I think when you understand everything going on in your life, or don’t feel the need to think about it, then music becomes uninteresting.

But in those moments when you feel bodily your loneliness, and you’re walking through a light snowstorm in the dark, the world takes on filmic aspects. Enya’s sighing “Only Time” drifts through the streets of Cambridge, and the sky weeps tiny snowflakes into shining rivers under the streetlamps.

At the HPR dinner last night, I sat with a group of senior editors. Strange how glasses of alcohol can make a one year difference in age seem like a millennium. So there, in supplication before those Jewish sages, I listened silently to discussions of Jewish Guilt.

I was surprised – a guilt felt for disappointing one’s parents?  It sounds exactly like the Chinese adolescent experience. But perhaps I’ve somehow moved beyond it; my hours spent in a dark bedroom this semester were filled with guilt towards myself. How can I be this way? So closed, fearful, and laggard? The middle school horror of myself resurfaced, wide-eyed. But is there any use to wedging myself into the subaltern spot? Does it bring me any closer to stumbling onto that shining, fantastical me, again?

This week, I’ve felt like I lost a half of myself. But it was a good thing; I have sometimes misplaced my phone because there is no one to call. And when that happens I have time to maintain an ordered room and start to walk back towards myself.