considering how new it looks... but there are other cool stuff that really are thousands of years old, like:

... this, at the Jinsha Site (Golden Sands), estimated to be about 3,000 years old. Thought to be used in place of blood sacrifices in religious ceremonies.

... and this dude, forgot what he's supposed to be doing. But he's couple hundred years old (circa 700 AD?)

... and who can forget the temples. This is Wen Shu Yuan (Wen Shu Temple) in Chengdu. Gorgeous, no?

Anyway, fast forward a couple of months, here's Spring Break 2010:

The view of Miami from my Organic Chemistry book, courtesy of my dear professor Maitland Jones Jr. Don't worry, we partied it up, but those pictures can't go on here...

However, South Beach was beautiful, hot and amazing...

But back to NYC, where life isn't so grand right now.... Here is Washington Square Park, before renovations... Took this when I was a Freshman:

Notice how the fountain does not line up with Fifth Ave. Reason why they tore the whole thing out and redid the park...

Right outside the UN, I thought I'd shoot a couple of tourists for kicks.

The beautiful flags of nations... outside UN...

And the United Nations itself... well, sort of... I couldn't jam the top half into the camera.

New York City Chinatown!!!

Docks of Battery Park...

STATUE....s... of Liberty? I guess she got lonely... kidding. Here's the REAL DEAL:

Fast forward to here and now... 

my view everyday as of last week is something like this:

The inside of NYU Bobst Library, looking up from the lobby. 

Yep, I've spent way to much time here recently...

Bruce Springsteen and Breakfast Burritos

After class yesterday, I went and spoke with a econ professor about doing graduate studies… amazingly he gave me a pretty solid idea for what I want to do. The only downer is that apparently I need pretty much a billion more math classes and I simply must get A's in all of them.

"A's," he said, "Not A minuses"

Ah well, next year will be interesting

Inspired, I spent the next couple of hours bunkered down in a nearby Whole Foods where I tackled my International Economics notes in preparation for the imminent final looming in the horizon

Unfortunately, that lasted until about eleven at night, when my best friend and I decided that we simply need to hang out. That dragged onto one in the morning, as we dithered our time away in Ray's Café on Saint Marks.

Woke up early this morning ready to tackle the econ world, walked outside into the glowing city… the sky is so blue that it almost hurts to look at. Unfortunately, my reverie was interrupted by some random guy who decided he had to get to know me. One of the few reasons I don't like the East Village, you can't really walk outside by yourself without some sort of attention or another.

Now I'm sitting once again in the dining area in the Whole Foods on Bowery and working away at my notes. After a breakfast consisting of cereal and a breakfast burrito, I'm feeling ever so slightly nauseated. There was a lot of egg in that burrito. Well. It doesn't look like I will have time for lunch, so I guess it'll balance out.

I'm really growing very attached to Bruce Springsteen.  The more I listen, then more I love his voice, softly murmuring into my ears.

I'm on Fire.

"… waking up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head… I'm on fire…"

It reminds me of the hot summer days I spent in China, where I wake up swimming in the humid mornings with cicadas singing outside my window and the sound of pots and pans as the neighbors begins to prepare their breakfast.

There's much to be missed of China. The friendly people, the serene mountains with its ancient stone trails laid centuries ago by men who had long since turned to dust. As foreign as it is to me now, having spent the last eleven years of my life in the states, it still draws me to it through a siren song of my childhood.

Night before the Study Storm...

Last night one of my guy friends and I hung out and then went to St. Marks for Baogettes... these delicious and incredibly cheap Vietnamese sandwiches. Seriously, they MUST put crack in there or something because nothing that delicious can be good for you. Then in a huge detour, we wandered around the Alphabet city until two and then hopped into a hookah bar for a bit. Strange night, got to know him a bit better though.

Now on a Sunday afternoon, I'm faced with all the crummy stuff that I have to finish before next week... as it's finals week, tensions are running a little high. Rather regretting spending the last two nights out. But what can you do? It's never to late to start now. I think I'll bunker down and start the studying process tonight... perhaps even Bobst the night away on one of the lower levels. Honestly, I think I've spent so much time in that library that I might as well set up a little cot in the corner next Elmer Bobst's giant bronze head.

Anyway, after going to my safe haven at YTTP and sailing through an amazing hour of Yoga, I'm almost ready to begin working... By the way, YTTP is personally a fav in terms of yoga... and that isn't just because of the "suggested donation" of ten dollars... though it is an admittedly large factor, considering my ever growing resemblance to the stereotypically broke college student. What I love it that even in a room packed with people, you feel this sense of total privacy. There is no self consciousness, no competition, no derision ... no judgement. Everyone is just there to push themselves as hard as they can under the guidance of some great teachers. Things are just what then seem. Absolutely unpretentious yoga for each individual person.
Walking past Bowery Hotel today, there was a couple of professional photographers (with some really nice equipment) intently snapping away at some guy. Now intently searching the internet for him... tall, blond, slender in blue shirt and jeans... all right, that's a crappy description, but best I can do when the guy was doing his best to disappear behind his floppy hat and dark sunglasses.

Life, Death, and all the crap in between.

So I'm sitting here contemplating life in general.
Went to a couple of concerts last night, and then hung out with my best friend until two or three in the morning. I think I'm starting to fall for him a little... but I just have a hard time seeing him in that light.
I'm a pretty fucked up person in general. I feel like I have been doing nothing but failing at life recently. The temptation to start doing some hard stuff is more than I can handle right now. But I'm holding off because, well, it's just kind of too dumb for me to start off on.
You know what's tempting right now? Start hooking up with a girl. I mean, like OK. I've made out with plenty of girls at parties when I'm drunk and just totally riding the booze train but to actually get involved with a girl is something else completely. It's strange how I have no inhibitions in that department... I do like men... loved a man even. But how do I know if I will like something I've never done? Maybe I should just try it? No?
Well... the counter argument would be that I would totally be using someone... but what if that someone doesn't mind?
Well, friend just called wanting coffee... he sounds out of breath and... well, hopefully everything's all right.