Today I will write.
Tonight I will write.
This morning I shall write.
And so the days rolled by, folding into weeks, which later became months. The longer I waited in-between writing on this blog, the more distant the idea of writing became. Soon enough, I found myself harboring negative feelings toward writing, even toward “writing for fun,” which was how this blog began. So I put the blog aside, resisting the temptation to remind myself of the last time I posted something substantial on here.
And then my life—a life I have come to associate with living in New York City, taking up space in coffee shops, commuting daily on the M86 bus and number 1 subway train to and from Teachers College, and binge (stress?) writing on weekends that spill into weekdays—suddenly changed. This was early March, and the effects of COVID-19 (or the coronavirus) suddenly felt very close to home. There was talk echoing the halls of Teachers College that classes would be cancelled. Talk became reality. Classes were indeed cancelled and then moved to online settings. Soon enough, I, too, was expected to move.
Somewhere, squeezed in-between all this chaos, was our Spring Break. What a joke that was! It was the most stressful, least relaxing, and irritatingly unsettling kind of “break.” At the end of this Spring Break, which I filled up with redesigning lessons, rethinking teaching, and revisiting learning, Max and I decided I should purchase a one-way ticket to Florida, where my parents are. Together, we called them on Friday evening. The next morning at 8:30am, I stood on my tippy toes along the curbside and flagged down a yellow taxi. Next to me was a large suitcase that I cram packed; my trusty vinyl tote containing my laptop, iPad, and maybe too many books; and a cute but completely impractical burgundy leather backpack for some personal items. Max and I said goodbye. We were both still in denial that our lives could just change like that within hours. We didn’t have our usual Saturday routine of sleeping in and picking up bagels from Bagel Bob’s. We didn’t sit across each other at our dining-table-turned-work-bench, taking turns distracting one another. We didn’t take our weekend stroll to Carl Schurz Park to watch other people’s dogs play, run freely (and sniff each others’ buttholes).
Just like that, Max closed the door to my taxi and waved goodbye, a dirty glass window separating us. In my hand I had two slices of sad looking toast with a thin spread of Nutella hastily smeared within. I had absolutely no appetite. The taxi driver was an Asian man. He put on his surgical mask and drove north. I peeked inside my tote bag and glanced at my own surgical mask in a Ziploc bag. I promised Max I would wear the mask when I arrived at the airport. He promised me that he would find a mask of his own when he returned to the hospital. The taxi driver and I sat in silence.
Today I will share my writing.
(Note typed into my phone, timestamped 12:24pm on April 4, 2020)
I don’t.
Writer’s block (or some kind of impasse)
(February 29, 2020)
I'm not sure if this is the right place to share, but reading "Writing, Life" (from The Hundreds by Lauren Berlant and Kathleen Stewart) created an opening for a flood of emotions.
I've been having a hard time with writing lately; it's usually all in my head, but recently, the build up of anxiety has spread to have an almost paralyzing effect when it comes to writing (particularly typing). To the point where opening up Google Docs primes me for feeling defeated.
Sometimes walking helps me shake off the negativity and nervousness clinging on to me, preventing me from making progress. I've been walking as much as I can, more so than ever this semester. I used to walk for sparks of creativity (and sometimes, I still experience these), but I increasingly find myself walking to feel movement—the kind of movement I feel I lack in getting started. Up until now, I've been pretty good about writing. However, the realization that I'm inching towards the dissertation (the proposal) is simultaneously frightening and thrilling, perhaps more of the former. I'm afraid to take risks in my writing for fear of failing, and the consequence has often been avoidance. I read and read, and take notes and more notes, but so little of the behind-the-scenes work appears in the form of coherent typed-out text. I collect and recollect, re-turning ideas over and over in my head, but as soon as pen meets paper or fingers encounter the keyboard, it's as though a switch is activated, and in front of me is a wall that I can't penetrate. It's so ironic that I help others with their writing (and think I'm fairly good at it), but can't seem to help myself with my writer's block.
March 15, 2020 (?) Instagram post on @booksmartstreetsmartblog
I shared the following post on Instagram. As I read it to myself, almost a month later, I cringe a little. I hear my “Instagram voice”—does that even exist? It sounds more upbeat? More pleasant? I guess this makes sense since these were still the “early” days of social distancing? Am I perhaps being overly critical right now of myself? It is a strange phenomenon reading your own writing after removing yourself from the time and the place of writing.
Day 5 of social distancing: Random memos from the day: 1. I had to recharge my phone halfway through the day because I was on it so much (my screen time increased by 13% this past week to 3 hours and 20 mins each day; not counting time on my laptop...). 2. I used the Instant Pot that my parents gifted me one year for Christmas for the third time on a long long time. Made chicken and rice soup with leftover rotisserie chicken. Didn’t have celery or onion, so just added carrots and leftover scallions. Salt and pepper was all I had to add after. So yummy! 3. Max and I tried to order groceries online, with no success 😔 Even after we managed to load our cart with 11 items (not much left), there was no delivery available... oh well. Might have to go grocery shopping in person some time this week. 4. Getting ready to file our taxes this week (jointly this time!). I hate doing taxes but if there’s a time to do it, it’s this week. 5. I probably brewed 5 cups of tea today. 6. Almost done reading Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong—she hooked me from the first pages! I’ve never read a book this quickly—there’s something magical that happens to reading when the author’s voice resembles yours. Would highly recommend this book! 7. Watching Joe and Bernie debating on my laptop. It’s strange to only see two people and even stranger without the clapping of an audience. 8. Still haven’t done any writing. Sigh. Maybe tomorrow... 9. I’m loving instagram stories but don’t want to be an attention hog by using it too much (only took me years to give it a try 😆). 10. I miss shake shack and $11 pasta at Bigoi and sipping macadamia nut lattes in blue mugs at Stella and Fly. Miss riding the subway and getting off at random stops to stroll. Miss giving and receiving hugs (Max and I give “back hugs” now. Yeah we’re cool). Alright. Getting off my phone now. Take care everyone!!
(Insert lots of hashtags here, because I think that’s what I’m supposed to do on Instagram)
On starting a new life
(In draft form in my Notes… last revisited on March 23, 2020 at 9:58am)
I already felt a certain heaviness weighing me down back in February. I had just turned 30 and the thought that I was entering a new decade brought both excitement and a kind of anxiety. I was feeling the pressure from family and extended family members to create new life as my biological clock was ticking faster and faster now. I was also beginning to think more seriously about my own dissertation, and with that came a feeling of uneasiness. Did I know what I was doing? Was I ready? I found myself frequently stuck, unable to write, and shaken by the thought that If I didn’t write, I would fail, and yet if I did write, it might not be good enough and i would still fail. My fear of taking risks, something I’ve prided myself in being able to embrace, suddenly became paralyzing. There were so many days in February when I was in my head and unable to escape. I took long walks, my kind of city pleasure, and they helped at times, but something was still off. Slanted. Crooked. Uncalibrated.
Rather than talk about my feelings, I turned to writing. In response to a reading group email among a close knit group of colleagues interested in affect studies, I allowed myself to become porous with my feelings. And pour out I did. In a moment of vulnerability, I opened up and tried to convey in writing my struggles.
That was back in February, when COVID-19 wasn’t a thing in the US. Not yet. And still, halfway across the globe, I believe I already began feeling its impact. Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus, is home to Tongji Medical College, where my parents studied. It is also where I spent the early days of my life, though I was born in a small town in Guangxi providence. Wuhan was all over the news, and painted in a negative light. Wuhan became associated with panic, with disease, and with the “yellow peril” per some distasteful French newspaper headline (the paper later apologized, but the hurt was done). Later Wuhan showed up on t-shirts as the new “Wutang Clan” (Wutang—> Wuhan). It was supposed to be a joke, but it was anything but funny to me. It didn’t help when the president of the US, being the presidential leader that he is, in March referred explicitly to the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus” further racializing the pandemic and inciting microaggressions, hatred, suspicion, physical violence, and blatant racism toward Chinese, Chinese Americans, and anyone who looked East Asian.
Ever since I immigrated to the states at 9 years of age, I had been confused about my racial identity. Once again, I wondered, what does it mean to be Asian American today? And how does it feel at this very moment to be Chinese American living in the densely populated New York City?
Reading Depression together
Hi everyone,
Hope you are all well and beginning to find a new rhythm to your days. Just this weekend, ____, ____ and I found ourselves connecting through Zoom (after being connected through Instagram), carving out a more an intimate space to engage with Depression. None of us had really started reading the book, unsure of how reading the book in isolation would feel. ____ came up with the wonderful idea of gathering and reading the text aloud to one another, engaging with the shared text while cultivating a kind of scholarly sisterhood. We met twice this weekend, both times in the morning; we read, journaled, and shared moments that moved us, that invited us to pause and ponder, and that spoke directly to us. Though it started as more of an “experiment” (thinking with Kathleen Stewart), we all felt it was a shared experience that we want to maintain and extend to everyone [in the group]. Thus, I’m writing to invite all of you to join us for a twice-weekly read aloud if you have some time on weekend mornings. I personally found it easier to get up in the morning, knowing that we were going to carve out a space to think, to feel, and to move together through these unsettling times and spaces of everyday life.
[…]
Thinking of everyone and sending along much affection and care,
Catherine
(Sent as an email, composed on my phone past midnight at the end of March)
(By Depression, I’m referring to Ann Cvetkovich’s book)
“Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
or once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language; let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines; we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
(Poem shared with me as part of a “lifting spirits” email chain)
[…] Last semester, I took a course in philosophy and my professor shared that the word "essay" comes from the French verb "essayer," which means "to try" or "to attempt to" or the way I think of it, to explore and experiment with thinking about ideas. I've carried this notion of "essay" forward into all of my classes at TC and I've personally found it comforting to approach writing essays as experimenting with thoughts on the page. Maybe this resonates with you, too. […]
(Email sent to students via Canvas)