: a musical instrument having steel wire strings that sound when struck by felt-covered hammers operated from a keyboard

(Merriam-Webster dictionary)

I propose a small adjustment:

Piano - noun

: a musical instrument, or time travel machine, having steel wire strings that sound and move you through cosmoses when struck by felt-covered hammers operated from a keyboard

Piano - noun

: it’s is where it all began, and it’s where you will go.

88 keys, 52 white and 36 black.

Sitting at the piano stool, you have a choice. Where do you want to go today?

You could travel to being five again with the basic C major scale, forced into piano lessons with an auntie that is now just a silhouette in your memory. Your leg is bouncing through the whole hour and you are eager for it to be over so that you can go play in the pool.

I’ve moved 12 beds, but I could always find those 88 keys. They were in school buildings and the homes of new friends and tucked on a board in the corner of rooms. I’d find them on sidewalks and airports; I looked for them in Parisian train stations and grocery stores; they sit in every dorm living room of the school I’m at now, sometimes dusty with keys misshaped and out of tune, but they are there.

You could relearn the motions of Comptine d`un autre ete and go back to your childhood apartment, thirteen and perched at the piano by your mom’s Buddha statue, sight reading a song you found online when searching for “the prettiest piano songs,” as you did in your free time. Your mom would be just next door, in her room down the hallway and laying in her bed the day after she had breast cancer surgery, but you wouldn’t know she was there, or pretended not to. She’d tell you later that she had been resting and your playing was beautiful and made her feel better and you will feel jaded until six years later when your friend gets an x-ray for a potential breast tumor and suddenly the memory, the song, the piano; it all makes you cry.

You could bring your fingers to the same chords that ring through the “Dancing Queen” chorus that you memorized at sixteen to play in the pit band for your high school’s musical production. You could go back to that seat at the keyboard below the stage, looking up at the star of the show, who would become an ex. The score had a keyboard part for most songs, except for one — her big solo. You could sit back and watch the one musical scene from the whole show that you were able to; you could gape again at the way lyrics soared out of her mouth when she sang; you could sit there blissfully unaware of how those nights of adoration would turn into hours of summer train visits and a love that felt impossibly true that would also rip your insides up so vigorously you now wonder if that was the last time you let yourself fall so freely into a feeling. This piano could take you back to before it all happened: when it was all still an invincible idea.

Every time your foot hits the pedal it is the first semester of college, in my piano professor’s studio. He’s telling me that my pedaling is awful, but also that I’m an amazing player. He continues to tell me that every week, and it confuses me. I have to go to performance class and I hate it because my mind sews my classmates’ perception of my playing into the fabric of my identity. But over the course of the semester, I learn how to trill effortlessly and play at the speed of light and that something unfathomable is possible when someone believes in you more than you do yourself. My classmates compliment my every performance and I eventually start to believe it. Grieg’s Notturno is the walk back to the dorm after performance class, where the sun had set while you were in there and the moonlight paints the buildings a faded glow. This is a song I want to play again and again and again.

Sitting at the piano stool, you have a choice. You could go back, or you could learn something new. You could make a new destination for your future self.

This semester, I’m practicing Beethoven’s Concerto No. 3 for a concerto competition in November. It’s the kind of piece my classmates would play in performance class while my first year self would sit there listening in awe and wonder how she could ever match up to them. When played with an orchestra, it’s over 30 minutes long. Although I learned it last year, I couldn’t memorize it in time and couldn’t compete. It’s really hard and really long. Some days, the last thing I want to do is practice. But the upcoming competition has brought out a discipline I only recognize in my younger self, and I think I can do it this year; I want to do it this year. I want to pour my body over every staff line and note on the sheet music, for my entire arms to ache from drilling the score so deeply into my fingers, because I’m realizing more than ever what a privilege it is to have a piano and be surrounded by people that absorb my love for my art. I want to remember what it feels like to be here: the bodily sensation of standing at the precipice of some kind of incomprehensible life change I will only know in a year. Life is changing all the time, but there are few times you know you are in that moment before it all changes. You often wish you could’ve known you were there. So here I am, now, celebrating that knowledge with a concerto.

Sitting at the piano stool, you have a choice. You might just be sitting at a piano, but you are sitting in front of it with a heart that begs to feel and body that begs to live. The present will always become a site of nostalgia, and the patterns you engrain in your fingers are giving yourself a way to come back, even if it’s just for a song.

Acknowledgements — I started writing this and it felt familiar, and then I realized that it was extremely inspired by Myla’s audio project, “A TOUR OF EVERY POOL.” This is basically an imitation of her piece, which is worth all the listens in the world. And also the book “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe.” Thank you Scripps College core curriculum.

1. I’m back on campus, and it has somehow frozen in time.

2. When I walk around campus, I remember everything. At the sidewalk by my freshman year dorm it is the night before course registration for our freshman spring semester and my friends and I are in a huddle, talking about how nervous we were and wishing each other luck before we dispersed off to bed. I remember the immense relief I felt that I had friends by my side to support me through the world shattering event of the war that is first year course registration and feeling a glimmer of belonging.

3. But also, I am back, and Ellie and Quinn are not here and not coming back and that is more devastating than I could’ve ever expected.

4. In training, everyone keeps telling us Scripps is the most caring college campus community they’ve ever seen. Going into my last year, I can finally recognize it, and I am so proud. But the fact of that makes me feel like I’m already losing it.

5. On one of our first nights a group of us played cards as the sun submerged into the sky and I missed laugher like that; how my diaphragms can contract in rhythm with everyone else on this campus so easily.

6. I have been hugged from behind and heard “you’re back!” and told how much I was missed and I feel so so welcomed back

7. At CC training we’ve been doing so. many. icebreakers. The second day of training was four hours straight of icebreakers. There’s a lot of would you rathers specifically about bodily functions. I take those very seriously. Then there are others that I regret not answering honestly, like if you could time travel to any time period with no rules, where would we go? While I think going to the future to hopefully find the solutions to every possible problem that will surface (what I said) isn’t a bad idea, I probably should’ve said that I would really just go back to May of my sophomore year. To talk to her again; to see if I could stop it from happening after knowing what I do now.

8. When I moved in, a voice that asks how I can enjoy an experience knowing the end is so clearly in sight permanently lodged itself in my head.

9. I always feel a lot during these few weeks of the year, and this year it is the same way.

10. I simultaneously miss the past so viscerally but also feel so turbulently in the present.

11. I’ve been afraid to tell people I feel that same way, probably because it also involves having feelings for someone. Sometimes I work up the courage and they ask me why I was afraid. For someone who has prided myself in my ability to destigmatize the way I feel, I don’t know.

12. I’ve learned an acceptance of the way I feel and the lack of being able to control it. Yet I’ve been conditioned to think that romantic feelings are also somehow in my control.

13. I’ve also learned an acceptance of the fact that feelings are fleeting and will always pass, and sometimes there is nothing you can do about them. I can memorialize the best days of my life with sentimental ritual but those days will inevitably end. I can cut my bangs when I’m sad but the feeling will linger until it’s ready to leave, but it will leave. Yet romantic feelings hijack me with such intensity that I feel the urgent need to do something about them. I’m learning how to wait.

14. I wonder if this is all my body’s attempt at reliving the past in a yearly loop; experiencing it again but slightly different this time because I yearn so deeply to go back

15. Yesterday after moving in the freshmen a big group of us all played marco polo in the pool then did handstand competitions and I taught everyone the game poopy pants that I learned from a summer of backpacking. Parents took pictures of us and someone thought we were an orientation group. I think that is the ultimate compliment.

16. Two weeks before I came back to campus, I was catsitting in LA. One day I walked around my sister’s old college campus and remembered that the last time we were there was her graduation, how she’s moved back home and will never be back here like that again. I thought about how it was mine next. And then I cried.

California welcomed me back seamlessly. I listened to the new MUNA album in the car back from LAX just like I’d picture all semester when I missed it here. I’ve been craning my neck for the LA skyline and palm-tree-framed streets during my commutes and swimming in the ocean almost every day. I’m regaining my small talk and oversharing skills with strangers. Getting back in the driver’s seat of my subaru felt like I’d just driven it the night before and parked it in the garage, except for the occasional moments where I’m making a turn and need to remember which lane to go into, the voice in my head reminding me the driver should be in the middle, and my chest loosens a little in relief that there is something about my time abroad here still with me.

When I talk to some of my friends from abroad who are now also home or back in their college town, as well as my other college friends who studied abroad in other countries, we agree that it all just feels like a faraway dream that we can’t really wrap our head around. Some nights when I can’t fall asleep I find myself replaying memories of my time in Cape Town: a random night out, my walk back from campus or to the grocery store, conversations I had with people whose mannerisms are slowly fading into vignettes. Classes started again this week and a few of my friends there texted that they were thinking of me, and I cherish even those few words on the screen, because they are proof that it was real and it happened, that even if the experience blurs into make believe in my mind at least others are still being haunted by it too.

I spent last week in Portland, where I reunited with friends and sank into hugs that made it feel even more like South Africa could’ve all been a dream; picking up just how we left off in a comforting, relieving, bittersweet way; all the things I’d seen and felt and people I’d met and cried about who would never know their names just seemed to disintegrate and we could’ve been here this whole time, me still wanting all of our memories back just as much as I wanted them before. I swam in the river and picked peaches and went to so many coffee shops; I sent off a friend who is moving across the world with hardly any plan after graduating and saw others that are just moving back home. I thought about my future the whole time, too.

Before I left, I was so scared that everything would change. But now, I’m scared that nothing has.

In Portland, Quinn and I went to an event where Ocean Vuoung talked about his recent book, as well as shared other tangential wisdom. He believes that caring is paying attention, so engaging with the world is one way to care for the craft of writing. When asked about what he enjoys about writing, he said it was “error.” He refers to the first draft, a product that you hate and makes you second guess all ambitions of writing, but is still your consciousness conducted to you as syntax. He reminisces about a botched hookup he had when he was seventeen that turned into a mentor figure for him, a memory he has still never forgotten; through error, I find delight in grace. It’s our responsibility, he says, to test the limits of the medium. Because writing is the only place where error is at such a low cost, and error never means that you are lost. With that privilege, why wouldn’t I try everything?

In that theatre, I felt my body settle with certainty that I want to be a writer, and then I was scared because I know it is a dream the world doesn’t want you to have. As we walked out, Quinn and I gushed about his wisdom, in awe of how well spoken and thoughtful he is, and I doubted that I would ever reach an ounce of that eloquence. I was afraid that I would never reach an ounce of that eloquence, or that I’m not brave enough to pay enough attention in the currently crumbling world that would bring justice to the art form. “But, let’s not forget he’s lived almost double the amount of life we have,” we reminded ourselves. I’m sure that time will bestow us with some sort of wisdom and strength we have yet to discover.

A woman walking behind us chimed into our conversation. “Are you writers?” she asked. Quinn said I was. “I’m a therapist with an MFA,” she said, “and he’s right. Fuck up gloriously.” Then she disappeared to her car.

I’ve begun rereading all my old journals (there are 41 to date) to find inspiration for my thesis. In my therapist’s words, “I’m growing it from my journals.” I’m currently in 2021, and I’m remembering so much joy, but it also feels like somebody else’s life. How did I ever feel this way? I asked Myla. Why did I think that?

She responded by saying that’s exactly why I wrote it all down. Because I’ll never get it back, but it’s there. I might never get back into that headspace again because of the ways I’ve grown, but the record of it is powerful and important and a fraction of the intensity and emotions that have now dissipated.

Two nights ago I met a girl who told me writing is a superpower that less and less people have nowadays. People will never forget the power of good writing, she said. AI slop has reminded her that. I told her AI slop is exactly what I’m afraid of, but maybe she’s right.

One woman in particular, who was working in ministry, persistently reached out to me after we met haphazardly on campus and connected about being from the US, and we got coffee or breakfast almost every week. I don’t know how it works, but I was probably on her list of students. Some of my friends questioned if I ever found it disingenuous, and maybe I did slightly when she proposed that we read the bible every week for the rest of the semester halfway through it, but she respected my boundaries, and it mostly felt like I was getting free coffees and making a friend. We rarely talked explicitly about religion, but rather about what it was like transitioning to life in Cape Town, the unique juxtaposition of it with life in the US, our favorite music and TV shows and hobbies and what we had been up to in the last week. We were both new to Cape Town when we first met, and our coffee dates were filled with a shared laughter and genuine interest in getting to know the other that was exactly what we both needed during a time of transition.

During our first hangout, we sat on a bench on campus at the base of the mountains behind us overlooking a beautiful view. We talked about a shared love for nature and then exchanged life stories, during which she also detailed her journey with faith. Nature was a big thing for me, she said. If the world is so beautiful, how could it not be God who made it?

I didn’t grow up with much exposure to Christianity, or honestly many other religions. I learned a lot from her, but most of what I learned about religion was just through our conversations about life. Since she is so devout, her religious practices or perspectives were naturally woven into catching up about our days and weeks. I learned that a lot of Christianity mirrors what I already do as a nonbeliever.

One week, she talked about how in the past week she’d given up social media AND sweets this year for lent.

Why did you make it so hard for yourself? I asked.

Because I don’t want to be too dependent on anything. (relatable)

I want to make sure I’m prioritizing my relationship with the Lord and trusting He will be there for me. (unrelatable)

I too don’t want to be dependent on anything, and that’s why I write. It gives grief somewhere to go, when no one else is around to feel it with me. I know that as long as I can write, my heart will survive.

Lunch at the YMCA on campus was always preceded with a sermon. During those lunches, I realized that I actually really enjoyed listening to them, but not because of the religious takeaways. Never did the characters feel real, but a sermon moved me in the same ways a powerful speech does. It gave me a chance to reflect about my life and my intentions while also being in community. It captures the feelings of being alive, like the Bible also explores. I’m in awe of the literary work that the Bible is.

The analogy that makes the most sense to me as a writer is that Christians seemed like English majors doing a lifelong literary analysis of the bible. I see the appeal. But if I try and believe in God, like sit down and really imagine a world where He is why all of this is happening, it doesn’t feel right. I feel tight chested. And you could tell me what that means, but I know I don’t like the feeling.

—

On the way back from one of our breakfasts, she told me to just ask if I had any questions. I asked her how someone gets into Heaven, and she proceeded to explain the gospel and the start of the Bible and the symbolism in it and I wanted to hear all about it because I felt like I was listening to a friend gush about something she really cares about, and I’ll always love doing that.

The story about Adam and Eve and sin reminded me a lot of the story of 嫦娥 and how she was told not to eat the pill (forbidden fruit), and spent the rest of eternity in the moon (death/sin). I heard that story every mid autumn festival while growing up. I believed it when I was younger, and I would look up at the moon for 嫦娥 every year. Then at some point it became just a story, but I’d still look up at the moon for her, for old times’ sake, to feel like I was a child again, to contemplate how you could wholeheartedly believe something once then stop, maybe without ever really knowing why.

—

I asked another close friend I’d made while abroad who is Christian about her belief, and she said that she believes because everything works out because of Him. When her grandparents died, it really solidified her faith because she knows that she will see them again, and the fact of that comforted her.

During the semester, I also found myself talking with another friend about a situation she’s found herself stuck in for years and didn’t know if she’d ever get out of.

It’ll always work out, I assured her, because I was her once, not believing that it would, and it did, of course.

I don’t really believe in that stuff, though, she said. Like, the “if it’s meant to be it’ll be” kind of stuff.

I told her that I honestly didn’t think I did either, but sometimes it feels like that’s all I can tell myself. Because life would be so scary if everything didn’t work out the way it’s supposed to.

I also lost someone close to me, but my brain didn’t go to heaven or God when I did. It just went to the fact that sometimes things like that happen and that’s that. But in a way, that feels like everything working out. My therapist and I used to joke that radical acceptance would be my superpower of choice, but I think we were onto something. It seems like the ability to radically accept is supernatural in the way it is so hard for us to do, so even religion is an attempt at framing the narrative.

—

I went to church with this same friend for the first time this semester in another attempt to immerse myself and understand. I almost cried; I still don’t think I believe. I was moved by the collective effervescence of our communal singing, and you could tell me what that means, but I still don’t think I was supposed to feel like I was in a lecture theatre watching a literary analysis presentation when we dove into a part of the bible and the pastor flipped through a powerpoint. I don’t think that when I was listening to the sermon, I was supposed to feel like I was back in middle school and listening to my friends explain the entire Marvel Universe to me after we’d just watched End Game together despite me not having any marvel context and being unable to keep up with all their storylines and characters.

During the sermon, people chanted along to sections of certain proverbs, and I understood them completely, because I too know exactly what it’s like to know every Taylor Swift song and its album and context. During the songs, I stood in awe of the musicians on stage and their talent. Throughout the whole time, I’d look around and feel comforted by how clean and polished the space we were in presented itself. I imagined how much of a weekly safe haven it could become when spaces like that feel harder and harder to access.

A NYT article correlates the lefts’ antagonization of religion with its diminishing political hope, citing religion as an effective blueprint for social organization, rallying towards a cause, and seeing past the present moment. Similarly, abolitionist Mariama Kaba highlights that hope is a discipline. Hope has to be cultivated and practiced; it is becoming exponentially more difficult to maintain hope in a world that is actively developing to quell care. I’m trying to learn that from those who are religious.

I too want to be saved. I want to live a life full of hope and optimism and be immune from fear of death and destruction and everything bad. I know the people I met want me to be saved, too. Their care is meaningful to me. In some ways, that’s the deepest way someone might ever care about me – trying to help my soul in not only this life, but forever. It would be real convenient if I could just sit back and really feel like that could be true.

But religion still feels too perfected to me. Even though I can see how it technically promotes an acceptance of the unknown, it still feels like an assignment of perfection to disorder. Because by saying everything works out, by assigning an all-knowing creator that is commanding our every move, aren’t we still not actually accepting what’s right in front of us? Aren’t we still rejecting the real present because we are instead holding out for a future moment where it will all make sense?

Maybe the whole point is that it will or won’t work out, but the real discipline is still caring when the outcome is not guaranteed. Because nothing hurts more than caring about something that does not work out; no discipline is stronger than hope in a lost cause.

In philosopher Clifford’s treatise, he claims that it’s unethical to weakly believe, or to believe something without sufficient evidence. This is because your false belief could have a ripple effect on other people’s lives:

“Every time we let ourselves believe for unworthy reasons, we weaken our powers of self control, of doubting, of judicially and fairly weighing evidence. We all suffer severely enough from the maintenance and support of false beliefs and the fatally wrong actions which they lead to, and the evil born when one such belief is entertained is great and wide.”

Perhaps I only want to believe in something I am completely sure about — and that’s the fundamental paradox of belief, because it seems like faith functions on taking a chance.

I loved church because it gave me the space to ponder our existence collectively. I believe in people, and I believe in community. I believe that caring will save us, and that starts with introspection, which a lot of Christianity functions on. I love that church and religious gatherings give people an accessible opportunity to do so, and that will never not be beautiful. The woman who was reaching out to me told me that I reminded her of her younger self with my openness to learning about everything and curiosity in religion, and it would just take actually experiencing a moment of faith to believe. So maybe one day, I will — I don’t know because I’m surrendering control too. I don’t think I can separate feeling from believing, so it’s up to my body now. And I honestly think she and I believe in the same thing.

After lunch I went camping with Jess and Maki (friends from study abroad), and it was so nice to be together on an adventure again. For a day and a night, I could resume the carefree version of myself that I had to say a painful goodbye to a few weeks ago, a version of myself who sees life with an intense brightness because she’s surrounded by people who laugh when she does and find the same joy in marvelling at the world and swimming in the ocean as her. Jess brought her snorkel and we watched fish slide through the water; at some point I kicked a sea urchin and hobbled back to shore and so then we just lay on the sand and talked. We had dinner at the one singular restaurant on the beach, where we quickly felt welcomed by their one month old puppy and when everyone working there already knew that we were the ones taking the 10am boat out the next day. After eating we watched cows emerge from the hills to their bedroom that is the sand and reminisced about the animals we’d watched in Namibia. Jess managed to build us a makeshift campfire that the wind didn’t want, but it fought for life long enough for us to roast two successful s’mores trees over it for us to make s’moreos like the old days. Jess built me a s’moreo inspired cake and the wind blew out my candles for me. Then we swam naked in the ocean, leaning into the lull of the waves.

The time came for us to try and fall asleep. I might have to wake up to pee in the middle of the night // that’s okay, just climb over me — we began hopeful. But as we lay in the humid, warm tent, feeling every inch of our skin develop sticky sweat, I knew it would be a long night. Two hours in, Jess unzipped her side of the tent door for some air, and we all laughed at the fact that we were all still awake. Broiling in agony, we tried a new approach of leaving the tent doors unzipped and instead just drenching ourselves in bug spray. The bug spray didn’t work, so now it was just as hot, and we were also covered in mosquito bites. The sharp itch all over my body fended off any possible drowsiness. We shifted gears and consulted the internet, where most people responded to our search of “what to do when you’re camping in the summer and it’s hot and there’s mosquitos” with: just don’t. But it was too late for us, and someone said to sleep with a wet towel, so I walked to the shoreline and soaked my shirt in sea water, stumbling through the dark hazy world because I’d taken out my contacts and forgot my glasses at home. We settled into our final attempt at sleeping under wet towels and shirts. Throughout the trials and tribulations of the night hours, we couldn’t help but giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation and how we had willingly baked ourselves in a humid oven and forgotten how hot summers are in Hong Kong. It’s hard to stay upset when you’re laughing and have people around you that continue to be optimistic, and I feel exactly where I need to be going into 21 having met people who have taught me that.

We managed to miraculously sleep for a few hours. The first hour of this sleep was a cycle of putting ointment on all my mosquito bites and dozing off while they were temporarily quelled, waking up with itch burning all over my body because the ointment wore off, reapplying and dozing off again, waking up, repeat. It was kind of miserable, yet that night I knew exactly where every bite on my body was and exactly how to reach it, and that might be the most in tune with my largest organ I’ve ever been.

At 5am we peered at the sunrise through the tent mesh, then ran into the ocean to cool off because we were still so hot. The wild boars had gotten to our remaining marshmallows and oreos that we’d tied up a tree with a plastic bag and left a mess behind them. We had a breakfast of instant noodles at the restaurant at the beach, which was the only thing they could serve after they unexpectedly lost power that night, and we ran a delirious round of our favorite card game while we waited for the boat to pick us up.

It’s still a little foreign to me to not treat a birthday as a crazy holiday that’ll give me enough of a high to last me the rest of the year, because that’s what they used to be to me. During adolescence, there was something so addicting about the validation. I’d stay close to my phone, tracking every greeting as it rolled in: calculating time zones to anticipate when each specific person would wish, and as one could expect, intense disappointment if someone didn’t and their window passed. Younger me proudly said a birthday was my favorite day of the year, my favorite holiday, the best day ever — and for a few of my younger teenage years, it was. I’d spend the first half of the year counting down for the day of instagram story collages and handwritten cards and basking in the attention that my friends so sweetly would shower me with. But then I would somehow always end up crying, often for reasons I didn’t know at the time, and I experienced such an intense cognitive dissonance when what was supposed to be the best day ever actually just wasn’t. Jae would tell me that birthdays encapsulate the entire year and life that led up to them, so of course you’re feeling all the emotions. I spent the evening of the day I turned nineteen on the phone with him, curled up in bed after finding myself in a city without friends I felt particularly close to, and with the grim realization that relationships are always changing and life is never the way you expect it to be — an introduction to what I’m learning to be one of the greatest truths of adulthood.

This year Jae still woke up to call me, but I told him I didn’t cry. A few days prior, I deleted instagram again for the foreseeable future (it’s a toxic relationship) with the knowledge that a lot of people would probably forget, because I too know how much I used to rely on social media stories for reminders. I also have been the worst at remembering birthdays since college started, especially during breaks, so I accepted my karma and did my best to “just treat it like another day” — wisdom Quinn imparted to me two years ago as an antidote for birthday disappointment. It always comes back to how linear time is a colonial construct after all… /woke

Turning 21 felt exactly how I want a birthday to feel. A lot of being present and reflecting and gratitude for my life and everyone in it. (Struggling to sleep gave me a lot of time for that.) A fulfilment with being alive and carrying the wholehearted belief that every year just gets better, and I just get wiser, and I know myself enough to know how to make the day beautiful for myself. Still a little bit of wishing some people remembered, because life would actually feel wrong if I no longer yearned at all whatsoever, but pride that I’ve developed enough of a sense of self-worth that I’m not worried when people forgot, because I know that I’ve never doubted that they care.

Like Jae says, the day is just a microcosm of my life at present. Right now, everyone I care about is spread out; our lives moving at the cosmic speed of light beams shooting in haphazard directions. I feel lucky that they have all even crossed, and that our dreams are bigger than just birthdays. To keep up at this pace feels like a challenge my twenties are bestowing on me that I want to take on. It might be impossible, and I can’t wait.

I grew to love this time spent at her apartment extra much because I also got to know her roommate, Leah. Over that stove, the three of us recounted our life stories, ranked all of our favorite cuisines and snacks and Taylor Swift albums, and hashed out all of our dilemmas. The chopping board heard us draft risky text messages and talk about everything we did that day, and the whiteboard held all our doodles as evidence of our conversations. If anything ever went slightly wrong during the day, I knew that the kitchen of apartment 73 would make it all better.

We taught each other cooking hacks we’ve picked up over the years, ways to make quick things and flavor combinations that go well together. We took on recipes of dishes I thought only existed in ca caan tengs in Hong Kong. I learned what ingredients kept coming up and needed to be picked up at the store. We learned that trying to shortcut a step often just adds way more new steps to backtrack the damage, and how important it is to take meat out of the freezer early. Sometimes our friends who lived next door would come try a bite of what we’d made or come say hi because they heard my laugh through the walls, and I learned that my presence is welcomed without me having to earn it. I watched food bring people together again and again; how it served as a diving board for all of us to spend more time together. It was during one of these nights that Cooper came over to watch Rupaul in Leah’s room, and I joined them in the beginning of what became a daily routine. I remembered that sometimes all life is about is being there in each other’s company, and how much seeing a friend can turn a day around.

And I remembered that people love the same things and food that you love — the same food that, even if you feel like you’ve grown past it now, made you wonder if you were too different when you were twelve and sometimes sneakily still does.

When I leave home, the food is one of the things I miss the most. Sometimes it’s visceral how deeply I feel it. But our evenings diminished that missing for the rest of my life, and because of that there will always be a before and after Jess and apartment 73 and our semester abroad of learning how to cook.

At the start of my time there, it all used to sting. I wasn’t used to it, and my difference felt palpable. I felt like a homogenous exotic other of “Asian”, or holding a static, outdated identity that could only be Chinese without nuance, or that people didn’t actually care about who I was and just wanted to impose their own definitions onto me. But then halfway throughout my time abroad, I traveled with my parents to Tanzania. Similar things happened and my parents didn’t seem to mind, but if they’d just happened to me I would have been extremely defensive. For my mom, she feels more Chinese than I do and is proud of it, so acknowledgement of her Chinese identity was actually affirming. My dad seemed to feel similarly, or would hold the title of being from Hong Kong firmly. But since my identity feels so much more nuanced than just that, and I’ve been insecure about my language abilities for my whole life, assumptions about it made me question my belonging in spaces. But over our trip, things like this happened:

• Being told to 脱鞋 (take off my shoes in mandarin) at the Nairobi Airport when going through security in almost perfect pronunciation. I cracked a slight smile and he earnestly asked if it was right, and I said yes.

• A man/tour guide for another group overhearing my parents talking about Hong Kong in the lobby of our hotel in Serengeti and saying 你好. When my mom asked him in mandarin if he could speak Chinese, he responded fluently that he studied in Tianjin. We proceeded to have a conversation in Chinese about his studies and work and my mom exchanged numbers with him, saying she’d recommend him as a guide to her friends that can’t speak English

• My family telling our safari guide we were from Hong Kong and my mom asking him a lot of questions about the Chinese population in Tanzania. He proceeded to point out all the Chinese built factories and buildings we’d pass over the course of the week

Coming back to Cape Town after this trip, I embraced these conversations a little more. I asked some friends I’d made who are Asian and from South Africa what their experiences have been, and they agreed that sometimes it’s well meaning, other times it isn’t, and that’s just how it goes. I started telling more people I grew up in Hong Kong when they asked where I was “actually” from, and we discussed the positive relations China and many Africa countries have. A student in one of my classes told me she was learning Chinese to get her Masters in China and I told her I could practice speaking with her. I wouldn’t have learned so much about the world if I just shut all these things down.

On my second last day in Cape Town, Emihle told Dora and I about how she loves learning basic words in new languages and trying to greet people in their native language; to her, it was an act of intention and curiosity, an indication that she cares. But she also told us that one of her friends told her it was racist and she didn’t know why. I told her sometimes people’s relationship to their language identity can be fragile, and the harm might be when you assume you know what their native language might be; we both agreed that assumptions are what’s bad about it all. Seeing her genuine curiosity about Dora and my mandarin names, how she remembered the sounds and tones of 欢迎光临 because she heard it at a restaurant once without knowing what it meant, and how she really just wanted to learn, helped solidify a new perspective.

Race relations in South Africa are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The categories of races are different altogether, and when Chinese used to be a race on its own, of course its more prominent as a way people would identify me. People aren’t afraid to talk about race explicitly, which also makes sense in a country whose history of bloodshed literally revolved around race as a concept, and when it has only been 30 years since that blood was shed. In the US, we shy around the topic of race despite it still being the organizing factor of society. Although it makes things more comfortable on the surface level, I wonder how much harm gets hidden under language.

There is a deep pain of racial reckoning that runs through South Africa, which cuts deeper than how any of how these ignorances graze me. I grew up insecure about my identity because of language, and that insecurity has only extended as I’ve moved around and faced new challenges. There are parts of myself that cannot show up at the same time, around the same people or in the same places. But I know it is also a privilege to know myself well enough and to have seen so much of the world that I know where those parts fit best, and to have somewhere for each of them. Even though a comment that points out how I’m different might always sting a little, as someone who had the privilege of being a visitor in South Africa, I’m grateful to have learned from those experiences.

I still have a hard time thinking about how I won’t ever be back there in Cape Town like that again, with those same people crammed into those small, freezing apartments with barely any space (or furniture) but so so much love for each other and excitement for life. But the classic, ever recurring lesson is that the memories are all reminders of the good that is out there. At seventeen I stood in front of my high school, on the perimeter of graduation, confessing that I was afraid I would never get over all the love and joy I felt from those years and that place but concluding this fear was the exact reason I would find it again. Of course I did, again in college and again the next semester and then the next and once again in Cape Town. And I know I will, again and again and again.

“Cape Town made me feel so alive,” Layla told us for her rose at our last morning coffee, and I don’t know how else to put it. Here are some lists in an attempt to recap some of that life from the past five months —

Things I’m coming back with:

• Some biltong in my backpack

• Newfound love for malva pudding, milk tart, chicken & pap, Savannah ciders, chicken mayo sandwiches, and Amapiano

• Deeper appreciation for central heating

• A revived belief in romance after watching my friends put themselves out there and find people who love their company as much as they deserve

• A nose piercing

• Knowledge about car rental, and how to file a stolen phone at the police station in SA

• So many more models in my life of how to be kind

• Slightly worse lungs and liver.. but stronger calves

• Rupaul songs engrained in my memory (the drag race theme song and peanut butter, specifically)

• Confidence in my ability to cook for myself

• Beaded everything (necklaces, belt, room decor, keychains, pouches)

• Mental map of some southern hemisphere constellations

• A less obsessive attitude towards sleep

Things I will miss:

• Samosas almost every day

• Greeting everyone always

• The view of the city and ocean when you’re on M3 on the way from Rondebosch to downtown

• Seeing everyone at swim practice, social kick convos when we don’t want to do the set, and ice cream every Friday

• Evenings and sleepovers at Jess & Leah’s apartment, cooking dinner and knowing friends are next door to ask for ingredients and offer them food or just see what everyone is up to

• Walks back to mine at the end of the night

• Seeing devil’s peak every morning

• “Seeing the penguins” of an option as weekend activity

• Walking Rondebosch commons and Keurboom park and all the dogs there

• People who aren’t afraid to dance anywhere

• Friends who search for fun and silliness as much as I do, all of our adventures and knowing everyone will want to play a game whatever the setting and fart freely to then laugh about it

• Saying “yoh” at everything

• Not having to see cybertrucks everywhere

• First thursdays

Things I’ve learned:

• Things will work out even if you do not micromanage every second, and there is freedom in being a little type B and accepting that experiences will just happen as they do

• Talking about how I’m feeling with people and being vulnerable might just be one of life’s purposes

• Making all my favorite dishes is easier than I thought (especially with a partner chef like Jess)

• A little bit of meaning is enough; happiness might be a fleeting state, but meaning always comes back around. There’s grief built into existence, but if you have friends you love and things you like to do to give it a little bit of meaning, it’s enough.

• There are people and communities everywhere in the world that are worth throwing yourself into

• You really do feel more settled in a place after a few months; you have the ability to validate your independence more because u know what ur doing

• There is a lot of struggle in South Africa, and the magnitude of it feels greater here than the US, but there are actually a lot of parallels. and with that the resilience and community making also feel more salient

• This struggle also brings more prejudice to the forefront of our lives, and even if you feel like you are the most woke person who has ever walked the streets of Rondebosch, you might still need to actively rewire the stereotypes that have been conditioned so deeply in everything around you. Between caring about safety and holding prejudice sits a delicate line that I’m still learning how to walk, and trying to do that while also making positive change feels like being given 10 disentanglement puzzles, all in a pile, to take apart. But never stop trying, or rewiring

• How to cook rice decently well in a pot

• But a rice cooker is always a worthwhile investment

• I can use Jess’ ID

• You can add stops and split rides on uber, and also see the breakdown of how drivers have rated you in the past

• You really can make anything into something beautiful (all the recycled art)

• Depending on your social network is hard and amazing and worth the sacrifices

• No matter how much of the world you think you’ve seen, there is more

• You actually can’t find boeber anywhere

• You can love an experience as much as romantic love, like how you all you thought about when listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s new album was your time abroad, instead of a person

Things I will never forget:

• Falling asleep in an aquarium beside huge tanks of swimming fish, being close enough to touch families of elephants, seeing the city from above while paragliding

• That children used to play against the backdrop of Table Mountain in District 6, before the bulldozing and displacement and gentrification

• Not to underestimate the need to pack warm clothes

• To never have my phone in my pocket or without my hand on it in a big crowd/on public transport

• Conversations with uber drivers, like one during my last week here whom I asked if he liked living Cape Town and he said, “I love it. The good and the bad, I love it all.”

We introduced ourselves and talked about our studies, halfway through which we mentioned we were from the US, which Emihle couldn’t believe. “I thought you were South African!” We took that as a major compliment. She said she’s from the Eastern Cape. We told her we were leaving South Africa soon, and she responded by inviting us over so she could cook us dinner one night. “I want to show you real Eastern Cape food. Seriously.” she said. So we made a group chat and penciled it in for after exams and hurried off to class.

The other two friends ended up being too busy checking off their final Cape Town bucket list items during our final few days here to make it, but Emihle was still eager, and so was I. This felt like an experience unique to my time here that felt appropriate for its end. So I coordinated a meal with her and brought along Dora, who had fittingly mentioned to me last week that she wished she could be like that guy on Tiktok who travels around the world and asks strangers to cook for him.

Emihle fetched us from downstairs, apologizing that she was still cooking and telling us about how she’d made dough the day before and tried to make steamed bread but accidentally burnt it. Refusing any help from us, we sat and watched her finish making pap and chakalaka, and we talked while mesmerized by the way her muscle memory commanded her different spice drawers.

We learned about how she grew up in the Eastern Cape, in a small town called Engcobo that is embraced by mountains and forest and rivers all at once. That’s where her grandma still lives, and it’s a village where you can ask your neighbors for anything and everything. If you didn’t feel like cooking one night, you know you can just go next door. She takes a 15 hour bus ride to get there every vac. Decembers in those mountains were exciting, because that was when the male rite of passage ceremonies would happen, and they always concluded with grilling meat for everyone. If you ever see smoke in the distance, she said, you know that someone’s making food, and so the whole village would flock there.

She told us about how this village used to be all she ever knew, and she didn’t dream until she started watching movies in high school. That’s when she thought about life beyond the village. Her mom went to university too, and it was important to her that both Emihle and her sister did as well. She watches movies every Friday, watching them on Netflix or YouTube or on her phone after people at her high school sent them to each other through bluetooth. I’ve never met someone who had seen so many movies. She loves binge watching K-dramas, and sometimes C-dramas, as well as learning basic words in other people’s languages. She could perfectly pronounce Dora and my Chinese names. She has never left South Africa, but she wants to one day.

We continued talking as we ate on her floor, cross legged around her folding table. She poured us glasses of coke filled to the brim, because no meal is complete without coke. When it was almost overflowing and I said I didn’t need so much, she said she’d grown accustomed to doing so because her grandma would always ask her is my nose long? when she didn’t fill it all the way up. She made us pap and chakalaka and chicken head/legs/gizzards that we ate with our hands. The brain is the best part, she said as we bit into the heads, and I agreed. Gizzards are her favorite overall, but it wasn’t until she came to uni that she started making them for herself. Usually the head of the household, usually a man, is the only one who gets to eat the gizzards, but she couldn’t resist when she saw them sold at grocery stores in Cape Town. She got so excited hearing about hotpot and our favorite noodle and fried rice dishes, and I wish there was more time to cook for her in return.

We learned about her family and her siblings, that she’s studying data science and likes that her specific track gives her variety in classes; we talked about the differences between our colleges in California and our university here; she told us which slippers she wears for which occasions; she likes all kinds of music, and doesn’t think Manon is coming back either; we could agree on so much despite having such vastly different life stories leading up to this very day.

She thanked me for following up about our lunch. Usually she’s the one who has to do that, so it meant a lot to her that for once she wasn’t the only one. Throughout our time, she repeatedly mentioned how excited she was that we were there. “I was so nervous about what to talk about!” she admitted with a laugh. Turns out we had plenty.

Emihle walked me down to the bus stop and asked if I wanted to see what snacks the vendors down the street were selling while we waited. She picked out some of her favorites for me and when I offered to pay, she refused and pulled out coins from her pocket. “I came prepared,” she said, telling me these were what she grew up eating and wanted me to try them. We hugged goodbye, promising to keep in touch. I hope we meet again.

Even as we sat droopy-eyed in the airport against the backdrop of a dark sky after a 4am wake up, we were laughing. Cooper got out his digital camera and began filming what would apparently become the trip vlog. As we watched back the grainy footage of us and our tousled hair under the fluorescent airport lighting, we agreed that it feels like watching a memory. In that moment I could feel the incoming memories that we couldn’t see but were tugging us closer to them. And then I knew it was going to be a good week.

I also knew it was going to be a good week when we were on the bus to board the plane shortly after, and after some exclamation of mine, Venus said to me with full seriousness, “you have perfect younger sibling energy — like, you are so autonomous, but also playful.” All the heads turned and we burst out into laughter at the absurd accuracy of the statement. I thanked her for the compliment. We found new contexts to use the phrase, repeating it again and again just like you do with a perfect inside joke, soon discovering that there is also no better way to describe baby safari animals.

Our first stop in Namibia was a local restaurant in a township that Venus had apparently found from YouTube. We had pap and fish and a chicken so fresh it still shed grains of sand and also a serving of mopane worms that tasted a bit like seaweed with a texture I couldn’t stomach. This was all paired with vetkoeks (fried dough balls) so delicious we bought a bag of twenty for the road, and they slowly vanished from the bag during the hours in the car we proceeded to spend.

We headed to Etosha. My car was behind the other because we had to make a detour to buy propane, but because of that we got to experience our first sunset on the road at the end of the drive. I say experienced because we didn’t just see it; we felt the sunset, the joy and lightness in our chest and excitement to be alive, the urge to really look at the sky and its fleeting colors with pure wonder and acceptance that sometimes a moment will pass in front of our eyes but can be magical nonetheless.

Our campsite had a whole bar and restaurant section, so we sat around their campfire listening to musicians perform for a bit as the stars came out. We made pasta and rummaged for sticks to make s’moreos that have become a staple on our camping trips. The next morning, Jess told us she heard something rummaging around in middle of the night and saw a porcupine getting into the bag of opened pasta we accidentally left out. It was left pierced with holes, but we still decided to keep it, just in case.

This next day was also our self-drive safari day! Our Toyota Hillux carried us past giraffes and elephants and so many zebras and gemsbok, and even a lion and cheetah eating a springbok it had freshly killed. For lunch we stopped at some picnic tables and threw chunks of spam and mayo on some slices of bread and peanut butter and nutella on others, using the can lid as our knife and fingers to spread peanut butter (channeling blissful immunity to disgust in full camping trip fashion.)

By the end of the afternoon, spirits were dampening after a long day in the car and it was tunnel vision back to the campsite — until we were graced by a family of elephants frolicking on our left. Then we noticed a road leading to more elephants I could’ve ever imagined seeing in one place gathering around a watering hole. As we drove down the path, elephants roamed around us, walking past and beside our car without seeming to mind our metal vehicle’s presence. We drove up as close as we could and turned the car off, watching in silence as they stopped to drink while other younger looking elephants wrestling each other with their trunks. One mom stood over her baby that was smaller than I even knew could exist, scooping water into their mouth with her trunk. After drinking, families walked off in a row, disappearing into the trees behind us.

That night we made batches of indomie and s’mores again of course, this time with coconut flake crackers that we coined s’moronuts. The great debate of pink vs white marshmallows was settled with the acknowledgement that pink are better in the s’moronuts, even coming from me as a pink marshmallow hater. Then we dozed off to sleep, entertained by the vivid, crazy narratives of our dreams written by our malaria-pills.

The next morning we drove to Spitzkoppe. After seeing everyone switch off driving I realized I could satiate my deep missing of driving by having a turn at the wheel too. For me, this was novel; other than my driving instructor’s car which I don’t really count, I’ve only ever driven subie (my subaru crosstrek in California) who has blind spot lights and beeps when I cross the lane lines. The thought of taking on a pickup truck that was the rental under someone else’s name on the opposite side of the road was naturally terrifying, but Siddhesh said it would be a good long wide road to try and let me hop in. The muscle memory came right back; at some point a herd of goats crossed in front of me; every so often I would think to myself there is no way I’m driving a pickup truck right now in Namibia, fulfilling an unknown yearning for the independence that is being able to drive anything anywhere.

We claimed a campsite in Spitzkoppe nestled under some big rocks. Even though this wasn’t my first time in the desert, the landscape will never not feel like a dream come true in the sense that it’s like the Cars movie in real life (one of my top 3 movies…) In the afternoon we hiked to see some bush paintings, scaling a rock face with a chain to get there and meeting a guide who showed us a scenic detour where we towered over the vast terrain. At some point, Kallen and I rode the rollercoaster of the back of the truck when six of us needed to squeeze. We headed to the rock arch for sunset, carrying up journals and watercolors and a few beers, and we let ourselves sink into the granite as we wrote & painted & watched as the rocks in the distance set aflame with a sharp orange glow. We sat in the peaceful comfort of each other’s presence and the vastness of the horizon below us held our thoughts.1 There was some climbing and photoshoots and cartwheels as the sky deepened, and we returned to our seats on the rock to finish our activities alongside the emerging stars.

Dinner was the final boss of canned food. We threw an array of canned veggies and mince into a pot that we fished out with chips, and it was delicious. After stargazing, Cooper, Leah, and I piled into our tent and scrolled through Cooper’s digi footage as if it was tiktok before bed. There was a lot of laughter and awwws and a discovery that Kallen had mooned us in a selfie and we only noticed now. Then there was even more laughter.

The next day we drove to Walvis Bay, during which we stopped for a chameleon (!!) who was crossing the road. Then some of us went on a Sandwich Harbor tour in the afternoon. We were met with a tour guide who had an abrasive sense of humor, but still humorous nonetheless. He told us that the past few days had been foggy and he wasn’t sure if we’d see much, and he drove us on the pink sand beach beside the crashing waves through a thick fog that froze my bare legs during our stops, one of which included a pink salt lake. I started to accept it might be a day that our view lost to the weather. But as we drove, the dunes in the distance slowly started to demystify themselves and the sun’s rays resisted. We stopped for our tour-included finger food platter at the base of the dune forest, now in full sunshine, and we scarfed down what was our first meal that wasn’t canned or made on a camping stove.

The next part was my favorite. Our guide zoomed our car up and over the dunes like he was driving a rollercoaster, and we screamed and put our hands up every time there was a drop. The rolling dunes in the distance shone in red and the sun dipped beneath the clouds. At the viewpoint at the top, we stood at the precipice of an endless coastline hugging endless dunes, orange and pink and yellow blending into the sky. Our disbelief permeated the air. The only word I can think of to describe the view was perfect.

We came back to the airbnb and caught up with Kallen and Gemma who went on their own adventure, taking turns eagerly airplaying photos on the TV from our last few hours, already beginning to reminisce what had just happened. Even with wifi and a big TV, Cooper, Leah and I ended the night huddled around Cooper’s digi to rewatch the footage from the day in the making of a tradition (you know I love traditions).

Our last stop was a campsite near Sosusvlei, to which we passed through rolling hills adorned with long white feathery grasses on our way. Jess called them fuzzy dunes; I felt like we were in Mario Kart. At one point we crossed over the Tropic of Capricorn, where our friends from the car before us had so kindly left puddles on the floor for us after a pee break. We also stopped for apparently nationwide famous apple pie in a town called Solitaire, where we found our friends from the car before us scraping their plates (and also pranking us that the bakery ran out and they’d taken the last slices.) When we were about to leave, we chance reunited with the couple who had also been on our Sandwich Harbour tour also on their way to Sosusvlei.

After a brief check in to our campsite, we got back into our cars for a final stretch to explore Sosusvlei before sunset. I was excited to drive again, but also slightly apprehensive of the bumpy dirt roads that were still new to me. But Venus coached me through the dips and dust from cars in front of us obscuring my windshield, supporting me to the point where I felt confident propelling us towards the rocky dunes in the distance. I remembered how my friends at school in California had watched my driving progress and let me practice with them to make up for the teenage years I didn’t have a car to do so, back when they helped me through my merges and exits as I tentatively took on the LA freeways for the first times, us all sitting together in awe of the DTLA skyline ahead of us. On the desert Namibian roads, I felt some kind of wholesome parallel as I cruised in awe of the dune skyline, like I’d just unlocked the next level of driving and the secret that friends are always a constant in doing so.

We explored Sesreim canyon (and no exploration is complete without handstands), walking along the rock decorated floors. Then we attempted to climb Elim dune, trudging up red sand that fought back. We didn’t make it up fully before sunset, but it was still so cool to see lizard tracks in the sand and more plants sprinkled across it than I’d expected and the distant mountains light up in alpenglow. On the drive home, the horizon radiated a familiar deep orange, mountains blushing in the distance. I love how we can see the sunset without seeing the sun, said Leah. I loved that too.

I was also growing to love what ended up feeling like a game of seeing how much of our music overlapped during our hours spent in a car every day, switching through whose phone was on aux (usually based on who had the right jack for the only two cords we had) and seeing how much of our library we could find in each other’s downloaded songs. I learned to love what other people played because we had no choice, and there was a simplicity in being forced to share music like it was created to be. I came out of the trip with new songs on my playlist, and I know that means it’ll linger in my life forever, because music has a way of staying in your life long after any person or era has past.

That night we finally cooked our pasta that the porcupine had broken into. When looking for marshmallow sticks, someone found a branch that was essentially a tree on its own, so we just made a s’mores tree and commenced laying out crackers and chocolate for the s’mores factory. The moon heard our laughter for the next few hours as we played families, then intruder, playing round after round and relishing in the joy that comes with existing so rawly in a place. Then we scrolled through Cooper’s digi before our heads hit the pillow (rolled up sweatshirt).

The early morning also heard our giggles as the toilet was clogged then unclogged. Gemma, Leah and I took a short walk and sat at the heart of the sunrise, the sun painting everything in our 360 view in orange radiance. We embarked on our final drive back to Windhoek. I shopped until I dropped at a craft market downtown, then we debated for 20 minutes if we should go to a popular but appearing-to-be-tourist-trap restaurant called Joe’s Beerhouse, eventually getting too hungry and tired to debate and deciding to just go. There is so much discourse about this restaurant, Cooper said in the car, which just meant we had to try it now.

Let me tell you that Joe’s Beerhouse was nothing short of an experience. When we first sat down, a man came up to our table telling us the was the resident artist and would do our caricatures if we wanted. The wait staff sported what looked like AI generated aprons, bottles of miscellaneous items hung from the ceiling as decor, and crowds of Chinese tour groups came pouring in. It was Kallen’s idea to secretly tell them it was Siddhesh’s birthday (it wasn’t), so after eating I slipped away and ordered a malva pudding for the man in the red shirt with a specific request for a birthday song. Soon enough, we heard drums and voices and I don’t remember much after that because I was laughing so so much.

When we got back to the airbnb that night, we forced everyone in front of the TV to watch as we scrolled through every 2000th photo on our shared album to the soundtrack of nostalgic music. We laughed, we (almost) cried, and bid farewell to beautiful week before the nightmare of finals descended.

On the drive home from Joe’s beerhouse that last night, we lamented about how much we’d miss the trip, how much we’d learned about ourselves and each other and the resulting love too. “It might’ve been the best week of my life,” Leah said. I remember laughing and first thinking there’s no way that could be true for me, but then realizing that it really might land on the podium of life experiences when its all over. Maybe I was just in denial of how scary the thought of that is, that we would just go on after a week we could never recreate again, not knowing where to go from there. Nothing can ever quite capture that feeling, yet I will still always try.

1

Myla van Lynde

Earlier that day, Stella came over to re-say goodbye (because on Sunday we parted and we couldn’t accept that), and we ended up calling Maya and Gabi to play Among Us — then my online class started and I was simultaneously being the imposter while listening to my lecture on zoom. Suddenly we were back in 2020.

Online/cancelled class, and everything else, meant nothing else to do (other than homework, but the weather also means no urge to do it whatsoever and the desire to procrastinate doing it as much as possible.) So, I went and slept over at Jess and Leah’s apartment. I called Quinn & Henrik from Jess’ room to play wavelength, then after Jess and I made some dinner. Kallen came to say hi because she heard about the sleepover and we jumped in excitement screaming sleepover!!! then Leah and I made some Rooibos tea to drink while we watched Rupaul’s drag race (without cooper that night because he was sick :( ) I journaled in Jess’ bed while she finished her work, caught up with Siddhesh in his room for a bit, and came back to Jess’. My conversations with everyone are usually cut short because I leave whenever two kind volunteers (often Jess/Leah/Siddhesh/Cooper and sometimes a surprise guest of Maki) offer to walk me home, and my schedule follows theirs. But that night, I could talk to whoever I wanted and eternally share walls with my favorite friends.

The next morning I woke up to Leah sitting at her desk with her door propped open, to which she exclaimed “good morning sunshine!” We simultaneously took our zoom classes at 11, then Jess and I ate leftover waffles I’d brought, stacking them with nutella and banana slices and peanut butter. I used the gym (where everyone else also seemed to flock to with nothing else to do) and we exchanged some of our leftovers with Venus for lunch, having a feast of fried rice I’d made, Jess’ tomato beef egg rice, and chicken nuggets with fries. Then I went home and finished building our house’s roof on Minecraft with Leiah, saw a rainbow, went on a walk with Seb+Lucas+Yulia, ended up back at Jess & Leah’s for zoom class, got a ping pong lesson from Siddhesh, and failed trying to steam frozen 叉烧包 without a steamer.

I’ll miss this era, when something as simple as spending the night at my friends’ apartment is the best thing ever. And I remember how lucky I am that a storm day can be something associated with joy.

Our apartment began using our last dispenser of soap in our bathroom today and I don’t think we’ll be buying another. A few weeks ago, I tried writing a daily routine, but I felt overwhelmed and unsatisfied with the product because every day is different, so there’s no way I could condense it all. But what I think I was trying to capture was everything about my life here, including the tiny details that I’d forget in years but make this all feel the way it does, and are therefore invaluable. Classes end next week, the first round of friends fly out too, and there is only one more scent in our bathroom that will taint my time in Cape Town. It really does feel like the moment I just start to feel settled, it’s all ending. I still have a month left here, but before it really is all over, here are things that happen(ed) every day/week:

• listen to Sun Bleached Flies by Ethel Cain (or the remix of it with Dancing On My Own that I screen recorded on my phone off of Soundcloud)

• stare at table mountain

• real life crossy road (crossing main road)

• pack into the jammie shuttle bus like sardines and almost fall over every time it makes a sharp turn

• get a snack from next door from the office during our mid-class break with Seb, switching off who pays each time. usually we get samosas (my fav is cheese and corn and his is the punjabi samosa), but sometimes we buy chips or frozen yogurt and another time we tried running to nando’s up the street, ordering a six piece of winglets, but that left us anxiously watching the time inch ten minutes past the end of our break and scarfing down the sauce covered chicken wings in one minute on the street over the trash can. (since then, we’ve decided to stick with samosas)

• (for a period of a few weeks in April) write another cover letter scaffolded from the 15 previous ones I’d written that week. Put my whole heart into it like i told myself I would do, feel stupid and wonder if using ChatGPT would be more efficient, but decide that I want to live with my heart on my sleeve always. This will get validated when someone emails offering an interview and says thank you for writing a thoughtful cover letter. Then this will get diminished when I get another rejection email, saying it was so close and competitive and it’s not me but them. ok.

• get free lunch at the YMCA with Linsey on Wednesdays

• walk to Jess and Leah’s apartment, now sometimes in the rain. After knocking, get greeted with squeals and a hug from Jess and Leah emerging from her room. Then Jess and I start to mince garlic and cut the meat (or frantically defrost the meat under warm water or in the microwave because Jess only just took it out of the freezer an hour ago) by the tiny counter of their tiny shoebox kitchen while Leah talks to us while we cook, then we trade places and I sit on the stool facing her while she cooks, and I eat Jess’ grapes and we fill up their whiteboard walls with another ranking of our favorite cuisines or songs or venn diagram of our music taste or made up chinese names for Leah and Cooper

• or walk to swim practice with Bree/Linsey/alone watching the clouds fade from pink after sunset (and maybe get picked up off the side of the road). or now get a ride (lift) to practice from one of my new friends (!!)

• get makeup done by Linsey before going out/take a top from her closet

• do work at Jess’ desk while she works on her bed, or pile onto Leah’s bed with her and Cooper and watch the new season Rupaul’s drag race while Cooper excitedly explains everything to us and gives us the insider scoop he knows from social media (he’s watched this season so many times before that he’s memorized all their songs even though it only came out in january)

• look through instagram on my browser even though I deleted the app (and redownloaded it to post on my story then deleted it again and then redownloded it to post then deleted it, etc.) probably feel bad about my body and close the tab and tell myself to never open it again and this will probably happen daily..

• at the end of the night, get walked home from Jess & Leah’s by two kind volunteers. the air is always a few degrees colder than when I came and we’re usually the only ones out there (sometimes there’s a houseless man we’ve started to refer to as our friend sitting on the steps. i think there is a mutual understanding that we will see each other every night at the same time and that’s okay). always hug goodbye when we get to mine.

• stop by Linsey and Leiah’s apartment, catch up with Leiah while we play minecraft and she gives me her leftover takeout and sometimes her attempt at making mango sticky rice that night

• draft something before bed on substack, often get too scared/unsatisfied to post it. (not tonight though!) I’m trying to force myself to just post as much as possible like I did during the first month because writing makes the untetheredness of beginnings and endings just a little more bearable.

Some of these routines are already coming to an end. Sometimes I walk around and my chest sinks because I will miss this all so much. I remember sitting on a bench with Jane the spring of my sophomore year telling her I was torn about studying abroad because I was scared and loved Scripps so much, and her saying there was no universe she would say not to go. Thank you Jane.

I don’t want to share the details of the day, but what I can say is that it was traumatic, and even though I don’t sob uncontrollably at the memory anymore after EMDR it still sits heavy in my chest. But I remember reading this email after being whisked away to Mary’s house in LA. We’d spent the day trying to distract ourselves at the beach and even though we have pictures of ourselves in the matching T-shirts her family had given us to show for it, all I remember is crying gutarally into my towel. I remember reading this email at Mary’s house and for a moment believing that everything would someday feel okay.

I think about this email all the time. Ella and I reference it like we’re PHD students writing their dissertation and its the seminal work in our niche field. Every year at this time, we reread it again. Every year, we discover a new sentence to be obsessed with. Every year, despite how many new experiences we’ve had, we re-remember that there is no better way to describe the human condition than PC’s email on May 9th, 2021. I think about it when I encounter a new pain, when I have to navigate how untethered it can feel to be seventeen/eighteen/nineteen/twenty (keep counting) and alive. It somehow always comes back remembering that the color of the sky at 6:17 or the feel of the breeze on your face really are just as important as any tip or point of fact you may pick up.

I wrote this letter in my journal last year. In it, I reference the revered email. Some of it reads:

I looked up at the sky last night and thought about PC’s email after [], where he told us to notice the color of the sky at 6:17, because sometimes that is as important as any other kind of advice we may pick up. I think he just chose a random time to make a point about the value of observation, but I’ve held onto that hour of the evening and his words like a lifeline, rereading them every May. It was 7:48, but it was close enough, and I tried to let the sky swallow me as I stood on the pavement, neck perched so I could see its vastness in its entirety. How am I here and you aren’t? I asked myself again and again and again. I don’t know if I will ever understand.

Two days ago, I called Ella after crying while sitting on the balcony floor looking up at the sky. We didn’t have much to say, but we sat with each other on the phone, a routine we’ve settled into over the last few springs. We revisited the email, enthused at our favorite lines, and decided we’d send each other pictures of the sky at 6:17 that day. Opposite hemispheres aside, we had cloudy skies in common.

At the swim meet two weekends ago, Alex kept mistaking her room number 716 for 617 because “saying 67 just comes so naturally now.” It became a recurring joke of the trip, and we all stayed up singing karaoke late on the last night in that room. We celebrated her childish 67 humor at the post meet team celebration (fines night) last night where she took a shot for the immaturity. Some could say we left part of our ourselves in room 617.

This morning, I was thinking about the email again and the sky and what time to check its color to create some meaning for myself later today. 6:17 came to me, but I wasn’t sure if it was just because we’d been joking about that number all of last night and swim meet. But then I checked, and of course it was.

This weekend we went backpacking!! Friday started with a hike to Constantiaberg peak through the Elephants Eye Cave to take advantage of the car. The wind whipped our bare legs frozen, sometimes almost knocking me over, and Yulia and I trudged behind the rest of the group because I’m learning I am far from the hiking shape I used to be in (foreshadowing), but it was still beautiful. I now learned that this was the third highest peak in Cape Town, which was unbeknownst to the new version of myself I’ve been trying to be who is type B and doesn’t care about the plan, but the sharp pain in my legs on Saturday reminded me that a balance is sometimes necessary. Still, it was beautiful.

On Saturday, we woke up at 6am and set off for Kogelberg! Cooper and I were at the club hours before, where my life was never the same again after they played a remix of Headlock by Imogen Heap, and even though I could barely hold myself up on Saturday night there was a liberation in feeling like I was milking every last drop of invincibility out of my youth. I can dance with strangers into the early hours of the day and wake up for sunrise to climb mountains that feel like they’re towering over the country and I know it’s not forever I can do that.

(but also, yes my body is a temple and I am so sore and tired and I’m going to take really good care of it now)

Saturday was windy and rainy and COLD. As we tried to find the trailhead, which was tucked away in wine country decorated with fall foliage, a man on his bike who was the only other person out there helped us find it and asked, “are you sure you want to hike?” Deep down my answer was no. But we bundled up and set off with dreams of the blue sky and a segment of rainbow in the distance.

Being the only ones out there, it was so serene that spirits were soon lifted. Then Cooper recounted the first half Pitch Perfect for us, including every detail from the soundtrack to the facial expressions and dialogue. We laughed at all the punchlines and got excited about scenes that opened. I’ll count that on my letterboxd as another rewatch because it really felt like the movie was playing in all of our heads.

Then we saw the rainbow again, this time in its grand entirety. We marvelled at it and jumped in excitement and had photoshoots, all taking turns to eat it, and I’m discovering there are few situations more joyful than a group of people in nature with a rainbow (circa 2022 when I wrote my common app personal statement about happiness and a rainbow, it all comes back to this.)

We followed the rainbow and it’s double shadow for the rest of the hike, its ends being revealed as we descended the mountain, the whole rainbow superimposed against a vast valley of river and ocean and green. There were no pots of gold (we looked), but the way everyone kept looking at each other in disbelief, a look on our faces that collectively squealed “is this real life?” was a memory I’d never give away for any amount of money.

In other news, my ankles were starting to have a hard time holding me and my pack up on the trail coated with loose rocks. I found a perfect branch for a walking stick and decided I’m getting old.

When we reached the bottom, the rainbow hung over the dunes in the distance that we were headed towards. We stopped for lunch, passed horses grazing and also zebras (!) in some enclosure. We crossed a lagoon that soaked my socks and shoes (my fault) and made it to the beach where the final leg of the day’s hiking was.

My morale quickly disintegrated on the beach. Suddenly my entire two legs and hips were throbbing with pain, either from the pack or so much walking or doing a hike out of my league the day before or all of the above. We trudged through the sand that dissolved beneath our feet every step, pushing against the strong wind that sometimes lashed our faces with sand grains. I fell far behind the group, Jess and I struggling without strong foot arches and her kindly letting me take turns with her Birkenstocks as she hung back for me.

Knowing the next day’s hike was filled with elevation, I accepted that the backpacker I used to be who could climb mountain after mountain just wasn’t the version of myself right now, and Jess said she wouldn’t be opposed to just hanging out on the beach and exploring the town the next day and ubering back to the others/getting picked up. She proposed this when I had resorted to just keeping my head down and succumbing to the wind muting my surroundings, watching my every step as the only way to get through. She told me later that seeing me like this was the moment she knew we couldn’t go on, and she was definitely right (lol). I still loved being the only ones out there on the beach and how it was so rugged and alive, and the bright attitudes from everyone in the group kept me going for sure.

Eventually we made it and Maki screamed that war was over and we passed through the Kleinmond neighborhoods and a house filled with 20+ cats all staring out the window at us. It looked like neko atsume in real life.

For dinner we made an appetizer of black sesame oil ramen Maki had brought from Hong Kong, Mac n Cheese with a side of canned meatballs that we decided tasted like meatloaf in baked beans sauce (and consequently turned off my appetite), and then roasted marshmallows over our stove. Cooper put us on S’moreos and I had three. Then we stargazed while stretching and ran an inside joke to the ground to the point that everyone was sick of it by the end but still secretly laughing.

The next morning Jess and I woke up to send everyone off, then packed up a little later and headed to the beach. Sunday was much sunnier, and we set our sleeping pads down on the sand and got comfortable, pulling out our stove to warm our tortillas for makeshift salami quesadillas. We set up a tent, which the wind really didn’t want us to do, but we fought back with a loose pot to secure one stake and shoes on another. We ran into the water, diving into its clear bright water gaping at the almost neon green hills encircling us.

We spent the next few hours in our tent on the beach, joking that it was the equivalent of a modern open plan house that would be in high demand on the housing market. We talked and talked and read and fell asleep and talked more, all to the hum of the ocean waves.

When the tide started to creep towards us we packed up and walked along a coastal trail that was adorned with jagged rocks. At one point a woman sitting on a bench intercepted our path and repeatedly told us that we were so adorable, asking to take a photo with us and her boyfriend, not letting us forget how adorable she found us. As we left she told us “to stay as cute as we are.” I think they meant well, but that was a first (and probably, hopefully, first for them seeing Asian people too).

We ended up at the Kleinmond harbour and I made a diy creamsicle with soft serve and an orange popsicle. The rest of the group picked us up after what sounded like a hard and beautiful hike that I don’t know if I would’ve finished. We drove on a breathtaking Big-Sur-esque coastal highway and stopped at Nando’s on the way home and we struggled to hold our chicken bones dripping with sauce in the car, deciding it might’ve been the worst fast food option for a car ride.

I may have gravely overestimated my hiking and backpacking abilities, but I don’t want to ever forget this weekend. During the orientation peninsula tour I remember wondering what memories would color this coastline, unable to fathom who I would even meet and grow close to but knowing that the memories were out there. They are always out there.

When I was seventeen, I would’ve said happiness. I lived in pursuit of maximizing joy. But of course that’s not realistic, and the more pain I’ve seen as I get older, the more I’ve been stumped. “I think it’s... other people? Love?” I choked out, half convinced. I knew my struggle to produce a response was giving perfect way for what she’d say next, that there was a purpose sitting on her tongue, ready to hand over to me if I just said the words. But that’s not the purpose I want, I don’t think. It feels too simple, I said to my therapist today. I want a purpose that is complex. Maybe that is my fatal flaw. Anyways, that’s another story, part of one that’s been in my drafts all semester and I’m still finding the words for. But my inability to explain what I live for when it came so easily to me before has brought that question to the forefront of my mind since then.

It is this time of year that I start thinking about death a lot. I try to think about it often; I don’t want to live with regrets. But in late April and early May I think of the painful death of a friend and sometimes I feel like I am back in the midst of those weeks, death so closely in front of me I could reach out and feel it. I see the precipice of before a life ends and look down to see the after, five years ago, and I grasp for ways to feel like the fall never came. I will look at the sunset and find birds to watch and swim to imagine we are back in that pool in Santa Barbara, all still crouched on the clifftop together.

Today I think that death is the meaning of life. It’s not that revolutionary, but it is for me, a little. It’s not news to me that death is the meaning of life in the sense that death gives life meaning; I know meaning is derived from impermanence. But the way a legacy, the aftermath of a death, lingers for so much longer than any life can physically hold itself, makes me think it really might be the answer.

I call the same friends every year at this time. We ask how the other is doing, even though so much has changed, even though they’re graduating college this year and will begin another stage of life where their memories fill with scenes I’ll never get close to watching. In the past few years, while everything else changed, our shared grief stayed a constant. We know we have the same shaped hole in our heart that will always need tending to, no matter how distant we’ve grown. Because God/the universe/someone/no one decided that death is all of our biggest fears, no matter whether we know it or not, it’s in the script of our hearts to keep beating. With these friends, we don’t need an excuse or explanation to remember each other. The walls are down because when death is dancing in the air there’s no time for excuses. We could use more walls down in this world.

The graves you visit determine the landscapes you will return to for the rest of your life. We do things to feel closer to those are gone; we become vessels of their character; our lives are moulded by the deaths it witnesses.

Today, I declared to my therapist that I’m going to ask myself every morning what my legacy is. I don’t know if I even have an answer, but if we don’t have control over anything, at least I have control over an attempt to have a second life after my cells self-implode and metabolism sinks and body doesn’t know to keep itself in equilibrium anymore. Someone else will become a vessel for my character, or maybe everyone.

I’ll live because I will die, and so will everyone around me, and today that feels like enough and everything. The answer is actually the simplest of all.

I remember the first time I consciously felt this way. It had just been my friend Vivian’s 10th birthday party, and we went on a boat with a photographer and then frolicked around the gardens by Disneyland while taking photos, and we all got a goldfish to take home. I went back and texted my internet friends,1 “I just went to the best birthday party of my life and I’m so sad now.” No one understood, and I don’t blame them. It sounds silly and privileged and like I was trying to brag. But I really did feel like something inside me was lost.

Even though it was a swim meet, this past weekend I danced the most I ever had in a 48 hour period. Part of this was because I was around people that love to dance as much as I do, which I’m deciding is one of the luckiest things you could come across. Another part of this is that they blasted 2000s music over the pool speakers the whole time. It was basically an outdoor dance party for two days straight with some races in between them. We danced in our hoodies and puffer jackets in the rain, and then in the sun when it came out on the second day. And no one cared that we were dancing because it was a swim meet, aka an alternate reality where everyone can pretend there are no other problems in the world other than their upcoming events, and any amount of silliness is fine because there are no other problems in the world, and if silliness is what you need to get through your upcoming events, then that’s completely okay and celebrated. We camped out standing by the poolside, doing the hand kicking motion (67) as our teammates passed by, singing along to the music as loud as we could hoping our friends underwater could hear, dancing under umbrellas or with arms around each other. I hugged and high fived and laughed with people who were just strangers, embracing how we said our As differently, how they say galas and we say meets, shamelessly making fun of each other with banter that was coated in a bliss that I haven’t tasted since middle school. It didn’t matter that in a little over a month I wouldn’t be in this country anymore, that the reality of our budding friendships were that they would come to a screeching halt in less than 50 days and who knew when we’d ever see each other again. Laughter and open hearts don’t seem to care about that.

During our final relay, the one I swam with Bree and Linsey as the “unattached team,” because we were actually booted from competing for points since we’re not full degree students (but that’s another story, and it didn’t really matter to me in the end,) A Thousand Miles was playing over the speakers. Since it was a relay, the music didn’t stop for my dive, and I remember standing on the block, the the postchorus piano motif erupting as waterborne Linsey charged towards me and I swung my arms, and then coming up at the wall to hear the final chorus after almost kicking my legs off and pulsing my burning arms through the water, looking up at the sky and the turquoise water behind me as a song I loved when I was seven and still love at twenty was sonically exploding around me. My recurring reflection has seemed to be that nothing will save ever me, but then something like that happens and I wonder if it could.

Because here I am, back in Cape Town, still thinking about that moment and all the laughter and new hearts I felt tied to, listening to that song in my apartment feeling like it just scooped up my life and all the swim practices and races I’ve ever swam until this point, all the panic attacks in my high school pools’ bathroom and nausea on swim meet mornings and the heaviness the pool held after Ophelia died and practices I dreaded going to, and arranged it into the type of art piece that you stand in front of at a museum speechless with tears streaming down your face and you don’t know why.

For two days straight, we were just there together. Laughter came so easily. We sang at the top of our lungs on the bus. We stayed up on the last night talking in a hotel room and I told them about that heaviness and they told me about theirs and we shared drinks and danced even more.

It took me a while to open myself back up to swim meets because of how much I lost myself in them when I was younger. I almost didn’t go to this one because I didn’t want to put myself in that position again, to hand my worth over to a constructed competition like I used to. But now that I’ve done a lot of work to remind myself what I used to love about swimming competitively, winning aside, and realized that it’s not worth the amount I used to push my body and heart for, I think I really do love them.

I love swim meets because half of it is just about hanging out. Sitting by the pool in each other’s company and cheering and hoping for the best; they’re microcosms of the rawest human desire, to just be with the people you love and your only purpose is to move your body and maybe win a race and support your friends in doing so, knowing they are supporting you too. And this weekend, it was also to dance. I’ll miss that feeling forever, probably.

Moms and their babies

We reminisced about the golden age of our spotify accounts, 2022, when we discovered that compiling songs paired with the perfect title, description, and picture was an amazing emotional outlet and we got addicted to it. We made one or two playlists a day, collaborating at least every week. Some of our best playlists — ones that we still go back and listen to when we need to capture certain feelings — are from this era. We were on the tumultuous rollercoaster ride of being seventeen and the art of making a spotify playlist was the bar over our laps that we clutched onto with white knuckles.

We’ve always wished we could know who saved our playlists. Over the years, quite a few mystery saves have accumulated on them, and while the cover images and titles and songs changed as we moved through the end of high school into college, we would repeat the phrase I just wish I knew who was on here to each other through it all.

Recently, there was an update that shows you who saves your playlist from here on out, but the past saves are still a mystery. I told her about it on the call. It was big news.

So now that this is possible, what if I just emailed spotify and begged them for a feature that revealed past playlist saves too? I threw the idea out as a joke, but we then realized it was totally in the realm of possibility.

So we walked ourselves through it. If we could actually find out who’s saved our old playlists, would we want to know? A new update that would suddenly reveal it all, the people and lives we’d hoped our curations pierce into the background of, the pensive moments, perhaps of regret or even just a moment of missing that our ex friends and lovers and past crushes would’ve had when they played our playlist and realized it was about them. Did they find it? Did it reach who we secretly actually wanted it to? The people, whom for which we went through the great lengths of dressing up a collection of songs with a name and cover photo to feel like it was something for the public, a piece of art we were releasing into the universe for others to relate to, and while that did end up happening and was also probably partially a reason for creating, deep down we really knew it was for them to find? Because we could’ve kept it private if not?

I remember when in high school, an ex found a playlist I’d made about her titled “I hate you.” I bumped into her one day and she told me to take it down because she knew it was about her and that it was disrespectful, or something along those lines. I said that I would, but later became frustrated that she even inferred it was about her. “It could’ve been anyone! Like, a dog that you had that you hated,” Eswyn said. I agreed and kept it up and it still stands to this day. When I talked to Myla about it, she agreed that making a playlist is a form of art and I have the right to keep it up and do whatever I wanted to do with it, which we have both been doing since then. But of course years later I can see where my ex was coming from, and I liked the fact that I hurt her a little bit too. Because she had hurt me so much to the point that I thought I hated her (I don’t) and that kind of pain has a hard time staying still. Last week I told Yulia in a perfect world everyone would know everything about me without me needing to tell them. My biggest dream might be to feel understood, and a public playlist is precisely a gateway to that understanding.

To Myla’s and my surprise, we decided that we actually wouldn’t want to know who has saved out past playlists. She asked me if I had to just pick one playlist to reveal the saves on, which would it be? I chose one that I’d made with someone in mind and have been hoping this whole time that the singular mystery save was them. But then I realized finding out would actually set me back in letting go of a chapter I deep down knew was over. It might give me a momentary reprieve, a glimmer of hope that something dead might still be alive, that I’m being remembered by someone somewhere out there in this world, but that would be it. Leaving it up to mystery might actually keep the hope alive a little more. It could always be who I want it to be in my mind.

Maybe making a playlist is my final plead into the universe, but the knowledge of it’s inconsequence makes that all it is and I know it. It’s really my first step in letting go. I listen to other people sing about what I know is actually true before I’ve accepted it. I put out an empty prayer, a playlist, that maybe they’ll hear this and change their mind, and I know it’s empty, but maybe that’s what makes it cathartic. I am immortalizing how I felt in a certain point of time, and the act of wanting to immortalize it means I already know it’ll pass, that I won’t feel this way forever.

Control is a confusing thing. I can’t shake the desire for it, but when I actually get the opportunity to have it (or seriously consider it), I don’t want it anymore. Having all the listeners on my spotify account at my fingertips could give me the illusion of emotional control, but then I’d remember it’s really all up to the turning rhythm of this earth, as always.

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I’ve been thinking about middle school a lot while being here, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts. That largely might be because all the music they play in public seems to be stuck in the 2010s in the best way possible. I’m hearing the same songs in restaurants and at the club that I used to listen to on the school bus at thirteen, dreaming of being older and all the friends and happy life I would one day have but felt so far away that I didn’t even know how to imagine it. Last weekend some of us went on a road trip and we blasted these songs in the car, us and the music and a landscape that breathtaking is the only word for. It was a feeling freedom and bliss that was what I think I would’ve wished for if I knew it was possible, and I want to tell my thirteen year old self that it is, that everything she would do and every decision she would make would lead her to those moments in South Africa, so there was nothing to worry about.

My last move across the world was preceded with years of romanticization and dreams to be fulfilled, and I came into this one with a blank slate. But dreams can still come true when you don’t think you have any!

I think that middle school might’ve also been the last time I lived as uninhibited as I have been here. I’m lucky to have a light workload this semester, and am also surrounded by incredibly type B people in a country where time is a loose measurement. I have both the privilege of affording to not plan my life to every exact detail and company who embrace it. While Jess and Leah still joke that they have never met anyone as type A/stressed/anxious as me, “embracing the B” has admittedly been freeing too. I feel the most present I’ve felt in a while. I’ve been able to watch and listen and let life follow those curves.

Ever since high school I’ve always have a pit in my stomach leading up to school breaks. My friends always make fun of me for it, because they’re usually just a week or two, but I treat the buildup like a big deal regardless. Part of this is probably because my freshman year of high school we left for spring break, covid hit, and we didn’t come back until a year later. I’ve lived through enough unforeseen endings to always worry a little more than might be warranted at every goodbye. Last night I lingered in Jess and Leah’s apartment, sentimentally lamenting about how much I’d miss them over the ten days we’d have to spend apart and how this is just a teaser of when we’d say our real goodbyes in June. They laughed at me because we’ll see each other just next week, and Leah asked me if something else was going on in her sarcastic way and I assured her not to worry because I talk to my therapist every week.

But seriously, my entire time here has revolved around the knowledge that in a few months I will have to leave without knowing when I’ll ever come back. It has made the search for meaning a hundred times more prominent, but also means that everything I do until then is my attempt at preparation for it. Maybe if I run through the dramatic goodbyes just a few more times they will feel easier. They won’t, and I’ll keep trying.

All I can think about is right now is that I’m so glad I’m coming back and that break is only ten days. I want everything to slow down and I’m simultaneously relieved and filled with dread that I do.

In other news, our road trip last weekend was to the Southern most tip of Africa, and that feels notable. I thought a lot on the road, and blissful moments aside I was honestly was sad about a lot of things too, but I’m trying to remember that when I look back at the pictures and think back to these places, the beauty and joy will stick the most. I remember going on a Gaviota camping trip senior year of high school the day after a breakup and that feeling so huge for me at the time, but when I think back to it, I remember talking and paddling with Myla, walking with Ada on the beach, sitting with Riley as she played guitar. I remember that I was upset but I don’t feel the heaviness when I conjure the memory, I just feel the warmth. That even feels too good to be true to say, but honestly it is.

A few weeks ago I was with Cooper when his phone got stolen on the train, and that also feels notable. We joked after the fact that it was the perfect crime, although we can’t forget the shakey dials to the police (nothing came of that) and ubering to the station and lots of waiting around. It was an anxious afternoon but I was inspired by his ability to find the light in it, and probably a good mid-semester reminder to still be wary that even though I haven’t had anything stolen yet, it is very very possible.

The other day I had a lovely conversation with one of our program leaders for a mid semester check in, and here are just some things I want to remember:

• I want to know more about you. (me) What about me? I’ve been existing for so long. (her)

• When I asked what her favorite thing about the job was, she said something along the lines of: I love the people and getting to know all of you. I meet some of the most entitled people that come here and leave the most humble people ever. It’s a privilege to get to talk to them and understand why they are that way. It’s usually just this bubble that they’re in, that just needed to be popped, and getting to see why it never was popped is fascinating.

  • I’ve never viewed entitlement in this way, but I think I really needed to hear that.

• Then she asked me, so, if you’re a writer, what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned about yourself?

  That no matter how much I try to control something I actually can’t control anything.

  Yeah, if it’s green, it’s green. I’m trying to learn that too. (her)

  I don’t know if I ever will. (me)

Also, in the uber to the beach with Dora and Linsey the other day, we talked about having crushes and what they felt like for us (all encompassing and excruciating for me, naturally), our hopes and dreams for love, etc. — classic uber conversations of course. Linsey, as she does, pulled our uber driver into the conversation too, and he told us about his wife that he’s been happily married to for 17 years now who he knew for even longer because she was his best friend’s sister. His favorite thing about her is everything. When we left the uber and thanked him, he told us he hopes we all find someone one day. Me too, mr uber driver.

There’s more that I want to write about but didn’t get to today, so I’ll just have to post more over this break and hold myself to it. I’m looking forward to having more time to write, and always grateful that all of you are reading.

Of course it isn’t really; the temperatures are rivalling Davis and Claremont heatwaves, both of which I’ve experienced, but the lack of AC in the buildings and vehicles here and the hilly walks in between classes makes today a big contender. I’m starting this in my third class without AC as my legs and back stick to a plastic chair, my dress is drenched in sweat, and my forehead feels like it might melt off. It kind of feels like the air is pounding down on me telling me to just put my head down and succumb to it, and I’m tempted.

I can’t really complain, though, because a heatwave this week means everyone is on the same page of beaching as much as possible, which has been almost every day. On Monday, Yulia and I explored a new beach (Llandudno) before my 3pm class, and I felt like myself again after diving into the crystal water (albeit icy) and finding a few sea anemones hiding under a rock to poke. It also feels worth mentioning that in class, which was my Musics of Africa class, we learned about and simulated Kaapse Klopse (the Cape Town Minstrel Carnival), which meant playing our instruments to the theme and marching and dancing around the room.

Yesterday, I rushed to the beach with some people after class, and it was so hot out that the freezing water was actually refreshing rather than piercingly painful. Some of us swam out to try and get on a rock in the middle of the water, the process leaving me with battle scars across my stomach and thighs from scraping against it. All worth it though, because we sat on the rock and had good conversation, watching the little fish swim by as the waves routinely washed over our legs, keeping us at the perfect temperature. Kallen and I later swam out and jumped off of a bigger rock, and I always love the adventure of a jump. During sunset we swam out to the original rock again, enjoying our private sunset viewing dock. The mountains shone a faint red as the sun went down, and we squinted at the sun’s diminishing outline to see the green flash that Lydia claimed she actually saw once. The swim back was cold, but the sky was a deep glowing red and it was magical. I went back with Jess and she cooked me her version of tomato beef rice and that was perfect too.

Today I couldn’t beach, because I was in class until 6:30pm, but I went to swim practice and afterwards Leiah and I played Fortnite and got a Victory Royale. That was a high I haven’t remembered since 2020; my throat hurts from our celebratory screams. Tomorrow’s the last day of extreme heat, and I’m hoping to rush back to the beach after class. I feel really lucky to be here. And I know it’s a big privilege that this heat can be a positive thing for me.

I’m evidently feeling a lot better than I did at the end of last week, which is prime evidence of joy’s habit of returning, as Stella sweetly quoted from TikTok to me over the weekend. Only 38 days until I see her, and I know that’ll feel like a second sun rising over Cape Town. Love you Stella.

1. my perceived mess of my words is probably a reflection of the way my life feels to me right now

2. writing, like everything else I’ve been fixating on, won’t actually save me like I hope it will.1

3. But even so, I’ve been making matcha soup in the morning because I’m usually short on time and want to save a dish, so I pour the oat milk into the bowl I’d used to whisk and it feels efficient and silly and something that is my own creation.

4. And I’ve been proud of my ability to feed myself, even if that means sometimes feeling weak in class because lunch is usually just rice and silken tofu or rice with seaweed and a boiled egg if I’m lucky. It’s actually yummier than I expected and feels very Asian in a comforting way, but I’m learning that I sometimes might need to eat more, so I’m also learning to bake chicken thighs and perfecting my fried rice recipe.

5. Then other times other people feed me well, like: the family lunch in Gugelethu where the family we visited served us ox liver and bread, beets, spinach, samp, and a freshly killed village chicken; when Yulia and I were invited over to someone’s house for dinner, and her South African roommate cooked us pap and chicken stew. We ate it with our hands and I licked the chicken bones clean and had malva pudding for dessert while we watched the kissing booth because it was filmed at our campus; or the cooking class in Bo Kaap I did with Siddhesh and Kennedy where we barely touched the ingredients, but still rolled our own roti and folded our own samosas that were delicious and also ate a chicken curry and finished with koeksisters and rooibos tea.

6. I got sushi at Youngblood again during my second First Thursday, and I think that makes it a tradition. I almost didn’t go out because I felt misunderstood and insecure once again and was staring at some polaroids of my friends in my Scripps room that I’d forgotten about and just put up, crying at their smiling faces I wished I could be in the photos with. But the girls from my program were doing a clothing swap for the night, and I pushed myself to go and Julia gave me her tube top and Linsey asked if I was okay and maternally insisted on doing my makeup. She gave us matching glitter around our eyes and said that next time she’d do her entire skincare and longer makeup routine on me. Everyone I saw that night loved the glitter, and I was proud to say Linsey did it. And the night turned out pretty well; the art gallery was awesome and I had more gin and tonics than I’d planned on having and stayed out way later than I’d expected I would but we played some cards and also danced, and we fended off the sting of the routine microagressions with arms around each others’ backs.

6. I went over to the villa for Persian food cooking night with friends from the other program that we (mostly they) cooked. “Ready for our nightly walk?” Jess asked afterwards, and me her and Siddhesh of us set off in the drizzle. They’ve been walking me home after going out, or if I’m at the villa late at night, and I always insist I’m good after I can see my apartment but they always insist to cross the road with me until the gate. I like this tradition of ours.

7. Today after we came back from watching the sunset on a rock at the beach and walking alongside the coastline, Yulia fed me some of her leftover pizza that she’d made and I gave her some rice and seaweed (my specialty now). We spontaneously decided to do so because both of our weekend plans had fallen through and it feels like everything these days is a lesson in letting go of control. Yesterday I went to hers at the end of the night after having a bad day and week and we laughed in her kitchen and she served me caffeine free diet coke and I came home and wrote in my journal everything is better because Yulia Emery is in my life.

Other things I want to remember are: riding the jammie (our campus shuttle) has felt like a rollercoaster, especially when we’re at the back of the bus and it throws us in the air over a bump. I played piano last Monday at the practice rooms of the music building after realizing that I hadn’t touched a piano in two months. I was expecting to stumble through my pieces, but the concerto I was working on all fall came right into my fingers. I also went to swim practice with the club team twice last week and on Friday we got ice cream afterwards and watched it start raining from inside the store. The pizza restaurant we went to on Tuesday for dinner with Linsey’s sister gave us our leftovers in tinfoil swans and I was really excited about that. I tried crocodile today and it was all the good things about chicken in a meat. And I like the routine of going into my psychology lectures basically every day and getting to see at least Julia and Reese consistently.

Reading this through, I’m trying and learning new things about food. Maybe it doesn’t get more meaningful than that.