the best metro ever

it's funny how one little thing can change your whole mood. but whatever, not going to dwell on that and i'm in a whole different city to be thinking about and doing other things.

i used to write in my old livejournal when i went to china on trips so here's my short spring break trip recounting. i'm in DC with my family and have been since Tuesday, with a long pleasant stop in the lovely city of Milwaukee Airport for about six hours since they cancelled our first flight in. it wasn't too bad, i read a book and looked at interesting clouds over the airport, though it did mean we had to pay an extortionist dressed up as a taxi driver to go six minutes to our hotel since we missed the complimentary shuttle ("and three extra dollars for the airport pickup, and three extra dollars for the luggage, and three extra dollars for the small person who you are travelling with!!" like an anti-oprah). the first recognizable thing i saw here in dc was the pentagon which i thought had a very militaristic and secretive air--though that may just be thinking. it's really odd to see a pentagonal building, architecture wise. it just looks like the building never ends, as you go around its faces.

anyway, we had no time to see anything that first night since we didn't get in until 11. but the second day we set out bright and early to go to (and this is where i can't remember where we went um...) the ART MUSEUM! okay i have to say how great it is that the smithsonians are all free. we were worried that the sequester might've closed them but they stayed open and they stayed free. how wonderful is that? and how appropriate? given the fact that the federal spending budget was $4 trillion last year, fuck yeah we should keep open these repositories of knowledge and history for everyone to come and freely learn from. i'll come down from the soapbox now. the art museum was beautiful in itself, architecture-wise (corinthian columns, thank you third grade greek history unit) and had so much art. i loved especially the pre-raphaelites exhibit, the sculptures, and the romantic landscape paintings. after that, we went to THE ZOO. i keep getting excited, that's why i keep capitalizing.

i love elephants. the one i saw was eating bamboo and breaking off the delicate leaves with its trunk by applying pressure with its foot on the stalk. saw clouded leopards, wolves, a bald eagle, a seal that looked  sick :(, a lion trying to fish a piece of cardboard out of its pool, a spectacled bear, and other things which i can't remember. the pandas we went to see this morning, since they were gone by the time we got there yesterday. sadly, the panda was far away so i could barely (bearly, heh) see it but it obligingly walked tantalizingly closer then far away again and i got a few pictures. i tried not to see too many things through the camera lens and not through my eyes, but i still took a lot of pictures. 

today we went to the natural history museum. my favorite part was probably, lamely, the gallery featuring the best nature photography of last year. also the geology exhibit. as the weekend draws near people have begun to flood into these touristy places and by the third hour of going through the museum i decided i never wanted to be in a room with more than fifteen people at a time ever again. time to escape. we had seafood at legal seafood restaurant, which was amazing (fried oyster! half a lobster! and my chicken wtf, fish sandwich which was the tastiest i've ever had), then returned to walk around national mall, having vowed off all museums for at least 20 hours. we walked to the jefferson memorial along the tidal basin, looked at the one cherry tree brave enough to blossom, and came back. 

this is getting long, so i'll be done soon. it is unfortunately cold in dc, probably like 40 with the windchill so it's made walking around kind of unpleasant. it's also made the cherry trees kind of not-blooming, which was one of the whole reasons why we came to dc this break. alas. other than that, it's been really tiring, full days which go by too quickly and there's still more of dc to see. for example, the white house--i was astonished that the white house sat right in the middle of the city, since for some reason i remembered it being off in a more secluded area, and my mom decided that is just uneducated of me so we are going to walk by there. will wave to obama. oh, and the title for this post was obvious because really, dc does have the best metro train system i've ever experienced (out of beijing, shanghai, chicago, nyc, san francisco bart--no germany, which i've heard is excellent). the tunnels are high, the trains are wide, it's smooth and just so wonderful. it's crazy to imagine how they made the subway systems. what a feat! 

excited for tomorrow.

.

sometimes i wish i was a tree. or a rock. a sequoia tree. a boulder with a good view. i wish that, tonight.

cumulative years

my friends are all amazing. they inspire me and surprise me, and in that way remind me we all have the capacity to surprise. they are by turns hilarious, insightful, thoughtful, wise, stubborn, strong, witty, intelligent. fragile. i sometimes forget what it really means for every person to be a person, narrating their lives from inside their heads, and being by default the center of a universe of their own interpretation. we have a tendency, i feel, to assume the constancy and confidence of others since we can only see what they show us after all. everyone else is an actor secondary to your life, doing things you can't understand the motivation of, but which you can only interpret in relation to yourself. it seems fixed. but you are that for them, and they are that for you, which just goes to show how easily the roles can be flipped and are in fact the same.

ellipses

today was punctuated by moments of unhappiness which were fairly intense but dissipated quickly enough. maybe it's because i was looking forward to seeing friends i haven't seen for awhile at Jordan's but didn't get to. or maybe it's just the internet.

i hate that little nagging voice that you get in your head. it's hard to shut up sometimes. but everyone has down days and they go away i guess.

i don't know.

but i did think of a happiness. in fact, i took a picture of it. i went on a nice night run and took my phone because after getting yelled at by the car which i think almost hit me, it's probably good to be able to call in emergencies.

11/6 & 11/7

11/6/12
this: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/266031293945503744/photo/1
and everything it entails that came from everyone...

...doing that

11/7/12

no pic taken but lunch at steenbock's -- so much tasty fries! as well as buttery fresh veggie sandwich
also, "it's just synaptic pruning" and philosophy studying

why great literature is great + a few pics

just finished rereading the great gatsby. i remember why i loved this book so much. sometimes i read a sentence or passage in some book or other and get that fluttery feeling in my stomach just from the sheer beauty of the words, before the meaning or any of the meanings have settled in yet. i think something subconscious recognizes the power of what was written down.

one of my favorite quotations from the book goes: "And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes--a fresh, green breast of the new world. It's vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

the beauty of that passage is chilling, almost. it's melancholy too, as powerful things so often are. what is the most powerful emotion? maybe melancholy, for how pervasive it is and how long it lasts. but anyway, while mankind's encounter with an unadulterated america can't be recaptured, strictly factually speaking we encounter wildernesses and frontiers all the time. that's what's so beautiful about this. it may talk specifically of the first settlers but what it captures are the feelings that we repeat again and again, generation after generation. we were never the first to experience an emotion and we will never be the last. over and over, we seek thrilling, mysterious, vast unknowns and over and over, we lose them.

what is it that is sad about "last and greatest?" it's Ideological and Romantic in capitalized senses of both words. also, when was the last time an emotion compelled us, without our consent? finally, i strongly disagree with the end of the last sentence, but at the same time, i think it has perhaps the greatest weight out of all that passage. sure, life has to be realistic and it has to contain midterms, cold coffee, recycling that piles up, long boring work days; but life can be so much more meaningful if it also contains cardinal ideals which we think of every now and then. and how more meaningful can it get than to spend our days seeking or experiencing something commensurate to our capacity for wonder.

that being said, i wish i had a brownie to eat

11/4

Still 11/4 cheating but too pretty

umm 11/1?

10/31

what i want

i want to laugh and make other people laugh for always

we are all granted power to induce feelings in others. does that knowledge come with the responsibility to do so? i'm not sure, because it would be impossible to live always thinking about how you make others feel. but i do think that knowledge should come at least with awareness, every now and then. today i am aware that i want to spend my life inducing feelings that are good and joyful and laughing in the people that i love and care about. which is not to say that you should be an actor playing a specific part in order to create a reaction in the audience around you, but rather that the desire to induce these emotions in others teaches you what to demand and grow for yourself.
and as you cultivate who you are, slowly, what is good in you can diffuse to your environment.

i've still been keeping up with the daily happinesses, just not posting them here. maybe tomorrow i wil put up pictures.