Colours of Fall

(Fall Foliage, Harvard Yard, Massachusetts, 2009)

These are the colours of Fall: Yellow, Orange, Red, Brown -- with a hint of green on a changing blue sky.

YELLOW
The transition. Summer is happiness, the sun is yellow, the lemony freshness of a slight fall breeze deceives us all before the change. It is a slight colour, maybe off-white or cream, the aging pages of a summer diary that's been left out near the salt water for too long. The green fades to yellow first -- a change so small we almost don't see it coming. Like meeting a stranger, like first introductions, like superficial small talk. All laying the base-coat foundations for a new life.

ORANGE
The beautiful. The turn of fall, before it gets too cold: the heat of summer remains, but the beauty of fall creeps in. Like a tree catching alight. Citrus sweetness flows around the yard and maybe in a strong breeze some will fall and swirl around you, dancing fire fairies enchanting and blessing the turn of a new harvest season. A warm hug, a pat on the back, a brush of the hand.

RED
It is passionate. Full of extremity and urgent as needing to jump into the deep end of a pool. Fall comes quickly out of Summer -- one day you are roasting in a singlet and the next you need to take out a jacket and cover up your legs with jeans: like red-hot urgency in a freezer. Clinging to a heater, kneading your face into the crevice of your best friend's neck, a not-so-subtle hard gripping onto fingers. It is fragile, highly transient and so, so intense. Red leaves are the hardest to keep, red dye the quickest to wash away with water.

BROWN
The Settling. It is not death, or the end of something. It is the start of comfort, acceptance and understanding. It is not the unpleasant colour that everyone makes it out to be: not diarrhea, or rot, or slushy mud. It is rather the familiar smell of hot cocoa after a day out in the wind, a robust trunk that you know would never fall under your weight. The swirling melted pot of chocolate in some people's eyes. Brown makes you feel fuzzy.

(Eliot Porter, Pool in a Brook, New Hampshire 1953)*

Like washing paint down a drain: let's observe these colours transition into and through each other and change into something entirely different. Winter is coming and with it a palette of blues and whites, the stark bathroom tiles will be all that is left after your paints have run down your bathtub pipes.

*Just heard about this guy and his photographs this morning in History of Photography, I likeeee his stufffff so I wanted to include it in a blogpost. SUE ME

One moment I was playing tag, the next I was caught in a civil war.

Last week, I was going to get my badminton racquet restrung (finally... I neglected to do it for so long). I walked briskly down one of the streets with the narrow footpaths between the Yard and the MAC Gym, and on the way I passed a little old lady slowly making her way in the same direction down the street with a walking stick. I noticed her frail but sure steps, each one slow but deliberate, as I approached from behind. I felt a little guilty passing her in my rush, a single one of my strides equated to three of her small wobbles. But, what was I to do? As I walked away and left her farther and farther behind me, I thought about what it would be like to be in that situation as I become older. Would I resent the younger generation for being more able than me? How much nostalgia would I be hit with as the years stacked up and my capabilities degenerated with each new experience gained?

Living in the Now is kind of a strange experience. You know where you have come from, but sometimes you forget. There are things buried in our memories that we don't think about but at random times they come up into our consciousness. You think you know where you are heading or at least can imagine different scenarios -- but they aren't set in stone, ever. We can always change our minds about what direction we're heading in. The present is always moving forward though; like a reference point in motion -- with reference to a stationary time dimension our experiences are actually extremely warped by aging.

I woke up from a dream this morning where I was playing tag in a childhood neighbourhood -- not my own, mind you but a childhood neighbourhood nonetheless. We were running and chasing and running and chasing and emotions skyrocketed from a natural high to something more intense, somehow. People started picking up real guns and real bullets and charged into a backyard to protest about injustice, about equality and hope. Most of us were gunned down immediately. I only remember running in the direction to go home, trying to find my friends and finding out that many of their bodies had been left behind in that backyard graveyard.

Then I woke up.

An October Update

Firstly! I apologize for not updating this thing in the last 3 weeks or so. I've been meaning to for a really long time, I just kept doing other stuff/procrastinating/couldn't think of how to start, but now that I've put it off for so long I have an excuse to introduce a blog post by apologizing about not updating. Yay for excuses!

Anyway, life here has been pretty eventful in the last few weeks I guess you could say. I'm not even entirely sure what's happened. Ummm pic spam perhaps

Mooncake with my cousin for midautumn fest. took like an hour to get to her place due to a disruption in the T so I had to get off at apparently a really dodge part of Mass Bay and take a shuttle to Quincy, so they drove me back later :3 

Starcraft parties late at night lololol korean influence

american footballlll I paid for this ticket when I didn't have to. ): and the guy at the gate thought I was bringing vodka into the game in my water bottle .. do I look like an alcoholic?

CSA cruise boat party in Boston Harbour :) Stole this from Ray's instagram. was a really nice atmosphere, esp since the weather was cool and it was windy on the top deck but it wasn't raining as we had been fearing. Oh yeah and SOME crazy guy climbed on the outside of the boat from the top deck to the lower deck and then got detained by security. No big deal #collegelife

SO MUCH NOMS @ korean bbq

Ok actually I don't have that many photos, I should really take more so I don't forget what's happened haha. 

On the cognitive side of things, I think I'm learning a lot here. Not only about the world but also about myself, which is interesting because back home I feel like I learned a lot about people in general but not so much about myself. Maybe because I was always the observer and didn't really think to include myself in the frame. Since I came here though and I haven't really had anything to hold me back from doing anything, it's really started to help me understand myself. 

I am someone who is very easygoing, but that is only because I haven't really discovered an identity. So, it's much easier to let others define what that is. I don't want to make a statement and in fact feel rather uncomfortable doing so at times because there's nothing really I believe in. So, I just go along with the crowd -- the default option I suppose. In that regard maybe I am a very boring person. But then maybe the fact that I am so malleable is in itself something that sets me apart, making the whole thing very paradoxical. I'm not sure where I fit into the world still, but the future is starting to scare me less ok as soon as I typed that I realized that was a huge lie, it still scares me but I don't know, I see a lot more opportunity in it now? I think I have grown in self-confidence a bit, and I believe I can do a bit more if I just go for it.

At home, I tried to stay under the radar mostly, didn't really get involved in much in my semester at uni and stuck with what I knew. But there are so many opportunities here that it's impossible to avoid, so I just go with it and am discovering slowly the things that I would really enjoy. Since coming here I discovered a multitude of insecurities that I never realized I had hahaha, but I think being here has also helped me work on those.

So, it's a slow process and very tiring among classes and other things but we all come to college to grow as people right? :) 

In terms of classes, CS is great, I'm really more seriously going down the path of possibly majoring in CS now. Ec10 made me like economics a bit less, just because it's all about firm decisions and taxes and alsfkjasl;dfkjas; confusing things that I don't like thinking about, I mean it's not bad and for some reason Econ section cheers me up when I had a bad morning, but otherwise it's really not something I'd want to pursue in life. Which is a pity because the business dept here is amazing and there are always so many events  and internships for people in business and finance, so I feel like I'm squandering those opportunities here, but well there are other things I'd rather be doing I guess. My philosophy class which sounded like it was about friendzoning is actually incredibly philosophically engaging and intense. So far we've read Plato, Aristotle, St Augustine and Sartre, and somehow the ideas I learned actually apply to everyday life. So I'm enjoying that class as well, despite all the readings I have to do hahaha. History of Photography is interesting but the readings are killer and I have no idea how to discuss them in section because I only ever skim them, plus I'm not too sure how well my midterm went so I will have to report back to you... I'm getting it back today. 

Speaking of which it is now 10.45am and I have class at 11, so I need to run to breakfast now :) I'll update soon, I hope haha. 

LIFE IS BUSY, remember to rest sometimes

de-facto Ostrich Pillow