hello, world.

yes, she is back.

for those of you who have noted countlessly again and again that my blog has been terribly ill-maintained (i can reassure you that senior year did indeed occur, whether it was apparent from the online observer or not), i have chosen to resurface and right (write?) the wrongs of my neglect. after a wonderfully jet-setting summer of exploration (both geographical and personal), i am ready to face the next step. not only mit (cambridge-or-bust commences in t-minus-367 minutes!) but also engaging myself in fresh faces and family traces.

only arriving home from shanghai two days ago, i've been taking tiny bites of myself and packing them into oblivion once again. stowed letters, old cds, pink shirts, everything turned inside-out and rustled as i manage to transport all my belongings to cambridge. it's comforting to know your material life fits nicely into a four-door sedan.

aim for non-linearity. on screen and on street.

this evening i flipped through some old photographs of my mother, in class poses from kindergarten to the first years of college. they're black and white, tinged with sepia at the edges. i see her youthful smile, her charming expressions; not quite ready for the shot, distracted by a friend, absently touching her skirt, unafraid. looking at each print one by one, i feel a peculiar feeling inside. it's difficult to capture this sensation of imagining my mother as a girl like me, wondering about the future, clasping hands with friends while viewing the naughty boys from afar. i wonder if i were a classmate, would i have been her friend, or a jealous enemy? now i look at my mother, lovely at 57, but the girl smiling from the pages is gone. i wonder when i, as i am now in youth, will start to vanish, only leaving photographs and memories in its wake...

fading into my own daughters, perhaps.

next: driving up to bahstahn.
postnext: eating lunch at mantra.
postpostnext: dreaming about shanghai dumplings.

it feels good.