Yesterday I awoke into Spring Quarter.

At least the drenching, ferocious storms of the moody winter are gone, replaced by light refreshing spring drizzles and cool breezes. The flowers are blooming; carpets of orange poppies lining the road, and the occasional patch of lavenders too. And on the nearby hills, entire slopes are blanketed by wearied, wind-hardened grass. This is what I have always wanted to experience in person: life in countryside blossoming with wild flowers. And Stanford, with its ideal suburban location, gives me exactly that.

But strangely, I don’t feel satisfied. These few days I seem to be extremely irritable, my emotions more and more volatile. For the second time in my life, I find myself subject to sudden “pangs” of anger or sharp dissatisfaction — “pangs” because I cannot find another more suitable or precise word to use. And it is getting increasingly difficult to suppress these feelings; nor do I really have anyone to converse to about them. Practicality seems to rule the day but it seems, too, to be driving me up the wall of impracticality — it is quite impractical to be irritable and therefore I should not be quick-tempered but that is not practically feasible sometimes. This meandering monologue with myself never ends.

Often I get irritated with myself for being irritated. This obviously makes me even more irritated — a self-perpetuating positive feedback cycle, dissecting it properly. Maybe it is because of the people around me. Everyone is nice and pleasant, alright; but except for a precious few, the majority of those smiles, those greetings, fail to strike me as anything other than superficial and forced. Where is the sincerity of it all? Is it even possible to be sincere? Given that classmates and dormmates are going to be classmates and dormmates for not longer than a quarter or an academic year, is there even a point in trying to get to know people better? There is always this unspeakable discomfort that hovers in the air whenever someone — a classmate or dormmate — says hi. And I can always predict the conversation topic even before the first words are spoken: How was your spring break? What classes are you taking this quarter?

There is never any variation; nor is there anything else to ask. But must we always ask so much? Rephrased: must we always ask so much of ourselves or others? Perhaps just knowing that someone is a friend is enough. Words are unnecessary. But sometimes I don’t know whether someone is still a friend, or not. Words unspoken are also the most garbled, the most brutally senseless words.