No particular order.
1. Lights and Music - Cut Copy
2. Breathe Me - Sia
3. Psycho Killer - The Talking Heads
4. The Story - Brandi Carlile
5. Who's Gonna Save My Soul - Gnarls Barkley
6. Kiss From a Rose - Seal
7. This Love - Sarah Brightman
8. On the Radio - Regina Spektor
9. Octopus's Garden - The Beatles
10. A New Day - Celine Dion
Monday, December 29, 2008
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Lately
So, there's the religion question. Namely, why there is a lack of it in my life.
Watching "The Idiot" performed by the Plano Senior High theater during senior year was probably the closest to a religious experience I have ever felt, and led me to swiftly and deeply fall in love with the entire cast. Dostoevsky is all about passion; I wonder if I'm not predisposed to being a religious individual myself. I feel like there's something greater to life than what I've been exposed to, but while I'm tempted to translate the feeling into some sort of spiritual explanation, I don't think there exists a proper vehicle for my doing so.
I'm not writing this to disprove Christianity (or any other religion for that matter), but rather to explain my agnosticism.
But after a long conversation with Ning about Christianity today, I've realized that there are certain aspects that I just can't buy into my worldview (sorry, Ning). Listed, they are:
1. The institutionalization of faith-- Religion is something that I see as something that should be first and foremost a personal experience. If I were ever align myself with anything remotely religious I don't think I could ever bring myself to join a church, a fact that means that I would never be able to fully inject myself into any established religions.
2. Monotheism-- I just can't. If someone were to decisively tell me that there exists a greater, godlike force out in the universe, I would be far more willing to accept it as a possibility than the idea of a God-with-a-capital-G.
3. Ideas that come from the Bible like the Armageddon, the fall of man, and even the idea of following kosher, if I'm going to be fair-- All a bit of a stretch of the imagination, I'd say. And don't get me started on the whole "man used to be pure and is gradually becoming more and more depraved" argument. I don't believe humanity is on a downhill spiral, but that's my personal belief and I won't spend time arguing a tangential point of view that will take too long to explain.
4. Other people-- It's fun to talk about religion on an informative this-is-what-I-believe this-is-what-you-believe basis but if it's going to be about missionaries and people telling me what I should believe, that just kills it for me. Just give me the texts and I'll interpret them my own way, kthxbye.
On the contrary, I like to believe that the world is too big for one person to fully comprehend, physically or metaphysically, and that while there are beliefs out there that I can't accept into my personal canon, I can at least keep an open mind and try to understand why other people can.
Also, and this is a remnant from years ago, but I still believe in being Good and Loving Well. Maybe I'll change my point of view as I age, but at nineteen-going-on-twenty, religion-wise, it's all I really need.
In the end, it all comes down to something that Charles Bukowski said, a quote I loved when I was seventeen and still love today:
Watching "The Idiot" performed by the Plano Senior High theater during senior year was probably the closest to a religious experience I have ever felt, and led me to swiftly and deeply fall in love with the entire cast. Dostoevsky is all about passion; I wonder if I'm not predisposed to being a religious individual myself. I feel like there's something greater to life than what I've been exposed to, but while I'm tempted to translate the feeling into some sort of spiritual explanation, I don't think there exists a proper vehicle for my doing so.
I'm not writing this to disprove Christianity (or any other religion for that matter), but rather to explain my agnosticism.
But after a long conversation with Ning about Christianity today, I've realized that there are certain aspects that I just can't buy into my worldview (sorry, Ning). Listed, they are:
1. The institutionalization of faith-- Religion is something that I see as something that should be first and foremost a personal experience. If I were ever align myself with anything remotely religious I don't think I could ever bring myself to join a church, a fact that means that I would never be able to fully inject myself into any established religions.
2. Monotheism-- I just can't. If someone were to decisively tell me that there exists a greater, godlike force out in the universe, I would be far more willing to accept it as a possibility than the idea of a God-with-a-capital-G.
3. Ideas that come from the Bible like the Armageddon, the fall of man, and even the idea of following kosher, if I'm going to be fair-- All a bit of a stretch of the imagination, I'd say. And don't get me started on the whole "man used to be pure and is gradually becoming more and more depraved" argument. I don't believe humanity is on a downhill spiral, but that's my personal belief and I won't spend time arguing a tangential point of view that will take too long to explain.
4. Other people-- It's fun to talk about religion on an informative this-is-what-I-believe this-is-what-you-believe basis but if it's going to be about missionaries and people telling me what I should believe, that just kills it for me. Just give me the texts and I'll interpret them my own way, kthxbye.
On the contrary, I like to believe that the world is too big for one person to fully comprehend, physically or metaphysically, and that while there are beliefs out there that I can't accept into my personal canon, I can at least keep an open mind and try to understand why other people can.
Also, and this is a remnant from years ago, but I still believe in being Good and Loving Well. Maybe I'll change my point of view as I age, but at nineteen-going-on-twenty, religion-wise, it's all I really need.
In the end, it all comes down to something that Charles Bukowski said, a quote I loved when I was seventeen and still love today:
For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command or faith a dictum. I am my own God. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
60 degrees in December and winter break 2/3 down
I am all happiness today.
For various reasons: Sherlock Holmes, gorgeous weather, people, nice smells, etc.
For various reasons: Sherlock Holmes, gorgeous weather, people, nice smells, etc.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
It's Christmas again
And from now on, the future will merely be long stretches of time punctuated by returning home and seeing those same people, deceiving you into believing that nothing actually changed between this year and last.
For me, 2008 was a year marked by uncertainty. But... it was good. After all, I can never say with any vindication that any year of my life has been necessarily bad.
For me, 2008 was a year marked by uncertainty. But... it was good. After all, I can never say with any vindication that any year of my life has been necessarily bad.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Gesundheit!
I baked shortbread this afternoon using butter that expired in July.
Pros: I know how to bake shortbread now.
Cons: I don't want to eat those cookies.
Also, over the course of the year I somehow lost my ability to deal with the cold. It's about 40 degrees in Plano right now and I'm already dying, and then I look at the weather forecast for Chicago and think, hm, negative windchill. After a year, I forgot that was possible.
Dear friends: prepare yourselves for my chagrin come winter quarter, when the winds are howling, the snow is piling, and I am crying into my pillow for the sun to come back.
Pros: I know how to bake shortbread now.
Cons: I don't want to eat those cookies.
Also, over the course of the year I somehow lost my ability to deal with the cold. It's about 40 degrees in Plano right now and I'm already dying, and then I look at the weather forecast for Chicago and think, hm, negative windchill. After a year, I forgot that was possible.
Dear friends: prepare yourselves for my chagrin come winter quarter, when the winds are howling, the snow is piling, and I am crying into my pillow for the sun to come back.
Monday, December 22, 2008
live through this and you won't look back
but doesn't clinging onto the idea that one day it will all be a memory force you into a cycle of nostalgia?
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Curiouser and curiouser
I pretty much have not been doing anything but sleep for the past week, and I've made a realization: it's really hard to put me in a bad mood when I'm not sleep-deprived.
This leads me to wonder whether modern man's growing unhappiness comes from being overworked and tired all the time.
Which subsequently leads me to wonder whether the pursuit of happiness is just a sham after all. If you ignore your own body in order to attain some external goal (that supposedly brings you happiness if you work for it hard enough), aren't you just moving farther and farther away from your desired end? Yet this is what we all do.
Anyways, I woke up this morning feeling better than I have in ages. Also, my crazy dreams have returned... you know, the ones that make no realistic sense whatsoever. I think there's a correlation somewhere in there.
This leads me to wonder whether modern man's growing unhappiness comes from being overworked and tired all the time.
Which subsequently leads me to wonder whether the pursuit of happiness is just a sham after all. If you ignore your own body in order to attain some external goal (that supposedly brings you happiness if you work for it hard enough), aren't you just moving farther and farther away from your desired end? Yet this is what we all do.
Anyways, I woke up this morning feeling better than I have in ages. Also, my crazy dreams have returned... you know, the ones that make no realistic sense whatsoever. I think there's a correlation somewhere in there.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Poetic license
Before I went to bed, I spent about an hour going through last year's Sliced Bread, which, ironically enough, I never really had the patience to read when it came out.
There are a couple of pretty good pieces in there (should I sound so surprised? I'm on the staff after all). I'm kind of inspired.
I've been sleeping upwards of twelve hours every night since I came home, and for some reason I've been under the impression that I'm a day behind-- I genuinely thought that it was Wednesday when I woke up, and that yesterday was the 16th.
There are a couple of pretty good pieces in there (should I sound so surprised? I'm on the staff after all). I'm kind of inspired.
I've been sleeping upwards of twelve hours every night since I came home, and for some reason I've been under the impression that I'm a day behind-- I genuinely thought that it was Wednesday when I woke up, and that yesterday was the 16th.
Monday, December 15, 2008
The first milestone
I'm having a lot of trouble sleeping tonight.
There are many things on my mind that need to be thought.
More specifically, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my Identity, or Who I Am In the Cultural Sense. Coming to college, I've become a lot more aware of my Chinese background, which can be expected given that I was abruptly plucked out of my Asian-dominated high school sphere and deposited into a world where the childhood memory of strictly overseen memorization of multiplication tables is not a reality but merely stereotype. But just as I'm beginning to understand the implications of this part of who I am, at the same time I don't feel that it's altogether legitimate-- I'm recognized as Chinese to the extent that I embody a certain set of cultural assumptions, but I'm not actually expected to follow them. For instance, I can read the language because I was given no choice but to learn it. It's such a subtle part of mine and others' understanding that I'm not the first person anybody would ask for how to read a random character some faux-Chinese restaurant fetishizes on their window. The embarrassment of quasi-literacy aside, am I perceived by others as Chinese? Yes, in the ways it doesn't matter, and no, in the ways it does.
By the way, orange chicken is not, in any incarnation, Chinese food. I like how it tastes, too, but please don't fall for its invented cultural background.
Furthermore-- I can't deny that I'm proud of where I come from. But what is there to be proud of, anyway? A modern political history so misguided that a few decades destroyed two millenia of noble tradition? A terrible international reputation that consists of either fear or demonization? Corruption?
Earlier this year, I believed that there was a way I could overcome the current stereotypes (I don't like the word in this context; "expectations," perhaps, is more appropriate) and redefine my cultural heritage on my own terms as a big fuck-you to Amy Tan and her ilk. I now realize the idea is impossible. As long as I am consciously aware of the Chinese-ness of my identity, any attempts at discussing it necessarily evokes these expectations, and any explanation only serves to flesh out the preexisting perceptions instead of creating new ones. The solution to this that I can see is to define myself without thinking along cultural lines, but does doing so involve denying the Chinese part of who I am?
It's all just a big Catch-22. My cultural duality exists insofar as I am able to describe it according to misleading standards, but defying those standards necessarily denies me the right to be Chinese. I really, truly can't find a way out.
There are many things on my mind that need to be thought.
More specifically, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my Identity, or Who I Am In the Cultural Sense. Coming to college, I've become a lot more aware of my Chinese background, which can be expected given that I was abruptly plucked out of my Asian-dominated high school sphere and deposited into a world where the childhood memory of strictly overseen memorization of multiplication tables is not a reality but merely stereotype. But just as I'm beginning to understand the implications of this part of who I am, at the same time I don't feel that it's altogether legitimate-- I'm recognized as Chinese to the extent that I embody a certain set of cultural assumptions, but I'm not actually expected to follow them. For instance, I can read the language because I was given no choice but to learn it. It's such a subtle part of mine and others' understanding that I'm not the first person anybody would ask for how to read a random character some faux-Chinese restaurant fetishizes on their window. The embarrassment of quasi-literacy aside, am I perceived by others as Chinese? Yes, in the ways it doesn't matter, and no, in the ways it does.
By the way, orange chicken is not, in any incarnation, Chinese food. I like how it tastes, too, but please don't fall for its invented cultural background.
Furthermore-- I can't deny that I'm proud of where I come from. But what is there to be proud of, anyway? A modern political history so misguided that a few decades destroyed two millenia of noble tradition? A terrible international reputation that consists of either fear or demonization? Corruption?
Earlier this year, I believed that there was a way I could overcome the current stereotypes (I don't like the word in this context; "expectations," perhaps, is more appropriate) and redefine my cultural heritage on my own terms as a big fuck-you to Amy Tan and her ilk. I now realize the idea is impossible. As long as I am consciously aware of the Chinese-ness of my identity, any attempts at discussing it necessarily evokes these expectations, and any explanation only serves to flesh out the preexisting perceptions instead of creating new ones. The solution to this that I can see is to define myself without thinking along cultural lines, but does doing so involve denying the Chinese part of who I am?
It's all just a big Catch-22. My cultural duality exists insofar as I am able to describe it according to misleading standards, but defying those standards necessarily denies me the right to be Chinese. I really, truly can't find a way out.
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