Post-TurnOn morning

Walking up on a sunny Monday morning is suddenly a pleasure to me.
No grogginess, barely, if any, no, not any desire to be back in bed.
I revel in the pleasure of the sun's touch through the café side window,
a warm tingle on my uncovered arm happily triggers my spine surge.
And my breakfast, a $5.34 oatmeal + strawberries I bought at the neighborhood coffee shop, seems bright and fresh.
I notice that, in a regular day, its appearance would've been prosaic and utilitarian at best, had I noticed it even as anything more than another task to complete, another obstacle to overcome on my wild race towards other tasks, towards nowhere. Is this by-product of last evening's group meeting?

Cricket or Sheep?

Is it finally going to happen? It is. In a few months my life will be different, and not only in the technical sense. I have my hands on the steering wheel, ready to lift the sails and turn the rudders, anxious to leave this little pond I've been floating around for years.

How different? What will it be? I'm not sure. I have ideas - nebulous spirits of possible futures, all of which I want to taste of. I will explore - whether I explore the remote stretches of the world and its peoples, the unseen subtleties of myself I've so long neglected, or simply other avocations, I don't know. But I want to explore. I NEED it. I want to feel that I'm fulfilling my potential, unlike now, where I drag my unwilling, coward self through a program I no longer like for a degree I realized I no longer desire. Sure, I'm not going to quit without getting a degree (Why, my inner self still wonders? Fear. Of an uncertain future, of financial instability, of not being able to prove to others that I have knowledge and skills worthy of plentiful remuneration. And though I aspire to a Life without monetary worth as a goal or even a primary factor, I still do not believe whole-heartedly either in my own power or in the happiness that this aspired life will provide me with, to renounce to the material world right now. Yes, I could - yes, the doors are open. Yes, I have the keys to my own chains. But darned fear! Fear of regret, THAT is the main one. Will I regret my decision in the future? But couldn't this be argued about ANY decision, including this one to stick it out for the few upcoming months? Why is staying here just for this final semester the decision that I will NOT regret? Because it adjusts most easily to societal ways? Isn't that exactly what I'm releasing myself from? But am I not bonded to society unless I turn entirely ascetic? And would that truly be a fulfilling way of Life, or am I simply starstruck with lofty ideals I cannot yet understand?), but I so often want to. I'm urged to - my body says "GET OUT OF THERE!", my future self already reminds me of what would could've been if I had dedicated this tiny semester to purposes I more desire. If I desire it... why shouldn't I do it? And why not now? Unfinished business. Unwanted advisor advice? "You don't want to allow things in your Life you might later regret". "But I WON'T regret it!", shouts my body. "GET OUT!". Yet here I am, only typing and waiting for my experiment to run, figuring out why my lousy Weka Random Forest classifiers do not serialize and deserialize properly - unbelieving in my audio-classification goals, but still curious about the details. The curiosity that brought me here is still alive, but it yearns for other objects. Objects with Life, objects with spirit, that arise excitement and passion in me again, unlike the curiously enticing elementary-school-like, look-at-me-I-know-the-answer kind of anxiety that I too often allow to power my activities, not only here in school, but everywhere I go. I want to deal with those issues, to figure out what I want (if anything), to find something better - to drive myself, and not to be dragged as I am now, as I have been for so long.

I've done this - I've wanted to leave, I've found ways to do so. I left once. I excitedly threw myself out into the world with a bicycle and a desire to traverse the USA, hoping to meet new people, try a new lifestyle, change my life. Two days into it and WHAM, a car hits me and cripples me for half a year, through which I barely had time to hide my self-pity away and scurry back to this sterile academic bubble, where I hoped to nourish my body back to full fitness and agility. (I haven't achieved that yet, but my body has done a good job of allowing me to do what I routinely ask it to. I want more, but that's another story). The project I was most passionate about - shattered in an instant - a year of potential experience dissolved into nothingness by one moment of too much momentum transfer. Did the Universe bring me back to settle some unfinished business? Did it force me back to stay with my parents for three months so I could somehow reconnect with them, although my whole being wanted only to be AWAY from them at that time? I felt it as a sharp punishment at that time - and not only the stopping of my trip, but my return to my family, to need from them again, when what I wanted with such a passion was to strengthen my independence. So was it fate? Or foolishness? Who rides a bicycle on a main road without a large reflector on their backpack, right? I did. Or was I the victim? Who rear-ends a bicycle on a flat straight road, without any possible obstacle to block his view?

All these things are true, and nothing can be done to change it now, but my spine still tingles and my eyes plead me to tear and my throat and my chest beg me to vent my frustration and anger through them, to tell the universe how much I disapprove of the accident that shrunk my goals back into this pond of academia. And I know that it would benefit me to vent so, that blocking such potent negative energy is not the good for my body, my mind, nor for the rest of me. Yet I don't, because I'm at the office. Out of "respect", out of conditioning, out of the same hateful habits I so anxiously hope to liberate myself from. I sit here still, and I look forward to my escape from this place with almost as much excitement as I saw my upcoming school vacations every year back in elementary school. Finally I will be free, I will have time to do things I want and not things that others want. Yet I ask myself - will I still find my previously sparkling willpower beneath the years of dusty layers of unwanted conditioning and repressed emotions? Is this energy through my spine a sign that I am really still alive inside? Then oh, dear God (merely as a form of interjection), why don't I let it out NOW??? Why do I risk not finding it when this semester is over? The idea of daredevil rebelliousness spurs me, yet the memory of what happened the last time I acted to one threatens and dampens my excitement. Why don't I live my life?? WHY????????????????

And I can only blame myself and my cowardice. Then again, I might later regard this same cowardice as wisdom that helped me, I don't know, find a kindred spirit or develop the next cutting-edge audio recognition technology. Hindsight too easily serves to justify one's current point of view, and not to elucidate one's objective reality. Then again, is there such a thing as an objective reality, as filtered as we perceive it through our own biases, prejudices, and emotions? (1. Is there? 2. If yes, can we ever truly understand it?) I think this is a solid example of an intellectual education conflicting with the human soul. The first says "Optimize! Find out why! Leave no room for doubt or for regret! One last semester of dragging now will make itself worthwhile when your US Masters degree allows you much higher probabilities of acquiring money-making and travel opportunities for the rest of your future.", while the second says "Live, dude. You want to live and travel, so go do it. You've got money now, things will take care of themselves later. You just go and do stuff you want. Every second of your time is irreplaceable, why waste it on what you don't like? Go and stand on Flagstaff Hill, shout your determination to the world, run back to your apartment on your leaden yet functional feet, pack your bags, choose your course of action, and go DO. Isn't that what you want? Time will pass, degree or not. So go and enjoy the present, for tomorrow never comes. Right?"

Still, here I am, almost two years later, in the same office, with a different research topic, willing to pretend only mild curiosity about the topic I'm researching, dreaming of the shiny yet fuzzy dreams of adventure. Why does the trained classifier that correctly chooses "crickets" as a particular instance's label, choose "sheep" for the exact same instance after being serialized and deserialized? Wouldn't that effect the accuracy of my results drastically enough to warrant investigation? I believe it does. And that is why I'm still here at 4:05AM, juggling breakpoints and overriding equals() methods to get to the bottom of the serialization bug. Ah, well. It's 5:27AM now, and I think I found it. Let's see what this does to my accuracy scores...

Numbers

(Written sometime mid-February 2013)

I used to love glancing at my phone, and interpreting the time in some serendipitious manner.
11:11 was perhaps the coolest, but 23:23 was also great. 22:22 was second best, and then came many others.
16:32, 12:36, 06:18 were nice. 16:28 gave me two of my favorite numbers, then 06:28 gave me two perfects.
04:20 reminded me of Jerol, 05:12 and 02:56, sometimes even 01:28 and 01:04 gave me powers of 2. 03:43 was seven cubed, 06:32 was strangerly concordant. 12:48, 11:33, in fact any x:(n*x) would do, but preferably with x in the double digits.
Catching noon exactly was nice to see, and midnight too, then all o'clocks were just ok. Each of those "timely glances" fed me a feeling of specialness: "my subconscious knows exactly what time it is, and it's showing it to me". Or a sign from the universe, or a hint that I might be in a dream. I remember no such dream occurrence now, though. Or any correlation between those timely glances and fortunate events. They kept me content, though. Or perhaps only bloated with silent pride.

In either case, I keep the suspicion that I glanced at my phone far too often, and I registered only the timely glances in my brain, with the other 70-95% of glances lost in the emotionless memory cells of my brain, along with all those polite conversations I used to deplore, my mother's repetitive advice, and all the images from my routine peripheral vision.

Still, I prided myself on my constant search for numerical patterns, soon turned habit, often raised to obsession. 234467 would quickly register as (x)(2x-1), addresses with powers of two in them easily struck a chord, and bills that added up to $11.11 tickled my fancy.  When I learned about the strange habit of tipping, and after I grudgingly adopted it, I decided to put my twist into it. Bills of $9.89, I tipped $1.22 to reach the golden $11.11, and reaching palindromes like $13.31 was also satisfying. $13.37 sometimes to spell out the "leet" méme that I don't yet understand.

And shapes. This started sometime in high school - I escaped someone's conversation, due to either boredom or social anxiety, to draw lines and shapes on my classmates' faces. What does his eyes-and-nose triangle  look like? Ah, there it is. Swish, swish, in my mind, and my mind was then silent. Then the cheeks to the mouth, and to the nose, making quite the 3-D quadrilateral. Ears, top of head, shoulders - all of the potential pulcrums to pull mental strings from, to make any shape I wanted to.

I don't know if at any point it was enjoyable, but it soon became like a nicotine addiction, invariably tied to any face-to-face conversation.

Ah, girls. Cute since the beginning.

Te quiero vida

Te quiero vida. Te quiero cuando siento el aire rozar mi piel, cuando lleno mis pulmones para sentirnos en pleno, y te quiero cuando me acuerdo que estás allí.

Y te quiero cuando salgo a caminar y veo los árboles abrir sus ramas al mundo, y bailar al compás del vaivén invisible. Y cuando cae agua, y siento el agua fría deslizarse por mis manos y cabeza, y no la ignoro por afán, por mantener la mente estirada.

Y te quiero cuando pienso en la magia de la luz, magnífico fenómeno de perfecta precisión, que comunica al mundo entero y a todo en ello sin reservación. Por su virtud llegan a mi los edificios, prosaicos ya, los caminantes aledaños, las estrellas en la lejana vacuidad, el camino que recorro, y mi propia forma envuelta en piel.

Y quiero a mis ojos que me regalan, en todo momento, el lenguaje de la luz. Generosa, tiene mucho tiene que decir, y lo dice de muchas maneras, y lo dice todo el tiempo. Qué colores, qué brillos, qué texturas, qué riqueza de ser. Qué regalos, ojos míos, que me guían a través de este laberinto que parece nunca acabar.

Y te quiero cuando quiero cambiar mi cuerpo de postura o posición, y lo hago apenas con la intención, a la velocidad del pensamiento, con un sistema de absoluta elegancia, haciéndolo apenas sin pensarlo. Y me siento comandante de una nave magnífica, surcando el mundo cual enorme océano por descubrir.

Y te quiero cuando siento de nuevo el ritmo de las cosas, el son de mis pasos, el correr de mi sangre, el fluir de los vientos y las nubes, el planear de las aves, el parpadear de las estrellas. Siento el ritmo como si por primera vez, y veo en el continuo de los ínfimos momentos infinita posibilidad. Y cuando deslucido, a través de la pesada cortina del ímpetu diario, apenas el principio de la vastedad de ese espacio, me siento inmenso y minúsculo en simultáneo, y te quiero otra vez más.

Y te quiero tanto, vida, cuando pienso en ti, y siento recorrer, por mi espalda y mi cabeza, doradas vibraciones que debo describir como buenas, porque así las siento. Y te quiero porque me recuerda lo poco que en realidad sé, y me emociono con la aventura de descubrir los misterios de mi existencia y de ti.

Y te quiero conocer, vida, pues no te conozco suficiente. Mucho te he ignorado, y me he perdido en los pesares y los deberes y los temores y los protocolos de otros perdidos por herencia, como yo. Quiero conocer tu cuerpo, tu mente, y tu alma, lo que te hace latir, lo que te hace sonreír, lo que te hace fulgir. Sé que eres vasto más de lo que creo y conozco, y aún sospecho que al recorrerte escucharé melodías nuevas familiares, y veré y recordaré lugares que nunca antes había visto, y sentiré las emociones reales, desenmascaradas de mi corazón... y veré mi ser como nunca antes, pero como siempre estuvo.

Extracts from CMU dialogues

Bhiksha:
I made a list of the things to get done by today. And the list, it took me an hour to get the list.

It is like swimming in a well, trying to drink water and breathe at the same time, and the water is dirty. And that's a constant state of affairs. But every now and again, you come up for air and you manage to breathe, and the feeling is wonderful.
So you live for relief?
The most memorable moments in my Life are those right after something is finished and before something else begins. During those times, you appreciate every millisecond.

(Nov 12, 2012 - Helped me know what Life as a busy professor feels like)

Leibny:
Me da mucha cosa lastimarlo. Es que me regala cosas caras y todo, pero, eso para mi no es suficiente.

(Nov 28, 2012 - On Leibny's life)

Aaditya:
It inspires me to see someone working so hard and late.

(Feb 12, 2013 - Helped me realize the ideals of the lifestyle I was leading)

Late Enjoyment

Sat, Feb 9th, 2013 (Sunday 4AM)

My body enjoys staying up late as of late.
It refuses rest, it insists on wakefulness even as I
curl it against my fairly cozy blankets.
But it's not just my body - it's my mody.
I think, and I think.
I think about Laura,
Then Echo,
Then Juanita,
Then Wen Xin,
Then Bhiksha,
Then San Francisco,
Then Elisa,
Then Colorado,
Then singing,
Then about new lodging.
And music.
And life-fulfillment.
And decisions.
And I feel the urge to write it,
to imprint them somewhere
somehow.
Why? Is this poetic inspiration that drives me?
No, though the term can be bent to include most anything.
I just want to do.
To learn, to act, to create.
To break free from this tiny conditional cage of work and focus
towards something turned from fantastic, puerile.
This discipline, Machine Learning.
What for? Well, money in the future, sure.
But now? What do I have now?
What do I DO now that my heart really reaches out to?
I reach out to my work to escape my little cage,
which I built, paid only by the fear of future regret,
but I learn little
I enjoy little,
I share little,
I change little.
When I COULD DO SO MUCH MORE

MORE

Echo leaves (Dec 4th, 2012)

Echo washes the kitchen while I talk to my dad and my mom on the phone, just after returning to school to pick up my two laptops.
Why are you cleaning the kitchen?
Why can't I clean it?
(silence)
So what are you doing tomorrow?
Good question… (30 seconds…) Do you have an answer for me?
Yes… (15 seconds…) You're flying back tomorrow.

This morning, you were so disappointed that I didn't have a surprise for you on your birthday. And I felt so guilty. And.. I don't want you to feel disappointed. (5 second silence). And I don't want to feel guilty.

(5 minutes silence, while I find a place to code on my desk).

At what time is your flight tomorrow?
Six.
Morning or afternoon?
Morning.
(2 seconds) Then we better wake up early. It's very important that we wake up early.
(I get up to set the alarm on my cellphone. She opens up her suitcase and begins to pack her clothes. Silence. I exit the room and come to the couch, where I'm now typing)

… Dec 4th, 2012 6:06:
And I could take no more in a genuinely happy way. I just dropped her off at the airport. She'll be in Shanghai in about 22 hours.

Outside the departure gates, we see each other beside a wall:
I don't know what to say.
There is nothing to say.
(Much silence)
I wish I could've given you more.
Don't be sorry.
I am.
(More silence)
I should probably go in.
Yes, it's about time.

Echo (Dec 9th, 2012)

When I first saw her arriving at the San Francisco gate,
I thought she was a pretty chinese girl
I was hosting for 3 weeks
with whom things might just happen
but even if they didn't
my Life was heading somewhere
or so I was believing
so she mattered not so much.

I'd bought a reluctant ticket
after months of I-don't-know's.
Because I made a promise
I wished I could costlessly close.

But the ticket was costly and still,
I flew her so we could meet,
pretty and dreamy
sassy and smart,
sweet and caring,
I thought we could hit it off,
in one or two levels, perhaps in some more,
perhaps even more than I had gone to before.

Pretty, chinese, a little too clingy
the first time I pursued a cyber-kiss-thingy,
she began making plans for our so-lovely future,
but she was too out-there, too fiery, too intense,
It did not feel right with our level of romance,
a month or so chatting and nothing besides,
she was only a maybe-could-later-become-kind-of-a-plan.

Still, 18 months later, there I was at the airport gate,
she looked tired and jet-lagged and her cheeks a bit wide,
Not exactly the cute princess I had in my mind,
but the same sassy mind who I chatted with long times.
Long ago, far away, too much to remember correctly.
Too much time to recall the dear memories I grew with her,
18 months before.

A half-felt hug, a bottle of water, a few awkward lines later,
she was criticizing the hole in my pants
and the way I thanked the BART lady.
Slightly slighted but still on good terms,
I looked at the girl who had flown across the world on my money,
and still poked fun at me.

A train ride, a few blocks walk, me trying to introduce her
to the new United States,
we got back home, I showed her the room,
and asked her to choose her bed.
She gave me some gifts,
a woven box with a fancy seal with a special hole inside,
made just to fit a painted ceramic pot
that held a bag of green tea.
That was the first one.

Then she gave me even more kinds of tea,
in little metal round boxes.
And more things.
From China.

A little tension between us
formed from silence and novelty.
Though tired, she was still quite pretty,
and I invited her to watch a Big Bang Theory episode,
because I liked it,
and because it came up in our conversation,
and because Leonard gets to have sex in episode five.

So I put it on,
and I could barely believe
how comfortably she rested on my shoulder to watch it
as we sat side-to-side on my mattress.

Our pheromones spurred us,
our hormones raced,
I casually slid my hand casually on her skin,
she did something similar back.
She pressed my skin or got closer to me,
I did something else to her.
Beat by beat we got closer,
beat by beat I dared to look away from the episode,
and onto her,
her cute watching eyes,
no smile, no frown, but just like she said…
just real, true, darn sweet cuteness.

I dared, I dared, I dared,
I put my lips to her head,
and popped a softest kiss on the top.
She hugged me closer and I saw the green light,
so I kissed her again and again.
A few kisses later she was kissing me too,
and I pushed the laptop away.
and we pushed our bodies closer,
and we pulled our clothes asunder,
and we soon were like two pink monkeys.

And she still had that cute smile
Seemingly innocent
yet playfully sexual
and I knew I had found something special.

Three weeks later we had gone thhrough much
we loved, we soaked in the bliss,
I stood my ground, she hurt,
I let her cool down, she bettered,
we loved again, we were happy,
she went to school, she asked me for breakfast,
I shunned the role of servitude and she hurt again.
The next few days we loved again,
and she loved me back so much,
with breakfast, kisses, and banana/egg sandwiches,
she gave me more than I imagined she would,
and made me feel loved
though also obligated to love her back.
And so I did not.

Pre-sleep

My body rebels to sleep
as it revels on the memories of joy and momentum
I gathered today.
It wills to do more,
and my mind is urged to stay up,
to think,
Which stocks wil rise tomorrow?
How much of a recorder Bhiksha is, how much like I did,
how does Laura feel about me, should I message her?
Yes, tomorrow on a text... how should I phrase it?
I imagine dialogues of truth and drama:

"Tie my hands and body, have me at your mercy"
"and ask me what you will, whatever you will"
"I want to tell you everything, all, that I am, that I show,
that I hide. I want to impress you, shock you, fulfill some of your expectations and smash many others".
But have me. Join me. Want to understand me.
Play with me. Talk to me. Agree with me, that the paths of the world must be superseded
if we are to taste the deepest, fullest, richest juices in this Life.
Let's play in the snow, let's make love in the snow.
Let's go to Thailand and start anew on our goals. On ourselves.
On each of us, supporting each other, holding our candle to each other to keep our paths strong.
Or Colorado.
Or Guatemala.
Alaska. Chile. Greece. The WORLD! Won't you come?
Won't you leap into the pit of adventure that strikes fear into many who survey it, but is also told in stones as a life-changer, a self-finding quest, an irreplaceable, indispensable experience for any who lusts for Life?"

Drama indeed. And more of a monologue anyway. I do want to join Scotch 'n Soda sometime soon, I hope?
Or am I leaving? Ah, future, my answers lie in you, but you lie in me. The cyclicity. And the solipsism.
And the thoughts. Don't stop. Keep writing.

Why?
Because.
Mind.
Wants. Expression. Out. Say. Words. Talk. Be. Act.
The act of the mind is the thought.
And my mind has taken to action indeed.
Would I enjoy a dream more, perhaps?
A beautiful, yet ephemeral dream?
Sometimes just quite far-fetched
Mixed, a concoction of distant concepts
that in my mind project to close neighborhoods.
And comics and family and books merge, in some permutation,
to create one more Life for me.
Much like now it does with words.
But then it returns, and I find
myself on my flat mattress,
warm, cozy, comfortable,
with so much potential unused.
Unmoving, steady,
with an appetite for novelty unappeased
covered by an old mantle of modesty, cobweb-ridden,
dampening my actions I imagine grand,
rich, strong fast,
swift, delicious in action and realization.
I awake to find
needs,
expectation,
schedule,
routine,
constraints overpowering possibility
through chains only of shadow and doubt
but through fear and time made steel.
When do we learn our true power?
How do we break free? Is it indeed just as simple?

It is. It must. Complexity only leads to constraints and models.
And the world is free.
But it cannot be free outside
if it is not free inside.
For no achievement is true if it is effortless.
And i begin to think
that effort, intention,
is the currency of the universe.
The way value is created, distributed,
how ideas become systems,
attraction love,
and ambition prowess.
How mud sparks Life,
feathers flight,
Life beauty,
beauty God.
Alas, our model today is constrained,
it believes no more than what is observed,
so it finds no more.
You only obtain if you take from someone else,
you only gain if someone else loses.
Over-simplified, of course, but the world is more.
THE WORLD IS MORE than many believe,
than most think,
than all conceive.
It marvels, with each drop of dew,
and each flutterring butterfly,
each flake of snow from the trillions,
each rock placed where it is
each bird, master helmsman,
each flower, birth of Life,
each sunrise, continuity,
each movement of each of our muscles, most instant, precise, miraculous system.
Ah, if I could write better,
I'd write more of the wonders of the world that I see.

that I've seen
that I will see
that I hope to see
that I'll never see
in this minuscule, blessed Life of mine.