J'ai une question pour toi.

Is it better to be really good at one thing and not-so-good at another or to just be mediocre in both areas?

When obligatory nostalgia suddenly becomes voluntary...

RT: Five weeks until graduation, really? Today was a sunny day signaling spring's steady approach and appropriately marking the very beginning of the end.

I got an email today from the Chancellor about taking a "senior survey" so that the University could make improvements on its undergraduate programs. The end of the email made me super nostalgic:

I sincerely hope your years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been happy and productive. I am certain that you will find they have provided you with a solid foundation upon which to build a career in business, education, government, and anything else you attempt. Enjoy your final weeks on campus, and please stay in touch with us after graduation.

The finality of it all is daunting. U of I has been my coach and confidant for the last four years, and now it's time to proceed to the next level. It's like attending college was this yearly game I played where I scored points in the form of letter grades, and "real life" wouldn't even enter the picture until round five.

I'm ready for round five. I guess I just didn't think it would arrive so soon, unexpectedly, on a sunny day during the onset of spring.

iPhone Notes

I love the "Notes" feature on iPhone.

I find myself writing down all my tonterías in it. Tonterías, in this case, are those thoughts that you don't deem worthy of paper (because they're really just that stupid or because you don't want a physical record of them), but that, for some reason, you can't seem to let float away from your brain. This is how the "Notes" feature on my iPhone serves me. So thank you, Apple makers, for fostering my writing addiction and thereby contributing to my (in)sanity.

Like I've said, my iPhone notes are not Shakespeare quality, especially since the best ones are usually crafted on four hours of sleep and a pot of coffee whilst I'm suffering from a migraine during my ridiculous Asian American Pop Culture class. Though, every now and then I stumble on a strand of truth, a piece of writing that when I look at again later, I don't hate. Isn't it crazy when that happens?

Here's one of them. (RT stands for "random thought." I label my notes that way for my own reference, you know, since there simply wouldn't be any other way to differentiate the whimsical musings of my consciousness from the mundane constituents of a mid-week grocery list: cereal, beer, water [iff: on sale] )

RT: Cooking always makes me feel better, even when I don't want to do it. Simple tasks like boiling noodles and adding garlic, and onion, and tomato--it's just a nice thing that I can do for myself.

And now I sound like one of those blog writers that lives on the Internet (you know, the ones that have virtual puppies shitting out virtual poop and whose "housework" entails organizing their "closets" of photographs by date and time.) It's hard to always be documenting your life so that you can showcase it on the Internet. It's like a disease: "User 'fairyboots' suffers from 'commodifaction of existence.' " Articulating it this way makes it so unappealing, right? It's like living life with the purpose of finding material for a blog. Eh, no thanks. Though I suppose that if a blog is what gives you inspiration, maybe it's okay. We all need something like that. Still, viewing life through a camera lens seems to prevent one from really living it.

Today I Studied...

...a lot.

But seriously! I even drew that mustache while I was still in the library. I just decided to wait until I got home to take the photo.

Saturday Night Candle Lounging

Typical.

New Year's Eve

My New Year's Eve silliness is on record compliments of Alena's camera, suavely handled by the lovely Laura Jane who is laughing in the background.

This face is embarrassing. Luckily, I'm not cool enough (this is unfortunate) for it to matter really.

A rather dreary post with some scintillating flecks of interest

My creative writing class met today for the first time in about a week and half. Our instructor had cancelled three of our classes because her father fell ill to pneumonia, and he died on Monday night. Apparently, the funeral is planned for Thursday back in Indiana where her family lives, but our instructor told us that she needed to be back in class today to keep things moving forward. Needless to say, we had a somber class, and one of the student poems that we read was serendipitously about what that student had done the night before his mother's funeral eleven months beforehand. Weird connection there, right?

Anyway, our instructor told us about how her whole family was gathered around her father's bed, singing to him as he died. There are so many people that die alone it seems; at least her dad was surrounded by everyone he loved telling him that it was okay to go. I looked around the classroom and so many of us were discreetly blinking back tears as we listened and watched our instructor weep throughout. This probably would seem unprofessional to a lot of people, the fact that she told us about this personal issue in class, but it was okay. In fact, it was endearing to see someone's vulnerability and be able to be there for the person, even if it was just listening in silent group form, to what she had to say. No one really said anything back, we just stared uncomfortably with glassy eyes.

On another note...

I had to write ten "vivid" memories for the class. I wrote the whole thing in various sittings because it was hard for me to recall memories that I felt were actually worth description. And then some of them, as you'll probably see, really aren't worth describing at all. Oh well, there are plenty of books in the world that really should have never been written either, so it all evens out in the end, right? We just have to remember that bad art comes from the heart too!

All my memories are "real" as in they are not fabricated, but it's safe to assume that some are more real than others. I mean, I wouldn't actually want to see all my memories sans my mind's creative embellishment. Anywho, here are a few of them...

one

I tutored English to seven-year-old brats in Barcelona and one girl asked me in Catalan,
“Hola, Jackie. Una cosa… Podem jugar fora?”
“No, we can’t play outside. It’s too cold,” I responded in English.
“Pero la Gisela m’ha dit que si!” She argued back.
“Gisela told you that you could play outside? Really?”
“Bueno, segurament ens va dir que si…”
“So, you haven’t really asked her yet, have you?”

I swear; kids are the same in every country.

two

“Jackie, what are you thinking about right now?”
“I’m just looking at your eyes.”
“And what do you see in them?”
I cannot tell a lie. I cannot tell a lie. I cannot tell a lie. I cannot tell a lie. I cannot tell a lie.
Nothing. At all.
“I don’t know.” I lied.

three

In preschool I told my friend Teresa that if she came over to swim, she could “have” my swimsuit. By using the word “have” I meant “borrow,” not that it would have mattered to me because I hated the swimsuit I had promised to lend her anyway. I went home that day and told my mom that I “gave” Teresa the swimsuit. Really, I meant that I “would lend” her it. Furious, my mom scoured the house for the stupid suit, me crying the entire time. When she found it, she forcefully corrected me, “Teresa does not have the swimsuit! It’s right here!” I looked down in confusion. Did I not tell her that I “gave” the swimsuit to Teresa? She just did not understand.

four

I am never consciously hungry when I run. Though, when I was seventeen I recall embarking on a pithy two-mile run where I felt ravenous the entire time. With each step I took, it was as though the hunger pangs ascended a notch higher into my throat where they uncomfortably jostled within. I felt like my body was eating itself. Only a mile into what was intended to be an easy run, I was overwhelmed with fatigue. The effort it required for me to move my 88-pound body matched the effort one would exert when pushing a brick using only the pinky finger. I stopped running, collapsed onto the trail, and cried. For the first time I saw that my “discipline” was debilitating.

five

In the botanical gardens behind the University of Barcelona, a 40-year-old creeper sat down next to me, introducing himself as Josep. He complimented my hair, feigned interest in the book I was reading, and requested my number. At first I invented a number but then had to give him my real one when he tried calling my phone on the spot. I made an excuse to leave, and as is Spanish custom, Josep leaned in to give me an air kiss on each cheek. Though, when I saw his fat dry smackers going in for the kill I hastily turned my head to right. He ended up with a mouthful of my hair and, still not giving up, continued to call me for three months afterward.