Ponti!

I haven't written about literature on here for a while because I've just been putting stuff on Goodreads with a few sparse words as the review. I'll keep this short, but I've just finished Ponti by Sharlene Teo, who is a Singaporean author who did her BA in Law and then switched to creative writing. She won a £10'000 scholarship to finish her novel back in 2016, and this is the result.

It tells the story of Amisa Tan, a beautiful but emotionless woman who once starred in a B-movie that has now reached cult status but never became famous, her insecure daughter Szu whom she resents, and the daughter's friend Circe, who is equally lost. It spans forty years to tell the story of Amisa's departure from her Malaysian village to her crumbling marriage with a man she only loved because he loved her on one end, to Circe's meaningless life in 2020 on the other end and (spoiler alert) Circe and Szu's reunion. In the middle of it all is the year 2003, when both girls are 16 and enter into this sort of inescapable co-dependent friendship characteristic of two people who have nobody else.

I literally finished this book 10 minutes ago and had forgotten Szu's name, which is probably indicative of something. Maybe it just means that the book is really not memorable, but it could also mean that the reader is meant to project themselves (or, let's face it, herself) onto Szu. Szu is so full of self hatred, especially for her body, to which she feels completely alienated and which she mistreats (she doesn't realise until years later that she had an eating disorder in 2003). She's completely lost the will to go on – she just survives, trudging through every day and unable to stop hating her mother, allowing her mother's death to consume her entirely – haunted even from beyond the grave.

There were too many dream sequences, and the magical realism that I'd expected from a book where one of the main characters is called Circe comes at the very end. There are also hints of some science-fiction-wondrous-magical-stuff at the end but all of this could've come in much earlier and been weaved into the fabric of the story. But that might've made the plot too busy, I guess. I understand why Teo would put in the whole Amisa backstory but to be honest it didn't need to be 1/3 of the book. It makes the book seem like a lot of novels these days set in non-Western countries that tries to trace the history of the nation/culture through people's individual stories. Like Khaled Hosseini or the countless stories about China written by people of the diaspora, including Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which, again, is my favorite book, so I'm not saying it's bad. I just don't think Amisa's story contributed much to the book because all it really reveals is how much she's suffered and how bitter and resentful she is, which we can tell from Szu and Circe's points of view. It just seems forced to appeal to that market that loves to read about intergenerational stories set against a backdrop of nation-shifting changes like political upheaval or economic expansion. If it had to be included, it should've been much more revealing and rich; a couple episodes of Bojack Horseman showcase hereditary trauma much more effectively.

The back-and-forth of narratives and timeframes dances around this mystery of why Circe and Szu are no longer friends; we can tell how toxically symbiotic their friendship is, but we don't know what happened. Did Szu die? Did Circe have a hand in her death? Was there violence? The reveal is a bit disappointing, but I guess realistic. A lot of friendships, especially female friendships, kind of just fizzle out as both parties realise they never really liked the other person anyway. Szu's point of view portrays their relationship as something pathetic, Szu desperately hanging on to the cooler and more self-assured Circe who was often mean just for the sake of it. Circe, on the other hand, reminisces about the friendship in a more neutral way, admitting that she had genuinely liked Szu at first but had abandoned her when her illness worsened and she was ruined by grief. At the end of it all, Circe truly feels regret and feels haunted by Amisa and Szu, and Szu seems to have gotten over it and is living a happy life. Which is cool.

I wondered a couple of times whether this story would've been better as a film than a novel. Sometimes it feels like Teo has trouble describing something that would've come out much smoother on a screen, like when the radio plays Fleetwood Mac in the car and Amisa starts to cry – it's a bit awkward, whereas in a movie you wouldn't have to actively describe it but could just passively absorb it and it would be much more touching. But now that I think about it, there are other parts where the sensory details, especially about sweat and pungent smells, are so vivid that you would really not be able to feel the same thing in a film.

I've been thinking a bit about female coming-of-age stories. Although Ponti isn't really a coming-of-age story. Do any of the girls learn anything? We only see the result of their development 17 years later but we don't see them actually realise anything. In 2003, we're subjected to their cyclical angst. So it's not really a bildungsroman. More just a study in teenage self-loathing, which realistically does in fact feel like it'll never end. And you don't realise you're done until many years later, looking back. But anyway, stories about teenage girls. I went to see Ladybird with Gabriel back in March, and although I'm super sick of white people coming-of-age stories (like, nobody would watch a movie about me at 18 even though my life is pretty interesting because they'd want intergenerational flashbacks to how much my family suffered under Communism and/or during the Cultural Revolution) and it frustrates me that boring-ass movies about white people where nothing happens is, like, lauded by film circles –– and yet, and yet, Ladybird was so good. Even though I didn't really date anyone in high school I related to the sadness and the desperation and the pretending to be nonchalant and the awkwardness and, oh my, the scene with her mom in the kitchen... I cried so hard.

But Gabriel didn't like it at all: he said Ladybird was selfish and self-centred. While I agree that there were aspects of the plot, like her best friend Julie who immediately forgives her for treating her so badly, and also that horrible thing she said to Miguel, were pretty bad, I'm interested in the fact that both Gabriel and his brother (whom he spoke to about it afterwards) didn't feel a connection to the main character at all. The story is semi-autobiographic, based on Greta Gerwig's own girlhood. When we look back at who we were we often see the bad and the embarrassing, and it's natural to me that Gerwig would write herself as selfish and self-centred, with side characters not getting much development because that's what they are, side characters in the Story Of Her that she never really paid attention to because she was too busy thinking about herself. Even though it was a white girl who struggled with class differences between herself and the other people at her private Catholic school, I related because our issues were different but really the same.

Maybe it really is a female thing; maybe only women can understand that feeling in that acute kind of way because being a Young Girl isn't just an ontological thing, we get dragged into this common network of Young Girls where being isn't just being, but rather a concept, an unattainable concept because we can never be the Young Girls in the magazines or the TV shows. Young Girls belong to everyone but ourselves. I don't know, I haven't figured out the specifics of this yet. I'm still only halfway through Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, which really is preliminary since it's mostly just fragments, and it doesn't really match up to what I want to be thinking about, more on that later, but it does have some very interesting truisms.

Anyway, I better brush my teeth and get to writing my two essays.

Oxford life - good omens for trinity

I've had the most lovely weekend so I thought I'd record it for posterity here. The sun had come out  for the first time since I'd arrived in England, and actually managed to remain in the sky for a solid four or five days. I was revived from my seasonal depression and genuinely enjoyed myself every single day. I still can't believe that some people are like this every day - just content, with no random indescribable feelings of sadness following them around and no sudden bursts of crying. I've promised myself not to cry this Trinity because it's summer and I really need to show my gratitude to the weather. It's gotten colder now, but my good mood still hasn't dissipated.

I returned to Oxford on Monday of 0th week, a full week before term was supposed to start, because I expected to be researching and writing an essay on top of revising for collections (mock exams to be taken before the start of term). Wearing both my heavy-duty St. Catherine's College fleece and my huge denim jacket, because I couldn't fit them into my one check-in suitcase, I lugged my stuff back to college, set up my room all over again, collected my mail, and saw my friends. I hadn't done a large amount of work over the vac so I began studying almost immediately after getting a celebratory burger at GBK, my favorite (I just went again today) because of their sweet potato fries, which come with a baconnaise dip.

My brother showed me this app that makes the photos you take look like they were done on a disposable camera, so I've been using it a lot. Here's El-Amin at GBK.

My Tuesday outfit: Topshop crop top, Tally Weijl
trousers I copped on sale years ago,
and a Zara suede trench coat that I bought in Madrid
last September that I was finally able to
wear for the first time! 

Tuesday was still relatively cool, but I whipped out a cute outfit that did NOT include my winter jacket (which both protected and plagued me throughout Michaelmas and Hilary).  I studied in the morning, and spent the afternoon at the Radcliffe Camera (or, to be more specific, the Lower Gladstone Link which connects the RadCam and the Bodleian Library through underground tunnels) where I read a book for my essay. I went shopping to get myself some breakfast foods and fruits. It was a quiet day as not many people had returned yet. To be honest I don't remember what I did – it was just a typical day spent doing work by myself, which is very common at Oxford.

Wednesday was when the sun decided to come out. I was so excited because I'd brought a ton of summer clothes, and as I was unpacking I'd been worried that I wouldn't be able to wear them. Even though it was only a little more than 20 degrees celsius, I couldn't wait to crack out my summer wardrobe. I wore an outfit that my mom's cousin used to wear back in the early-2000s, these black traditional-style top and pants with flowers and ornamental frog fasteners. It was super cute, but a bit small, except in the chest where it mattered. There it was too big. Sigh. I also ate a whole punnet of blueberries in the morning, which I was so proud of that I probably told ten people. I usually never eat fruits and it made me feel so incredibly healthy. Snacking... but on fruits? It was revolutionary.

For dinner we went back to our often-frequented, vehemently-hated college canteen, but the regular chips, green peas, and fried meat that we received was made better by the fact that we got to sit outside. The silver tables reflected the setting sun's rays back at us, reminding me of lunches spent on the terrace back in high school. I noticed that everyone sitting outside was drinking something orange. "Is that Aperol Spritz?" I asked, ready to indulge in my favorite wine mom beverage. "What?" was the reply, so I asked, "What are you drinking?" The answer changed my life:

Pimm's.

I'd obviously heard of Pimm's before. It was this quintessentially British, nay, quintessentially Oxbridge, nay, quintessentially Oxonian drink that I associated with punting and posh accents. I finally got to try it and I haven't turned back since. It's sweet and refreshing, and just tastes like summer. Sipping it while talking to my friends and watching the sun illuminate the sides of their faces was wonderful. In fact, I had Pimm's three days in a row. I still have two empty cups on my desk because I took it back to my room to finish, and honestly it's starting to smell. I should bring it back to the bar.

Thursday. I was awoken at 7:30 in the morning by blinding sunlight, and the sound of someone cleaning my windows with a long stick. It would bang against the glass, and then I would hear the soapy water dribble down the windowpane. My room faces the east, which means that I have a horribly hot morning, but a cool and calm afternoon.

I wore a silk skirt that is very flowy that I think was handed down from my mother, and a crop top (what other piece of clothing says "SUMMER!!!!!" as well as crop tops?) I spent the morning studying more, but the sunshine outside was killing me. That's when I turned British: I messaged my friends and asked them to come sit on the quad with me – I couldn't bear not to take advantage of the rare sunshine. We spread out a blanket (the two things I got from Harvard: a blanket, and a rejection) and sat in the shade of the off-center big tree that dominates St Catz's central quad, talking, studying, and chatting with people who walked past. Eventually we were kicked off the grass and told to sit on a different patch. The afternoon was passed peacefully. I obviously wasn't as productive as I would've been if I'd locked myself into the library, I had no regrets. I got to know a friend much better, ate a box of strawberries, and met my tutor, who told me that the essay would actually be due in Week 2. So that was that and I no longer had to worry about writing it.

With Gaby and Frances on grass patch in front of Staircase 12. Next to us were some Computer Science guys who sat around making jokes and hanging out. One was fixing his bike.

The light coming into the dining hall.

El-Amin looking happy at golden hour

Friday morning was my collection. I think it went okay - at first I thought it was going to be extremely difficult, but then I realised that, to do well in your exams, you just have to predict what they might ask, write the model essays, memorise them, and then regurgitate them in exam conditions. Which is a shame because it's completely different, perhaps even the opposite, of what we learn throughout the term. And it's so boring that I can't bring myself to do such a thing. I'll need to learn how to do that, though.

I came out of my three-hour exam and went to pick my up boyfriend almost immediately as he got off the bus from London. We spent the afternoon at University Parks, reading books and drinking prosecco out of the bottle.

There were geese near us. They walked around, honking with what I could only assume was pure joie de vivre, and occasionally flapped their wings in the water, making a great deal of noise. Frank Ocean was playing, obviously. Along the river, people drifted by in their punts, sometimes getting stuck. I messaged my friends and we decided to go punting the next day.

While waiting for my friends to be done with their collections on Saturday morning, Gabriel and I had breakfast at Turl Street Kitchen, treating ourselves to hot chocolate with mini marshmallows and a full English breakfast (for him), and an avocado and poached egg toast with yoghurt and granola and tea for me. We loafed about on the grass back at Catz, and then went to G&D's for ice cream with my friends. On the way back, we stopped by Blackwell's and I couldn't help but buy a new book: Ponti by Sharlene Teo, set in Singapore. What can I say, I gotta support Sino arts. [HTTP:///WWW.SINETHETA.NET !!!!!!!!] 

G&D's.

When I was chilling on the grass, my friend Gaku, who was one of the first people I met in Fresher's week, had come out of his collection and asked me when we were going punting. 4pm was set. I was shocked because Gaku's life is pretty much just Engineering and tennis – I hadn't seen him properly in ages because he literally never does anything. Punting definitely had to happen. Unfortunately, after 10 people had gathered at the porter's lodge, we realised that we needed to book punts on the Catz website and it was taken. So a time was made for an hour later, but with only one punt, and people split up. It had also begun raining, a small, light drizzle coming out of an overcast sky, which deterred some people. The time finally arrived, though, and a few of us showed up again. But the boat that we'd booked hadn't come back, so the porters told us to wait by the riverside for them to return. We waited, and waited, and waited. Other punts came and went – from other colleges such as Merton and Balliol. The Balliol boat parked itself near Catz and those inside went to pick up some of their friends, who'd brought boba to-go and boxes of takeaway food. Finally our punt returned. We were disgruntled, but once we got onto the boat we realised how difficult it was to actually steer the boat. Perhaps it was so hard because there were 6 of us and we were all trying to contribute somehow with our paddles. The person standing up with the giant stick was supposed to steer, but we kept on bumping head-on into the river-bank. This meant that the person sitting at the front of the boat – Joshua, and later Gabriel – would get viciously scratched by twigs and would have to use their paddle to push us away from the shore. Finally, after constantly switching the punter, we were able to get a hang of it. We rowed into the part of Uni Parks where Gabriel and I had been sitting the previous day, but then turned back because we didn't have much time. On our way back, we were going so smoothly that we started to see the idyllic side of punting. Just after I said "We're getting the hang of this!" there was a splash as El-Amin fell into the river, losing his glasses in the process.

It was hilarious. Thankfully his phone, along with everyone else's, had been in my backpack, so the damage wasn't too bad. When we got off, El-Amin left to shower and we made an appointment to meet again for dinner and a movie. Half an hour later, we met again but El-Amin was wearing the same exact outfit: it turns out he has 3 identical shirts. We feasted at Edamame, the tiny, family-owned, heavenly-tasting Japanese restaurant that was the closest place to eat to Catz. 

I love this picture I took on Holywell St while
we were in the queue for Edamame

After that there was still around an hour until we were supposed to go see Isle of Dogs, so Zach, who actually lives in Oxfordshire, took us to Christ Church Meadow, where we walked as the sun set and everything turned dark. We encountered a deer grazing peacefully on the other side of the river, and a tree that had been hollowed out. We got to the head of the river and decided to leave, but the gate was locked, so we slipped under it and returned to central Oxford via St. Aldates and went to Westgate for the movie. 

A bridge in Christ Church Meadow, with Zach, El-Amin, and V standing on it.

Sunday meant another brunch, this time at Vaults and Garden, the café inside the University Church that Gabriel and I love because they do wonderfully fluffy scones. There were no scones at breakfast, but a salmon and eggs on toast (for him) and a full vegan breakfast (for me) and some green tea (for us both) was a fitting substitute. 

I had a busy afternoon ahead of me so we spent the rest of the time back on our spot at Uni Parks, sitting on the same blanket and finishing off the same bottle of prosecco. Gabriel watched Goodfellas on his phone (he has 40GB of data!) and I prepared for the meetings I had ahead of me. I then met up with Sanaa, my friend from St. Hilda's, and showed her my favorite library, the Social Science Library, which I love because of the combination of its proximity to college, its café which served cheap hot meals as well as snacks and breakfast, and the fact that it had air-conditioning. I skipped out soon after to go to a meeting for The ISIS' non-fiction team where we discussed the current pieces that were being written for us. After that we all relocated to the St Catz quad and had a really fun picnic while the sun set and drenched us in shadow. 

So that was basically my fun weekend. I was in a good mood the whole time and I'm really optimistic for Trinity Term. I suppose I better start doing some work now. Thanks for reading all this liushuizhang! 

turn the radio on

I haven't read the news since around April/May... I'm not sure why, but I just fell out of the habit. I used to check the Guardian app every morning. I think part of the reason why I don't read the news is because I'm frustrated that every news source is biased and I just want unfiltered facts. These days I get most of my information through social media. I still read the New Yorker, but for fiction and long-form reporting, so I don't really know what's going on these days.

But near the end of last term, my friend Wes who studies Engineering made a radio for an assignment. He showed it to me and I got super excited because I never actively listen to the radio, and hearing the football commentator's yelling surface through the static felt so cool. I haven't been listening to much music lately while I work because I find it distracting, so this barely intelligible white noise feels like a good alternative. Wes let me keep the radio and I listened to it a lot last term. Now that we're back from the holidays he let me have it again and I have it on at all times unless I'm watching a video. It means that the times when I'm just doing stuff for my routine, like getting dressed, I'm passively listening to all this information. I also try to position it so that it's staticky so I can't hear it completely clearly and won't be too distracted.

It's worked so far, and I've actually managed to learn some new things! For instance, Theresa May apologised for saying she would deport Caribbean immigrants from the Windrush generation, and I've been listening to testimonials about alcoholism, energy drink addiction, and male victims of domestic violence. It's fascinating. And I love that I can actually what's inside the radio. I feel really cool with it. And it kind of reminds me of the guy who fixes radios in All the Light we Cannot See. I personally have no idea how you could just take a machine apart and learn how it works by putting it back together. Like, I can see all the wires, but the science just eludes me. It looks like magic to me.

It only does one channel. I think it's BBC Radio 5.

Storytelling

I used to tell stories, but I haven't come up with ideas in years. I’m not sure why. 

I used to lie in bed and throw myself into daydreams about pirates or ninjas or the Mafia, depending on what in particular I was obsessed with at the time. I would map plots and repeat scenes in my head until every line of dialogue ran smoothly, no hiccups, looking through different camera angles. Sometimes I’d loop the same few minutes over and over just so I could indulge in the emotions my characters were feeling, extreme things like rage and heartbreak that I never had the opportunity to experience in my mundane life. Meanwhile I wrote Chapter Ones in notebooks, filling five pages before giving up and ripping the pages out, or finding a new notebook. In the fifth grade we read Kensuke’s Kingdom, so I wrote a few sentences about two sisters who lived on a boat, but never got around to their actual adventures. In the sixth grade, I actually managed to complete a short story called Firesong (I’d taken the title off a random book spine in the primary school library; I loved the sound of it; I thought it was genius). It was full of moments transcribed from my favorite manga, One Piece, that probably made no sense. I used the Papyrus font, which I would not see again until I started taking piano lessons at the Conservatoire and my teacher used it to write the recital programs. Jiaqi Kang: Clair de lune. 

I stopped setting my nightly daydreams in other authors’ universes when I started working on my fantasy series called “The Sonata Dilemma”, which occupied me between the ages of 11 and 15. At first, it was an amalgamation of everything I’d ever read: the fictional world was called Fiore (like in Fairy Tail), and characters had golems (like in D. Gray Man), and they travelled among island states (like in One Piece). Some characters were twists on fairy tales, including the three little pigs, who were named Edgar, Allan, and Poe (like how Lemony Snicket uses literary references.) Most of the names, though, were either taken from people I knew in real life, or were a significant word that got put through three layers of Google Translate to seem symbolic. During the peak of my My Chemical Romance phase, I planned to integrate lyrics to songs into my books. For a while I was deeply ashamed of this serial plagiarism, unable to believe that preteen me had had the nerve to rip off these known works. But now I don’t care: after all, all books speak of other books. I was just a misunderstood postmodern prodigy. I was reading so much, devouring volume after volume, and my brain was becoming so unbearably full of information and ideas that I just had to vomit it back out somewhere. 

What does still baffle me, though, is the internalised racism in part thanks to a Jacqueline Wilson childhood: out of 12 main characters, all but one were conceptualised as white. (Yifei was Chinese, and her name came from the badass academic in Aiqing Gongyu.) I would later reconfigure around 40% of the names so that they indicated ethnic backgrounds. These days, the only times white characters appear in my stories are when they’re the bad guys. Ha. 

The original idea for the Sonata Dilemma was twelve 12-year-old girls who are recruited by the government as part of Project Olympia to become secret agents fighting against the evil mafia led by Yue Sonata, due to their magical powers, the nature of which corresponded to the 12 Olympian gods (Percy Jackson.) A twelve-book series that got darker and more serious as it progressed (Harry Potter.) I’d always loved stories with sad endings, so at some point the government became evil and manipulative, which the girls would realise in the final book. They would then get together with the bad guys (who were actually good) and activate S.T.A.R.D.O.M., a weapon that would bring about the apocalypse (Rave Master… I think.) Not bad for an eleven year old.

I could finally put an end to my awful habit of abandoning new stories halfway through. The scope of the series, and the multitude of side characters, meant that there were endless prequels and sequels and spin-offs to be added that stayed within the same universe and same wider pictures. I would record these ideas, assign them to a character (usually as a tragic backstory for a member of Yue Sonata’s cabal), and promise myself to get to it after I’d finished writing the core series. I created a highly complex family tree that linked every single character in the whole franchise through blood, adoption, or marriage (A Series of Unfortunate Events.) The ancestors’ names started with A and B, and their children were C and D, and so on. (Also A Series of Unfortunate Events.) Yue Sonata was second-to-last in the Sonata clan, but that didn’t mean he was the second youngest. There was a lot of time travel involved because the universe was made up of 4 worlds, whose names I’ve unfortunately forgotten: one was our normal world; another was Fiore, a parallel world in which magic and mermaids existed that was ruled by a series of matriarchs; another was a post-apocalyptic future; and Åsgard was an eerie wasteland that connected everything together, a liminal space through which characters travelled to get from one world to another. Most of the action took place in Fiore, but would spill over into the others, and linear time was hardly important. The drama of one hugely complicated family would ruin everything. The Sonata Dilemma. 

Naturally, the stories were to be written under a pseudonym: Lokki Montgomery (previously Adel), who was also a character and was the sole survivor of not one but two horrible tragedies (also A Series of Unfortunate Events): the end of the world, but also the battle that turned Åsgard into the barren landscape it is today, where all of her friends from L.E.A.F’s first generation were killed, including her lover (again… A Series of Unfortunate Events.) L.E.A.F, whose initials represented the 4 worlds (I really forgot what L and E stood for), was the name for Fiore’s Queen’s elite intelligence squad, also comprised of 12 agents. I don’t remember why they died anymore, although I think there were monsters and that it had been under the Queen’s own orders, but they were later replaced by a second generation, who would each be assigned a Project Olympia candidate to secretly supervise from birth until they were ready to be activated. Project Olympia, in turn, was initiated, and the candidates artificially being given superpowers, as defense in case Yue Sonata’s organisation ever decided to come back for a second revolution after they’d failed horribly the first time. The first time was known as the S.I.E.G.E., because there was a siege, at the capital, and it had ended with Yue being cryogenically frozen in the dungeon. His underlings, who were in fact an alliance made up of 4 different criminal groups, planned for over a decade to return and release him. 

Spinoffs included a book titled “Crime and Cowardice” (get it? Like Pride and Prejudice), set in late 19th-century Canada and loosely inspired by Pandora Hearts, about an aristocratic girl named Lacie Watsun who runs away from a forced marriage and takes up with a homeless guy, and they fall in love. Or the stories set in the post apocalyptic future: Enma (name stolen from Katekyo Hitman Reborn) grew up in an orphanage after his father died shielding him from a nuclear blast, but everyone hates him because his face is scarred. One day, looking out from the window, he sees a young girl in the playground, and I forget the rest, but it was all based on the MCR song “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W”; Walker Edgecombe (named after a teacher at my school, Mr. E-W) is collectively raised by teachers in a utopia’s Children’s Village and has a chip in his brain that records his thoughts, but one day discovers a warehouse for old chips and is compelled by a vagabond boy, Holly, his future second-in-command when he leads the Revolution, to search for a blind girl with powers who will answer his questions. 

And so on and so forth. Not bad for an eleven year old. 

I wrote the first draft of the first book, about a mermaid named Phoenix Alora whose arm can turn into a hammer, on our family iPad. At the time I didn’t know about caps lock, so I would hit shift for every letter that I wanted in capitals, including chapter titles and shouting dialogue. I drew pictures of my characters and filled out Rick Riordan’s personality questionnaires to develop them, assigning likes and dislikes and degrees of messiness. I posted the first few chapters on Wattpad and designed my own cover, with a phoenix painting I stole off Deviantart and Century Gothic as the title font. Or was it Copperplate? I polished the manuscript for years until, at around 13, I got the courage to print it out and put it in a binder for my friends’ mother, a published author, to read. She gave a lot of constructive feedback that helped me a lot with the world building, but for a long time after that I was embarrassed that I’d wasted her time with my awful writing. 

My mom said that I couldn’t just make things up and that everything I wrote had to be grounded in reality. I thought she was trying to tell me I wasn’t allowed to write about these things unless I’d actually experienced them. I stood by my imaginative credibility. 

Now I can only write things grounded in reality. Looking back at a short story I’d wrriten at the age of 14 about a girl and her imaginary boyfriend, I can’t believe I’d managed to write about romance without experiencing it, although I guess that’s where the “imaginary” part comes in. The latest thing I’ve written, an absurdist novel I’ve been working on since 2014, is deeply rooted in my own memories - it’s about a diasporic Chinese girl living in Geneva who makes friends at root seeking camp in China and wants to achieve great things. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about adaptation. A year ago I came up with an idea for a TV show (unfortunately it’s all lost because my Notes app on my laptop crashed). It’s a space opera with martial arts, about 5 ragtag girls from vastly different backgrounds (showcasing the diversity of Chineseness) who become sworn sisters who save a vampire’s life. In return she breaks them out of jail (I forget why) and recruits them into an underground resistance group against the evil British space empire. They get separated and all learn martial arts over the next few years, eventually becoming the 5 greats, like in Legend of the Condor Heroes. They reunite to lead the revolution but end up being assassinated by imperial forces and fail. It’s supposed to be a sci-fi Jin Yong story. I still think about it every once in a while. 

Another adaptation I want to do is a modern day Three Kingdoms TV show. It’s set in some city in the 21st century, and the kingdoms are bookshops that are vying to hold the midnight release of the last Harry Potter book, thus ensuring their survival in an age where paper books are dying and everything is being ruined by Amazon. Also, they have machine guns, for the exaggerated Tarantino esque violence. Also, it’s all women of color, and most of them are lesbians, because that’s really cool. I really like this idea and I hope that some day I can pitch it to Netflix, but first I actually have to watch and read Three Kingdoms to understand the basis. 

My boyfriend said he’d love to see me write a screenplay, because it would probably be really interesting. I’d love to see me write a screenplay too. I’ve tried to write stories but I can’t. I try to fashion a coming of age narrative out of feelings of alienation, fear of the future, and anxiety over the inevitable forwardness of time, all emotions that pretty much consume my every waking moment, but nothing comes out. Whereas as a child I’d been full of plot twists and character arcs, now, I guess, I can only write about myself, and even then it’s not particularly enthusiastic. Now I can’t imagine anyone writing fiction that isnt based on themselves. Obviously fiction is really about combining imagination and truth. What is at the center is always true.

But at the same time I don’t want to be that author who can only write about people like em. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s body of work is full of stories about educated Nigerian women who sometimes move to New England for some academic Ivy League reason and stay there. The New Yorker girls in Jenny Zhang’s Sour Heart are all from Shanghai, all are connected to Long Island, all have an academic parent. One went to Stanford and has a much younger brother.  I love Jenny. But I hope her next work goes further from her comfort zone. Then again, it is her début. 

I havent written a story in a very long time. I hope that it’ll come back to me someday. 

The state of nature

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/09/the-state-of-nature

I've started reading some new yorker fiction lately and I love this so much. It's so quiet and bitterseet. Exacty my kind of short story. I love the part about the cat's arc, and Rita's notebook, and the ophthalmologist who cant see. Everything falls into place.

A story i wrote when i was 14

23.12.2013 to be accurate. Posting it here for posterity lol. One of the only things ive ever completed. Word for word from my old tumbkr account below:

(it’s set in paris and i dont actually know how a real kiss tastes like i was just assuming but it definitely doesnt taste like some song from Carmen)

the ending is soooo crappy and rushed but yeah

I 1^st met you in the cemetery, of course.

(A slow dance at some birthday in November. We danced to a song neither of us had ever heard before. I don’t know the song even now, and I don’t even know the lyrics: the singer, in English I think, sang like knuckles along piano keys, his words blurred except for the chorus, come on come on come on and it wasn’t like I was listening for the words because I was smelling the lilies inside your collar and the vodka on your breath. Before you I’d spent every party sipping some unknown drink and watching my friends make out with each other. And yes I still did, but with you it was different)

It was a bright, sunny day, the kind of day that kept one warm hand on your (not you your, obviously) back and guided you, malgré toi, to the nearest source of ice-cold water. June; first day of the summer holidays. I was 15 and alone: indeed I’m always alone, but especially in the cemetery.

(I was in a bookstore in July buying my summer reading. There were already almost a dozen books inside the basket I was provided, biographies and comic books and novels and thrillers and Around the World in 80 Days. I was looking through the latest young adult dystopian stories when I felt a jostle on my shoulder blades and I scowled and turned around and you were there, six feet tall in a dark green t-shirt and round black sunglasses. We talked about Harry S. Truman for two hours and in the end I bought my books, 40 of them and half about the Korean War. We went to the film store on the other side of the city and rented three documentaries that were 90% talking and 10% archive film. At 20:00 we were in my living room and kissing and you tasted like Habarena)

I was wearing my 3^rd-favourite top, the one from Mallorca, and my favourite pair of shorts, and I was holding:

• a symphony of flowers of various origins
• Dan Brown’s Inferno, hardcover, 1^st edition, translated from the English to the French by Mark Taylor
• a pen
• beer in an iced tea bottle

(On the 31^st of October, Halloween, we bought expensive tickets to a Russian production of Swan Lake and arrived 50 minutes late, not because of traffic even though there was traffic, but because we hadn’t even gotten off the couch 20 minutes in. We had to be shown in with a torch and 30 legs had to be raised in order to let us pass. I relished in the complaints those rich women made, and their quick gasps of regret when they saw your walking stick.)

The spot in which I usually sat to lean against a stone wall and draw my thoughts was nearest to Rémy Garcia 1946-1994 a loving husband and Elisabeth Ferschin 1998-2013 insane little girl, located in the bottom-left corner of the cemetery from bird’s eye view, but that day I did not go at my usual hour (6am) and if I did not go at my normal hour I would not sit on my normal bench.

(We were sitting on an ant-sized cliff by the river in September, the rush of the current and the screeching of birds the only noise. I was thinking about my parents and I don’t know what you were thinking about, maybe your parents too. I realise now I do not know what became of them.)

I walked the graveyard’s perimeter twice, and then crossed it diagonally in all directions. For an hour I did nothing but search for a comfortable seat amongst the dead and gone.

(One August morning we were in my room. My computer was on my lap, balanced on the tips on my bare knees threatening to fall over, and we were looking at pictures of you on this program that morphed faces into different ages, well, I looked and you listened to my descriptions as I tried to tell you how you looked accurately while trying too hard to be poetic. There was you when you were a small child and you now, and you as a 12-year-old with acne, and you later, when you’re middle-aged and an estate agent somewhere, you much later when you’re old and wrinkles cover your face like roads on a map.)

In the end I was about to find my usual spot again—and that’s when you caught my eye. In reflection, I can’t believe I had never noticed you before. You stood there, dressed in filthy gray. I walked over and gave you my flowers, and I sat down in front of you, and we talked. About philosophy, at first, and then about death, and then about the apocalypse, and then about the Jurassic era, deep, meaningful conversations. I spent a whole entire day there with you, and that’s how it began.

(On a Tuesday a boy at school asked me to smoke a cigarette with him and his friends. At 14:00 during free period we exited the school gates and took the Metro two stops to the east. We leaned against the grimy tiled walls of the station and I took my first drag of smoke. If a person passed by at the right moment, we would look just like a ragtag bunch of black kids, in a gang and/or truanting, laughing about something in the December air. I saw you on the other side of the street: you weren’t exactly conspicuous, with the busy street crowd parting for you subtly like a 2-frame-per-second Red Sea. You didn’t see me, of course.)

You died when you were 4 years old, or at least that’s what it said on the grave: 1997-2001. I went back and looked you up, and it was a car accident, a speeding truck and a blind little boy to whom nobody paid attention to for 4 seconds. I spent so much time with the ghosts in that crumbling little place, and I could just imagine your death. I could see the neon advertisements on the buildings and the stark blue sky, and the moment of impact must’ve been one of those fast things that no-one really notices and then everyone does, a single miscalculation on the biggest clock of all time that at first barely makes a twang but in less than a second has managed to stop the entire order of operations.

(Last week was New Year’s Day, and I was invited to a big school party held by a senior, and I don’t remember much from it except I wore very high heels which were muddy when I stumbled home barefoot at 01:45 on the 2^nd of January. I also remember that I was talking to a boy about types of liquor and Kim Kardashian and stuff we’d seen on the Internet, and then he kissed me and he tasted like nicotine and paprika chips and mint which is what real kisses taste like. He wasn’t at all like you, or how I imagined you to be. I made you up to be a pretentious hipster, like I am, who thought I wasn’t like other girls, like I did, and he is obsessed with How I Met Your Mother.)

I was so lonely, and I’m sorry. I love you, but it’s time to say goodbye. I am sitting in a coffee shop that faces the Montparnasse traffic. You are getting up and saying goodbye, putting on your coat, which is huge and dusty and tweed and 34 years old and you walk outside and wave goodbye while walking across the road and there is a speeding car of whatever colour and whatever make and a splat and a scream and you are gone, just like you have always been.

performance part 2

Since I didn't really conclude/properly finish my post from yesterday about performative intelligence, I'm gonna note some things down here.

So. Performative Intelligence: Why Do I Do It? Do I Do Things? Let's Find Out!

Reasons for my need to display my knowledge:
- Imposter syndrome
- Trying to compensate for the fact that I'm not conventionally beautiful drop-dead gorgeous and thus won't be taken seriously by the people I meet unless I show that I know things
- The fact that my conventional academic achievement has been the only thing that I've been truly good at in life and thus makes up a lot of the way I perceive my identity
- Putting pics of myself studying on my story encourages me to actually go ahead and do that studying
- I've always really liked knowing things, especially in the context of History competitions where one small detail reminds me of the answer and it makes me really happy and I get really addicted to answering those questions

OK I'm bored again bye

Performance

"Part of Post-Modernism's appeal surely is that it allows us to display, if only to ourselves, our knowledge of prior aesthetic and cultural pluralism, our own astute awareness of ironies and paradoxes."

–– Zurmuehlen, Marilyn, 'Post-Modernist Objects: A Relation Between the Past and Present', Art Education, 45 (1992), p. 14.

This quote comes from an article that I was reading yesterday for an essay I need to write for my Antiquity After Antiquity class. I found it so great that not only did I write it down in case I need it for my essay, but I also took a photo of it and put it on my Instagram story.

I find it really good because it points out such a big part of not only post-modernism but academia as a whole, or even just generally society. It's really easy to be pretentious these days because we're in a post-modern age and the whole point of post-modernism is to question everything and uncover the layers of irony. It made me think about performative intelligence and how prevalent it is. We like to display our knowledge and sophistication.

First of all, I posted that quote about performative intelligence on Instagram. Why did I do that? Was that not to show my friends and followers that I: a) am reading about Post-Modernism; b) understand Post-Modernism; c) am sophisticated enough to criticise Post-Modernism? Granted, I also share a lot of other aspects of my life, and I know that I have this weird compulsion to share (or not conceal) where I am, which is why I continue to location mark my posts (despite Instagram removing its very amazing photo map feature a few years ago) and put location filters on a lot of my stories –– and when I post non-studying photos I genuinely care less about other people seeing the pictures than about just passively uploading my data onto the Internet, where it will likely stay forever, despite stories only being viewable for 24 hours. I don't know, it's weird. I'm just trying to say that the reasons why I posted that quote onto Instagram probably isn't because I'm an asshole who needs everyone to know how smart I am in order to cover for my crippling imposter syndrome in the IRL Oxford environment.

It's definitely something I want to consider though. Building upon my last post, I was thinking about how much of my exterior projected persona has to do with performative intelligence.

Something I really remember from high school is when Mr Smith looked over my extended essay and said that academic essays shouldn't be about displaying knowledge, but exploring and idea and doing research, in the same way that doing a lab in school about something where you already know what the results are going to be, just for the lab experience, is pretty much useless. That's the main difference between high school and university. In university, the things you do are so much less cookie-cutter certain; you never really know what's going on anymore. By the time I do my PhD, my dissertation is gonna be on something that nobody else has ever researched before, and undergrads might be reading it.

I struggle a lot with trying to be academic: coming up with original, interesting arguments that shine new light on a topic and that are unique to my own perspective. Not just reiterating what the authors of my sources are saying and not sticking to the script. To do that, I'm learning to write beyond the "introduction - point 1 - point 2 - point 3 - conclusion" structure, and learning to actually write out detailed essay plans (I used to literally just have 1-2 words per paragraph) so that I can formulate my thoughts before setting them to paper. Everything I've ever known has been to fill out the right boxes and take the tests well, reading the criteria and syllabus so I know exactly what's wanted from me.

I don't really know where this is going. I've been writing this with only half my focus. So I'm just going to publish it!

Journal entry from 2017

On the same day that I started this blog, January 1 2017, I also wrote an entry in this little Google Doc I'd started back in the summer that I only wrote a little bit into. Here it is in its entirety:

I feel suffocated by all the things I have to do: I have so many expectations for myself. Why am I not watching more films reading more books learning about more ideas constantly creating and developing..? I think my main problem is recognition, I always imagine myself becoming famous and appreciated and maybe I really need to focus on the means more than the end, on the actual process. I just feel like everything is so urgent. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/to-speak-is-to-blunder?mbid=social_twitter I was reading this essay by Yiyun Li in the New Yorker and she talks about reading Katherine Mansfield’s journals from when she was a teenager. I dont know how Mansfield is but I’m almost 18 and although I’m only on the cusp of adulthood I feel like my life is already over. Why did I not do things earlier, faster, better. And I don’t worry about CAS reflections or studying for mocks or…? I guess I’m thinking too long term i have FIVE MONTHS left all I have to do is survive these five months but I feel as though I might Burst I am so desperate to become something great. I started to write absurdist and satirical stories out of self-consciousness because you can’t criticise me if I don’t take myself seriously. My writing is bad and good on purpose. But when I read beautiful things I want to create beautiful things also. I have this desperate need to fill every moment of my life with something meaningful (but I watched the big bang theory for like 3 hours last night…) I don’t feel that I am doing enough there is always someone out there doing more than me doing better than me, I’m not jealous of Lorde who became a superstar at my age I’m jealous of Kelley Dong a random person on Tumblr who writes about film and seems to have things sorted out, I’m jealous of Charlotte, a Chinese-Canadian girl on Tumblr who makes films and plays the piano and makes art and has friends and followers and looks pretty in an ugly kind of way. I know, I know I’m doing a lot but i feel it’s not enough. I guess if I had 13k followers on Instagram assuming ceteris paribus I’d feel a lot more accomplished, this kind of popularity is so superficial but I still find it so important, this kind of validation from strangers, a feeling that you’re appreciated I guess… I do all this and I’m so constantly stressed by my own soul and yet I still spend hours scrolling meaninglessly on Instagram and Facebook why do I feel so disconnected from everything and lost. I never called Obrist and I never will. In ten days I find out if I got into Oxford or not but it does not really matter I just feel… I don’t know there are things that are indescribable I know I know I am still in the “early life” tab on my Wikipedia page and things will be different post-humously. I am really not good at writing in journals. I am so far away from who I want to be. 

I totally forgot that I wrote this, but I basically haven't progressed that much in the past year plus. I survived the 5 months and got into Oxford but do I feel any better about myself? Not really. I'm capital-R Realising things every day but they're really the same things, and I keep trying to improve but it's just baby steps.

I've always been in pursuit of a life that looks cool from a stranger's perspective. I'm trying to stop being so cripplingly self-conscious about what strangers think of me. But all I've ever wanted is for teenage girls, whether now or 50 years in the future, to think I'm cool. To be every girl that I've ever thought was cool.

I saw a book yesterday on Rowan Blanchard's Instagram (another girl of whom I'm jealous) called Theory of the Young-girl and I really really really want to read it. I'm hoping I'll learn something. I don't know what's in store for me in the future.

24 hours in the swiss mountains

I've been thinking lately about starting a vlog channel, mainly for posterity, so that in many years I can come back and watch this and laugh at myself and remember the good times. The problem is, I can't take myself seriously at all. Despite plans I make for making a video about outfits, a week in the life, high school senior advice, etc., I just can't imagine myself along in my room talking to a camera, and then having to listen to my own voice over and over when I edit it, and then having to release that to the world and let everyone see it... it makes me want to cringe. Still, as long as I don't take myself seriously I think it could work. I'll start slow. I'm also putting in quite minimal effort because I'm too busy to fret about whether or not my videos are perfect. 

My first video was made with the iMovie app on my iPad, which is how I plan to make all my videos since I don't want to pay for, or learn, or torrent, Final Cut Pro. Thing is, iMovie is already really inflexible, but the app is worse. For the graphics I had to use a drawing app called Paper 53. 

I hope this becomes a thing. But I probably won't be uploading another video until after first year is over. 

Some rules I'm setting myself for videos: 

- No videos longer than 10 minutes.

- Try to keep videos shorter than 5 minutes.

- No random music that fades in and out during montages. (This montage only has the natural sounds, and although it makes it a bit harder, I think it's a lot better.)

- If I do use music, it needs to be tasteful. No techno/EDM that never fits the video itself.

- No taking myself seriously

So this video was about the mountains. My friend Odelia is a visiting student in Oxford from the US, and she's been spending this holiday travelling around Europe by herself. She came to Switzerland and stayed at my house for a few days. 

On Saturday, I took her to Interlaken. There really wasn't much to see (we'd decided not to try going to the Jungfrau because of how little time we had) so we just walked around. We took the classic Swiss yellow-signed footpath all the way to Bönigen, a town that overlooks Briez, the lake to the right of Interlaken. It was calm and quiet, and there were women doing rowing training sessions on the impossibly blue water. Some people whizzed past on their bikes, and an old lady was walking her dog. We stood by the lake on a pebbled beach and tried skipping rocks – I actually managed to skip a rock for the first time in my life. We'd planned to eat in Bönigen, but the restaurant was way too expensive, so we hopped onto the Postbus and went back to Interlaken. The Korean restaurant we ate at was pretty gross, though, so we topped up our stomachs at a bakery and had slices of cake. We sat there for hours, talking about mental illness, democracy, racism, making friends. It was one of those really long and satisfying conversations, and I felt really good about it afterwards. 

We walked around a bit more, checking out a town called Matten to the south of Interlaken that looked busy on Google Maps. Turned out all the streets were residential. We strolled through the tiny village, saw a couple of really modern churches (one Evangelical/Methodist church looked like it was literally one of those big shipping containers that had been painted white, installed with a couple of windows, and adapted into a church. The other one had a normal-looking building, but it had this big white block next to it with a spike attached to the top - a bell tower? It had kept the very traditional Swiss church roof spike, but the rest of the structure was totally new and minimalistic. Both of those buildings were so fascinating to me.)  It had gotten really hot, and we were sweating. Then we returned and got on the train back. 

The train from Interlaken to Spiez contained a couple of middle aged men of that annoying, entitled variety where they will speak and joke around with you for no reason other than their own entertainment. I tried to stay good-natured, thinking, actually, about what the very extroverted and easysgoing Damon and Jo would do, which is laugh, smile, and joke with them. But they kept speaking to us in German and trying to ask questions. I said enough to humor them but they were irritating. Every time I did anything, like drink water or take out a book to tell Odelia about it, they would comment on it. They kept asking me where we were from, which I don't appreciate for various reasons, so I just said "Genf", but they didn't believe me. Thank God the trip was only 20 minutes long, so we got off for our next connection soon after. I know I'm trying to be more positive these days, but I've never really been big on having conversations with strangers. 

I did observe a stranger on the next train though (Spiez-Bern). It was a teenage girl wearing a very trendy outfit including a pair of Nike Air Max 97s, which I find disgusting (I've never understood why people will drop large amounts of money for shoes that are on trend, considering they'll be out of fashion and unwearable within the year), but you know, to each their own. She looked cool. I watched as she took another pair of shoes out of her backpack, sneakers whose color matched her sweater exactly, and started putting their laces back in. I wondered what her story was. Out of the few things she'd brought with her, why was there an extra pair of shoes? Why was she relacing them while putting them on top of her bag - was she not scared of the dirt? They didn't look new: in fact they had some brown stains on them. I concluded that she'd gone somewhere for an overnight trip (without planning an outfit change between the two days) and had spilled coffee on her shoes. She'd then put on a second pair of shoes – either newly bought or borrowed (because why would she bring an extra pair... plus they don't match her outfit as well as the original pair) and washed the dirty shoes. They'd dried and she was relacing them, but had been unable to completely get rid of the stains. 

After she was done with the sneaker, she took out her phone and went on Instagram. She went on someone's profile and repeatedly went through their story to watch the same picture over and over again. I wondered what she was thinking about.