being mortal

"Human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it, we have only our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. They provide, ultimately, only torment."

"All we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story. That story is ever changing. Over the course of our lives, we may encounter unimaginable difficulties. Our concerns and desires may shift. But whatever happens, we want to retain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties."

"This is why the betrayals of body and mind that threaten to erase our character and memory remain among our most awful tortures. The battle of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one’s life–to avoid becoming so diminished or dissipated or subjugated that who you are becomes disconnected from who you were or who you want to be. Sickness and old age make the struggle hard enough. The professionals and institutions we turn to should not make it worse. But we have at last entered an era in which an increasing number of them believe their job is not to confine people’s choice, in the name of safety, but to expand them, in the name of living a worthwhile life."

"At least two kinds of courage are required in aging and sickness. The first is the courage to confront the reality of mortality–the courage to seek out the truth of what is to be feared and what is to be hoped. … But even more daunting is the second kind of courage–the courage to act on the truth we find. … When it is hard to know what will happen, it is hard to know what to do. But the challenge, I’ve come to see, is more fundamental than that. One has to decide whether one’s fears or one’s hopes are what should matter most."

"People seem to have two different selves–an experiencing self who endures every moment equally and a remembering self who gives almost all the weight of judgment afterward to two single points in time, the worst moment and the last one."

"In the end, people don’t view their life as merely the average of all of its moments–which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens."

will i ever really be?

as time goes by

so as my roomie nina and i were eating lunch, i was listening to this lovely ditty:


and as the lyrics came on:
You must remember this
A kiss is still a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh...

and then nina snaps back "a sigh is not just a sigh. it's a psychological scream."

home

'Rembrandt's embrace remained imprinted on my soul far more profoundly than any temporary expression of emotional support.  It has brought me into touch with something within me that lies far beyond the ups and downs of life, something that represents the ongoing yearning of the human spirit, the yearning for a final return, an unambiguous sense of safety, a lasting home.'

I have lived half my life out of a suitcase, sometimes seeing this world from thirty-seven thousand feet in the air rather than on terra firma.  I have to check & recheck where i left my passport and wallet and all other things that form the luggage of life on the road.  I lock my suitcases each time I leave the hotel room and twirl the combination lock.  There are visas from places near and far stamped in my passport.  Border officers or guards have carried out their routine dozens of times in my life.  I walk ever conscious of being on foreign soil, with an over-the-shoulder awareness.  Oh! for an unambiguous sense of safety in a lasting home.  It is the reality of the cross cut deeply into my soul that brings comfort of a final home that awaits me. 

-ravi zacharias

the happy ones.

The happy ones are almost always also vulgar;

happiness has a way of thinking

that's rushed and has no time to look

but keeps on moving, compact and manic,

with contempt in passing for the dying:

Get on with your life, come on, buck up!

Those stilled by pain don't mix

with the cheerful, self-assured runners

but with those who walk at the same slow pace.

If one wheel locks and the other's turning

the turning one doesn't stop turning

but goes as far as it can, dragging the other

in a poor, skewed race until the cart

either comes to a halt or falls apart.

-patrizia cavalli

beach house

there are a few bands/musicians i revisit time & time again.  the beatles. elliott smith. rilo kiley. yo la tengo. epik high. & now i would say beach house will be up there in that special category.  there were periods (months) where i would just indulge myself in their albums ("devotion," "teen dream," & most recently "bloom" - which is my favorite). their songs so perfectly encapsulate this mood of ethereal, melancholic wistfulness that i crave.

ugh, so amazing.

bathroom chatter

people seem to complain about those awkward, obligatory chats you have with people when you run into them on the elevator.  the only types of conversations that are reserved for this sacred time are convos about the weather, plans for/from the weekend, or the "busy day ahead!" but if you really want an escape route from these stale convos you can always resort to your phone and pretend you have some very urgent emails you need to tend to.  or just never take off your headphones and do the smile & nod.

i think what's worse than awkward elevator talk is awkward bathroom talk.

first of all, you're going in there to do your business, and the last thing you want to do is talk to someone before or after.  and i never knew what the proper etiquette is with that either...

you walk into the bathroom and you see someone you know. is it rude to just ignore them and make a beeline to the stall?

so if it is rude, you decide to engage in some light chit-chat, but when do you then disengage?
and then when you do walk into the stall, is it weird to keep talking from there?

and just say you pause the conversation while you're in the stall, then once you get out of the stall do you just continue from where you left off (assuming that the other person is still in the bathroom, which actually does happen more often than i would think - girls can take a long time "freshening up").

so many unwritten rules... somebody, please enlighten me.

yo adrian

love the romantic storyline in rocky.

rocky & adrian's first date was so endearingly awkward.


watching this film made me grow a soft spot for honest, unpretentious meatheads.

n.

my friends & i have used the metaphor of trains many times.

living in queens, the yellow line has always been near & dear to me.  the n train especially has been my train of preference because it always took me exactly where i needed to go (queensboro plaza, broadway stops) and has a very clean/bright interior (w/periwinkle seating).

but for some reason, i always feel that when i'm waiting for the subway, the r train would always come first. if i'm desperate or tired of waiting, i'll just end up taking it but it was definitely not the ideal - it will take me near my destination (but i would need to take a 5-10 min detour stroll) and definitely was more rickety/old & less aesthetically pleasing.

but the amazing thing was that this weekend, for some reason - every time i was waiting for a train, the n train would come first, which is extremely rare for me (with the exception of this strange time when the r train came disguised as the n train).

i know this is going to sound a bit loopy, but i think this was a sign - a sign that i shouldn't take the r (even if it seems convenient and accessible at the time) and that i should wait for the n, because the n is coming.

when it comes down to it - do i really want to take the r?

remember your values. remember what you want in life.  remember who you are and what you stand for.  remember not too long ago, you specifically stated what you wanted?  how can you be so silly, so fickle, so emotional?

maybe this is a time to retreat back to myself. figure out who i am, once again - before eventually finding someone who will accept it, cultivate it, and hone it.

zimbabwe

it’s funny how God can change and move our hearts in ways and places we never thought it could go. 

it’s been about a month now since coming back from zimbabwe.

it felt like a different dimension - worlds apart from nyc. although a small part of myself did miss the comforts of being home, another part of me was scared to leave this dream.  i remember the last day (after half our team had already left back to the states due to the ticketing mishap), i was strolling around pastor tatenda’s compound and a wistful, almost grievous feeling overwhelmed me. i couldn’t help but think i would probably never be back here again.  the thing is that i know i'll miss it... but not in a way that would make me want to desperately come back. it’s the kind of longing where you know that you can't recreate this time again as much as you want to. it is a memory that can never be brought back but will be frozen in that moment at that right temperature with the right circumstances and people. this is what made me truly sad. 

zimbabwe was a place of miracles, of transparency, of rawness. it was hard thinking i’d have to go back to the sterility and the emotional coldness of the NYC. but God is working here too – albeit differently. 

what i’ll miss most though is not doing ministry and doing “God’s work” per se, but it will be the familial warmth of daily Zimbabwean life.  there was a feeling of belonging/kinship at the tatenda home – cooking together, dining together, working together, just living life together. here in nyc – it’s so easy to feel alone… everything is so self-involved and individualistic (and i thought that’s what i initially liked about it), but i see now such is not the case. 

pastor tatenda – lucia – tanatsuwa – tatenda jr. – netsai – amos – adam – tapiwa – privilege – mercy – thelma – sandra 

men vs. women

“Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.” - anais nin  (my newest literary muse)

gave me chills

“There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else. You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

susan sontag's list is v. similar to my "g.a.s.p."

excerpts from "gilead"

on writing & parental love:
"for me writing has always felt like praying, even when i wasn't writing prayers, as i was often enough. you feel that you are with someone. i feel i am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest.  or they might never reach you, for any of a number of reasons.  well, but how deeply i regret any sadness you have suffered and how grateful i am in anticipation of any good you have enjoyed.  that is to say, i pray for you. and there's an intimacy in it. that's the truth."

on baptism:
"ludwig feuerbach says a wonderful thing about baptism. i have it marked. he says 'water is the purest, clearest liquids; in virtue of this its natural character it is the image of the spotless nature of the divine spirit. in short, water has significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle of the Holy Spirit.  so far there lies at the foundation of baptism a beautiful, profund, natural significance."

on mortality:
"you're just a nice-looking boy, a bit slight, well scrubbed and well mannered.  all that is fine, but it's your existence i love you for, mainly.  existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined.  i'm about to put on imperishability. in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye.  the twinkling of an eye - that is the most wonderful expression.  i've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it."

on the hardest commandment (to keep):
i believe the sin of covetise is that pang of resentment you may feel when even the people you love best have what you want and don't have. from the point of view of loving your neighbor as yourself (leviticus 19:18), there is nothing that makes a person's fallenness more undeniable than covetise - you feel it right in your heart, in your bones. in that way it is instructive.... i avoided the experience of disobeying by keeping to myself a good deal. i am sure i would have labored in my vocation more effectively if i had simply accepted covetise in myself as something inevitable, as paul seems to do, as the thorn in my side, so to speak. 'rejoice with those who rejoice.' i have found that difficult too often. i was much better at weeping with those who weep. i don't mean that as a joke, but it is kind of funny when you think about it."

on doubt & proof:
"so my advice is this - don't look for proofs.  don't bother with them at all. they are never sufficient to the question, and they're always a little impertinent, i think, because they claim for God a place within our conceptual grasp.  and they will likely sound wrong to you even if you convince someone else with them. that is very unsettling over the long term. 'let you works so shine before men,' etc. it was Coleridge who said christianity is a life, not a doctrine, words to that effect. i'm not saying never doubt or question. the Lord gave you a mind so that you would make honest use of it. i'm saying you must be sure that the doubts & questions are your own, not, so to speak, the mustache and walking stick that happen to be the fashion of any particular moment.

on the nature of God:
"i tell there are certain attributes our faith assigns to God: omniscience, omnipotence, justice, and grace. we human beings have such a slight acquaintance with power and knowledge, so little conception of justice, and so slight a capacity for grace, that the workings of these great attributes together is a mystery we cannot hope to penetrate."

life is here

from: stall wall poetry

"not only do we have to be good at waiting, we have to love it. because waiting is not waiting, it is life. too many of us live without fully engaging our minds, waiting for that moment when our real lives begin. years pass in boredom, but that is okay because when our true loves comes around, or we discover our real calling, we will begin. of course the sad truth is that if we are not present at the moment, our true love could come and go and we wouldn't even notice.  and we will have become someone other than the you or i who would be able to embrace it.  i believe an appreciation for simplicity, the everyday - the ability to dive deeply into the banal and discover life's hidden richness - is where success, let alone happiness, emerges."
-the art of learning, josh waitzkin 

love iii

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat. 
-george herbert

sweet matrimony

(so this is kind of overdue) but my best friend is married!

she was the most elegant & beautiful bride.  j & d looked picture-perfect! and i couldn't stop bawling during the ceremony (so unattractive).

it was nice being reunited with family, old friends, current friends, church folks - all in one place. 

and it was inevitable that i was flooded with comments like "when are you getting married?!" "you'll be the next to go!" (only from the older crowd, of course) and i just stood there, grinning uneasily saying "oh no no no..." unfortunately there isn't an emoticon that expresses uneasy, slightly perturbed fake smiling.

can we please focus on the bride? it's the bride's day! but i know it's the token thing for korean grown-ups to say to single young adults. that time has come apparently... (i need to get a clever, canned answer of how to reply to such questions about my singlehood)

but yes it feels weird one of my besties is going on to the next stage - living the "real, grown-up" life, while i'm still somewhat living the college dorm-life with roommates & instant noodles.  not that i don't enjoy my life, it's just that i still feel like i'm not fully "adult" yet (i guess carrying around a hello kitty debit card doesn't really help).  

the weird thing is even if i were to be married + kids, i have a feeling that i still won't feel that way.  i guess i will always be "young @ heart" though i paradoxically also consider myself an "old soul" or a "young fogie."

i'll be sad if there comes a day where i won't be able to see the boa constrictor anymore though.

the risk of love

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell."
-c.s. lewis, the four loves

the ryan gosling effect

i have always had an affinity towards the underdog. there is something that feels morally right & ultimately rewarding about rooting for something or someone that is overlooked and not naturally designed to win.  david vs. goliath. the weak vs. the strong.  i think this type of mentality also accounts for the part of me that likes to like things that no one cares or even knows about. my own niche group of likes & interests. this obscure indie band is an underdog. this unknown author whose book i picked up randomly - he's an underdog too.  most artists are underdogs until they get "discovered."

on the flip side, i also find myself hating stuff that is too "popular" (i.e. the lakers, john mayer, dragon tattoo books)... i know, how noncomformist/hipster of me!  i think a small part of me seeks "fairness" and feels that love should be equally distributed, while another part of me genuinely thinks that these "popular" things are just overly-hyped when it comes down to it. i think even harry potter is overrated (i know some of my friends would want to kill me right now).

that is why i tried so hard to not like ryan gosling. he's like that heartthrob at your school that everyone likes, and you keep telling yourself he is lame & so undeserving of the attention, but then when he smiles at you while walking past each other down the hall - you find yourself feeling faint. the reason why i even bring this all up is that i was once again reminded of his perfection today while watching "the gangster squad." what would've otherwise been a mediocre, overly violent movie was single-handedly redeemed by ryan himself.

everyone watched "the notebook" at one point in their lives (at least in the female population), and every single woman fell in love with ryan gosling.  i actually didn't like "the notebook" much at all (i found the old lady version of Rachel McAdams supercreepy - didn't help that i saw her in "The Skeleton Key" first), but even then i couldn't deny Noah's charm (oh, Noah is Gosling's character in the movie just in case you didn't know).   but my dislike for the movie was still there, so his charm didn't have its full-blown effect on me.  then i saw him  one of my favorite movies to date, "Blue Valentine":

and that's when i fell in love. the young version of ryan gosling's character dean is very reminiscent of the young noah. both scrappy, dreamy young guys who can charm your pants off.  they have their oh-so-idealistic "love-can-conquer-all" badge on their tattered sleeves the same way leo once did on the titanic (it seems as though only poor guys can pull this off? rich guys are the villains, apparently). but the thing that tugs the hearts of all womankind is their resolute, one-track devotion to their girlfriends who later become their wives.  there's nothing that says "i love you" (*spoiler alert*) like punching another guy in the face, pretending to jump off a ferris wheel, building a house for you, and fathering a child that is so obviously not his.  of course both movies (especially "Blue Valentine") end in not-so-happy endings, but don't need to get into that right now.

and i think maybe the loophole is that he always (on the surface) plays the underdog (with the exception of "crazy, stupid, love" where he played the regular male peacock): he's always the misunderstood street rat character with the heart of gold. anywho - there's just something about ryan and his easy smile & boyish charm that makes us all a little weak inside. and if it doesn't... i question if you're a human or an android.

that is why i'm not ashamed to say that i work for a company that "hearts" gosling even more than i do. time & time & time again.

words of the wise