Something Else

I don’t think it’s so much a thing, as it is an idea. But then again, you really can’t imagine it, put it into words or images or colors or sounds.

It’s not that sweet candy, red like a ripe tomato or a shiny ruby, which tastes so sweet that your tongue goes numb and your saliva tastes bitter afterwards.

It’s also not that time when you’re so tired you’re not tired anymore, that you’ve been up so long your eyelids are open only because they’ve already been open so long they don’t remember how to close anymore; so long your eyes have become dry and the words on the page begin to fly, the door beginning to zoom in and out, and the walls no longer holding the ceiling still. It’s not being on the ocean, the pure, blue Mediterranean, where the horizon is indistinguishable and the breeze is warm and cool at the same time, the sunshine searing and relaxing, the waves bob up and down, gently enough that you can walk around fine and not be nauseous, but significant enough so that back on land the wooden planks on the pier seem to come alive, with the aim of tripping you and making it impossible to walk sober.

And it’s still not a good dream — that vague impression as you arch your back in the morning with your face in the morning sun, listening to yourself groan and the sheets ruffle and the tiny birds chirp, attempting to remember what last night’s dream consisted of; usually no more than a premise, like being chased by a monster or being forced to play a ridiculous game with embarrassing relatives or being stranded in a strange, unknown place, though sometimes the settings are familiar, like your home, complete with the dark brown leather sofas with the old clock that ticks really loudly, the mahogany wood floor that smells of the three-star hotel you stayed at in rural North Dakota; still other times, it is completely alien: stuff that is beyond your wildest imaginations, except it’s not — I mean, it is a dream; that stuff has to be from your imagination...perhaps it is only strange because you never had the insane idea of pairing the graphics of Minecraft with your Algebra II classroom, the one with the desks in groups of fours and the motivational posters lining the wall, the one with the humid odor of greasy cafeteria food lingering and that all the loud, obnoxious kids end up in — the absurdity coming from the combination, like apple sandwiches or purple eyes.

But no, it isn’t really absurd, just hard to describe, like love, or pain…though sometimes they end up being the same thing: that feeling of bliss and indescribable warmth and airiness, the type that causes your facial muscles to tense up and smile stupidly…and then the feeling of having your stomach gutted and poisoned, and your mind’s foundation of security whipped out from beneath, the crash from that isn’t so much heard, but felt — and felt through the blank stares and desolate thoughts, clenched fists and that nagging voice that stills says, “I love you”. But the cesspool of emotions doesn’t capture it either. They are similar only in that they are fleeting, cerebral and yet all the same instinctive and intuitive, unable to grasp and hold on and examine.

It is the school of fish that swims large and proud, but upon being approached, simply disperses, fading away into the gloom of the briny ocean, without a sound. Maybe I should try swimming farther, faster, and more quietly. Maybe instead of tapping the glass to draw attention, I should circle to the back, and in my sleek, black, wetsuit, descend into the water and paddle silently, with delicate, fluid, rounded strokes. I am only hoping to catch a single fish, a single squirming, slimy silver fish, with its mouth gaping for the air it cannot breathe, flapping its fins feverishly without effect. I’ll bring my head close, eyeing its eye, smelling the entire sea within its meager flesh, brushing my gloved hands against its tiny scales. Yet, I am afraid it will not be so easy. Fish are elusive, and the environment they inhabit is simply too big.

I think I shall hunt in a different place, closer to home, nearer to my heart: the play structure at the elementary school, where I used to climb the monkey bars until my hands blistered, and run in the tanbark until my knees were scraped. I can sit on the swings and close my eyes, listen to the creaking of the swings and my childhood friends laughing wildly. The sun is unkind this time of year, and simply sitting there is enough to make my forehead glisten with sweat. I can wipe my face with my moist shirt, and glance around — the classrooms painted white with flat roofs on one side, and the green grass field on the other. The field would be nice for a picnic or something, for the grass is long and soft and leans back and forth in the wind; the place is quiet in summer, when school is out and the children aren’t crying everywhere. I can set my red and white plaid blanket on the grass and sit down, legs crossed, and stare at the broken wood fence separating the school from the two-story houses behind. I can look, I can listen, and I can taste the grapes that I brought and feel the cloth and the grass, but I won’t find it — I won’t find it. It is something else.

Essay for Yale

My English teacher posed the question: what makes you different?

My response: It’s hard to pinpoint a uniqueness in terms of the how’s and why’s of my achievements. Expectations, hard work, natural talent…I can’t invent “difference.” Still, I think I can say that I value creativity and imagination very much — more than most, probably. Creative works are intrinsically original, and what makes one work  stand out from another isn’t a matter of a step-by-step process or some objective scale, but a human quality of appreciation, of a perceived beauty. I pride myself on this skill that is purely human: the skill to reimagine the world or to retell it in a way that forms new spheres of perspectives. And this humanness, the ability that is common to all people but with a twist only I possess — that is where I live. That is what I value.

That is the reason this essay exists in the first place! The numbers, the lists, the endless lines of A’s and B’s can say a lot…but the essence, the soul — it is here, if anywhere. And no, of course this isn’t me, or even an actual part of me. It is only a partial representation of me, coded in words and sentences. Yet it still speaks loudly, beautifully, and truthfully.

When I write, I am putting a part of my identity onto paper. I can feel the 8.5x11 and see the smooth black ink, and I realize that it is, in fact, the only tangible “me,” the thoughts extracted from between the ears onto this flimsy processed material.

When I create music, the composer and myself, our identities are lifted into the air; the vibrations connect us, me to the audience, and the audience to the world...the harmonies translated into emotions and colors and spectacular images.

I can speak to you and shake your hand and we can laugh and cry together, but tomorrow you and I will be different people. What words, what music and expressions of ourselves do is preserve a little bit of who we are, and who we were, to put into the solidity of the world our fleeting thoughts and emotions, and to make it available to everyone. Tim O’Brien writes in The Things They Carried, “In a story…the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.”

I hope that, perhaps, my story will be able to produce some smiles, give a little piece of the world to others, and make people feel…something — something vivid, something worth waking up to. I’m not sure how or if that makes me different. But if others feel that way too, then at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing that my story is different, even when the approach is the same — our respective destinations shooting out in every direction, lighting up the sky like fireworks.  

An Attempt at a Love Poem

Love isn’t temptation, not exactly, no.

Imagine the mountains: the white peak,

The gentle slopes and perhaps on a good day,

The sun behind, with its watchful gaze.

And at its foothills, a beautiful garden,

Filled with greenery and kind fauna—

The air warm, and not too moist.

I don’t think it’s admiration either.

There’s the man, with his sculpted body,

With his golden hair (or was it black?),

But either way with a winning complexion on his face.

Or — or the paper you read,

Written by an old friend, and you were left weeping.

What love is, the chemicals don’t quite tell the story.

The words fail and dissolve, slipping into oblivion.

The rhymes do not do justice,

The metaphors cannot capture the fleeting essence.

Wild like the wind,

Falling like rain,

Causing joy and pain.

No, no, no, no.

That cannot do.

It brings the unspeakable, barely expressible.

Pen to paper is no eye to eye, no hand to hand, no lip to lip.

The whispers are convincing, coaxing.

Fight or flight, seized up….

I shall say to you,  “   - - - - - -   ”

Shhh….listen to the breaths.

Feel the expansion of the diaphragm.

Close your eyes.

And then, maybe, something more.

Perhaps,

Something to do what words cannot.

Essay for UChicago: Why are you here and not somewhere else?

I am here because there is no where else I can be. I am here, but not anymore. Life is a constant crossroads, and here is only a certain intersection, gone by with each fleeting second, going by rapidly, speeding — I am barely holding on.

Here is the desk I am sitting in, not moving except for the rotation of the Earth, the revolution around the Sun, the persistent movement across the cosmos. I can walk across the room, but I don’t think I can tell the Solar System where to go.

Here is everywhere, because anything is possible. Sometimes I sit, waiting for the the rain to start falling on a cloudless sky. Other times I tune in to the radio, listening for my name. Here is nowhere, because only a sliver of possibilities ever occur. Here is what is happening, what has happened, and what may happen, all rolled into one. But I am not sure, though, about what is happening, what has happened, and definitely what may happen; so I don’t know where I am — that is why I am everywhere and nowhere.

Happiness is never here. It’s always somewhere near the horizon, hidden behind the mountains somewhere. But neither is sadness. Sadness is always in the past, encroaching on the present, but still behind. I am running from sadness to happiness, with the stamina of limited life, running endlessly here — here in the in-between land.

Perhaps I am here because an Ancient Egyptian from the 12th century BC decided to go down the Nile to the marketplace and buy some grain instead of tending to his sick sister. You know, butterfly effect and all. Perhaps we are all where we are because of that.

I went to New York City once, to a subway station, I don’t remember which one. I looked at the map, which was framed on the tiled wall. I saw that vibrant, round, red dot that was labeled “You are here” in nice, big block letters. I tilted my head, and took a step to the right. The dot stayed right there, not moving.  

Children often ask, “why, why, why?”  It is partially, I think, because they have not learned much about the world yet, but also because they haven’t started taking things for granted. “Why am I here and not somewhere else?” Though I am in some senses, still a child, I must assert a position of adulthood in this situation. And in this instance, I shall answer as such:

“ ”

The reasons don’t always make sense. They are either wrong, or they operate in a way that is beyond our comprehension. These are the unanswered and unanswerable questions. These are the many questions that may be currently answered incorrectly. Shall we declare the falsities we claim to be true with greater conviction than ever before, or shall we revel in the uncertainties of the universe?

I am here because the forces of the universe have worked in a way that has landed me in this place at this time, a house surrounded by houses, in a city surrounded by cities. I am here because I think I choose to be here, though I am not so sure if that’s the case.

Here is a mystery, a perpetual mystery, of which I am trying to make myself content in its presence.

Here is a fragment, or a combination of fragments: fragments of something meaningful, I hope, a part of everything, a part of me.

And here I come…

The Transformation

And soon we should grow up,

Though for now we must

Continue falling with our half-

Grown wings and half-thought —

We won’t become butterflies;

We are butterflies, the kind that

Never stops, the kind

With the brilliant colors;

The kind that is unkind —

The cruelty that directs its fire at ourselves.

So the burning chars our fingers,

Blackens our young and greedy minds,

Digesting the metamorphosis into a cripple;

So that we limp and ache and curse,

That naivety is a disease.

Transforming is the transformed,

Is why we run to walk and fly to fall.

The exposition is the recapitulation —

The same mistakes circling around our narrow lives.

We are the people we turn to and from.

We can’t wait for angels for we are the angels.

We can’t hide from devils for we are the devils.

Shall we run to ourselves, and run away while we’re at it?

And in the meantime, would you like to fall with me?

Contentment

Start with the canvas, a nice milky white and a smooth texture. And silence. Silence is important. Picture it, the quiet, the blank sheet in front of you, and hold it, hold it still. Before you ask, it’s not nothing. It’s everything. But before I get too ahead of myself, I should clarify. I think we can find so much more with no expectations, preexisting biases, values. It’s so much easier to find the off-color spot on the empty frame, or the slightest tick in a silent room. Clarity and fair judgment are hard to come by with a full box. Yes, we do need some stuff in the box, I know. I understand. But right now there is a little too much, perhaps.

It is, I admit, hard to unlearn things. To reverse a picture, a sound, and return to silence. Silence is where everything starts. And it is a one-way street. Maybe that’s why when we think of contentment, we picture the innocent newborn child, viewing the world through fresh eyes, seeing things for what they are, and not what they’re made to be. I’m sure I was content sometime back then, before my mind was made of words, when thoughts came in vibrant colors and a cacophony of sounds. Ignorance is bliss. Perhaps that is what the gist of this may seem like right now, but not really. I think John Stuart Mills said it best: “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” Turns out, I’m not looking for contentment. I’m not looking for long afternoons on the front porch, sitting back on a rocking chair, staring out into the distance. I’m not looking for closed eyes and deep breaths, sitting in a meditative position. I’m restless, I’m out to do things, I’m eager to reach out and create.

Why? Because I’m not content. Bring me the canvas, bring anyone a blank page or an empty recorder and there’ll be the desire to fill it with beauty, with themselves, and the world around. I long for the stillness and the untouched, not so it can last, but so I can fill it with my possibilities, so that, even if it’s only in my mind, the world isn’t so constrained by what is, but rather drenched in the what could be. Contentment is the start: to allow the lines of potential realities intersect, and let the infinite worlds play out before you. But then comes the painful part, when you have to collapse the realities and focus onto one truth. What comes out, it could be The Starry Night, or Beethoven’s 9th, but in a way it doesn’t feel complete. As beautiful as it is, there were other equally beautiful possibilities that were turned down. I think that’s why artists always tend to be dissatisfied and unhappy. But it’s not just about artists, in the sense of painters and musicians. If I may be a little metaphoric here, life is a little bit like art. We start out empty, with all the colors in front of us. But it cannot stay that way, and eventually you have to choose the painting that will become your life. And wonderful as it may be, somehow, in some ways that masterpiece will never beat that time in the beginning when you had all those magnificent images in your head.

Yet, that being said, it’s not so bad, having walked this far. It’s not so much about regret, or later realizing that you missed a stroke here or there. It’s just the thought that, “I am this one person, and I could have been many others.” Makes me feel sort of lucky, and unsettled too. So I’m here against all odds, for better or worse, making things happen, longing for contentment, hungry to move forward.

The Search

Is there something else, is there

more?

Where are the

words, the love, the

infinite comfort of a promise,

the constancy of dignity and God?

No more corners to search

and no more books to read and

souls

to look into.

myself

myself

myself

Only thing left, last

thing still not understood.

I cannot see what is behind my eyes

I cannot hear what is between my ears

I cannot understand what is in my mind

Mine mine mine mine….

but not mine to know.