July 15, 2022Comments are off for this post.

why i love reading

When I was a kid, I loved summer breaks. I went to the community library once a week, spending hours fawning over the aisles of books. I'd slowly scan the spine of each title, pausing whenever one caught my eye. If it passed my unspoken test, I'd add it to the stack in my hands. The books would pile up one by one until I'd have to strain to peer over the top, which was my signal to give in and head to the checkout.

There was something so exciting about getting sucked into a book. I'd look up after spending hours indulging in a story, feeling like no time had passed. As a kid, it was especially easy to bury my nose in the pages and forget about anything or anyone else. I felt a particular affinity toward fantasy novels; I loved getting lost in worlds entirely different from ours.

As I grew older, that interest started to dwindle. I stopped making time for reading; instead, I let other things take priority, enticed by the new experiences and people I met in college. I broke out of the bubble I created as a kid, distracted and thriving in all the stimulation that comes with college. 

Then the pandemic hit. It cut us all off from our social lives, which meant I had plenty of time on my hands. In an unfamiliar world, I started searching for new outlets to manage my anxiety and fill my time. Naturally, it led me back to reading.

But with my cell phone always within reach, my attention span was cut short. After picking up and putting down several books, I eventually settled on one that had been sitting on my shelf for a while (Artemis by Andy Weir). Once I reached a particular spot in the book, I returned to the familiar feeling of being pulled in by the story. There's a sort of ease to it; you find yourself turning page after page without even realizing it. Finishing a book always brings a sense of accomplishment in knowing that you finished what you set out to do.

I have a newfound appreciation for the idea that there's more to books than just stories. Reading is a safe retreat for me now. It's an outlet for my anxiety, a source of inspiration for my creativity, and a community with friends that read and swap books with me. At the end of the day, I just love stories. I love characters. I love books. Books unlock an infinite number of worlds and experiences you've never had before, and there's something special about the privilege of having the time to get immersed in them.

If you've ever thought about picking up a book, do it. Spend 10 minutes a night picking up that book beside your bed. Get lost in each story, finding bits and pieces of yourself. I hope it can benefit you as much as it has for me.

September 11, 2021Comments are off for this post.

this is water.

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As humans, our views tend to be enduring. Rarely do our opinions shift. But every now and then I'll stumble upon a piece that makes me take a step back and consider my outlook on everyday life.

It sounds dramatic, but then I read and watched David Foster Wallace's 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College.  It was an assignment for a class, but as I listened, I was drawn to his words. His commencement speech is atypical; he pokes fun at the conventional format and clichés often brought up to a graduating class. He addresses the realities of life after college when you are suddenly thrust into the adult world.

If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable.

But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try and see it

Wallace, 2005

Wallace says it's easy to operate on a default setting. It's easy to live with the belief that the world is supposed to cater to your needs and to your feelings, and anything hindering your progression throughout your day is an inconvenience. If you really think about it, there aren't any experiences in your life where you weren't the absolute center of it. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you, but yours are immediate and real. This is our default setting, "hard-wired into our boards at birth." But it's rarely spoken about because it's considered so abhorrent in a social context.

He uses the example of having to go to the supermarket after work. You're tired after a long day but forget to get groceries earlier in the week, so you're standing in the check-out lane. And suddenly there's a lady screaming at her kid in front of you. Maybe you begin to feel impatient. In that situation, it's easy to automatically become annoyed or frustrated. Because they are taking up your time by making you stand in this line longer than you feel is necessary, so now you can't beat the evening traffic to go back to your home.

It requires little effort to take on this default setting - that you are the center of the world - when you are experiencing the mundane, frustrating, and boring parts of your adult life. But what Wallace emphasizes is you have no idea what people around you are experiencing in their lives. When you are aware enough, you can choose to look at these situations in a different light. Because maybe you are the one in their way. Maybe that lady is going through the worst imaginable experience in her life right now, and she's yelling at her kid right now because it's bubbling up and bursting into the moment right in front of you.

Our society promotes this mindset. Society pushes the idea of personal freedom, letting us, as Wallace puts it, "be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of creation." But real, true freedom means having enough consciousness and awareness to choose how you construct meaning in your experiences.

So what does it mean to break away from our default settings? Wallace admits that this is a difficult thing to do. There are days when you won't want to put in the effort and there are days when you just can't. Wallace speaks to his own experience, saying that an academic education actually enables his tendency to over-intellectualize, and get lost in the "abstract argument in [his] head." He misses what's going on right in front of him.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?

Wallace, 2005

Wallace shares this anecdote in his speech to demonstrate what it means to diverge from the default. Living with knowledge means living with your eyes open, knowing what's right in front of you. It means reminding yourself of the true realities that exist around you and considering how your perception of the world isn't necessarily everyone's perception. It means to live with discipline, awareness, and attention. It's reminding yourself "this is water." And it's putting those ideas at the forefront of your daily consciousness.

September 6, 2018Comments are off for this post.

the book that brought me back to reading

the lightkeepers

Set on a dangerous archipelago in the Farallon Islands, The Lightkeepers by Abby Geni follows Miranda, a nature photographer that decides to spend a year capturing the landscape. The wildlife alone immediately puts her to the test when she's swarmed by mice upon landing, proving that Southeast Farallon is indeed the most "rodent-dense place in the world."

If that weren't enough, the water is treacherous and characterized by an alarming number of shark attacks, the bedrock is coming apart, and the water is so dangerous that ships can't dock and instead have to lift Miranda in a net with a crane to get her ashore. But she's not alone. She's living in a cabin with a group of scientists who have been studying the island.

Shortly after her arrival, Miranda is assaulted. One of her colleagues is found dead a couple days later. The novel follows Miranda as she witnesses the natural wonders of this place, deepens her connections with the scientists, and deals with what has happened to her. 

When more violence occurs, each member of the island falls under suspicion. The book maintains a level of tension that gradually increases with each twist and turn, and is narrated through the numerous letters that Miranda writes to her late mother.

"I wish you were here. I wish you were anywhere."

(the beginning of one of miranda's letters to her mother)

the lightkeepers farallon islands

(Wikimedia Commons)

The Farallon Islands are a real place (if you can believe it). 27 miles from San Francisco, the islands were dubbed "Islands of the Dead" by the Coast Miwok, an indigenous people that inhabited northern California. They islands have been protected as a National Wildlife Sanctuary since 1999, and the only people allowed are scientists who study the local wildlife. There is a long history of shipwrecks, ghosts, shark-infested waters, and egg wars. Yes, egg wars. The 1863 conflict named the "Egg War" was between two rival egging companies who claimed the right to collect eggs on the islands. These islands were fictionalized for the first time by Abby Geni in her book called (you guessed it) The Lightkeepers.

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(Stacey Rozich, NY Times)

Miranda never settles in one place too long and is a frequent traveler. In the year she spends with the scientists, she gets to know them well. Mick studies the whales and seals on the island, and becomes a close friend of Miranda. Then there's Forest and Galen: the shark specialists. Forest is quiet and reserved. Galen, an older man, is in charge of the operations on the island. Next is Andrew, who studies the birds on the island with Lucy, his lover. Quiet and menacing, he doesn't seem to care much about the islands. Lucy constantly picks on Miranda. And finally there's Charlene, the intern. Characterized by her red hair and bubbly personality, she spends a lot of time with Lucy. Throughout the book, the relationships between each of the scientists and Miranda are explored.

What I enjoyed about the book is that the animals are just as complex as the humans. She struggles with her role on the island with the animals. Is she an observer? A protector? An aggressor? From the gulls on the island described as killers to Miranda's subsequent injury from petting a shark, the wildlife on the islands seem like something to fear. And Miranda does initially. But following her assault and the death of one of the scientists, she suddenly finds the beauty in her surroundings, almost as if she's surrendered to it.

"The bats began to rise. It happened all at once, as though they had received a command. I could see them spiraling upward in a column of smoky gray. I watched the flock pour out through a broken window. Their numbers were enough to blacken the stars. They erased the moon."

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When I first picked this book up, I wasn't sure I was going to like it because it was different from the genres I typically read. But this book was so captivating and interesting. The way that Abby Geni writes just pulls you into the story. I ended up marking pages that I wanted to go back and reread. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's looking for something different, and a story that is mysterious and emotional and complex.

"Perhaps there were only two kinds of people in the world - the takers and the watchers - the plunderers and the protectors - the eggers and the lightkeepers."