why I write

My mom finally mailed me a box of stuff, which she picked from what I had mailed to her last year from the US. She said she couldn't include the knives because the government banned the mailing of all sharp objects. My immersion blender didn't make it, either.

My mom sent the box from China. I knew she packed it because I found two plastic bags with the Chinese label "Bei Yi Department Store," a place she worked for more than twenty years and from which she retired at the age of fifty. My dad wrote the mailing label. I recognized his handwriting. In the field for "detailed description of contents," he wrote "Clothes, Books" and declared its worth of 1500 USD.

I found my old books. Letters to A Young Poet, The Book of Questions, a pink cookbook named Mexico, the National Geographic hiking map of Jasper National Park in Canada. I found a grocery bag I got on the beach of Oaxaca and two shirts from a slightly touristy shop in Chiapas.

I suppose my dad understood the value of these things to me by putting down a number ten times higher than the materialistic cost.

I bought Letters to a Young Poet the senior year of college. "My dad wanted me to be a lawyer. As an English major, I thought architect would be a middle ground," said my architecture advisor. The present things are clear, I remember him saying, while the past trickles away. Or did he say "tinkles"? "Twinkles"? I remember he pressed his fingers together to make a gesture towards something far, and I remember agreeing with the revelation. When he told me to read Rilke, I did not hesitate for one second.

words from Rilke

I found solace in solitude that year.

Years later, I know I write because I must.

why I write this thesis

"Being here is a demarcation of time," I wrote that in September, 2019.

I wanted to make a speech about the turmoil, physically and internally, that I had — sometimes endured and sometime inflicted on myself — over the year before.

This year. The year before.

It seems my narrative are so bound up by the recent past that I felt a huge burden when someone asks me about it.

5 key texts

I want to evoke feelings. I believe it is shared human nature and thus a way to foster empathy.

Empathy comes from compassion (understanding and love) for the self. <-- don't have a text yet; does personal experience count?

Causality is important in determining narrative.

Narrative, in the dramatic sense, follows a structure.

Memories are images strung together. Words construct images — words come to me via memories. I am turning personal memories into images... And I want these images to make sense to others. I want others to understand, through these images, something about me, something about themselves.

I am still a bit confused about how narrative and memory come together.