In the wake of extremely outgoing parents, I was allowed to drown in my shyness and stay hidden from the world. In retrospect, the label kept me safe for a time. I never had to discuss the turmoil in my life. I learned to dissect and process my pain alone. . .
Blog
Ode to Looking Down
Looking up at the world was now far clearer and a lot less scary, but self-preserving habits are hard to break. I mean, I had spent most of my life avoiding looking up for fear that I would be perceived as rude! But in Western culture especially, eye contact shows you’re polite. Eye contact with a handshake establishes confidence. Eye contact is a way of connecting with someone and showing them that you care about what they have to say. But can’t I look at the ground and still be a good listener? Can’t I still look at the ground and be a confident person if I feel like I can protect myself better? Can looking down ever be seen as a positive?
Pamela Anderson is at Work
A household name and a cautionary tale.
Out of My Head and Into My Body: Why Gardening Makes Me a Better Writer
It is equally easy for me to fantasize about being a writer as it is to fantasize about being a plant person. These fantasies of lifestyle and values echo each other. It is romantic until you must edit. It is romantic until you must weed.
The Robot-Dogs at Paris Fashion Week
Of course, de la Fontaine’s original story was not so full of promise and potential. At the end of the original tale, the wolf (obviously) kills and eats the lamb. The moral has something to do with the power politics between an innocent being who finds herself defenseless against an unforgiving aggressor. Coperni does, in fact, note this discrepancy between the original story and their robo-version in their artist’s statement about the show. They do not, however, acknowledge the irony.
Solo Travel
I’ve always felt like a social butterfly, an influencer, the life of the party, etc.—but I’ve also always felt alone. I love my friends and family, but I covet my time alone, which is why I enjoy solo traveling so much.
Notes of My Native Language
A common question I get asked by both Asian and non-Asian people is: “Do you speak your native language?” With the expectation that I’ll say, “Yes, I speak the language of whatever exotic ethnicity I look like.”
Beauty is A Bad Investment, But I Can’t Stop Buying
I think it’s foolish not to appreciate the creative aesthetic of beauty. Beauty is literally some women and femmes’ livelihood and often beauty is the job that will pay most when other jobs are still overrun by men. The question shouldn’t be is beauty worth or time, but rather what you’re getting out of beauty.
Shitty Luck
Supposedly, there is only a .02% chance of getting crapped by a pigeon each time you venture outside. But my chances seem to veer closer to 100%.
Alien Chatter
My dissociative self is sadly not a witness to my world but a captive to my mind, chained to the fear that the minute I return to the restaurant floor, my body will cave into a carcass and dissipate into dust.
“You Haven’t Lived Until You’ve Died In New York”*
New York had become my campus, or so the flyers advertised. In subway stations, at museums, on trains, in taxicabs, outside restaurants, on street corners, I found myself asking the question: What makes a New Yorker?
What follows are my observations.
Our Mess
“Mommy, why is our house painted different colors? No one else’s house is like that.”
“Because honey, your father likes chaos, and I am an artist.”
Every Spotlight Has A Shadow
Showing teenagers, regardless of their identity, dealing with complex and messy situations isn’t innately a bad thing. But when these nuanced stories are only told by older cis-het creatives like Sam Levinson, they tend to become a spectacle of voyeurism
Subsisting and Social Distancing with 12th Street
At the end of the Fall 2021 semester, some of the 12th Street editors got together online and wrote some thoughts on how we keep ourselves amused and healthy these days. And from all of […]
It’s Not Kind Of A Funny Story
For Ned and all the books that helped me. Seriously because. . . “I’m smart but not enough—just smart enough to have problems.”-Ned Vizzini TW: depression, grief, suicide, mania, mental illness, drugs, alcohol, mentions of […]
Love Of A Sniper
I’m convinced. Relationships just aren’t for me. Every time I try to cultivate a relationship with someone, it always ends in a gut-wrenching, mind-boggling, what-the-fuck happened, and what was it all for kind of […]
Dead Name
It was one of those first days of fall, where the light suddenly feels more distant. Golden hour and Greenwood Cemetery had an ephemeral glow, a stark contrast to the detritus of our lives collecting […]
Obituary of an Ice Cream Sandwich, or “The Monks and the Trees”
Tuesday, September 21 2021 The grain of the wood floor pulls me deeper as my feet find theirgrounding and my head extends toward the ceiling. I stretch myarms wide, halting the rotation of my right […]
With the Success of “Shang-Chi” and “Squid Game,” AAPI Creatives are Hopeful
The representation that recent films like Shang-Chi and shows like Squid Game allowed the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community to experience—especially after a year of increased anti-Asian violence due to the COVID-19 pandemic—feels necessary, now more so than ever.
The Home Within my Hips and Head
In time, I learned how to cheat my body’s system, depriving it of food and exhausting it with exercise. I started to walk with my thighs spread apart from each other, keeping my hips locked and my gait wide. My hips tried to relax, begging me to stop putting them in the middle of my mind’s complex-driven conquest. But I was too terrified to hear them plead, terrified of being hated by the cruel boys in my class who wanted someone emptier than I was.