foreword
this is a curated collection of my scattered short-form thoughts. this is actually the second edition (find the first edition here)! you may think of them as seeds for blogposts that never came to be, like brown dwarfs. alternatively, you may think of them as artifacts of my brain, like fossils. only a small fraction of my stream-of-consciousness happen to be preserved, and an even smaller fraction are eventually revealed to the world…
01/18/2023 — movies, pacing, time
curator’s note: this particular thought was inspired by 1) mastering quantum mechanics ch. 15 and 2) puss in boots: the last wish
stories are framed through the creator’s careful pacing. in stories, character developments happen quickly, in canon events, training arcs, and waves of important revelations. it’s somewhat straightforward to apply this framework to my past experiences. i look back and see how i’ve changed; i point to the events i remember the most clearly and frame my life and lived experiences around them
so maybe that’s why i struggle with the things ahead of me. it’s hard to paint my future with the same romantic colors as i do the past. things like self improvement and identity formation are slow, arduous, and extremely non-linear processes. in fact, they’re more cyclical than anything. change is hard. i change and grow and change and grow but then i find myself circling back to the same problems, again and again—
but maybe that’s a good thing. after all this time, i’m not truly there yet, wherever there is. i have struggled so far to be here, and here i am still struggling–still alive!
03/24/2023 — a scattered journey to gate A21
i’m waiting for the bus. the bus is late by ten minutes. people walk down the street; sometimes i can pretend that they’re all npcs, and i’m watching a film, frame by frame. overcast, even lighting. i’m right across the street from the back bay trader joe’s, which is the “smallest trader joe’s in the known universe”, according to a sign at the door
there is so much that i am ignorant about the world. therefore, i can choose to see it through any lens that i’d like that tickles my brain right. is this line of thinking optimistic or cynical?
i’m on the bus now, driving down boylston. seeing h&m man will never not be a little amusing
there’s a restaurant called rock bottom. the last three letters—tom—look like they don’t have led lights on them, so at night i guess it just looks like rock bot. personally i think rock tom would have been better
there’s a vertical sign that says “AVA”—i think it’s an apartment building. but the lettering is exactly like that of CAVA, just without the C. wonder how that happened
there is a sharply dressed businessman on the bus, airpods in, taking a call. he is very professional sounding. i could convince myself that he is not a real person
through the glass, i see a beautiful mural inside a coffee shop in chinatown. i don’t see this very often in chinatown. i wonder if i will ever visit
a car cuts in front of the bus suddenly; the bus driver shouts out in surprise. where they were going in such a hurry?
i used to think that i was very special. i think i still want to think of myself as special. when i was kid, i used to half-believe that i had special powers. maybe more than half. i was really hoping the hogwarts or camp half-blood letter would come
something i used to do was close my eyes and spin around and see if i could tell what cardinal direction i was facing. if birds could have internal compasses, maybe i could have one too?
(i’m writing this because i absolutely can’t tell what direction the bus is moving. i probably could figure it out, though, if i looked at the sun’s position or thought hard enough about the layout of boston. that’s something, right?)
on the left there’s a truck that says holden fruit and produce. family owned and operated, apparently. are the kids going to take over the family business? you could write a whole movie about that
we’re nearing the airport now. i think they updated the signs; they look new and sleek. they picked an orange and gray color scheme though, and i’m not sure how i feel about that…
i’m almost at my gate. but first: restroom. i was thinking boston logan airport looked newer and nicer than the last time i saw it, but maybe that was just because i was paying more attention, because when i walked into the first stall there were only two holes where the coat hook was supposed to be
this is a very long bathroom; there are probably around 20 stalls, all in a line on one side. this must be in the top 3 longest single-row bathrooms i have ever been in
occasionally when i sit down on a toilet i wonder if the stalls closer to the door are much dirtier than the stalls farther from the door due to more frequent usage. i imagine if i were to plot dirtiness if stall against distance from door, it would probably be something like a decaying exponential. there are so many factors that go into how we would model this. how does the dirtiness of bathroom scales with usage frequency? how does the business of the bathroom flatten out the distribution, as all the stalls become occupied?
as i walk out i realize there is actually another entrance on the other end (which makes sense because walking all the way down to the 20th bathroom stall seems very far), so maybe the stall dirtiness distribution is more like a U shape. But I don’t think it would be symmetric because people coming in from the side i came in are coming from some of the gates and security checkpoint, and people who go into the other side are coming from those who are waiting to board and those who just came off the plane. so many things to think about!
i wonder if anyone has tried to answer this question. does anyone else think about this? i’d imagine that if they did, they would maybe avoid the first few stalls. but i don’t, because i never remember this little thought of mine until i am already sat down
07/01/2023 — gatekeeping
it occurred to me that maybe i don’t like being friends with course 8s (mit physics majors) because i want to be special. perhaps i love physics so much i don’t like it when other people like it as much as i do
curator’s note: i still think the primary reasons for my lack of course 8 friends are negative personal experiences during my freshman year, a certain cliquey-ness of those at the core of the course 8 community, and wanting a separation of work and friends. still, there’s something here to this too
07/24/2023 — how much of the world is told through the male lens?
curator’s note: the context is revelations on my asexual identity
07/24/2023 — caltech bathroom shower thought
curator’s note: unlike most other thoughts on here, this definitively originated in the shower. and unlike all other thoughts on here, this is about showers!
basically, the shower i usually use (hereafter shower A) was occupied, so i used the other one (shower B). unfortunately, i had left my shampoo and conditioner inside A
unlike A, which has at least five different shampoos, there is only one pair of shampoo and conditioner in B. i realized that it is probably because A has much better water pressure, so everyone eventually migrated over to that shower. as i contemplated just stealing a pump of shampoo and conditioner from this poor stranger, it occurred to me that this particular shampoo and conditioner has a much higher probability of unconsented use—both because the higher occupation rate of A forces residents to use B without their shampoo (e.g. me today), and because the low occupation rate of B results in fewer (just one, actually) shampoos in B
anyway, i wonder if this slightly cruel consequence of A’s superior water pressure can be a toy model for some fucked up economic system somewhere out there
07/26/2023 — introductions
introductions feel something like singular value decomposition. i decompose myself into subspaces and present myself in discrete, finite fun and quirky personality traits. when i think about this metaphor—introductions as subspace projections—i imagine myself flattened, splattered between walls
curator’s note: i promise i’m not a huge nerd i just had a discussion about SVDs for my summer research
08/01/2023 — stress stress stress
when i have too many things to do, there is a point at which i switch from “doing things because i want to do them” to “doing things because i need to accomplish tasks”. why am i accomplishing these tasks? i’m not sure, but if i don’t accomplish them, it feels as though something Very Bad will happen. i don’t think the increased urgency i get from stress is worth the sense of lack of intentionality that permeates my life
09/05/2023 — moments i will remember
i think my life goal is to collect as many movie-like moments as possible: distinct moments that i will remember in vivid emotional imagery. that is the only way that goodbyes are okay—so that i can smile because it happened (on top of crying because it ended)
curator’s note: thanks JW for being the seed for this thought, and also for the various movie-like moments i got to share with you
09/05/2023 — women
i think my type in women are women who show their strength in femininity rather than masculinity. maybe i’m just looking for affirmation that being a woman does not preclude me from the strength i want so badly? more on my gender panic at 2
09/07/2023 — the (second-to-last) first day of class
“each of you is the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be!”
09/25/2023 — love
what will be left when you leave? if i love you i will love you forever, because i will carry the fragment of me who loved you with me for the rest of my life. but where does that leave me? is it okay that a part of me will miss you forever?
is it love if i don’t desperately need you? is it love if i smile when i’m with you but i also smile when i’m not? is it love if i’m not constantly in fear of the day you leave? yes, it is—it ought to be—but i think i’m still learning what that means
11/23/2023 — family
what does it mean to love when it isn’t a choice?
11/28/2023 — unhappy feelings that i like (in moderation?)
caffeine jitters and anxiety, especially in an iced oat milk latte
tired winter afternoons in dimly lit lecture halls. bonus points if i have no idea what the professor is talking about
arduous, antisocial workaholism
the numbing cold on my face from the wind on the harvard bridge
it is in this sense that i love winter and mit. is it strange that i feel comforted by the recurring discomfort that comes with the winter and approaching end of semester? ihtfp <3
11/28/2023 — words of affirmation from voidpet that i like :)
you are deliberate and afraid of nothing
it takes strength to confront these emotions; you are doing a great job
there’s virtue in work, and there’s virtue in rest. use both and overlook neither
12/23/2023 — movie (goodbye)
how truly, truly lucky i am to cry—to have a friendship that i cherish so much!
curator’s note: the context is the graduation of a friend. i am now deeply afraid for my graduation. see you in 2024
YAYYYYYY NEW APRIL BLOG :D
does anyone else think about [stall cleanliness]? » literally every time (and same for bus seats and etc)