Time and again, we are forced to make choices...

"I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Making choices is difficult. I don't think I'm very good at it, even though in the past I've made decisions without looking back. For example, I've never agonized over whether I should have gone to Scripps. And I've definitely made decisions that were not necessarily right, or the best, but stuck with it stubbornly because of some sense of loyalty to the decision.

But when it comes down to what I want to devote the majority of my life doing, I start to doubt myself. Should I study international affairs? Should I have dropped everything and gone to art school? Sometimes I think we're all born with infinite amounts of potential. Our potential is embedded within, like little seeds that need to be cultivated. In daily life, we make a myriad of choices that cultivate different aspects of that potential. But one day, does it come to a choice, at a point of no return? If we choose to cultivate one single aspect of our potential, do the other plants wither and die away from neglect?

At her talk last semester, Angela Oh gave us some advice. She said, don't worry about what you choose. Make up your mind and choose one thing, anything, and it will not matter in the end. I believed her partially. Maybe it doesn't matter what you choose, as long as you pour your soul wholly into all your endeavors. Then, everything you've touched, everything you complete, will reflect your deepest passion, the essence of oneself. Maybe the essence that is a person's reason, life-source, identity...only springs from some fierce, intense devotion.

But like Esther's character in The Bell Jar, I'm trapped by greed, I want only the best of everything in the world that I've ever known without the grief, the mundane, the weariness. I don't know how to make the right decisions. But from now on, I will make more conscious choices. I will listen to my feelings. I will follow the rare and exhilarating feeling of liberating joy and openness, and never settle for less than being whole.

what I am to you is not real

- Volcano, Damien Rice

Writing fiction is a process that I'm trying to become more familiar with. I'm writing my first short story as a final project for my creative writing class, and creating original characters has been fun! I think writers must become attached to their fictional characters by the end of a story, because their back stories have to be so richly imagined and fully fleshed out to make the characters believable. Finishing a novel must be quite depressing then, because the author is forced to say goodbye to the characters that have followed them in their head for day and night.

On the other hand, you have to be careful to not get too attached to fictional characters. When tragedy has to happen in a story, the author's sentiments can't get in the way of the inevitable ending. It's hard to take away happy endings from characters though, especially as I'm writing, I feel emotionally close to the people in my story. Sometimes I feel like I could be close friends with these people, if they actually existed. I've never had the experience of writing a novel, of course, but I imagine it must become a much more extreme attachment. I also find myself spacing out a lot more in my daily life because I'm dreaming about imaginary people. Hmm. Maybe I'll attempt to do NaNoWriMo again next year, not that I have the discipline to write a novel!

I always manage to take on too much. My goals for this summer are starting to seem overambitious. I got a letter from the IIPP program, and apparently I'll be taking classes from 9-5 for seven weeks, with mandatory evening activities on some evenings. I don't know when I'll have time to paint, research, and write fiction! I'll manage somehow. Optimism! <3

Only what we manage to do/lasts, what love sculpts from us;

-Marge Piercy

In an ongoing effort to merge art with progressive politics and to make literature more central to my life, I'm going to be an English minor. Somehow, I ended up signing up for three literature classes for next semester. It will be different and challenging, as I've only taken one literature course in college and I think it was an exception in that there were no analytical papers involved. So next semester, I will be taking:

Intro to British Lit - with Aaron Matz, clearly brilliant, and slightly intimidating.
Travel Narratives - with Jamaica Kincaid. I couldn't resist the opportunity to take a seminar class with Jamaica Kincaid, a writer who is practically a household name.
Asian American Literature: Gender and Sexuality - with Warren Liu. Love! He is adorable, and extremely affirming.
South Asian Politics - With the new professor in the Politics department who specializes in India. Will be my first comparative politics class!
Painting I - Yay. :)