June 2012
1 post
tricky
i met up with one of my close friends from high school, and somehow the question came up of whether we have changed. my friend responded that i’ve become more compassionate. or at least overtly so— apparently, donating bone marrow and volunteering for things is a get-out-of-“mean”-free card. score. (not that i was ever considered mean before, probably overly sarcastic if...
May 2012
5 posts
transportation
there is always something about being in transit that makes me more self-reflective. buses, trains, airplanes, cars, seeing everything around you in motion while you can only sit still and wait to get unstuck from the in-between.
i’m sitting in the airport at dc right now. i cried on the taxi leaving brown to the airplane and then on the airplane some more, i get much too sentimental and...
summer aspirations
get fit (i.e. make it through ‘insanity’ program with friends)
read (at least 3 novels, and definitely this psych one)
cook (will be off meal plan next year. at least 3 dishes well)
learn to play guitar (goal of 2 songs)
watch chinese tv shows (need to work on conversational mandarin)
keep in touch with brownies (1 long message to close friends once/twice over the course of...
sophomoric thoughts
i have my last final of the year in uh… 3 hours. and guess what, i am (currently) not studying.
i haven’t been stressing out this finals period as much as i have generally. perhaps it’s because of how spaced out my finals are, or perhaps it’s some strange manifestation of sophomore slump. it’s not that i don’t care— giving your all (or at least most of...
on stories
yesterday, somebody in my fiction class asked if i could send him this piece of writing i read out for our last fiction class (see “for my friends” post). he was intrigued about the concept of writing for somebody else, and has a family member who’s going through a rough time. he thought it might help if he sent the piece, or read it aloud.
this is why i like writing, and will...
on lack of sleep
oddly, the feeling of being deprived of sleep gets to be a tad addicting. my recent sleeping schedule is the most wonky it has ever been, and as much as i’d like to say it is because of such and such exterior factors… it’s me.
i believe the first time i ever encountered the possibility that the feeling you get when you are in want of sleep is pretty alright— a little...
April 2012
4 posts
for my friends:
Did you know that your heart is about the size of your fist? So when you reach to clasp somebody’s hands for a first meeting of sorts, you’re really delighting in the comparison made: one a little more clumsy than the other in the fumble of fingertips. Awkward smiles and invitations to connect the intersections of our identities litter the floor when we shake hands and release, the...
flash fiction →
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to...”
– Jack Kerouac
mind-perk
oh yes →
stressed and just about hate everything
~~happy waves~~
March 2012
4 posts
options:
(of things to do besides facebook)
read a book
write, possibly stories
read the news, keep up with the world
look for jobs
exercise
discover new music
text/otherwise communicate with people now out of touch
make plans
read psychologytoday or mentalfloss
any other worthwhile pursuits? if life’s made of time then i’d hate to be wasting it on facebook, yet it’s my default...
figuring out
what life is
and learning how to stay open, to roll with the punches, and use crappy metaphors like no other.
yesterday was one of the most idyllic and insane times that i have had at brown, so towards the cause of remembering it (although i don’t suppose i’ll forget any time soon,) here is why it was perfect:
i chose a baseball game over computer science class. it was beautiful and...
oh no.
WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE
February 2012
1 post
whaddup world,
i can stay awake for an entire day without much trouble.
i will never take health for granted.
or youth.
or the fact that i can —well, will soon once more be able to— turn a cartwheel or jump when i am excited or run to class because i am late or run to my friends because i miss them. oh yes, i have the ability to! it’s beautiful, really AND I LOVE IT
life sucks when...
January 2012
5 posts
i never know what to do with sadness.
to interact or ignore or bury it in busy or just complacently sit with it, feeling
and i can’t really remember anything besides the forgetting. but i want to, i honestly do. i want to remember so hard that i can’t quite tell what i am making up
for now, this is okay.
oblivious bubbles
there’s a room at brown that i particularly like to study in. it has a yellow wall, orange sockets, bright lights, and no windows. i joke that i study in there because it looks relatively cheery, and never changes— there could be an avalanche, tornado, enormous natural disaster or riot or the world exploding all over the place and it wouldn’t matter. the room would be unchanged,...
up up and old
one of my greatest fears growing up was to grow up. especially being old. i associated adults with the inability to wonder, because that’s what i saw in my parents— you go day to day and don’t stop to marvel at the sky or the sights or the small joys. like sometimes how it feels really good wash dishes because of the suds. or you’re eating food that you ate every day for...
December 2011
4 posts
continually learning:
recognize where people come from, it’s important
don’t expect to change anybody. it’s a terrible basis for any relationship (romantic or otherwise)
things get jumbled up from mouth to mouth, drama is a huge game of telephone and you just shouldn’t play
you can’t always unscramble where the messages got mixed up in telephone game drama, and that often isn’t...
happenstance
hi,
i am the second best match in terms of bone marrow for this sixteen year old girl with leukemia.
which i think is absolutely nuts. not only for the chances— that would be difficult to calculate but they’re undoubtedly quite high— but just circumstantial stuff. in senior year of high school i was in this leadership/alcohol drug awareness/confusedish group that had small...
lullabies
i enjoy the concept of lullabies— that there will be something comforting, melodic, sweet lulling you to sleep. even the name is great. there’s the warmth that automatically goes somewhere deep and trickles outward
i think that there should be lullabies for waking up, morning lullabies. for people to sing to you, so you feel that security and tingling and coziness at the start of each...
November 2011
6 posts
a goal →
Watchwhen the sun goes down and the lights go off, well, you and i will frame up the scene. there we’ll be slightly pornographic, but life is always better when you’re fairly obscene
(this is really odd because i like this line a lot and am not even remotely obscene)
on missing things
the downside to being a sentimental person is that you miss things.
you miss your eraser or the black pen that looks exactly the same as every other gel 0.5 pilot g2 pen on this earth but you still miss it because it was yours and you lost it. and home. oh gosh, home. i won’t even get started about how much you miss home and all of the little sentimental things that are so far away from...
on watching others
facebook is a great mechanism for this. but what i originally meant to mention was…
my baby cousins are growing up. one of my baby cousins has entered high school. and is tall. and i like him, i want all of them to be small forever. the oddest thing is remaining stable (well, relatively stable and only growing more so) while others grow.
my mind’s blown, i thought i’d always...
on home
home is the thought that there will always be a place waiting for you.
i think too much of home.
home is the feeling that you get when someone long forgotten checks up on you,
and the security of having an anchor settled down somewhere, so no matter where you go adrift you will eventually find your way back.
yeah, i like home.
the permanence of it in a transient world is quite lovely, i have...
October 2011
5 posts
occupy oakland
the occupy oakland movement was responded to with police brutality when people began to throw rocks at them. and it was on the front page of the nytimes website, some blog thing to the lower righthand side of the page. because this was new, that an occupy movement incited some sort of violence.
but protests occurring in oakland isn’t really new (re: oscar grant), nor are the police who...
things that are comforting
being able to recognize constellations (this is mainly orion, taurus, gemini, and sometimes cassiopeia)
the breeze
old chinese songs
oolong tea
ice skating, very very much so
talking with jeanette
listing off everything that i know about redwood trees
smell of asian medicine
calling parents
hugging mah stuffed animals, cuz i’m a baby
spotting dog owners (of big dogs)
the more time that passes, the more i realize that i have absolutely no concept of it
excuse me
while i wax poetry and word vomit about fall. which i have decided is my favorite season because it’s so exciting to have wind blowing everywhere, it makes you feel so alive. except i was outside for two hours and i swear i feel a little dizzy now because of the copious amounts of breeziness. but i love it.
and the leaves changing and slightly cloudy skies with a bit of intermittent rainy...
profile evolution
prepubescent myspace beginnings: hi i’m tiffany i was born in this place and have a mom a dad and this relative and that relative. my dog is really cool. i like such and such and wow this is really cool i do this and i also do that. great! now let me outline my life story for you a little more in detail.
almost-pubescent myspace continuations: wait. probably gave out too much information...
September 2011
3 posts
christina the cookie,
happy birthday! i tried to post a video on your facebook wall in the afternoon but it failed miserably. and i was incredibly awkward, as per usual. i should probably just stick to writing forever, i’ll carry around some mechanism to do so.
reasons why you’re amazing:
astute observations spoken with the best mannerisms
such a great combination of ghetto/sassy gay friend/truthful
...
who are you?
one day, i wish to respond to this with “another”
not that i am not my self, but that my self has become other entities, something else outside of me entirely. because isn’t it so amazing that your actions have meaning and impact on another person?
but for now, i’m just tiffany
August 2011
9 posts
“two halves don’t make a whole, two wholes make a whole”
– jason mraz (about relationships)
hi,
i think i should try to be less transparent
white-washed
white-washed: a (generally derogatory) term used to refer to people who abandon their heritage/culture, and try to act “white” for acceptance
i’m really unsure about how much this term comes up outside of immigrant parent communities.
one day when i was a sixth grader, my oldest sister kindly, belligerently, accusingly informed me that i was white-washed. i sorta panicked, my...
things on my mind:
grandmother
baby dwarf hotots
pets in college?
bad idea.. probably
i really want one.
two weeks until sophomore year, when did that happen
two weeks left in the bay, same q
richard aoki is ________. (unconventional inspiring assertive)
wait, don’t i need books for classes?
i need to exercise
and stop eating haagan daaz/drumsticks
i’m not saving anyone from fattiness by...
on writing
i do not write so much as i quilt— take patchwork forms of niggling thoughts and weave them together in a fabric to blanket your mind, envelop it in a bit of my perceptions.
i wonder what it takes to create a story. is it being blanketed by others’? an invisible friend that becomes a character, a character that i daydream a story for? imagination for a what-if me, had-i become this...
“it feels so good to just breathe the air in the bay— sweeter, clearer,...”
– breathing never made me so happy
i am tired.
the craziest thing about growing up is finding that everyone is human. when you’re younger, adults seem almost like a higher being. forget corporations and the boards of school districts and government, but adults in and of themselves are above the extent of our imagination. the magical ways that bills get paid, food gets made, things get done are unseen, unthought of. and you take it all...
July 2011
7 posts
grapes of wrath
“if he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it ‘cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he’s poor in hisself, there ain’t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an’ maybe he’s disappointed that nothin’ he can do’ll make him feel rich”
i like this, mostly because it reminds me that the most poetic...
of ridiculous notions
i have this odd feeling right now of missing everybody i have ever met. it’s a combination of seeing all of these built-up communities come and go, connect laugh cry share secrets disperse, and also that i have went past five hundred facebook friends.
fact: i have interacted on a level beyond the casual conversation with (at the very least) over five hundred people in my lifetime.
is it...
“and all the lives we ever lived
and all the lives to be,
are full of trees and...”
– charles elton, as in to the lighthouse