“Perhaps, most simply, idleness is reserved contemplation through the tranquilizing of productive and unproductive time.” I am productive. I like to think so. I must be working toward something, or I will feel defective. Rather, I must be validated by a finished-product, the thought of incompletion knots under my skin. I have this recurring dream […]
Last semester, I officially joined QC Voices with “Unpacking and Repacking Love to Find Home.” That piece borrowed elements from lyric essays to find some means of consolation. Writing that piece was the NyQuil of alleviations, it only relieved the symptoms. In a sense, this piece will be a part two, or the strengthened body that […]
There are times when syntax functions like the Powerball operated by a discombobulated robot-arm. The mind feels hollowed out, the tongue is an idle instrument. Moments like this, we face a terrifying reality—words only mean as much as their sounds. The times I truly feel that language is insufficient are during the quiet exchanges between […]
Lagging with a quarter tank on the Taconic, I scroll back to an archive of music bereft of life—indie and alternative music confined to its inception. Still, nostalgia (even under false pretenses) thaws the distinctions between the seasons. A couple of songs in, an exiled piece crescendos. It recoils against my expectations, voiding the […]
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates the harvest moon, which may include paying fealty to the moon goddess, a pale-faced abstraction with winglike sleeves. Even before my first Mid-Autumn Festival, I remember the worship of its deity. This did not yet involve the ritual devouring of mooncakes— the amazingly caloric, and gelatinous staple food of the […]
Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for James Gray’s Ad Astra. The spaceman always finds his way to the moon. He makes it despite his spacecraft stalling in elevation, or sparking flames on its way down. Over and over again, we return to the same suspense, and the same malfunctions, all for a liftoff. The flame […]
Although I am fond of my childhood memories, I prefer some distance from the city that some belong to. Yet, as I am getting older, I keep finding myself at my mother’s apartment, or specifically, at my childhood home in Guangzhou. Nostalgia floods through the barred windows of her apartment—the vibrations of construction work […]
