Mind the Gap

To Do List

2011-04-09T19:53:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if it's entirely counterproductive to just make a list of all the things about myself that bug me and try to change them. Would that make me a narcissist, a masochist, or just plain melodramatic?

dog days are over...?

2010-07-20T19:47:00.003-04:00

I tend to use my birthday to mark the wane of summer. Lately, though, I'm not so sure. Is the sun really setting on the dog days come July 23rd? This seems a bit premature. In lots of ways-- lots-- (much like turning 21) it seems like things are just starting to get interesting.

twentysomething

2010-06-09T18:40:00.003-04:00

On the way home to Astoria from my internship today, sandwiched between a bright eyed, underpaid, entry-level worker and a rain-soaked City Year kid, I really felt like a twentysomething. Now I know, I've not yet made it to "twentysomething" (one month, 14 days). But there is something distinctly wonderful and earnest about being this old-- or young-- in the city. We twentysomethings are the naïfs that keep New York's corporate sweat shops running and its outer boroughs' landlords supplied with fresh tenants. We are dumb enough to believe, still, that our expensive brains and flawless Urdu will pay off in the post-graduation job market. In most cases, we're wrong. So why does it feel so right?

Well, because I like to be put to the test. Give me three assignments about incredibly varied architectural goings-on in the world, and I will write them. Ask me to contact PR for a dozen photographers, and yes, I will gladly hold while I wait for an available representative. Because being new to the game, and flexing my professional tendons is still fun. And I'm riding the wave. Despite overwhelming naïveté on the part of my millennial cohorts, I can't help but feel like remaining shiny-eyed and wondrous is the way to go.

hermit, n.

2010-04-13T22:48:00.002-04:00

I've been calling myself a hermit a lot lately. It's both a disclaimer and a crutch. I feel less guilty about avoiding certain social situations and for slinking into my room to watch bad tv in the middle of gatherings. I decided to look up the word today, on my 5th use of the day. What I found was ... well, hopeful:

hermit, noun. - 1. a person living in solitude as a religious discipline. 2. a hummingbird found in the shady lower layers of tropical forests, foraging along a regular route.

See? I'm just a hummingbird, foraging along a regular route.

musings on coupledom

2010-03-29T19:57:00.006-04:00

I ran into a gaggle of cool-kids today, in the lobby of Butler Library. Absolutely resplendent in ratty soccer-style sneakers and my windblown, $5 pashmina, we found ourselves entertaining thoughts on coupling and singledom. I've always known that nonchalance is the modus operandi of New York City's becardiganed, too-cool-for-school crowd; but it seems that relationships-- for most of the early-20-somethings I've met at least-- are treated with a nonchalance that borders on irreverence. And then I thought: maybe they have a point.

My own relationship has certainly changed me for the better. In other ways though, aspects of my personality (my ability, for example, to be a jealous, ranting loony) have been given a new platform for expression. I think it's these dark and scary parts of our (relatively) newly post-pubescent selves that both single and coupled, early-20-somethings are attempting to avoid. Without getting too Hallmark card-y, the great thing about being in a relationship is not (at least not at 21) social capital or financial security. Rather, it's the knowledge that you can explore those slightly crazier recesses in yourself and have someone there who understands the process (and, hopefully, loves you anyway).

As the cool kids and I made off in our separate directions, I decided to let a little, very little, irreverence into my relationship. Maybe it's just what we need.

fake world

2010-03-14T21:27:00.005-04:00

A former friend (and very funny lady) has been keeping a blog about her semester abroad experiences in Aix-en-Provence, France (I will not pretend that I don't read it with near-religious fervor and delight). She wrote recently about feeling like being abroad was like living in a "fake world." It seems, though--after a couple readings-- that it's the abundance of pastries, the meeting new people and seeing new things, and the making time to do stuff that's genuinely interesting that makes her world feel "fake." At the risk of sounding like a Carrie Bradshaw wannabe, I got to thinking about how often I put off what I want to do in favor of everything else, namely, what I should be doing. Life, after all, should be about making a better later now, not the other way around.

In a week in which the weather has been nice and I've been free to enjoy it, I have, more than ever, put off getting those pesky administrative things taken care of: taxes, planning my summer, presentation preparation and assorted assignments. All of those things, for better or worse, are my real life (and they're a real pain). But slowly--and verrry slowly indeed-- I've realized over the course of this week that getting those things done will make it easier to live my "fake life" and create my "fake world" in my real one.

And that feels good.

I feel it all/the wings are wide

2010-03-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

wild card inside.

ok, cupid.

2010-02-13T01:41:00.004-05:00

Today, at a friend's birthday party, while browsing her profile on the popular dating site OKCupid in the spirit of the aforementioned festivities, we came across an ex's profile. What I realized (aside from the fact that the poor kid is quite lonely), is that over the last two years I have created a retrospective vision of a terrible, monster of a guy who is the worst person you'll ever meet. The truth is, yes, he's objectifying and disrespectful. But people-- all people-- are multilayered. There was a time, before I knew better, that I was head over heels.

I'm so glad that cupid's aim is better these days and that I'm able to celebrate this Valentine's Day with someone who is-- flaws and all-- perfect.

elephants overhead

2010-02-06T13:36:00.005-05:00

Recently, I got asked to move out of campus housing and into the greater wilds of New York City. After saying-- and genuinely meaning-- that I'd think about, it seems that the universe is speeding up the thinking process.

A raucously elephantine party in the apartment above mine last night (not to mention the late-night entrance of my own, mutinous suitemates) has me thinking a lot more about dorm life. For the most part, I have had ideal dorm-living experiences, but this year has been pretty... different. I have never before lived in a "party dorm," and apparently this one is just that Thursday through Saturday. Last night, after calling the RA on duty, public safety, and berating my suitemates, I realized that I will always be a hermit, the curmudgeon-y guy who wants his peace and quiet after 1am. And maybe the best thing for me (and the University's obnoxiously exuberant party-goers) is for me to vacate the premises and carve out a new life somewhere else.

31 january

2010-01-31T15:43:00.004-05:00

I haven't written anything here since 2009. What a funny thing.

The start of the new semester is a stressful time and always leaves me feeling a little unsettled and uneasy. But after a week or two of classes and new Clefs (!) and some adjustment to my new schedule, I feel as though the dust is finally settling.

resolution, n.

2009-12-31T15:16:00.005-05:00

The word resolution has so, so many meanings and, thus, just as many synonyms. The most simplistic definition of the word that I've found thus far, though, has got be the following:

resolution, n. a firm decision to do or not to do something.

So basically I've been going about this resolution thing all wrong.

Somehow, my resolutions always sound like they've been written by a Hallmark copywriter, or a New York Times staff columnist ("I'm going to treat my body better; I'm going to foster healthy relationships..."). The thing is, those are exactly the things I'd like to do.

Most of all, though, I resolve to move on with no regrets.

Happy New Year.

the sand inside

2009-12-26T23:25:00.008-05:00

The hardest part about being the child of teenage parents, however academically accomplished and brilliantly talented they may have become as adults, is watching them age in front of you.

Most kids come along and their parents have already been made crazy by a life full of pressures and involvements (and baggage). But I had the unique pleasure of watching my parents become the simpering, schizophrenic, and cheerless adults all of my friends' parents were. Maybe that's harsh; my parents are neither schizophrenic nor cheerless. But today, at my siblings' Kwanzaa pageant, I watched, as if in slow motion, my Dad applaud at a hilarious(ly adorable) skit in which my sister played a Yoruba goddess out to teach two young farmers a life lesson. The expression on his face wasn't just happiness; there was something else. Like bewilderment or astonishment. And as heartwarming as it was, this was not the skit for that. His look seemed to say "how did I get here?"

Funny thing is, I know. What a strange position to be in.

2009, au revoir

2009-12-20T20:55:00.009-05:00

In this, the year of seemingly endless celebrity deaths, the avant-garde going mainstream, and a sizeable amount of personal growth, I'd almost forgotten that the decade was, well, over.

The 00's (aughts?) were definitely my formative years. But I wasn't really, truly cognizant of passing time until well into high school. Until then, life is infinite; when you're 14, only the elderly have sand timers around their necks. And then- bam- something happens and you look down at your own neck, and there you are, sand timer-ed like the rest of them.

In the New Year and well into the next decade (at the end of which I turn 30, dear god), I think I'll end up remembering the 00's as a period of self-realization (to be distinguished, for sure, from self-actualization). Here I am, ready for the next ten years, sand timer around my neck, plans in my back pocket.

Here's to 2010.

#marriedlife

2009-11-08T22:12:00.003-05:00

I just recently discovered Eva Cassidy. I guess I'm behind the times; people have been mentioning her for eons. I've just been too thick to heed. Not since middle school have I been so immediately affected by someone's music. Aside from how sappy the whole thing makes me feel, this is kind of amazing.

Also, junior year is a real schlep through murky emotional and intellectual waters. And all for what, exactly? Mhm.

updates from Mo-Hi

2009-09-18T09:21:00.003-04:00

I haven't updated this thing in so long. And it's not for a lack of material; so much has happened in my romantic, academic, and a cappella lives that I could go on and on for days. Not to mention the incredible wealth of stuff happening in the world at large. And Columbia is up to its same old shenanigans again, with professors assigning exams and presentations within the first three weeks of classes. I've joined the hive again for one more year.

the week in news...

2009-08-14T21:33:00.011-04:00

My ride! (via Flickr)

This has been quite the whirlwind week. For one, I have a(nother) job that'll last me well into the spring. I'm officially working at the Office of the Director of Graduate Studies. My interviewer told me that I can a) gchat and check Facebook if I ever have downtime (uh...) and b) that he is officially sanctioning-- indeed, welcoming-- any humming that may be a result of my proclivity to song. This job is perfect (although I must say that I was quite startled to have Facebook brought up so casually in a professional setting). I start on Monday.

In other news, I have a red, Ross brand hipster-mobile, name TBA (any suggestions?), birthday gifted by the wonderful Kate Lovely. I rode it around Astoria and found that there is nothing quite as exhilarating or terrifying as bicycling in New York City.

Also, did some community garden-ing this weekend with Kyle. The earth is an amazing home.

I feel really good about how things are going for me right now, in spite of how poor I am and how much work I need to do to be quite where I'd like in life. But finally, I feel like I'm making some progress.

ess-KAH-pay

2009-08-03T15:41:00.003-04:00

Aside from my childlike love of Finding Nemo, the title of this post is pretty apt due to the fact that I am making plans to return to the city ASAP. Sayonara, Dirty Jerz.

Zsa Zsa Zsu

2009-07-30T01:33:00.013-04:00

I feel as though something's happened to my motivation and my feistiness. Has becoming a member of a two-some made me both treacly and indolent? I guess we all expect relationships to enable a certain amount of sentimentality, but I'm beginning to feel as though the heady, almost hubristic confidence-- my response to harbored bitterness-- that got me into this great, healthy relationship has evaporated in some of this summer heat. The thing is, being in a stimulating relationship has offered me so much in the way of emotional well-being and, well, general happiness.

So what the EFF is going on?

For example, I was recently asked to write an article for the World Daily News' insert for prospective college students and their parents, an immense and unexpected honor, clearly. Long story short, it's not getting published because of word counts and blah dee blah Asad's an idiot. But worse than that is just how absurdly simplistic-- and almost formulaic-- the writing was. When I edited the piece, I felt as though I was reading the work of some simpleton 9th-grade writer. Yeah, it was that bad.

Perhaps I'm not responding well to no longer being a teen. Perhaps being 20 disagrees with the Peter Pan in me.

I need school to start. I need to be in New York. I need to again experience the terror and the thrill of the hand-to-mouth student experience. I want to smell the stale (central) air of an East Village thrift shop. I want to be and avert clichés. New Jersey is both under-stimulating and deeply uninspiring.

Where's the fuckin' zsa zsa zsu?

ni ju

2009-07-23T00:14:00.003-04:00

And just like that, I'm suffix-less.

mirror, mirror

2009-07-19T00:18:00.006-04:00

If it really is one's reflected self with which one is truly enamored in love, than I've found the kind of rare, coveted dressing room mirror with the gentle lighting and ideal positioning that one certainly does not find nearly often enough. <3

- A

good design, good diction

2009-07-04T02:06:00.015-04:00

something along the lines of what I'm going for.

- photo from JAK & JILL BLOG

I used to be someone who aspired to good design with a lot more fervor/passion. Sturdy things with functional beauty, clean lines and sweeping curves interested me. I even began to refashion my vocabulary; where a friend was once described as a deeply loyal and loving girl in search of a beau, she became a "veritable wellspring of love to be given." In an effort to keep words from getting in my way (and from sounding like Tim Gunn), I began to pare down. And I've seen this linguistic pruning begin to carry over into other aspects of my self-presentation. Blazers were replaced by cardigans, cotton traded for flannel-- sometimes at the most inappropriate of seasons (omg, am I turning into a hipster?). I've attributed all these design changes in my life--from my room, to my language, to my self-- to several things:

Kyle. Someone simple, down-to-earth, interested in Coco Rocha only for the fact that she got on his model sister's nerves during Fall 05 Milan Fashion Week. His urban yogi aesthetic has, even in the short span of two months, had a lot of influence on my general self-presentation.
The recession. Where I could once pretend I had money to spend on an outrageously priced sweater, I can no longer hide from the fact that I have bills to pay and long-term economic goals (god, I sound like an adul(l)t). For similar reasons of eschewing extravagance, the $10 words have also begun to go out the window (although that sentence may have contradicted this point).
A general lack of design inspiration. Where am I going, what am I doing, aesthetically? A friend once told me I'd created a very strong and distinct self-mythology. Well where, praytell, is this Goosebumps choose-your-path tale going? Will I come out of the hauntingly hipster Columbia University with some of my preppiness intact, or am I destined to a becardiganed life forever?

I'd like to think that I'll reach an aesthetic middle ground, somewhere where I feel comfortable in both my plaid wool and my starched cotton. Until then, I'll keep pouring over Garance and JAK & JILL and hope that something, anything reaches out to me from this terrifyingly erratic aesthetic abyss.

Great Parisian Adventure

2009-06-28T20:05:00.009-04:00

I've been watching a lot of French cinema lately, don't ask me why. I think my obsession with things French is a result of my frustration with all things New Jersey. The more time I spend here, the more time I spend wishing I was as far away as possible.

On that note, can someone send me to yoga camp, too? I miss Kyle.

Great American Adventure

2009-06-24T13:23:00.007-04:00

Just returned from Detroit, where I accompanied my granny on a trip to visit a childhood love of hers who is terminally ill. It would have all been so romantic had I not spent the majority of a trip in a very real, very un-romantic hospital. Old people are a drag (when they're not absolutely crazy, which is how I'd prefer to turn out).

In any case, the only place worth going in Detroit (aside from Bell Isle, which is not in Detroit at all but is instead in a kind of Canada/U.S. purgatory that made my cell phone blink "International!"), is Motown, pictured above (taken from Flickr). Detroit is distinctly depressing and profoundly abandoned. I've never seen so many derelict buildings. I'll only ever visit again via Motown tunes on my iPod, I've decided.

small wonders

2009-06-14T01:27:00.007-04:00

I should not, but do, take pleasure in the fact that you are getting fat.

Munchies, perhaps?

Black, Heavy, Bold, Medium, Roman

2009-06-11T12:05:00.005-04:00

This is an amazing documentary about the conceptual development and evolution of the world's most ubiquitous type face, Helvetica. You'd be surprised how often you see it (especially in New York) and how often it surrounds you completely unnoticed. Maybe only worth the hour and a half if you're a complete design/aesthetics freak, but definitely entertaining.

I'll never forget the conversation I had with my dad at around 6 when I told him I wanted to be an artist. His response was, of course, being my dad, that I should be an architect instead because that is where "the money is." As much as I love and appreciate good architecture (as it is an extension of my general appreciation for good design of all kinds) more and more each day I find myself wanting to study graphic design and learn to design on a smaller scale. A part of me even wishes I went to art school. And then I remember the kinds of kids that go to art school and I renege. But in any case, if I do ever end up at grad school, it will not be for a degree in architecture.

tea & self-pity

2009-06-10T12:09:00.007-04:00

Back from a stint as a wandering job-hunter in the city, I realize now that perhaps I do need to spend the month of June in New Jersey at home and return to Gotham in July. It's a tough realization to come to only because I do miss New York so much and I hate feeling as though I'm not making any kind of productive use of, well, myself at the moment.

Went to several small cafés, tea shops, and bakeries in both Manhattan and Brooklyn (including a wine bar/restaurant a lá Max Café) for both meals and to drop my résumé off. Kyle, always the gentleman, accompanied me. I guess it all boils down to my desire to get out from inside the nest and out into the world. After all, I'm (almost) 20. =)

p.s. the American Apparel casting was like a hipster cattle corral/absolutely and hilariously ridiculous.

capitalism done right

2009-06-06T23:35:00.005-04:00

the title of this post is the line I intend to use when the folks at American Apparel ask me why I want to work there. Rather than saying, of course, that I'm a struggling art history student with bills to pay and moderately expensive taste in sweaters. Thoughts?

In other news on capitalism, I found this extremely entertaining.

"the summer is young"

2009-06-02T20:33:00.005-04:00

The title of this post is from the end of a friend's most recent post on her own blog, Margin Notes (link to the right). Her writing's always evocative, but for whatever reason that phrase really stuck: the summer is young.

The summer, after all, is young- at least for the next three months, until it isn't anymore. And I still don't have any concrete plan as of this very moment, as I sit here writing this and "the summer is young" is what I keep telling myself. But I'm going to wake up and it will be August 31st and I'll be saying, "where did the summer go?" The odd old couple that lives in the violently purple house beside my family's own muted, yellow one was also most likely, at some point, in the habit of telling themselves that the summer, their relationship, their eldest daughter (now in her 40s) was "young." And then, suddenly, none of it is. It's just a striking notion, that time moves in such a way that seems so ample from a distance. I have all of my life ahead of me and these are the days of my youth, sure, but they're numbered. And I think I like it that way. Or I will at least until I'm not young anymore either...

I say all of this to say that I need to get the hell off my ass and do something with my summer. But also to remember that sure, the summer is young on the second of June but'll be no spring chicken come just a couple of months from now.

I needed

2009-05-29T21:47:00.005-04:00

to do some (late) spring cleaning and so voila! all my posts from before this very moment in time are gone, saved to my hard drive.

And good riddance.