-NALEN+

梦里梦到醒不来的梦

I am someone who gets creeped out very easily. I don't believe in ghosts, but ghost movies petrify me. Running solely accompanied by your breath and something more sinister from people popping out of closets, hanging from ceiling fans gives me nightmares for weeks.

Back in my old house, I used to rip out articles, comics, and pictures that I liked from my favorite magazines. Literally every wall of my room was covered, including the ceiling (pictures on aphasia, under "room"), with faces of beautiful people, beautiful stories, lessons and quotes. Enormous photographs from W, Richard Brautigan's "Love Poem" ripped out from i-D, articles from Newsweek, an editorial from the first edition of Vogue China.

I worked on those walls for years. Eventually I had to decide if things were meaningful enough to put up, if it was poignant enough to merit covering something else that I had previously found striking. My friend told me it all reminded her of something out of A Beautiful Mind, and wondered that all those eyes didn't frighten me at night. Upon reflection, I could see that it might be creepy, but it never unnerved me. Every inch meant something to me. One of my favorite articles was the speech Steve Jobs gave at the 2005 Stanford commencement. (Can you spot it in the photographs?)

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. ...

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

His speech appeals to the romantic in me, but I am not all romantic.

When my parents sold the house, the realtor told me to take down the papering because he said it would "frighten off" prospective customers. "It makes your room smaller," he smiled, which was untrue as the omnipresent cluster of faces, if anything, gave a sense of a lack of dimension. My parents threw most of it away, but what could I have done- taken them apart and reassembled them, these pieces that I chose for the way they looked next to each other, the way they fit into each other? My room now is bare. Usually I am at home maybe two months out of the year, and even though I'm home this summer, I haven't even bothered unpacking. I picked the coloring of my new room- light mint green with cherry red hardwood flooring. It matches, it's simpler and less haphazard, but still, I miss the sense of meaning all around me.

Back to Steve Job's speech. How does it match up versus something like this, that I can't say is right or wrong in comparison?

In [art, music, etc.], the few top get tons of money while the rest get nearly squat. And what's more, if you're at the top, yeah you've got your life made. You're doing what you love and you're earning big bucks.

But guess what? If you're doing what you love, but you're earning barely enough to pay your next apartment rent fee, and don't have enough to sustain a family and eat out every now and then (and not even own a new car), you can't say that you'd still be "Oh so happy to be doing what I love". In fact, I've seen tons of those people just wish and regret that they became doctors/lawyers/businessmen, etc.

There's a fine line between reality and fantasy. But cross it, and you're screwed, and time doesn't turn back. ... How many people in the world have jobs that they love? A crippling, minor percent of the entire 100.

The reality is, jobs end up serving as just a means of earning money so that the worker can do the things he wants to: this is how it ends up for most people. ... If you have a passion for becoming a Tolkeinist, and end up becoming someone who studies a made up language all your life and love it to death, but earn just as much as the guy flipping burgers at McDonald's, your daddy won't talk to you because you won't have a phone that you could buy.

That's reality.

(5000 points if you know where this is from.)

I've been thinking a lot about love and what it really means. I know that it counts for something, but I'm not sure how much. I am not particularly idealistic by nature and I question things over and over again, every day. If I love California, does it mean I should stay? If I don't love my career, does it mean I should change it? And if I love someone, be it romantic, platonic, or familial- does that mean I should be with that person? That love is the only justification needed?

I don't think so, but I don't know how much it counts for.

Labels: ♡L, 2005, California, career, collages, commencement speech, cynicism, death, decorations, dreams, idealism, life, love, moving, real estate, realism, reality, rooms, Stanford, Steve Jobs

posted by ♡ @ 8:22 PM