A post on dancing! Finally!

I showed Isaiah and Chaina how to do a headstand today. It was the longest and most graceful I've held a headstand yet -- I have quite a recent comfortability with being upside down, thanks to all the Pilates and core-strengthening I do. Looks like my technique is going somewhere. Looks like all I need is an audience to really execute. That, or the fact that I danced seven hours today. Takes a while to really get in your body, eh?

I realized today in class that I love Oliver. I'm not in love with Oliver, but I love the man's spirit in movement, I love that he exists and exists as a live human being who demonstrates that it is possible to reach the ecstatic in dance. That there is little way to decipher what erupts out of his body as technique at all, despite the high rond-de-jambes* and ballet vocabulary. I love that he's goofy and sensitive to his daughter's emotional rollercoasters, which, at age three (?), are frequent and sometimes inexplicable. I don't necessarily love that he gets turned on (kinetically - who knows how else) only, it seems, by 80s and early 90s hits. He's so Euro. But I think it's fun. It's satisfying to be in his class. And either I've become a super-groupie, or it's true what seems apparent to me that he is getting more "choreographic" in his final combinations.

* Non-dancey folk: rond-de-jambe is the rotation of one leg at the hip in a half-circle. It can be along the floor, or a fast circular kick in the air; torso straight or dipped in opposition the height of the foot. It is a ballet term, and classic ballet alignment would demand strict even balance in its execution, whereas in contemporary choreography the aim might be for the acting leg to pull the body off-balance, which would create momentum towards another movement. In musical theatre or more prescribed modern techniques such as Graham and Horton, there is the "fan kick". Think poofy skirts, bloomers, and cheers.

What do I mean by "choreographic" -- I mean that the combinations at the end are less intended to demonstrate the technique than to communicate an emotional or expressive meaning. I don't know if Oliver realizes he is doing this. I don't want to sound presumptuous, but with all the frustration he's had to deal with with his knee injury and his surgery next week, and whatever else is making life a little tougher these days, he's making more interesting art. He's making art. He's not just making sequences.

Funny that it's taken eight months of this blog to actually start writing about my dancing. This is why I started this blog in the first place (I think): dancer in New York, my new, though long-awaited skin. I scribble notes after every class, but usually it's a mix of text, stick-figure diagrams (w/ one triangle for the chest and one for the pelvis), and poetic inspiration. In other words, it's a horrible read. Thanks for bearing with me on this one. Detailing movement into words is quite taxing. Try it. Try describing everything that's going on in your body and everything your body is doing when you get up to brush your teeth. There -- you've just had your first composition class.

What's in a name?

I remember doing this exercise at age 14, at which point I promptly discovered the world of (many dead) porn stars and the ubiquitous usage of "Lee" as an often-Southern pseudonym. Thanks to Blog-Idol Joko (I'll still call you that, why not), here it is again as part time-waste, part soul-search activity: the Google "(name) is" hunt for self-definition:

MELINDA IS …

Melinda is worth watching if you like Woody Allen
Melinda is the wild one in an old college threesome
Melinda is perhaps an even bigger mess
Melinda is spreading her own sense of self-worth and value to these kids
MELINDA is a haunting tale of a young girl living alone in a world of rot and decay
MELINDA is now in-stock and is ready to ship upon your order
Melinda's is also known for scarves, hats, and handbags
Melinda is a neurotic, chain-smoking warning
Melinda is cute, flighty, and ready for love

MELINDA LEE IS …

Melinda Lee is a very popular radio host in California
Melinda Lee is an attractive enough woman, word on the street is that she is wrapped tighter than Martha Stewart receiving a bouquet of carnations
Melinda Lee is Vice President of Geosam Investments Limited, a private investment company based in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Melinda Lee is up early on a Wednesday morning to prepare egg rolls for frying.
Melinda Lee is a 20-year student of a variety of yoga and personal growth disciplines.
MELINDA LEE - IS HER GOOSE COOKED?
Melinda Lee is a dentist and a dancer of many disapplines.
"Melinda Lee is a warm, compassionate person who offers her clients knowledgeable techniques and is a spiritual light with her overall healing."
Melinda Lee is a delicious recipe that you can cook quickly and easily.
Melinda Lee is one of thousands in the Recipes-to-go Ethnic Cookbook.
Melinda Lee is the most dedicated and committed person we have ever worked with
Melinda Lee is on VHS or DVD, or possibly Pay-per-view.

MEL LEE IS …

Mel, Lee is at it again
Mel Lee is talking crap

Another sense of home

This is quick. I just want to get this off my chest.

I come home tonight -- somehow, everyone's excited. At 42nd St in my train change-over there is a dark, dirty man (darker from dirt, probably) sitting with a hat for change and three disgustingly dirty and wet kittens. How recently were they born? Does their mother there not care when Dark Man grabs the wettest of the kittens to polish with his shirt, with as much vigor as one might do tarnished silverware? So there is this 'event', as precursor to the show that's actually drawing crowds ten feet away. It's a crew of breakers I have not before seen, at the usual spot where the Christian Scientists yell at you to take their free stress tests. If you ever need to get stressed -- see them. They will yell at you. Ok, but there's a bigmungous crowd around these breakers, firstly because they have enlisted a plastic-bucket drummer -- you've seen him, he's usually busking on the other side of the station -- as their beatbox, and secondly, primarily, they are all shirtless and beautifully RIPPED. I indulged in a free ogle, before they could enlist me to stand still with three sweaty tourists while one of them would vault over our heads and then yell at us for money to have experienced this in 90 degree heat. All respect to these boys who do this to make ends meet (and who have eight-packs). But I'm not hanging around for this one.



OK, so finally home to 136th and broadway, and still, everyone's excited. There's an extraordinary wait at my late-night deli of choice because, for whatever reason, some woman with painted eyebrows is buying ALL her groceries ... at 11:30pm ... probably for her entire family. The counter that is usually graced by no more than ten items a customer is LOADED. Some adolescent brown boy with the body shape of that pink-blob character in Sponge Bob cuts in front of me to buy a lottery scratch card. Ok. So I get out finally with juice to freeze for tomorrow's insta-sweat that is morning class with Oliver (quel j'adore!), and bread, and pineapple (mmm!) and plaintain chips to go with the guacomole that I am going to make. 8 dollars. Yipes. And you know I'll blast through the juice in two days flat.

Shit! So my point! I get home, Tito's hanging on the doorstep with some ladies I don't recognize but who probably live here. He lets me pass, but leaps past me on the stairwell like a child who just got candy -- I make fun of his talking up the ladies, and he's only half talking to me (the other half in his head -- both of them) when he sputters out: "only the middle one! I've been in love wid'her since I was eight ... no, six ..." Tito leaves the door open for me as I, not so much in love after being brushed off by aforementioned boy over the phone yesterday, trudge heavily one step at a time to apartment 15.

Rosario (why is she not Rosaria?) is sweeping -- I love when she calls out to me, "Meh-leenda, Meh-leenda!", this time to express how tired she is (in Spanish). I'm tired too, too tired to attempt a "yo tambien." I reply in English. It's chill.

Excited. Everyone's excited. Plenty o'kids around, I know them, they're related, or live in the building, they are as free here as they are in their own family homes. I am about to pour juice to freeze in my Nalgene and make guacomole and slice a tomato when I see Little Guy waddle towards me. Little Guy is Howie (they say: "ow-ee", so that's what I'm pretending his name is written down). Howie turned two a couple months ago, he's the two-year-old I tell people is a ghetto superstar when I explain what it's like living here. He's young enough to not be afraid to enter my room, and previously we had bonded over his trying on of my shoes. This is a beautiful child. More so to me, tonight, because he recognizes me -- he lives here intermittently -- exclaims recognition, and waddles up to hold my hand. We play our shoe game again -- I give him my sandles to wear, which he does competently (the middle thread sitting snugly between his Little Big Toe and his Little Second Toe), he looks up at me with a confused expression on his face -- too much English? -- but nods when I ask him questions.

Howie's innocent affection frees up all the other kids to interact with me more. And this is the point I am finally getting to. Isaiah tells me about his girlfriend at school. Chaina is excitedly running into the other room to explain in Spanish how Howie is holding my hand. The other little girl, the sweetheart, smiles coyly and just goes with the flow. Howie wants some guacomole. I think it's more that he wants whatever object seems to have drawn my left hand's attention away from his right. He's possessive that way. I like these kids. I like kids. I haven't spent enough time with any to get exhausted to the point of anger -- maybe this is why I don't force time with them. But I enjoy kids.

And I wish I could have hugged these kids ten minutes after our guacomole episode and told them that they did nothing wrong by being boisterous kids, even though Mummy screamed at them, restrained them with her harpee-shriek, and then with her beating hand. She is the one who just gave birth again. She's not had it easy. It's not easy living so tightly together. I get a feeling she never really wanted kids, but it pleases her mother and its what she's supposed to do. But she's become more vicious lately, especially with Isaiah, who loves her dearly, and what I had to get off my chest tonight, before washing the garlic smell truly off my fingertips or bathing my sweaty self, is the feeling I had gurgling inside me while washing my dishes with my back to the sounds of her abuse. This was not discipline, when at other times, her harshness and occasional violence is. I don't pretend to sit on some pedastal of humanitarian concern when it comes to how someone must discipline their kids. But tonight was arbitrary, and somehow I am involved. I'm that kid from next door who got all the kids here in trouble. I'm the one who got them to overstep their bounds, because tonight, everyone in the city was excited. I was inappropriately friendly, and we were having a good time, and somehow that was against the harpee's house rules.

This is only mild tension. So far. And I obey, as did they. I stop talking to the kids, who have all been relegated to their room anyway, the door closed behind them. Howie is left, but follows Tito who distracts him away from crying about my tomato that he can't reach. And I wash a little apple for a pre-bed snack. And I walk into my room, and shut the door. Lifting the screen of my laptop, I wake up a portal to another world and live within my four white walls and this cyberworld alone. The apartment is silent.

I don't know what it is that I represent to her -- God, I don't even know her name, so maybe it's that, and every other similar indication that I don't, won't, can't belong -- but sometimes I think she hates me. No, that's a lot of emotion. She doesn't care about me that much. But I do think she thinks I'm not someone she wants influencing her kids. And I close my door.

This is where I live.
It's starting to feel a little more like a home, in all the senses of that word.

For my fellow 40-yr-foodies: Thoughts on Singapore from her vagrant offspring

In a pure coincidence of timing, I believe, rather than national pride, Tiger Beer sponsored it's Second Annual Tiger Beer Singapore Chilli Crab Festival in DUMBO, Brooklyn, on Sunday, August 7th, and Singapore itself celebrated its 40th birthday today, Tuesday August 9th. In another remarkable coincidence, I, a Singaporean, was born on a Tuesday.

In March.

Not so much hung over as exhausted and day-dreaming a la fluffy-clouds-with-a-little-bit-of-naughty about a cute boy from the night before, I nevertheless trekked via three differently colored train lines to fulfill the "false consciousness" of my national identity. Nothing would stop me from eating Chilli Crab in New York. Not Anna's last days in town. Not the M.I.A. concert in Central Park. Not Meredith Tsumba, who happily came along instead of going home to Philly to rockclimb. Thank God for Meredith.
We arrive via a stinky cobblestone street to jugglers, an inflatable jungle gym, and an elevated boxing ring. Meredith and I both have raised eyebrows questioning the "authenticity" of this "Singaporean" fair, but then I am quick to relate to Meredith that if the tinny music from the live band at the other end of the street sounds like cheesy import, this event is very much of my country. Welcome home. What time was that M.I.A. concert again?

But a Singaporean cannot deny her stomach. Or her own forceful boxing match with death, which is what the Chilli Crab experience is, occuring in your mouth which can only occasion the odd inhaling "tssss" and exhaling "ahhhh" at extreme moments of pleasurable pain. Here, I was reminded of my childhood memory of wondering if my father would survive another East Coast evening, bowl and bread in one hand, assuaging handkerchief to forehead in the other. I am also made soon aware of the fact that I am happy they did not give us larger bowls despite the $4 price tag. "Death by Chilli Crab," along with "Love in Ice Kacang," are part of the larger poetry of Singapore's deep existential and sensual affinity with its dishes.

So "tssss" and "ahhhh" I did, sucking and slobbering and getting crab shell stuck inbetween my teeth. Of course, too, I am sweating, and of course, with oily, chilli-bloodied fingers, I use the backs of my hands if not my wrists to wipe the droplets away. Now THIS is what I call "Singaporean." My also $4 Tiger Beer served in a plastic cup, my friends, is NOT. But what can you do: glass in the customer's hands is fine, I suppose, in a country where a fistfight cum bottle-brawl is about as likely as a cold front 3 degrees north of the equator. Were I telling you this live, now is when I would shrug my shoulders -- fingers face-up, of course, to avoid any sauce-drippage from my Chilli Crabbed hands.

On the occasion of "our" 40th year of independence, what does it mean to be Singaporean? Evidenced from this event, to be Singaporean is to be:

(1) painfully but necessarily bureaucratic. My $10 meal required -- OF COURSE -- me to wait in FOUR separate lines: one, to buy the food and beverage tickets that would enable me to purchase food, and one for each food or beverage item. (dessert was pulut serikaya, which they called something else, which is a two-layer "cake" of sweet sticky rice and steamed pandan-flavored coconut milk -- almost like flan)

(2) shamelessly syncretic. This event was not the "Singaporean street market" I was promised. Or was it? Hamburgers, corn on the cob, and Vietnamese summer rolls were about the only other food offerings to those who dared not the slobberingness of the admittedly authentically spiced Chilli Crab (I've venerated it so much, I seem unable to pronounce its name without capitalizing it). Oh, and there was roti prata with thin curry. OK. But where was my satay man? Where was my Indian mee goreng? Where was my whatever-it's-called, those little pyramid-shaped steamed desserty things wrapped in banana leaf? Teary-eyed (haha), I am getting nostalgic now for my "real" Singapore hawker centres and street markets, like Clarke Quay, like Lau Pa Sat ... ... ... which are all constructions of the Tourism Board in the first place. None is so manicured as Singapore. None is so artfully and intentionally designed. The absence of hamburger or corn on the cob in a real Singapore food-venue would actually represent a failure in product diversification. There's always money to be made on novelty, not to mention from the visiting tourists who "tah boleh tahan" (cannot withstand) our insane penchant for killer spice. Then again ... could someone from Tiger Beer please explain to me why there was a mini-faux-WWF match going on in the boxing ring? According to Meredith: "I like that they're shirtless." Still, what is that, for the double-nipple-pierced "Red Dragon" to be nothing more than a body-slamming Caucasian in YellowFace?

(3) it is finally, and fundamentally Singaporean, to be absent.
I was outnumbered in my own street fair. Yes, it was interesting for once to have the faces behind the Asian ladles white. Yes, we are, all fantasies aside, in Brooklyn. Yes, it is difficult for a combined population of 4 million to have any sort of critical mass at any diaspora event. But where are the Singaporeans in this patchwork event? And will someone please get them to turn the 60s music down a notch?

***

Why don't we ask a "real" Singaporean while I sob away my disappointment and cultural isolation into a bowl of ...

Why don't we ask my mother. Hi Mum -- did you expect to be quoted here?

My mother sends me a lovely email with pertinent -- Biblical, as well as non-Biblical -- pick-me-ups to have me appreciate our 40 years, and who I am on that spectrum.

She writes:

We're really a nation of immigrants, and still receiving new immigrants each day into our ranks. Your heritage is from that stock. Opa's grandfather came from China to Malacca; his father moved to Singapore. Oma found Opa's marriage proposal very attractive as it would mean, among other reasons, she could leave Indonesia, the adopted land of her parents. Kong-kong's parents came from China, while Ma-ma had a longer run as a descendant of immigrants! Of your parents' generation, 50% of Dad's siblings made a life elsewhere (A. Soo Bee, A. Kim, A. Julie)!!! I've recently met several people our age, and their grown-up children are mostly settled or working in other countries!!!

Methinks our "affinity" with America and many things American comes from the same immigrant-stock mentality and heritage. It's the spirit of venturing out to make a new and better life, a "can-do" attitude and spirit, seeking new opportunites, carving out/pioneering niches, etc. And see what they've become in a short span of 200 plus years!! We've just finished 40!!!

Dad used to quote me pithily "Home is where your heart is" whenever I baulked during our early married life overseas in Bangkok, however even now, I think I can still venture elsewhere if there's a purpose for it...!

Firstly: I love you Mummy!
Secondly: "pithily" -- now there's a word that is somewhat awkward to use in daily speech. My mum is quite a good writer, only she doesn't really have the patience for it. But "pithily" and "baulked" -- which, for all you Yanks, has a 'u' in its British variant -- in one sentence do much to explain how it is my mother has won every - single - family - Scrabble - match in living memory. Even when I got a seven-letter 50-pt bonus for something beginning with 'V' that I can't remember. Seems impossible, but true!
Thirdly: So what does it mean to be Singaporean.
How can I continue to be one if I stay longer and longer away.
Does being one require being recognized as such by other Singaporeans -- which I already am not. I can "act" Singaporean," much in the same way that I "act" American, only -- not as successfully. If these countries were people, I could say that I have learned their senses of humor -- which I think, on the level of personality, is an instant indicator and therefore, point of access.
Somehow, Evita runs through my head: "Don't cry for me (insert) SINGAPURA ...!!! THE TRUTH IS I NEEEEH-VER LEFT YOU ... all through my wild days ... my mad existence ... I kept my promise .... donch kipp yaw distansss ..."

It's 12:07 now, August 10th. Singapore's 40th birthday, well-over on that little island, is now officially over for one of her furthest children: me. I'm going to let go the tragicomedy that is my identity crisis and suck my fingers to sleep in memory of a saucy, spicy, moment of "home".
.......................
.... or of a similarly saucy, not quite so spicy boy who still hasn't called me now three days later.
.... isn't there something else they say about Singaporeans? That we're sexually repre---
*THIS BLOGPOST HAS BEEN TERMINATED BY THE SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT UNIT CENSORY BOARD. WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVINIENCE CAUSED, AND HOPE THAT YOU WILL ENGAGE YOUR SEXUALITIES AS MUCH AS IS NECESSARY TO GET MARRIED AND HAVE 2.7 CHILDREN -- THAT IS, IF YOU ARE CHINESE AND HAVE A TERTIARY EDUCATION, BECAUSE YOU ARE LAGGING BEHIND.*

*THANK YOU. TERIMAH KASIH. XIE XIE. (~~~?~~tamil?~~~~)*


*P.S. LAST TO ROBERTSON'S ANNUAL SALE IS A DURIAN-HEAD!*

Or ... maybe not ...

... yet.

I've just been offered three shows in two days, shows with people I like and respect as artists, projects I actually want to do. Projects in New York. Projects well into the beginning of 2006. I will even get money for them. THis is like resolving to leave your boyfriend and having him come weeping at your threshold, cajoling you to take him back, just one more time ...
And you want to.
You want to throw yourself at him, rip his clothes off with your teeth, and forget every humiliation you made yourself ever go through because of him. Because, perhaps, of what you saw yourself to be while with him -- but is that really your fault?
And you're happy. You're happy with the idea that you could have not one but three excuses to linger on, living this half-life, dreaming of discovery, and failing which, at least a six-pack with which to nab a rich husband and deliver his babies if it all came to that.
And this is the most irrational of loves or fantasies. There's not even enough money to go around in the dance industry to imagine 'making it' and being rich. Sandra Bullock worked at an ice cream palour for two years, eating ice cream day in and day out because she couldn't afford to buy outside food. Now, she makes $20 mil a movie. (Thanks, Tami Chiu and US Weekly for this information) This cannot exist in the dance world. Here, you dream of dancing your guts out, of taking a literal beating to your body for a living (honestly, this is what my quads feel like today), so you can find a choreographer who would do this to you even more. Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised I attempted playing rugby in my freshman year -- both activities draw blood.
Let me do myself some justice, though, with revealing what is the real dream -- the real dream is to work with a visionary and to be involved in the production of a cultural artefact that is ... interesting, enlivening, fucking revolutionary. It's to be involved in something that changes how people see their world. Yes: visionary is the dream.
I no longer feel reactionarily defensive about my country v. American behemoth. Obviously, some dreams, like Singapore qualifying for the World Cup by 2012, or New York hosting the summer Olympics, cannot be fulfilled under certain circumstances. Can Melinda grow, *as a dancer*, amongst 4 million people, with no significant contemporary choreographers to speak of? OR DO I JUST NOT KNOW? AND I WILL NEVER KNOW, JUST LIKE I NEVER KNEW ABOUT NEW YORK, UNTIL I FIND OUT FOR MYSELF.

So ... is it time?





Oh, and I was wrong -- in our language of signage, I mistook the fact that the baby was born at 2 am for my impression that there were born two babies. There is, in fact, only one. And she and Mother are back in the home -- let's hope I might get some sleep amidst the crucifying heat and the noise.

Beginning the repatriation

"Meh-leenda, Meh-leenda!"
"Si?" I reply, pitifully ignorant of anything else Spanish.

My host mom/landlady's eldest daughter delivered twins today -- her third and fourth children. I have until now thought that she is cow-like in many respects, that she is vulgar and harsh, and yes -- she is rather bitchy. But she just gave birth to twins! Last night I had another few moments of bonding with Tito, the eldest son, and I laugh with her own rambunctious giggle when Rosario (landlady) reveals to me that she has a sty in her eye -- as do many of her friends who all live in this building. It seems like just when I am getting ready to leave, I am beginning to feel much more at home. And if only I spoke Spanish ... I suppose I dream that I could have been more meaningful to this family, and they to me.

But it seems that the world is conspiring to send me home -- if a China Airlines one-way ticket in September only costs $571, including taxes and fees, then I believe God has spoken. God ... how he becomes such a daunting figure in my conception of what life will be like at home ... were I to suddenly face an American judiciary in the attempt to receive asylum, I would claim religious persecution in the form of traditional, hierarchical religious familial social structures that make my love life impossible and my own spiritual quests faddish. Oh yes -- doubt not the invasiveness of the Methodist public eye.

I jest -- I obviously released it and myself from our awkward relationship, although in light of my current career path it will somehow be made known that my directorial debut was for a Christmas outreach musical at the Drama Center on Fort Canning Road in December of 1999. Various house plants from my home served as setting, alongside a few risers (for the angel choir, of course) and some fancy scrim hanging from the flys for some heavenly effect. It seems fabric on the stage was my motif at the time -- note massive white cloths stretched across the UWC stage, black-clad (what else -- my piece was modern dance after all) younglings crawling beneath. Oh yes -- these are the memories I face in trying to return to Singapore as an artist. These are the tales of ambition without true knowledge or guidance, that I have nursed yet tried to forget while I've been away de/reconstructing myself. These are demons I face, alongside my fear of not being any thinner than when I left.

Stupid!

At least Andy has left, stranded himself back in Seven Oaks in order to booze with his now married friends and write and attempt to publish his first novel. It's really his third. My name, my Chinese name, was used in his first one, which he says was of course shit and will let no one read it. Should I have found it inappropriate for my high school drama teacher, who I of course was semi-in-love with (except that he talked rudely to most anyone brown, which I will not forget), took the name that I had never really come to associate with myself for his first, shitty novel? Should I be madder still that he never let me read the second one?

I suppose I can wait until this third, or the fourth, or never and he will relent on his death bed. Then again, this is the man who stood before an assortment of 200-odd 12th graders to proclaim, "If there is a God, let him strike me dead." I don't think I was alone in thinking at the time that Andy was only saved by the fact that he did not end with "now."

So Andy, the teacher that carved out my passions during my four years in Singapore as an adolescent, is no longer there, which is good because I will have to stand for myself, and not so good, because I would like to have a beer and banter with the man. The older I got, the less I took his bullshit, but the back and forth is always fun, and he will always win because he simply has more facts. Obscure facts. British facts. I really do wonder what Andy was like at a young age. I would like to be able to picture his interactions with his first girlfriend, and his first boyfriend. I expect he is very much in the gay camp now, but I recall him never denying that he has liked girls. Oh, then there was that cast party at his place when Amanda Mitchell gave him a genuine, sincere hug, and somehow that was scandalous. Other scandalous things were going on then. Angela was in love with him. Scandalous things were the lifeblood of UWC seniors reason for existence. And I will admit, I was almost proud of the fact that I managed to weasle my way into the club, even if it was only justifiable to them and to me under the acting umbrella. Don't adolescents take themselves too seriously ...

I am praying silently to myself that Andy and Amanda never read this blog, although Christina-now-married might, so I hope she will laugh. THe rest of you -- my American friends -- will just know more of how bizarre, or rather, tabloid-like growing up in an international school on a tropical island can be. And you doubted I was superficial ...

All that said, I am excited to meet up with Russel Britton for dinner tomorrow night. He was an excellent, fucking hilarious comedy actor in our time at school, and also reliable and trustworthy as a colleague and friend. I believe he was editor something-or-other when I headed the yearbook. He's Australian. Has a sister. His mum was the master school bus lady, and liked to wear large floral print, particulary with colors that augmented her crest of permed silver-grey hair. Russell is one of the few from UWC who came to the States rather than to Australia or England, and ended up in hotel management. That's what he's doing now. He came out in college -- see what the Americans do to you? JOKE -- though I don't know what's up with this girl he's visiting here in New York is about.

And so all this stream of consciousness to say that I am closer than ever to actually leaving in a month, and I'm scared. I'm frightened most of all of having any sort of responsibility, which is funny, considering who all the people I mentioned above have always conceived me to be. Smart. Ambitious. Reliant on responsibility to keep her sane and unalone. Quoting Shouri, another "lost-and-found" friend: "You, of all people, could have been anything you wanted to be." Weren't we all, when the future was nothing but possibility and hope?

And now ...?