Prep

It felt like reading about my own life. One minute I was 22 years old, sitting at a table, legs outstretched, reading a novel as dusk begins to hang outside my window. The next I was 14 again, watchful, defensive, laboring to pin down the surrounding personalities. Had it really been this simple? I wondered, thumbing the pages of the book. Had the characters of high school been so easy to read? A boy farted when giving his book report, a girl tried unsuccessfully to stifle her laughter, I knew then that she was someone I could be friends with. I guess back then, we all wore our deepest truths on our sleeves because none of us had acquired enough guile to be exacting or worldly. The awkward mumbling was sharp and sudden, the glancing at watches was obviously fake. None of us had an understanding or command of our limbs and what they might do, what secrets they might betray, at any moment. So it was easy to just watch and grab hold of people's cores. One gesture, and I knew then that I could be friends with her, I knew then that she was a prissy bitch.

But was it really so clear? I only wish I was the kind of teenager who understood this clarity, who trusted what I saw before my eyes as reliable proofs of people's personalities and knew, consequently, that some of them were not worth knowing. As it were, I martyred myself into giving second chances, listening, abandoning friends, even soothing the pains of enemies. There was a whole problem of empathy, namely, that I had too much of it. And suddenly, I saw a girl in adulthood vacillating between worldviews, lifestyles, careers, politics, also for this same problem of empathy. It feels so complex and undecidable now, but would the choices eventually emerge as clearly as high school personalities (something I could be friends with, a politics so shallow, a mindnumbing career)? If so, would this revelation make me trust what I see, could I give up my desire to keep all the eggs in the air, could I watch some of them fall to the ground and break? Maybe I will end up juggling the wrong two eggs for 5 years, maybe I was wrong about the prissy bitch. But here's the thing, at least I would know it's okay to let some eggs break. I would juggle but I wouldn't be zealous about it, I wouldn't think the game itself actually mattered.

Flipping through the playbill of the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular in order to discard it and see space on my desk again. We saw the hokey Rockettes, their hundreds of legs kicking to music and in unison. Wait, turn back to the other page, the history of the show, detailed descriptions of each piece. Do I need to know these things? Oh, who cares. Suddenly driven by a desire to let it all go, I dumped the whole thing in the trash.

Persona

In high school English class, the question I hated the most was, "What persona is the author projecting in this poem?" The question always hit me between the eyes. I thought, "Persona, are you kidding me?" Because persona, to me, was what happened when the cheerleaders squealed, "Yes, I LOVE you!" to the dorky boy when he let them copy his homework. Persona was what possessed all the girls at lunchtime, as they flocked around the table of football players and preened madly like golden-haired princesses lost in some forest. This was persona, it was affected, it hid the persons. I could be talking to a friend when it took over, churned up some intangible shift of the air, sliding a glass door shut and making me feel--in an instant--suddenly alone and far away. I worshipped literature because it seemed like the one place that did not tolerate persona. So, "What persona is the author projecting in this poem?" Really, the idea was so offensive.

I suddenly remembered this last night, reading the opening passage of a novel that was clearly spoken through a persona. Two thoughts came to mind: I was a really nutty teenager, and, personas are okay in writing. In fact, the more I live "real life," the more I believe that growing up is all about acquiring personas but somehow being okay with it. For example, what is professionalism but a persona, knowing exactly how to posture, how much confusion you should show, how to curb your enthusiasm. And the same goes for the "we're keeping it real!" artists. As each of us emerges from the tumult of adolescence, we learn to write like adults, to remove ourselves and wax eloquence about macroeconomic policy or social movements instead. By adopting a persona or a unique voice, we can re-open the door to those things--what are they called? oh yes, feelings--and write more lightly, more deeply again.

Maybe. Or maybe I'm still tipsy from the Woodpecker Cider. Okay, one more glass of water!

Encounters of An (Annoyed,) Globetrotting Vietnamese

If you are a Vietnamese American (or any immigrant/"other" subject) and you have moved through various social, national and intellectual circles, you eventually find a number of repeating phenomena. Below is a collection of those phenomena. Unfortunately, my clever and dead-on replies are invariably coined after the fact.

(1) So what do you think of the Vietnam War? [Half of the time, this is asked by white intellectuals who, after discussing the topic with another white intellectual, turns to me as the specimen of authentic truths. The other half of the time, it is asked by Vietnamese people wishing to "educate" me about what "really happened" in the War]

Me: Why are you asking me that question when the question you really want answered is, “So are you a Communist or not? Are you crazy or not?” (and that goes for both sides). Why should I give you information when you’re going to use it to tie me up in a little box and shut the lid? What do I think of the Vietnam War? I think it’s a tool you use to classify me.

(2) Vietnam, on a train

So you live in Orange County now? We hear that the Vietnamese Americans in Orange County are really crazy, right?

Well, some are and most are not, but the ones who are have loud voices. You know what's funny though, Vietnamese Americans in OC told me that you are all Communists over here. Do you think that’s true? Then why are you even asking me if all Vietnamese Americans in OC are fanatics? The number of fanatics there equals the number of Communists here.

(3) For those who are always eager to "school" me on Vietnamese ways because "I have lived in America for so long"

Why should you presume that it is I who has something to learn from you and that is the only way our “cultural exchange” goes? That is not exchange, it’s a one-way street where the playing field is unbalanced from the start, where I am asked to speak in Vietnamese which is a linguistic handicap like shooting foam bullets. From the start, you presume, you assume that I am the poor creature who “lost” her culture. I have culture, don’t you have something to learn from me too?

(4) For all the WASP-y backpackers out there

I think your developing country is so beautiful. I have been there and taken all these pictures. The people are beautiful. Here is me holding a plough in the rice fields, here is a path of just bamboo groves and gravel. It was so beautiful.

I think your developed country is really beautiful. I have been there and taken all these pictures. Here is me standing next to a car, can you believe it, a real Toyota. Here’s me standing next to a wall, we don’t have walls like this in Vietnam, so strong, so sturdy. I wish that my house had a concrete floor, it is smooth and cool during the summer, you can sweep it, you can bounce a ball on it, you can mop it.

(5) Well, I joined this club because I think Vietnamese culture is beautiful and I don’t want to lose my roots, brothers and sisters. So, like, why are we arguing about politics, I mean, this is a place where we educate each other about our Vietnamese culture, right? I think we should read more Vietnamese books and protect our heritage.

First, it’s not a pickle. And I do read Vietnamese, thank you very much. My roots are fine too, thanks. How about your head? Try to figure it out, my source of pride isn’t “being as Vietnamese as I can be,” but now I know what yours is.

(6) When (insert born-again VSA kid) insists on being “cultural” and therefore somehow innocent of politics. I have never come across a greater delusion than when people advocate against human trafficking in Vietnam and call it “preserving heritage” rather than the political act that it is. Your definition of politics is messed up, it only means certain things in certain times, to satisfy your self-righteous feelings about saving Vietnam, to skirt the issues and evade your fears of standing up to the “community” for what you believe in. If you’re too chicken to stand up and say, let’s have dialogue, then get out of my way because I’ll say it myself.

(7) Asian American girl in Sociology section: “Well, I have Filipino friends and their moms are all nurses”.

Why should this girl's Asian American “experience” give her any more right to have voice about immigration than the white guy from Kansas? All people have an equal opportunity to be stupid. It seems simple, but some people just don’t get that having one Filipino friend is not proof that you’re an expert on Filipinos, or anything else for that matter. So try to say something more intelligent next time.

(8) When “A bunch of us got together and thought hey wouldn’t it be super chill if we had an Asian American film festival?” I am torn between wanting to support this so badly and being embarrassed at the gigantic display of ditziness.

(9) Excuse me, why are we talking about “the Vietnamese immigrants” as if they’re all the same? Hello!!

(10) Pittsburgh, 10pm. Two black girls cry out to me across the street: Ching chong ching chong!
[I'm still thinking of a good reply to this one, besides my middle finger. Write your ideas in the "comments" section.]

(11) Finally, my favorite identity crisis question.
Question: So what percentage of you would you say is Vietnamese versus American, 40/60, 50/50?
Answer: 100/100

No Home To Go To

I remember thinking towards the end of senior year that it was going to be impossible to go back and recapture all that had gone on in my life that year. So much had happened. From the intellectual backflips and contortions of writing a very personal thesis, to my worldview caught naked and unprepared in the bright lights of the real world, there had been many emotional and intellectual changes with no time to process. I was totally overstimulated, so much was just constantly happening.

So in planning out my post-graduate year, I decided to pursue a working fellowship--not a conventional job and not graduate school--so I could “take time off” from whatever it was I was living in, and reflect, and write, and “rediscover” myself. Instead of always running after someone else’s dream or wracking my brain to arrange complex social theory, my brain and I would have space for my own thoughts. Then I would be able to write again, to write--as I remember telling one of my professors--not “this social science stuff” but to really write like I used to do.

I am beginning to realize that this is not a year of rediscovery, but of continuing to change.

For the past few months, I have been continuously disappointed at not being able to arrive at this state of resolution and happiness which I had vested in my rediscovered self. My rediscovered self, I thought, would not have these confusions about life direction, my rediscovered self would be internally motivated and judging rather than externally impacted. With it, I believed I could return to that state of my life where I had been able to deflect and defy the world’s material desires. (I had been disarmed by the events of senior year, I had fallen out of my dreams, I had fallen out of myself.) If only I could get away from those Harvard kids with the suits on, I would return to my former self, could fit in and fill out my own skin again.

That has not happened, and I am finally grasping at why. There is no home to go to. My life has changed, and I could not help but change with it.

In the past I have always resisted this admission of change. For me, college has been a transformative experience, but I've always been frustrated by old friends or family’s accusation that I “had changed”. What did this mean? No, I insisted to my friends that although I went to Harvard I did not change. It was just that at college, my ideals discovered expression; the core of my person had always been there, the essential beliefs have never shifted. By the end of senior year in college, this desire for firmness and stability reached a new height. I could not wait to get out of Harvard and run home to suburbia to be surrounded not by yapping college students but by silent and impersonal cars. Slowly, subtly, my brain oriented itself towards one direction, to seek a return to my former self, to discover and stand again on those immutable grounds.

But (like many a sophomoric scholars), I had studied social science but failed to apply this training to my own transition from college to the "real" world. I'd failed to recognize that the socioeconomic structure surrounding me was changing. By this I do not mean the U.S. economy, but my personal socioeconomic situation of having to produce and provide the basic necessities of life for myself. I used to waltz into a dining hall and just eat whenever I pleased, now I make grocery lists, cook and wash dishes. I used to sleep in class, now I must stay awake at a job for 9 straight hours. My use of money used to be an occasional non-dining hall meal, now it has multiplied one hundredfold. All the daily practices of life have changed. And as you know, my friend, once what you do changes, what you think will follow suit.

This leads me, in a retrospective turn, to recognize that I was never defying the world in the first place. In those times, the world I lived in (no dishes to do, no rent to pay) was in fact what enabled me to commit to purely "ideal" thoughts and works. I wasn’t defying the world, I was folding right into it. Let us be clear, though, that this is not a matter of being "idealistic" then versus being "realistic" now; those words carry heavy connotations. Instead, it is simply a matter of what I knew. When you do not know an alternative, what you are and how you live feel genuine. When you do learn a different way to live, your life is suddenly exposed. You may wish you never learned that alternative but there it is, once you know you cannot un-know, you cannot return to the state where you did not know. At this point, the immutable emerges as temporary.

And it is not even that ignorance is bliss, but change is what life is, especially for those of us who insist on moving and seeing and knowing. And we accept this life, with all its imperfections and its fickle changes, "full weight".

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's not your fault that you cannot go back there.

Why I Do This

As perhaps representative of my life, I now turn to employ a practice I once looked upon with disdain, blogging. This leaves me with two choices: feel like a hypocrite, or no longer disdain blogging. I'm going to go with the latter.

In fact, this afternoon, as I sat entirely without shame in the "Diet & Health" section at Barnes n Nobles reading a novel picked up from the "New Fiction" piles, it occurred to me that blogging would not only be fine, but maybe a good idea. You see, the novel I picked up was a good one, in its many pages, there lacked that ill-defined but distinctly onerous quality I usually refer to as "shitty writing". By contrast, my journal of late has been full of shit. College social science has taught me well the art of prolixity, rehash, and overanalysis. On top of that, I was keeping my journal on the computer, which gave me a sense of infinite space in which to spin off from one inchoate thought to another without any structure or consequence. STRUCTURE! CONSEQUENCE! I yelled to no one in particular, that's what my writing needs. So now I am blogging. Perhaps it will help my writing . . .

If you're still unconvinced, here is what Virginia Woolf, in one of her novels a good 80 years ago, has to say about why it is good to blog. We pick up the scene where Lillie Briscoe stares impotently at her unfinished painting, and Mr. Ramsay, James and Cam reach the lighthouse ending the novel where, as usual, nothing actually happened:

"Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was--her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision."

So, that is why I do this.