waiting around to go to the airport

everything is back in boxes, or stashed away in some part of shelby's room. it's been a crazy two and a half weeks back in chicago and i've loved most of it. i'm surprised at how much i enjoy being alone lately - from longer commutes, to going to the park, to just cooking in the apartment, with music playing. i think about how so much of my younger self was trying to be someone else, i feel like it's such a cliche though, but we all kinda go through it somehow, before we realise we don't need to be anything but ourselves. and i mean then it's the question of what the self is, which is a whole other rabbit hole to go down. but, it's been nice to leave a party when i get tired, and retreat under my sheets to watch a movie with a cup of hot honey lemon green tea, and not feel like i am missing out on anything. i wonder if fear of missing out is something that is more part of our generation that anything else, because of social media, and constantly knowing what everyone else is up to, but a more polished, curated version of other people's lives. and you just sit around feeling bummed out that maybe you're not making the most of things. i wonder if we do need to make the most of things. sometimes, making the most of things just makes me even more tired and unable to enjoy the most of whatever it is that im trying to make the most of.

anyway, back to packing, unpacking, repacking. and moving! oh my moving. i love helping people move, but moving in myself is another thing. i'm excited though, to be placed again. and settled somewhere instead of living out of a box. though that has had it's own merits too. being able to quickly pack up and move is such a romanticised concept that i theoretically enjoy.

i wrote these thoughts a month ago:

I think about conversations to process other conversations,
I've taken so long to learn how to slowly ease into myself
I watched a show recently that says society trains us to hate ourselves because it's more profitable when we exist like that
I think about the church and how so much of the time it's antithetical to what Jesus preached
I think about joy and happiness and our pursuit of it, and wonder if suffering contributes to joy. Not that I'm saying I want to suffer or want people to suffer but I wonder if being happy 100% of the time is ideal
I think about our ideals and if they are really ideal
I think about being single forever and that it'll be okay, I'd travel and live in different parts of the world and have occasionally really good sex and have conversations both the mundane and the great
I think I just saw a bat

so what are you really going to do?

at uptown climbing with jun. it makes me feel weird sometimes. i think just the association of being watched by people/having had anxiety attacks before when i was not in a good place. finding apartments has been challenging. i have a good feeling about the one on belmont. but i don't know. hm. we'll see. aunty joyce i think prayed about God having set aside an apartment for us. that was comforting.

i think i'm happy? i just had that realisation a moment ago. it's not like i have not been, you just don't really think about that much, like kindof definitively ya know? i think i'm happy. Jun, hope and me sat on the balcony last night for dinner. it was beautiful, watching the light change as the sun set. i had whipped up two simple dishes with jun and hope's help from what jun had in the fridge and we talked over dinner and virgin mimosas. lol we only had sprite, no champagne. conversations lately have been geared towards the future mostly. what people our age are "doing" now i guess - varying from us (being in college), to those who are already working, making loads of money or having their own businesses, to those with kids and husbands. i thought, looking at the city before me, all the buildings - the offices, homes. lights flickered on and off as people left their offices for home, and arrived home from offices after a day's work. i thought about all the lives in those windows. the vastness of the sheer number of people living in the city before my eyes was kind of comforting. like i'm just one in the many you know? i turned back to face hope and jun. the conversation was about what we see ourselves "doing" i guess, and the frequent questions we get from friends and family, 

so what are you really gonna do? 

how is your degree going to practically contribute to your life? 

how are you going to make money? 

we laughed and joked, but also acknowledged the reality that those questions sometimes pose - like we have/should be out there finding jobs that pay. i think we each make art for different reasons, but we each feel the need to make, to create. for some of us, it's something we love and express ourselves through, others - a coping mechanism, a way to critique society, or some - we simply feel the need to make.

artists sometimes, more often than not, have to work twice as hard to get half as far, but far in which direction is what i have been wondering lately. where are we trying to go? what do practicality and success and happiness mean? doesnt it all differ from person to person? why does society feel the need to have set criteria that people tick off or feel the need to meet? i dont think there was really a conclusion to the conversation. i mean we each kind of had inklings of perhaps where our hearts are drawn to, with the considered realities of practicalities like cash and paying the bills, and i mean, we're just taking it day by day i guess. it's as if art school taught us both that hard work is key, but just when you almost let hard work consume you, you realise that that isn't all it is, and continually striving isn't the way to go, you get lost easily in the hustle. i mean that's why we are artists, no? there's always the thought/need to get into shows/galleries, to be known, to make social change, to make a difference, leave a mark. but also havent i always made work that notices the mundane, that pleads for our steps to slow down, our eyes to see, our ears to hear, our hearts to be softened to the everyday, to people we love, people we don't yet know, to remember we are human, and flawed and messy and kind of all over the place, but maybe that's beautiful? or maybe it's not beautiful but it is who we are? the lights from the ships on the horizon flickered apprehensively.

there and then though, it was enough for me to know that my heart was full. to be on the balcony with friends i love having dinner, with the city beneath us.

of presence/silence/conversations

i bumped into cheryl at the bus stop today. she came and sat by me and gave me a hug. it was so good to see her. she felt like home somehow. the last time we hung out regularly together was during ac cell - i feel like one of the periods where i felt most myself, and that feeling of familiarity came back to me. we were taking the same bus back and i was so glad to have time to catch up and be silly and filterless and just talk. i feel like it has taken me such a long time to know how to engage in conversations genuinely. i think growing up i always feel like i had to have everything resolved before i talked about things. i dont know where i got the impression that talking to others should be about sharing conclusions, and having answers, and resolutions. it was difficult to talk about things i still had questions about or were unresolved. i think one part of it was because i didnt want to put the other person in a position of feeling like they needed to help me solve my problems, or say feel pressured to make me feel better. which often, i think i feel the need to. i've always been one to need to fix things, or to provide answers, or to comfort, or feel like just in some way my interaction with someone else has made a difference. but idk. i feel like it's taken me a while (as in more than two decades) to learn that presence is so valuable. being there, being present, listening. like that is often simple and enough. and when it's not enough, it's okay. we aren't meant to or expected to be solutions to others, i think we all struggle together don't we? sometimes we talk through things to reach new revelations, sometimes we just all get more confused, sometimes we just need to get things out, sometimes it's just sitting in silence.

hm. hello june.

sundaes, pancakes, thoughts, and beauty.

I was laying on my bed watching something on youtube, half listening to my sister, half watching this video - I shout an answer, and she shouts another question, I shout something that doesn’t answer the question. She comes and sits on the bed she used to sleep on and starts telling me about something. I stop watching the video and listen. She braids her hair as she recounts a conversation. I interject to correct a falsity. Her eyes widen. I laugh. It leads to an hour-long catchup about things you wouldn’t expect to fit in an hour.

Mum and dad keep dragging me out for walks. My parents are legitly more fit than me. But also the reward is all that good food that they have scouted for me these three months. Parents do so much more and worry so much more than I ever will know of, and I am ever so thankful.

my heart is home again.

The 24-hour journey home this time felt okay. I’ve had worse flights, worse transits. I sit beside a man who used to work in Singapore, as he tries to recount the places he’s been. He says there’s a fountain. Suntec city I say? He says yea, but there’s this other neighborhood that starts with a t? nobody calls places in Singapore neighborhoods but I don’t bother correcting him. Tampines? The plane starts to move forward as it prepares for takeoff. I need to look it up he says, as he pulls up his phone and turns it off airplane mode. I think to myself boy you gonna screwup the signals on the plane, even though I know it wont. He says “Teh muh-sake!” that’s it. I’m like ah, temasek. Glad we got that established. It was a nice conversation, as if a preparation to go home to familiarity, to the land where Asians are the majority, where the accents are familiar, (everyone has an accent yall get over it), where my feet can take me places with my eyes closed. I close my eyes as the plane takes off.

The semester passed by so slowly, kinda painfully, but also pretty quick in other ways. There never seemed to be enough time for the amount of things to do, conversations to be had, ideas to churn on. I made do with what I had. I feel like it was a semester where I didn’t have any energy left to try to hold onto or care too much about people, or things around me, it took whatever I had just to keep putting one feet in front of the other. But I think I learnt that, sometimes we carry others, sometimes others carry us, sometimes we all just try to crawl forward together.

The last week of being in the states found me at cedar campus for intervarsity’s chapter focus week. I was the only one from my chapter going, Jessica was so lovely as to drive me, and another student Cam from Roosevelt, and rachael and leann were in the car together too. 10 hours it took to get to the upper peninsula, but so worth it (I wasn’t the one driving though lol). It was a week of having a lot of time to myself, realizing that I was socially not as outgoing as I used to be (but that was okay), I truly enjoy good conversations, i don’t have to have my faith figured out fully and struggling is fine, I am an artist. I feel like I knew this before, but you know the head and the heart thing, these things seemed to do some sort of osmosis to my heart.

I think it was one of the most beautiful places I had been to, so much of it was just what it was, the lake and nature and trees and whatever lived in them. The hikes I took, and time of just lying on the rocks and being small in God’s creation was very life giving. The waters were so clear and it felt nice to breathe and have time to feel my lungs do their thing. It was fun laughing and playing two truths and one lie with with cam, rachael and wardell, where rachael accidentally told us all three truths because she forgot to add a ‘not’ to one of her statements. Waking up and realizing I wasn’t the only one in bed, and laughing with Malory and deciding we both could sleep another five minutes as we waited for the line for breakfast to clear. Watching rachael and jessica be very excited about ice-cream sundaes. Turning off all the lights so we could watch the lightning and the lake when it started raining with jessica. Meeting singaporeans, christine, joel, and adriel! christine and I were in mg at the same time, and adriel and me both went to acsi. It was funny, they came up to me and were like “are you from Singapore?” and I’m like yea.. wait how did they know, as I thought that they said they saw my ac pullover from the day before. I didn’t even realise I had brought it. they very kindly basically adopted me into their chapter and we walked to Narnia together. The conversation with Nicole on the way back was really refreshing too – I love hearing stories, so much. God writes stories, and our lives so beautifully, I may run away and try to deny things He has done, but stories?! They touch my heart. Having people to wake up to, be in community with, having the liberty to be myself – also to disappear when I wanted to and be by myself – I am so thankful, to be known, and loved.

The last few days in Chicago hanging out with Shelby made leaving so hard. We watched romcoms the night I came back and ate food. on Saturday, I ran a couple of errands as she went to work, and we met up after to get lunch at PANERA we go to Panera so much lol and to go to the art institute together. We hadn’t had much time individually to go much this semester (besides work where the students go each week) for ourselves, so we thought it’d be a nice end to the semester to check out the shows that we hadn’t seen together. The Robert frank show was amazing - so Shelby, I loved it. I headed to the lake after to sit for a bit before hanging out with her while she finished up some work stuff before heading home together. The next morning, she made pancakes and we made it all fancy with icing sugar and strawberries! And ate before she drove me to the airport. We missed clare though, it was nice to have time to hangout a little.

A week has passed by so quickly, three more weeks before it’s back to the states. Both places have become home – in their own ways. Places do carry sentiment, but ultimately, it’s the people that carry me through the seasons (o lawd so cheesy but it’s true).

I wish you a wonderful rest of the week, I hope you take time to notice the beauty in something mundane tomorrow and everyday.

we stood by the door talking about whether we open presents in front of our friends and family or not. I said I preferred not to because I'm crap at pretending I like something if I don't. Melissa said she usually likes the things she gets so it's okay.

i planned to be in the studio for a good four hours tonight, but I'm in bed.

goodbyes are so hard

i find quiet in

quiet is the hardest to find. it is the most stark in the midst of chaos. 

i find quiet in the silences during a meal with snow, where there isn't a need for words, just a mutual understanding of the present circumstance, a simply being with one another and having this meal together. 

i find quiet in the walk home after TA-ing my last class for the semester - a sense of emptiness at the end of yet another session of classes, yet contentment and relief in the excitement and anticipation of middle schoolers curating their final exhibition.

i find quiet in the morning, when i awake, but it's not time to get up yet. i close my eyes again, fully conscious: the peace before the shitstorm that is the rest of the day.

i find quiet hanging out in the studio with ciel, both drenched from running through the rain, but content with snacks and sheer hard work.

i find quiet in catching up with liv, chatting across states - it felt like we were in the same room again. technology is a weird thing.

i find quiet in packing up after teaching a class - when students leave, and it's just me and their artworks, and a little bit of mess. i breathe. one more class to go.

i find quiet in listening to my roommates have a conversation, while i sit in silence, so very thankful for their presence even in the moments where i am unable to actively participate in a conversation.

i find quiet in riding the train home with 5 of my dear friends who have loved me so well and have been there from the very beginning.

i find quiet watching a dance/performance piece with alexa at the mca on a rainy saturday afternoon.

i find quiet in drives, and coffee hangouts, and meme exchanges with clare and shelby.

i find quiet in conversations with caro, usually, most of the time, at hot woks.

i find quiet in catching up with my sister a little over text, in receiving photos from dad and mum telling me about what they have been up to. 

quiet finds me in the moments i least expect. quiet is always welcomed,

i walked by the lake with a stranger today
watching a whole bunch of other strangers around us
everyone was soaking up whatever bit of sunshine they could
there were:
people playing frisbee
dressed up kids filming a video
old men laying flat on the grass sun tanning
couples taking walks
families fishing

laughter, so much laughter
and chatter
and peace

on the bus home, the tulips lined the streets
it always seems as though they sprung out of nowhere
springtime is here!
when they are actually planted this time of year
every year
they're still pretty though
i watched the sunlight hit them
they were soaking up sunshine too