Although I am the furthest from a morning person you’ll ever meet, I registered for an English class called Morning Pages, which, on top of being a 9 a.m., mandates two pages of writing—you guessed it—every single morning. It’s made my dreams much more vivid, given me (or cursed me with) thirty minutes alone with my thoughts to start each day, and stirred up colors I’ve never seen before. Because it’s so early, I don’t remember anything I write. Rereading my morning pages has been an intriguing glimpse into myself, to see what I think of when I’m still asleep, still caught in the veil between worlds. Every morning, before I have a chance to think, I write.

1. morning pages, notes, dreams, roughly September 10 to October 1 - — - - — -- — - - — - — - - — 

2. I had a strange dream. It was nighttime, and I was in Berlin, standing on a cement tower in the middle of a river that knifed through the city. It was much like the Providence River, except that this one was on the verge of flooding as a thunderstorm raged overhead. The water rose to surround my ankles, the night punctuated by flashes of lightning. To my own surprise, I turned to the river, spread my arms, and leapt in headfirst.

The dream ended before I found out whether I drowned, and I shot up gasping, disoriented and chilled despite the humid September morning.

7. We learned an idiom in Vietnamese: uống nước nhớ nguồn. When drinking water, remember the roots.

3. This time, I’m not writing my article in a Blank Street in New York next to my childhood friend. This time, I’m on a flight home to Denver, next to a man who all but admitted he makes missiles (“defense…working on things that only fly one way”). At the same time, an international friend is texting me about how her lease is endangered, which is making her miss home—a home she so desperately fled across the ocean from. This weekend, I am going home because I miss the scent of lavender shampoo in my mom’s room and because recently I haven’t been able to breathe without my chest tightening with the subtle suffocation of heartbreak. When anyone asks, though, I tell them it’s because otherwise it would be a long time before I saw my family again.

4. Recently someone brought up the idea that your original universe is your childhood home. I flinched when I heard this—what a terribly cold, static, and desolate original universe. And then I considered it would also be a universe of afternoon sunlight and the clacking of my dog’s nails on hardwood.

Strange that when our built-home becomes shaky, we start to miss our original-home. It seems this phenomenon happens whether you flee 1,956 miles or 7,816 kilometers.

3. My favorite part of flying is the lapse between the moment and the fall, the tightrope between chance and death.

8. Recently, I had been struggling with the question of whether or not to go abroad. I would go to Shanghai, a city I’ve only spent three weeks in but already love. I would go to learn my father’s language, to say that I went abroad, to take a bite out of whatever is so life-changing about the experience.

11. Something I wondered about in Amsterdam: Do you think Banksy stopped being a street artist the second his art was hung in museums?

10. Mostly what was stopping me from committing to Shanghai was my friend S’s couch that she let me stay on for days, despite the fact that I lived ten minutes away, because she understood what I meant when I told her I couldn’t be alone, despite the fact that I have three suitemates, despite the fact that I live in the center of campus. Mostly what was stopping me was the new Snoopy blanket on my bed that my friend picked out. Mostly what was stopping me was the milk my friend A brought to me when I wasn’t even home, because when I asked why milk, she told me that when she was younger warm milk always made her feel better. Mostly what was stopping me was the summer squash that K roasted and the subsequent dinner we cooked, dancing around each other in a rhythm we must have learned in some life that wasn’t this one because I had only really met her the week before. Mostly what was stopping me was the day my other friend S let me sleep until 2 p.m. on her floppy air mattress that took up all of her floor space so that she had to tiptoe around her own room. When she let me borrow all of her clothes because I didn’t want to leave. When she let me ramble and laughed at my bad jokes because she knew that every dream I had that night was about the same person, because she knew I felt sick to my stomach when I woke up.

9. Another dream. I was trapped at the bottom of a well, waiting for my brother to rescue me, except I was my brother and also the water. And the rope. And the shadow it cast.  

12. A suspension between vulnerability and possibility, the losing of one to become another. That glance over the cliff to check how steep the drop is—not the jump or even the fall but the moment you resolve to do it, the threshold you cross, the little switch that clicks and doesn't flip back.

13. How much I love every blade of grass, every tree that falls in front of my dorm, every little rushed hello and sidewalk hug and “we’ll catch up.” How much I love his smile, and hers, and even hers too. How much I love the fat squirrels, how much I love that I am friends with someone in every suite in my building. How much I love my professors, my friends that will drop anything to do anything at a quick text. How much I love the river, where nothing ends, where whatever I bring to it is held, gentle and infinite.

7. I once asked gods I don’t believe in for more time with you.

14. Mostly what was stopping me was the very tangible truth that almost everyone I live for is here. That when I come back a lot of them will be gone. That this place, all 143 acres of it, is home in a way that makes my bones ache with longing, even when I’m here. Some strange, backwards nostalgia clinging to my lungs, missing something I haven’t even left.

15. In Vietnamese, you use the particle về when traveling home. Should I use it both ways, then? Flying from home to home. 

16. A week into the semester, I woke up to the news that the author of my favorite essay, the essay that had become my creed over the years, had passed away. I emailed my high school English teacher about it—my first time talking to him in four years—and was delighted to hear that he now teaches woodworking and still remembers my love for “Living Like Weasels.”

6. If I declare some place is home, then I have to be able to leave it. Home waits.

27. My friend A has been holing himself up in his room, obsessed with creating his EP. It’s all he can talk about. I can’t blame him—I get it, the head rush of creating something wholly your own. It’s the closest antidote to time that I’ve found. 

12. “To be the first vessel to hold this new thing.” (Alan Lightman) 

18. Recently, during a law firm tour in Boston, I listened to a panel of lawyers speak about their careers, and I realized with cold certainty that I had to go to Shanghai. That I had to go to San Francisco the summer after that. Otherwise, I may become one of them one day, sitting ducks on the other side of the chasm they were too scared to jump over.

17. Is it possible to love a place so much it becomes a prison? What about a person?

19. Over the summer, I had the good fortune to travel to a few cities in Europe with my friends for ten days. As the six of us went from plane to car to train to train to train, bar after bar after museum after Tower after club after Wall after hostel, I remember the resonant tuning we started to find ourselves in. We spent so much time together I learned how to spring between every single person’s head, human synapse, hopping neurons, absolutely electric. In so little time, we created our own little original universe—created one where I knew everyone’s every thought, created one that we slept and ate and cried in for eternity. We walked everything, ate the Earth, became the trees, and drank until our throats burned.

20. Then eternity ended, and it was over. Another original universe gone, created and lived and inhaled once and then gone.

23. “Know you have a long way to travel / Miss you / I’m at the table in the back.” (Gabrielle Calvocoressi)

22. Ten days, four years, what makes an eternity an eternity?

21. “the two of us, or the all-of-us, not here long maybe it is.” (Ross Gay)

24. I’m going to Shanghai because I want to see if I can build from scratch. What I can build from scratch. I’m going because I want to see if home will wait for me. If I can really trust the unknown—however dark and however cold—enough to dive headfirst. If I really trust myself.

I need to find out whether I drowned or not. Really, I’m going because I need to test out how deep I dare to dream.

25. It's the tension right before a first kiss, the catch of light in a pupil, the first breath of waking up, the space between beat and drop, not the lighting of the match but the failed one right before, the held breath before the next. 

26. “…jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” (Annie Dillard)

28. Sometimes that’s just where the river marches, and you have no choice but to drown or to throw your arms out to a god you don’t believe in and jump, hit the water before it hits you, find the depths of the well before it finds you. Sometimes that’s all there is to do. Time helps but it leaves a scar anyway. If there’s anything I believe in more than I believe in love (there isn’t), it’s that whoever dares to dream wins.