Annotations (2/11-3/11)

Thank you to everyone who read my inaugural post/Qatar essay! I’m so grateful to everyone who reached to tell me what resonated with them.

I’ve decided to experiment with mini-essays—things I’ve been thinking about that I think are worth writing about, but perhaps don’t quite yet warrant full essays. I’m calling them “Annotations.” We’ll see if it sticks.

2/14: Please invite me to more parties

About 6 months ago I got the idea to create and host a Valentine’s day couples tournament. This was borne out of a few different feelings: (1) Valentine’s day is fake and corny and going on an actual date that evening would’ve felt, to me, akin to playing house; (2) if I’m forced to acknowledge this cheesy, saccharine day, I want to at least do it with all my friends; and (3) just because you go on a “real date” on Valentine’s day and I don’t, doesn’t mean your relationship is better than mine and I can prove it!

So, C and I hosted a Valentine’s Day “tournament of the couples” (“couples” being romantic, platonic, mortal enemies, whatever).

The tournament consisted of three rounds of what was essentially “the newlywed game,” where you and your teammate answer questions about each other and your relationship. You get points whenever both of your answers match. Round 1 consisted of binary questions (“which of you is most likely to find yourself on a yacht?”). Round 2 was multiple choice (“what are you/your partner: mommy, daddy, or baby?”) where each contestant had to answer for both themself and their partner, and two points were on the table per question (one per matching answer). Round 3 consisted of open ended questions (“what would you and your partner do if you were each forced to perform in a talent show?”) and the finale was a 10-question speed round for the top two teams. In between rounds we had 10 to 15 minutes of regular degular party time with drinks, mingling, etc., and the ultimate winners took home a pair of tiny matching teacups.

Not to toot my own horn, but this party was a rousing success. The game made logistical sense (a miracle!), gameplay was smooth and not too overdrawn, and all the answers drew a lot of laughs. No fights or break-ups ensued (a pro or a con?) though there were plenty of pointed but good natured barbs. I learned a lot about people, including friends I’ve known for years, and it was interesting to see which pairs did better or worse than I expected.

After throwing this party I came away with a few feelings. (1) I love my friends and I love learning about them, (2) games are fun, and (3) I wish people hosted more creative events and parties for no reason. I love a birthday / housewarming / Halloween / Christmas party, but we can literally all hang out without a raison d’etre! The gathering can justify its own existence.

All this makes me think of the writing I’ve done over the years about loneliness and socializing. Two pieces in particular come to mind. One is this piece on how we should all be inviting more people to more things, and the other is on how we should all be reaching out to “old” friends because they probably want to hear from you more than you’d think!

If you’re struggling to instigate a hangout that has no real purpose, may I suggest you start with an event that centers an activity. Games, like the Valentine’s day tournament or bingo or board games, are popular. I’ve also done collage hangs, jewelry-making sessions, movie nights (obvs), kintsugi parties, potlucks, unusual snack tasting parties, and parties where everyone had to paint portraits of a random other party attendee (whose name they drew from a bucket—if you didn’t know who that person was, you had to mingle to find out!).

Anyway, we should all hang more. Pls invite me to stuff thx.

2/21: I miss her

I’m standing in a house. It’s possibly my childhood home though I don’t totally recognize it. I’m with a new friend—my waking self doesn’t actually recognize her, but in this dream I know we’re excited we’re becoming close—and we’re chatting about bungee jumping of all things. I tell her about the time I jumped over a river in Korea, and how the blues and greens of the water, valley, and sky melded in my vision as I fell down.

Wait, wait, wait, I interrupt myself mid-story. While you’re here you really should see my sister, I say, she’s so cute. I walk my friend to a different room in the house, where my youngest sister is playing. Here, she’s about 8 years old, and she’s excited to show us the scene she’s laid out with all her toys. Wow, you’re right, she’s so cute, my friend says. Just you wait, I say, you ain’t seen nothing yet. I walk her upstairs, to another room, where my youngest sister is again. Except here she’s 3 years old, with the roundest face a human can have. My friend is gobsmacked by her cuteness. My parents had her via frozen embryo, I explain. They liked her so much, they had her again. (This is, of course, not how frozen embryos work.) It makes total sense, my friend agrees—she’s literally the cutest child, of course they had her again.

And then I wake up.

(To be fair, my youngest sister (who is now 17) was truly the most adorable child I have ever seen. When I told her about this dream she was horrified: “So I was locked up in different rooms like a prisoner?!” I want to clarify—she was free to roam the house, no version of her was ever a prisoner.)

2/24: The lose-lose prospects of Korean womanhood

I finished reading “Kim Ji-young: Born 1982” by Cho Namjoon, a book about gender inequality in South Korea. The main character, Kim Ji-young, is the Korean everywoman (“Ji-young” being one of the most popular names for a girl in SK). The book is part novel and part ethnographic study, including real statistics and data about women and labor throughout. Out of 29 OECD countries The Economist has studied for their “Glass Ceiling Index,” South Korea has consistently been named the worst or second worst place to be a working woman since 2016.

Literally right after I closed the book I saw that The New Yorker had just published “The End of Children” by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, a piece about crashing birthrates and the crushing pressures that contribute to that in South Korea specifically. This turned out to be an impeccable chaser to the “Kim Ji-young” shot. I highly recommend people interested in Korean demography and gender politics read both (though the NYer piece is the more difficult read, you have to read it after “Kim Ji-young,” I think).

There’s nothing that I can say or write that you won’t receive more comprehensibly by reading these two works. But I will just mention one point that I think bears emphasis: It’s hard to overstate how crazy fast Korea’s industrialization was. When my grandparents were children, Japan was actively colonizing Korea and prohibited people from learning, reading, or writing in Korean (forcing Japanese as the official language). When my mom was a small child she had schoolmates whose families lived together in 1-room shacks.

With such huge societal shifts in just three generations, it makes sense that there’s some whiplash. This isn’t to excuse the sexism in Korea, but I think it’s worth some consideration. I think there’s also something to be said about the fact that the notion of gender equality came about and became normalized in Western nations when we were still a pre-Internet world. I need someone much smarter than me to write 10,000 words on this please.

2/25: Remembering Aaron Bushnell

On the first anniversary of his death, I am thinking about Aaron Bushnell, the military vet who stood outside the Israeli embassy in DC and set himself on fire.

In the year since, I’ve been thinking about why Aaron’s self-immolation affected me so much. Part of it, I think, is the sense of stunning clarity and moral conviction he must have felt in the moments leading up to it. I don’t believe I have stood for or against anything with even a modicum of such conviction. It was an incredibly brave thing to do. (Though I don’t necessarily think it was the “right” thing to do (you can be both brave and wrong). As others have written before, people who stand for Palestinian liberation would prefer to have him living, breathing, and fighting.

After Aaron died, I read a lot of coverage about his death that speculated about his mental health. So many writers and shitposters claimed that obviously his acts were the product of a deranged and tortured mind, and that any honoring of Aaron’s life was the glorification of mental illness. I’m sure Aaron was mentally anguished—a lot of people against Palestinian occupation were/are. But I don’t think it’s right to see it as a cause or culprit of his death. I see it as a comorbidity. If Aaron was mentally unwell, that unwellness was caused by the same thing as his drive to immolation: the impossible task of living in an unbearably cruel world.

3/5: In a cafe near Bryant Park, a couple friends and I met up to catch-up and practice ASL. When we get together no one says a word. Everything we communicate is signed.

I’ve been taking ASL classes semi-regularly for about two years now. In January I published an essay in The New York Times Magazine about how learning ASL has forced me to become more in tune with the emotive facial expressions and body language of myself and others. I’m quite proud of this essay, but due to length the final draft omitted one key point: I think learning ASL has taught me to be a more attentive conversational partner.

When hearing folks converse, we can often afford to multi-task. Listening and speaking are both still possible as we cook, glance at the clock, or check our phones—our ears catch sounds regardless of our eyes or hands. But sign language is entirely visual. It needs to be seen, and there are no back-up senses that can pick up any missed information. I’m grateful for this time when my attention has to be, more or less, undivided.

3/10: Othership and the adventures of “get me out of here”

C and I were offered a free trial class at the “social sauna” startup Othership and, let me tell you, nothing turns me into a good old fashioned hater than New Age-y “wellness” regimes hopped up on capitalism. I might have to write a whole separate thing about this because it was kind of ridiculous.

Our experience was pretty similar to other written accounts I’ve seen. We were signed up for the “Guided Down: Sound Immersion” class where an instructor named Ether addressed us as “journeyers” and then shepherded us into a sauna. Ether and another instructor alternated between hurling essential-oil infused snowballs into the sauna rocks, spieling about “vibrations,” playing a variety of instruments (“this is an Indigenous, tribal flute”…Okay? Which Indigenous group? Which tribe? What is it called?), and telling us that we were learning to get in touch with our intuition and compassion (how was this learning happening, you ask? I dunno, through the scents we were breathing?).

We then did a cold plunge, which was scary! Little known fact about me is that when I was a teenager I used to have allergic reactions whenever my body got too cold too fast (it’s called “cold urticaria”). If I swam in cold water or was buffeted by an unexpectedly harsh wind I’d get full-body hives, my muscles would shut down, and I’d have to sit and take antihistamines until I could walk again. So yeah, the cold plunge was a mental challenge, and I thankfully left untriggered.

After the cold plunge we returned to the sauna where Ether picked up an awfully out-of-tune guitar and sang what I assumed was an original song with lyrics like “L-O-V-E is all you need, to be free” and encouraged the whole group to sing along. I did not, but a surprising proportion of the class did! We were then prompted to share with the group any thoughts or emotions we experienced during the class. After each share, the class was led to “send love” to the sharer through a collective deep breath and audible exhale.

I was surprised by the enthusiasm I saw around me, and the buy-in everyone seemed to have. It all just makes me think that people really crave moral/spiritual education, and flock to “meaning” wherever they see it advertised. And in a time when “working on yourself” physically, mentally, and spiritually is the biggest virtue, of course a venue offering all of the above will draw a crowd. But surely we all know that compassion is not something you can passively grow or exercise while sitting in a luxury sauna?

Overall I had quite a nice time. I enjoy saunas, all the scents were a nice touch, and the cold plunge was a better experience than expected. But beyond those core offerings—which you can find at any number of other places—I didn’t find the session any more helpful than a guided meditation. All these wellness start-ups are hellbent on reinventing wheels—except their wheels have mood lighting, crystal bowls, branded merch, and both scientific and spiritual rhetoric. Let’s calm the vagus nerve and the sacral chakra. Ground to the earth, optimize and be well.

It was novel, interesting, and I’m glad I went. But would I pay $64 for another drop-in class? Decidedly not.

3/11: Death and taxes

There are only two things in the world that will consistently and reliably make me throw a tantrum: troubleshooting tech difficulties and doing my taxes. Yes, I use an accountant. Yes, it still stresses me out.

Other things I’m thinking about:

I recently rewatched Empire Records, which I’m convinced is a perfect movie with an equally perfect soundtrack. Oh, to be a misfit teenager in the ‘90s working in a record store.

“The Uncomfortable”: A series of wondrous, whimsical, and “deliberately inconvenient” creations by Katerina Kamprani. I found her randomly on IG and I love everything she does.

Andrea Long Chu’s evisceration of Pamela Paul. She’s just so good. Mind unmatched. I spent the whole time reading this piece thinking “get her!”

My friend Sabrina Imbler’s dedication to Sam Nordquist, a trans man who was tortured and murdered in upstate New York, who has been disrespected and misgendered continually in life and in death.

Musical fixations! I love all these songs but especially the first one, “Lose My Focus” by Raveena, which is pure sunshine and bliss.

Note to self: Get better at sticking these landings. I’ve never been good at kickers.