Writing like Hemingway

I noticed a book at Barnes & Noble yesterday to teach people how to write like Hemingway. I sat down with it for a while. It spoke a lot about how literary devices, his writing style, sentences structure, Iceberg Theory. Then I noticed I really don't want to write like Hemingway. Aside from our subject matters, I don't think it's cool to be evasive, indirect and short. Words already fail us so often, I just don't have the patience to create something out of other people's imaginations rather than the ideas that I already struggle with transmitting. Better pick up some Fitzgerald or Poe.

And speaking of writing, I just read John Richardson's piece in Esquire: The Last Abortion Doctor. One might think this is an article about abortion, but it spoke so truly about related topics such as medicine, politics, gender and pain. It's really hard to read. It's probably the best thing I've read in a long time. I do think that all feeling human beings need to read it, especially now, just to understand a little bit more about what life is.

Superhero fantasies

My sister used to say that I could turn any object in my hands into a spaceship. Ballpoint pens turned into rocketships and wristwatch buckles became dragons. I had a collection of beads that I'd sort by color and have them wage war upon each other on a shaded political map of the world, Risk-style. Even the holes in these beads played cannon mouths in my insanely militaristic daydream games. My family members know that I have a rich collection of sound effects for jets, guns and explosions.

I had absurd superhero fantasies, like every boy between the ages of five and thirteen, I'm sure. I had one in particular that involved a sword and a Superman-style Fortress of Solitude. The way that it goes is a twelve year old me would find a sword in the stone in some remote mountainous region near where my parents are from in China. (Swords were important to this, ever since Crouching Tiger.) I would be on a quest to imbue this weapon with magical abilities, a la Cardcaptor Sakura. (One character specifically. I adored that show.) I drew broadswords on sheets and sheets of paper. Then I created my Fortress of Solitude. There were a few versions. One version was a domed platform floating in the sky. Another version required another dimension, accessible by a closet. They would all be foresty, full of wildlife and waterfalls.

My paradise was designed to be eternally and emotionally sustainable for my immortal superhero self. I considered whether to bring in family and friends into my immortal oasis, but it seemed an arbitrary privilege; I can't bring in everyone.

It became one of few complicating factors that brought my fantasy to the ground. I thought about creating people in my world. (Of course, I could select for physical characteristics and personality. Omniscience over bioethics.) I knew I need people, but I also couldn't decide whether ultimately I could tell the difference between a community of many conscious, sentient beings and a self-centered universe populated by characters that may or may not exist in their own right, but only seem to be. I hope my friends aren't scared of me yet.

The other complication that brought my Fortress down was what I saw outside the window. Superheroes don't grow up in Flushing. I had yet to attribute meaning to my location. Without a location, I could be anyone. I guess this is why people leave this place. I don't think Flushing has been home to anyone more than two generations at a time.

It's funny. My sister asked Chang-Rae Lee why he wrote about Flushing. He said that this is a magical place. In my life, I've thought about magic the most in middle and high school, commuting to school on the 7, dreaming about getting out. Now I get homesick when I'm away.

Wow. I need to think about this.

On Facebook, wonderful thoughts take people and hold them still.

Following Virginia activist/filmmaker Annabel Park's posted item about very personalized ethnic conflict in China, a thoughtful someone writes:

heart wrenching... but the equivalent of this is an equally heart wrenching story about israeli settlers in palestine or even us settlers on indigenous american soil... ultimately, the chinese shouldn't be in xinjiang, and the israelis shouldn't be in palestine.

i tried to read the story understanding my privilege as a Han Chinese, and as a settler in N. America occupying Native American lands. It's hard.

Goddamn. Something a lot of people (like me) need to think about. The privileges of being Han Chinese are extensive, and I've only begun realizing this. You have a cultural history that won't be washed away. The numbers of your ethnic population are not under threat of extinction. I've been thinking about the "concentration" that I have to do within my concentration. I think I'll do it on internal colonialism.

Concentration is such a word. If you have thoughts on this, please comment.

Now is always the time for immature idealism.

I reject anything else.

I find myself reading a lot about Obama's visits to see Putin and Medvedev. I know about Obama's youthful idealism. I'd bet a lot of people empathize and identify with it. It's something I feel like I know.

What would it be like if we always had a foot in what is impossible? What good could we accomplish? Would we mess it up? Maybe, but I don't usually consider that. What if we recognized this in everyone, at all times? Could we be more honest? Could we let go of what holds us back?

I'd also like to take the time to say that this article is really, really worth reading. If only I could write with my feet nailed to the concrete.

Just have to say...

The economy probably never got so bad until people started saying it was bad.

I know it's probably going to be heavily analyzed in the future, and all sorts of things are going to be said about it. I'll write this just for the (my, I guess) record. People probably stopped spending when they started hearing about how bad things were. Doesn't mean it wasn't going to get as bad eventually, but talking about it probably changed a lot of people's decisions.

Gaza

There are few news items that have caught my heart as closely as what's going on in Gaza right now. I need to write a few thoughts about what is going on.

Since middle school, I've always kept a respectful distance from the conflict(s) from which this arises. I've always known that there are truth and there are lies, that "both sides" disseminate their fair share, and (most complacently for me) these players all share in wrongdoing. (I forgive myself by thinking that these basic levels of understanding were just a function of my awkwardness receiving a liberal UWS education.) And then, I'd say, there was college. I tried much harder to get my information promptly, to be responsibly informed.

Which is why feeling the sharp pain of an occupied people is new and pretty unusual to me.

The lack of a developed history in my epistemology has left me with very reductive ways to look at this conflict. I guess most of the world thinks this way now, with the soundbite-friendly internet and political erasure of histories, etc. But certain inalienable truths do come out.

Disproportional? Yeah. But I think what's more important is... If you need to kill a thousand to protect fifty, you only reveal a belief that the lives of your own are worth more than the lives of the other.

What a disgusting way to think. I remember hearing similar thoughts voiced by classmates in high school... When reflecting on the rich man's dilemma in La Barca Sin Pescador by Alejandro Casona (he was offered the choice to kill a poor man he didn't know far away, in exchange for wealth and power), they said, pretty flatly, that they would kill the man. Not only pretty fucked up, but it says so many other things.

A few other things before I'm done: I really don't know how a legitimate operation is conducted without basic, internationally-established humanitarian concerns. I don't understand how a successful operation is conducted without regard for public sentiment inside or outside Gaza. Shouldn't these be basics? Is anyone working for peace, instead of hit-me-I'll-hit-you-back?

Love is in a dire state.

In defense of giving a minimal shit about the flows of money

We hear many things. Unprecedented... lasting damage... catastrophic... historic... (life-altering?) I haven't lived long enough to put the stock of my life into the myriad forms of capital out there, so it is justified the case that I don't know what I don't give a shit about. Still, given the choice, I believe would sooner remove myself from such structures of society and "civilization" than move with the courses of material gain and loss while attempting my own pursuit of truth and a good life.

My net worth is not developed and my savings are insignificant. I don't anticipate approaching the limit of insured savings within the next ten or twenty years of my life. But the idea of accumulating what can be summed up in a few pixels on a LCD eludes me. Influence, I understand. Power, we can talk about. Wealth? ... And? What else can wealth mean?

My stance is not necessarily Marxist, but there are many things that can be touched on. I would argue that capital separates us from what we truly want to spend life pursuing, more than other people or our occupations or our time or ourselves. If we are inspired to spend the extent of our lives reaching for what is true, what makes us happy, or that in which we are exceptional, our own economies collude our visions.

If certain financial realities are collapsing in your world, you don't wonder about what to do. If you are principled, inspired and determined, the game does not change. You'll find another way.

(And so far, "employing the vernacular" has not been successful. Damn.)