Wayne Say What?

How to be me

2011-05-05T02:05:00.000-07:00

Graduation's forthcoming and I can feel it. The looming sense of freedom on the brink, ready to slip and fall into my lap. Yet I know it will never come. The situation is fleeting, like the years of knowledge and achievement that I'm supposed to be celebrating, yet its all insignificant, temporary. What I've learned: forgotten; people I've met: soon to bid farewell and never see again; my Bachelor's: meaningless. What does four years of my life mean?

Ages 1-4: I learned to walk, talk, shit. Become acquainted with the world.

Ages 5-8: I Started school, grew like 2 feet, learned to count, recite the alphabet and feel.

Ages 9-12: I grew up, thought I was the shit, got rid of my appendix, grew like 1 feet.

Ages 13-16: I grew like another feet and 2 inches, voice changed, attitude changed, life changed

Ages 17-20: I grew 0". Got some aspiration to become some sort of designer, some sort of somebody.

There is nothing permanent about life. Sure, I've grown a staggering five and a half feet, take up 130 pounds worth of mass in this world, but what else? College is supposed to be a life changer, defining who you are. College is supposed to be the best four years of your life. College is supposed to be the pinnacle of life, the portal to adulthood. Yet, I feel as if college is this impermanent label, this self-proclaimed system that truthfully really doesn't matter. If I didn't come to college for the past four years, I can only bet that my life would be twice as interesting, and equally "influential." Yet, I'm here, I'm part of the system, and I'm about to join the forces of capitalism, the members of unemployment, the future workers of America.

Life is how you treat it. Forget past and future. Life is the present of existence. The gift of consciousness. Most importantly, life is unique. Your life like mine, is unique. Thus is is important to define that uniqueness, that soulful you, in the most meaningful way. And that is possible only through this concept we call time.

Thus, 4 years is a lot of time. In 4 years, I made a lot of strides in my unique life, a lot of decisions. It is true that you cannot change who you are, but you can define or re-define who you are. It is safe to say, that among all this impermanence, this unsureness that surrounds my college years, I am not the same person I was graduating from High School. I'm probably a lot more pretentious, arrogant, fucked-up, mature, intelligent, cynical, light-hearted, blah blah; whatever adjective you want to define me as, good and bad. Rhetoric is meaningless. But I am who I am, and theres no reason to hide it. I can say, amidst all the unsureness ambiguity that surrounds who we are, the existential angst that plagues all teenagers, I can for the first time, understand myself, my intentions, and my place. It's not a pretty sight, but it's a sight I have to live with, and make do with. I leave you with some of my written beliefs.

I believe in fate. The people I meet through pure chance, as few as there are, are the people that I can truly be close to. Everyone else is byproducts of society, and a forced interaction that could potentially end up as an appearance of amiability but isn't really. I avoid those interactions by not acknowledging them, hence I refuse to socialize for the purpose of socializing. I let chance do the work. I do not set up situations with an outcome in mind, I let the outcome bloom from what I do.

I hate to be late. If I am ever late for something it is because 1) I meant to be late like fashionably so, or 2) I had to be late like traffic accident, lost my keys, of some sort even though its rare. I hate when people are late, I hate to wait, even though I am as a side effect of my timeliness, patient.

I hate lies. Lies are the highest sin in the world. Lies fuck up the world by creating the false. I like truth. I have absolutely no respect for liars, for pretenders, for the untrustworthy, and the irresponsible. It is important to live up to your responsibilities. It is also important to be loyal.

I hate organized shit. Although I understand the necessity for organization, I despise it. I do not like organized clubs, organized events, organized society, the school, the government. There is a beauty in chaos, the serendipity of spontaneity, the liberty of freedom. I had constriction and organization constricts growth. It also is the genesis of drama. Live loose. I am a passive anarchist. Anarchy for myself, and myself only. Anything more is unreasonable.

I have a weird fucked-up mind. I can't sleep at night because I think too much. I fantasize too much and zone out of life. Everything I do is probably predilections of something I've already thought of. I think I have created a million fake scenarios, thousands of internal soundtracks, directed hundreds of movies, imagined tons of worlds. I dislike drugs because they inhibit my mind to think, especially honestly, raw, and truthfully.

I have a tendency to never forget, at least the things that matter. I am not nostalgic, nor sentimental, but I remember the weirdest, smallest things as long as they are moments, not facts. I cannot memorize facts, dates, science, but I can recite conversations I've had, movies I've seen, and every episode of friends, not savant style of course but almost. The important difference is that I have to care, and I can filter. Thank goodness I don't remember everything of everyday.

I am a weird fellow. I may be unlikable, unapproachable, awkward, hypocritical, full-of-it, or downright brilliant: whatever adjective you want to use. Rhetoric doesn't matter. But I am who I am and I understand it. My own commandments. This is me being me. I think I'm ready for the next four years.

Asian Pride

2010-11-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

There’s a strange shift in me lately. I used to be so opposed to my Asian heritage that I rebel against everything oriental, except for food of course. I accept being Asian but I’ve always been focused on the self, individuality, and personal philosophies that my cultural heritage has been sort of lost and being Asian was no sign that I should act and associate with Asians. It’s an odd feeling because as of now, there is an oddity of nostalgia mixed with an inclining fascination of what is the Asian.

It’s an odd situation because being an Asian-American, I would say I am more American than Asian event though I am definitely not white, nor act white, nor act Asian. Growing up in California cities, I can say that I am not anything close to a minority either, and somehow all my friends are Asian-Americans, and even some are those dreaded fobs. However, as of recently, I have an innate rooting towards Asians not strictly because I am Asian and its common courtesy for cultural pride, but more because of the different cultural eccentricities, that carry their own beauty and relevance.

The Asian-American mix is most clear in cinema, and its clear difference between the Hollywood standard and the Asian blockbuster standard. In another sense, Asian cinema is sort of an underdog, dwarfed by international Hollywood. However, all Asian cinema, whether Chinese, Korean, Thai or Japan has subtleties that define it’s cultural background in addition to the obvious race of the actors. Those are subtleties are very difficult to single out, and I think to non-Asians, difficult to understand at first glance, but every time I watch an Asian movie, it reminds me strictly of being Asian.

I am completely for expansion of Asian culture into America and being a product of just that, respect those who try. Movies such as Better Luck Tomorrow, although not completely successful, are a bold attempt to synthesize cultures, despite it was more MTV than KTV. Then, international directors like John Woo and Ang Lee, are technical masters, whose skills parallel those of western counterparts, but as a result, end up more Hollywood-esque. A recent film, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, an obvious homage to Segio Leone’s western, except involving Koreans, as a “Kim-Chi” western is interesting enough to be classified into its own genre. And that’s what I’m talking about: an Asian, American, Hollywood fusion made for Asians and surprise, Americans! Instead of those horrid remakes of Asian awesomeness, completely ruined by Hollywood standards, losing everything that was great. See: most J-horrors, My Sassy Girl, etc.

Although, the reality is that cultures don’t blend well, and it probably looking for financial disaster, critically praised for ambition but failure in execution, it is an idea that Americans (being a cultural hodgepodge) should propel towards. I am glad to see Jay Chou, Asian pop-star phenom, of whom I actually do not care for at all, although I would take him over Justin Bieber any day, star alongside Seth Rogan in the Green Hornet. I am glad to see John Cho, more commonly known as the Harold of Harold & Kumar, continue his acting career. What I do not want to see is a complete separation of Asian and American cultures with stereotypical flicks of, as amazing as they are, pure martial arts bad-assness like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (about the most Asian you can get), but instead a mixture. That is why, Jackie Chan, you are my hero. International Super-star. Oh, and Yao-Ming. I hope your foot gets better.

Rationale

2010-10-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

We live in a world of technology, burning with energy, enterprise. New world technology is the greatest thing ever, and our perception of necessity continually shifts. We want this, we want that, we NEED this. It’s as if our gifts become perplexed by our own creations, taken over. Human desire is a weird thing; it is a monstrous thing.

The logic of human rationale doesn't quite make sense. Yet, we always try to rationalize ourselves, again and again. But the truth is, the moment we start rationalizing, the moment we fall into the pit of self-pity and become succumbed by the evil that is our desire.

There's no point in rationalizing -- that is for something personal. Freedom is full looseness, self realization, in that you are who you are, whenever. Slut it out, who cares? Be a bitch. Do what you want. Except, everything in our world goes against true freedom: institutions, standards, taboos. We must all live by a code that is inscribed within our soul at birth. Our progenitor's code. No one can be free, no one will ever be free. But respect to those who try. Freedom is the timeless umbrella governing all desire.

Invisible Motivator

2010-09-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

The uncertainty of things is really a motivator. There is a innate human curiosity about the unknown, the undefined and the unreal. Truth is our gold.

The weird thing though is that so much of life is known, yet unknown -- or even forgotten. Nevertheless, uncertainty always has a tension tied to it -- a sort of anxiety that really brings at the human of us. Emotive, unstable, stressed: like an invisible force tugging our chains and puppeteering us into oblivion. The look of a poor girl put on-the-spot to answer something answerless. "I don't know!" Yeah, I don't fucking know. So it seems.

At the same time, they say ignorance is bliss. Of what we don't know is some sort of virtue to mask us from the truth. But then again, they associate that with childish naivity and not the newfound minds of modern society. I believe we are all curious souls. Don't listen to what they say. Listen to what you find.

I also believe that because we are always so anxious and so worried about the infinite variables of our life that we're on top of things. The moment we stop worrying, the moment our curiosity hits peak is the precise moment where we begin our downfall. So really, the stress on our shoulders, buckling our human frames is really just in our heads, as our individual, invisible motivator.

But the fact that we do not know where our day is going to go, how our year might end, where we will be in decades gives us a reason to live. An invisible motivator that sets us on our feet, making it so we don't become that fuck-up we dread.

Being uncertain is everyday. It is natural. I can say, I'm not some really stressed out dude, but at the same time, like everyone else in the world, I am curious about the future. Just strangely, lately, motivation is escaping me; inspiration is fleeing.

Take away my perception and blur my thoughts, I want to be uncertain again. Introduce: drama. I want to explore.

On the playlist:

Thrice - Come all you Weary

Unwound - October all Over

Off the shelf:

Neuromancer - William Gibson

On the screen:

Birth of Nation - D.W. Griffith

Fragments of us

2010-09-21T12:55:00.000-07:00

There is a reason that you rarely remember precisely your dreams the minute you wake up. There is of course a reason, that sometimes you do remember a fragment. There is a reason for everything.

We view the world in fragments. Our line of sight travels at the speed of light, on par with our minds, to capture the illusion of a whole, but really is just bits and pieces of our personal diagesis. Blink and look. Then blink again. A still frame. A cut.

We tackle the world one piece at a time. One down, a million to go. One step at a time. We fragment reality all just in order to process it, even if it is so fast, its unrecognizable. That is the only way we can accept it, for our very own sanity.

There is a human obsession to cut things apart, break things down all in the name of curiosity. Most people like their fruit cut into bite sized pieces; our pizza neatly sliced. We like to break down logic and arguments, to look at the basis of enterprise. There is nothing we can't break down, and there is nothing that we haven't already. Even the atom is broken down into electrons, neutrons, and furthermore, and that stuff is then broken down into quarks, and quarks are they what, matter? Which is then the building blocks of everything as we know it so then a quark is really just a gestalt of our existence. What?

The reason is that everything is in bits and pieces, even ourselves. We are God's underwhelming mess. I'm all over the place and so are you. My brain wanders at the speed of light in un-understandable bits. So does yours. To understand it all is impossible, but to understand a bit: plausible.

Hence, we are unable to remember our dreams, but so a very important stand-out fragment like a crystal in sack of coal? Because all the bits and pieces of our shattered subconscious is just junk, just mental excess and our living breathing self really doesn't give a fuck. After all, our conscious is the one thats living, talking, breathing. Subconscious is just a pest, like an annoying side-kick, that makes up who we are. But once in a while, the bits and pieces of our mind starts to make sense like our our picture of our everyday world, and that is when life just finds a little bit of meaning, a little bit of truth, a little bit of the fantastical, the whimsical.

The little things are what matters. Our special moments.

Diagram

2010-09-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

My diagram is Bullshit.

Bullshit is not a lie and obviously is not fact. Nor is it fiction. We have to accept bullshit as what it is, something that came from your ass, and can more or less be stuffed back up.

Instead, Bullshit is something temporal, it has no value and no care for fact nor fiction but just there as a rhetoric for impressing. You cannot lie in bullshitting because the bullshitter has a personal agenda that is beyond the realm of truth. Liars are conscious in their sin, but bullshitters are not. Shat just gets shat out. Mental diar--

Don't believe his lies says Leonard. I say don't believe anything anymore, Leonard. There is no truth left in this world. They are who we want them to be, and we are who they want us to be. You know that, but you don't. It is a cycle of desire and perception; of belief in the utter bullshit.

The truth though is that bullshit starts to shape the world and becomes accepted -- as an undefined vagueness in the universal precedent of human thought. Cough. Concepts, abstracts, diagrams. Philosophy, art, architecture. Ultimately, something called design and though.

In this sense, the act of bullshitting really is of the imaginary. It is temporal yet ethereal. We can see through it and for that time being accept it. And we accept it because we are all idealistic, imaginative souls searching for some realm outside the reality of truth and fact.

To you, my imagination is bullshit; to me, it's beautiful. And someday my bullshit might become an idea. And my idea might become reality. And although it's real, it doesn't change the fact that the premise is still from the deepest part of my body: my ass.

Everything starts there. All ideas. Let's embrace it. Shit is pretty awesome.

What is something that is neither real nor fiction. Is it abstract? Is it surreal? Conceptual? All the terms that bright minds and leading scholars are so familiar with? Nah, its fucking bullshit. It's unnecessary, irrelevant and ridiculous. But hey, it makes the day more interesting.

Skip

2010-05-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

Its been a while. Like half a year while. Semester was fucking crazy. Enough said, but irregardless, I'm back.

I got two weeks before I head out of the States -- two weeks of freedom. What to do? Shit.

My fingertips are raw from guitar, stomach full of food, and I'm lying on my ass right now watching some horrible movie on Sci Fi Channel with twelve different tabs open on google chrome a-surfing. This life I dreamed off during this past semester. Finally, free time.

But this free time comes at risk. Because I know that free time isn't actually free -- its opportunity. Opportunity to do things I want, to work, to progress. I better not waste it. I'm an ambitious fellow, but I'm lazy. Those two do not go together.

Now for something real: let see. Lets talk architecture, and what I've learned this semester. To me, design is something for the people -- it should never be generic nor ever be limited. But I realized how generic and limited Architecture really is beyond the spectacular and avant garde. Urban uprising and its trends, I don't know if I like this direction. Nor do I like the mundane start of the profession. What fun is drafting?

Creativity lies in the person, and the opportunity. Imagination is something greater -- it is beyond the conscious and ranges in the unimaginable. Imagination is something I want to explore, but imagination involves a sense of the fantastical, and fantasy is not architecture. Hence, I'm at a weird fork, where the real becomes unappealing, and I sought to escape realism. I want to be a concept artist, a media artist, a writer, a director. I want to be able to design the unimaginable, something so preposterous and avant garde, that we are we can say is it is art. Practicality is at a loss for words.

Design is about sharing your mind with the world. Its not construction, its not making, but its reinventing. Its about sharing a vision. I have visions, and dreams, and stories. They are of no value to anyone but me, but I would like to share them. For what purpose? Entertainment? Money? Fame? Nah, its about creating something that can be appreciated, our culture, or times. Design is about the infinite possibilities that have yet to be explored, and making it possible, even if just through media. Creation. Even if its some shitty movie on sci-fi channel, its still something to be proud of. Its yours.

On the playlist -

Fugazi - Waiting Room

Dillinger Escape Plan - 43% Burnt

On the TV screen-

Sci Fi channel- Furnace

Law and Order: SVU

Break

2010-01-03T01:40:00.000-08:00

I wake up at 10 o'clock.
I wake up at 11 o'clock.
I wake up at Noon. 1. 2. 3. Get up.

I'm stuck again in a forever cycle. A conundrum of laziness I just can't seem to break.
What happened to desire, ambition. Break has zeroed me out.
On the upside, my diets improved. Berries, steak, nachos, veggies. Water. Whatever.
Christmas. New Year's. Its all the same to me -- just another day.

It seems as if Winter break is a failure, but I grasp it anyways. I know I need it. I can finally piece together the broken thoughts of forever and predict the future -- fix what's broken. Get ready. After all, it is a new year. Let's do it.
Ready?
Sure
3. 2. 1. Break.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T02:42:00.000-08:00

Today is the Day after. The Blackest of all Fridays. Thanksgiving day number two.

Thanksgiving is a weird couple of days. Not long enough to really call vacation, but long enough to relax. Tradition of stuffing yourself like fat kids at a buffet. And to pretend your thankful for all the stuff in your life, but really, you're just happy to not be doing shit. And I am happy to not be doing shit. Its a quick two days, with really nothing memorable, yet its almost the nicest two days of the year. Everything about thanksgiving is quite nice -- the food, the tradition, the break.

I really do not have much to say. In entertainment, people need to stop watching Twilight and instead go watch The Road. I haven't yet, but I will - and update. Cormac McCarthy needs our support admidst the legions of Stephanie Meyers fankids.

I saw Pixar's Up again yesterday. I re-affirmed by position on really not liking it. No doubt, it is a great piece of animation but the themes, the adventure, and the talking dogs just really do not speak to me. The story was preposterous to the point where the cartoon takes over and loses its human roots -- where the movie was probably most strong. And even then, the drama felt forced: montages of a man growing up and experiencing happiness and death; Reminiscing -- cross my heart I promise, and the reminder that the world is not a perfect place. I believe that Pixar's animation skills can bring emotion far beyond the human senses -- a trash robot anyone?
Nevertheless, it's still a fun watch, especially when those talking dogs drive out in biplanes with bone steering wheels. Red Roger.

Doritos made a pretty cool flash game. Hotel626. Innovative -- check it out. Google it.
And thats my Thanksgiving. Didn't do shit. Yes.

All the playlist-
Battles - Atlas (Really cool song)
In the Dvd- Up!
Off the shelf-
who reads over thanksgiving?

The Closet of Cognitive Creations.

2009-11-13T09:01:00.000-08:00

Ugh, I don't feel so good.

I hate that feeling, kicked out of a warm cozy bed by my poor-tempered bladder. And wherever poop comes from. Don't know what I ate yesterday, but its too early and too bright for me.
It's really an odd place though -- the bathroom -- as I sit there butt-naked on the gleaming toilet. You would think that the bathroom -- aka where people "go" and wash -- would be places of quick come and go but its really rather quite inviting. Privacy working at it's most alluring. I wonder how many great ideas sprouted from brilliant minds in the bathroom, even the most geniouses of genious have to poop.

In anycase, the bathroom should be renamed the "thinkroom" or Closet of Cognitive Creations. CoCC or if you want to be impish, you can spell Creations with a K.

And after you "finish" up at the bathroom and do whatever you do, you feel just so much better -- mentally, physically, and emotionally. It literally does flush shit away. And turns shit into not-shit. Whatever that means.
And now, I feel alright.
So when you have the bathroom free to yourself -- or even better your own bathroom, consider it an opportunity, and enjoy it. Girls who live with three other roomates and all wake up at the same time: you know what I'm talking about, but please share.

The Death and Life of American Cities

2009-11-09T22:48:00.000-08:00

Today I was reading Jane Jacob's The Death and Life of American cities. As intriguing as it was a read -- critically discussing the problems that our society faces of urbanization, I felt an odd urgency of slight detachment -- not because I don't care about our cities futures but because her ideas offer no real alternative. Granted, this book is a stepping stone in American urbanism and its ideas are held so dearly to generations after, her fierce critque of architectural modernist Le Corbusier's high rise large scale planning, and Burnham's City Beautiful begin to question a notion of validity. Her generalizations of what a city really is and what we should look at is humanistically touching: there is a lot of broad truths. However, her ideas, stripped down is really just a pretty way of stating her "utopia" -- which we will never reach.

She claims that a first of a successful society is safety through sidewalks: one should be able to feel safe whenever out. The first thing that comes to mind is that I refuse to walk home after 1:00 here in Berkeley (Berkeley fails). She believes that safety is reached not through enforcement (police) but through a integrated society where people are "public actors" and watch over each other. (neighborhood watch?) The high density of cities support each other as the people really form a community. What a beautiful way to put things. Too bad it will never be surefire -- take away law and see what happens.

Sure, in a perfect society, the world is inherently good and there is no evil. Our world is far from that. The perfect community comes from the luck of a draw -- getting the right people in the right place -- it will not always happen. Sure, good design may aid community, and a lot of what we're stressing in sustainable design is society-friendly, "sociopetal" ideas, but the truth is human development in our urban world is something completely unpredictable and only through experience can our design really become part of the community. Jacobs calls cities the "sacrifical victims" of our livingness. But isn't that what we are? Experience layered upon experience. Why is the 21st Century more advanced than the 15th?

In the end, I suppose theory about something human is flawed is this way. All works about building the utopian city, and architecture are all indeed interesting, but unreasonable. And I welcome new ideas. But bar psychology, we can only study and observe and hope for the best because pure rationale stops applying to the human notion. Our world, from the theory point of view, is in a bad state. Count off, I can list about 100 things wrong, but despite our strongest efforts, problems come and problems go. Our world is not an utopia. We live, we breathe, we fight.

I'm not downspeaking Jacob's work, as I do deem it necessary to question our failures. But reading the book makes it sounds like we understand our world and we can make it perfect -- and we cannot. I understand her reasoning for her work so this is really just my own bias. I guess I'm more one of those, we make the world a better place by starting with the individual. (I'm not really the radical type) Contrary to her beliefs, I welcome Le Corbusier's vision for a high-speed city, Daniel Burnham's efforts to link monuments all as potential for a better place in hope that human experience will finally head in the right direction, but that hope will never be certain. No matter how we live, there will always be those who call for improvement.

This was long and mostly me rambling on cause I don't know what to write for my essay, like a brain storm. Got to get writing for real now.

Off the shelves:
The Death and life of American Cities - Jane Jacobs
The Design for Ecological Democracy - Randolph T. Hester
Yay for class :)
On the playlist:
The Arsonist- Thrice

The Pilot

2009-11-08T02:23:00.001-08:00

It's hard to begin. Without someone's guidance, the starting line deviates from being a line to cross into a strip to trek. We're never out of the beginning. Without someone's motivation, doing is anomalous to the latter, finishing, simply absurd. I am at full-throttle, blazing. Only to find an invisible wall to stop me, and I reflect, rebound and recover. I am at the start, again. It's hard to begin.

It's weird to imagine thing coming full circle. Such that we live in such a cyclical world.
Flash.
It is 1 AM.
Flash.
It is 1 PM.
Why the pinnacle of day and the apex of night are the same number, I have no idea. All I know is, I exist at 1 A.M the same way I exist at 1 P.M. -- trying to begin. Anything in between is just grey. Every day is supposedly a new beginning, every hour, every shit. The beginning of a sentence, the end. Except, in many cases, the beginning is the end. Things repeat. Things go nowhere. I am orbiting. Why can't I slingshot out of my gravitational pull into something greater?

It's hard to start. It's hard to be fresh. It's impossible to be pure. Things are always the same like we're hexed on an endless merry-go-round. I will never change. I cannot change. I am bewitched to my evil ways. My inner circle.

Ring around the Rosie
Pocket full of Posie
Ashes, Ashes
We all fall down

But somewhere, a glimmer of change tangents our circle. And it is that excitement that makes it worth starting. A potential for true progress. The rarest of productivity. Somewhere admidst the cyclone of what we call our lives is a chance to change to the vision in our heads, instead of changing the vision to match ourselves.

It's hard to begin. Only with your guidance can I move forward. Only with your motivation, will I do. I am at full-throttle, blazing, hurdling over any obstacle bare in mind. It's hard to begin.
Flash
But, this time, I am going.
A new blog in hand.
Hope I don't trip.

Off the shelf:
Invisible Monsters - Chuck Palahniuk
On the playlist:
Mr. Jones - Black Unicorn
Circles - Thrice
You're Not Sorry - Taylor Swift :)
Streaming the Hulu:
The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken - Bones