Nonsensical Rambling: Wierd Dream 1 (From a while back)

starcraft-based dream

earthquake owned the nation

everybody who had been north of the fault line turned into zombies

jerry chen and alan were in the dream

alan was on a praise team

religion had become meaningless

we were trying to get to the northwest

good amount of still-healthy people

people turned to pleasure in that grim time

we pondered the meaninglessness of pleasure

Bible was very heavy; handles attached to covers, weighed me down

one obstacle was a very long, narrow house

it was a creepy, decrepit maze

we saw through the lie, and i used superhuman strength to just charge through the walls

military were mutant zealots (zombies)

their friendliness was fickle

Final Rant About The Girl I Love

She is: smart, funny, capable, independent, cute, hot, hard-working, and fun-loving.  She takes her faith seriously.  She is not a sister to me.  She is my ideal woman.  She makes me smile when I look at her, but frown because she's not mine.  For what has literally been years, I have been content to have her happy, even if that happiness is not with or because of me.  But I feel my star rising again.  The time will soon come when I will see myself as worthy-- her best possible option.  Given all this, I fear that I admire her wrongly.

Those qualities I listed about her are not bad; they are indeed admirable.  Rather, my attraction to her is suspect precisely because I like her for fulfilling my ideal.  If I'm honest, I have to admit that I don't know her.  I don't.  I really don't.  I don't know most of her likes and dislikes.  I don't know most of her tendencies and preferences.  I don't know exactly her life's calling or even her tentative plans.  I don't know at all what day her period comes.

Suddenly, her place in my memory becomes clear, and all I really know of her is from moments in the past.  Our relationship is most accurately described as people that are acquaintances but, for whatever reason, interact like old friends.  Suddenly, I am afraid that our shared upbringing counts for nothing, and even more that we are truly strangers and fated to remain so.

I absolutely hate unrequited love-- I believe it foolish.  I remain open to any other possibility, but I find myself comparing every other girl to her.  This situation is so unjust to those individuals; I find myself unable to ignore the fact that, no matter what other exceptional qualities they may exhibit, not one of them is her.

This is the image that prompted a 20-ish post thread on Google Buzz amongst my connections on there.  We started with frown emoticons, moping (somewhat in jest) about the matter.  At some point, a friend of mine posted, "I think the lesson here is that we're all doomed."  I responded to her statement with, "Better to have loved and lost, than never loved at all?  Thank God for singular intersections!  You can't say you're doomed to lovelessness until you're single and literally at the end of the line... What are we again?  23?"  The original poster, an acquaintance of mine, responded with: "Wait... we were talking about relationships?"  To which I replied, "That's what I contextualized it to, as all my other relationships have been (relatively) ossum."

To that statement, there are several likely responses. A: "Well, we know what's on Ezra's mind."  B: "Well, lucky you."  C: "Why do you say that?"  I will answer the person that asks Option C.

Romance has been the only context  in which I've experienced relationships as once or never, and not as forever.  Not in friendship have I lost people through such finality as the burned bridges between me and my old flames.  That's why my friendships are so much better-- I've never perceived them as straight lines that precluded rekindling.  The lines have always been intertwined along jagged, looped, and twisted paths.

Even so, reconciliation is not out of the question, even for those painful people from my past.  By God's grace, we'll be good again.

Asians Have the Darndest Surnames

I have a friend named Tiffany Sun. If she married a guy with the last name "Moon," she would be Tiffany Sun Moon, under Western conventions. If a girl existed named Annie Ching and she married a boy with the surname "Chong"...? In this post, I seek an examination of our multi-cultural identities through the treatment of our surnames as (imperfect) signifiers of what goes on within and around us.

I feel ambivalently about the Romanization of our surnames. It simultaneously represents the subjugation of Asian identities to Western conventions, but also the transformation of Asian identities into something else, an Asian-whatever (Korean-American, Vietnamese-Canadian, Japanese-British, Chinese-Australian, etc) identity that straddles oceans. Already, we are not completely what our forebears were. What are our parents, if not unreal, for insisting on an impossible cultural purity? However, neither are we yet completely assimilated.

There are several questions to answer. What does it mean to stay true to our heritage? Is it sufficient that we have retained our surnames, but Romanized? Other groups, to avoid persecution, changed their surnames altogether, some by translation. If my surname were translated from "Chang /Cheung /Zhang /Chiong," it would be "Chapter." I would be "Ezra Chapter." Should we campaign for the right to change our legal surnames to Chinese characters? That course of action doesn't seem prudent. Even if imperfectly, the Westerners are able to attempt to utter our sacred surnames through their Romanizations. Perhaps we ought to ask ourselves a more important question: Is it even necessary or important enough of a matter, to remain true to our heritage?

There are more issues to consider, if language use is to be considered a representation of cultural imperialism or hegemony. The use of Chinese characters was once part and parcel of Chinese domination in all spheres of life in much of East Asia. The Vietnamese, Japanese, and Koreans all used Chinese characters in the past. The Japanese altered their script. The Koreans created an alphabetic script. The Viets threw off one master only to receive another, and their entire language was standardized to a Romanization. Fittingly, when Chinese people go by their Romanized surnames, they get a taste of their own medicine.

Perhaps, language-- as a tool of power-- is only effective if there is something of value to demolish. If we hold our cultural heritage loosely, it won't hurt when we inevitably lose it through generations of living in the West. It only matters that we hold ethnic culture so tightly if we believe it to be superior to others' and integral to living, yes? Perhaps what really matters is living a meaningful life in view of God, which may not necessitate clinging tightly to heritage. Could it be, that culture is not more important than life itself?

This post really has no conclusions, but merely presents the shortcomings of particular, more traditional perspectives. I have no illusions as to my ability to convince everybody to rediscover their respective heritages, or to let go of them. Neither are those the only options. You can have both the old and the new, or neither! Truly, as Asian-Americans, there is no right way to deal with heritage; I only hope that each of us has peace with it.

I just hope not to see people walking around with names like Jon, Jeff, Peter, or Joy Yellow.

No, I'm not interested in talking to your father.

Mimetic Desire is the millstone that sinks many. The most tempting thing to a 22-29 year olds? Domesticity. Really... is that your highest aspiration? I am disappointed in you.