Baby grows up… …and is finally a college graduate!!! It’s been six days since graduation. In another fourteen hours, I’ll take the AmTrak to New York; in about two weeks, I’ll start work. One chapter ends and another begins. Today marks yet another birthday I spend in a hotel room (see From 20-year-old Me, With … Continue reading 24th 🍀
Tag: Friendship
Happy Fall Things: Wise Professors ft. Other Shenanigans : )
Note: here's a mandatory throwback to my November posts from freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Somehow every November always ends up becoming either my favorite or the most tumultuous month of the fall. Life is truly a cycle, not a progression. Conversations That I'll Remember In Salem's oldest witch shop, behind a curtain, the psychic … Continue reading Happy Fall Things: Wise Professors ft. Other Shenanigans : )
Just A Sunday Hike: White Mountains, NH
Crawling up slippery rocks, hair flying in the wind, shoes squelching, toes numb, fingers scrambling for a grip on branches, on trunks, on anything. Muddied gloves gripping hands that pull me against gravity. Anxiety, wonder, anxiety, wonder. And the air—so, so clean. A blast of oxygen after a mask-filled existence. There’s the easy rhythm of … Continue reading Just A Sunday Hike: White Mountains, NH
22
hi dear friends and readers, today i turn 22!!!! today i feel very very loved and very very blessed. thank you to each of you — you know who you are — who have made it so special. i've waited seven years to play this song (so let this be the soundtrack to this blog … Continue reading 22
Thanksgiving with Books and BBQ
What's in your magnitude? What's in your library? What's in your details? Happy Thanksgiving!!! This break, I've been on campus: empty cobblestone streets, a handful of lit windows in the wintry night, closed restaurants and libraries, vacant laundry machines — solitary, quiet, and kind of really nice. I've been reading and reading and writing and … Continue reading Thanksgiving with Books and BBQ
Conversation Sparks: Life, you’re the dancing queen
We tend to romanticize the past. For a while, I complained to friends that I was feeling the belated onslaught of the Sophomore Slump — call it the Junior Jetlag. Every seven hours, I would reminisce about my idyllic, fulfilling sophomore fall. But then, I went to read what I wrote one year ago — my pillow … Continue reading Conversation Sparks: Life, you’re the dancing queen
Ode to My Youth • 母校，生日快乐
Saw a couple of tiny girls in Hongzi at Bugis today and suddenly remembered. Happy 102nd birthday, Nanyang! ❤ 一九一七八月十五，是宝贵的良辰。 在火药气味浓厚中，可爱的母校出现。 I remember those golden, burnt-edged secondary school days of folding notes and passing them with furtive glances in ordered classrooms when the teacher isn't looking; of six heads huddling over one glowing phone screen … Continue reading Ode to My Youth • 母校，生日快乐
A New York Sunday
12:00am It's pouring in New York City. Curtains and curtains of rain in the darkness with speckles of light. Apocalyptic streets with the occasional yellow cab and barely any human alive. We are all drenched after dashing out from shelter in Central Park and scuttling up the restaurant's shuttle. And then in a state of … Continue reading A New York Sunday
The Big 21
On May 31, 2019, I turned 21. The big 21 is sundrenched in Californian heat, pulsing in road trip vibes, and peppered with desert sand and surrealist tree-like cacti with muscled arms (think: the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter). Outside of the window are lonely gas stations, abandoned houses, and then a humongous pink ice … Continue reading The Big 21
2018: An Autobiography of Seasons
The countdown of days to the end of the year starts with a burnt nose. As I am steaming my face, eyes closed in bliss, my head dips too far down the basin—nose first. The boiling hot water scalds the tip. When I whip my head back up, there's a pimple-shaped red blotch on my … Continue reading 2018: An Autobiography of Seasons
my pillow book: the pathos of November
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 … Continue reading my pillow book: the pathos of November
When In Kyoto ≧◡≦
Kyoto is one-hour strolls along train tracks, washed-out pink carpets hanging on strings, bottles of sake behind second-storey windows, two scrawny girls trying to catch a pale yellow butterfly with a net, watery rice paddies beside a parking lot full of Toyotas & Hondas. Kyoto is that moment my hair almost rustles as my bones quiver … Continue reading When In Kyoto ≧◡≦
[Story] On Black Friday Morning, in a Sun-lit Café
BLACK FRIDAY — 10:40AM, Friday She sits there, her heart a solid thudding of the metronome, an old man's pace. The café is a startling white, clean like a repurposed showroom. The rows of baked goods behind the open-air counter are a dash of brown-gold, like yolk nestled in egg-white. Patterns crawl across its interior; … Continue reading [Story] On Black Friday Morning, in a Sun-lit Café
November is…
November is the great mystery of daylight saving time. It's the time when night comes early, days turn dark in mid-swallow, and the sense of time grows distorted. It also makes me freak out a bit when it’s 5pm but it feels like 9pm and I’ve not yet started on my paper. November is days … Continue reading November is…
Things I Love
1. Sundays on hammocks in hot Singaporean-like Cambridge weather. Hurrah! 2. Learning. The room is warm. My pulse is throbbing at an almost manic pace. In a hitched breath's moment of unconscious cerebration, it occurs to me that I am surrounded by knowledge coming to life -- in eager minds, raw stories, bustling thoughts, and this … Continue reading Things I Love
I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane + Life Updates
Life Update #1 I have miraculously finished packing everything when I only started two days ago. Now I have three HUGE 27-inch luggage bags -- one pink, one blue, one black -- which will accompany me to the faraway land of 'freedom and opportunity', of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, of baseball (??) and Broadway, … Continue reading I’m Leaving on a Jet Plane + Life Updates
Selina Xu 