islanded in a stream of stars

I still exist. I think so, at least, and that's what counts, right?

Two weeks ago I was in LA looking at colleges and visiting a lot of lovely relatives. They are attempting to bribe me into staying into California for university by promising to get me a car. My grand uncle jokingly promised to get me a Ferrari if I go to Stanford. Not that I'd want a sports car considering how unwilling I am to speed. I ended up being really impressed by the two universities that I originally had labelled "eh-probably not for me" and really disliked the university that has the "best" reputation. Perhaps it was because I was chased by a clerical workers' protest there, but I've finally managed to eliminate one school on my list. I also have my graduation dress because Ellie was freaking out about "waiting until the last minute" to find one although I still have a good year until I graduate. I liked LA as a city much more than I had thought I would; I can really picture myself living there for several years.

The day before I flew out to Boston and Sophia and her dad picked me up. I got to meet all of her relatives (I swear we must have been sisters in a past life, because our families are awfully similar), and then we stayed up talking until 3 in the morning about feminism and philosophy and all sorts of other nifty things. We went swimming and took a soak in the hotel hot tub before coming out.

I just arrived at Harvard yesterday with Sophia and have been wandering around pretty much since. I have extraordinarily good luck with roommates. Danielle and I have similar habits (i.e. staying up until insane hours of the morning) and seem to share the same sort of philosophical beliefs and a lot of the same interests, so I'm terribly glad about that. Yet our experiences are different enough so that we don't run out of things to talk about. Our room is pretty nice; we each have our own bedroom and a common area with desks as well as a window seat. Sophia is probably going to become our unofficial third roommate as her rooming situation didn't work out as well. Our dorm, Matthews, is pretty big; I have no idea who the others in the nearby rooms on my floor are. I ended up showering at 2:30 this morning to avoid a bathroom crunch and woke up at an embarassingly late hour as a result of my strange sleeping schedule. I just hope that I won't continue to be semi jetlagged and an insomniac so I can get to class (intro to journalism) tomorrow. I'm nervous about my classes but also excited to actually start since this weird lulling freedom to do as I please still feels rather foreign to me.

I have lots of letters to send out, so if you're not staying at home this summer then please give me your mailing address as I've probably already written you a letter.

As soon as I manage to get my laptop, Karen, hooked up to an internet connection I'll resume pestering all of you with comments and posts. Sorry if I'm terribly confused about what's been going on in people's lives lately. Be seeing you!

Uncle Doug's triple-bypass surgery went well, and he's recuperating quite nicely. He's being discharged from the hospital tomorrow, I think.

And in honor of the upcoming HGTTG movie (22 more days!), I'll be presenting a quote from the series with every entry.

"We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem."

A beautiful quotation on film music which I discovered in an interview with Adrian Lyne's Lolita screenwriter, Stephen Schiff:

"A movie's score is its emotional touchstone; it has to be very immediate, and it has to speak to an audience in a language that requires no transposition."

I've found that the following soundtracks are absolutely magical when reading Lolita: Phillip Glass's the Hours, Yann Tiersen's Goodbye, Lenin! and Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo.

Now back to my original topic, assuming that I had one to begin with.

I was quite pleased to have a chance to discuss Lolita during CrWr as I was assigned to a small group tasked with the question (paraphrased), "Which novel could best replace Anna Karenina as the lector's reading choice in Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, keeping in mind the work's social and political agenda?"

Coincidentally I had been rereading Lolita over the weekend while frantically editing a piece for Moch which roughly touched upon a few of the same subjects-loss, innocence, youth, beauty of language. Luckily I had Lolita in my backpack, so I had a merry little discussion with zedhaus and others about why Lolita would work. Yes, you're replacing a Russian classic with another Russian classic, but even that's a bit of a stretch considering that Lolita was Nabokov's second work written originally in English. Lolita has the image of doomed lovers, the exploration of the many different kinds of love relationships, and, to quote from the summary printed on the back (lazy of me, I know!), "the story of a hypercivilized European colliding with the cheerful barbarism of postwar America," an assertion with which I disagree, by the way; I don't think that Nabokov had a strong political message in mind.

Unfortunately I think I lost most people there because nobody ever really reads Lolita for fun, or if they do they're looking for the raunchy bits. Well, such a reader will be disappointed, as one of my intrepid classmates remarked after flipping through my copy, "There isn't anything graphic about the sex; it's encapsulated in his language, and you've got to read through the lines." Nabokov is wonderfully frustrating with his wordplay and flowing passages about minutae; the meaning is veiled in the aesthetics of his images.

The thing that bothers me the most about the perceptions of Lolita is that most people assume that it's all about a perverted old man's domineering, abnormal relationship with a young girl. I'm not absolving Humbert-Humbert of his crimes by any means, but I will openly confess that I can't hate him. He is quite conscious of the fact that his sexual fascination with nymphets is grotesque. Some may blame Lolita as encouraging H-H, another folly. Lolita was fully aware of her power over H-H and willingly manipulated him to get what she wanted on occasion (the most notable example being her convincing H-H to go on a second cross-country road trip), but H-H took away any chances of having a happy childhood and home life. A true nymphet is unaware of her sexual appeal; she is aware that she has the power to attract, but doesn't necessarily consciously use these powers when she's interested in men. I don't think that either party is completely free of blame or the consequences for that matter, so it bothers me when people say that it's all H-H's or Dolores's fault. Nabokov once said that "The moral of Lolita is that there is no moral," and despite the murkiness of moral ambiguity I believe that it is folly to view the book as being totally fixated with the vulgarity of sexual perversion. The main attraction for me is Nabokov's writing style, a feature that tends to be overlooked with the public's preconception of Lolita as any crude sexually precocious young girl and her predatory older lover.

I must admit that part of my response stems from being sick of fending myself of accusations of being a pervert because Lolita is easily one of my favorite books in existence. I do understand that a lot of people dislike this book not because of the morals (or lack thereof?) but because they don't really understand what goes on. Lolita is something of a puzzle, and you really do have to reread it for it to make more sense. And I know that I will probably never understand every single reference, image, nuane of meaning, but it still enchants. I've forgotten how many times I've reread certain sections (in whole, I've reread the book thrice) but I've only grown to better appreciate the wit and the beauty of the words unfurling on the page.

I've read too much Lolita criticism within the past few hours instead of studying for French. Not that I need to study for French, anyway.

Edit: I just found out that my uncle Doug (the one who nearly became the first Chinese-American American naval admiral, and who has kindly let me joined his cell phone family plan) had a heart attack yesterday, but luckily it was a mild one, and he's recuperating fairly well in the hospital. I wish him well and hope that his upcoming bypass surgery is speedy and safe.

It suddenly struck me during dinner that we're going to be stuck with a conservative Supreme Court for the next twenty years or so because Rehnquist is retiring. Goodbye civil rights and liberties; I will miss you! I was horrified to hear that all of the state gay marriage bans passed; to be honest, I'm not too optimistic about the civil unions thing either. Can someone please explain to me why we keep denying homosexuals their Constitutional rights? I've been trying to understand this for ages, but it still doesn't make any sense to me. We're all human beings (unless there are some closet extraterrestrials out in the audience, whose identity cannot be easily confirmed by me); why the hell can't we always treat each other as such?

It suddenly struck me also that I might've offended more than one person with my previous comments earlier about liberals, and I apologize. I just dislike how people supported Kerry on the rather immature assumption that "anything is better than Bush." And I hate the Bush-Hitler comparisons; we are not talking about mass genocide here in the US. Saddam Hussein is more of an appropriate comparison with Hitler. Bush may be misguided in his actions, but I don't think it is his intention to purposely ruin the fate of America. But nevertheless, I'm deeply worried about what will be happening to this country these next few years. I hate to find out what's going to be added on the Patriot Act. Canada is looking lovelier than ever, but then again, I've always had a funny feeling that I'd live there someday.

I'm taking my driver's test tomorrow, and I'm really nervous because I'll probably forget to look over my shoulder when making a right turn or something. And I just know that the weather is going to be lousy. It actually hailed yesterday while I was driving home on 280. I've never seen cars move so slowly on any highway ever, but I've never been up to Lake Tahoe in the middle of winter, either.

The positive aspects of today: my grandmother did not have another stroke two days ago though she'll be in the hospital in HK for two more days. My veteran neighbor is not dying, though he's still in delicate condition. He was an army lieutenant who was seriously injured while on duty in Honduras two or three years ago and later became addicted to painkillers after his operation. He overdosed on them about a month ago and was in really critical condition for awhile, but he's doing better now. A specialist for his condition made a diagnosis today, but I didn't have a chance to talk to Jane Ellen, his mum and my neighbor, about it today. I hope that he's doing alright.

Bell choir is sounding lovely, too, and I'm ringing Sara tomorrow for good.

Three years ago on this day many people lost their lives in the World Trade Center attacks. May we always remember them.

My parents just left the house five minutes ago because my grandmother, who was at a friend's house, is being sent to the emergency room. I don't know what's wrong, and I am scared.

I am starting to regret all of those conversations I had with my family about wishing that Popo would be gone.