l'écrivain et le flâneur

(1) I was inspired to log onto Tumblr and post this picture taken on a recent Japan/Korea trip because of a confluence of factors. One, I was talking to a friend/college classmate, and she reminded me of how I, instead of listening to class lectures, used to spend that precious time reblogging photos for my *aesthetic* blog (and the vast majority of them were photos taken somewhere in Asia). Two, I was talking to another friend and was reminded that this year marks my *gulp* tenth year since graduating from college. And, three, I was reminiscing about this recent trip and it all dawned on me how ten-year-ago me would have been highly satisfied (more likely overjoyed and astonished) to know that I finally got my *aesthetic* Tumblr photo moment in Japan, beneath the remaining cherry blossom petals softly floating down into a dry river bed. 

(2) The aforementioned friend who delights in pointing out my less than diligent habits in some of my college classes conveyed to me her increasingly nihilistic view on working and adulthood. It’s also unsettling to me to think that my entire first third of life was devoted to a rat race that resulted in...a cycle of full-time work to enjoy windows of time that sometime become vacations to spend the rewards of full-time work and will eventually end in permanent vacation to spend the rewards of full-time work. I think it hits my friend particularly hard knowing that she has a creative streak and (had?) a desire to do something meaningful in this life. Now, she works at a start-up doing B2B engagement 💀

(3) Speaking of work, I applied for, and received, a promotion; somehow, I’ve convinced people I’m deserving to be a “senior” attorney. I was reluctant to apply -- mostly out of fear that my current, comfortable work-life balance would be disrupted -- but I’m glad it ended working out okay. In the end, I still do what I did before but with more money (for the aforementioned vacations). The “senior” title, though, doesn’t stop me from bouts of imposter syndrome and the tendency to think I’d be a suitable mentee whenever I see a new mentorship program being advertised.

(4) Back to the trip -- International travel remains, in my mind, one of the best ways to determine compatibility in a relationship. There’s no shortage of obstacles to encounter as a couple: logistics/planning, navigating through unknown locales, reaction to unforeseen events, handling money, deciding on where to eat, etc. 10/10 would recommend. 

As an introverted person who is 50% of the time misanthropic, I thought I could lean into the self-isolation, as I had when I was much younger. The prospect of staying at home with a stable, fast internet connection brought back memories of adolescent Anthony waiting for bootleg Naruto episodes to buffer on my DSL connection.

But alas, too much has changed within me perhaps. I’m too accustomed to freedom, strolling to the store to peruse its wares, venturing to visit friends over a nice meal. 

It isn’t any easier with this relationship unfurling before me. We’ve become something between boyfriends and roommates who share the same bed. Sometimes, he’ll give me a look before he goes off to another hospital shift, and everything that we promised one another comes rushing back to me.

So I try to move forward.

I’m the type of person who likes discrete tasks and projects. Drive forward, check off the list. It gives me a sense of purpose.

In so doing with my plans to move out and strike it on my own, I give myself the distraction I need from becoming too morose. But am I depriving myself of the space and time to properly grieve and process this ending? In favoring a tidy transition, am I leaving out essential conversations that will help heal and create something sustainable for the future? What does the future hold, anyway?

Stones better left unturned are rediscovered.

Memories long buried suddenly resurface to consciousness.

You start to wonder how six years could pass by so quickly.

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It’s difficult to write down these words. To be frank, I’m not really sure what I’m feeling right now. 

I’ll keep it short, then.

We’ve decided to start unwinding things between us. The circumstances are complicated and the story is too long (and somewhat painful) to recount here, but what could have/should have/would have been is likely no longer.

Let us disentangle the story we’ve woven. Be free.

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A part of me is hopeful, perhaps delusional. I recently finished 사랑의 불시착 and if love is fated then maybe things will work out in the end.

A part of me realizes that I should’ve been a better boyfriend. More understanding. More tolerant. More giving. 

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I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I will never love someone like this again. That I will never meet someone with as kind of a heart. That I will never again meet someone who makes me want to be a better person. That I will never find someone who sees the good and beauty in everyone, everything in this world.

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Finally, since this bit of a writing haven has spilled outside these digital walls, I ask of those who know us in real life to let us work through this process on our terms... (i.e. please keep this discreet)...

A foreword PSA of sorts -- my posting frequency has been abysmal over the last year and a half, so thank you to those kind people who continue to follow (or perhaps just let me rest and gather dust in your “following” lists) and those new faces who have clicked on my blog in recent months.

Thank you. Truly.

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I’m not really one to make New Year’s resolutions (maybe that means I lack resolve), but here are some observations as we reach both the end of 2019 (conclusive) and the decade (debatable but an annoying debate).

(1) If you’re a long-time follower of this blog, then you’ll know that the concept of time, as a force, fascinates me. I love visualizing time as a river--eroding, influencing, shifting the very landscape of our lives. Time, with a relentless pull or drag not unlike gravity, has the ability to distort perception, change memory, and, ultimately, affect how we choose to live.

What’s also powerful is the concept of time as a resource and the impact that “free time” has on one’s own vitality.

I’ve learned this year that having time for myself and to myself is tantamount to breathing. If anything, working in an environment where time was never my own became a suffocating experiment. Being able to sit here and type this post is a wonderful privilege, courtesy of time.

Reader, your time is precious. Use it with caution and care.

(2) This blog’s changed greatly since its inception. From Rupi Kaur-esque attempts at poetry to some writing of which I’m fairly proud, it’s apparent how much I’ve changed over the past 7(!) years that this blog has been alive.

I’ve decided not use the word, “grown,” because life, at this point, feels less linear than it does amorphous. 

Sure, time continues to march forward--aging is a relatively straightforward concept (see (1)). But, #adulting, is certainly no longer akin to the tiered scavenger hunt that was academic life. Gone are the stages and accomplishments of exams, semesters, internships, and jobs. For now, we just float in the proverbial pond, jumping from lily pad to lily pad, until we get offed by the predator known as death (further digression: it is increasingly disturbing to me when I read about people dying and then those people are identified as 28 year old’s or younger).

I digress, but what I am trying to say is that I’m happy to have kept this capsule of memories through the years. Writing was, and continues to be, a place of solace for me. 

It’s funny because when I’m with friends that I met through Tumblr, we always remark about the “death of gaysian writer tumblrs.” We’re being dramatic, but certainly, it’s a different place from way back then (NSFW content ban, included). Many of us have moved on with our lives, and for the dusty blogs that remain, they’re simply snapshots of the past.

Here’s to writing and choosing to sit with my thoughts. Memories, memories. They’re powerful things.

(3) The 2020s loom, and already things appear to be thornier and more difficult to navigate than originally anticipated. 

Let’s just say, Mother Life has conspired with Lady Time, and they both continue to keep me on my toes.

I have no adages or aphorisms for you, dear Reader, because I, too, have no idea what is coming next. A couple of years ago, this may have given me great anxiety and distress. These days, I’ve learned to give fewer fucks. That said, the unknown isn’t a fun place to be. 

Perhaps through character building or, more likely, the weathering down of my will, I’ve learned to be more flexible in life. Rigidity sows dissonance sows anxiety sows stress sows aging sows death (see (1) and (2)). It’s better to just accept the things as they come, as they are, for life is too short to always battle when things aren’t in alignment with expectations, ideals, desires.

Sometimes we lose more by refusing to lose (I guess I did have an aphorism).

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Reading has been my other place of solace. I didn’t seek it as often this year, but some books to share (in no particular order):

- Pachinko by Min Jin Lee - Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino - Bloom by Kevin Panetta - On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong - The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg

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Hi there, anon. My apologies for taking some time to respond... being on a bus tour in Europe doesn’t pair well with contemplative writing. That being said, your question raises a lot of other questions (how lawyerly of me, I know).

For example,

- How out are you? Are you out to anyone? Just close friends? All friends? Some family? Your work?- What is your present stage in life? Are you in school? Are you freshly graduated? Have you been out of school for some time?- From where do you derive your current social network? Are you a member of community organizations or hobby groups?

I think asking these questions will guide you on how to meet other people. Because meeting other guys, for the purpose of dating (I assume), can be quite similar to meeting friends as well.

For me, after I graduated from college (which was the last time I was actually dating...), I reconnected with older, gaysian friends who “showed me the ropes.” I became involved with a local organization composed of gaysian men, and I also met people through law school. Because I was basically out at the time, except to my parents, I had a bit more freedom in leveraging my networks and freely expressing my identity.

Inevitably, given our modern era, I also tried my hand at the apps (through which I met my current partner) and the internet (where I met more than one wonderful person through this very site). It’s not an inherently bad medium, but there can sometimes be many hazards associated with it.

Ocean, deep and vast, I cast into you my doubts, my fears, and my worries.

In middle school, my mom used to drop me off early in the morning. With only the pre-dawn crickets and jostling of the janitors breaking me from my reveries, I would find myself waiting alone for first bell in the cafeteria. My thoughts, at the beginning, were enough to keep me occupied -- these were the days, after all, before the proliferation of smart phones. I would paint elaborate scenes in my head and project them across the dusty, pre-dawn sky while twilight still had a canvas across those school windows.

Those days, however, were brief, and I soon found myself needing a new distraction. Maybe it was because I had read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes or perhaps it was because we had so many old magazines left in stacks around the house, their glossy pages begging for a new purpose, but I started folding paper cranes. 

I had to learn at first, painstakingly following the instructions in an old library book and folding and re-folding creases that were not crisp or exactly angled. Each crane was its own project, the point at its wingtips and the angle of the neck and tail unique. I would fold and fold cranes until the sun peeked beyond the tree line and as my classmates joined me at my cafeteria table.

Perhaps it’s here where I learned the virtue of patience and consolidated my work ethic into a harnessable force. In the creation of those origami cranes, I witnessed the power of deliberate action through the steady fabrication of paper into craft, instructions into muscle memory, a whimsical thought into art.

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I feel as though I learned a similar lesson in my latest transition, and it could be considered as somewhat counter to what I learned all those years ago. Despite my deliberate actions, my patience, my steady work ethic, sometimes you have to accept that the Sisyphean feat is not worth the suffering.

It’s been a long year and a half, and I’ve accepted that Big Law is not for me, confirming something that, deep down, I’ve known all along. A part of me wanted things to work out -- that perhaps with enough steadiness, the endless pace, the mounting anxiety, and the sometimes immeasurable pressure would eventually subside. The prestige and money enticing, what seemed like a farfetched goal in young Anthony’s mind had become a reality that, increasingly, I found myself wanting to preserve. But the more I caught myself resisting my intuitions, the more unhappy I ultimately found myself.

It’s a journey that’s brought me to the darkest corners of my psyche and back, and I cannot exactly pinpoint how or why things often felt this way. Perhaps it’s the surprise that my own capabilities could not wrest me from these feelings. Maybe it was the confrontation and conflict between what I am able to create and what I want to create for myself. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. A change felt necessary.

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In my origami infancy, a few misplaced folds would render a crane lifeless. It needed to be transformed into something else. And so I would enact this alchemy in spite of my inexperience, rolling out the creases against the table’s edge and gently lifting the corners into creation. 

(1) A kind follower has been revisiting some of my old posts (thank you! I appreciate it!), and it’s reminded me of the journey into my current position at this law firm. How fitting it is then to be on the doorstep of a new opportunity... I’m hopeful to share more good news soon...

(2) A dear friend of mine has been having immigration issues, and being a business immigration matter, I was more than happy to step in to help. It certainly sheds new light on the process, which is complicated, illogical, and opaque to the outsider. Of course, I had to restrain myself from exacting too much gleeful revenge whilst being on the client side through my friend, but my impression of the “lawyers” was certainly not a positive one. It’s already difficult enough to navigate the U.S. immigration system, only for legal professionals to muddy up the process even further by denying access to pertinent details and information.

She sent me a bouquet by way of thanks. They’re lovely. 

A distant memory came to me today. 

Weekend afternoons when I was child, our family would sometimes find ourselves gathered around the secondhand kitchen table nestled into the corner of our modest two bedroom apartment. We’d each have our tools of choice -- fabric scissors; children’s Fiskars, with the multi-colored ergonomic grip; the random office scissors my mom would “find” at work and give a new home.

Manufacturer’s coupons, collected from the old Sunday newspapers thrown out by the hotel where my dad worked, were a frequent activity. To us, we turned cutting coupons into a bit of a game - a mission created out of the various, seemingly arbitrary but carefully orchestrated, categories of savings my parents had created. I liked cutting for “cookies/candy/cake” the best, and, for some reason, “cleaning supplies” came in second. My sister was particularly skilled at finding “paper towels/toilet paper” and “laundry detergent/fabric softener.” We would stack the coupons high in each of their designated piles until the glossy sheets of paper would come sliding off the kitchen table. 

Standing here and looking into the portal to that past, it almost seems silly that my mom and I were arguing about which six-figure salaried offer seems the best and whether I should just stay at the fancy law firm where I am currently employed. 

Times have changed. 

My weird cocktail of emotions often feels like a cup of water filled to the brim.  Any additional volume will cause the cup to overflow, a displacement of anxiety, worry, and sometimes anger inflicted upon others.  It isn’t fair to them.

...

We were hanging out with my mom and brother today.  Strangely, I felt there yet not there at all.  I’ve been having trouble being present as of late.  As of the last year, maybe.  It honestly frightens me.  

I thought about this as I walked to the grocery store after a gym session, noticing the smooth river rocks that lined the sidewalk.  Edges dulled, by design really, the rocks easily slipped into their respective curves.  Conformity.  Dulled is how I feel sometimes.  Or maybe more often than I’d like.  

...

I had a moment of weakness a few weeks ago.  It was a stressful Sunday at work.  I felt as if I didn’t know what I was doing and also contributing nothing of substance to the project at hand.  

After, I told my boyfriend that I wanted to go to Target.  To be bold, spontaneous, and just buy something that I saw and liked.  In a way, I was satisfying a childhood dream of my own -- wielding the power to purchase anything I pleased.  As I walked through the store, finding nothing that I wished to buy, I realized childhood me had a very warped fantasy of adulthood.

I bought this in the end, perhaps fitting in this moment of regression.  Isn’t he cute?  I named him Luffy.

...

A strange memory crossed my mind.  

In elementary school, we played this game called “Butterfly” on one of the older playground apparatuses during recess.  It’s one of those childhood games in which the name makes absolute no sense -- to this day, I don’t know why we called it Butterfly.

There was a set of parallel bars attached to the apparatus, kinda like these.  You would square off against a competitor at opposite ends of the bars.  Once someone yelled “Go!” you’d race to catch your competitor, hoisting yourself over the bar on the right and then running to the other end, repeating and repeating the race until you finally tagged them out.

The memory came to me all of a sudden, sharp and bright.  It smelled of fresh cut grass and early May sun.  The crunch of mulch against my sneakers, the metal bars with chipped blue paint, the shouts of my classmates spurring me onward and onward.  

Life goes on... in three snippets.

...

I went on my first work trip since joining my current firm with my big boss and big big boss. Chicago, mercifully, was only unbearably cold the final night of our three day trip, and overall, I suppose it was a welcome break from the usual grind of the office.

We stayed at a hotel that was much too fancy than anything I would normally patronize. The front desk knew my name before I arrived, and there was daily turndown service during which the staff would dim the lights and turn on soft classical music. The rainfall shower head, though, is a luxury I can get behind.

I’m always painfully self-aware of how I act around hotel staff during any stays, most likely because my dad, and quite a few of his siblings, are employed in the hospitality industry. I ordered room service breakfast one morning before a long client meeting, and protesting my attempts to help him wheel in my breakfast, the attendant almost bashfully exclaimed, “Sir, there’s no need to hold the door open for me. I’ve got it.” It’s strange to be on the other side.

...

I mentioned how I paid off my student loans a few ago, and a number of people have told me that they’re proud of me. It’s an interesting sentiment, associated with the fact that student loans are often seen and experienced as insurmountable, crushing debt. 

I didn’t feel much of anything, though, which left me saddened. These days, it seems as though I’m numb to a lot of things. In search of a greater reaction from within myself, I found nothing. Perhaps I was simply reminded that money truly cannot buy happiness.

...

I left work early today. I’ve learned my lessons from the past and understand my body well enough to not try to push through an afternoon of headache and fatigue. 

The train ride home was ordinary enough. Rain fell steadily as the metro carved its way through the suburban landscape. It’s times like these that I wished I lived within city limits.

An animated man continued to speak on his phone as we approached the penultimate station. He was trying to sort out something with an unfortunate corporate representative--he was less than pleased. As the train slowed to a halt and opened its doors, I noticed the man getting up from his seat and leaving behind a wallet. 

I followed him up the escalator and out of the station, though his clipped pace made it difficult. He approached the turnstiles only to rapidly palm his body for his wallet. I extended a hand, and a look of gratitude and relief washed over his face.