Touchstone August 28, 2006

I always thought of rock climbing as something like climbing a tree. Something that you did because of an almost primal urge within yourself. You would be able to do it instinctively because that’s what our ancestors did. It would be physically satisfying and demanding.

I remember walking into the Touchstone gym in San Jose during my senior year. I was with my buddies who’d convinced me to tag along. Black full length pads covered the floor. But my attention was drawn to the climbing wall itself. Zigzagged with bits of fluorescent multicolored tape, the wall looked like it was a hallucinogen’s trip through psychedelic land. The holds, the synthetic rocks that were drilled into the wall, came in every shape and color. Big ones, small ones, smooth ones, rough ones, jagged ones, ones that ripped the flesh off of your fingers if you held on too long, ones that coaxed you to grab hold of them and swing like a monkey.

The climbers themselves are as varied as the rockclimbing wall itself. Rock climbers are a very interesting breed. They are sociable, outgoing, quiet, reserved, but are always aggressive. And they love fooling around on the climbing wall.

Now, after climbing on and off for about 9 months, I can say that I love rock climbing. There is something so satisfying about using your body in a natural way, straining it, challenging it to climb rocks. Finding the sweet spot of a hold, figuring out a “problem” (as the routes are called, demarcated by the tape), sensing the weight shift in your body, feeling the rawness of your fingers after a good climbing session. When I stare down at my calloused, skin-stripped hands, I admire them rather than think about the spasms of pain they would emit.

Yes, that’s what I do, and what I love. I climb rocks. You only need a pair of shoes, a few pads, and the rock. That’s all that you need. (Bouldering, a type of climbing, doesn’t require a harness or ropes.) I adore its equipment sparseness, its simplicity.

“Two sides of the same coin” August 27, 2006

Chase, my friend, said tonight that the song that was playing in the car talked about a man who gave up. “It’s a really sad song,” he mused.  ”Well, maybe he’s just moving on,” Guy, my other friend, countered. “It’s bittersweet,” Chase declared. Later, he added, “We’re just talking about two sides of the same coin.”

Humans attach sentimentality and emotion to whatever “coin” they look at, whether it be a boy dropping out of high school, a woman who fixates on her former boyfriend, or a young man’s decision to enlist in the army. They cannot perceive things objectively. Also, they are bound to interpret the coin in unique ways. One person sees hope, another, despair. One sees bitterness, the other, sweetness.

The two sides of a coin are different. They aren’t the same. They have different pictures, different engravings. They carry different meanings.

People describe this coin using words that oppose each other. For the high school drop-out, “To give,” “to move on with your life.” For the woman, “To relive memories,” “to be haunted by your past.” For the young man, “To throw your life away,” “to serve your country.” The wonder of humans is that we all think differently. We can romanticize, we can denigrate, we can love, we can hate.

And we all talk about the same coin. We sometimes cannot see that the coin essentially is made of the same metal. Its the one thing that both faces have in common-the core, the base, the fabric that makes up the coin.

Maybe it’s a human impulse to describe life’s “coins” in terms of emotion. We long to humanize things in front of us. Seizing and grabbing them, we use adjectives of emotion like “exhilarating,” “lovely,” and “profound” to describe the coins.

We lose sight that we all describe the same thing.

Baking August 25, 2006

We made coffee cake at Mariel’s this morning. Mixing, churning, creaming, sifting, we maneuvered our way around the recipe. Everything was so physical and involved. It was delicious and easy-to-make with an enticing, wondrous cinamon smell. We drank tea out of mugs while eating the delectable breakfast treat. We chatted about how we felt about college, friend’s leaving for college, the like. Her kitchen was warm, welcoming, and well-lit. Satisfaction filled my belly-and my heart.

The kitchen has always been a place of comfort, love, and security. Baking gives me an excuse to be in the kitchen more. There’s something that I enjoy about creating something and sharing it with others. It’s a simple gesture, really: come, and I’ll share with you what I’ve made. All complex problems seem reduced into simple terms, like 1 cup of flour, 2 tablespoons of butter, and 1/2 cup of sugar. Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Bliss.

Sick! August 24, 2006

I sound like a dying goose sound as I cough up a storm. This time, though, it’s not only wind (breath), rain (saliva), and leaves (god knows what) that I’m producing, but viscous phlegm colored a sickly yellow like withered weeds. I hurriedly open the sink tap and watch, with an animalistic fascination, as it disappears down the porcelain bowl of the sink. Did that really come out of my body? Did I produce that? The little boy inside of me exclaims, “Cool!”, the adult, “Gross! Unsanitary!” Suddenly, that little glob of mucus disappears into the pipes. It’s like the phlem never existed. The sanitary whiteness of the sink gleams at me.

My parents show no mercy when I tell them I’m sick. “Drink more water,” counsels my mom. No medicine for me, no aspirin, no ibuprofen. “Makes your immune system stronger,” she promises. I’d always envied those kids who had their pain drugged away by colorful medicine like Benadryl or Chidren’s Tylenol. I didn’t care if the grape pill tasted horrible, it was still medicine. I’d imagine them drifting off to an easy sleep while I, half mad with fever, would lay in bed, unable to shake off my temperature. Finally, after countless tosses and turns, I would collapse into an unsettling sleep.

The worst was when I had my wisdom teeth removed. Fortunately, my mom had some compassion built into her in her child-rearing policy to have the young-un endure pain. I scored on the anesthesiology, welcoming the mask with a knowing grin that I wouldn’t be able to feel the surgeon tear into my gums. This victory was short lived. Back at home, I discovered that I had stored enough nuts to last three winters-my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk’s. No painkillers for me. I retreated back to my bed, defeated, and wounded.

I’ve almost given up announcing that I’m sick. There’s really no point in stating an obvious fact and being subjected to Chinese herbal black tea. The night-black brew, I’m convinced is merely a panacea. I’m sure that the virus or foreign bacteria in my body system senses it coming, and even it can’t take the nastiness of the stuff. Still, I share the same interest and determent with the tea as I do with the phlegm. It’s as if I need to flood my senses with its foul odor to verify it’s the real thing.

The only plus in saying you were sick was that you got to stay home from school. Still, as we had no TV, there was little distraction besides waiting for the mail to come around noon. I checked constantly, running out in my bare feet and pajamas, furtively poking my head outside the gate. I couldn’t afford anyone to think that I was playing hooky.

The other plus was the soup. Over time, Campbell’s has been equated with chicken noodle soup which has been equated with colds. The salt-infused broth, warmed my belly every time I had the sniffles.

Now, let’s hope my nasal passages magically clear up before tomorrow’s voice lesson!

Transitions August 23, 2006

Life, psychologists argue, can be described as continuous or discontinuous. I imagine those who argue for continuity see life in colored bands, linked together by links of grey. Each period in life would have its one color. When linked to the next period, there exists this cross-fade of colors, like the cross-fading of two records. I’d imagine that the stuff that holds these colorful, exciting periods together has to be grey and dull. It’s where you’re about to leave one phase and enter another. How unsettling, how boring, how scary.

That’s exactly how I feel now, as I live between high school and college. I’m not quite there yet. I’m a slightly out of place teenager, living at home, watching his sisters get ready and go to school, and working at Stanford. How odd.

It’s not that I’m not aware of what will happen in college-the people I want to talk to, the parties I want to go to, the a capella groups that I want to join. This makes the anticipation of what’s about to come painfully intense. I can’t have it right now, and it makes the transition period more boring, more uneventful, less scandalous, less exciting.

My friends leave, one by one, each packing, saying goodbye, and checking in at orientation. I dutifully, lovingly, suddenly see them off, silently jealous that they are finished with the grey area of transition. Lunch with David, walks with Kim, pizza with Kevin, party with Ellie, dinner with Mary, baking with Sarah.

Even still, when you get to college, the transition is not over. People use the phrase “get settled in,” “become accustomed to dorm life,” and “ease into your studies ” to describe what happens during the first quarter.

Transition words, my English teachers have said, are the difference between an “A” paper and a “B” paper. They are meant to connect, to smooth over, to provide a fluid passage of thought that the reader can use to navigate the ups and ins and outs and downs of your paper. Shouldn’t my transition be fluid? Shouldn’t it be an easy passage? I forget that a paper is prepared, is worked on, has multiple drafts. Life isn’t like that, we feel its rigidity, its fluidity, its harshness, its softness, its coarseness, its fineness. Life cannot be poured over and rewritten, debated and revised, erased at the nervous tapping of the backspace key.

Maybe that’s why I feel so strongly about this transition period. I feel powerless in controlling my life. I’m just working, sleeping, eating until that day that will set everything off- Tuesday, September 19, 2006-Stanford Move-In Day. I am willing, I am wanting, I am longing.

Excuse me, world, I, Mackenzie Lee, am ready to jump in to the next period of life!

The Library August 22, 2006

My internship at Stanford is spent mainly in front of a computer in Meyer Library. Oh Meyer how I love thee! Computer clusters galore! Meyer is well-lit, spacious, and expansive. When I’m not busy concentrating on the internship’s Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) at hand, I people watch. Here is a skecth of someone I observe.

His shoulders slumped, his sits at a table, staring at his hands. What he sees in his hands, I’d like to know. Head down, eyes downcast, elbows half bent, he sits there, quietly, not making a sound. His fleshy face does not yet showing the wrinkles of old age, but there is an intensity in that face that suggests he has lived a lifetime.

Occasionally, he gets up to go use the bathroom. When he walks, he maintains a perpetually sad and sombre expression. He shuffles back to his seat and always returns to that same desk. It seems as if he is too sad to go outside or to do anything else than just sit there.

Ordinarily, I would get bored at watching him, but his hair is a stunning white-blond. It’s the most remarkable thing about him. I wonder how his hair could be that color. I think about why he is there and if he’s waiting for someone. No book, no magazine, no campnanion is there to engage him, only the silence of the library and the shifting of papers and the soothing patter of keyboard keys.

Suddenly, today, the second floor computer clusters are closed. I have to work on the first floor. The man with the shocking white hair enters the library, and, unperturbed at the absence of his table, finds a quiet corner and sits. He sits and sits and sits, looking at his hands, wearing that sad face.

Jean de Florette August 21, 2006

Based on the novel by Marcel Pagnol, this French movie is a classic. This was my third time watching it, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Set in the Provence, the south of France, the film explores the dark side of human nature. A greedy campagnard, or country man, seeks to set up a farm of oeillets, French carnations. To do so, he needs water, for water is life and life is water in Provence. He happens upon a stream, but it is on another man’s property. Later, he accidentally kills this man and plugs up the stream in an attempt to buy the property from the man who inherits it. This man is Jean de Florette.

The audience sees Jean and his beautiful family viley destroyed with the brutal summer heat and the campagnard’s greed. In countless treks to the river, Jean exerts himself so hard that he loses all of the things that make him a wonderful man- his wife, his daughter, his love of the country, his faith in god, his sanity, and ultimately, his life.

What’s worse is that throughout the film we see the campagnard, Ugolin, delighting in the family’s misfortune. He eventually purchases the land from Jean’s wife, now a widow. But, when Jean’s daughter, Manon, sees the campagnard unplug the stream, the audience knows that justice will be had in the second installment of the story, Manon des sources.

Plot aside, this film asks deeper questions. Can man really take another man’s life in order to further his own greedy aims? Is it possible for man to watch another man suffer while having the ability to relieve the suffering? The film says yes. Man does have the awful capacity to blind himself towards humanity with images of wealth. Man can stand back and watch others suffer. He can even joke and laugh about others suffering.

But, that does not mean that the greedy man does not suffer. His conscience leads him to rethink his actions. After Jean dies, Ugolin weeps. His friend asks, “why do you cry?” Ugolin shakes his head and responds, “ce sont mes yeux qui pleurent“-”my eyes are crying.” Ugolin tries to distance himself from his evil actions, but ultimately cannot. Glistening rivulets of tears fall down his face freely.

These ideas ring true with anyone who watches the film. This is why it is a classic. Everyone has had a time where their “friend” has betrayed them. Everyone has seen help withheld from those who need it. This tears at the heart and the soul.

Sometimes, man is man’s worst inflictor of pain.

Let’s get started! August 20, 2006

This is what I thought when I wanted to get a blog. “It’ll be easy, it’ll be cathartic, it’ll occupy my unused hours during the day,” I thought.

 I went to google.com to search for the best site to start my blog. I ended up talking to Leo, my friend and technology expert. He suggested I use wordpress.com, so I followed his advice. (I trust Leo.)

  Then came the hardest part. Choosing a username. I spent about 20 minutes trying to find the appropriate username that wouldn’t convey a stereotype but would convey a sense of originality.  I went back to google.com and typed in “cool words”, which led me to a site where I found the word “zeitgeist”. You can find its definition here http://www.answers.com/zeitgeist&r=67.

But, my trials were not over, for I had to write a title for my blog. How am I supposed to find a title for my blog when I don’t know what I’m going to write about? And, of course, the title had to have a creative side to it as well. Hopefully, you’ll consider my ideas as you drink your Starbucks coffee, sip your cup of tea, or down your glass of calcium-filled milk.

To leave a taste of what’s yet to come, a little about me. Here is where the stereotypes begin to form in your mind. I am a 17-year-old, Asian, Californian, Stanford University-bound guy. I’ve moved more than 6 times, and lived in France for two years. I love observing and thinking about moments in life, like how people interact at a party, or how the water envelops me when I go swimming, or how people’s ideas change. I write to get ideas out of my head.

I have never kept a diary. Still, there seems to be this inner monologue of thoughts and ideas that persistently runs in my head, without fail. This constant flow of activity begs to be written down and expressed. This blog will be more than a one month emo teenager whine.  

Now, it’s time to experiment with the formats!