When I was about eight, on me second or third trip home to Klias in Sabah in Borneo Island, my family bought a giant watermelon. It was possibly accompanied by the persistently-popular prawn/shrimp crackers, (whose artificial flavors run universal between the fingers of children throughout the South Pacific seas) jack fruit, ramputan, and durian. These are all very tropical, very delicious fruits whose size, shape, tactile quality and scent are highly distinguishable. We probably cut up a pig back home as well. My father and his brothers' (all 74 of them...or 11, I can't remember) would go wild boar hunting when he was little. And Yong's mother, my rather ill-tempered Aunt, would have slaughtered a couple of chooks who would be served with apples placed by their necks. I remember the gentle stream of blood mixing with water as she washed them out into the drain on the side of their house, as I dashed around shooting Malvin with a newly-purchased plastic water pistol. He would have been four, and hilariously/dangerously uncouth towards my grandfather, who would have been 94 or so (he lived to be 99, but nobody's really sure, because he made up his age when he arrived in Malaysia as an indentured labourer). It was Chinese New Years, and "Gong Xi Fa Choi!" (Happy New Year!) songs was blaring out of the television, the house was decked out with bright red lanterns as well as ung-bao packets (money gifts) and firecrackers and moon cakes.
But I am meandering. The story I meant to share with you involves only the giant watermelon. Context is secondary.
The four-wheel drive (SUV) pulled up in the front driveway, a dusty grey road filled with stones that hurt when you walked barefoot but made terrific projectiles for boys to be boys with (I would later nearly blind my cousin Yong with one of them days before he flew home to live with us). We hopped out--my family, one Uncle, some cousins, possibly an Aunt, and began to carry fruits and fireworks and other Chinese New Year essentials into the house, a ramshackle two-story behemoth whose bathroom hygeine-levels scared the living daylights out of me. Being eight, I was eager to prove my physical strength to others, and this watermelon--though certainly large and difficult for my hands and stomach grasping action to control--was to be taken in by nobody else. I shooed off the others with arrogant disdain.
"I can do it! Let me do it! I can do it!" I scolded, as Dad shook his head, slightly unsure of his son's ability to carry what was to be an essential element of the Hiew family's New Year's feast that year. But, to my great surprise, he only shook his head slightly, gathered shopping bags and headed indoors. After scrapping with the watermelon for a few moments, I looked up, and found that absolutely nobody was outside. It was simply me, Mark, and a watermelon that when placed tall-side up, would have come past my chest.
Now by the left hand side of this house was a giant pit. Not like the volcanic sort that one finds in Los Angeles, but one far more artificially toxic. It's certainly a large hole, more like a steep, semi-natural valley that could have been forged by a landslide or a Japanese bomb during the War or the Hiew family's ancestors. I'm not really sure. The point is though that far too much of Malaysia's countryside is awfully polluted, and this pit was a case in point. It was absolutely filled with plastic shopping bags.They may have been multicoloured and from a variety of stores in town, but they were certainly not of any type of aesthetic appeal. Shopping bags and food scraps, I believe. And the dogs (oh the dogs!) would go rummaging around there all day, then come back inside the house, flea-ish and nasty and wiping muck all over the chairs, and nobody seemed to notice!
It was nothing but a giant eyesore; one that would constantly lead me to wonder: "Why did my extended family throw all those bags down there?" And "What sort of fun would it be for me to roll down that massive slope?"
Now on this occasion, the car was parked particularly close to the beginning of the drop-off between the front yard-ish region of the house and this gaping pit. After several anxious minutes of tugging and re-tugging, I quickly realized that this giant watermelon would not be lifted by my small arms that day. Admitting partial defeat, but far too vain to ask somebody older to take it in, I decided--rather rashly and in particularly poor judgment--to employ the "roley-poley" technique. Much like walking a chair across a room leg by leg, or more accurately, a Camusian snowball up a slope, I stooped down low and began to slowly push the oversized, sweet mother of goodness towards home. Those open front doors were my goal, and by george, that green football was going to sail through those posts, even if it did involve thick layers of filthy dust and dog poo!
Problem was, and you have likely guessed it, that large oblongish watermelons do not roll straight. They wobble. A lot. This particular one wobbled so much that it began to take a dangerous course, veering to the left of its prescribed path and then suddenly, horrifyingly, over the precipice of the gaping pit of plastic rubbish bag doom.
I literally gasped. "Mum will not like this", my mamma's boy eight-year-old mind squealed.
There was only one thing to do. I leapt down the precipice like Indiana Jones, chasing after the tumbling green orb as it bounced down the steep hill, knocking into small roots, picking up then discarding toxic blue grocery bags, and gathering pace all the time. Now I was quite quick back then, and I managed to catch it before it got down even half way down the hill.I clutched that watermelon like it was my life savings in a piggy bank during the Great Depression. And yet, after sliding along such dusty terrain, it had become incredibly slippery. My hands, to exacerbate the situation, were sweaty and kiddish. Alas, these two conditions combined meant that I dropped the watermelon just as I began hauling myself back up the hill, and this time, I did not catch it again. In fact, at one point during my second chase, I fell down. And tumbled. Like the watermelon.
And in response to the question I had up until then been asking myself: doing roley-poleys down a disgusting, trash-filled hole of colouful crap is not fun.
Nor was dragging that precious nugget of black-pipped, red-fleshed nectar all the way back to the house from the bottom of the hill.
I try to imagine the expression on my face upon delivering the watermelon back to my father, standing at the kitchen, cracking open peanuts with his siblings.There is Chinese New Year music on the television above me. Chickens are cooking, women are laughing. It's hot as all hell. I am so far from 'home', yet feel so surrounded by 'home.'
I am grinning, and it is the cheekiest, most rueful grin I have ever grinned before.
Friday, December 23, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Everything You'll Be
- The "I finished College" round-up.
“Basically, any country which hates America, he’s buddy buddy with.”
And so ended my final class period at the University of Maryland, on an ineffectual rant by an anti-Hugo Chavez chap in a marle-grey “Maryland’ sweatshirt doing a presentation-turned-soapbox on Venezuela for extra credit.
I had a surprisingly faint desire to raise rowdy objection: “As co-founder of the DC underground Chavista movement, I hereby stamp the mighty red flag of the Oppressed into your Yanqui imperialist heart. Muahahaha (ha…ha)” I heard myself scream.
But instead, I continued surfing news headlines on my laptop. Depressingly, I couldn’t even muster the sincerity to pay attention to my disconnected peers in this, my ultimate lecture. Perhaps fittingly as far as career path goes, it was in ECON315: “Economic Development of Underdeveloped Countries.” But of all the minds and ideas that I have encountered in my time in college, of all the moments where I’ve stepped out of a classroom with head swimming in re-evaluated thoughts or punch drunk on a fresh theory, it was completely inappropriate for me to go out with this class. The teacher, who is a Latin American PhD candidate, is a right-leaning free trade sympathizer who has announced his desire to jump ship on his home country for the plasma TV-owning lifestyle of the World Bank technocrat, citing his hopeless pessimism in Argentina’s ability to curb pervasive corruption. This, in a classroom filled with at least a proportion of students whom I hope are actually interested in doing something about, you know, the economic development of underdeveloped countries. Beyond that, however, his devastatingly ineffective efforts at lecturing—employing frequent 10-second silences as he stammered his way to some over-qualified response to an elementary question; his less-than-stellar exam question grammar:
”The Solow model predict absolute convergence that is all countries will end up with the same GDP per capita if and only if…”
…and his drastic simplification of a 750-page tome’s worth of relevant material into cartoonishly superficial PowerPoint’s offered little to sub-zero intellectual inspiration.
But it wasn’t always so. Indeed, as I prepare to walk the stage next week, cap and gowning the end to this small, collegiate chapter of my life, I reflect on the events and lessons I might actually want to remember some years from now.
If one were to chart my college journey, the variables would likely involve political spectrums and identity conceptualizations.
My freshman year saw me dive headfirst into activism. Coming from the Republican quagmire of suburban Howard County, I entered university with 1968 on my mind and a yearning for some “Capitalism is rubbish” conversation. I recall the heady rush of the first Peace Forum meeting, where a colourful coalition of peaceniks, Red Guard uniformed socialists, conservative ‘hostiles’ and interested kids like myself discussed the recently elected Bush Jr. administration’s aggressive vision for the Middle East. What followed was a whirlwind of tabling, teach-ins, fundraisers, debates, and protests, protests, protests. Whether traveling en masse to large-scale United for Peace and Justice demonstrations in D.C. or leading midday campus walk-outs and die-ins, I became well-versed in the rhythmic plastic bucket beats of protest drumming and catchy chants such as:
“Hell No! We won’t go! We won’t fight for Texaco!”
I recall the night that the “Shock and Awe” campaign began, huddled in the dorm room of fellow peace activist Rohinna, recoiling in horror at the televised sight of the very actions we had dedicated our 18-year-old hearts and souls into preventing. An ROTC floor mate, whose front door was emblazoned with pro-War propaganda extending far beyond the peace sign scarf which adorned mine, blasted Outkast’s “Bombs over Baghdad” that night. Others on my floor became enthused at the fighter plane love-fest being paraded across the broadcast media: “We’re gonna fuck the hell out of them!” one exclaimed, much like he might concerning a rival football team or an invading enemy on a Playstation game, and not the children of Iraq.
It could have been that very night which led me toward the field of peacebuilding, or towards the post-conflict reconstruction of East Timor two years later.
Though I flirted with other progressive issues, including contract struggles for university workers, environmental conservation, and building a revolutionary socialist party, I settled on my major pet issue in global HIV/AIDS. A petri dish for social justice affairs, fighting this torrid epidemic has brought me into solidarity and friendship with a variety of minority groups from many walks of life. Zackie Achmat, the Mandela of the movement in South Africa, revealed his organizing tactic to me over breakfast at Afterword café one breakfast (“We just did it!"). Youth peer counselors from Nigeria and Botswana, HIV-positive members of ACT UP New York, reproductive health providers from Portugal, spoken word poets from Baltimore and many a public health EuroNGOer* in Brussels; all have been bright jewels in my evolving understanding of this ruthless virus and the beautiful resistance of humanity it has spurred. My mentor, now an organizer in New York City, told me that even if our organization crumbles, the movement will live on, because “it’s strong as hell.”
Revitalizing the then-defunct Student Global AIDS Campaign chapter at my campus, and seeing it flourish into one of the University’s most prominent student organizations is the closest thing to a legacy I will leave behind.
Behind the activism there was always the ideology. Intellectually, I spent the majority of my college years is psycho-political resistance, intoxicated with the great ideas of Marx and his followers. Ecological anarchism, Trotsky’s permanent revolution, Gramscian hegemony, and Lukacs’ “History and Class Consciousness” were the order of my internal debate, as I analyzed the alienation and reification displayed by my fellow students: wearing “in” Che and CCCP shirts, watching Superbowl advertisements, eating Taco Bell in the food court. In London, I paid my respects at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, writing an unashamedly ambitious reflection about how the term “Markism” might sound as the future Marxism (!) Later, in Las Vegas, I would lament the symbolic virtuality of the casino complexes “The Venetian” and “Paris,” using the post-modern ideas of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard as my chalk board.
Soon afterwards, like thousands of young students before me, I stopped seeing the revolution, rejected rejection and finally decided to enter into “the system.” Though part of me (the rational, Asian side) regrets not spending time reading more practical subject matter, I like to justify my two year flirtation with radical politics as a testament to the heady idealism of youth.
More so than anything else, attending the University of Maryland provided context. As much of a mainstream liberal bubble as it is, and as privileged as many of the students still are, it is far more diverse than the unaffordable political office feeder institutions inside D.C. It was here that I got my taste of real J.A.P.s**, Long Island frat boys, sororitutes and other factions of the lowest common denominator that it would be more PC to not lump together, but far less satisfying. Though I am leaving College Park only now, I departed from its seedy, beer-pong-infested shores in spirit several years ago, and it’s the drunken loutishness and “Fuck Duke!” tribalists I have most to thank for facilitating this abridged emigration. The Food Co-op, sanctuary of progressive cuisine and spicy soundtracked sandwich lines, has been an island oasis within a sea of fast-paced materialism; devoted faculty and an opportunist’s bounty of extracurricular activities provided me with the monotony-breaking hobbies of meditation and salsa. Most importantly, I've learned what it is to be Australian, to live in America, to be upwardly mobile, about where one fits into the class and stratification of today's world.
So fare well, College Park, and stay classy. It’s been a good three and a half years, and I’ll look back with some satisfaction at what we’ve shared. And, in disjointed fashion, I'll finish by noting that where in previous times I would have jumped to the defense of anti-imperialist Generalissimo Chavez at the slightest hint of bourgeois elite critique, today, I'd rather work towards something far more constructive.
--------
*European non-governmental organization
**Jewish American Princesses, not to be nor easily confused with Japanese nationals
“Basically, any country which hates America, he’s buddy buddy with.”
And so ended my final class period at the University of Maryland, on an ineffectual rant by an anti-Hugo Chavez chap in a marle-grey “Maryland’ sweatshirt doing a presentation-turned-soapbox on Venezuela for extra credit.
I had a surprisingly faint desire to raise rowdy objection: “As co-founder of the DC underground Chavista movement, I hereby stamp the mighty red flag of the Oppressed into your Yanqui imperialist heart. Muahahaha (ha…ha)” I heard myself scream.
But instead, I continued surfing news headlines on my laptop. Depressingly, I couldn’t even muster the sincerity to pay attention to my disconnected peers in this, my ultimate lecture. Perhaps fittingly as far as career path goes, it was in ECON315: “Economic Development of Underdeveloped Countries.” But of all the minds and ideas that I have encountered in my time in college, of all the moments where I’ve stepped out of a classroom with head swimming in re-evaluated thoughts or punch drunk on a fresh theory, it was completely inappropriate for me to go out with this class. The teacher, who is a Latin American PhD candidate, is a right-leaning free trade sympathizer who has announced his desire to jump ship on his home country for the plasma TV-owning lifestyle of the World Bank technocrat, citing his hopeless pessimism in Argentina’s ability to curb pervasive corruption. This, in a classroom filled with at least a proportion of students whom I hope are actually interested in doing something about, you know, the economic development of underdeveloped countries. Beyond that, however, his devastatingly ineffective efforts at lecturing—employing frequent 10-second silences as he stammered his way to some over-qualified response to an elementary question; his less-than-stellar exam question grammar:
”The Solow model predict absolute convergence that is all countries will end up with the same GDP per capita if and only if…”
…and his drastic simplification of a 750-page tome’s worth of relevant material into cartoonishly superficial PowerPoint’s offered little to sub-zero intellectual inspiration.
But it wasn’t always so. Indeed, as I prepare to walk the stage next week, cap and gowning the end to this small, collegiate chapter of my life, I reflect on the events and lessons I might actually want to remember some years from now.
If one were to chart my college journey, the variables would likely involve political spectrums and identity conceptualizations.
My freshman year saw me dive headfirst into activism. Coming from the Republican quagmire of suburban Howard County, I entered university with 1968 on my mind and a yearning for some “Capitalism is rubbish” conversation. I recall the heady rush of the first Peace Forum meeting, where a colourful coalition of peaceniks, Red Guard uniformed socialists, conservative ‘hostiles’ and interested kids like myself discussed the recently elected Bush Jr. administration’s aggressive vision for the Middle East. What followed was a whirlwind of tabling, teach-ins, fundraisers, debates, and protests, protests, protests. Whether traveling en masse to large-scale United for Peace and Justice demonstrations in D.C. or leading midday campus walk-outs and die-ins, I became well-versed in the rhythmic plastic bucket beats of protest drumming and catchy chants such as:
“Hell No! We won’t go! We won’t fight for Texaco!”
I recall the night that the “Shock and Awe” campaign began, huddled in the dorm room of fellow peace activist Rohinna, recoiling in horror at the televised sight of the very actions we had dedicated our 18-year-old hearts and souls into preventing. An ROTC floor mate, whose front door was emblazoned with pro-War propaganda extending far beyond the peace sign scarf which adorned mine, blasted Outkast’s “Bombs over Baghdad” that night. Others on my floor became enthused at the fighter plane love-fest being paraded across the broadcast media: “We’re gonna fuck the hell out of them!” one exclaimed, much like he might concerning a rival football team or an invading enemy on a Playstation game, and not the children of Iraq.
It could have been that very night which led me toward the field of peacebuilding, or towards the post-conflict reconstruction of East Timor two years later.
Though I flirted with other progressive issues, including contract struggles for university workers, environmental conservation, and building a revolutionary socialist party, I settled on my major pet issue in global HIV/AIDS. A petri dish for social justice affairs, fighting this torrid epidemic has brought me into solidarity and friendship with a variety of minority groups from many walks of life. Zackie Achmat, the Mandela of the movement in South Africa, revealed his organizing tactic to me over breakfast at Afterword café one breakfast (“We just did it!"). Youth peer counselors from Nigeria and Botswana, HIV-positive members of ACT UP New York, reproductive health providers from Portugal, spoken word poets from Baltimore and many a public health EuroNGOer* in Brussels; all have been bright jewels in my evolving understanding of this ruthless virus and the beautiful resistance of humanity it has spurred. My mentor, now an organizer in New York City, told me that even if our organization crumbles, the movement will live on, because “it’s strong as hell.”
Revitalizing the then-defunct Student Global AIDS Campaign chapter at my campus, and seeing it flourish into one of the University’s most prominent student organizations is the closest thing to a legacy I will leave behind.
Behind the activism there was always the ideology. Intellectually, I spent the majority of my college years is psycho-political resistance, intoxicated with the great ideas of Marx and his followers. Ecological anarchism, Trotsky’s permanent revolution, Gramscian hegemony, and Lukacs’ “History and Class Consciousness” were the order of my internal debate, as I analyzed the alienation and reification displayed by my fellow students: wearing “in” Che and CCCP shirts, watching Superbowl advertisements, eating Taco Bell in the food court. In London, I paid my respects at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery, writing an unashamedly ambitious reflection about how the term “Markism” might sound as the future Marxism (!) Later, in Las Vegas, I would lament the symbolic virtuality of the casino complexes “The Venetian” and “Paris,” using the post-modern ideas of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard as my chalk board.
Soon afterwards, like thousands of young students before me, I stopped seeing the revolution, rejected rejection and finally decided to enter into “the system.” Though part of me (the rational, Asian side) regrets not spending time reading more practical subject matter, I like to justify my two year flirtation with radical politics as a testament to the heady idealism of youth.
More so than anything else, attending the University of Maryland provided context. As much of a mainstream liberal bubble as it is, and as privileged as many of the students still are, it is far more diverse than the unaffordable political office feeder institutions inside D.C. It was here that I got my taste of real J.A.P.s**, Long Island frat boys, sororitutes and other factions of the lowest common denominator that it would be more PC to not lump together, but far less satisfying. Though I am leaving College Park only now, I departed from its seedy, beer-pong-infested shores in spirit several years ago, and it’s the drunken loutishness and “Fuck Duke!” tribalists I have most to thank for facilitating this abridged emigration. The Food Co-op, sanctuary of progressive cuisine and spicy soundtracked sandwich lines, has been an island oasis within a sea of fast-paced materialism; devoted faculty and an opportunist’s bounty of extracurricular activities provided me with the monotony-breaking hobbies of meditation and salsa. Most importantly, I've learned what it is to be Australian, to live in America, to be upwardly mobile, about where one fits into the class and stratification of today's world.
So fare well, College Park, and stay classy. It’s been a good three and a half years, and I’ll look back with some satisfaction at what we’ve shared. And, in disjointed fashion, I'll finish by noting that where in previous times I would have jumped to the defense of anti-imperialist Generalissimo Chavez at the slightest hint of bourgeois elite critique, today, I'd rather work towards something far more constructive.
--------
*European non-governmental organization
**Jewish American Princesses, not to be nor easily confused with Japanese nationals
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Presenting Ambition
It has been said that there are two kinds of people in this world: lovers and cynics. I’ve always been far more partial to the former; journals filled with awful high school poetry and a “Global Partnership for Effective Assistance” calendar presently hangs over my shoulder as artificial testament. But in recent discussion, a number of mates have commented on my losing the fluffy white edges of unbridled idealism since the beginning of our friendships throughout college, attaining an element of pragmatism which has certainly provided a valuable reality check to put in my wallet next to the “Be the change you wish to see” and “Love is all you need” personal IDs.
Well that’s not really all that surprising. College, after all, is expected to mould naïve, “yeah, bro” 17-year-olds into battle-ready, confident professionals: pressed, shaped and critically-analyzed out for life-long career success. So as I enter into the final fortnight of my undergraduate degree, as my forays around campus acquire a tinge of near-nostalgia, it’s refreshing to see College Park out in reverse. Indeed, far from tidying up my non-existent professional portfolio or perfecting my job interview persona, I’ve set out upon a rather vain, infinitely juvenile mission which simply glows with man-child escapism.
I’ve recently dedicated myself to becoming one half of the most sickeningly cute couple of all time.
Not content with winning small scholarships for my high school’s future UMD students, nor with today’s front page phallic glory, this week has seen significant strides towards achieving this tongue-in-cheek loftiest of dreams. Sure there’s Brad and Angelina (or is there? I really couldn’t tell you), Rodin’s couple from “The Kiss,” or even Sonny and Cher, but this new flame and I are making ground fast. Last night, David, a lovable gay opera singer of a friend, was driven to near-physical rebuke at the jealousy our split-earphone Podcasted disco dance out of the metro station did invoke. And this afternoon—following my delivery of a rose and a purple peacock-feather ring—Her young boss whispered “SO CUTE!” as we sauntered out of the office in the direction of the city’s Congressional buildings.
Inextricably linked to all this, however, is the romance. The Fred Astaire/George Clooney/Jeff Buckleyization of my past three weeks has seen notable shifts in my psychological process. Mostly, this has taken the form of simple reductivism: where before I would plan ahead according to homework assignments, friends’ parties, meditation, sleep and the like, now there is 1. Time with Her, and 2. Time without Her. Where previously I would spend valuable commute time wading thoughtfully through my latest wannabe-music-critic playlist and browsing New Yorker articles, I now return to the one single collection of songs I created for her (our relationship was soundtracked and re-soundtracked by myself diligently over Thanksgiving), entitled: “Aussies Know Best.” And where haughty anti-consumerism once placed me above Holiday season fetishism, I now daydream endlessly about where more tweed could possibly fit best within her already achingly-hip wardrobe.
According to my guide points, we’re working at a steady clip between infatuation and perfection, balancing amicably on that thin line between “sickeningly cute” and simply “sickening.” Examples of text message highlights include the following:
”Also, I think you are cool. In addition, I like u a lot…”
Which I followed up the following early morning with:
“I think youre adorable.”
Email subject lines are even better (or worse, according to the audience): “Smitten” and “Cupcake” being the most egregious offenders. We trade Neruda quotes in between developing innovative theses on political philosophy, one of a startling array of mutual passions. After a disappointing year of dating half-leads, it appears that this self-deprecating writer has struck gold (literally, as in the color of her shoes). I find myself eyeing her curiously over dinner, silently shaking off the lingering disbelief at my stumbling upon such a well-informed, oppression-busting, fiendishly cute Wilco fan of an East Timor activist who “admits” to having a crush on me and actually enjoys my verbosity.
We haven’t quite reached Advanced level at kissing as we walk, but I justify that by arguing that a certain oft-neglected romance is found in the smear of saliva upon nose/cheek/shirt collar/lips.
Similarly, I attempted to give her Lesson #1 on the embattled artform of Australian English, but she declared a desire to continue pronouncing “Australian” in her rarified Phoenixian tongue.
“So sickening/ly cute!” I hear you say.
During T-WOH (Time Without Her), I am notified daily about the tangible glow her presence has provided my cheeks. Personal conversations—without challenge, and much like this entry—devolve into revelatory gushing sessions in which I blabber over everything from her Winona Ryder’s niece-like beauty to her remarkably progressive Christianity down to the name of her iPod (“W”). I smile that stupid-ass ear-to-ear grin at the slightest mention of her name. While volunteering at my Food Co-op, I even visualized her small face as I scooped deep-fried falafels out of the pot.
And to think, it’s only been three weeks. World domination already appears to be a foregone conclusion.
-------
On another note, Happy World AIDS Day. I made possibly my final appearance as a panel speaker for Student Global AIDS Campaign and Advocates for Youth, and will undoubtedly miss playing the small role I did within such outstanding civil society organizations.
Well that’s not really all that surprising. College, after all, is expected to mould naïve, “yeah, bro” 17-year-olds into battle-ready, confident professionals: pressed, shaped and critically-analyzed out for life-long career success. So as I enter into the final fortnight of my undergraduate degree, as my forays around campus acquire a tinge of near-nostalgia, it’s refreshing to see College Park out in reverse. Indeed, far from tidying up my non-existent professional portfolio or perfecting my job interview persona, I’ve set out upon a rather vain, infinitely juvenile mission which simply glows with man-child escapism.
I’ve recently dedicated myself to becoming one half of the most sickeningly cute couple of all time.
Not content with winning small scholarships for my high school’s future UMD students, nor with today’s front page phallic glory, this week has seen significant strides towards achieving this tongue-in-cheek loftiest of dreams. Sure there’s Brad and Angelina (or is there? I really couldn’t tell you), Rodin’s couple from “The Kiss,” or even Sonny and Cher, but this new flame and I are making ground fast. Last night, David, a lovable gay opera singer of a friend, was driven to near-physical rebuke at the jealousy our split-earphone Podcasted disco dance out of the metro station did invoke. And this afternoon—following my delivery of a rose and a purple peacock-feather ring—Her young boss whispered “SO CUTE!” as we sauntered out of the office in the direction of the city’s Congressional buildings.
Inextricably linked to all this, however, is the romance. The Fred Astaire/George Clooney/Jeff Buckleyization of my past three weeks has seen notable shifts in my psychological process. Mostly, this has taken the form of simple reductivism: where before I would plan ahead according to homework assignments, friends’ parties, meditation, sleep and the like, now there is 1. Time with Her, and 2. Time without Her. Where previously I would spend valuable commute time wading thoughtfully through my latest wannabe-music-critic playlist and browsing New Yorker articles, I now return to the one single collection of songs I created for her (our relationship was soundtracked and re-soundtracked by myself diligently over Thanksgiving), entitled: “Aussies Know Best.” And where haughty anti-consumerism once placed me above Holiday season fetishism, I now daydream endlessly about where more tweed could possibly fit best within her already achingly-hip wardrobe.
According to my guide points, we’re working at a steady clip between infatuation and perfection, balancing amicably on that thin line between “sickeningly cute” and simply “sickening.” Examples of text message highlights include the following:
”Also, I think you are cool. In addition, I like u a lot…”
Which I followed up the following early morning with:
“I think youre adorable.”
Email subject lines are even better (or worse, according to the audience): “Smitten” and “Cupcake” being the most egregious offenders. We trade Neruda quotes in between developing innovative theses on political philosophy, one of a startling array of mutual passions. After a disappointing year of dating half-leads, it appears that this self-deprecating writer has struck gold (literally, as in the color of her shoes). I find myself eyeing her curiously over dinner, silently shaking off the lingering disbelief at my stumbling upon such a well-informed, oppression-busting, fiendishly cute Wilco fan of an East Timor activist who “admits” to having a crush on me and actually enjoys my verbosity.
We haven’t quite reached Advanced level at kissing as we walk, but I justify that by arguing that a certain oft-neglected romance is found in the smear of saliva upon nose/cheek/shirt collar/lips.
Similarly, I attempted to give her Lesson #1 on the embattled artform of Australian English, but she declared a desire to continue pronouncing “Australian” in her rarified Phoenixian tongue.
“So sickening/ly cute!” I hear you say.
During T-WOH (Time Without Her), I am notified daily about the tangible glow her presence has provided my cheeks. Personal conversations—without challenge, and much like this entry—devolve into revelatory gushing sessions in which I blabber over everything from her Winona Ryder’s niece-like beauty to her remarkably progressive Christianity down to the name of her iPod (“W”). I smile that stupid-ass ear-to-ear grin at the slightest mention of her name. While volunteering at my Food Co-op, I even visualized her small face as I scooped deep-fried falafels out of the pot.
And to think, it’s only been three weeks. World domination already appears to be a foregone conclusion.
-------
On another note, Happy World AIDS Day. I made possibly my final appearance as a panel speaker for Student Global AIDS Campaign and Advocates for Youth, and will undoubtedly miss playing the small role I did within such outstanding civil society organizations.
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