1st and Amistad

Above, blazer: Goodwill. Blue thermal: Old Navy, gift. Jeans: Forever21. Oxfords: Payless.

This time last year I was busy having Epiphanic Moments, courtesy of James Joyce, contemplating the unfathomable significance of my then-favorite white boy picking lint off my back during rehearsal and how he declared it necessary to accompany me to the trash can. We were dressed like Charlie Chaplins in our matching bowler hats and printed bow ties, twirling our matching umbrellas, and he said to me, "You know you want to be a boy." (And it was true then, as it sometimes is now. Girls can be such bitches. Incidentally, at the same time Minnie's parents would freak out if she lived with guys next year, my mom is freaking out because I probably won't be able to.)


Oh, how things have changed.

I've spent the past few days having a spiritual crisis (how does one detach? I can walk through the mental process of detachment for whatever minor thing's happening at the time, but I can't actually detach, and how do you detach from everything?), testing my ability to digest lactose by consuming huge amounts of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and milk, getting stupidly mad at the flower shop for not having anything yellow, marveling at how I've lost all sense of how English and Chinese sound because I understand them, and suppressing a serious jetsetting itch.

Above, fake pashmina: NY street vendor. Key necklace: DIY. T-shirt: Napoleon in War Paint, Threadless. Dress: vintage FCUK. Tote: J. Crew. Tights: generic.

I have also not cared this little about how I look in the past several years since I was a little kid. I will take this as a sign that I am reconciling myself with my Self, and not that I'm lazy.

I always like to think things are constantly getting better. I think they are. I am still having Epiphanic Moments. As Connie once said, epiphanies are bittersweet.

Epiphanic Moment: A couple of days ago, my cousin declared that she needed to see my dorm, so we went, and while she was sprawled on my bed, and I on Mariah's (O Mattress Pad!), gazing at her upside-down Polaroids and feathered masks, I realized

1. I would rather be here than at home.
2. I have unwittingly grown terribly, terribly fond of the city of Berkeley, despite verbal protestation and declaring my undying loyalty to San Francisco. (Oh, B! Ours is a forbidden love.)
3. ...I am even developing a crush on Berkeley the school. On competent professors and GSIs, and how ridiculously huge and anonymous the student body is, and I can take Arabic next year?
   

And the question now is, did I really want to know that? It is so much easier to Angst than to Love because it gives me something to blame when I fail. And yet.