Impossible Dreams

I had a dream this morning that left me wanting what was in it so badly that I could barely breathe when I woke up.

I had to take a shower just to loosen up my lungs and feel like a normal person again. It's very troubling that this can still happen to me...it has been a very long time since this type of thing has happened. Things continue to lurk in the shadows and burst through into my subconsciousness, and I don't know what to make of it. I want to scream "Leave me alone!" but the more I want to the more I wonder why I can't just let go of it. What's making me want this?

A part of me still thinks that the things I dream of might happen. That one day people will miraculously be kind, understanding, and willing to truly act like they care. To my (maybe) desperate core, I NEED to believe these things because it's getting to be unbearably lonely otherwise.

I hate waking up and knowing that my reality is so irreconcilable to what I've dreamt, so utterly disappointing and bitter that it's all I can do not cry. Because I know that my psyche is both telling me that I can't have it and at the same time making it feel so possible...

In my particularly stressed, sickly, and sleep-deprived state all of this has made me especially disturbed by the whole thing. I still think that most parts of life a pretty great. Just...not this part.

eep.

So much stuff is going on to the people I love that I can't control. 

The blanket that I've got wrapped around me isn't enough to keep that cold sinking feeling out any more...

Must. Study. Make every minute count.

Office Hours

I met with one of my DCRP gsi's today to discuss a paper I'm going to write and found out something interesting about myself. (Anyone who knows the nerd in me knows I adore most of the CP gsi's I've ever had. They're doing what I want to do in 5-10 years, only right now, and they act both as constant sources of encouragement and intimidation for me.)

My paper-writing style: pick a general topic, start to explore all five thousand points, get overwhelmed (and don't really say anything), prioritize, narrow down, eventually a good paper comes out. The narrowing down is the most difficult part for me.

My post-grad life possibilities & career goals: pretty much the same. Where will I go when I graduate? Stay here? Go home? LA? San Diego? Seattle? NYC? Boston? First, I want to travel. Japan? NYC? Greece? China? Where do I want to go to school? Etc etc.

So yeah. My GSI hit me right on the mark. I have the ability and potential to do anything, but do I want to do everything? My biggest battle will be deciding what I want to do most. My track record shows that I tend to do a lot of what I liked to call "ambitious flailing": I didn't know what I wanted to do in College so i applied everywhere and when I got in almost everywhere I waited until practically the last day to decide where to go. I joined a bajillion campus groups in my first 2.5 years and ended up committing myself seriously to a couple. I happened upon Italian by accident and ended up living in Italy as a result. 

But....I've turned out all right and I regret very little. I guess I'm in for a lot more gut-wrenching in the next couple of years. Maybe one day decisions will be easier to make. Maybe not. I think it'll be okay though...whether or not people will judge the hell out of me for it is a different story.

Academics

Putting the past four weeks back into perspective (sleepless nights that feel like weeks, papers, neglecting friendships, exams, bad food, and the aforementioned addiction will be put aside for now):

To graduate from CED with honors you need a 3.574 GPA.

Guess who has a 3.54?

I've basically got to get ALL A- grades this semester (and Jere's class p/np), B+ in studio, A in econ, A in arch 130/140. I don't really think it is going to happen, because I have been skating on such thin ice this month. I could fudge around with things and take some stuff p/np, but at the expense of my minor. I decided that a minor was more important than a "honors" distinction.

But really a 3.5 from Cal isn't a bad GPA. [Random: The guy running for state assembly in my district got a 2.5 ag AHC before transferring to Poly. That's not scary at all. He has a long history with the AFL-CIO and other organizing stuff though so I may or may not have voted for him anyways.]

And that Arch midterm that I thought I got a C on because I studied and studied and studied and none of it was on the midterm? Well...I guess sophomores are kind of stupid (no offense, friends), because they graded it REALLY easy. Can anyone say 99?

So, is it worth the rat race, lack of sleep, etc etc? Kind of. Work does pay off. But I am basically guaranteed no honors so I don't see the point in working to death, either. My mom said that getting a C in physics kind of screwed me over, but really it could have been a higher grade in ANY class. I don't think it did. I learned some very important lessons that semester, which isn't going to show up on my transcript, but made me more able to handle the challenges of life.

So yeah. Back to studying, paper-writing, grant proposal-ing, and web-ing...

Addiction.

Hello, my name is Katie, and I am a caffiene addict.

I fell asleep last night around 10pm, got up at 9am, and still had a headache. By 3pm it hat turned into a MASSIVE headache, despite 3 Advil and a litre of water. I have a midterm to study for and a paper to write and I'm not really sure how I am going to get it all done now that I wasted all of Sunday sleeping early and whatnot.

A couple of hours later, after screaming "Ahh MY HEAD HURTS" at my study buddy every couple of minutes, I had a bit of Vitamin Water (the yellow kind with caffiene in it). Miraculously, within fifteen minutes the headache was all but gone!

I got around to thinking and realized that I probably hadn't had any caffiene since Friday or Saturday. I guess my body was going into withdrawls. I feel pretty sad about being so addicted but at least I am not overdoing it and going crazy like previous semesters. I intend to spend the first week of christmas break caffiene-free (which will be quite the bitch). Unfortunatly I have studio in the spring so I doubt I'll be off of it for long. I'm told that anything you do for a month straight becomes a habit so maybe I just need to not drink caffiene AND get like no sleep for a month and then I'll be okay?

AHHHH.

I hate being a dependent.

Compartmentalization

I've been doing a lot of thinking about "hapa" issues lately - about a month now - and this is the collection of some of my thoughts over the past month. It's not meant to be cohesive, authoritative, or final. Due to work, cs, and school mixed-race identity keeps coming up in different parts of my life. My mother is Caucasian (her ancestors were Scottish and came to the US on the Mayflower as indentured servants) and my father is Japanese (born in Japan...but my great-grandfather was actually the first one to move to the US). In geopolitics, I tend to consider myself fully American and, more specificially a Californian.

But then I look at "American" TV and movies and textbooks and I don't see my family in it. I see half of it - in a generalized, distant form - but I don't see the other half. [1848 Commodore Perry. 1907 Gentleman's Agreement. Immigration Quotas. Anti-Alien Land Laws. Pearl Harbor. Internnment Camps. Farewell to Manzanar. Someone by the name of Korematsu. Apologies.] And then...it stops. So I spent a lot of time getting to know Japanese American history, the experience, and the community that exists today...because that is the main ethnic community that I grew up in and I wanted to know more about it, needed to know more about it, if I was going to continue identifying myself as a Japanese American. 

So I'm in solidarity with the rest of the JAs who wonder where our stories are in the story that we get told of "this is America, this is what it is to be American", wonder when it will reflect what ACTUAL Americans have expereinced, wonder when things won't automatically be presented from an Angl0-Saxon canon. I see my father's family's struggles written all over the pages of books that I accumulate on JA issues: farmers, picture brides, camps, "no-no", "yes-yes", shikataganai, shhhh don't talk about that, college is the key, cancer, gambling, improved socio-economic standing, children who don't learn Japanese, basketball, mochi.

But then there's my mom's family. They lived the American dream, yea? Great-grandpa came over to California during the depression, worked in the oil fields, had his one-room house. Two kids, boys. The war came and money comes pretty good. Great-grandpa's got a steady job and they add onto the house so the kids have a room to sleep in too. Grandpa marries grandma, in Vegas, he's 20 and she's 18, not an uncommon age at the time. 4 daughters and 9 grandchildren later, they're watching their retirements go up and down with the market but they've got their house at least. What kind of issues could this family possibly have? 

Alcoholism, drugs, racism, all of the hot button issues - we sweep that under the rug more than any of my Japanese American family does. Take your prozac and put on your happy face at family gatherings, don't discuss the plurality of ethnicities and cultures and religions that have found their way into this family - be tolerant, but not accepting. I don't doubt that my family loves me. But it's hard to know if they truly accept all the parts of me when I've grown up hearing anti-Jewish, Mexican, Black, Middle-Eastern, gay, and Muslim comments. White priveledge means my family can face many of the same struggles, but one side is branded as more "normal" and higher up on the socioeconomic scale.

Truth be told though....I don't know the ins and outs of that part of my family very well. Bad things have happened and good things have happened and we got through it. Hey, that sounds familiar. shikataganai. Sometimes my maternal grandparents say things that my father would never allow, but how are they supposed to know any better? I know they love me. They don't mean it. You don't understand JA culture that well but you respect it. Hey, it's cool. I won't talk about my involvement on the Nihonmachi Street Fair committee. It's just a work thing, I'm working with the kids. What petition? I'm president of a club on campus that does some cultural stuff, but it's not a big deal. I bet they'd be surprised if, whenever they get a computer, my grandparents googled my name. Yeah, that asian print looks cool, I guess. When I go visit my grandparents, it's like a parallel reality. It always has been since I was 6 and mom explained that grandma and grandpa don't like fast food or theme parks. Yes, you have to eat your grandma's cooking. Maybe not the Miracle Whip though. 

It's the same thing when I'm at home too. In public school, I was "Asian". That's why you're so smart. I skipped class for no reason, ate breakfast in Spanish even though the teacher repeatedly asked me not to, and was never ever seen as needing help in science because I could get by on my "Asian priveledge": a shiny 4.2 GPA. I owned that town because I could still get As, and damn the consequences that I would reap in college. Hey look it's "your" people. Nintendo is so cool! Do you look up to Michelle Wie? 

Some people, on the other hand, rarely acknowledged my JA side. I was constantly downplaying my "asian-league basketball thing", the "family stuff" we do for New Years, and grumbling about Buddhist Church because I didn't really want to explain why my family does all of those things. I wasn't Mexican, and that was good enough for some people to just accept me as "like them". I was constantly, if subconsciously, navigating between these two continuums, and it worked for me. I don't talk about J-league with my high school teammates, and I don't tell my J-league teammates that some people question my involvement and legitimacy in the community. That some of those people are WITHIN the community.

So on the very few occasions that anyone has shown interest in knowing my personal family history, know "what am I" beyond the ethnic makeup of my family, I find myself unable to give a concise or even cohesive answer. I am a complicated, detailed mosaic of experiences and beliefs and to me, each and every one of those pieces has a distinct meaning for me. But I am usually met with confusion, or at least comments like "that is complicated" - before I've even gotten halfway done. I'm not sure whether it was to make things easier for everyone else, or whether it was to make things easier for myself, but I can essentialize my story based on what situation I'm in. I'm JA or I'm white or I'm American or I'm smart or I'm the farmer's daughter or I'm your ex-girlfriend. Put all that together and - well, I see myself most clearly. But for everyone else, it's just a jumbled mess.

Clark Gable

I listened to The Postal Service for the first time in a while tonight...and found myself bouncing along to one song in particular: Clark Gable. Like Death Cab they know how to make depressing things sound upbeat, until you really take the time to listen to them. 

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London underground

When it struck me that I've been waiting since birth to find

A love that would look and sound like a movie so I changed

My plans and rented a camera and a van and then I called you

"I need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"

And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in

The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it

The marker snapped and I yelled "quiet on the set"

And then called "action!"

And I kissed you in a style that clark gable would have admired

(I thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"

And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd

I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear

That your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by

Anyways, it got me thinking. I haven't got a personal life, nor do I really have time for one. Most of the time I don't notice or mind, but sometimes I stop to think about it and I wonder if I just make myself busy and tell myself I don't have time because I'm incapable of having one. I don't think I'm unworthy of being loved but nonetheless  I really think its extraordinarly difficult for me to find it. When my mom was my age, she had already met my father. 

I put my name on the degree list for Spring 2009 today. I'm really excited about it...excited to be done with many aspects to this chapter of my life. Excited to be done with bootsy professors and 4-papers-a-week madness. Excited to escape the fresh-out-of-high-school dramas. Excited to be done with homework. But I'm also a little scared of leaving school....of leaving the opportunities I may have missed, leaving the intellectual bubble that I've got going on, leaving my best friends, leaving in general. Will I look back on college and regret not having experienced more? Or will I look back on it and regret having thrown myself into so many things? 

I generally think it will be the former. But all of this has got me uncertain again...some people don't see it come out that often but I really am filled with an incredible amount of uncertainty, self-doubt and confidence issues. I've gotten pretty good at fooling myself into not acknowledging them so that I can get through life, but the more I go through this world the more I can't ignore the disconnect between what I've been trained to see and do and believe and what the cold realities of life show me. 

So what the heck will life throw at me? I don't know...but until then I'll keep trudging through, trying to find that magic balance between school, social, community, family, leadership, learning, personal and public. And if all else fails, I'll drink more tea.

It's Official

NSU and Culture Show has taken over my life.

Gone is the illusion that school is a priority. I really don't care about my transportation paper or the anthro midterm. But I owe it to myself to at least try rather than resign myself to epic failure, despite the incessant headaches that I've had for the past couple of weeks. I don't think it's worth it to go to the doctor and get it checked out...they always say the same thing.

Sigh.

Apologies to everyone I've neglected.

Blackjack!

Thursday was my 21st birthday!!

I also had a global poverty midterm, class till 8, and an NCS meeting till 9. But all of that went fairly well and after that I had dinner with my friends..drinks at a bar..and more drinking at my apartment. I love love love my aparmies and my friends =))

Friday was good too...homemade chicken katsu, NSU's annual Fenton's Social (dude where are the power eaters at?), and then I got to hit up San Francisco with some OG friends. It feels like forever since I've been the "little one". Hell it feels like forever since I've just not been around young'ns. It's oddly comforting and liberating at the same time and made me miss the "good ol' days" a little bit...but not too much. Last night proved I can have good days any ol' day, even if they are few and far in between.

Now I'm paying dearly for two days of oblivion....4 papers to write, all-cast is tomorrow, programs, dealing with people who are mad at me, dealing with lazy people, etc etc....it kind of makes me wish I was done with school already. Kind of. I'm focused on creating more great memories with all of my friends and providing the same kind of environment for the young folks that I was lucky enough to have as a kid. Taking a day off has filled me with a delicate mix of nostalgia and hope.

At any rate, it definitely beats Vegas.

Thanks again to all of my amazing friends for the hugs and drinks and laughs!

Another Wish

Walking out of 170 today...I have not been this physically tired in ages. I've been walking around in a feverish, achy daze for the past week. No amount of vitamins, soup, raisins, tea or sleep will shake it. I'd say I'm feeling a little less alive than usual, except the sore shoulders, aching back, and squeaky knees make me fully aware of just how much I can feel. So my soul can't possibly be dying just yet. Yes, my friends....it's a physical manifestation of the absolute craziness that October (always) is: mid-terms, deadlines, missing my family, social obligations, keeping tabs on everything, papers, and my (least) favorite, social planning.

So while I don't care much about physical gifts and that pretty pair of boots I saw anymore, I know that my birthday won't be exactly how I want it (the midterm gets in the way, for starters). Even a nice leisurely brunch, a walk on my beach, and time with the people that (like it or not) I care about seem a little out of reach. A day outside normal reality and inside my imagined reality is just not possible. And for that reason, and the fact that I always try and fail to be less ego-centric, I would not be devastated if my birthday just came and went this year.

But, I have concluded, a hug and a massage would be more appreciated than yet another drink this Thursday...assuming that teleportation is still out of the realm of possibilites. Because a surprise trip would be the coolest thing EVAR. You can blame this fantasy on my aunt and uncle, the latter having whisked the former away on a trip to Europe to propose to her some years ago.

Sometimes I'm just hopeless like that.

Tricks and Treating

Second Gen's theme is halloween-ish, and it's tonight. I sort of got tricked into helping out with a bunch of stuff for it...which only annoys me because I was invited over to do my reading rather than this stuff. In my infinite nice-ness (or rather my neurotic need to make sure people are decently-fed) I'm contributing dinner to the cause which I was duped into helping in the first place. Ironic, no?

I don't know why I'm complaining. I am supposed to help out with things. I normally don't mind. But last-minute-ness is like the #2 pet peeve of mine, and I have a lot on my plate right now (academically and with my family) and my birthday is this week. Which means it's a holiday all week, yeah? (haha Gautam thinks so). Okay I'm not that delusional, but historically my birthday has ALWAYS fallen on one of THE most stressful weeks of the term..this year is no exception. Papers and midterms anyone??

Change

Deliberate change is so hard to make...

and yet the small, unintentional changes that come about due to sticking to the status quo or negligence are so easy to make....

Why???

Sigh.

I'm feeling like epic fail right now.

I'm feeling like this year isn't what anyone expected.

I'm feeling like that is somehow all my fault.

But I know that I can't control the way people feel about things, or what they choose to make their priorities.

My goal was to help folks grow into the people they could be. But I can't do everything for them and I guess I'm not really the leader I thought I was, after all. I wish I could shake this feeling that everyone's watching and waiting to see if I epic fail or epic win at this stuff this year.

A dying breed, indeed.

Midterm Season

Its 2am and I just heard the street sweeper go by. Sweet. I hate this part of midterm season!

I'm working on a paper for my Japanese American History class and I went to look up when Tofu Festival started (1996), which led me to the Nisei Week site, where I then looked at the pageant requirements (still restrictive), and then SF Cherry Blossom (not really updated)...then I looked up what year Vincent Chin was murdered, which was referenced in a song by a Filipino-AMerican rap group, which led me to look for "Japanese American Musicians" on wikipedia, when led me to the Mike Shinoda site....which reminded me that I didn't get to go to the opening of the first part of his art exhibit at the JANM this summer.

Anyways, buy me his book?

Kthx.

I've only got about 70% more of this paper to write before I can sleep!

Profiling

I was going to write about how hip hop was tonight (YAYS!) but all I ever seem to write about is NSU anymore so I'll write about this other thought that's been buzzing through my head. I was browsing facebook and i happened upon this girl's profile who is also an arch major here (I was looking for someone w/the same first name as this person) and I could tell right away because it all screamed architecture. 

Interests: Design and All-Nighters. Residence: Wurster 6th floor, etc etc. 

Look at mine and what do you see? JA this and that. Interested in...mixed-use development. Community. Strada. Fluent in Italian. Favorite book: maps. One of my quotes is about the different epochs of architecture that are contained in a Roman street corner. 2 years of working for a firm. 

So at first I was going to say...."I do not live and breathe architecture and design." I do not aspire to be a studio resident, nor do I enjoy all-nighters any more. I don't go around talking about art. I'm even trying to kick my coffee habit. But then I realized....that this statement is not true. I do not live and breathe architecture and design, except for the fact that it is an intrinsic part of every moment of my life. I see, hear, and feel the effect of the built environment on the way in which lives are lived, in every moment. From the crappy lighting in my living room to the gorgeous way that the sunset reflects onto the building across the street to make it look truly magical, I take notice of art, architecture, and design.

But some part of me still feels inadequate when I see this girl's page. Why? I'm no less able to earn a degree in architecture than anyone else in the program. To the outsider, I spend all my time caught up in all that "activist" stuff - registering people to vote, empowering the JA community, serving the community, supporting others in their struggles, keeping up on the political culture of this nation. But that doesn't mean I'm not engaged in my major either. I'm just not into the PROFESSION. A lot of people seem to think that the two - academics and profession - go hand in hand. I guess...I guess what I should already know, but just realized tonight, is that I am not defined by my major.  I'm more than that, more than my activities, more than the books on my shelf, more than my italian-isms. But how do you convey all of that to someone you've just met? Or someone you've never met? How do I say "These are my passions and they may seem disparate to you, but to me they are a cohesive fabric that I live and breathe"? 

Gosh. Why do I feel the need to justify myself? Why am I so aware of others' perceptions of me..and more importantly..why do I care?? I think I know part of the answer...I'm tryikng to be the person that a couple of specific people think is interesting. Not just interesting, but focused and amazing. Trying to present myself so that they will see that I've got my head on straight just like them. Trying so hard.......for something I'll never get.

This Is Why You Buy Italian

I just sat on my glasses while on the phone with someone who was asking me a bunch of questions about a grant I applied for....luckily, they didn't break. My Armani frames always pull through for me!! Like all things Italian, they are high quality, although they are also pretty finicky and I have to adjust the nose pieces every other day.

Hopefully the results of the grant application come out just as favorably!!

Update on the past week:

• It's now october. WHAT??
  
• I went to work and met w/someone from SF JACL on Friday...also went to Bingo in Union City that evening....and it rained that night. It was a long day.
  
• Speaking of rain, it was the first rain of the fall. Kind of humid but actually quite pleasant for me.
  
• My collection of cute bento boxes is growing but I spent less this time than I did last time =)
  
• I found out that one of my cousins has some major medical stuff going on...I am worried about him.
  
• I'm not ready for my arch history midterm...
  
• Football concessions = bootsy, but Cal games are always an experience!!
  
• I'm almost out of food and due to the aforementioned midterm I haven't had time to go grocery shopping. Actually, I have a lot of bread and yogurt but that doesn't make for a very balanced diet.
  
• When I wasn't out doing NSU-related things this weekend, I took the time to clean my room and take care of myself. I like having a clean room...too bad I'm going to destroy it this week.
  
• Oh! I found out that I won a scholarship from the architecture department based on my "class standing and outstanding academic merit". Who knew I had ANY academic merit??
• EAP grades still aren't in the US and it pushed my Telebears back a day =(