as queer as a clockwork orange

With a cold that was quickly shifting from a stuffed nose to an unbearable cough, I decided to relax a bit. Stare at the computer a bit. Find out more about my future classmates via the trusty Facestalk. I came upon a discussion thread on the forum of the university group named “Nervous?”. Reading about how other students were dealing with their anxiety was definitely an opportunity I could not miss. It was like hearing hot, juicy gossip whispered right into my ear… by the guilty party themself. Definite plus.

As I scrolled down the discussion board, I increasingly witnessed the words “panic attack”. Panic attack. Those words put together like that, it just made my heart skip a beat. The first time I read it, I thought maybe this girl has panic attacks regularly. Nothing to worry about. But I guess I should say my heart just kept skipping as I kept reading. One future classmate was proclaiming proudly to all fellow peers that having come upon the prospect of beginning college life she just had two panic attacks, and even had the good sense to call it “fun times”. The reply to this was even better. This student claimed that she was “in the middle of a panic attack”.  But somehow she managed to publish this most coherent and well thought out post. That’s a winner right there. I believe there was a time when I watched Australia’s Next Top Model one of the girls really got it good. She slothily waved her arms around, face pale and flustered, swayed a few times and finally collapsed into the kind arms of her competitors. Last time I checked, that’s pretty dramatic. Sure, some people have milder panic attacks than others, but typing coherently while suffering a panic attack? This world must be getting pretty crazy. Now, even panic attacks are trendy.

Two more days until I meet these people. I’m not quite sure what to expect now.

I grabbed a bottle of Snapple out of the fridge and unscrewed the metal cap off, anxiously anticipating what absolutely inspiring snippet of information would be printed under it this time. And dang, this one really did not disappoint.

#359: A teaspoon contains 120 drops of water.

I kept wondering about the person who actually figured this “fact” out. With his little eyedropper, eyes cross-eyed on the little teaspoon trembling in his other hand, watching each little drop fall into the teaspoon, counting aloud while he was at it. In second grade, my teacher once told us to drop as many drops as we could onto a penny without it spilling over. Then she asked us what we learned from this activity and I replied we would really know how to drop eye drops into our eyes. Sad. If anyone knew about this he would probably be called a loser.

I must admit though, the number 120 is real pretty. 120 drops of water. Poetic, even. Easier for naive kids to remember and show off to their naive friends later on I guess. But frankly, I think Snapple’s getting a little desperate. Can’t wait to see what else they’ve got up their sleeve the next time I decide to twist one of those caps off.

Pushing through the glass doors, she entered the world of artificiality. The white fluorescent lights blinded her as she shifted her eyes towards the large and colorful menu above the cashier. Loud pop music blasted through the speakers as she approached the indifferent man behind the counter. Wearing his dirty uniform and a cap stained with sweat, it comforted her how he didn’t give a damn about how messed up her life was. He just wanted to finish his shift and get on with his own chaotic life. McDonald’s was the best place of escape. Nothing was real. Even the patties sandwiched between its burgers.

Carrying her cup of coke, she sat down on the plastic chairs and placed her tray on the table. Kicked out of the house at 7 PM with an extraordinary screaming session with her parents to usher her out was not how she wanted her Friday to turn out. But now, she had apparently been disowned and banished to McDonald’s, leaving her with only a backpack left in her possession. She unzipped her bag and took out her worn out sketchbook. Flipping through the yellowing pages, each sketch was an action of fury, of rebellion against all the expectations her parents burdened her with. Sketches of depression and frustration of being the lesser sibling unfurled before her with cities burning and children crying. But after all those strokes of disappointment at herself and resentment of her parents, the answer as to who was right or wrong she could never figure out. As she neared the end of the book, one pen sketch caught her eye. It was a girl with tears streaming down her face, skin and bones, unloved. This girl was the worst of her imaginations, the worst she could become. She wished it didn’t come down to this.

With a hopeless sigh, she closed the book, left her unfinished coke on the table and walked out of the glass doors into the rush of people pushing past her, faced with an unknown future.

–

Walking briskly in a stuffy black shirt and slacks, gripping her violin tightly, she passed McD’s, stomach growling ever more cruelly from skipping dinner so she could fit in some last minute practice before the recital. Suddenly, a girl wearing a plain t-shirt and jeans, carrying a black book burst out through the glass doors barely avoiding a collision with her violin. The artist faltered a few steps back, watching curiously as the violinist continued her way towards a night of a potentially face-losing, humiliating, mind-blanking performance.

After ten years of monthly recitals, she still couldn’t perfect the flawless performance. The nerves never failed to welcome her the moment she stepped on stage, with the bright lights shining down on her and the audience sitting in the dark, waiting, waiting, judging. Her hands would become clammy with sweat and unnecessary thoughts would start to invade her mind and blur her focus. What if I blank out on that really challenging section? Gosh, those double stops sound so fugly. Bet you those harmonics won’t sound out. How am I ever going to get through this whole piece? It’s Sarasate’s Carmen. What was I thinking when I chose to work on this piece?

The long agonizing wait was always the worst, watching other students face their own imperfections as they stumbled their way through a piece, each mishap, a stab to her rapidly beating heart. But when the teacher called her name, she stepped on stage and took a last look at her mom; the perfectionist who pushed her so hard to become a person she didn’t want to be and yet created talent out of a talentless daughter. She raced through the notes, playing out hours and hours of practice. Years of failure, doubt, success. But this time, she wanted this piece to be her own. Not a piece handcuffed to the dreams of other people.

Adrenaline pumped through her, her hearbeat beated faster and faster as she sped through the last final stretch of notes, and with sweat trickling down her face, arms and fingers a blur, she pushed through the last three notes. With a final flourish, she took her final bow. It was her last recital.

It was the first time she performed flawlessly.

–

She plopped down in front of her laptop and turned on her stereo. Carmen. Showy piece. If only love was as filled with hope, excitement, anticipation as this perfect song of unexpected harmonics and thrilling stretches of notes. But unrequited love, it’s different. It’s a love so innocent, so naive. It’s a love that’s always in constant denial of the danger of not getting back what you gave.

As she waited for her email page to load she automically scrolled up her MSN list to see if he was online. With her face propped in her hands, elbows on the table, she waited, wishing so hard she would her the jingle of a new message from him.

She sat staring at the computer screen, bored like no other as the air conditioner hummed silently. As she opened up Internet Explorer, trying to figure out if she should go to nytimes or check out videos on Youtube, a new window flashed orange on her dashboard.

–

Insomnia enveloped her with an unforgiving grip. It plagued her every five minutes. Thoughts started to twist into peculiar dreams. Dreams began to morph into reality. College life spiraled into idealistic notions that were too good to be true. But it was only best to expect the worse. That was when insomnia created in her these alternate universes.

I stand waiting under the street lamp for the green man to light up as I watch cars flash by. I try to peer into the tinted windows to catch a glimpse of the people sitting inside their encapsulated little world. I wonder where the lady staring out the taxi window is heading to: where life is taking her. Her blank face conceals a whole confused tangle of emotions: desperation, despair, frustration, joy, depression, failure, success, victory, and yet as the taxi rushes past, pulling her away from me, I will never know the story of her life, the story that brought her to this exact moment where my life and her life crossed paths.

The lady in the taxi, the person sitting next to me on the MRT, the barista I order my drink from, the singer on the album I’m listening to, the doctor who gave me my PPD skin test, they all look normal, just trying to get through the crap we face everyday all the same. And yet if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find the insanity that taints their world. The secret obsessions of each person slowly ripping apart their idealistic image of life, prolonged victories of the heart over the mind. Snippets of sinful action, of destructive words heard, of unforgivable failures, pile up like bricks of memories unwilling to leave, pushing these people closer and closer to the brink of mental insanity.

Sometimes it’s scary to imagine the possibilities in each human being we meet. We are just organisms living through our human imperfections. We breathe, feel, see, hear, just like any other person. And yet each one of us possesses a complicated history; a history that fabricates the turmoil that is the present. Our world is so small compared to the infinite universes we make of our lives.

Jason Mraz - We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.
I bought this album without second thought, without taking my brother’s warnings into account just because I believed in Jason Mraz. I believed in his genius. But it turns out to be another one of those crappy follow-up albums that depends on the fame of previous album hits and feats with famous artists. As is my tradition, I played through all the songs in the album. None of them stuck. They were all boring, simple and similar, with the exception of maybe “The Dynamo of Volition”. It truly is a shame that in this album, he failed to bring out his amazing lyrical ability as he did in his last album Mr. A-Z. The tracks “Lucky” and “Details in the Fabric” are basically scams to get the fans of Colbie Caillat and James Morrison to buy Mraz’s album. When I first listened to “Lucky”, I was so horrified. The first word that came into my mind was transvestite. The thing that almost made my lunch come back out was that Colbie’s voice was so similar to Jason Mraz’s she sounded like a man. Not only was the song boring, but couple this with Colbie’s supposed feminine beauty, it just came out all wrong. In “Details in the Fabric” James Morrison is basically just a background vocal. Then there’s the awful chorus of children in ”Coyotes” that ruins the whole song.
Sure, I have to admit that his lyrics are still pretty awesome, but I really don’t understand all the hype about the song “I’m Yours” or any of his other songs. This album was, from its ugly packaging/cover to its blah content, just seemed to me like a low-budget production made just in time to keep riding the wave of his crashing fame. I guess it would be good background homework music.

Jon McLaughlin - Indiana
Another one of the albums I bought without second thought just because I was so in love with his voice in the song “So Close” in the movie Enchanted. Luckily, McLaughlin is no disappointment at all. A very well produced pop album by an amazing singer-songwriter, and piano in all songs. Couldn’t get any better than that. Although I must admit, the introductions to some of the songs are obviously just to flaunt his finesse on the piano and have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the song, but they’re still wonderfully beautiful. If any of you are craving for some really awesome mainstream pop rock, Jon McLaughlin is the one for you. My favorite in this album is “Human”. The reality of the lyrics strikes me each time I listen to it. They should play that song on Heroes someday.

Sophie MIlman - Sophie Milman
A new and upcoming Russian jazz vocalist, she has one of the most unique jazz voices I’ve heard. It has a really comfortable fuzzy feel to it. Lisa Ono’s been overplayed. Luciana Souza and Madeleine Peyroux are getting old. Finally, there’s someone new. Look out for her in the future.

Dear TAS,

It’s finally time to say goodbye. After walking hand in hand through thirteen tumultous years, it’s time. I won’t miss you. You’ve become so much a part of me, I can’t get rid of you even if I wanted to. All my memories, my thoughts, my actions, my emotions have been molded, crushed, shattered by you. I am someone because of you.

In Kindergarten, you taught me how to fear and love everything that was American. I was led into a classroom echoing with an unfamiliar language and a teacher who was white and sprouted yellow hair from her head. But I picked up the language like a dusty book on the shelf and read it with wonder and delight. I was plunged into a pool of new ideas, swimming freely through cartoons, picture books, comics; each one planting their unrealistic and ideal morals in my naive mind. Equipped with more freedom than I could handle, you let my creativity and curiosity run wild. I learned to whistle. I secretly cut the hair of my long-haired classmate to see what would happen. I napped. I laughed. Love was always happily ever after.

But things change while we’re trapped in the same body we’re cursed or blessed with. In third grade, I discovered love. An innocent love that I yearned for everyday. It wasn’t bounded by the norms that so thwart the complicated love that this world believes in. There were no consequences, no future, no past, and a happily ever after…for a while anyway. The next year, he was no longer in my class and he left not long after. I didn’t even realize I was in my very own silly tragedy.

Those happy and innocent days ended with the first fat C I received in middle school. Thus the hatred began. You instilled in me such high standards that I could not achieve. You taught me to despise myself when I didn’t believe in myself. I learned to hate my own self-consciousness. But you loved me a little more than everyone else. That was when I started to run on the track, in the park, in the classroom, through all the spontaneous fires that middle school has to offer. And when I won, I felt so very absolutely ready for high school.

During high school, I loathed you like no other. Frankly, I wanted to divorce you. You flung me through depression, ecstasy, anger, defeat, victory and yet I was forced to stay with you. After all, you were the only one who could make it all happen. Well, I made it through alive, albeit a little burnt and disfigured. And I just want to let you know that I hate you for screwing up my eyes, for crowding my mind with thoughts that aren’t good for my mental health, for treating me with failure when luck was almost on my side, for making me force myself to give up my hobbies for academics, and for giving me heartbreak. But I love you for sparing me my life and allowing me to finally wrap you up in a lovely box so I can push you into a little corner of my brain as another one of those fading nostalgic memories. I love you for creating a fighter, a soldier in me out of the wreckage.

Thank you for ruining and saving my life.

Your ex-student,
Jane Lock

P.S. You’re the best teacher the world could ever ask for.

Potential dire consequences have forced me to oblige myself to run tomorrow. Even if it means demanding my bro to drag me around the track. Wait, that wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t quite burn off the pearl milk tea, mocha java chip frapuccino, Coldstone mint chocolate ice cream I shamefully (but it was sooo good) ingested over the course of the two days my brother has returned home.

My brother, however, eats guiltlessly. He’s hungry every three hours. He eats a big breakfast, big lunch, big dinner + all that good stuff I ate. And still, he remains skinny as ever and hungry as ever.
I just feel that I’m not really getting fair treatment here. It’s metabolism inequality.
Gimme some of that.

My dad is driving us home as I sit in the backseat in the dark, staring out the window. Trees, lights, people, shadows flash past. A constant flow of music is streaming into my ears. With each song, a different story, a distinct yet fuzzy memory starts playing on the screen inside my mind. Sometimes it’s a slowly disintegrating sepia tone image, a hopeless nostalgia as I watch a person who once was so important to me distort and change into a person I so desperately wished he wasn’t. As the song transitions to the next, the image fades, bringing me back to that moment of regret and despair that not so long ago singed the skin of my life forever, leaving a burning black page.  But as my dad makes a turn, colors start seeping into the dark letters as Carrie Underwood’s amazing voice soars, staining my hopes and dreams with an optimism I haven’t quite gotten used to yet. And…stop. Sunshine happiness is cut short. Turn off. Get out.
We’re home.

Sometimes I really wish I could take on the persona of one of the Korean cram school kids. Their goals and our goals are basically the same. We’re all racing towards the same light at the end of the tunnel trying to grab that same moment of success. So why not, right?

But what I find most intriguing and fascinating about their school culture is the extremely conservative view on relationships. Though the cram schools reinforce the importance of academics by stifling any sign of developing love relationships, the students there have already accounted for this  in their formula to success long before anyone lay down the rules. One student stated that they knew each other too well to get involved in relationships. If only it were so simple in our fad-infested, love-crazy culture here.

We have all these different likes and dislikes and hobbies and ideals and ideas and political viewpoints and thus getting to know someone is already such a seductive activity that as you get pulled into their whirlwind of personality and credentials, you start to float on some superficial cloud of hope and idealism. And then suddenly one day you know a bit too much. But by that time, the milk’s already been spilled and you’re still crying like an idiot. Sure, the Korean students have their likes and dislikes but at least they all share the same secret; the same glorious secret.