Positive Reflection

About five months have passed since I started going to grad school in Iowa. I've actually done a lot; small things add up. That's been a pretty important lesson. Little things that, viewed individually, are easy, become monumentally hard when piled all together.

Another: things that at one point of my life I was really good at, I can't expect to be an expert at all of them at this point. Be that piano, languages, writing, or math, things don't last forever, but some part of them remains. The part that remains at least can regenerate and become what it used to be. Of course, the seed needs good soil and the right climate to grow in. Iowa's pretty harsh for that, and it's hard to provide room for other parts of me to grow when so much of my math brain has to grow as well. Just like it's hard to find space for anything good in Iowa when it's overrun by cornfields.

The part of me that's trying to force itself out of the soil is the grown-up, the guy that knows what's good for himself and the guy who knows how to get himself through a normal post-college life. At the same time, the young guy in me wants to force his presence through the robotic work weeks.

I've learned a lot about living independently, and there's not much that I can say I've finished learning. Here's what I've learned and what I'm learning...

Learned:
- To cook consistently, and added a few dishes to my very limited repertoire (aka burritos, sloppy joes, pancakes... all of which my boyfriend or his mom cooked and I decided I should be able to as well, haha. Also curry, which isn't hard when you have a sauce pack. mmmMSG.)
- A house is not a home. Roommates are not necessarily to become friends, at least not ones who are there when you need them.
- My academic side needs to be constantly stimulated, or prodded. A lot of last semester was just prodding, though, and that's not good either. (AKA A lot of work with no purpose.)
- To live on my own, coordinate shopping trips and laundry all while maintaining the academic routine to which I'm currently enslaved.
- How to come out to larger groups of people/coworkers that I'm constantly around.
- Having a long-distance boyfriend with an open relationship is extremely tough, but it's what I want, and if anyone's capable of it, I am. (Well, if the relationship weren't open, that would be ideal, but that's not possible. :/ Also it's questionable whether closed is actually ideal on my end - I haven't resolved that question yet. More on that later.)
- Grad school is grad school, regardless of where it is.
- Regrets must be gotten over. The way I've done this for the Spring semester is by reviving my focus on learning math IN class (which I enjoy more than learning math outside of it, admittedly). Yes, that actually has done the trick, at least so far.
- And the above solved the problem of how to deal with incompetent teachers and sketchy academic quality.
- It's difficult to keep in touch with people who don't live where you are, even if they're back home. Facebook is useless in facilitating this task, as well as many others.

Still learning:
- Math, and I'm learning to accept that I'm going to be learning predominantly math for awhile, and if I continue at this, potentially for the rest of my life.
- How to balance my personal needs with my demanding school routine.
- How to accept that though I may not have a job and I'm only doing homework, I am still useful and I'm doing what I should.
- How to deal with having an open relationship. It's really hard to stay convinced of the other guy's love when it's so early in the relationship that you had to do this, regardless of the leaps and bounds the other guy goes to in order to facilitate that. Also, I get lonely out here too, and I wonder if the open long- distance actually is better than closed long-distance for me. Unfortunately there's no way to evaluate that because the latter situation didn't happen. Actually, I probably had a chance to try to make it happen, but I conceded a little too early. And on a related note:
- Sometimes life presents you with two choices, and you can only pick one. Both are decent choices, but really something's missing from both, and by choosing at all you get the added pain of not having the other choice, not knowing whether the other is better for you. I kind of feel that way at this moment with the open vs. closed thing. But back to the relationship, the obvious thing is to just go with seeing other guys/hooking up with them and seeing where it leads. One thing, though: This is a pain in the ass. I would rather not do it, but it hurts me not to. Essentially I'm forced to. It's kind of like going to school and getting the reward later, or at least that's what I have to tell myself. But yeah, there isn't any going back right now from what I agreed to (and I wasn't reluctant at all when I agreed to it, actually), so the proper course is to proceed. In any case, what I'm learning in general when faced with these kinds of situations is just to proceed and believe that I made the right choice, though the reasoning may not be evident in the short-term (but the payoff should be there in the long term). Japan v. Paris, I'm over that. Boston v. Iowa, I'm not quite there. With the relationship thing, I actually don't care too much about the decision I made, but I just don't know how to proceed, and it scares me, as it did before I was in a relationship. Well, I got a pretty good relationship out of my efforts so I might as well have faith and confidence in myself.
- My phone calls to friends back home and elsewhere have been long and taken a lot of time out from studying. My pondering about life has been long (like the paragraph above) and reduced my study time similarly. I need to ponder life and study simultaneously, I guess? I'm still learning how to deal with the lack of time to do everything I feel is necessary.
- Still learning how to go to bed early consistently. Just broke off from that routine the last two days, and when this happens it really KO's my ability to work.
- How to come out to my parents and get them to accept who I am, and who I'm with.
- How to prevent myself from getting lonely later by realizing the possibility that I will be (even if I don't feel lonely at the moment), and seeing other guys/going out to the gay bar, or hanging out with friends when I need to, or calling friends when I need to. I think the first one is the most important, because I tried it last semester ONCE and I actually felt a lot better, even if it was just sleazy dancing and nothing else.
- How to realize that I am who I am and I should play the game of life by my rules, i.e. seek success where I know I can get it and put myself on top, not relative to other people, but just on top.

It's been awhile. Thanks, freewriting.

Thank you

I have a list of things to do. Among them are to write about 8 thank-you cards and send them. And my father's day card is essentially a thank-you card. So to get away from staring at the mound of thank-you cards like a mound of obligations, or the roof of my black laptop like a black hole sucking in my mind like a vacuum with a mind like an ogre, I'm about to make a list of thank-yous. Just like when you go to church and then you say thank-you, except you don't even think about meaning it.

· Thank you to my friends, who have stuck with me and been there for the past 4 years, or the past 7, or the past 17 - wow.
· Thank you to my family, who do a lot more for me than I will ever acknowledge or understand.
· Thanks to my teachers, who have done the best they can to educate me and to prepare me for deeper questions to be posed in the future.
· Thank you to nature, nature ever uncertain, for comforting me with sunny, lazy days and buffeting me with snowstorms to make sure I'm awake.
· Thanks to the people who've applauded me for work I've done or music I've performed. It truly means a lot to me.
· Thank you to those who have given advice, even if it went unheeded or it wasn't sufficient.
· Thank you to those who understand my skepticism, and even more thanks to those who understand my happiness.
· Thank you to people who aren't afraid to open their mouths and be called stupid, unless you do it on autopilot all the time.
· Thanks to those who have taught me to be myself, to learn things myself and how to do those two things.
· Thank you to Iowa City for being so welcoming and encouraging when Boston is not.
· Thank you to Japan for opening up your world to me. No thanks to Paris, sorry, except my host family and buddies from there.
· Thank you to math, for providing me a path to continue exploring and keeping my mind open and challenged.
· Thank you to Tufts, for being an institution where I was allowed the room and time to explore myself and what it means to be somebody in this time period and in this body.
· Thanks to the spirit out there that comes into me and leaves me from time to time, for allowing me to see a world beyond the restraints of logic.
· Thank you to music.

Thank you.

Someplace for my head

During a break in the rainfall, and before I realized I don't care about abstract algebra, I was outside, walking beside the Latino Center, when I caught the scent of some pine shrubs enjoying the glory of hydration. I stopped, turned, and walked over to confirm my nostrils' message. Exuberant pine needles, ever green. I kept walking, recalling to mind that my sense of smell seems to have heightened. Smell is the sense most securely tied to memory; it's as though my body is searching for some memory here to hold on to, some lingering, irresistibly fragrant figment of my past to lure me back into the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' common scene. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's not, since it might be my hormones making me search for pheromones in the air, which the blossoming plants give off unashamedly, while eligible lover men and lover women decline to betray even the slightest hint of enjoying the presence of one another. Maybe it's both these things.

I mistake a bird for an airplane, and then an airplane flies in a linear fashion above the clouds, as if to tell me that nature escapes too easily and one has to chase it whenever one can, without tiring. Another airplane flies above, when I look back.

The needles on the pine trees all point straight out, convinced of their direction. But they all point in different directions. Some of them are pulled by gravity, drooping. Some of them have fallen, still green. Many of the brown, faded, remain. The rain has stopped again. Somewhere, someone is running. Less people today because the weather isn't as kind. The others roam inside searching for someone to be kind to them. A man drinks a smoothie at Hotung Cafe.

Tufts - the end is near. Life will go on as usual. Four years from now, a new train stop will appear for the Green Line on Tufts' campus, and it will be a hassle to walk to the gym. Parking of the kind I sometimes enjoy, legal or not, will be a distinct impossibility. Tufts will continue to increase its reputation, maybe developing a reputation equivalent to Ivy League in time for my retirement. And I will be an alumnus, at least.

I will probably be somewhere else. But Somerville, I will miss you.

The linear transformation

I don't know what a linear transformation is. I still don't know (I can probably give a shitty guess) after I was supposed to 3 years ago, and even if I guessed what it was, could I prove some map was a linear transformation? That's basic math for people like me who are supposed to be mathematicians.

My story at Tufts is a linear transformation.

Hopelessly in a single direction, but valiantly fought. I look at the picture of me on my Tufts ID card, taken when I was a freshman. I look so innocent, with that nice, warm polo jacket that I lost somewhere, and that green t-shirt that I got in Japan in 2005. This break, I left that shirt at home and came back to campus. Symbolic enough, but home's not far away enough. This is an awkward transition stage from my past to my future. And I have to move further physically in order to complete it.

So I will probably go to Iowa for five to six years. Five to six years! That's a lot of time to spend in one place. I don't know if I can handle it, but I know for sure that I'm fed up with Boston and can't take any more of it. People here are just... so not me. And that sounds like a shallow, flamboyant-ish statement that I'd ordinarily not permit to escape my mouth, but it's true. I don't feel at one with anything here, especially not me.

Why not with me? I've changed a lot, really fast. Perhaps the transformation isn't linear. But we act like all transformations are that simple.

But I was at an on-campus LGBT party tonight that sucked, and it sucked because I didn't dance with anyone who I didn't already know. Que sera sera? Fuck that.

I was told to beware the phrase いい加減にする: to leave things halfway. That's what I've done on this journey. But I can't make it alone, and so I haven't had the push to get me where I need to be, to cure my pure ignorance of how to do these things. I've started an online dating profile but I haven't messaged anyone in a month, ever since I sent some guy a message and we went on a couple of dates and it didn't work. Why do I get discouraged so easily? I hate rejectionだから (that's why). And I don't get rejected frequently enough, so the natural dose of rejection just isn't there and any little bit is an overdose. Can't take it.

The other thing is, I'm not a freshman anymore. That party tonight was replete with freshmen who were all up for just having a fun spring party, and probably had lots of social connections in case they ever wanted to go to bed with someone. Well, I don't!

But I've changed. Had I never done pushups, situps, and gone to the gym last semester, my body would've looked like a freshman's. Right now I'm somewhere between muscular and cute, but it's an uncertain state - it just doesn't work. Yes, I think like this, all the time. It's inevitable. That cute, shy, unconfident freshman in the picture is still the shy, unconfident man, but he's no longer fresh and he's no longer the same kind of cute. All you can take from all this is this: there's a map taking me somewhere else, and I wish to God that someone would show it to me!

He's not willing to be flamboyant. He never fully was. いい加減にした。(I left it halfway.) Freshman year was the closest I ever got to being flamboyant. And yet there's room to go back and try to be who I can be in a form that everyone can understand - maybe then they'll understand something about me. I don't think anyone else who's gay understands, though. And that's my own fault.

I have to be honest. Sometimes I wish I were straight. But then I don't because I know I wouldn't understand anything about the world.

At least I can admit to myself that I don't understand anything about the world. That's something that a straight Alex wouldn't have been able to do.

Oh, to clarify: I waited until people started leaving to hit on someone, and it failed. That's what happens when you use the move PROTECT too much in Pokémon. Eventually you get hurt. But here there's a time limit; Pokemon doesn't have that!...

But I do.

All I can say to you is this: I, Alex, have tried to be the best I can be and not best anyone else. But all I have done is best myself. Beset myself with this all.

It's a lonely night in Somerville... yet I don't feel so bad about it. It's certainly not the alcohol; that never worked before. Because I know there is beauty out there, and it's in music.

This story is too fucking epic. Just like some things are "so fucking metal." I've got to win here before I get out of here.

In between the useful and the unused

That's where I am. Sitting at my desk pretending to be a diligent little math boy with his pencil and his pensive mind, scribbling in his head before scribbling on the paper, I pretend to be the fully self-trained, self-motivated scholar who knows what he's doing. Useful.

The thoughts stop occasionally, like they did just now, and they sit and rest, bubbling around in my head. What has gone by this week and how can I apply it? Then again, unapplied, what is the pure essence of these thoughts?

I've just spent the last 4 days with my life 50% filled up by the crisis that my friend is going through. Given the wrong diagnosis, she's been on antidepressants since the age of 13 when really the problem was that she's bipolar. But they found that one out just a little too late. The latest antidepressant and consequent necessary withdrawal have sent her into wild mood swings, driving her from maniacal, unfocused highs to hysterical, suicidal lows. Her mind 100% controlled by the medicine. I think what I did to help her saved her life. I wouldn't have done otherwise, however. Who would've acted differently if they were me? Who would've?

Details can be spelled out later and in other venues, but she's in a psychiatric facility now. However, I'm not the only reason she's alive and well & where she needs to be now. She also is. This can't be ignored. On Friday when none of her friends were around campus the medicine drove her into a low deeper than any before, and she started drinking, and saw the pills on her cabinet, and thought that if she just took all of them this would be over real fast. You know how she convinced herself otherwise? She reasoned out of it with her knowledge taken from her classes as a psychology major.

Maybe some things aren't so useless (as reputed) after all. Only unused.

Epic story short this has given me more than a bit of perspective about life. And my future. And her dad's a math man who got a Ph.D at Brandeis with a thesis advisor from MIT but who's currently unemployed. You know why? Because he couldn't teach. I can... and he even still studies every day, his wife doing the work that keeps the family going. Reminds me of a good Murakami novel. No, two. Norwegian Wood and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

I think my heart can rest easy. But my mind won't. I know she might be in that room, screaming right now, another night of 5 hours or less (or none) of sleep... like k-os repeats in that song about "I can't really make you love me," I'm haunted.

Why?

I saw

When I was in Vancouver, on the SkyTrain, I saw a guy who looked like he might be really ugly. His clothes were a mess from what I saw outta the corner of my eye, and he might be homeless I thought. Well, bad look. I looked again and saw that he was normal. Except his face looked really emaciated. And it was him that the alcohol breath was coming from. But holy shit. He should've been so beautiful. He was one of the best-looking guys I had seen the whole trip I was there. Or at least he should've been. The alcohol and the drugs killed that. Why is that? Why the fuck?

I identify with him. When I look in the mirror after I have one of those sleepless, depressed nights after I get rejected or something, that's me. The drug addict. Addicted to the lack-of-sleep high soothing my sorrows. Refusing all other cures. Knowing that nobody would ever look at me if they knew what kind of sorry state I fall into when my emotions get destroyed.

And yet I told myself (jubilant that day. I was in Vancouver after all!!) that I shouldn't look back at him - encourage him to get over his problems, rather than looking at him as though maybe I cared. For him.

It doesn't make sense.

Proof

At this point in mathematics, most of my problems just deal with proving why things are true. Then, when I come across problems where you actually have to find a solution, things become really intimidating.

A good metaphor for my life.