"I am always proud of you."

Well I think I can go cry now.

I received pictures from my grandma's 85th birthday, in which I realized everyone is getting more white hair, or just less hair, and the parameters for my personal success have nothing to do with my lack of being there, if only to say, I hope you have a great day, or, I'll always be there for you too. There is no epic gesture that can traverse physical distance, and while my sister and I are different in our family because we want to live far away from home, sometimes I miss everything.

I struggle so hard to "do well" so that I feel like I'm not wasting my own time, or other people's money, and it's difficult because I have really high ambitions, but I seriously wonder what difference it makes with certain members of my family. Would they be happier to be able to say, wow she's such an engineer, or are they more satisfied knowing I can cook the traditional dishes for CNY? I don't know! And it's really daunting to ask, hmm.

I really need to call people more.

When you're at that point where everything you see them do reinforces your opinion of them, maybe it's a good time to start thinking about What Ifs. For instance, I'm wondering what would have happened if Jinki had gotten the timing right. But that's in some other universe, where there's acknowledgement of presence and meeting of the eyes and shit.

Something I should point out: The last entry wasn't about Jinki. The last essay was about inserting Jinki into this cultural context that I wasn't sure he belonged in, and was part of a larger discussion about my own racial background and how I was at odds with it, how I'm slowing learning about it from a less detached standpoint -- I was never ashamed, just indifferent, or rather, disinterested -- and realizing that it actually explains a lot of why I do what I do. Or how I think. The self-defined shapes and colors of my life, etc.

The EDIT was me trying to pull off funny while feeling really, really bitter. Most people seem to be WAY more invested in the Jinki side of things rather than Minho's, even with such a two-personed term that is the OTP. Which is FRUSTRATING, because while I adore Jinki, it's getting increasingly difficult to put up with every single Jinki-saturated thought and/or sexually frustrated slip-up; paring up his body parts like it's totally assumed I enjoy endless accolades of his sizable thighs and sunbeam smiles. Jinki as a thing to be consumed is no longer related to Onho, in my opinion. And while we're at it, let's get one thing straight: I'm not, and never have been, attracted to any of the SHINee boys. Sometimes I find them inhuman in their gorgeousness and become totally gross trying to explain how much I'm endeared by that -- but I don't want to fuck any of them, and I'm not interested in whether or not you want to. I'm here for the Onho -- I'm only interested in them fucking each other.

Therefore, this will not be an essay on Minho -- because hey, I'll walk the talk. This is about what the hell Jinki offers to Minho because it's a problem, to have one person give and the other person receive with the loop still wide, wide open. It's about how TOTALLY UNCONCERNED they seem to be about this, but for those of us who grapple with POVs/sweet, slow processes of telling someone, hey I really care about you, Jinki's questionable role in the very hefty responsibility of half a relationship is almost never seriously discussed. I'm guilty of this myself -- I never write from Minho's POV -- mostly because I'm always like, what else can I make him do besides whine?

But yesterday I was washing the dishes while thinking about @onbunny's question, and I was also thinking about the translations to Jinki's diary in Son of the Sun, Part 2, because, you know, the kid can come up with some really beautiful insights. He's metaphoric and makes lists -- I love lists -- and has this tendency to anthropomorphize objects into characters with lungs and momentum in order to make a connection between them and the effect they have on his own life. It's a cool thing, what he does, and I really enjoy reading what he has to say about most things. I then started thinking about how ironic it was that, even though he's the leader of SHINee, he's said that his ideal type would be someone who can lead him. This reminded me of one of my favorite books during middle school, Bloomability by Sharon Creech, and how she was mulling over the different roles between leaders and followers, and one of the characters went, why are you talking about FOLLOWING, we did not grow up just to FOLLOW, but then someone else pointed out that you can't have leaders without followers.

Then I thought, maybe that's what Jinki can offer. And perhaps I've been unfair to him all along, because if and when Jinki decides to give himself to someone else, maybe it really is all about the following. Maybe at that point, he would be perfectly content just to follow -- and that in itself is a promise. Maybe admitting aloud that he's in love with someone -- to that someone -- completely shatters any sense of security he has about himself, that it's enough, coming from him. Because that means that not only is he being honest, but he's also being totally himself.

I also realized that even with people that I love, such as my family and friends, I'm never totally myself with either of these parties. That is, I'm not NOT being myself, but I display different facets of who I am depending on the company I keep. For example, I'm not going to be telling inappropriate jokes in front of my parents, but I'm not going to be totally honest about my self-doubts with many of my friends either, as opposed to my family.

So then, here's the biggest contradiction/irony. Jinki -- or Onew -- is constantly giving: He's giving his smiles to the cameras, he's giving in to what society expects of him as a man, as a celebrity, he's giving in to what his parents taught him, what his friends value him for, etc. Even if it's fake as hell sometimes, it's still effort on his part, it's still GIVING. So maybe when he's really BEING HIMSELF, he doesn't want to give anymore. He just wants to take. He doesn't want to be NICE, he doesn't want to sheath his weird sense of humor, he doesn't want to ACT.

And who's the one person he's a total jerk to?

I was discussing this with Emily at the time, and to my complete surprise, she had nothing to directly counter me with (which usually doesn't happen). We also agreed that, despite this revelation, Jinki probably still thought he couldn't stand a chance against what the whole wide world had to offer to Choi Minho -- which is a hell of a lot, I don't blame him -- so it was sad and heartening at the same time. I then mentioned that even with angling things from this side, I didn't think it was sustainable, because while I understand why he's less keen to give to Minho when he already gives so much in his public life, that still doesn't resolve the open-ended loop. However, all the usual gestures of what you would do for a loved one doesn't seem to fit him either. Flowers, chocolates, meal prep, a night on the town, weekend trips and weekday dinner dates -- I'm not sold by that. I wouldn't expect him to be a total bum, he'd still cook and clean and pay the bills, but when I thought about it more, I realized that I would rather not have him do all the usual, cliched crap. Then Emily said--

"…I have a feeling that Onew would make up for it by being so random…I do think Onew would do that kind of stuff…But on completely uncalled for days, like in the middle of the season and being like, "Oh yeah, I just bought this cake because I thought it looked good" and leaving out the, it made me think of you part.

Yeah, that was it. Exactly.

And just to make it a little about Minho, because oh what the hell -- while I am also inclined to think that Minho looked totally POed during the most recent Incheon airport stalker snapshots because of Jinki's illness, there is no real reason to worry. THAT IS, there is no need to accuse him of not thinking about his own dear leader like all the fucking time. This is precisely what frustrates me -- give the guy a little more credit, you know? Out of all the SHINee members, Minho cares the most. Argue that, I dare you. So there's really no need to be like, man I hope you're gonna go to the ends of the earth in order to make Onew happy especially while he's sick, otherwise there'll be hell to pay!

Seriously, fuck that. Dude does not exist solely to serve.

Parting shot: Jinki also mentions in Son of the Sun that he writes his diary entries on his phone. I was thinking, man, I'd like to get my hands on that phone -- and then we realized, someone had gotten to it first.

For some reason I don't see fit to put this on Tumblr, though most of my fandom thoughts are there, but -- seriously, why such a strong temptation to insert Lee Jinki into every story about heroines, every odd mind and list of tragedies, like if longing had a face it would be his? I don't get how ridiculously coincidental it was that I imagined him so perfectly as Jeanette in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit -- which I think I wrote an entry about, once -- and then again, after the first chapter of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts by Maxine Hong Kingston -- which is a painful, painful book to read, because everything she writes about, every cited symbol and color and tradition, is simultaneously an explanation and a reminder, because I've known about being Chinese for a long time, although for a while I thought I had grown up in a household devoid of its imposing order on life -- somehow he slips into place among the creative rebellion of these characters, as well as the feminism.

I feel like I give him much too much credit, and I'm definitely, definitely exalting him to a way beyond fictitious degree, but in doing this -- in attaching a sympathetic face to a string of heartbreaking stories -- I feel like I'm helping myself comprehend just exactly what's happening as I read this book. This book makes me want to cry, and I have three-fourths left to go. Every page holds a reminder about my grandfather.

I think there is some kind of intersection going on, between appealing stimuli of the more superficial senses, and stuff that is just so personal, admitting it exists is like completely countering denial. I have spent such a long time declaring that I'm neutral ground with all this culture -- with being American, with being a proud American, and that means I'm Chinese but not really -- and yet I was wondering if, the reason why I like the color red is because I'm Chinese. Hear me out: I don't know anything about my family earlier than two generations back. No records that I know of exist, not that I could read them anyway. But if SEEING RED instantly sets off -- is an indicator for -- joy and celebration, if somehow those experiences slowly evolve and ingrain and morph genealogy, so that decades, centuries later, some insignificant female descendent buys red items because it seems to contrast so nicely with everything else that's in a plainer color -- is that how it works? Is that one way to explain it?

Another thing: I thought -- think -- of myself as AMERICAN because my parents are deeply, physically affectionate. They love their children because they are theirs -- which is hard to explain, because of course there were also expectations and non-choices; music lessons, accelerated coursework, etc. But I remember having separation anxiety as a child -- I would start throwing a tantrum, sobbing to the point where I'd make myself throw up -- if my parents didn't pick me up from daycare the moment the minute hand passed the 12 at six o'clock. When it was storming outside, the thunder and lightning scared me, so I'd go into their room and lay sideways above their heads, and they'd let me kick their faces while I slept. I used to wet the bed -- I remember waking up to my father changing my underwear for me. My mother read my sister every Boxcar Children book in existence. In fact, they took my sister and I on every trip they went on since the day we were born. Other Asian American peers would tell me that their parents never hugged them, never laughed with them, or took them to movies, water parks, museums -- so I thought I was lucky. And less Chinese.

But actually, it's inserted itself in other ways. I'm an engineer (and I've confessed this before) -- but this wasn't a choice. They think it was a choice, but I grew up in their loving, very Americanized household, and now I owe them everything. I will always, always owe them. I love them, so I owe them! It's impossible to escape.

Back to Jinki: I feel like I'm insulting the purpose behind these novels by substituting him -- a man -- into these characters experiencing these cultural/identity growing pains. And I feel dumb, for the most part, because Lee Jinki is a needle in a haystack of humans -- but his sufferings are not quite on par with other stuff, other shit going on that is degrees worse. It's insulting! but nonetheless this happens. I read somewhere that Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is considered a parallel to The Woman Warrior -- but I made the association independently because they are the only two books I have read so far that have unseated me in such a specific, compelling way.

Sometimes I think that when we write fanfiction -- assuming most of the writers are women -- we idealize these male characters by writing them with female* sensibilities. Even when we try not to, it kind of seeps into the spoken dialogue, or a certain turn of phrase. It's inaccurate, but I guess I like it this way. I want Jinki to care more, to be filial, to adhere to and be aware of traditions, to yearn for and recognize the potential for love in frighteningly close vicinity. The thing is, as far as public observations go, he easily encapsulates all these qualities already -- maybe that's why he's become such a muse.

EDIT: *This is a typo; it should be 'feminine.' Next time, I'm writing an essay on Minho instead; no one cares about him.

1. Brush your teeth twice every day.
2. Wash your face (a shower counts) twice every day.
3. Use your calendar.
4. Jog at least two miles every day.
5. Even if you don't get into grad school, put your VERY BEST EFFORT into your applications.
6. Even if you don't get the job, put your VERY BEST EFFORT into your application.
7. Basically emulate Choi Minho.
8. Be less afraid to speak on the phone to adults. You are pretty good already, but you can be better.
9. Lose ten more pounds, get toned simultaneously.
10. Learn to drive stick shift.
11. Learn more than 20 constellations.
12. Hike a mountain.
13. Spend wisely.
14. Remember birthdays.
15. Go through all CS5 tutorials.
16. Finish WIPs; write more.
17. Read Orca book club books for every month.
18. Join writing club?
19. See an orca. Go on a boat!
20. Call your grandparents once a week.
21. Fall asleep with your laptop in the other room, not in the bedroom.

So now I'm convinced that the moment you put someone into a really bizarre context based on something they say or do, that's when it occurs, a flip of the switch. You hadn't thought of them in that way before, and now you can't go back.

I have all these worries, future, job, health and family, etc. You really don't expect these things to happen. But when it does, it just becomes this tremendous, tremendous pining. And then you wonder how many people live with this feeling every day, because it is totally possible to function as a normal human being, and churn out work, and be young and merry or whatever, but at the end of the day it still sucks that I'm not the right person for you, because you are so the right person for me.

So I'm picking apart this salmon carcass with my fingers, because despite being a docent on a salmon trail and constantly hearing about all these salmon enhancement/protection/advancement projects I still don't know how to cook one -- I had defrosted two steaks roughly two weeks ago and they were getting gray around the edges so I thought, okay. Time to get eaten. The meat was a little stiff and definitely not as FRESH, but it's food, you know? And where I come from, fish is a luxury -- so whatever! but yeah, so bits of salmon clinging to my fingertips -- I'm checking the pieces for bones before I use it in a salad for tomorrow's lunch -- and sudden I think of tangrams. And I'm kinda like, where the fuck did this come from, trying to think of all the pathways, the first of which is--

Tangrams are these seven geometric shapes that you can make into a silhouette of a cat, or a butterfly, or a house or a bus, or whatever you want as long as it can be made with sharp edges and corners, and I fell in love with tangrams during my fourth grade science class with Mr. Richter, who also gave us time in those blowup star hubs? With the make-believe sky and the constellations projected on the interior of the dome? Stars and constellations spoke to me at a young age as something Very Important and Significant and YET to this day I can only point out Orion, and only barely, and only standing about ten feet from the bottom of my driveway back home. But I'm thinking about Mr. Richter, and I'm thinking about salmon, and I'm thinking about these tangrams, and how this guy had a whole year's worth of curriculum to teach us, and we're eight, nine years old, we get BORED EASILY -- so occasionally what he did was, pull out a box of tangrams, and for each puzzle that we were able to complete, we got a lemon drop.

So now I'm eight, and I fucking love lemon drops. I love them so much that when I'm answering a question about Minho fifteen years later -- I only talk about two things on the internet, one of which is Minho, and the other is everything else -- and I'm trying to express that whole, "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade" deal, instead of being too obvious and using lemonade, I use lemon drops. Because my fourth grade science teacher wanted a quiet class period every now and then, and to shut us up, he gave us puzzles for an hour and enticed us with candy as a prize.

And then I'm thinking about Sedona, because Sedona is in Arizona, and Arizona has all these gigantic telescopes and observatories and a bigass touristy crater where I bought H.A. Rey's STARS at the gift shop, and borrowed a telescope from my tenth grade math teacher later, and even with all this enablement, I was so lazy and uninspired despite really wanting to know how to find and identify stars! But I loved Arizona, I loved stars, and the REASON WHY I LOVED STARS is again, thanks to Mr. Richter and his star dome and discussions about the legends behind the names of the constellations, like the Twins and the Big and Little Dipper and Cassiopeia and her King and the Snake and so forth. Pisces, whatever.

So now I'm like, wow Mr. Richter, you had this huge influence on my life that I've only just realized years after I took your class! Now I want to write him a thank you note. And then I'm thinking about today, about how I took my first class out on the salmon trail, and talked about life cycles and ecology and forest habitats and being able to smell your way home for thousands of miles, and wait a minute oh shit, they were FOURTH GRADERS. And I'm probably not going to change anyone's life by talking about salmon but what if, what if.

Two kids (dad's the one in the jacket, shirt and tie, not the uh, tracksuit) and their eventual offspring. I really love these pictures of my parents; it's kinda a creepy comparison, but this is what a really good fic could end up looking like. I'm taking these with to remind myself that it's up to me to continue the story.