Proofs

a=b=1
a^2 = ab
a^2-b^2 = ab-b^2
(a+b)(a-b) = b(a-b)
a+b = b
1 + 1 =1

Physical Poetry

Concrete
yet yielding to the mind
Freedom
but limited to muscle, bone and flesh
Flight and
all things return to the earth...

Poetry
but as silent as the pumping of the heart
and the bellows of the lungs
Material,
chained in every unimportant way,
and liberated on the best of days
Spiritual
yet corporeal as life
and more real than death

Would you understand?

Weapon

it excels in its own way
smooth, damascus-patterned
sharp like the gaze of a cat,
birdsong tracing papercuts in the air
glowing light obscuring its fine edges.
this metal on the mountaintop
waits for something
but finds only the mist of the falls
to contemplate
until winter

My Family's Weapon

This is too depressing to write about right now...I'll do it later.

Dream on

just for tonight
live to dream again
dream when you're awake
and dream that you're asleep
because dreaming's all that's left
when you wake up to a story of your life

so dream on, dream on
and wander mountains high
dream on, dream on
and drink from the great lakes
dream on, dream on
and discover the eagle's map
dream on, dream on
and dream to live again

Relay for Life

It is dark and it is night and it is light and it is day, and it is grey and it is dawn, but it doesn't matter now, for while day turns to night and then into dawn, we will see no difference until we have walked our all. It is the unending hour of Relay.

As we walk, we remember last year, and all the things that happened. The giant pills. The folding frisbees. Lost jade. New faces. New new new. It was so new then. It was so fresh. But these memories have faded with the turning of a year. Threads spun then are twisted together into the present, and as we decode the present, our understanding of the past changes. Ergo, the past, our memories, changes.

Last year, I didn't know you. This year, I think I know you. Things are not the same. The sunset and sunrise will light the air differently. I'll use the same camera and maybe make it into a picture or two this year.

Dan and I laughed at Thompson, walking pill-in-pill with Sir.
Phil had to get photoshopped into a picture by me. Very poorly, I might add.
Perry...haha, Perry. Wow. Fighting with him at lunch was fun.

How these things change so oddly...

...and then there are some that don't.

Yaz walked for hours. It was beastly. I'm sure she'll do it again.
Truth or dare? Yeah. I don't play.
Jeff being a letch? That'll never, ever change, I think. Not until he falls in love for real and she makes him pay for it.

But this year, I will make it different. During the day that is night that is grey in the light, I will stand upon the grass and deliver a speech. This speech will be earthshattering. This speech will bring the clamoring crowds to celebration and from this fountain of inspiration, they will walk; no, they will dance. They will float upon the air and walk forever on this relay of Life. And by the end, no one will have heard me. And I will sit and I will cross my legs and smile, satisfied.

My speech will be this; it will be greater than this. My speech will say everything I cannot...

"Hear me, for I am the son of the son of the son of the and so on and so forth for seventy three generations descended from Confucius. And through me, some chord in my throat reverberates with his now ancient, once new wisdom. And though I have known very few of you for several years, I have known more of you for only one. And in this one year, I have seen and done actions that defy all wisdom, all learning. I regret nothing. Fate, which so bestrode me, and whose lash I have learned to hate, Fate has brought these threads of our lives together, starting from before my illustrious ancestor was born. Or so it would seem.

Life consists of choices. All the time. Choices, choices, choices. Our choices. And, fittingly, our choices turn back upon ourselves until the choices we make are affected by the choices we make. Choices, passed from generation to generation through the ages. This is what they call Fate, but only in retrospect. Your choices and the choices of every other person are obvious from the beginning. That is what they call Fate, in foresight.

So, I bow to Fate now. My Fate will be to unify, as it always has.

So Live and Choose and be what you will. Fate will have already brought us together. To me, we will never separate."

Not so long ago, I walked alone. In a way, I still do. But this walk has taken on dimensions I never could have steered it, thanks to my friends. If I hadn't been separated from my Old Friends, I might have never met you. If I hadn't reluctantly known someone, I might never have met Kim. If I had never met Kim, I wouldn't have met the entire Grosse Pointe gang. If I hadn't known the GP gang, I wouldn't have been invited to Relay or photoshopped those enormous Savage Bunny t-shirt designs. I wouldn't have invited Dan to come along. We wouldn't have randomly invited Thompson, who came to Dan's house that day. And the following summer wouldn't have been a crazy medley of fun.

Maybe I'm playing up my importance a bit. It was fated to happen. Phil knew Weijia already. Maybe these two groups would have united without my catalytic aid. But would I have found you guys? The wildest year of my boring life, washed clean in the mist of speculation. I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known...

But my choice would have been to find someone like you. And that makes it Fate. And all the romantic rollercoasters that came afterwards, that's choice. That's Fate, and quite alright.

As we walk, I remember the years, and all the things that happened. The detention. The water fight. Chinatown. New faces. New new new. It was so new then. It was so fresh. But these memories have faded with the turning of a year. Threads spun then are twisted together into the present, and as we decode the present, our understanding of the past changes. Ergo, the past, our memories, changes.

I want to hold onto this, to see you as new every day.
Fate was so arbitrary then.

Feel

I feel like crap. The back of my throat's dry, my head is aching, and my sinuses are blocked up. But I've learned my lesson. To miss school is to die academically. At least, for me.

Whoa! Do I really look like that? I look completely wasted...or like a vampire. Sir's being kind just standing near me.

Wrap My Words Around You

Is it fair to write a song to a woman?
Is it fair play to try and win her heart?
Is it right to bring her sonnets
In the morning time?
To express the first few
Longings when they start
To express the first few
Longings when they start

I write my little love on the pad, but these words will never be
seen by anyone else.

Is it right to let her feelings
Rise to catch you?
Is it OK when her heart begins to fall?
Would you blame me if I
Wrap my words around you girl?
Would I wrong you
To say anything at all?
Would I wrong you
To say anything at all?

I am uncertain of this little love.

But if I wrap my words around you
Wrap my words around you
If I wrap my words around you
Would you stay
Would you stay, would you?
Wrap my words around you

And my uncertainty taints the words that flow from my mind.

Wrap my words around you
If I wrap my words around you
Would you stay
Would it play with your heart?

These words will go doubly unseen.

Am I a hunter if
I send poems to please you?
Am I a cad if
I mean everything I say?
Should I even let you know
This song's about you girl
Just because I want to see you smile today
And my words may bind you
To me much too tightly
You may choke upon them if we fall apart
It's not fair to write a song to a woman
Because a woman takes a song into her heart
Because a woman takes a song into her heart

Until I'm certain of my heart, that muse must remain restrained.

So let me wrap my words around you
Wrap my words around you
Wrap my words around you
Till you stay, till you stay, let me
Wrap my words around you
Wrap my words around you
Darling, wrap my words around you
Till you stay
Would it play with your heart?

Anything more would be unfair.

inexplicable

interim

What do I want to do with myself? I was told to set some goals. Two or three times, actually. Right out of the bright blue sky...

-Become an actor.
-Become a singer.
-Write novels.
-Start my own business.
-Design my own house/weapons/car.
-Learn Chinese Medicine.
-Learn martial arts.
-Travel the world.
-Explore.

and the hardest of all...

-Become happy.

Happy Chinese New Year! Gong hei fat choi!
May your fortunes in this new year grow like the plum tree sapling in Spring.

THE OTHER TABLE! o.O;

Megan and Kevin looking like zombies and Yeh Yeh and Nie Nie

Teng and Kung parents

The Kung family, minus Sean who was at our table

Leslie, Brad, Mark. Left to right.

Cameraphobia!

We're bad kids.
The waiters were horrified.

We're really bad kids.

The Teng boys

here comES THE CRUSH

...but the pressure only makes me faster

Holy FUCK...

...that woke me up.

Must remember to set the volume to sane levels before playing music...

It seemed the popular thing to do at the time...

Learning to Dance

The Paradox of Language

I watched a new life open its eyes to the world for the first time, and I was immediately entranced. Something about a child’s wide-eyed expression inspired a similar feeling in myself, something unnamable but immense, like a tidal wave crashing through those two tiny, soft and shining orbs. I was rendered speechless, just as the baby was speechless, not because I did not have the words at my disposal, but because the child did not have the words to define its world. It must have been a veritable sea of impressions…a confusion of colors…a bombardment of sounds, a…

What is it like, I asked wordlessly. My cousin just stared, and I smiled. I’ll never understand.

It was early in my life that I realized the freedoms language gave me. With the written word, one might travel with a knight to faraway kingdoms, explore galaxies with intrepid space pirates, or sift through the mysteries of a murder. With the spoken tale, one might live his father’s life in the streets of Rangoon, Burma, or the rocky immigration and eventual life in Chicago. With a pen in hand, one is free to smudge the line between dream and reality.

It wasn’t until later, however, that I learned of the limitations language places on the soul. Certain ideas don’t translate between languages, and even within the same language, ideas are up for interpretation. No thought is exactly as its illustrator meant it. Misinterpretations between those who would be lovers can make them into enemies forever. Tragically, no language can completely remove the barriers between peoples’ minds and souls and hence “I think, therefore I am” remains a lonely, yet enduring truism. The only self-evident truth, it gives the existence of others the benefit of the doubt…not impossible, but definitely not certain.

I could not help but feel envy as I watched my cousin. Her vocabulary was so limited as to be unlimited, an unending palette of impression and emotion and raw being, not limited merely to angry or hungry or sad, but angryhungrycuriousgladconfused. And that does not even begin to describe it. Or so I would imagine, in my structured, grammatical, limited fashion. I think in sentences, forming the subject, then the verb, then the object in a neat, orderly line, one by one by one. I wondered at the mind of the child before me, unhinged from such mechanics, and wondered what she was thinking about; my thoughts wandered from there to wondering if there was anything she was not thinking about. I wondered if she was omniscient and if I was right to start indoctrinating language into her with my speech. As Buckminster Fuller said, “All children are born geniuses. 9,999 out of 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently, degeniused by grown ups.”

But without language, without the ability to communicate, my little cousin would live a forlorn life. She wouldn’t be able to ask for a hug, or a puppy, or any of a million desires that a child could think up. She wouldn’t be able to give her parents the gift of saying, “I love you,” or write her Nobel award-winning speech. She might exist in a beautiful, unique, incommunicado world, but she would be stuck, alone, in her mind.

The mind is a vast landscape of thick rainforests, sweeping sand dunes, frozen mountain peaks and wide open ocean. All of this is contained somewhere in relation to the body, most likely within the skull, though some point to the heart. The vast majority of the time, these magnificent vistas are cloaked in obscurity. Sometimes, however, the curtains fold and rise away to reveal a stage with a few props meant to represent the real thing, and unfortunate boundaries. The actress in the middle of the stage, however she chooses to dance, can convey a few ideas, emotions. Yet this is all the audience will ever be able to see. Though it would be a wonderful thing indeed to bring them directly into the environment, it is an impossibility that will never be surmounted. But a single pirouette and a deep curtsy is better than nothing at all. I can only hope to teach my cousin to dance well.

I've figured it out, a bit

I am sick.

As in demented.

I have some sort of complex where I am always looking to be in love. In love with someone with whom it will not work. Now granted, being in love is a lot of fun, but this constant unending search is not. It's not cool. Why can't I just live, damnit? Whatever. I'll work on it.

I love coincidence. But whenever things seem too "right" I'm always put off. Why? I both love and hate destiny, chance, and fate, it seems.

Eh. I haven't figured anything out.

Just let me dream

Dream the wolfdream, wolf dreamer.

Revelations

If the first cookie is stale, it is highly likely that the rest will be as well. You do not have to eat them all to find out.

Gang of Four

There's a new power on the streets.