Meteor shower

     Full of wonder and self-assurance rn. Just watched the meteor shower w Maman, and you know what? We're all just specks and we're all going to die. No matter what, we will. And the shower was f-cking awesome. I'd never even seen a satellite in the sky before and tonight I saw this beautiful blue star, with a tail, for a split second, like it was weaving in and out of our atmosphere in some line pattern that I really don't understand but that I am amazed by. And it's not that i'm being pretentious bc it's 11 o'clock at night and i just spent an hr and some change talking death, existentialism and what's really happening in life. If you ever have problems and they're too much to handle, go to some kind of lookout and stare out at a city, a bridge, an ocean, a sky. It's incredible, and it's incredibly lucky that we can be on this earth right now, even if for just a short time. Like, it really is.

-"What is nothing? What the actual f-ck is nothing?" (I am really, really confused by and really, really scared of 'nothing.' Like, it really freaks me out... esp since I don't believe in some kind of alternate ending to life. But I cannot compel myself to believe that when we die, all of our EVERYTHING is just turned off and GONE and there is NOTHING and we don't even KNOW that there is nothing bc WE. ARE. NOTHING. Like, what the f-ck????)
-"What if gravity turned off and that plane fell on us?" (She corrected me bc if gravity turned off obviously the plane would just float into space and get crushed by space debris or sth.)
-"Did I get too cynical?" (Answer: totally yes)
-Her: "Doesn't that cloud look like my shadow? Like that sticking out part is my head?" Me: "Yes!!... What what you do if you got up just now and the head moved?" Her: (laughing but totally mulling it over) Me: "I would just start believing in God, right there... I would start my own religion"

     I'm obsessed w life. Not the YOLO mindset (per se) but like the idea that we should savor everything, every feeling, bad or good, and I guess that's how mine differs from the YOLO approach, bc it's not about being happy all the time, or forcing yourself to have no feelings at all. It's about accepting ANY feelings you get, and getting that they are NORMAL and VALID and that in the grand scheme of things they really actually do not mean anything at all and don't count for anything bc you're going to die anyway (jajaja). But that's not meant to depress. Basically the opposite. We should feel lucky that we're feeling anything at all, that we're feeling excitement, or jealousy, or embarrassment, or euphoria, or fury, or whatever. Bc soon enough (again, I'm not religious so this is only my own opinion. Just thinking out loud or sth right now) we'll be dead and we won't feel a damn thing. And if we've fulfilled our lives (not saying we have to be rich or successful or have loved every moment or sth, just, idk, if what you've done w your own life feels adequate or better), according to my thought process, that's not a problem. It's our time. We've made our mark and then we leave and join all the beings out there that were once guests here, and now they're not. That will be me. That will be you. That will be your best friend, and your crush, and your mom, and your dog, and your cat, and your filthy teacher who gives you too much homework, and it will be everyone you've ever seen or breathed the same air as (does that even make sense? whatever) for even a split second.
     We're all in this together bc (to give these cliched words a slightly more existential meaning) we are all equal. Even flies and lice are equal to us (I guess so. I haven't really thought about this yet). And it doesn't matter what you do, at least not to all the beings that have already left life on Earth, and yes, it matters to the beings still on Earth that you've known and touched and affected, but pretty soon they'll be on the other side, so to speak, with you, except that by then there will be no other side,  there will be no side where they came from, there will be no them, and there will be no you. At least not to you there won't be. Because right now you're a speck, and so is everyone else, and when you're dead you'll be less than a speck, and so will everyone else. We start out equal when we're born and that's how we end up, too.
     But aren't we so damn lucky? That we feel pain and love and a whole lot of other stuff while we can? Like I said before, we're just guests in this place, just specks. We live inside our brains. Everything we know is totally made up. Including, come on now, all our problems. And the roots of all our problems. Like, what is a body? Nothing. What is a mind? Nothing. What is a spirit? Nothing!! So sure, say you're famous. Say you're the most famous person in the world. If you have an incredible body you'll have a legacy among the living as maybe a sex icon or a major athlete. If you have an incredible mind you'll live on in music, or literature, or science, or a whole lot of other stuff. Now I don't know about everyone else, but I'm selfish and I'm pretty sure all other humans are too (not a bad thing, just a true thing). I don't care nearly as much about what other people think of me. When I'm dead I won't care (at this pt at least, as a sheltered 15-year-old) about what the living will think of me. I care about what I think of me. What will I think of myself when I'm dead? NOTHING, bc I won't be able to f-cking THINK!!! See how nothing really matters? Not that that's an excuse to just sit around wasting your life away doing nothing. If anything it should be an affirmation that life is so precious. Life is precious, and when you think about it, it's over f-cking FAST. And for some reason, that is really comforting.

I.T is inspiration

I.T is inspiration by pinkyallamoda on polyvore.com

Camp reflection, etc.

     I am so, so devastatingly sad that camp is over. 6 weeks of my life, all a memory. WAAAAHH!! And omg I miss the bae sooo much, like I didn't even get to say a proper goodbye (meaning hug and flirty reminder to text me) and now I'm pretty sure we'll never see each other again... Waaaahh...
     Always telling myself that "from now on, it'll be different." But no, it never happens. I'm still anxious and disappointed and upset and freaked out and stressed about everything.
     The issue is also that I feel like I don't have an excuse for any of it. Like, when my mom told me I could have anxiety I was almost thrilled to accept that (even though I'm pretty sure I don't). Like, everything is all my fault and I could flip it at any time I wanted to, I'm just choosing to be stubborn and lazy and unfocused about it. There's no depression or anxiety or eating disorder at play here, just me and my inability to act. It's so upsetting really
     On a different note, I am DYING for a camera!! I know I've mentioned this before, but EVERY encounter is a photo op!!
What I want to do:
-Take fotos all the time
-Run every day
-Get strong arms for once in my life, jajaja
-Not fail the French exam
-Learn the whole Call Me Baby dance (and roast 크루브 bc let's face it, the guy sucks at dancing and I am a machine)
-Decorate my room (put up Shakespeare and Co. poster, make art, decorate desk space, etc.)
-Take artsy pics in Europe w my dumb 4S, jajaja
-Bike more!! I used to be so obsessed w the idea of biking after Blue Tree two summers ago but idk what happened to that, jaja. But it's such a great thing!
-Send off the letters 미르신아기 and I made for the second-years (jajajajaj her puns randomly surpass the panache of any given Jew's instagram at my school)
-Do sth productive w my sophomore year
-Learn how to use my (until now completely obsolete) sewing machine
-Some (click) times in our lives (click) we all have pain, we all have sorrow~ (I have absolutely no idea why I wrote that. Feeling CRS nostalgia or sth)
-Delete instagram!!!!??!!!
-Go to sleep immediately

On Gen X, changing the world and why beauty doesn't have to be the answer

     So I randomly just watched The Breakfast Club again, jajaja. It's just so comforting to me, like I really can't relate to most of the things going on w them but it's comforting all the same. My mom and I are v obsessed w all the living generations, esp Gen X (bc that's her) and the millennials, and it's just so fascinating bc Gen X is basically defined by anarchy or sth. They just can't figure it out: they never have (as we can see from all the John Hughes movies) and they never will. We were trying to come up w some defining Gen X-ers bc it's so easy to come up with defining millennials (winners like Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian, etc.), but like... There aren't any. Ben Stiller? Jerry Seinfeld? I guess so. But they make for some pretty pathetic spokespeople.
     I'm a Gen Z-er (also known as my fave word, a boomlet) so i'm v hopeful for us younguns. Hopefully we can reconstruct the lame world the millennials haphazardly built for us with the support of their Gen X parents: parents who grew up children in families ravaged by divorce (a factor which, according to The Wall Street Journal, ended about half of all marriages in the 70s) and consequently blossomed into smothers and manchildren so their own kids wouldn't have to grow up too early.
     But omg, that WSJ article along w some others (yeah i may have just done some more research on this jajaja) was so enlightening!! All the generations totally f-cked each other up!!! The baby boomers rebelled against their stagnant surroundings and listened to rock n roll and became hippies. They wanted to feel young and alive or sth so they felt pressure to look/act/stay young even after having kids, so they left their kids unsupervised and alone so they could live a little (tbh sounds totally like the millennials. But they do say that children relate to their grandparents better than their parents so ok yeah sure). So Gen X felt cheated out of their childhoods and set out to save the souls of their spawn (jaja i love writing rn) with Baby on Board stickers and leashes for their 4-year-olds. Cute!! So now the millennials are growing up and they simply cannot live w/o the care their parents lavished upon them, and bc they cannot think for themselves and figure out how to be adults they're the "boomerang generation" that just returns back to their parents' house, which works out fine for the love-starved Gen X-ers and the lazy millennials, but where does that leave the rest of us?! Like, when I come of age there's gonna be SO much work to do. Ugh. But I have so many reforms in mind already!! I'm fully stocked w ideas. But rn the point of my life is to survive being a teenager, so I'll focus on that for now and get moving after I graduate and go skydiving and stuff.
     Ok but I can't resist. Some starter ideas:
-A fashion/lifestyle magazine called Boomlets!! Kind of my take on a younger, less existential Rookie mixed w HONY. It will involve street style worn by girls of all shapes, sizes, colors etc. along w some kind of background on them, a la Brandon Stanton!
-A girl band ALSO called Boomlets!!! Still trying to recruit my friends to do this. (Ok i realize these aren't like global reforms or sth but it's a start)
-Preface: Ok, this is actually a good one. A project that protests lookism for women (the concept that while men are judged by strength and talent, women are totally just based off of how hot they are), except I don't really know how to do this w/o involving a burqa-style getup that masks how we really look. But that's just weird. Idk how exactly to do this. But I'm sure i'll get many earnest recruits for this puppy too bc tbh it's pretty genius
-A foto series of different places in Newark, Queens, etc. that look pretty grody to the typical person's eye but they realize that the places are actually beautiful bc they're full of character and heart and as my dad says about Queens, "it's the blood of New York City."
     And what even is this "beautiful" craze anyway? Everyone's all about "oh yes I love beautiful things" and recently this crap about "everyone is beautiful" and of course the feminists protesting "You don't know you're beautiful/That's what makes you beautiful." So basically it's just a common idea that girls should be allowed to feel beautiful themselves and it's ok to have high self esteem and no matter what you look like, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL.
     Not that that's a bad thing, but how about this: ENOUGH WITH THE BEAUTIFUL!!! Like, SERIOUSLY!!! What if a girl doesn't WANT to feel beautiful? What if a girl wants to focus on being FUNNY or SMART or a LEADER instead of basing everything off of looks?? It's just so unfair. Obviously lookism applies to guys too to a degree, but it doesn't hold them back. This would never happen to a man looking for an office job.
     But everything is just about looks, looks, looks. E-NOUUUUGHH. Even on my favorite song by my favorite band (a cover of Call Me Baby by The Ark, a Korean girl group that wears super badass clothing)...:

     ...Even on that, people's comments focus on their looks and how they can be sexy and pretty even dressing like tomboys. Ok, yes, but can't we just focus on the fact that they are SUCH incredibly talented dancers and singers, and of course that they have the best sense of style, instead of how they can be beautiful even though they're not ladylike? Maybe they don't want to be beautiful. Maybe they want people to say "waaaahh they are TOUGH!!" Just an idea.
     But fashion is different, like it's an optional thing. It's basically an extension of your personality. you have control over it and you can change it, unlike your actual body and looks and whatever. So it's really totally different. And I just can't deal w not being able to wear what I want bc i am SO into fashion and clothes and personal expression, and it is so unfair to have a polyvore and then go to H&M to try on your dream clothes and have them all look like total shit on you. I mean REALLY. And then you try on a pair of like cotton shorts bc none of the denim ones fit you right, and your mom tells you it's a really flattering look for you, and bc you're about to have a meltdown in the dressing room you just buy them, but at home you're trying them on and you're just tearing up at the mirror, bc ok, sure, they say you look good in these and they're good for you body type, but what if you don't WANT to wear these stupid pajama clothes to look good?? What if you want to wear the short overalls you saw in the store, and kneesocks, and crop tops and cheetah print ankle booties (at this pt I'm just rattling off the whole H&M fall catalog) and skinny jeans and all of it w/o feeling like puking in the mirror? It just feels SO unfair. So, so unfair. And I have the feeling that that mini rant had nothing to do w the point I was trying to get across here, but it came out naturally and now it's over and I really gotta sleep. It's so irritating that I'm up at 6:30 am and my mind only starts functioning now, at half an hr to midnight. Ughhh. Buenas noches

Summer anxiety!!

     I'm obsessed with Instagram all of a sudden. It started w that Bollywood fan account 하리가 and I made, bollychudiyan, which I hardly ever used and whenever I got too into it I would delete it. But it would always find its way back onto my phone. And then I started following EXO members and unfollowing all the stupid Sonam Kapoor (ugh, no talent) fan accounts, and then I changed the password so 하리가 couldn't like her own fotos w it, jajaja. And then I started following other people that I actually knew, some from camp and some from school but upperclassmen and some from BRS, and then it just got depressing. Honestly I think my body image is going downhill just because of that. Even Sal's stupid farm pics with his long hippie hair depress me, jajaja. But I just can't get enough of refreshing my feed and letting my fomo (fobf?? fear of being fat? no that looks too much like "fob" which is too funny to be taken seriously).
     Every time I've taken a picture this summer I get so upset. Like I really cannot handle it. And then to see it on Instagram or fb sucks. And to see it on my phone sucks too, like even pictures with Myrsinaki made me sad to look at, which made me sad bc I loved that moment until the picture was taken. But at the same time I feel like I really have an eye for good photo ops!! Me and every other white girl on the planet but still. Every time I'm in Newark or the city I just see so many fotos ready to be taken but if I look like how I look like then I don't want to take it or put it up on fb.
     I feel weirdly like I don't know how to talk to/hang out w boys anymore. I am so reluctant to set up the BRS reunion AND any CRS reunions where Red Hook is... I don't want the BRS boys to compare me to 엠아리, who's looking basically like a model these days, chiseled jawline and all, and I don't want to interact w the CRS boys simply bc they are sooo deadly!! But it's kind of weird that I haven't "found my people" boy-wise anywhere. They're definitely not at school, but not at camp either? Like, where ARE these guys??
     My money anxiety is preventing me from going on the great shopping spree I know I need. Every time I walk into H&M I wanna buy the whole store out!! And Romwe, and any Stussy chapter, etc. etc. I am simply DYING to visit Stussy in Milano but I feel like it'll be a shady outlet or sth only for boys. Plus it's weird to shop for this stuff w my parents. But we'll only be there for a little while so it's not like I'm gonna go off on my own to shop in men's stores. Plus it's SOOO expensive! And I won't even see 피얌마 at all!! ㅠㅠ
     The biases: 엑소 타오, 킴남준, Bender from The Breakfast Club, Ross from Friends, 자크 from camp jajaja
     I figure I'll raid Rookie's monthly images for some good backgrounds. And GOD am I into photography at this pt. I don't even want an iPhone as my new phone anymore bc i feel like the fotos will suck and I want a Samsung instead bc it's also more internationally savvy (all my CRS amigas have them and I'm obsessed). But tbh nothing will be worse than my junky 4S camera. And yes I want a camera but again w the money!!! I really have begun to freak out like a crazy person about money these days. I hate going for groceries just bc I hate seeing the receipt even if the cashier informs me that "you saved $xx today!!" Then I go nuts and tell my mom and she's like, "hey, we're a family of five" and I'm just like, How will I survive?? Bc i really do have kind of expensive tastes. I don't realize it, but I totally do. I'm always dying to eat out, and I love healthy food which is pricier, and I love eating a lot of food which just makes it priciest. Ay caramba!! Plus I feel like living in a city by myself won't be all it's cracked up to be (and I will have a roommate, or I'll have nightmares that the third Insidious will happen to me). And like, that it won't feel "real."
     Yeah, so I'm obsessed w this "real" idea. Ever since summer started, I've been reading like a maniac. I read and I run and I procrastinate and I eat and I polyvore; that is my summer. But y'know, we're talking trips to the library every three, four days. Which is awesome!! I haven't read this much since I was a youngun in middle school. But it's like... Ever since I read Joy Luck I've just gone on to read these sorta depressing adult books encompassing the lives of complex people puzzling through their complex issues. And they have not-nice endings, like French movies. And I think it's turning me bad!! I really do, like I feel kind of empty after I read them and now it feels like nothing is how it's said in books, like relationships and stuff. And I get that I'm just a kid and I shouldn't expect to face these kinds of things, but just read Joy Luck or The Buddha in the Attic and there is absolutely no way people actually think like this. It's too much.
     We dropped off Myrsinaki earlier tonight at EWR (and god, I love airports), and as we were driving home I was talking to my mom about this "real" theory. But I just don't know how to explain it. I find I'm really bad at talking... And it's pretty frustrating bc I'm a good speaker when I'm rehearsed. But it's simply not meant to be. I'm cut out for writing books or sth. I wish I could just come out w the female version of No Coins Pls and strike it rich, as was the plan in February, but I'm not really writing these days. Sometimes I journal but that's pretty rare. Like right now, it's 12:40 am and I know I should have been asleep 2.5 hrs ago bc Myrsini and I woke up at like 10 this morning (meaning Sunday) and I have to get up at 6:30 tomorrow morning (meaning Monday) to run, and then I also have to make my lunch bc I was too busy watching, for the first time, The Breakfast Club, which 엄마 recommended for me and which I loved but it was also kind of depressing but in a good way plus Bender was sooooo hot... Buuut I'm not gonna sleep until I've gotten out all my thoughts bc this does NOT happen often when my thoughts come out in a stream of consciousness thing where it's actually natural and real and genuine and all that good stuff, and hey I am totally on a roll here!! I know I'm a writer but at this pt in my life I'm not feeling it. But it's really very ok bc I know I'll be back to write that kid's book. It's in my blood!
     Books I've read/am reading: One L (it's SO great!! I was discussing it w "the parentals" as 산드라 would say and we all agreed that the pressure Scott Turow was facing at Harvard Law in the 70s is not so far off from the pressure Jews and Asians are facing rn at any given tri-state area high school, jajaja (laughing in a sad and ironic way), which is probably why I'm so invested in it, bc i can actually relate to the chaos and lunacy his mind has become), The Tin Horse (basically Anita Diamant's The Boston Girl but with deeper emotions), Inside the O'briens (by the author of Still Alice which I am so reading on the Europe trip bc I was obsessed w Inside the O'briens!!), and other books I unfortunately totally don't remember at all, lol. I tried reading some of Amy Tan's other books but they're really just mleh. Joy Luck and even The Bonesetter's Daughter were right on the money but everything else was too much. I also got her memoir out of the library but omggg. I'm sorry to say that it just feels like she's trying too hard. Plus, she is SUCH a type, and she talks about these outlandish things that she did when she was young, like moving with her first-generation Chinese mother to SWITZERLAND (?!?!??!?!) in such a way that I have to go back and figure out if she's actually serious, or if she's just being comparative or sth. But come on. It's awful.
     Food I am dying for: the spicy tuna rice at Totto (waaaaaahh), raw cookie dough, the pork bun at Totto, Empanada Mama, the maggi noodles at 하리가 house, Korean bbq
     In addition to photography I'm obsessed w soundscapes!! I've taken a bunch since June when I was w A. in DC's Chinatown listening to some brass band on the street, and on the train coming back home, and in Chelsea, and even in Times Square where I was hiding my phone every time one of the CRS girls spoke so I wouldn't record them, jajaja. But the wind always gets in the way!! I messaged the Suvi who did the soundscape instruction for tips, bc Myrsinaki told me she always did that whenever she wanted to take up some skill (like 존 for meditation... ugh, John jajaj). She said she  was flattered and she would get back to me but she has NOT. I am v underwhelmed by this, and honestly this is so typical CRS. Myrsini and I were just talking about it on the way to the airport. Basically most of the campers totally have this reputation for having awesome ideas and then not acting upon them. Like during holiday break (when Myrsini was w our Turkish amigo and so we were messaging nonstop about the drama jajaj), a few of them were planning a massive trans-continental trip for this month and basically asked everyone "which would be a more convenient option, meeting up in Paris and then island-hopping in Greece, or taking Europe by train and then setting up shop in Thailand?" Which sounds like a dream, but really? We certainly were not all loaded at camp, but what kind of an idea is that, let's get real, jajaja. But that's one example out of tons. The reunions, for example, they always fall through. I was lucky enough to see Nush and Myrsinaki twice, Shaf and Shags a bunch of times and some of the city girls a few times too, but I know a lot of people had their plans just not work out. Whatever, though. If they don't want to meet, it's no problem. I totally have skype anxiety so i really can't talk in this department.
     But seriously, the Red Hook guys are SUCH a crackup. 안다루 with his 타이새야-style posts and his selfies (jajajajaja, the SELFIES!), 타리스탄 with his awkward Italy videos, all the Stuy guys on the CRS group chat (ugh, the Stuy guys. 아누사 was 100% right when she was complaining about how deadly they were on College Day, but I was totally smitten w 라이안 and 리타므 and didn't realize the true social ineptness until post-camp)... I wish I made friends w the European boys. They were more normal, lol.
     I really should make this blog private w all the names I'm shouting out all the time, jajaja. But I have this far-fetched idea that I'll someday become some household-name blog like the ones on Rookie simply by "being myself!" (Suuuuure.) So of course it MUST be public!!
     OK, I think I'm winding down. Gotta get myself up bright and early for my run anyway, and ughhh I feel the sleep tugging at my eyes already... I'm going to hate myself tomorrow morning... My time management SUCKS, and I'm more than a week behind on French, and oh great my mom is coming jajajaj she just slaughtered me but I'm going to bed now for real. And also, I am SO pumped for Europe!! I'll take tons of pics w my awful 4S camera and tons of metro soundscapes, and I'll buy a bag and a bucket hat and a hacky sack and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese fashion mags, and I'll run in all the countries and feel a huge sense of accomplishment from doing that a few months later when I'm back in the clutches of my high school. Ugh. School.
     Jaja. Ok. Καληνυχτα!!
     EDIT: I changed all the names to hangul so it's censored!!

exo-l

exo-l by pinkyallamoda featuring platform sandals

Friday night feminism ᕦ㋡ᕤ

    In desperate need of some strong female influence! I went through my newly cleaned out bookshelves looking for books with STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN ROLE MODELS as the main characters. What I found was

I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced

Cheryl Strayed's Wild

Gone with the Wind

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

The Boston Girl (which I SOOOO recommend for anyone who likes any and every decade of 20th-century America, particularly New York in the 30s and 40s)

Reviving Ophelia

The Joy Luck Club

The Help

A Little Princess

I Am Malala

Nancy Drew? Jajajaja, how underrated

The Poisonwood Bible

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman

    Like, I am so on the lookout for reading material, but I can't handle reading these men books all the time. It sucks. I have no patience for it. I'm massively into a more gender-equal, feminist approach to my media intake, and Dan Brown, which I was obsessed with two years ago, doesn't cut it anymore (Digital Fortress, anyone? I actually hate this guy now). I've basically come full circle from where I was last year at this time, when I told my mom that not only was I anti-feminist but that I thought women authors WERE BAD and "too girly" (ex. Salinger > Plath). I was totally on-board with this idea that women were just frivolous and didn't get the whole life thing and had their own place in society that didn't really interfere with the rest of the scene. I mean, read some of my past entries on da blog. I was very very bad. 

    Well, not bad, just ignorant. I was downing all this Kerouac and Salinger and all these books where women were nice as, like, toys or accessories or something, but they were pretty crazy and fake and they weren't really people. Subconsciously, of course, but I WAS STILL ABSORBING IT and thinking to myself, jeez I wish I was a boy, boys can do so much more and are more interesting and girls are too girly. 

    I think that's also kind of part of my makeup stigma...? Maybe? Because I don't want to give in to the womanly temptations or whatever that my esteemed writers and I were so against. But I'm so glad I've realized, and that I LOVE US!!! Jajaja. And I know how awesome women can be. And the more women I read and watch and listen to that are inspirational and strong, the more I can be all of those things and help myself grow as a person and learn to ignore all the BS going on in school, etc.

    So as an added PS, if there are any woman-centric books you'd recommend, I would love to hear them! Thanks yaaron xx