"Hey Elaine, have you eaten lunch yet??"

I shake my head in the negative and Kevin's eyes get round.

"Free pizza at Tatum right now!"

He has me at free pizza. I bound up, call a "Be right back, Bret!" to my supervisor and I'm out the door.

As I sit here with a new plate of (free!!) pizza (two slices of pepperoni), one cookie, and one can of coke, it occurs to me that food often tastes better when it's free.

As a former starving college student, and a current starving masters student, I figured that I have some wisdom to impart on those of you who are soon to experience the wonders of your college years.

And so, here is my advice to you in hopes that you will not starve as I did.

1). Be social during the first week of classes. College clubs, groups, and church organizations will ply you to join their groups by luring you in with free food. Be strong in your convictions, and have no shame. Go in, eat their food, leave.

2). You must love pizza. Sorry. If you don't, I assure you that you will miss out on many free food opportunities.

3). Never get a half-size option at a restaurant. This is a plot by restaurants to cheat you. It's half the size for almost the same price. What's better is to get the full-size and then save the leftovers later. That way you're paying more, but you're also paying for more than one meal.

4). Happy hours at restaurants. Find them out, utilize them. Be careful. Some restaurants require you to buy a ridiculously priced drink in order to get happy hour prices...and then it comes out to the same price. Not cool.

5). Push yourself to the limit. Is it expired? If you're not sure, it's okay. ...Maybe. (I hold no responsibility for anyone rolling around on the couch because of eating some suspicious food. Please use your judgment in this area). Similarly, there is nothing worse than food that goes in the trash just because you dropped it. Five second rule applies in all solid food situations. Don't be wasteful.

6). Concerts/gallery openings/parties = food at the reception. It doesn't matter if you didn't go to the recital. Keep out of the way of the well-dressed personage that is putting on the reception (who will usually be preoccupied by well-wishers and congratulatory crowds anyway) and you're good to go.

7). Never go grocery shopping when you're hungry. You want to buy everything.

8). Get a roommate that works in a food convenience/cafe store. Or work in one yourself. Restaurant work/cafe work = free food at the end of the day.

Please take all advice with a grain of salt. I hold no responsibility for future embarrassing/compromising/dangerous situations. :)

the moon by night (I)

I'm just a hologram. You can see but don't touch me.

The cheshire cat smile of the moon beamed down at me.

When I tilted my head to the side, I could see that small sliver of a gleam teasing me.

When I looked sideways again, I could see that she had her head out the window as we drove down the road. The window was rolled down and the wind glanced through her hair. What did she see? Was she looking at the moon, too? Or did her eyes peer at something else entirely as her gaze was directed heavenwards? Even if I was uncertain as to the contents of her mind, I was already familiar with that expression on her face.

I had come home to find her on my doorstep, a long list in hand and a self-assured countenance.

"I need supplies." she had said matter-of-factly.

I don't know her name. I doubt that she knows mine. But I've seen her. Walking down the street, going the opposite way. That now familiar expression as she looks upward at the sky, towards the tree tops, or with eyes half closed while music flows from her earphones into her consciousness.

This is all conjecture. This is what I think when I see her walking up the street this way at the same time every day.

And now we were driving towards the local superstore Walmart as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

That's the strange thing about night though. All these things that would seem out of place or odd or questionable in daylight seem to find their place at night. So instead of asking for her name or offering mine, or asking how she knows me -- or knows where I live -- I went back to my truck, turned on the engine, and waited for her to join me.

There's none of that urgency that would have come with daylight. That urgency to keep hold of this time, understanding that it's so brief, and that I need to grasp it and find out all that I can about her. No pressure to get her name, her number, or to find out what she thinks of me. The silences as we stall at stoplights are peaceful.

And so we're driving to Walmart with the windows rolled down and that moon smiling down at me as if it already knows what's going to come next.

/ / /

I live in my head. I'm saving all that I can until I'm dead.

The moon doesn't really give a damn whether it's waxing or waning. And so why should I? And yet as I examine it, I wonder...is it diminishing in quality, or growing towards its potential? Will I see it disappear soon? Or will I see it at its most luminous quality -- full and ripe and bursting with glory before it begins its inevitable decline?

Am I waxing or waning? Do I have yet to reach my full glorious self? Or am I slowly...but surely disappearing from this world?

I refuse to do that. My peak will be my end. That's why I have this list right now.

I slowly unclutch my fist and smooth out the wrinkled sheet of notebook paper on my jeans. Written in bold black sharpie marker is a list of things that I need in order to fulfill my plan. Bold to assure myself that I am confident. Sharpie markers are meant for those that are certain of what they want. It's not meant for mistakes.

Some items were thought out carefully. Others were realized more whimsically. But ultimately, all the items are necessary.

What am I planning on doing?

Why should I tell you?

I live in my head. I'm saving up all that I can until I'm dead.

run

I made my way to the kitchen, but had to stop from the shock of what I found: a room full of all of my friends...dancing round and round.

I had the oddest dream last night.

I was sitting in an apartment -- and although I'm sure I've never actually seen this place in real life, I could sketch out every room. I used to think that I should become an architect because I'd dream up these beautiful houses in my dreams.

It felt like it was my home though. At least, that's the impression that I got in the dream. And there was some sort of party going on. Filled with people that I knew. Funny thing was, they were all jumbled together. My friend Chris from music school was talking about a concert that he was giving soon and playing his trumpet for us. I was talking about Glee with someone, talking classical music with Yooms from Seattle, and talking church with Vegas from Seattle. At one point, I remember getting up to greet and give a hug to my childhood friend from New York, Taeho. He had cut his hair since the last time that I had seen him him and he was wearing a sweater vest.

It must have been my party. Or a party that they put together for me...which is a really nice thought...but I think that the former is probably more likely. And it had a comfortableness that doesn't come with reality. Because it wasn't odd at all that my friend that I knew from when I was born was conversing with my seventh day adventist friend who was sitting next to a friend from Seattle.

But then something happened to change that comfortability. I felt trapped. I had to leave. I didn't want to be there anymore. I got up and just left.

I thought to myself...I can't dig through all the shoes that are in the entryway to find my sneakers. I'll attract too much attention. I left in my bare feet, went down the stairs of my apartment building, stole the sneakers of my neighbor downstairs. He/she had left them in the entryway of his own apartment, the door slightly ajar.

The sneakers were a little big, but it was okay if I pulled the laces tight. They were black and white reeboks.

After I had the sneakers on, I just started running.

It's still light out and it's a nice summer day-almost-night. I see a lot of things around me, but they're not really important to relate. Oh. Except that the things I see make me think that I might be in Korea right now. Or California. How else can you explain the incongruency of seeing a Disneyland banner that's written in Korean?

I'm not sure where I'm running. In my head, I have an idea of running to this lake that I know of. Secluded. Safe. Private. I'm flying down the sidewalk, leaping down stairs. I don't stop even when I have to change directions or when I suspect that I don't know where I'm going.

I'm not a good runner in real life. I know. I used to try and jog in the mornings...And I would get up at like 6 in the morning to do it, because I didn't want people to see me running around the streets.

But in my dream, I don't need to stop. I'm not going particularly fast, but I feel like I can run forever. It feels amazing to run like this.

Which is good, because in my dream I know. I am dead sure that if I stop for one moment, they'll catch me.

But it's okay. Because if I keep going, I'll be okay.

I don't know what happens after that in the dream. I'm kinda curious, but I just don't remember anything after that. I don't know what I thought I was running from, or where I thought I was running to.

I'm not big on the dream interpretations. I'm not like my mom, who calls me the minute she has a bad dream to make sure that I'm doing all right. I'm not Freud, so I'm not going to psychoanalyze this thing to shreds only to find that (surprise!) it has something to do with repressed sexual tensions or with my father. Or, knowing Freud, a combination of both. I'm not saying that dreams are nonsense. Some of them are a reflection of what you've been thinking...your insecurities...what your mind is preoccupied with at the moment, whether it be desires or fears. As for the whole dream fortune-telling thing...well I think that only applies as much as you believe in it. I don't, but maybe you do.

I don't usually end up writing a lot on blogs because I feel pretentious when I try to. I'm not trying to pass off what I say as pearls of wisdom...Nor do I believe I have any worldly wisdom at all. I don't. Far from it.

But I don't think it's a stretch to say that people often feel the need to "breakaway" from something. Run away from people. Themselves. circumstances. If I were to say that I was running away from something, it would probably have something to do with how tired I am of bullshit these days.

I'm tired of what's expected of us, what people think of me -- whether it's wrong or more right than even I can know, what's real or what's true or what I want to be faced with who I am. I'm tired of waffling, people who hide their motivations, or people who can't make what they say true by actually doing it. I'm also tired of people not seeing me for who I am...although that may have to do with how I'm afraid of giving too much away.

To be honest, I'm scared that I'm not living in a world full of sincerity...but at the same I'm not always comfortable with who I am...sincerely. And when I think about it...that's really the only reason I would feel trapped in a room full of people I know from all aspects of my life. So trapped that I feel the need to run from it.

But really, bottom line? I see no point in complaining about bullshit and the lack of sincerity around me. Who I am and who I relate with and who I spend time with...These are all decisions that I make. And if I'm not sincere with others, how can I expect people to be real with me? Why am I saying all these high and mighty "I'm tired of" things when I'm far from perfect myself?

Or maybe I find these things irritate me in other people because I know that they're the exact things that I struggle with.

People get this idea in their heads that they can run away from who they are. Which is ridiculous...because when you're the one doing the running, you're really just bringing the problem along. The last thing I want to be is a person that's complaining about the world or the way they think that the world works or of the pressures that they face or how other people are just so ignorant and hopeless. I don't believe in that. Not really. At least, not in the end.

And on the other hand, it's funny how people that become all cynical and jaded think that they know it all. But sometimes I think their so-called perspective blinds them to how amazing the world really is...and what we're all capable of.

The world is what we make of it. If you don't like it, do something about it. Simple. As. That.

But sometimes I have to admit...it really does feel good to run.

rain

Waiting for the rain to stop. Destination: beautiful.

This is my sister’s idea of a perfect day:

Sunny. Brilliantly blue sky (I’d like to think of it as azure. The kind of blue that makes you stagger if you take a moment to really take a look at it). It’s the kind of blue that’s associated with open convertible tops and road trips down the coast. Of course, for Izzy, her day has to have a little bit of cloud covering. A bit of a breeze but not really enough to fly a kite. A cool temperature that stops just short of being brisk. It’s this perfect combination of many factors. It has to have very exact measurements of many different ingredients to be just right.

That’s what she calls an “Izzy day”.

I’m a little easier to please, I think. I like a moderately warm temperature. And rain.

I don’t really care what kind of rain. Drenching downpour, a dash of rain like you’re sprinting through sprinklers, or that kind of barely there rain that makes you feel like you’re walking through extra-saturated fog. It’s the kind of rain that’s like the touch of someone’s hand on your face.

There’s that kind of rain that feels like bombs falling from the sky. It turns dips in the road into unfathomable lakes. There’s another rain that feels like standing under a showerhead that is supposed to shoot some kind of massaging stream of water. Each drop feels like a pinprick on the skin. And then there’s the kind of rain that just gathers on your clothes, like the dew that sits in the grass; only visible in the early morning.

I get this…instant, incredible, welling-up-from-within feeling of happiness whenever I see rain. Whenever I hear it. Whenever I smell it. It’s like when you smell the cologne of that boy you like or that just-laundered scent of bedsheets. When you inhale it in, you feel secure. You feel these emotions before you can even tell yourself to. It’s a reflex that’s developed over time, repetition, and association. Slightly Pavlovian.

It’s like that smile that spreads across your face when you’re talking to someone you love. Irrepressible.

Rain = happiness.

When realizing my happy affinity for rain, someone once pondered what it was that made me love it so much. Maybe some particularly happy occasion that forever made me associate rain with goodness. He kind of made it sound romantic. As if I had my first kiss with my soulmate underneath it and now whenever it rains, it brings back those good memories.

I can almost imagine that perfect memory. The air that fills my chest is slightly humid, damp. The meeting of lips. The arms thrown around each other and bringing each other close as the rain pours down on us. It’s not that the rain is something to be ignored, but it’s something that makes the moment more…real. Raw.

But I think he got it backwards. It’s not that something good happened one day under the rain that made me like it so much. It’s just that when it rains, it creates good things on its own.

Like that one day in India. The heavy rain that came down in sheets was such a relief after the scorching 120 degree weather of the previous days. It completely overcame the senses, and who cared if the air was humid or that the breaths we drew into each chest were already thick and saturated with moisture? At first, I was worried about the black underwear that I was wearing under the white skirt…And then, I didn’t care anymore.

We were all just out in the rain, hands raised up. I lifted up my coffee cup to the sky, as if surrendering to it, acknowledging that there was no way to shield it. During a lull, I was lifting my skirts and splashing the water on the others with a scrape of sandaled feet. The water was warm after puddling on the hot ground. I remember so well the glowering look that I got from someone when I kicked water on him. It’s like it was five days ago, not five years.

For some reason, that’s one of the things that I remember the most vividly from India. That day has sharp points of brilliant clarity. When the rain started up again, we were walking down the street and another guy held the umbrella over my head so that we could share it.

I reached up to help hold it, but he shook his head with an “I got it” affirmation. I can see this face so easily too even though I can’t even tell you what color the umbrella was. Funny thing is, I don’t think he’d remember this sliver of memory that is somehow so clear to me still. While we were walking up the steps, one of the girls slipped on a slick slab of stone and went flying.

I can’t remember if it rained on our second trip to India. I’m sure it did, but I don’t remember it.

Last summer, a group of us was walking on the beach in Korea when it started pouring. It’s one of those metamorphosing beaches – the kind that is just a mile of wet sand during one part of the day, and just covered with seawater during another part of the day. I can feel the squelching packed sand beneath my feet as it started to rain. Someone picked up a slug-looking thing and showed that if you rubbed it, it would actually glow this bright highlighter yellow.

And it rained. It’s the kind of rain that makes you lift up your face and start running.

By the time I got back to shelter, I was soaked.

It always seemed so ridiculous to me that someone could somehow catch a cold from being out in the rain. Does that actually happen to people outside of Korean Dramas? There’s this kind of strength that I feel from rolling down the windows while I’m driving and it’s raining. Or when I have my hand stretched out while I stand from underneath a building overhang to catch every falling drop. Or when I’m walking out at a time that everyone else is hiding under umbrellas.

It’s like I’m invincible.

Maybe I like the rain because of some misconception about what Gene Kelly is singing about in “Singin in the Rain”. I mean, he’s not singing because he’s happy in the rain. He’s singing because he’s in love and who cares if it’s raining? But when I was a kid, I just thought that he was happy to be dancing and singing and loving life under a rainstorm.

Maybe I like rain because it’s so tangible. Snow is pretty but so deceptive. You can barely feel it. Rain makes its presence known and it’s genuine. At least, I think it is.

People seem to think that I don’t like umbrellas and that I just prefer to walk around without one. That’s partially true…My mom sent me an umbrella once when I was living in Seattle. It went straight into the closet and it never came out. If I had to choose, I’d go without one.

But I love it all. I love the rain without an umbrella. I love being under one. I like the pinpoint of sound as the drop slaps against the sleek surface of it. I loved being under an umbrella that one time that I was walking and someone stopped to give me his umbrella. Sometime, I’d like to bring out that umbrella that my mom gave me on a day that’s raining…not to use it, but to give it away to someone.

I’ll tell you a secret. I’d love to share an umbrella with someone I like. Have him show up sometime and hold it over my head to share like that one time in India.

I love sweeping aside rain with window-wipers. I love staying up at night to hear the rain on the roof. I loved climbing out on the roof at night to sit and feel it on my skin and see the slick of it on the lamp-post lit streets.

Do you think I like it too much? Maybe. Can you like something too much?

I don’t mind when it ends either. Sometimes right after it rains, there’s a skim of water over pavement. Under the right conditions, it can feel like you’re walking on water. If Peter could do it, why can’t I?

Sometimes after it’s been raining for a while, large clairvoyant puddles form on the streets. Instead of being able to look through the shallow depths to the cobblestoned bottoms, the surfaces mirror the sky or the peaks of buildings overhead.

But rather than portraying what already exists, they seem divorced from their reflections. They actually look like portals to another world: slits of illusion that show a glimpse of what’s beyond, like one of those advent calendars where the numbered days can be peeled back to reveal a chocolate underneath.

Jump into one puddle. Fall into another world. Possible? Yes, I think so.

But that’s a story for another time.

singularity

If you'd find yourself here on my side of town. I'd pray that you'd come to my door.

So there’s the two of us, walking down the street side by side.

It’s just one of those many beautiful parts of the day. Dusk. Sunrises have their own splendor, but the blemishes in the sky we see are merely a prelude to the coming day. They’re just splotches on a canvas that are eventually layered over. When the sun is going down, it’s as if an actor on stage is coloring our ears with his last words before the stage lights go out --before darkness plummets down and that slowly released breath before tumultuous applause takes over.

Dusk somehow feels more intimate. That’s how it felt for me – and maybe for you, too? It’s as if we were the only ones witnessing the sky’s last, brief murmurs before it succumbed to the darkness. But this kind of intimacy is a lie. It’s like being in love. You think that you’re the only one on earth that can possibly understand the euphoria of being in an extraordinary relationship. Too bad everyone else shares that same intimacy, that same euphoria, given the opportunity.

I’d like to think though, that we’re meant to relate with each other in these seemingly personal, individual moments.

Or maybe I should feel cheated that such a personal, profound moment has to be shared with other people. Or maybe knowing that it’s such a common emotion makes it somehow less significant. I don’t know.

Our arms graze naturally as a result of our slightly mismatched gaits. I swear I didn’t mean to brush my arm against yours, but suddenly I have this unexplained impulse to put my hand in yours. To establish that the brief contact we just made can be solidified – made real.

It’s not just the question of whether the feeling will be reciprocated and that the spaces between my fingers will be filled with yours. It’s not even the question of whether you’ll pull me towards you and how there will be some unformed question in my eyes met by an unformed answer in yours.

I want so much more than that. Because people too often cheapen what those three words really mean. I don’t want something just in that moment. I want some sort of promise that I mean more than what has come before--that nothing before can even compare; that I mean more than anything that exists now—that no one now can even compare; and that I mean more than anything that will come in the future – that no one in the future will ever compare.

But how is that even possible? To ask that of you now before I’ve even solidified into words my tentative feelings is preposterous. To ask you to give vows of something that is real and lasting would be unfair. Truly, the words could have no more validity than the confessions of a typical middleschooler leaning against a locker, carefully gelled hair falling artfully into his eyes, promising his eternal love to his first girlfriend. To ask for guarantees just isn’t realistic.

I’m stuck between what is rational and what I secretly want.

So I bring my arm closer to my side, tucking my hand into my pocket, hiding away the possibility of that moment. The impulse fades just like the sun that is swallowed up.

And then I get that call. Is it from the cell phone vibrating in my jacket? Some sort of custom-made pager clipped to my belt? Or maybe it’s like Batman – a signal lighting up what has already moved from dusk to night. It doesn’t matter. That’s not important. What’s important is that the world needs saving, and I’m the one to do it.

I’m a superhero after all.

I could dash off into the darkness, without any sort of explanation to you. But this time, inexplicably, I want to turn to you and ask you to come with me.

I’m not Superman. I can’t go through life keeping everything hidden from Lois Lane. Granted, she couldn’t be the smartest person in the world if a pair of glasses kept her from ever guessing that Clark Kent was Superman. But she deserved to know, didn’t she?

We can fly out together to Shanghai, Argentina, or wherever the distress signal is coming from. Save the world – put out fires, defend the indigenous people from the threats of the greedy corporate world, save people from falling bombs or hurled grenades, put criminals behind bars, or get rid of that nuisance called Godzilla once and for all. We could do all of the above.

Then on the way back, we can pick up from where we left off. We can watch the sun rise from the clay shingle rooftops of some cottages in Tuscany. We can lie down on the grass and pretend we’re looking for shooting stars at night. We can have one of those vending machine coffees (some of the good ones) while we wait under an overhang, letting the pouring rain fill our eyes, our ears, our minds. Watch as everything slows down under the torrent.

Or maybe we can go back to that street, walking side by side…Maybe this time hand in hand. Maybe when you reach out to grasp my hand in yours, I’ll actually let you. Or maybe I’ll actually be the one to take yours.

Or maybe, given the opportunity, I’ll still take my hand, my heart, away and hide it away safely.

Because what if love is like a great big star in the sky? When a star dies, it collapses in on itself out of existence. The gravity of what used to be there is so strong that it pulls everything in, becoming a big black hole in the sky. It devours so much that not even light can escape it. A big, dark, empty void. And then what are you left with? If love is so great, why does it have this potential to destroy? Or perhaps the point is that without love, the suffocating emptiness is too vast.

Then again, at the same time, when you’re swallowed up by a black hole – a singularity – scientists say that it has the possibility, the ability, to transport you somewhere completely different. Completely new.

And that could be the beauty of it. Out of the depths of crushing gravity, we can emerge somewhere and somehow different. New. Transfigured.

Honestly though, it’s too much to think about. Death and crushing darkness and promises of forevers and transfigurations and saying “I love you.” I can’t pretend to know nearly half of all the motivations and desires and hopes and realities of the world. I don’t even know if I’m hopelessly romantic or downright skeptic.

So I turn to you and ask if you want to come with me. If you take my outstretched hand at this moment… then we can first worry about saving the world.

And then maybe later we can think about what else this means – your fingers wrapped around mine.