if you write about writers, who will write about you?

Today in my Intro to Fiction class, we discussed The Hours by Michael Cunningham, where he fictionalizes a part of Virginia Woolf's life. This brought on a meta discussion about the morality (as well as other literary problems) involved in writing fiction about a real person's life. Why would you choose to do this? How accurate does it need to be? Are there problems in presuming their thoughts and feelings; what kind of liberties are taken?

Questions that also struck me that I hope to bring up next class (or privately with the professor): Is there a difference between writing a fictional account of a historical (i.e., dead) figure and someone who is currently alive? What kind of permission do you have to seek? Is there a certain length of time that needs to pass before the person's life becomes public property much in the way literature copyrights expire?

Then there's the entire idea of writing fiction about fictional characters. I would love her opinion on this. They call it "derivative fiction" when they can get it published, all those awful works based off Pride and Prejudice (Mr. Darcy's Diary, Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, etc.; what is this crap?) or The Wizard of Oz (oh Wicked). How legitimate is this? How are the morals involved here different from writing about real people (historical or present)?

I have no problem with any of this. Honestly, the thing about writing is that no one can stop you from writing whatever you want. The only thing people can restrict is the distribution of your writing--they can say who can or cannot read your writing, but they can't stop you from writing it.

So write it.

for all time, you are my everything

You're the breath of life in me
the only one that sets me free

Spring Break ends today and it's back to classes and routine (nose to grindstone) again tomorrow. I know I'll be able to readjust fairly quickly, but right now it's so hard to want to face everything again, when the past week has been so full of lovely things like sleep, Chinese food, writing, random drinks with A, time. Life goes on, though, and we move with it. I'm just in a vaguely nostalgic, vaguely pensive mood, one that borders on unhappiness (except I wouldn't go that far). It, too, shall pass.

I'm listening to this song on repeat. It's a pretty good rip of a fancam from a concert featuring D (a Korean star) singing 98 Degrees' My Everything. His English is coherent, clear, understandable, and the entire performance moved me to tears when I first watched it. This song is a tribute to his late father, apparently with images playing in a slideshow behind him as he sang. The very concept is touching, but to hear him sing it is just so much more-- It kind of breaks my heart.

in memory, we emerge from the fear and the tears

It was Eve.

It wasn't just anyone, it was Eve.

Eve Carson was our student body president this year and yesterday morning around 5am, a 911 call alerted the police to her body at a community not far off campus. She was lying in the intersection, shot. She was identified this morning at the hospital and her name was released to the public at 12:30 this afternoon at a press conference.

No one knows if it was a random incident or if she was targeted. All we know right now is that she was murdered.

I didn't even know Eve. I've never met her. But I've passed h on campus, I've seen her picture in our campus newspaper; I knew people who knew her, I knew her policies and her friendliness through other people. She was real to me, to the entire campus and city of Chapel Hill.

This time, the shooting victim wasn't just a twenty-something college female. This time it was Eve--Eve, who was someone to everyone. Her death doesn't just affect her family and her friends and the people who knew her. Her death affects the entire UNC campus and the city of Chapel Hill because she was such a public figure, so engaged.

This is the closest death has ever struck for me and it's terrifying. It's incomprehensible and unfair and random and frightening. In the March (again, March) of my freshman year, a crazed graduate student drove his car across the most crowded area of campus during lunchtime and hit five or six people. About nine people were injured but hundreds were left shaking, afraid. Sarah was almost hit that day. She was terrified; I was terrified--but no one died then.

This brings home to me how truly tragic the shooting last April at Virginia Tech must have been. Multiple this feeling of shock, loss, fear by thirty-three.

For me, just one--just this one--is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

It was Eve.

faith: finding, losing, searching, waiting

I was raised in a Christian household--Protestant, though non-demoninational. I grew up in church and for a period in my life--middle school and high school--I attended a small Chinese church (CBCNC ♥) that introduced me to people I grew to love. I was the closest then to God, thanks in part to my youth group--and I still love those people now. A lot of us have drifted away from God now that we're in college, but we all matter to each other in ways that is somehow hard to define, that is somehow different from the way other friends are close to us.

I miss God a lot of times. I miss praying, miss having faith. But part of me just doesn't think I believe the same God I used to--I still believe in a higher being, but it's not the same God that Christianity knows. Maybe I'm just too weak to give up my vices and my material wants to be able to fully put my faith in Him, to give my all to Him, I don't know. I'm always at a loss when people ask me what I believe in, or if I believe, or if I'm Christian.

People have asked me before, "Would you be happier if you did believe?" I don't know how to answer that, not entirely. I believe I would be happier, but my faith would not be in the God the world knows through religion. I don't do religion; I don't like it. It's a man-made structure and faith should be a personal relationship.

This is still something I'm working on. It doesn't occupy all my thoughts all the time, but there are times when everything is falling apart and I'm left wishing I had someone greater than all this to rely on. Or sometimes I see my friends, T or S, who believe, and wish I had the same passion. I wonder if I'll ever find an answer.

when the inner child grows up

I have crises of confidence sometimes. I wonder if people look at me and underestimate me because I'm small and short. I wonder if people see me act cute and silly (and hear me whine) and think less of me. I wonder if they find out about my passion for cheesy Asian pop music and dismiss me as flighty, frivolous, young.

I think that's part of why I work so hard sometimes, to prove them wrong. (Another large part is for my parents, naturally, but you've heard that one before.) Of course, this could be my paranoia speaking; there could be no "them" to look down on me--and even if there were, they shouldn't matter. I shouldn't worry so much about the opinions of people who don't know me, since "those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind", after all.

Still, a part of me takes pride in being able to tell people that I'm a double major with a minor, that I'm graduating a year early, that I'm going to law school. Somehow, it makes me feel like I'm proving their assumptions wrong, that despite what they think, I have accomplishments I can take pride in. It should be the case anyway, I know. I can be proud of myself without having to prove myself to anyone. But this is how I am: I validate myself according to others. (I really shouldn't.)

I'm a paradox. I want to be both cute and endearing as well as respected and admired. I want to be doted on while at the same time being treated as an independent, capable, accomplished adult. I like to be hugged and cooed over, to be teased affectionately, but I want to wow people at the same time. I look with envy at the girls who walk around in their peacoats and matching outfits (scarves, gloves, hats), and their clicking heels (boots or otherwise). I want to be able to be perfectly put-together like that, all the time--to look professional and feminine and like I can handle anything that comes at me. Part of me wonders if they sacrifice comfort for fashion, but another part of me thinks it might be worth it. Then another part of me thinks that I only think that way because I'm insecure about myself--body, height, personality, accomplishments--and I feel like the only way to assert myself as a female adult is to dress like one. Honestly, if I had confidence, I wouldn't worry so much about appearances because I would trust the world to be able to tell exactly how much I was capable of.

But I don't know how much I'm capable of. I wonder if it (everything) is enough. I wonder if I will be treated like a child for the rest of my life. I can't help feeling that way when I'm reaffirmed in my fears every time I go home--outside of my parents, who are excused for treating me like a child (in some ways), every adult I've known since I was in eighth grade will forever treat me as if I'm still in middle school or (possibly) high school. I will forever be young, naive, inexperienced--and perhaps in comparison to them I am but it's an oppressive feeling to be treated as if you are eternally in eighth grade.

I'm not sure how to resolve this contradiction in my needs, but at least I can tell you that no matter my childishness (it's interesting how that word has negative connotations whereas "childlike" conveys something much more positive), I am not a child. I may still be growing up, but I am also grown up.

reflecting yourself in the world around you

It's true that you choose your friends and that they reflect the kind of person you are. Many of my friends are Asian and many of those who aren't are at least interested in Asian culture--I never realized how true this was, how much I took it for granted, until I came into work last night with some bubble tea and was asked by at least three different people (co-worker, customer, and manager) what it was.

Not only had they never had it, they'd never even heard of it.

With globalization so prevalent in the U.S. (the "melting pot" of cultures) and especially while attending such a liberal, diverse university, I'd made the mistake of thinking that everyone had equal exposure to cultures that I had. It's not true. They don't know all that I know, that I take for granted--and the same is true in reverse. What do I really know about French or Norwegian culture, for example? I have no French or Norwegian friends. I have no friends who are so immersed in those cultures that they would teach me by virtue of acquaintance.

Sometimes it's startling to realize how different my frame of reference regarding the world is compared to other people's. It's difficult to take a step outside of the box and trying to see yourself from the outside looking in, rather than from the inside looking out. The viewpoints are startlingly different. (It's like finding out you're in a clique. What, really? When did this happen?)

This was a reminder to me to pay attention to the world outside of my ostensibly open-minded and broad perspective of Western vs. non-Western cultures. There is more to the West than just U.S., and there is more to non-Western culture than just Asia. While I may have an advantage over others in my knowledge and familiarity with aspects of Asian culture, there is still a whole wide world out there of knowledge I don't have, and could learn.

Reach out. Teach what you know and be receptive to everything you don't.

looking back and looking forward

So it's 2008 now.

This is the year I graduate and, hopefully, attend law school. It's strange to reflect on the past year; as I was doing so, I realized that I have a tendency to separate my years by the academic calendar, rather than the solar calendar. When I said a month ago, for example, that I hadn't seen M since last year, I meant that I hadn't seen her since my sophomore year: May 2007. It hadn't been an actual calendar year, of course.

When I include my spring semester of my sophomore year, and the summer, 2007 seems much longer than it does otherwise. I've grown a lot this year because I think it's one of the things you can't help; you end up a little wiser every year, if only because life happens to you. Life happens and you learn.

Though not perfect by any means, I really think the previous semester has been one of my best. Not academically (there were still two Bs more than I would have liked) or even socially (there could have been a lot less drama in a lot of areas), but overall, it was a good semester. I remember most of it fondly: work was fantastic, because I had fun and grew closer to people and got a raise; I met new friends that I grew immeasurably close to; I had fun with my non-academic time; and I learned how to study. That's probably the most key experience of my semester--learning how to manage my time, how to step out of my comfort zone and talk to professors, how to be more effective when I took notes, how to find a place that maximized my studying capacity...

I pulled a few all-nighters, yes. I stressed out, yes. But I really think I learned how to manage my time well this past semester and that made me happy. Certain sacrifices were required, whether in sleep or in free time or in getting to read books for fun, but I think they were worth it.

There are still a lot of areas in my life and in myself that I would like to improve, but 2007 was good to me. I started off the year in a state of panic, in dismay, but I grew over the summer and throughout the fall semester. I had a wonderful December. I ended the year happy with my growth as a person, which is something that did not come easily to me before. I still have doubts and anxieties and clawing, consuming fear of inadequacy sometimes, but I am much happier with who I am now than I was a year ago.

What else could I ask for? I hope 2008 will bring more of the same.

For all my joking protests, I don't really mind growing up, even if it takes some effort.

it's not easy being a girl

I wonder if I don't sometimes make feminists cry. Why? Well, I wouldn't mind growing up and being someone's housewife, for one. My mom tells me I'd regret it, but I don't think I would. I like being domestic, as strange as it may sound: I like cooking and cleaning and caring for children. Well, to an extent, but to an extent where I'd be willing to stay at home if my husband was okay with it and if he made good money.

I like chivalry too. I think "ladies first" is a wonderful tradition, and I think guys should hold doors open for girls and pay for dates. In return, girls should look pretty and flatter the guy and generally be pleasant company (your sex is a weapon if you know how to use it right). I don't think guys are superior to girls, no, but I think that we're different, and thus we can't be equal in all respects.

Guys have superior physical strength, fact of life. I'm okay with that. I'd like to know how to defend myself and how to change my own tire (though everyone I've told that to has only laughed at me and told me to call AAA instead), but I'm okay with relying on a guy for that too. I can be independent without turning down offers of help, can't I?

I wouldn't mind being rich and powerful by my own right. I wouldn't mind being the adored eye-candy hanging off some hot guy's arm either, really. As long as I was adored, you know. Love puts a different spin on things.

I wonder if this is making some people reconsider what they know of me. I'm not misogynist, I promise, though sometimes I think I'd rather have been a guy. One particular instance of this is: can girls even pop and lock? Am I wasting my time tryiing to master this? Man.