Untitled 2.

I think this is working really well. Us? Yeah.

I really think so too.

Untitled 1.

No matter the escapes, your bludgeoning words are all I hear.
Though fragmented replay, the message remains whole.

I am fighting, struggling to not let you all down.

Twenty-two.

Today, I am 22. I feel like during the time I was 21, I was at my peak. Turning 22, I realize there's just another gargantuan mountain that I have to climb.

Driving speed limit.

Parting ways with my friend David a little after 10 at night, I walked towards my mom's '91 silver Accord. We had just watched Inglourious Basterds. It was okay. Instead of taking the freeway back home, I decided to take the long way and drive through the streets. It had been such a long time since I rode through those streets. I wanted to take my time, and actually drive according to speed limit. I drove through my middle school and high school. I drove past where my first girlfriend used to live. I drove by my grandparents' house. I drove home.

The arrival.

Ever since I have arrived, home has been interesting. On the drive home from the airport, my mother was telling me about how my grandfather had fell again. She was listing all of the health issues he has been going through, and it really doesn't seem good. I thought about the day he passes, and what I would really remember about him. I feel like I don't know my grandfather very well.  I don't believe he has really had a strong connection with any of his grandchildren. He was always visible during family functions, but never really present. One of those quiet grandfathers who just sits, watches television, and rambles a story about the past every now and then. I thought about what I would actually remember of him, and the only thing I could think of was terrible. I thought back to when I was much younger, back to when I was more of a troubled child. I remember crying and swearing over something at the table, and my grandfather got fed up with it. So, he took me to the backyard with a Chinese wooden back-scratcher in hand; it was for my back, but not to scratch an itch. I remember running to my mom as she came home from work. I told her what had happened. To my surprise, she had nothing to say about it. It seemed more like she didn't have the courage to confront her father about it. That day, was also my first and only recollection of feeling like my mother had betrayed me.

The whole drive home from the airport, my parents were harshly bickering with each other. It was nothing new, but I was still taken aback. I suppose it was because I haven't been around for a long time. After continuously listening to them, it made me think, "I really am home now." The rest of my night was a quiet one at my parents' house. A lot of my hometown friends are too busy during the day and can't stay out as late during the night. So, I just continued reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed until I fell asleep.

Sleeping in a different position from normal, or even a whole different location makes you much more aware while asleep. Thus, you're supposed to be able to remember your dreams much more vividly. My dream last night was quite strange. For some odd reason, I dreamed about someone I really did not expect. It was about a person who I never actually dated, but was hung up over for a long time after we stopped talking. I thought I had been over her after almost a year now. It was an interesting way to wake up to my first morning at home.

Today has been unexpectedly warm and slow. The weather isn't as cool as I hoped, but the night was nice. Knowing that it will probably be another long period before I return here, I started texting people I normally wouldn't, or haven't seen in a long time. It got me into a text conversation with one of my old friends, who used to be my best friend in high school. However, over the years, our connection faded as our life paths continued to rapidly grow apart. He is someone who I saw and talked to probably five or so times whenever I came up to visit. Regardless, I walked over to his house even though we only had 20 minutes before he had to go to work. It makes me immensely happy to know that we can just talk to each other out of nowhere and begin to catch up like we did.

It hasn't even been a full day at home yet. I feel good about it, but still in the middle ground.

Tonight's flight.

8:05pm is the time of my departing flight to the Oakland International Airport. It has been exactly 9 months and 10 days since I've been home. I've often found myself referring to going home as "going up north," or "going to Northern California." Odd enough, the past four years I've considered Irvine as my home, and I would rarely go up north. My infrequent visits to home were primarily due to my restraints of working and student organizing. With my new job starting on the 21st, I know it will be even rarer for me to visit.

In the past, I actually resented going home for awhile. I found that every time I was up there, I just wanted to be back down in Irvine. A lot of  it has to do with how much I have changed as a person these past four years. I feel the ways I have progressed in my mindset and the social consciousness I hold as a person, defers me from a lot of my former high school friendships. Home should be a place where you feel most comfortable with friends and family. Over the years, I have definitely found a lot more of these two things down here, in Irvine. Although I cherish those memories I had with former high school friends, I found it hard for me to continue with them. I also sometimes felt like I was wasting my time at home, and not being productive. Now that my undergraduate career is complete, and my longest absence from home is nearing an end, I finally feel like it will be a worthwhile, relaxing time.

Despite all of this, I believe it is the most excited I've ever been to visit home.

I wonder how foreign it will actually feel.

Annie le.

Annie Le, a 24 year-old Yale graduate student, and daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, went missing a just a few days before her wedding. She was last seen Tuesday morning, September 8, on surveillance cameras entering the university lab where she worked. However, cameras never recorded her leaving. The latest update to this story makes me sick. It reports police finding a body within the university lab wall, only assumed to be Annie Le as of right now. Yale is offering a $10,000 reward to anyone who has information on the case.

I've been following this very disheartening story lately. As sad as it is to say, I'm not usually one to be affected much by disturbing stories on the news. However, this one just really makes me ill.

Part three: burning bright.

There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few years he built a pyre and burnt himself up.

But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. Someday we'll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.


Graphic novel adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, by Tim Hamilton.