I'm currently reading *The Woman Warrior*, which appeals using elements similar to Shang-Chi & teaches using elements very dissimilar to Shang-Chi. Over the last week, I've read pages and pages of stuff that is, in some way, tangentially related to being Asian-American[^1] The only line I can remember came in this one: "In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders." I think I have soft eyes. I trust easy & laugh often; I truthfully cannot believe how fortunate my life has been. My parents' eyes have softened over time, I've found, and I'm primarily fortunate because I got to skip to that stage, I think. Re Amy Chua, it's possible my kids' eyes will be mush. I spent the last month of school actually at school. Somehow, doing this, I missed *more* class than when I travelled often. That doesn't really make sense. The time this semester has been flying at Mach-10 speed. Each day feels open, slow, until I blink and bedtime arrives. Saturdays are my absolute favourite on campus. My body doesn't really sleep past ~9:30am often, meaning most of my mornings are spent walking around, under a Carolina blue sky, on a roughly empty campus. I'm writing from Houston. The weather is a little gloomy. There are no plans — perhaps concepts of a plan — for the day. Part of coming was probably to escape Chapel Hill. The same series of cafes, campus buildings, and plush sofas — no matter how comfortable — can be somewhat stifling. If I had to say one thing, I would say that Houston has taught me if there was ever a crystalliser of eyes, it would be the game of golf. Golf must have been brought to us by the same inventors of rare strains of drugs — you know the kind, where users go long periods of time in misery, but that misery is lightly sprinkled with moments of euphoric bliss. Golf, the game of life, as Forbes says. Sometimes I feel like I'm killing it as an adult. Then something dumb will happen, like I'll spill Coke in my backpack, which I don't even drink, leading to an overwhelming desire to call my mom. ~ 03/18/25 I write all this to say: who we are is who we're around. Sometimes we embark on things alone, and that forces some kind of strength of eyes. Sometimes we are around others that forces some kind of strength of eyes. A lot of important things happened this trip, even though I never saw it at the time. I'm glad I put words down, even though I never finished them. [^1]: Ignore how — technically — I only fit one of these.