branches by CJ Q. '23

i already feel like an alum visiting mit, when i come to meetings, when i eat dinners with people, when i go to square dancing every week. it doesn’t feel painful, but maybe it’s because i’m already done. it’s disturbing to me how painless it feels to be saying goodbye.

two games i have been thinking about. one, the witness, which is about the meaningless search for truth or objective reality or illusion or whatever. two, everything, which the author intended as a “feel good” game about interconnectedness, arguing against the alienation of self from the rest of the universe, and yet is filled with bleak existential thoughts. if you’ve seen everything everywhere all at once, the rock scene was apparently inspired by everything.

ben&ben has a song called branches, and when i listen to it i imagine mit as the singer and me as the listener. the verse describes the singer as a fire for the cold listener. compares themselves to a river and the listener to a dove. but then the dove has to fly away. there’s something about birds and breakup songs; i think about imagine dragons’s birds, which has a beautiful music video.

i’m not a fan of psychological horror games like ddlc, which is why i still haven’t played omori even though my friends highly recommend it. of a different taste is existential dread, like the talos principle or nier automata or outer wilds or the stanley parable or the beginner’s guide, which i’m more fine with but still need to brace myself for. everything comes close to evoking existential dread, but the silly anthropomorphism prevents it from being too bad. i wouldn’t call everything a feel good game.

i’m working on my first large code project in a while with a few other people, and already we’ve spawned many branches of our repository. the idea of a branch is that you can develop it on its own but eventually branches get merged into a main branch. progress ever trots forward.

there’s been this saga on the random hall mailing list about bowls being “stolen” between floors. one reply says “images can theoretically be faked but the lack of bowls is tangible and real.” a bowl is a bowl is a bowl.

in the song branches, the chorus isn’t directed to the listener, but to the singer themselves, as a reassurance that things will be okay even if the listener has left. but this feels at odds: isn’t the singer the one who’s the fire, and the listener the one who needs to be warmed? isn’t the singer the river, who will flow eternally, even without the birds that drink from it? so why does the singer have to reassure themselves, when it should be the listener who will be more hurt by leaving?

the future versions of lives i can live will not merge into a single, uber-version of myself that includes all possible good things in all my futures. i can see so many of them, blooming in different directions, branching out. but the best i can hope for is taking all the lessons from my past, my single-threaded, only-one-possible past. the best i can hope for is to work so that as many of my future branches as possible are worlds i will be happy living in, and i can maneuver so to make this possible.

i will graduate and become a software engineer, a frontend developer for the same place i worked at last summer, for they offered me a return offer and i accepted it. i asked to work in the new york office, for i didn’t like the bay area as much as i thought. in another world i could’ve gone back to work in san francisco. in another world i could’ve applied elsewhere for work. in another world i could be doing a masters here in mit and stay for another year with all the people i am leaving behind, and then maybe i wouldn’t feel so lost, wouldn’t feel like i am leaving so much, so many, behind. but that is not the branch my program has taken.

in the same way that as humans we can feel alienated from the rest of the universe, surrounded by our own skin as people living in it, i can exist in mit and yet feel alienated from it. interconnectedness cannot exist without bleak existential thoughts.

perhaps the singer needs the listener as much as the other way around. perhaps the fire needs the person to warm, else it is meaningless. perhaps the river needs thirst to quench, else it is meaningless. everything is interconnected, after all. yet, the chorus of birds: “i know that ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh / birds fly in different directions.”

a game i have been playing recently is slay the spire. there is a relic called a singing bowl. it refers to singing bowls used in some religious practices. they make a sound when you rotate a soft mallet around its rim. they don’t have a spiritual significance; it is to give something to focus on. it could be replaced with any other steady sound. a singing bowl is special, but it is merely a bowl, and a bowl is a bowl is a bowl.

the other day i went to the mit awards ceremony and accepted the compton prize, awarded for “achievements in citizenship and devotion to the welfare of mit”. it is nice to know that not only have i taken from mit, but i have also given back to it, as a citzen, a member of its community, for this is the privilege that is awarded to me and i want to do something about it. because mit isn’t a place, mit exists because the people who are in it work to make it exist. for what point is there to a fire without someone to warm? what point is there to an institute without people who will learn from it? mit works because we do. hence the chorus of branches: “my, my heart is my own / i carry on, i carry on.”

in the million million possible worlds of classes and extracurriculars i could’ve mixed and matched, in some of them i am happy, i am finding joy and love taking the things i want to take. different people do different things for fun. last semester i took a class where we wrote compilers, and to compile a program you must analyze its control flow to some extent. you must think about how its branches can flow and loop and lead into other branches. i liked that class, i did not like it as much as i could’ve, i found more joy doing other things, and we all can do the things that makes us happiest.

it is not inherently bad to be privileged, it is what you make of it. and yet, do i want to advance the narrative that an mit graduate must use their education to make the world as best as they possibly could? i want to be able to say, it is okay if you only save one person, and it is okay if that person is yourself. how can i believe that, and at the same time believe that, as someone who’s had the exceptional privilege of being in mit, i am somewhat compelled to pay it back?

i have thought about the fig tree quote from sylvia plath’s the bell jar too many times. i have quoted it before and i will quote it again:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

“meaningless! meaningless!” says the teacher. “utterly meaningless! everything is meaningless.” the prechorus to birds echoes this, “everything is temporary / everything will slide.” ecclesiastes opens with existential questions, and answers that the point is to enjoy life, for these are the gifts of god. like the witness or everything, it is unclear to me whether ecclesiastes is something meant to reduce my existential dread or increase it.

the shape of the compton prize is a bowl. a plain, unadorned metal bowl. after the awards ceremony i filled it with the candied nuts they had at the reception. it’s a trophy. it’s sacrilege? it’s merely a bowl. a shiny bowl, but merely a bowl. and a bowl is a bowl is a bowl.

will i do good, in the company i will work for? will i contribute to the world? am i making good use of the education given to me, could i be doing better? but part of the maintenance mindset is thinking about how i can be the best fit given the context i am in. i’m not working for another company or doing grad school, so is there a point thinking about how i could be doing better if i was doing something else? maybe?

in branches, before the chorus, the singer asks: “oh love / was it easy to let go?”