My Dad keeps foreshadowing my future. He tells me that I need to think of a future, if not my future. My Dad chimes to me: the way I'm living my life right now will lend to a precarious future. Through my sleep I can hear his resonant words and echoing tone of self-defeat and misery. These two emotions may not necessarily tell his tale of making it in America (because I don't know), but he certainly claims I am the burden on his plate. Especially after I informed him that I choose a life of manual labor over an actual career. This terms implies at least $60,000 earnings which are upheld by meritocratic status (a Masters). My Dad mentally accosts me every time he condemns my future. He slays any optimism or any hope that is bound to ever exist. Although this is not novelty for Asian parents, I think the generation gap only increases the daily melee between me and him. My angst and rebellion towards my Dad is an act of bravado; I do not want to let go of his teachings and I certainly don't want to be too far away from Mom, especially from her ritual cooking and quotidian advice.
I awoke this morning to snow plows and their chained tires grinding on the sidewalk. The snow was softly falling and shrouding my rooftop. I could hear the infant snowflakes pitter patter the windowpanes. Pigeons were displaced and the building super was armed with last year's shovel. He displayed punctilious efforts at clearing the sidewalk and brushed his shoulders off. During this moment of staring-out-the-window I felt brisk. So I returned to the warm ruffles of my comforter. Under the covers I stirred, I tossed and turned but sleep was a far goal. So I put on my headphones and listened to a few mixCDs that my ex-best-friend Jessica burned me for my birthdays. Upon discovering these sad, emo songs, a part of me was reawakened. A high school mode was cleared of dust and set on the turntable for rotation. I remembered listening to these songs on my way to the high school gates. I recalled sitting at the Bay Parkway train station seats and listening to the songs. As the train pulled into the station I would pause my song and walk onto the train, find a seat, and then hit the pause button again to commence the song. My high school life was rather embittered, emboldened, and refreshing in comparison to college life which is on-going. It is only refreshing because I am considering it in retrospect. It is refreshing because it is completely different from my college experience. Had I not entered college I would not imbue this frame of mind.
There are a few songs that I can call my soundtracks for my life (my life at the moment): Smile by Tamia, When Will It Be Me by Yasmeen, and Boys of Summer by Don Henley. Smile and When Will It Be Me were two songs sent by my crush in high school. She sent me these two songs via AIM when we spoke in four different sessions. I remember that this was the infancy of my America Online AIM account so the upload was retarded. Therefore I had to finish the upload the next day which meant we continued our conversation. Or was it that I stayed up all night waiting for the upload to finish? This experience makes the two songs worth my music space. On top of that, When Will It Be Me was her favorite song, she declared to me. When I listened to it I couldn't help but wonder if she was single at the time, and needing a boyfriend or lover in her life as the singer Yasmeen croons, "when will it be me." I couldn't help but wonder if her act of sending me her favorite song meant anything. I wondered if she wanted me to hear her cry, if she even made cries to me at all. That was the day I realized the power of music and the power of sharing playlist and song tracks with nearby strangers or fellow friends. Of course that is what mixtapes are for. Mixtapes aka cassette tapes were the main staple for Butch Walker's music video for his song Mixtape. In the video a first grade girl gives him (first grade him) a mixtape. He recovers it and decides to send her a final goodbye by entering her apartment through a window and taking a final picture of her. The act of leaving her that very mixtape was an act of reuniting her act with her present self.
It's interesting how lying in bed produces both a desirable atmosphere and an undesirable atmosphere. It's desirable because I get to block out the morning sounds and I get to disappear into the folds of my comforter with my music. My music isn't all the way up so my parents will definitely not hear me. But I do fear that my Dad calls me for whatever reason. This is some form of concern to me: I always fear that he will call me, or Mom will call me and I won't hear their voices because I'm listening to music on my tight headphones. I like to listen to music especially if it lulls me to sleep. But I fear this because the battery life will drain and I will be forced to reawake only a few minutes later. Because the music is still playing I won't be able to have a recuperative sleep. I wish there was a gadget to detect my sleep: once I start to fall into deep sleep the music will automatically switch off so I can enjoy the rest of my sleep.
Lying in bed thinking about my future is strange. It's also fulfilling. I are not bemused by the world and its events unfolding outside of my blanket and bed and apartment. I am serene, safe, and tucked away in my bed under warm comforters that have sustained my body heat for the past seven hours. The problem with lying in bed is that I begin to think way too much. Especially once the silence sinks in, my brain chatter starts to gain its space and fill the void. The void becomes filled and I begin to hear many things my brain says to me, even though these are the things I will myself to say in my head (not out loud). I like to lie in bed even without music on because I can listen to the thoughts in my head. I can also let my entire body be splayed out, laid out, and eased.
It's hard to say what my future brings, but one thing is for sure--my future will arrive soon. And when my future has arrived it is definitely my present. And that present will look towards some greater form of itself, known as the future.
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