Inspired by Sei Shōnagon’s diary-lists in The Pillow Book.

Things That I Will Remember

Shivering as we tread the familiar path to Annenberg in the canopy of night. Everyone holding signs celebrating the declaration of their concentrations. Shimmery silver streaks, Trophy Wife and Sugar Daddy signboards, bare cookies, beaming faces, flashing lights, postcards sent into the future, holding my choices in my palm: History & Literature and Philosophy.

Classroom to Table with Professors Ellen Song (History & Literature) and Musa Syeed (Screenwriting). Faculty Dinner at Leverett House with Philosophy Professor Samantha Matherne. ❤

Stepping into the dim, timber lighting of Border Café, looking left and right, before my gaze falls on a face I haven’t seen in person since 2014. Many things change, her smile (and our appetites) stays the same. Aspirations are different, more uncertain, still fervent. Our eyes as bright, as clean as our sixteen-year-old selves.

 

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The hasty, just-right moment of picking up the phone, hearing a strangely familiar voice and only being able to utter Oh my God again and again until we both start laughing. Falling into an easy camaraderie built from a patchwork of a few days — some friends are only made in a handful of hours but seem to have been known to me from a past life. Laughing in an empty dorm room strewn with red solo cups and curious, sullen bottles of alcohol, like the aftermath of some alien abduction scene, the three of us the last ones standing. Talking till 4AM, bleary-eyed, yet feeling like if sleep was not gravity, we could float till infinity in this ether of honest intimate conversation.

Eating hotpot with ginger ale and lemon tea, slurping a big bowl of ramen under the veil of steam and the wise words and heartfelt advice from Tim & Ee San, tasting first snow on the tip of my tongue.

Going wild at Berklee’s Jay Chou Tribute Concert, in stark contrast to all the other mild concert-goers. Singing like no one can hear us, dancing like no one is watching us.

Doing Harvard-Yale as a room, all deck in Harvard gear, rubbing numb fingers, smiling in the wind, rosy cheeks, furry hats, munching on fries, cheering confusedly, posing for photos, and collapsing into giggles over how good we look.

Walking from Fenway Park (in Boston) back to our dorm (in Cambridge) in the cold, noses red, sipping on bubble tea (milk green tea, mini bubbles, 50% sugar, no ice) and talking about everything under a sky thick with clouds and fecundity.

Things That Constitute A Bad Day

Waking up at 7AM after snoozing my 6AM alarm for an hour, once every eight minutes.

Writing a paper already due which I got an extension for. Clock ticking.

Stomach growling but no real food in sight.

A throat parched and scratched from two chocolate chip granola bars and a hundred goldfish crackers.

Waiting in front of the printer for ten minutes, paying three times, refreshing, and nothing stirs.

Being late for class. Again.

Falling down the stairs of Quincy, wrapped like a maki roll in my puffy ankle-length down coat, tumbling, crashing into the long legs of some bewildered, terrified guy who grips me tight and sets me right on the stairs. Glasses askew.

Not wearing contacts and glasses fogging up when I blow my nose.

Limping back to my dorm room in the darkness, puddles sprouting in front of me like invisible tiles.

Purple bruises on my legs when I want to wear a skirt.

What I Wrote This Month

A 20-page screenplay titled UNWIND ME about the inexhaustible variety of college life. Three characters. One night. Sometimes we don’t see how much we need someone to care or just how lonely we are. 

A paper using the lens of trauma to inspect the complexity of white liberal guilt in Jess Row’s Your Face in Mine: its historicity, hypocrisy, and fantasy of a return to innocence.

A comparative paper on the extent of fictional repair in Ruth Ozeki’s My Year of Meats vs. Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt.

Coming up next week: revising UNWIND ME and writing my second PHIL 129 midterm paper.

Things That Don’t Last

Strawberry yogurt-coated pretzel crumbs. Squashed juice boxes. Empty bottled iced tea. Lindt chocolate wrappers like aluminum petals.

Negativity. Bad days. Writer’s block. Being upset at a friend. The absence of a response, the limbo before a decision, the length of time called waiting.

A month like November.

Lots of love,