Ground Zero

These days are ridiculously exhausting, considering that I'm not really doing anything overly strenuous. It's just that there is so much to absorb and assimilate, to learn and accommodate, that it demands every ounce of effort and attention that one can muster. The days careen from one remarkable experience to another, with scarcely the space to take stock of what has just happened, before the next happening thrusts itself upon you and demands that you pay attention. These are the heady days of a new arrival, the headlong and total commitment to the experience of a place, driven by an eagerness that is founded on total defencelessness and the total faith that the place will provide only worthwhile experiences.

Anyway, taking stock. Among the people that I've already had the privilege to meet are a Nepalese girl, a sixteen-year-old freshman, a Kentuckian, several Californians, a substantial number of New Yorkers (some of whom live right down the street from Columbia), a Beijinger, a Shanghainese, two Hongkongers, an Indian from Hyderabad, a girl from Comoros, a Londoner, a Peruvian and a Venezuelan. I had been rather cynical about the so-called diversity of the cohort before, because how diverse can you be when everyone's in college and pursuing the same goal: a good degree from Columbia? But of course, a commonality of objective does not in any way restrict the multitude of means to get there, and it is in the methodology that contributes towards the objective that the diverse experiences of this class come in. Of course, it would be ludicrous to say that Columbians form a cross-section of the world's societies; but I realise that I am being exposed, all the same, to more backgrounds and experiences than I could ever have imagined.

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Yesterday was taken up mostly by signing up for this term's classes. Ended up with four courses, namely Literature Humanities, Frontiers of Science, Sociological Imagination and an Urban Studies lecture called Race, Ethnicity and Immigration in Urban America. I also want to try to add Art Humanities to the schedule, but that can only be done on Tuesday.

It is something of a relief to finally begin constituting a timetable, and to gather the required books for the courses - in other words, to start preparing a structure into which this life can be placed. The stability this offers may be arbitrary, but it is still stability nonetheless. And it does offer something else to talk about. Some people have said that they're taking up to 20 credits, which is 6 more than the recommended level. Some chose courses based on how well they fit into an easy schedule. Some are still debating whether to drop one of their six courses for the term - 2 more than recommended. There is a certain element of seeking to reassure oneself in these conversations, since we are all relatively new in this system, and want to be affirmed that we're not only doing things correctly, but doing them well. But what really strikes me is the freedom that they have to choose. This detail may not be important to them; it may not, at least, be interesting to them. But when choosing your courses becomes a luxury rather than a right, then I feel the vexation of being the holder of a Singapore government scholarship, the riskiness and frustration in having to trade a measure of freedom for a measure of empowerment. I understand that without the scholarship, I would not even be here to be vexed by the strictures upon my choices. This very frustration is thus enabled by the strictures that form its target. But the frustration is real, and it is there, and it is acutely felt.

Also watched Pan's Labyrinth in the on-campus cinema (a room that also doubles as a lecture hall), and found out that it is a pretty good movie, with stunning graphics and stunning plot ideas that play with the power of wishful thinking. Fantasy and real life intertwine through the plotline, and magic and material things come together to mutually annihilate, in the process generating beautiful patterns of consequences. It was a good story, written self-reflexively to comment on the power of story-telling to transfigure reality into something more manageable. And there was a beautiful ending, a death, but not an dreadful death, more like a deliverance, the return of a soul to its rightful place in a dream world, escorted by a hummed lullaby. The ending was good in that it made moot the question of whether all the magical things "really" happened, showing that no matter what, the effect of the magic, real or fake, is felt in real, emotional terms, by real, emotional people.

And after that, met up with CUE people again to go to the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe, a legendary establishment in Alphabet city, crammed among row-houses with only a faded awning to identify it. Apparently, this is the most venerated literary spot in Manhattan, and is renowned on the international slam poetry circuit. So we were there, crowded into an overcrowded room, enjoying normal people making beautiful verses about welfare reform (which, I thought, was a topic more suitable for an essay rather than slam poetry), child molestation, sex and dignity. The words were well written, and the stage added another dimension of performance, so that the emotional impacts of the words can be amplified, and also so that the audience is not merely a passive receptacle of art, but a participator in its production and thus its meaning. In Singapore, such events always strike me as pretentious, but here, where they had practically invented the medium of slam poetry, it was pulled off sensitively, brutally at times, but always with a sense of awe and respect at the artistry that was being given to us on that tiny stage.

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Today, some of the Singapore group started out by going to Flushing, the other Chinatown of New York, located in Queens, a Chinatown that is really Chinese, because the Chinese moved there from the Manhattan one because they were being priced out by that area's growing success. It was a happy trip, on which we took another Chinese meal (with the table overflowing with good, authentically prepared Chinese food, as should be the case for good Chinese meals), ate some great egg tarts from the Taipan Bakery, bought Yeo's packet drinks from a supermarket that imports things that I never expected to see outside of Southeast Asia (attap chee in syrup, for example). Also bought another jacket, in preparation for the turn of the weather to coldness that is sure to come soon.

And after dinner, went to Tom's Restaurant (the Seinfeld restaurant) for enormous milkshakes, before making our way further downtown to wander through Tribeca. Found the cinemas at which the eponymous film festival is held every year, and made our way into the Civic District, past colossal neoclassical skyscrapers, City Hall and what looked like a courthouse. Our trajectory eventually took us to Ground Zero, which is still empty, a sorry sight after seven years. On the one hand, the peacefulness of the site at night really enhances the solemnity of the unassuming, simple memorial at the site, a memorial that consists of nothing more than a nominal roll of all the victims of the attacks. But on the other, one hopes to see this scar in the Manhattan landscape start to heal. We owe it to the lost, to the heroes, to build something out of the ruins.

In moments like these, then, and at places like this, you realise that you are intimately connected to the pulse of history, by virtue of being in proximity with its heart. Everyone remembers, for example, where they were on September 11, 2001, when the news broke. It was one of the moments that united human experience, that defined the flow of history. I remember that this happening had a profound impact on my secondary-school life. And to see the site itself with my own eyes was a powerful experience. I had pretended to know what it's like at the site itself, extrapulations that seem inexcusably pretentious and presumptious now that I've actually seen the place for myself. You look around you, and things that made history, things that are still making history, are all around you. It is a humbling experience, and a precious, rare privilege to be in the right place and at the right time to experience this.