A Brief Anthology of You

By Emily Tang

"What if the point of our time here on earth is not to figure out our purpose and fulfill it? What if the point is to enjoy?"

The meaning of life-as told by a 21-year-old. A Brief Anthology of You<

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Dec 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885044127

Book preview

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New Degree Press

Copyright © 2022 Emily Tang

All rights reserved.

A Brief Anthology of You

ISBN

979-8-88504-410-3 Paperback

ISBN

979-8-88504-411-0 Kindle Ebook

ISBN

979-8-88504-412-7 Ebook

This book is dedicated to you.

I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live. If I’m able to, then perhaps I’ll be closer to portraying a true expression of love.

—Hayao Miyazaki

Contents

Author’s Note

Part 1: Of Love

Rubber Gloves

Kitchen

Golden Hour

Waiting

Thank You Notes

Love Letters

Apartment Windows

Conveyor Belt Sushi

Notes App

Milk Tea

A Conversation with a Soulmate

Part 2: Of You

Chopsticks

Teddy Bear Tattoos

Cornelia Street

Gentle Reminder #1

Espresso Machine

Footprints

POV

100 Percent Success Rate

Part 3: Of Agency

Grammar

Theory of Knowledge

Hobbies

Corner Store

Gentle Reminder #2

Guava Cake

Pinterest Boards

Soup

Part 4: Of Growing Pains

Delta Nu

Goodbyes

Ross and Rachel

The Squiggle

It Just Is

Gentle Reminder #5

Gentle Reminder #6

Part 5: Of Healing

Table for One

Wordle

Birthdays

Waves

Restart

The Point

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Author’s Note

Dearest Reader,

In the summer of 2019, I was driving down a long, straight road that took me on a direct path past my elementary school, middle school, and high school. They were all on the same street, a few blocks apart. For eighteen years, it was the only road I had ever really traveled.

Despite driving down this road countless times in the course of my life as I knew it, the drive felt different that day. The sky was a gradient of pinks, purples, and blues brushed with soft white clouds. It was delicate and admirable in ways I hadn’t stopped to notice. The evening air compelled me to slide back the sunroof window. As I did, the air rushed in. The same air I always took in hit different today. It was more liberating and nostalgic. The song I was playing in the car talked about euphoria.

And, I thought, this is what being on the brink of living feels like.

On the brink because I still had a tingling feeling of anticipation at my fingertips. I had just graduated from high school and was looking forward to a summer that would end all childhood summers—looking forward to new friends, new places, and new beginnings.

I was standing on the edge of something promising.

And then, it all came crashing down in 2020.

Suddenly, living felt impossible.

There is no specific place in time when the idea of this book came about. There is, however, a specific place in time when I felt like this book was necessary: when living felt suddenly out of reach, just as my fingertips were close enough to brush it. This book was born from my realizations about what makes life meaningful and worth living. The roots of this book are a mosaic of poignant moments and lessons spontaneously generated in their own time when the time was right.

It came about in nostalgia when I graduated from high school and gazed over all the familiar faces, hyperaware that this would be the last time we all stood in the same building together. It came about in tranquility, the pink and purple skies the summer before college, as I drove back and forth from graduation parties and send-offs. It came about in euphoria from songs I would listen to with the sunroof down on warm evenings. It came about as childlike joy as I reached for the sky with my shoes on swings after long school days, pondering what made me happy. It came about in a desire to share these little moments in hopes others might see the world in this way and spark some kind of joy.

Life, inherently, is hard. As we grow older, we often find ourselves challenged to continue striving toward another day. Life is humbling. We collectively suffered trauma from a pandemic that took life as we knew it away and replaced it with something much stranger, much tougher, and much bleaker.

Suddenly, there was a place in this world for an eclectic collection of lessons from a twenty-one-year-old seeking the meaning of life and constantly seeking a will to live.

I hope what I’ve gathered from my brief time on earth will help you find the courage to persevere in the toughest of times, to find joy at the bottom of the barrel, to discover hope in devastation, and to see compassion when it is least visible.

To you:

I hope you find joy in the smallest of things. In lavender skies and twenty-five-cent watered-down lemonade stands. In the sounds of a city gradually waking up on spring days. In taking blurry, pixelated photos as you hazily stumble down crosswalks in the arms of your friends. In finding a package you forgot about at your front door.

I hope you take comfort in the sunlight leaving warm kisses on your cold skin on February days. In hoodies straight out of the dryer when it rains. In spending a night in the corner of your bed crying until you feel your shoulders relax.

I hope you find promises in the dying rays of the sun at the end of the day, making room for a new start soon. In the quick flashes of light from strangers’ cars on the highway, reminding you that you forgot to turn on your headlights. In single roses handed out from one large bouquet.

I hope you find peace in driving down empty roads late at night, listening to your favorite song on repeat because there is no one around to count the number of times it plays. In lying on the carpet for no reason at all. In stepping out of a crowded room and being engulfed in tranquil silence.

Life is overwhelmingly large, yet our time still feels so short and small. In the hustle and bustle of it all, I want you to know that you are enough the way you are.

That your existence is enough.

This book is for you.

Part 1:

Of Love

Rubber Gloves

William Steward Halstead invented rubber gloves for his wife, Caroline Hampton. She was a nurse and disinfected her hands with antiseptic every day. He saw how dry and chapped her hands were, so he invented gloves for her. Now, the world has rubber gloves (Nguyen-Do 2022).

Josephine Knight Dickson kept cutting herself while making dinner for her family, so her husband invented a temporary adhesive bandage for her. Now, the world has Band-Aids.

This universe is about love. It’s always been about love.

Kitchen

In her Diary of a Song interview with the New York Times, Joe Coscarelli asked Taylor Swift if she had changed any of the lyrics in her hit Lover while producing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, she said. Um, I had toyed with the idea of being like, ‘We could leave the Christmas lights up until April.’

The lyrics she ended up with described the Christmas lights staying up until January, a much more common occurrence than Christmas lights in April.

Doesn’t everyone leave their Christmas lights up until January? asked Joe.

But, it’s not about that being a crazy thing. There is a spark in Swift’s eyes and excitement in her smile. It’s about how mundane it is. It’s about how we can put a rug over there. We could do wallpaper, or we could do paint.

Coscarelli just unlocked the secret to why Swift’s music touches the hearts of so many people. The beautiful thing about her songwriting is that it relies on our collective consciousness. The human experience in its blandest, plainest form. Her songs tell stories, and it always feels like a story you’ve heard before. It feels that way because you probably have. It’s a story about two people falling in love. Two people falling out of love. One person more hurt than the other. One person feeling more sorry than the other. Timeless stories between people. Tales as old as time.

Things inevitably change over time. We get a little older. Things phase in and out of style. People come in and out of our lives. But, what remains untouched forever and ever, what continues to thread people together beyond time, is the human experience. The way we fall in love. How we chase one another for affection. The pain when someone doesn’t reciprocate. The outpour of joy when they do. The warmth of pride when we finally achieve a goal we’ve been striving for. The comfort of feeling safe in another person’s presence. The relief of feeling understood after a long time of fighting to be heard. These things never change.

When Swift says, It’s about how we can put a rug over there. We could do wallpaper, or we could do paint (New York Times 2019). She’s not just talking about that unique experience of creating a space with someone you love, but the mundane experiences we might not directly experience, but somehow we know.

People have asked me where I learned to write. The answer has nothing to do with literature or education. The truth is I listened to Taylor Swift growing up. Little did I know, when I started creative writing, I was mimicking her and romanticizing the mundane things in life.

Like kitchens.

Kitchens appear in all her love songs. The song with the paint set in the kitchen. With the stack of bills on the kitchen table. With two lovers dancing around the kitchen, illuminated by the refrigerator light. With a broken-hearted protagonist crumpled on the kitchen floor.

Suddenly, a mundane place where people cook and eat has so much potential for romance and nostalgia. It’s a place where you bond with someone for the first time over clumsy brownies. A host for late-night conversations and unseasoned ramen in paper cups. A home for that stack of unopened mail and mixed-up keys that once unlocked something but now belong to nothing. You start to appreciate everything about an unimpressive