Trying to find a way out of the labyrinth

So begins another week.

But I don't really want it to begin. There's lots of work to be done but I don't want to do it.

We're about to enter the first round of exams so I should be running in top form but frankly all I want to do is sit somewhere quiet by myself for awhile.

I think because it's such a crunch time that this is the last time I would want to take a break and be kind to myself....so that's exactly what I'm going to do. I don't know how much it will help but it certainly can't hurt right?

It's so easy to be judgmental and critical of ourselves. It's one of those times when I thought I was at least keeping my head above water and treading in place but now it feels like I'm going backwards while everyone else is going forwards. I don't know how much of the time that's actually justified but I figure that it couldn't possibly hurt to be kind to oneself.

Granted, it feels like such a short-term fix; the things that I want, that would make me feel more secure are somewhat out of my control. But spring is only a few weeks away, so there's that.

Calm before the storm

A short post for now because honestly I don't know how much I have to say about this but I feel like I should say something.

Evidently, today I'm getting more news back that could potentially alter my future path-more than the usual anyways.

I remember this day about 8 months ago really well. It was the heat of summer, I was about halfway through my summer internship and volunteering opportunities. I got the email at work but had to wait about 2 hours to commute home before I knew anything for sure.

I am not sure how I feel right now. My heart skipped a beat when I realized that today was the day and now I am slightly nauseated...but it also doesn't feel as earth shattering as it did last summer. Maybe it's because my future plans are not as contingent on how this goes. Maybe because weddings and babies and all the other human events make this seem really small by comparison. I don't know.

I guess then that I am feeling nervous but the crippling anxiety is missing. I guess because I know I will graduate, I will be in school next year-all of those things. Today is just a day and life will go on.

When did 'emotions' and 'failure' become dirty words?

A short post because I need to go to bed soon.

I was recently writing something for a project that I can't really talk too much about. But I can tell you that I had to confront a time in my life when things really were not going well. When I felt powerless and hopeless. I was looking back on old blog posts from that time to see if past-me had more eloquent ways of saying things.

I had written nothing.

I also had never acknowledged what was happening in my journals really or in any subsequent blog posts. I had literally never written about what I still consider the hardest, most emotionally draining period of my life. It is a time that was basically burned into my memory. It's a time that I carry with me as a talisman and say to myself 'I survived that, which means that I can survive anything.'

It's a hard thing to acknowledge really. That some part of my life wasn't smooth and effortless. Honestly, it still hurts to think about it now, years after the fact. At the time, I was grateful that nobody saw my tears or knew about my weakness. And after it was done, I put those thoughts and feelings away in a drawer.

But that's the thing about pain...'it demands to be felt'. Sooner or later, it will come out.

"We must try to live": A review of 'The Wind Rises'

(Disclaimer: I watched the Japanese version with English subtitles; a friend mentioned that the English dub is a bit heavier handed and some of the subtleties are obscured)

Hayao Miyazaki has been hailed as one of Japan's finest animators and artists of our time, bringing us such beautiful films as Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle and Kiki's Delivery Service. After creating a film for over three decades, The Wind Rises was Miyazaki's final film before announcing his retirement in September 2013 and was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Animated Picture". Hayao Miyazaki has always had a certain fascination with flight, such as Kiki's broomstick and Howl's wizarding capabilities and the aircrafts of war, so it is not really surprising that his last film would follow suit. The film follows aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi as he aspires to engineer the most beautiful airplane. The film begins with his childhood in a traditional Japanese household and ends with the test flight of his prototype in the rapidly industrializing nation before the start of World War II.

This is perhaps Miyazaki's most complex films both in terms of plot and character development. The film had a slow build for me in the first half. Although the 'goal' is introduced early on, in a similar way to most of his films, we see Jiro going through school and his company faces failure after failure. It isn't immediately apparent how the protagonist is going to achieve his goal and what's more, the aforementioned 'goal' doesn't even seem to be the driving force of the action. Throughout the film, we see relationships being built and scenes that aren't serving immediately to bring him closer to his dream. Furthermore, because the film is a biopic it is the first film that is based in reality rather than in the fantastical. Audiences are meant to relate to what's going on on the screen rather than use the film to escape the mundane as they have before. In many of his previous films, a quest is outlined for the protagonist and is eventually resolved at the end of film with all problems being solved. In The Wind Rises, the plot is much more bittersweet and in my opinion, realistic. At the same time that something wonderful happened for Jiro, something terrible happened as well. But despite that, we are not meant to think that the end of the film was the stopping point for the characters. Rather, we as viewers were privileged to see a part of his life that continued after the film. Although tragedy strikes, it is not the end of Jiro's life-he simply goes on. The great exception to the film's reality of course are the dreamscapes, which remind me of whimsical versions of the dream palaces we see in Sherlock. These times allow Jiro to predict and solve problems in design as well as 'meeting' people, like his idol, an engineering virtuoso by the name of Caproni. Nevertheless, the film remains grounded in the fact that for the most part it is trying to portray a time and place that really existed.

It also attempts to portray people that really existed. Although there was of course some creative license with the characters, there was actually an engineer named Jiro who designed airplanes for the military. In a slight departure from his other films,  I didn't find any one character to be compelling in particular. Jiro is portrayed as the dreamer but lacks some of the charisma of Howl or Ashitaka; Naoko is beautiful and sweet but isn't feisty like Kiki. But rather than creating one character to bear the weight of the film on their shoulders, I think that Miyazaki effectively shows many nuances of human nature that he simply could not do in any of his other films. In many ways, the characters uniformly feel more mature, which will certainly resonate with older audiences. While there have been adults in the other films, they are usually they are depicted as evil or petulant. In previous cases, many of the protagonists are children and the film is their bildungsroman but we do not see them after they've  come of age. The characters in The Wind Rises are mainly adults and deal with situations that I think a lot of young adults can relate to- like rerouting a dream, persistence despite failure and especially losing a loved one. I especially think that he shined at showing compassion in the face of adversity: friendship in spite of professional competition, love in spite of the inevitable end. It is the ordinary small moments that I think make the film so extraordinary. The film is not built on cinematic shots and encounters with magical beasts, but rather on subtle moments like Jiro not being able to control tears falling onto his designs or holding his wife's hand while he continues to work late at night. Rather presenting than a one dimensional hero or heroine on a quest, the film seeks to show a time and place-which is refreshing but also made a strong impression.

Joe Hisaishi returns to score the film with the Yomiuri Symphony Orchestra. Admittedly, I had to go back and find the soundtrack online because it is so secondary compared to the film action itself. That is not to say that the music was not important to the overall film but compared to how different the film itself, the score is much more prototypical of Hisaishi's other work. However, it is notable that Hisaishi chose to use a guitar as the solo instrument for many of the tracks as opposed to the piano. Although many of his works have been transcribed for guitar, I think this is the first to use it in the original score. The use of guitar in conjunction with that of an accordion ties the film strongly to the European musical tradition, which is fitting considering how much of the film is spent idolizing German and Italian engineering innovation. In one reiteration of the main theme, Hisaishi makes use of the brass section and drums to underscore the military aspect of the film toward the end of the film. I'm actually a little surprised he didn't use more wind instruments but perhaps that is a little too obvious a choice. Personally, there is no one memorable ear-worm melody that I can pick out at random and I am not likely to listen to the soundtrack out of the context of the film-it doesn't really make sense without the screenplay. However, the music nicely supports the overall feel of the film as a whole.

The Wind Rises is quite a departure from the Miyazaki's past work and many critics have noted that the film seems to be reflective of Miyazaki himself, a myopic dreamer. When it was released, the film was highly controversial given that many parts of the world have not healed yet from the damage inflicted by the Kamikaze missions, conducted by airplanes engineered by the real-life Jiro. While I don't have enough a background in history to really comment on the political nature of the film, I found the film to be exceptionally complex compared to his previous work. If you were expecting the usual feel-good Studio Ghibli film à la Totoro, this is not the film for you. While still a beautiful artistic piece, The Wind Rises is not flashy and theatrical in the way that his other films have been but I think it is probably his most well-written film. The Wind Rises is both sentimental and poetic but not overly so-the perfect culmination to a long and distinguished career in animation. 

Onwards and Upwards.

It's hard to believe that my final term of my undergraduate career begins in less than a week. After the fervor of last week, things finally feel like they are settling a bit-though I know this is just the calm between the storms and by this time next week I am sure I'll be relishing the opportunity to sleep past 8.

Still, I'm not quite dreading the return to school the way that I usually do. But maybe that's because it never felt like I ever stopped working completely. Throughout break, I've been chipping away at various projects. It hasn't been an overwhelming amount of work but it has been steady. Although I don't have much to share with you yet, I am actually kind of amazed that all the things that needed to get done did.

Spring semester has never gone particularly well for me; we spend the first 60% shrouded in darkness and lethargy and then suddenly it's the end of March and both flowers and finals arrive. I've felt this pattern since high school but weirdly enough I don't feel that way about this year. We haven't had to be holed up in our houses because of ridiculous cold or snowstorms so it honestly feels like we're just inching closer and closer to spring and to sunshine. (Though of course now that I say that, we're probably going to have a Nor'easter tomorrow). It sounds so silly to be affected so profoundly by the weather but it actually helps me feel more like the spring is a continuation of sorts of the work that I've been doing so far, rather than a new and terrible obstacle to be overcome. Going back to my schoolwork isn't a prison or a terrible sentence, you just carry on like you have before.

How ironic that I finally figure out how to exist somewhere, right before I have to leave it.

Goals for each season of 2015

As I've said before, I don't really believe in resolutions made because you were bored or because you needed an excuse to change something about yourself. However, I do have a few activity goals for this year that I hope will be fairly manageable and if they come to fruition, I will absolutely share my experiences with you.

Winter: (Finally) go traying.

For those of you who are not familiar with this term, it refers to sledding down the hill on Severance Green. Traying is listed as one of the "50 things to do before You Graduate" but unfortunately I have not been on campus during any major snow storms in the past few years. I also have not been sledding since grade school and generally stay inside whenever there is inclement weather. Nonetheless, it is one of the several rites of passage so I am setting it as a Winter goal for myself, since it wouldn't be the same to come back and do this as an alumna. Although we've been having a really mild winter so far this year in Massachusetts, I'm hoping that I'll finally get one good trek in before I graduate.

Spring: Travel somewhere on my own

Of course I have traipsed around Boston solo before but the idea of going to a new place completely by yourself has a certain thrill that grabbing coffee at MIT does not. At this moment, the idea of going somewhere where I don't speak the language seems a little bit daunting but I would be more than game for a domestic trip. I feel like traveling on your own means that you have to be completely self-sufficient, if only for a short amount of time. As of right now, my best chance at doing this seems to be our March recess, if money and the Fates allow.

Summer: Waterside evening at the ICA

I've wanted to go to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a while, not least of all because it affords visitors a beautiful view of the port and Boston skyline. There is also nothing I hate more about the summer than humidity so this seems to take care of that nicely. A bottle of wine with friends on the marina sounds just fine to me, thank you.

Fall-Go to the Head of the Charles

I used to go to music school in Cambridge so I've passed through Cambridge during the regatta for the better part of a decade. However, I've never actually seen any of the races; seems like there's no time like the present.

Going to seek a Great Perhaps

Another relatively short entry for now; hopefully after next week these can get longer, more interesting and more eloquent but for now, I will write about what I currently know. It seems like the next few months or so are a time of immense transition. And not just for me but for a lot of the people in my life-not just the graduating seniors. I think when I take stock of things in a year, things will definitely feel very different. I feel like even though everyone is finally settled in where they currently are, it's time to move upwards and onwards to new places. 

All of this is a bit confusing for me, because I understand that change is good in the long term. Change means things are still in the process of happening and getting better...but it is also slightly terrifying. Moving into new places and meeting new people might be exhilarating for some but for me, the thought of diving into something completely new without any context to anchor me is incredibly anxiety-inducing.

It is so odd to think that my time is limited and a lot of the people that are here today will be scattered around the globe in the next few months. People are getting married, moving away and...moving on. I feel like my mood oscillates between being so ready to go onto greater things myself and being terribly afraid that I am wholly unprepared for what the world has in store for me. 

The world seems to be spinning faster and faster and the moment that I stop to take stock of what is happening, the less and less time I seem to have. I think I definitely took for granted that there would be four years of my life that would more or less just build on themselves and now I must confront something new. 

Because there is no turning back, nor would I want to. Although I am not one to be easily bored, I think that while known things are safe, they are also stagnant. I think that in moving forward, there should be some balance of the fear of the unknown(because I think it is a useful instinct), hope that things could be wonderful, and comfort in the fact that if it isn't wonderful, it isn't for forever-it's just for now. I hope that 2015 is the year where we all have the courage to take that first step and make something spectacular.