Spotless Mind

 "Falling in love with yourself first doesn’t make you vain or selfish. It makes you indestructible."

Vulnicura

I am a glowing shiny rocket 

Returning home 

As I enter the atmosphere 

I burn off layer by layer 

Jettison

-- "Black Lake" by Bjork

i find myself reading as many interviews with Bjork on her latest album Vulnicura as i can get my hands on.

i discovered Bjork in high school, after learning that OLIVIA was a huge fan of hers. this was back in the day when it wasn't as easy to stream free music online. i borrowed Medulla, Vespertine, and Volta from the library. i bought Debut for two dollars from a library sale. some of her songs didn't jive with me, but the ones i loved became regular fixtures in my playlist--Pagan Poetry, Unison, All is Full of Love, and my favorite--Unravel.

in these interviews, Bjork breaks down in tears whenever they probe her about the emotional process of writing this break-up album, following her split with Matthew Barney, the father of her 12 yo daughter and her romantic partner for over a decade.

when your life has been so intricately intertwined with someone else's for that long, what happens when the cords are cut?

some days, i like to imagine that the little ironies in the world are some divine creator's way of sculpting harmony from an oftentimes nonsensical narrative. as i pore over the lyrics of Vulnicura, i hear my old voice rising, conjured from the melodic words like a ghost: on the brink of rupture from burning in degrees Kelvin

"Hey you. Tell me, what happens to a star when it dies? Will it incinerate everything around in a colossal explosion? 

Or will it silently collapse in on itself, a victim of its own flame -- burning and burning until it has burned itself out?"

and stranded in space, three years in the aftermath

"Maybe I wasn't the star. I was the rocket ship, and your heart was the moon. My aim never wavered all those years, but it didn't matter. Once the flame sputtered out, I was trapped in the coldness of space. Somewhere between you and the person I had once been."

and now, here we are--incinerating in a descent back down to the earth, unfurling layer by layer to reveal what's left underneath after all this time. to be born anew.

y u mad bro

I had this dream last night that Graydyl and S were over at my house, catching up like we usually do every winter. I was telling them about how a classmate asked me out, and how nothing has happened since then because neither of us have brought it up despite seeing each other quite a few times in the last two weeks, and how I'm not even sure about what I want in the first place.

Instead of being sympathetic or understanding like I was expecting, Graydyl became FURIOUS while S suddenly burst into tears. Completely flummoxed by their reactions, I asked Graydyl something along the lines of "y u mad bro" to which S responded, wailing through blubbering tears, "But Sophelia.... do you really want to die alone??"

Well, that little comment rankled my fury, and as I turned to snap a retort, Graydyl stood up and stormed out the door. I followed, trying to ask her to stop and talk to me, but she refused to even look in my direction and sped off in her car without another word.

I have no idea what my subconscious is trying to tell me, but holy kleenex batman that was a terrifying dream.

Duke and Spirituality

ETA: I just found out that Duke has reversed its decision and decided to hold the call to prayer in the quad instead. I can't say I was particularly pleased with this backtracking, but I have to acknowledge that Christians might not be comfortable with the chapel being used for the Muslim call to prayer. (Though I have to say... the chapel holds a lot of non-Christian events at school, and I have yet to hear any major complaints against those.)

HOWEVER.... what pissed me off more than anything were the comments people left on Duke's Facebook page. Calling Duke a "traitor Muslim school' and all sorts of garbage. I suspect NONE of those people ever studied at Duke in the first place and have NO IDEA what it's like on campus. Those people threatening to never send their kids there -- if your kids are just as close-minded and poisonous with hateful words, then they probably don't belong at Duke either.

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Original Post

I generally don't blog about current events, but there are times when the events intersect strangely with the ongoings in my own life, and I feel compelled to write in order to process my thoughts.

My alma mater, Duke University, recently announced that every Friday, the Muslim call to prayer will ring from the chapel bell tower. This has been gaining particular attention the news, especially in light of the recent events in France with the terrorist act committed at Charlie Hebdo. Some boneheads have been calling upon donors and alum to stop donating to Duke until the policy is reversed, claiming that this encouragement of Islam is a threat to Christianity.

I won't even go into the fact that the influence of Christianity is everywhere at Duke (the insignia, the chapel, the Bibles we all receive upon graduation), and that the idea of Christianity being wiped out from Duke is laughable. But I will talk about how I am indebted to Duke for opening my eyes to religious acceptance and spirituality.

When I entered the school in August 2009, I had no concept of either. I was vaguely aware of the Buddhist influence on my extended family an ocean away, but growing up I had no religious rituals and hardly ever thought about higher powers and whatnot. That changed almost as soon as I started my freshman year, when a high school alum at Duke invited me to join a Christian fellowship's welcome event.

That freshman year was a terrible year, but it made me who I am today. Two things happened coincidentally during that period. My disastrous academic experience hurtled me into a personal crisis of intense self-doubt and loathing. At the same time, I began exploring Christianity -- initially, as a way to make friends who also felt fatigued by the prevalent hook-up culture, but little by little I began attending small groups and large groups, intrigued by the conversations on what it meant to live a good life and be a good person. These were conversations I'd never had growing up, and I read Bible verses and listened to the pastors in curiosity.

At a certain point, however, I reached a dead-end. There were things I liked about Christianity, but there were also things I didn't like, couldn't accept, or just couldn't believe. As I asked more and more questions to my mentors, the answers started to meld into one: "It will make sense if you believe." But I can't believe, I wanted to say, because it doesn't make sense! Gradually, I stopped attending the group events, but the friends that I made remained through the rest of my undergraduate career and beyond. My best friend from Duke is a devout Christian, and if anything, my experience with that Christian fellowship taught me how to be religiously sensitive.

The other major spiritual epiphany happened in my junior year. To get some English major requirements out of the way, I enrolled in a class called "Spiritual Autobiographies." Our first essay assignment was to observe a spiritual or religious event that is not part of our own beliefs and write about the experience. Some classmates went to a mosque, while others went to a Buddhist temple. I went to visit a pagan witch on the night of the full moon.

That night will always be one of my favorite memories, because in many ways it changed me. Not because I started believing in pagan rituals or spirits, but because of certain things the witch said to me that night. One was what she told me when she read my Tarot card. The second was when she said that it's okay to take bits and pieces of what you like in other religions and custom-build your own spirituality, without having to accept all the other baggage that comes with each organized religion.

The light came on. And that's where I am now--spiritual, but not religious.

In medical school, religion becomes especially important when we talk about end of life care and death. During my end-of-life elective class yesterday, we had to act in scenarios with actors in which we were supposed to break the bad news that his/her mother had terminal cancer. We were split into small groups that rotated through four stations, each with a different actor. As soon as my actor asked me, with tears streaming down his face, if I believed in Jesus our Lord and Savior, bells went off in my head.

My friend had to do the same scenario in a different group, and she said her first reaction was panic. I understood -- religion is something we almost never discuss publicly and can become a scary topic to broach. But as I held the actor's arm, I quietly told him that I believed in a higher power, but that my role in his mother's care was not in religion but in medicine. When he suddenly closed his eyes to pray aloud, I let him. I kept my eyes down in respect, just like I'd done all those times I'd had dinner with my Christian friends who said Grace before every meal.

Duke University not only helped me understand my own spiritual beliefs, but also helped me understand how to interact with people of other beliefs, and to respect the positive things that religion can bring--compassion, comfort, and solace. I am proud of my school for leading the way in religious acceptance and grateful for what it has taught me in turn.

Lights On

Break or seize me 

If the flame gets blown out in the shine 

I will know that you can not be mine 

Live or leave me

Let me tell you all my secrets in a whisper till the day is done.

I sit on the carpeted floor with a half-drunken bottle of Abita Purple Haze as they talk. She's opening a second bottle of champagne and asking S about his plans to propose to his girlfriend. I watch as the liquid lurches as she fumbles in refilling her glass--a telltale sign of her inebriated state. E is playing with the French bulldog, while C helps himself to another slice of king cake (in celebration of the beginning of Mardi Gras festivities in the city). S talks of diamonds and engagements, and I ask how he and his girlfriend met.

Later, I wonder if she would have told us everything if she had been sober. Maybe she wouldn't have told us that she thinks her boyfriend in California is about to dump her. Maybe she wouldn't have said all those other things about her past. Or maybe she would have anyways.

We are a strange group of six. Four boys, two girls. Under any other circumstances, we would have never all become friends. We are essentially your standard dysfunctional yet loveable sitcom cast. But here we are on a Friday night, with a neglected game of Cards Against Humanity splayed out on the coffee table amongst drained glasses of Bellini. They flip their secrets face-up one by one, but I have yet to play my hand.

I can tell you a little something scandalous about each of them, but they have nothing on me. Not because I don't trust them. But because my lack of secrets is the greatest secret of all.

I still remember what she said to me just last Monday, about a girl she knows from back home who is 24, engaged, and still a virgin--exclaiming this to me as if it were the most absurd thing she'd ever heard in her life. Then, there's the last time we played Never Have I Ever at the sushi happy hour at Vitascope, and I sat out because I knew that even more than any of the dirty secrets they each aired that night, the biggest shocker to them would be mine.

I hide this from them, not because I am ashamed, but because I don't want a reaction. I don't need your pity or your incredulity or heaven forbid your approval (and I have dealt with all these before). If they ask me directly one day, I will tell them. But for now, let them speculate of unspeakable sorrows, dark and tragic pasts, or raw heartbreak if they deign to notice that I do not speak--when in fact, the sheep in wolf's clothing is as pure as the driven snow.

Break or seize me 

Let the things that I tell you survive

In the way that you handle your size 

Live or leave me

--"Lights On" by FKA Twigs

Willow

The conscious says what it will in daylight, until the subconscious rears its head in the night.

There was a book. The cover was white with the word "Willow" stretched across in crisply elegant black font. I was shocked to see the familiar name across the bottom. I rifled through the pages and it suddenly dawned on me that you'd written enough words to fit in a book. Those words told me about everything that had happened since--poems and vignettes about the people you'd met, and the places you'd been, and the things that had happened to you. I saw one about me. It was short and sparse, infused with nostalgia and a sprinkling of barely discernible regret. The pebble to the meteor.

What I felt was envy. That you'd accomplished something I'd dreamed of doing for as long as I can remember. But then I realized something else in that liminal space of lucid dreaming. It doesn't exist in a physical bound shape, but mine exists. It's here.

Hero's Journey

Piazza d'Italia in downtown New Orleans

While I was working on Act III this past week, I decided to stop and rethink the story architecture. This was partly because I was having some trouble deciding where to go with Aurora, and I figured it would be best for her story to mirror Charlotte's to make the two lines cohesive. And so, I went and charted out the Hero's Emotional Journey for Charlotte and realized a couple of things.

When I was younger, I had this (somewhat irrational) fear that someone would see the story premise I'd set up on Fictionpress and decide to take it for themselves. Eight years later, this fear seems rather foolish to me because: (1) no one is bored enough to steal a half-written modestly-reviewed Fictionpress story; but mainly (2) over the years, I've developed this stubborn belief that it is impossible for anyone else to write EP because it is made up of so many parts of myself.

The first step of the Hero's Journey is generally referred to as Incomplete/Ordinary World. Done correctly, it sets up the hero's Want and Flaw at the beginning of the story, before the inciting event sets the plot in motion. So, I started thinking about what Charlotte's Want and Flaw are, which made me think about what I was like at age sixteen.

When I was a teenager, I had very low self-confidence. It affected all areas of my life. With tennis, I had a tendency to choke -- that is, you're leading your opponent and just at the cusp of closing of a win, only to get nervous and end up losing the match all together. I didn't play piano competitively, but it was the same at recitals--I would play far worse when it truly mattered.

Socially, I was shy around strangers and uncomfortable with public speaking. I remember thinking at the time that being an introvert was a curse in an extroverted world. I wanted to be an extrovert. I wanted to make friends easily, to comfortably crack the same jokes I made around my friends with people I didn't really know.

Reflecting now, I wasn't so much surprised that I used to think this way. I was more surprised by the fact that I hadn't even noticed when I stopped thinking like this.

At some point between sixteen and twenty-three, I stopped treating my introversion as something to be ashamed of. I embraced it. I learned how to flip the ON switch for extroversion when I need to, but my base level remained. I don't know if I still have the tendency to choke, but I don't think I lack in self-confidence anymore. I am stubbornly comfortable with who I am.


Charlotte's Want is courage -- to be able to stand up for herself socially, and to be able to overcome her stage fright in order to reveal to the world the full extent of her musical talent. Her Flaw isn't merely just a lack of self-confidence. At this point, I was reminded of something the Pagan witch I observed in Durham had told me when she read my cards. "You tend not to speak for yourself, because you don't think you deserve it."

I think I don't deserve it? I had been bewildered by that statement. But it makes sense when I think about it now, and it applies to Charlotte as well. Charlotte doesn't believe she deserves happiness, and consequently, this subconscious pessimism becomes self-sabotaging. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This revelation hit me in an epiphany. Because now, I finally saw with clarity how the different threads of Charlotte's storyline all feed into the same Want and Flaw, and now I saw what the story's ending must achieve in order to reconcile the two.

Unfortunately, school starts this Monday. Which means back on the grind, which means holding off on EP until after the next exam in about three weeks. Adios.

2014

I sort of feel obligated to write something, as a final hurrah post of 2014. I wrote a Top Fives recap last year for 2013, but I'm honestly too lazy to sit down and do one of those.

I will say.... looking back, this year felt ridiculously long.

More than once, I've caught myself about to say that I worked or went to Europe last year, when it really all happened less than 12 months ago. During my gap year of work (June 2013 - July 2014), time really sped by; but ever since I started med school, it feels like my life has slowed to a crawl. I've only been in school for five months, when it feels like at least a year.

When I really think about it, a lot has happened this year.

In January, I watched the musical Once for the first time.

In February, E, CC, and I played the Flowers in the Attic movie drinking game via the FYA rules. "NO, CHRISTOPHER. STOP IT, CHRISTOPHER. STEP AWAY FROM YOUR SISTER, CHRISTOPHER."

In March, at my mother's behest, I dreadingly wrote a really long Facebook post analyzing the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan, which ironically became something a lot of my new classmates commented to me about after we'd become Facebook friends.

In April, I had my golden birthday at the age of 23. I also watched BAP perform live, devoured Dreams of Gods and Monsters, and finished comment-watching that Korean Alien drama with Y (that is a noteworthy achievement, btw).

In May, I finally visited France--as well as Amsterdam, Brussels, and Monaco--and it was glorious.

In June, I roadtripped with my mother from North Carolina to New Orleans with all my belongings.

In July, S and I went beach-hopping down the northern California coast along Highway 1.

In August, I started medical school.

In September, my grandmother passed away.

In October, I experienced Halloween on Frenchman, disguised in my blonde wig.

In November, I went to my first small-venue concert ever and saw FKA Twigs perform live.

In December, I came to a decision that I will not publicly verbalize, and it probably isn't what you're thinking of, but I will say that it was something very monumental to me, and I imagine it will be something that will define 2014 for me down the line.

And somewhere scattered along those twelve months... I wrote all of Act II of EP. A shitty first draft, but nevertheless around 35,000 words. Guys, I am 2/3 of the way done with this shitty first draft. I am very aware of how much work is left ahead of me, even after I finish this draft. But considering how I first dreamed up EP eight years ago, when I was a sophomore in high school on the brink of turning 16, and how my resolution every new year since was to finally finish it.... I've never come this close before.

All in all, 2014 treated me well. 2015 will be my zodiac year, which according to Chinese tradition will not be a lucky year for me, but who knows what will happen? Come at me, 2015.