By Sally Mao

08/19/05

I should be excited, I keep on telling myself. I should be excited. Tonight I will brave a night plane to Pittsburgh and in less than twenty—four hours I will be on a campus on the other side of the country, totally devoid of familiar faces, familiar furniture, and Chinese food.

And so far all of my friends, my mother, my father, and my grandmother have reminded me of this. You should be excited. You should be so excited. There’s absolutely nothing to be terrified about.

And yet, and yet. Why am I having these feelings so soon? My fingers, as I type this, are almost trembling, with anticipation? Nervousness? Why do I suddenly feel like a plucked cocktail shrimp?

The funny thing is, I’ve never even had this kind of syndrome before. It’s really annoying, not to mention nerve—wracking, as if hundreds of little shockwaves are swimming in my bloodstream. I also don’t know why all this seafood imagery is running through my head. Maybe it’s because I just came back from China a few weeks ago where I had some of the best fresh-caught fish I’ve ever tasted. But that’s a different story. This story is not about food. It’s about queasy feelings that shouldn’t exist, and the jubilant feelings that should exist but refuse to appear.

Last summer I had gone away to a college campus for CSSSA, the California Summer School for the Arts. And I precisely remember the feelings I had before going away from home by myself for the first time.

They can only be described in two words: “Hell, yeah.”

I had absolutely no intention of being homesick, or even missing anyone. I could only silently thank the deities for allowing me a chance to get away from the mundane, suburban existence of Cupertino. I felt that way before going to China this summer, too.

Maybe the terror is that I’m essentially an adult.

I’ve never much liked the prospect of being one. Most teenage girls want to be older—they want the independence, the maturity. I was never one of these girls. I wanted Neverland. I wanted childhood forever. I wanted to be myself as I was ten years ago—believing in quixotic things, not listening to directions, playing in the dirt, wearing mismatched socks, and not caring about anything. Insouciance. That’s what I’ve always wanted. That’s what’s been on my Christmas list, my birthday list, for many, many years. But, being human and being me, it can never be accomplished.
I’m 18, but not a legal adult. I like to say I’m an illegal teenager.

8/20/05, 12:55 AM

The last hour has been spent contemplating certain death. The plane was dimly lit, a pathway of thin neon lights in the center aisle. It was almost pretty, but a little dizzying. I sat next to an emergency exit. Minutes passed by like the slow descent of thawing winter water. As I tried to doze, I could hear the unstable droning of the plane.

I thought about how it’d be if there were some dire emergency and what it’d feel like to hurtle across the sky with the ruins of a metal bird ripping through my eardrums, all the people and torn belongings floating over me. Sounds romanticized, sure. Maybe too beautiful to be a plane crash. But who really can photograph, document the few moments before death? And even if that were videotaped, who knows what brilliant colors you see when your eyelids shut and wince, in those final few seconds?

We were taking off. The familiar rumble lifted my stomach again. And then we were slowing down. What was going on?

The minutes migrated. The announcer said that there was a problem with the engine and they needed to check things out. Twenty minutes passed. The man to my right snored a slow, soft pattern.

I knew that if we were to take off again, we’d become a meteor in the sky—destined to fall. Yet I thought about death, and this way of dying, and whether I believed in God. The people next to me complained of boredom, while the people in front of me complained of bad service.

I guess they just don’t think about death. Every time I board a plane, I think about crashing and dying at least once, random thought or whatever.

Finally, the announcer said that we must get off the plane. Part of me was relieved; part disappointed. There was no thrill in safety only boredom.

Monday, 08/29

The first day of classes has been a dismal day. It rained. And I’m one of those people who adore the rain. When I think of rain, images of invigorating dewdrops lapping against the black streets come up and I instantly feel like dancing.

Just, not today. It made my sneakers squeal against the sidewalk. Sleepiness overwhelmed me. Caffeine will definitely become my best friend.

The corridors of Porter Hall, where four of my classes were located, looked suspiciously like a high school, with its shiny red lockers and drinking fountains. And this to me is a sort of omen. Maybe it’s the pervasive queasiness I get that’s reminiscent of my first journal entry. Either way, it’s unpleasant. I’ll be switching out of a few classes soon, if I cross my fingers.

My Interpretation and Argument class, the freshman English requirement, switched topics rather randomly from “Hyphenated American Identities: Native American, Asian American, and Latina/o” to “Paranoia” I don’t think I mind. A perfect topic for me, because paranoia has been the definition of my experiences anywhere away from home—like while I was in China for a month and a half, where strangers always had hidden agendas, no matter if they were a small rosy-cheeked child on the street or an old grandma with a walking stick. But since this is supposed to be my new home, I’m going to have to shed that paranoia like last season’s ugly teal sweater. Paranoia feels a lot like being inside a sponge. You don’t know when you’re going to be squeezed into submission and deluged with dirty dishwater.

Speaking of dirty water, August is ending soon, and we have a chance of floods since we live in the basement floor of the Mudge House. Our windows are like gutters—right next to the ground. I haven’t been through a flood since the days of mudslides back in California. It’s easy enough to imagine a huge roller coaster of steel-like water gushing into our rickety windows.

Tuesday, 08/30

We just had an actual fire alarm. I must say it was the most terrifyingly banshee-like bellowing earsplitting screeching noise my eardrums have ever experienced. The smoke smelled like bell peppers stuffed with bad cheese. Some people tried to cook in the kitchen and set off the alarm. Obviously they overestimated their culinary abilities.

The rain still dusted the streets as we rushed out. The police and fire department had arrived already. All of Mudge House was outside. One guy stood there on the wet pavement in a towel, bare-chested and sopping wet. He’d been in mid-shower when the alarm started wailing. How ostentatious. Or maybe it was just bad luck.

The firemen came out, complete in mustard-colored bodysuits. Annoying people smoked cigarettes in front of us. The stuff got into our nostrils. If there is an ideal time to smoke, this sure as hell wasn’t it. I shot invisible cannonballs at them.

In about five minutes all was over and the firemen left. We could still smell the smoke.

What been my first few experiences since starting this journal? Dysfunctional planes, possible floods, and cooking fires.

In all reality, I think it’s quite beautiful, to have these very faint touches with the absolute sheerness of life. Something about it amazes and terrifies me. I used to shun the excessive fear of death, but now I recognize it: how weightless life is and how heavy death can be. And for once I recognize that my life is only beginning: that now is the time I construct myself, out of time, out of these hands, out of thin air, out of human clay.

Right now our entire country is trying to bear the weight of Katrina, who claws her hands over us like a giant witch, ripping apart our very roots and vomiting on our people. And so I mourn and so I pray…for those people down there who dance every day now in their waltz of terror.

8/31/05

Since coming to college, I’ve graduated from doodling on paper. Doodling on my pants is much more fulfilling.

9/2/05

I am seriously contemplating applying for the BHA program and combining Humanities and Arts. I swear, it’s something about that Fine Arts building. Its Romanesque pillars, its music, its elegance, its stature, all as if some invisible moat of beauty surrounded it. Every time I pass by that building, this serenity sweeps over me and I feel like I’m lighter than usual. The orchestra’s music always leaks out, drifting into the air in a stream of lovely sound. Inside, there is a huge mural on the ceiling, Sistine-Chapel-esque, that the first graduating Fine Arts class painted.

I’ve finally changed my class to Reading Contemporary Poetry. I’m very happy about this. The poetry class I have doesn’t involve too many lectures. It’s refreshing to hear the familiar voices of Whitman and Dickinson and Plath. Don’t get me wrong: I definitely want to try new things. But this is only the first semester. I need my dead poet sisters and brothers to pull me through.

9/3/05

I attended my first “frat party” last night. Such escapades, I soon learned, pale in comparison to juggling oranges and running around in the grass.

9/6/05

It is an indescribably gorgeous day and CMU is deluged in the radiance that only comes in the very peak of summer when peals of platinum sunshine paint each yellow brick building. I am sitting on a semicircle stone bench at the College of Fine Arts surrounded by engraved wall sculptures of lions persecuting Christians, Eve and the Serpent, a tall and lanky Jesus, and the men of the Last Supper. A few students sit under the trees tossing breadcrumbs at the finches and peeling bananas. Perfection cannot go beyond this.

Unless, of course, I immortalize the scene with magical realism. The sunlight would then paint even the sooty pigeons gold, from their white beaks to their tangerine eyes to their scarlet feet, and all of a sudden the music in the hall would echo higher and faster until the statues start weeping. The students sitting on the grass would burst into song, plastic wings sprouting from their backpacks and unfolding into the light. I would then join them in flight as we hop from building to building. The statues would tear away from walls and stare up at us in awe and stupor, mouths cracking in soundless delight. We would be the ones who stare down at our buildings, our grass, our fence, our University, under a seamless sky.

9/08/05

Pittsburgh’s Asian food really needs reevaluation. I was so deceived.

The menu said “wonton” soup. So I ordered it. And what do they give me? A broth, with potstickers, not wontons. I felt cheated. Maybe it was a psychology thing: all my life I’ve had many potstickers and not enough wontons. Potstickers were the food I had for lunch, for dinner, always, forever. There are certain distinctions: The potsticker’s skin is much thicker than the delicate, thin peel of the wonton, and is loosely in the shape of an orange slice, contrasting the wonton’s cubic shape and thin “skirt.”

At that moment, once again I felt wonton-deprived.

But then as I explained the grave mistake of the menu to the manager, he gave me the meal for free. Things were happy again in the world.

9/12/05

On Friday, I was supposed to go to a playwriting class. I was very excited to attend, being highly ignorant in the field of playwriting and screenplay in general. Something about the mystery of dialogue still stymies me sometimes in my writing. It's not a dislike of dialogue; it's just that I have other fortes. In conversation I am generally the listener, and in those cases where I'm the speaker nothing I say is particularly whimsical or exciting. Even in my journal entries, which are more colloquial usually than my writings, I tend to be boring. Like the one fact that bothers me insanely is how many “I's” are used. It's a horrible horrible habit, I despise it (there it goes again) but it's like going on a chocolate binge—once you start, nothing will stop you from reaching in that crisp wax wrapper again and taking out a chunk of that raspberry truffle chocolate bar. Indulgence sometimes rips apart my writer’s senses. I remember sophomore year and my metaphor binge. Now I'm forever a metaphor-holic. Addictions for me refuse to be cured.

On to the point: so at 1:30, the time my class was supposed to begin, I showed up to an empty room. It felt positively eerie, with the empty swivel chairs and the wiped blackboard. Ten minutes passed, so I proceeded desperately to the English department, where I discovered that playwriting was actually a part of the Drama department. So after attempting to check whether the class had moved and trying to call the Drama academic advisor a couple of times, I crept into the Drama building, with its wooden panels and winding staircases and high, high ceiling. The academic advisor was cheerful, wore pink lipstick, and had hair the color of sun-dried apricots. Unfortunately, she did not know what was going on.

It felt like a mystery, in which I was to find a missing person who seemed to leave no trace, only it wasn't a person—it was an entire class. The mystique of it built so much tension in my veins. Did I really sign up for a phantom class? What would ghosts discuss anyway? Certainly not the meaning of life, right? Ideas about primeval, endless discussions that stay iron solid through the passage of time formulate in my head. But that killed died when I got an e-mail from the teacher saying the class was cancelled due to an emergency, and that they would meet again next Friday. My spirits somewhat lifted, I accepted the next assignment with glee.

And that assignment was something that really lifted me up: “Overheard dialogue or conversation.” So I get to be my own emissary. Rapture!

If only my ears weren't nearly so deaf.

9/13/05

I have to make a presentation on Sylvia Plath in a week. So, I borrowed a few books on her from the Hunt Library.

I’m serious, the woman fascinates me to no end. I can fall in love with her. I will fall in love with her. I have this vast volume of her journals on my lap right now, and if I travel back to the very first pages, she is suddenly a bewildered freshman in college living her first uncertain, inexperienced, poignant, memorable, free, lush, wild days of this ponderous gap between adolescence and reality just like me. And as I read her journal, it’s as if we are one and the same, as if I am wearing Sylvia’s shiny shoes and black seductress dress walking down the twilit campus, hoping for intangible things and having that terrible sense of loss and longing that so often strikes me from my nerves to my blood pulses.

Her experiences are strangely like mine—being the one girl at the party who drank ginger ale instead of beer, having the constant (not-so-clichéd) young angst. I think this entry from her journal entombs it: “If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier; if I didn’t have any sex organs, I wouldn’t waver on the brink of nervous emotion all the time.” I wonder if this is chilling or interesting, my angst so resembling hers. It really leans more toward the chilling side.

Wouldn’t it be eerie now if I suddenly saw her, Sylvia, my friend, walking on the grass out there in flip flops and a skirt, with a yellowed notebook and a book bag, walking and smiling under the sun?

9/14/05

There are two reasons why this day, this moment, is so momentous: the lesser one, because I received a freshly dusted package from home, and the earth-splitting one, that I’ve finally found my long-lost best friend through e-mail, whom I’ve been searching for five years, and I’ve found that she attends the University of Toronto, that she hasn’t switched names, that she is alive in this world and I am alive too and suddenly it all amalgamates and I am floating on ether! My dear God and Allah and Vishnu and Ra, you all would just not believe how much I had regretted losing contact with her, how many sleepless nights were spent mired in shame and remorse, how many times I wondered where she was now, what she looked like…

Amy has been trying to find me all these years too: apparently she googled my name and the website for 826 Valencia showed up. (Fate! I tell you, it was fate!!) From there she searched for me at Monta Vista High School, and tried to search for my name in a directory. But none of that was successful. How we found each other was kind of weird: I came across this website called Classmates.com which is an absolutely evil website where you can trace your old classmates from different schools. The reason why it’s evil is that it corners you into buying their services and blockades any kind of communication with your classmates until you dish out cash. Lucky for me, I signed up for their free trial where I was finally able to e-mail Amy and quickly cancel my membership.

Now when I spill coffee on my Stat notes, I don’t feel nearly as bad! Or when I trip over a hedge, or when I show up late to Interpretation and Argument! As Langston Hughes puts it, “Life is fine! Fine as Wine! Life is fine!”

I know where Amy is. And because of that, I have power. I feel divine. As divine as the soft, delicious plum I peeled last night that satiated my midnight, work-insomniac hunger.

9/15/05

Samples of the assignment (overheard dialogue I wrote down):

Person B: Think about like a club, where people consume a lot and urinate everywhere so there would be an overflow of the toilet. I mean, at that hour most of the city’s asleep on the weekend in a hardworking city.

Person A: Wow, that’s great, in Allegeny county alone, more than 300 sewers were broken…

Person C: One more good reason not to eat fresh caught fish in Pittsburgh…

Person B: There are fresh-caught fish here?

Person A: Of course there are. There were six-foot long carp down by the bridge.

Person C: Yeah last year, someone caught a piranha.

Person A: Cracked pipes, open sewers, defective manholes…Old manholes made of bricks…

And some other random snippets:

1. “I got spat on on the way here!” (Class)

2. “Oh my God, have you seen Josh Robbins? He got fat!” (adolescent girl exclaims to her friends as I was walking down the street)

3. “My mom’s computer has a TWO GIG hard drive. I mean, come on. TWO GIGS!”
(sophisticated pause) “I-pod minis? FIVE gigs.” (Something priceless you hear only at CMU)

4. I want to be a pizza for Halloween. So girls can eat off me. (In a computer lab)

Please, please, please, e-mail me in my lonely new G-mail address that’s been covered with cobwebs lately, mao.sally@gmail.com, because I love hearing from anyone and everyone who has anything interesting or superfluous or cute to say. Really, I am a people person bursting on the inside. I love you all.

And most incredibly, thank you my beloved 826, and all people who are affiliated. Love! Until then, have a steaming bowl of real wonton soup and use telepathy to transport the wonderful feeling to me. Don’t take the restaurants in California for granted.