West to Easter: Easter

Providence
Mass and Marijuana, Pot and Prayers; they're all religious
So technically it was Good Friday. But then technically this post is three weeks late. I remember the lack of sleep, I remember Brandon being the same as he's always been. The truth is there is a Brandon in all of us, and so we affectionately laugh over his quirks that are really us deep inside. Let's just say he's an anxious dude. Barely 200 meters from the station was all it took for our conversation to shift towards activism on campus, specifically with regard to African-American activism. Damn it's good to be around old friends.

Not that we talked very long about it. Brandon showed me around diligently but also with very little sense about his campus (self-admittedly too) and invited me to Good Friday words, testimonies, hymns, the like. I have this feeling Steph, Brandon and Nick think I'm still Christian, or maybe not, and they were just being nice chaps inviting me to all the Christian proceedings. I find myself lucky that I can consider them, and my non-christian friends good friends and that I hang out with both groups. It was not lost on me how contrasting my stay with Conor and this group of christian friends were (and this was to turn 180 again when I finally met up with Marcus); and it was... well I was going to say amusing but that's pretty snobbish. I guess I just find it rewarding, and wish people would develop relationships like that. It was also not lost on me how I'm able to connect with this group of christian friends more than say, my 'party' friends. There's a few of us, but the number is growing - the people in the middle again. Yams, Kwang Ik, Marcus, Yan Zhou...the thoughtful agnostics and atheists. But that's too tribal and exclusive. And although this blog is an outlet, I have to honor and acknowledge that everyone lies on a spectrum and my comfort range of friends just revolves around a certain group.

I wish I could quote some or even talk in detail about all our conversations, but they lay deep in my subconscious at this point, behind the massive amount of reading I still have to do. I try my best to record. (Just think how difficult, maybe improbable it would be to recall events that happened 100 earlier, all compiled into a book of personal wisdom and stories... just saying.) I met Brandon's friend, who's name already escapes me. I saw Brandon's room, and felt a tinge when he was saying how he tried but couldn't connect with his roommate. "He's in hockey (a jock), you know how it is." That was the kind of thing I was trying my best to avoid... Although I wasn't thinking it at the time, I've always felt, perhaps naively, that you can connect with anyone if we all just tried hard enough. It is devastating to realize there is a point you can't get past. It is worse to realize others can do it much better than you when you really want people to know, this is who you are and you would give a lot for them. Maybe worst, in some sublime melancholic human condition-ish thing, that barrier was just artificial; it was time and space, it was language or culture or pre-conceived judgement that prevented two people with the same souls from reaching each other.
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ORRRR

Perhaps I delusion myself and wallow in stupid philosophizing. The world is simple and beautiful with a cup of coffee. I met Nick Chuan, his hair disheveled and his figure and manner and intellect not out of place if he was born in the 18th century or earlier. As with Steph, it was easy to fall into great conversation and easier still were the laughs and stupor.

Marcus Yeo though. Like some intervention, some dramatic plot tool where the protagonist, unexpectedly finds a hermit in the forest or something, Marcus Yeo walks into the Korean restaurant and back into my life. (LOL fuck I'm having too much fun writing stupid drama. It's good to be back laughing at myself.) Marcus Yeo is what made my time at Brown different from Yale. He gave the light-hearted but still deep and personal contrast to Nick and Brandon's sometimes religious overtones. I will remember all those one to one moments, like me and Steph on the campus green, or me and Brandon throughout campus (I never got one with busy Nick), and now with Marcus Yeo, in pseudo-romantic fashion, around the city, on the banks of the river looking at the pale glowing lights. We talked about so many things, about scholarships, being international students (what else right), where Singapore is going (probably my favourite topic at this point), etc.
"Dude, same!"
Was what I might have needed to hear all along. And after the talk, just weed, an atrocious film, and hugs and goodbyes... I still feel the effects of not getting into council. But then, nobody has ever not run in failure.

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I am left to wonder if I'm just a feminine and sensitive person who was repressed.

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You hate hugs? Don't kid yourself.

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What can I pride myself with now?

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My parent's only connection with me are asking for my pictures of the trip.

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Post is Easter because, it's east of new haven and it was Good Friday -> Easter. Puns are hard, I'm sorry.