late july

This morning I went to help the Campuswide Honors Program register new freshmen into SPOP (Student Parent Orientation Program). When I told my dad last night that I was going to go to campus early enough to get there by 7 AM he asked me, Why do you always sign up for those things? I told him I didn’t know....I don’t actually know. I always feel compelled to. And then I told him, this is my last time helping out at one. I don’t think it convinced him that I am any more justified in the escapade. 

I think, out of all the forces that guide me throughout my day, one that I am quite sensitive to is that of possibility--I think I have found myself, over the past three years, returning to campus on early mornings to help with these events because of moments like what I experienced yesterday, cleaning the mirror in my bathroom--I found it necessary to ask myself, sternly, wiping over my reflection in circles, what I expected out of the next morning, and all I could answer to myself was that I never knew who I might meet, who might meet me, who might be changed. I am not, by a very long shot, the brightest or the friendliest student that the CHP has to offer. I am probably not even properly qualified to serve as a “face” of CHP, because I have never felt very at home within its community. But I’m drawn back to it, again and again, drawn back to volunteer opportunities that involve greeting and meeting new students, because I think there is a possibility that somewhere amongst all of them there is someone like me. Awkward, strange, discontent and all. 

Mostly--I envy them. I look at them all, new-faced, excited, innocent, willing, eager, and I think to myself, Lily, didn’t you have good hopes for yourself when you were in their shoes, didn’t you wish to be somebody really great, didn’t you have this reluscent vision of all that UCI had to offer you....didn’t you wish to become a good person, to meet other good people, to fall in love, to find a niche....? I did. I know I did. And I’m looking back at my last three years and thinking, did it really happen? Am I anyone at all? If, somehow, I could have known who it was I would have become when I was new-faced and willing, would I have still chosen to move forward, in this direction? I really don’t know. I think there are a lot of things that I could have done better. I could have been more graceful. I regret a lot of things--friends often, encouragingly, but somewhat misguidedly, tell me that it’s the things that I won’t do that I’m going to regret someday, and that might be true, but I regret a lot of of the things I’ve done, too--the people I’ve lost or pushed away, some of the clumsier things I’ve done, some of the choices I’ve made....I don’t regret being shy, and having a hard time making friends. Because the people I’ve met are beautiful, and I need them. I couldn’t have met better people. So if I had to have been me, this is one of the best things that could have happened--that I didn’t know who I’d be, so I’d make the same choices, and so that I’d meet the people who would help me become better....I’m a very shy person, and I’m a late bloomer--socially, I’m immature, shy, clumsy, and when I do reach out I am upon entirely fresh, petrifying ground, and though I have been unsuccessful in a few attempts somehow I am stubborn enough to pursue the people who interest me anyway....

In the same way I suppose, I keep going back to volunteer at the CHP events. I remember two years ago at the “Experience Honors Day,” a day in which prospective CHP students and their parents come to tour the schools, a very small-statured Chinese girl and her parents kept pointing at my nametag, which said “English Major with an Emphasis in Creative Writing”--and I remember that the girl was nearly crying with excitement, because she wanted to be a writer, she had written and illustrated some manga before....I told her about the opportunities I had already had to work with the faculty and to take classes doing something that a lot of people told you, no, wasn’t going to get you a job and wasn’t going to put you into a very liquid job market, either, and I told her about the ways that I found it worth my time, maybe even more so because of that, because, what they don’t tell you is that having to live with question, with darkness, with the strangeness of one’s own compulsions as they oppose reason or security--that’s all preparation for life after college, too. Perhaps it’s even more valuable preparation than all the “job-prep” major tracks. Having to be at peace with yourself when you know you are not doing something that makes sense according to the majority of your peer’s concerns is a skill that you have to learn like any other. I told her this in softer terms. I told her that as uncertain as my future was, I was sure that right now, I was going the right way, that I was doing the right thing for that day. I remember that she was still too moved to speak, but her parents both thanked me extensively. I ran into them later that day while I was walking through the park and they waved to me and thanked me again. I think, really, the moment didn’t have much to do with me. I still wonder how that girl is doing--if she decided that UCI was worth it, and if she did, where she was, and if I’ll run into her in fiction classes, ever.

Today my job was to stamp the hands of all the students waiting in line with a little anteater. It’d be their lunch pass. The day could have easily been a success without me, and for a couple minutes toward the start I was self-conscious of this fact, but I started asking kids where they were from and a few of them opened up to me and I was touched by how gracious they were, and  I became excited for them, for their futures. When most of the students had gone through the registration line and had entered the seminar, a third year nursing major approached me and introduced herself as Beatrice. She saw that I was a fourth-year by my name tag and said something like “how exciting!” and I must have not looked excited because she said quickly, “and scary....” I said I was sure I’d be excited closer to when school started.

And I’ve struggled with it, and I realize that it’s selfish and pointless to worry, and I know in my heart that I am doing the right thing and I have the rest of my life to decide what to do with myself, but I don’t feel very useful on this earth, and I am scared, I am so scared, for what I don’t know. I am probably more scared for my future than I have ever been scared for anything in my life. I try to take the advice of my elders, people who care about me the most--do not worry, it is useless to worry, do what you can with today. And for a large extent, I am able to live day-to-day. But this--this is a beautiful world. This is a world of consistent beginnings, of peering into darkness, entering that darkness, and emerging from it, which is a victory itself, whether or not we plunge straight into another darkness....this is a world of forever-possible renewal, but with that comes the strangeness of unfamiliarity. Every day I am made stranger to myself, every day I’m getting to know myself more. And I am happy, at times. Sometimes I am overwhelmingly content. And sometimes I feel this need for the future like the need that arises out of a presentiment of loss; the preciousness of things being magnified, prismatic. We say, precious, and what we mean are jewels, which absorb and throw the light in short witty glints. But what I mean are the small things held in the hand, recognized as vital, with heartbeats of their own, and held close to the heart. The things felt against the palm and the heart at once. Bird in the hand. Bird in my hand! 

I left today with my hands covered in the ink from the re-filler bottle for the ink pad. Sometimes moments in my life feel entirely mimetic, as if they speak not for themselves but for a larger idea, and for that idea only. But today I’m just going to be a girl who has ink all over her hands. 

I try to be content with what I have...but this is a beautiful world. With all the good there is out in the world, available, willing to be had--with all the futures out there, ready to be had, existing to be had--with all the air in the world to breathe, knowing this, seeing these things, how can I not want it all? 

mid-july

I recently discovered a small Taiwanese restaurant/café called Class 302 close to the university’s campus. I’ve been working late (until the library closes at 8 PM) and visiting the campus gym after this, but usually we’re hungry or too awake after working out to go home and sleep. I introduced one of my friends from the library to another friend from a different circle of my life, and they took me to Class 302 a couple weeks ago. I accidentally ordered dim sum with shredded dried pork as a garnish, and wondered why it tasted so strange to me until Megan pointed out what it was. I’m not sure if it was this small amount of animal protein after years of abstinence or all the sugar in the shaved ice we ordered that gave me a stomach ache later. But it probably wasn’t the pound of sugar.

            Last night we went again and, when considering what to order, my friend turned to me and said “why don’t you get pig like you did last time?” I turned to her and said “are you happy that I ate pig? Does that make you happy?” We were joking; and I don’t even remember what the stuff tasted like, but there’s been a weird concatenation of events in my life recently that have been asking me to consider the choices that I’ve made and the things that are important to me. Sometimes, looking over a menu, I’ll whine, I’ll say something like “I wish I could eat fish!” and then someone with me will say, “why don’t you? We could go to a lot more places,” or, “you should, then we can go get sushi.” Someone at work the other day was really surprised to learn that I don’t even eat/drink animal broth, not even with the “bouillon cubes, you know, for flavor?” I said something to the effect of “if I couldn’t live without that flavor in my life I’d have a different set priorities.” And it’s true. It’s sort of a tautological statement, so it doesn’t even matter that I said it, but at the time it seemed appropriate. I’m wondering now how much of what I say is white noise.

            I wonder—I suppose if you don’t know, if you haven’t made this kind of sacrifice—you couldn’t know what it’s like. My body still wants animal products. I smell meat and it is food to my nose and I want to eat it, I feel drawn to it, I know it would be good to me, for me. I know that it’d be a lot easier for friends to take me out or take care of me, it’d be easier for my family, it’d be easier for me, too, to shop, not to have to read the ingredients on every single pre-packaged thing I buy to make sure I know what I’m putting into my body, that it doesn’t violate what I hold to be right for my life. Sometimes I want to ask, when people say things like “we could go more places”—I want to say—do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t know what I’m giving up? Do you think that every day, I’m unaware of the sacrifices I’m making and asking you to make if you want to go somewhere with me? I resist the impulse to withdraw; I’m loathe to be a burden. But I also feel, I don’t have a choice in this matter. I fully believe that the right thing for me to do is to abstain from eating animal products. And, believing this to be the right thing to do, do I have the option not to do it? To live the way I feel is right, this is what I have to do. And I am used to explaining this to people, but I’m sure it’s one of those things that you don’t understand until you give up something like it; until you are, multiple times each day, fighting against your natural impulses to do what you think is right.

            I used to sort of think that people were born innocent and good and this dissipated as they grew older and violated their own purity, or goodness. But what I’m learning more and more is that you have to earn goodness. I’m not talking about spiritual righteousness or goodness—that’s a whole other discussion. I mean, you have to earn the type of self that puts good into the world. You don’t have that from birth and then lose it. When I got home from England I realized the simple validation, person-to-person, of receiving a smile from someone on the street or in passing. You don’t find a lot of that in the UK—they’re famously reserved—so when I returned to California after three months of solitude, after three months of fighting to preserve my sense of self and worth amidst a world that did not know or care I was walking its streets, and I found that people, strangers, smiled at me in passing, I felt incredibly…human. I felt acknowledged as a person, as a human being with a heart and a brain and something beyond the body. And that doesn’t just happen—people aren’t born smiling! I was touched, I think, by the fact that someone would take time out of their own minds or own concerns to reach out to me, even if it was in a small way. And I began to understand that my reservations are not protecting me from a world that doesn’t understand me and does not wish me well, but are stifling these opportunities in my life and other people’s lives. I think now about all the people who have changed my life, who have made an impact on the way I look at God or the world and everything is illuminated in a certain fatedness, and I realize that every small thing they did for me has gotten me to where I am, has gotten me through some intense difficulties, has, at times, saved me from myself….This is a small example. But I believe that doing what you feel to be right, even if it’s hard, is something you must preserve. Despite what is easy, or what appears to you, or what would please the people around you most. People often wish to be better. I think there are endless opportunities to be better. People sometimes say that you get back what you put into the world, but I think that’s missing the point—your job is to put goodness into the world. What you get out of it is that you’re better able to put good into the world.

I look up to people in a magnetic sort of way who are natural lights, who can make anyone feel better, who can brighten anyone’s day without trying, with ease and grace and something akin to beauty, a tangible spirituality and peace. I am not that person. But there are still things I can do.