This post is about many things that have been sitting, cobwebbed, in the back of my mind for years. At the core of it, it’s about a transition from being enslaved by my emotional illness into making softness my bitch. But secondly, about how the jettison of woke in favor of a more nuanced treatment of race has been a relief for me. I write this in the hopes that the once-repressed rambling makes you feel loved, understood, or more at ease. If I had been affirmed that having weird or unpopular thoughts didn’t make me a monster, sooner… I think I would do more good in this world instead of hiding from it.
Pt I. Stay hungry Stay foolish
One of my mother’s dance colleagues posted some poetry online about the floaters in his eyes. His wife picked up on this immediately and sent him to the hospital, as it turned out that he had severe corneal damage.
Over the years, my small cowardly heart has murmured…
“I should give a talk about big-R Racism in front of the whole school” …
“I want to perform Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘Man with the Muck Rake’”…
And yet, I stop myself.
Poetry-out-loud characterizes the power speeches that I have fantasized about giving. And perhaps in a less literal parallel, these yearnings are symptomatic of an inability to be still and a hunger to proselytize.
Despite relapse after relapse: as soon as I become conscious and reasonable, I’m always taking on more work and responsibilities—often to my own demise. This is due to an ambitious perspective where myopia convinces me that sheer willpower can overcome the cycle of rushing highs and paralytic lows.
In other words, I’m a watered down Genghis Khan. A lot of the same glory, with hopefully less massacre and non-consent. Always seeking to conquer whatever microcosm I occupy.
Though let me be clear. I’ve come a long way from high school and younger, as a terrified and reticent girl… back when I failed the self-defense and socialization programs we needed to graduate.
“Hey man, imagine if you were her?”
The instructor shook his head. “That is very lame. No rapist is going to listen to that.”
Kai suggested the most absurd response today, which would not only de-pressurize but provide a clever solution.
“Let me do it… Leave the raping to the experts.”
Pt II. MEDIA THAT LEAVES TRACES
Playing with the darkness, or exploiting the ennui for good; I’m not the first to speak to this idea of moral dualism. Before I was forced to ghost the social media scene… I have witnessed a few posts on Facebook that have a fundamental home in the social understanding and ethics I hold to this day.
The first post is a Native American proverb. In essence, it’s about how to hold opposite energies in one’s soul. “Which wolf succeeds? The light or the darkness?”
“The one you choose to feed.”
-Cherokee
The second post, which weighs heavily in my mind, is a movie clip which I’ve been unable to source for years. It’s a vignette of a young black girl speaking to her white classmate. She captures my very fears so powerfully.
“I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of what your whiteness allows you to do.”
-don’t quote me on this as it is not verbatim
Now combining these two ideas, where do I stand? I refuse to devolve into identity politics by saying —*as an Asian-American woman*— because I try not to reduce entire groups of people to statistics. I know, I know… I just stated that being white grants you certain assumptions. Yet I stand firm in my contradiction.
Let me be specific and contextualize. Being a minority in America should not grant you moral superiority over others. Every being in existence has certain features that make living easier or harder on a daily basis. I try to focus on what therapists love to call “locus of control.” Intersectionality is cool and all, but adding more and more filters of “I’m X” and “I belong to Y” doesn’t always help clarify who you want to be. Su Bingtian is a wonderful example of this. In his success, he was able to feed dark ambition but also radiant, almost innocent ignorance of the stereotypes that 100m runners have.
All I’m saying is that starting a job application by saying your race and gender tends not to get you anywhere.* Or, in the tight race between egalitarianism and meritocracy, I would say neither is truth but the latter is closer to the reality I want to occupy.
From a moderate perspective, appearance and ethnicity is 50% of an impression. When I say half of a hundred percent, I mean it. In certain situations, that prejudice is enough to decide life or death.
But for the rest of us, how you decide to treat others is up to you.
*I speak from personal experience.
pt iii. iT’S NOT ABOUT HOW: YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO KEEP GOING.
One of my b-boy1 friends who I look up to went through a breakup recently. And he was in a space of anger, anger, anger.
The last time I remember anger anger anger — I was attending the TWTP, or Third World Transition Program at Brown University. Key professors in the community validated Black anger about the state of affairs in the city, fraught with very pinpoint features such as housing discrimination.
Anger is anger. How dare I draw a parallel between something so personal as a privileged man’s breakup and the shared experience of 40-some million2 people in the United States of A? What value is created in comparing these two things?
Well, whether an individual or a large population; stupid as it sounds, being angry in no way changes reality. Not at least in its initial stages of conception in your mind. Life continues in its own meandering, sometimes limp, sometimes brilliant ways. It gives 0 fucks.
Don’t try to make yourself remember, darling
-Porter Robinson
Don’t look for me, I’m just a story you’ve been told
So let’s pretend a little longer
And when we’re gone, ah
Everything goes on
How much can you change, how much should you let go, and is acting out of anger a positive force?
Based on a single page of Google research, you know that while racism has not been eradicated, a few changed the future of an entire generation in undeniable progress. Tubman, Dred Scott, Lincoln, Malcolm X, NAACP, Langston…
Sometimes the oddest comparisons can make way for great humor and great cynicism. So, drawing the parallel of a group to an individual: who are the thoughts and beliefs in my head that are those “power players” for change? Who is the Hurston of the mind? Post-nut clarity?
If a girl breaks up with you after a few weeks… Does this make cancer more or less solvable? Maybe consider vice versa. If such a large group of people can enact change, how come one-to-one integrity is so difficult to maintain? I touched on this idea in a prior blog post regarding these varied dynamics and how they influence my day-to-day life. Secretly, I’ve become competent at code-switching between the conscious and the liminal to great effect.
But from a sober perspective, a lot of the mental scarring and fixations from the past few years remain.
I mean, that’s how I live with my old crush… i.e. his insults and banter that play on loop in my head when I’m not paying attention. The bastardization of things I once enjoyed: hearing dogs bark in the neighborhood and becoming plagued with thoughts of bestialities because of one joke he made three years ago. Only time has been the best healer.
I refuse to blame my mental state on anyone but nevertheless the social fabric has already been rent.3 I do my best daily to tackle what is bothering me head on.
This slow, unfair, retard4 of a modern life will put you through your paces. For most, the physical aspect is very congenial. But everything else is fast and greasy and will also hit you like a brick.
I remember my dad telling me to glow-up after college and purposely look more ugly to focus on my studies. “You need to use all your wits and looks and courage to get through this life,” he told me.
And the longer I am alive, the more I really think he’s right. Maybe the wrong approach, but the right process.
1 breakdancing is the more formal but less cultured way of saying this.
2 you bet as hell I’m following APA style guidelines. Thank you Mrs. Sen-Das.
3 this concept was popularized by my religious studies professor, Jason Protass.
4 I argued with my brother for years as a teenager regarding this word. You win, Kevin. I’m a incel now.
IV. the conclusion
I don’t want to discourage too many loved ones with this post.
I guess, what I want to say after all this nonsense, is how fucking hard life post-grad can be. Nothing prepared me for hours in a cell, trying to reason with police, or even something as simple as expressing love for a few important people in my life.
Life passes by faster and faster by the day.
What percolates at the end of it all are values. You decide the borders of your life, and the rest fills itself.