Internal Monologue

(Dunhua, Dongbei)

(Blank. Cue voice over)
Much of life seems like luck; although you have some kind of idea in your mind, there is no telling what will happen.

(Children sans helmets riding colorful bicycles down a street in a middle-class single-family home neighborhood, from left to right)
Nothing, no one can guarantee you will be where you end up. I guess that's the best thing about it.

(Vast field of brown wheat with low, dark purple foothills in horizon. Wheat sways in torrents as tiny tractor works its way from from left to right)
Right now feels pretty good. I still don't know what I really want to end up doing, but I'll try a few different things.

(Nighttime, from inside dark car, passengers are murmuring to each other. The rumble of the freeway predominates. Whether or not they are talking about the city, you can't decipher.)
What I really want to do, in the short term, is end up somewhere where I will be doing work (that helps me get to work) with who I admire.

(Seventy-seven women from the ages of fifteen to thirty-three in a Shenzhen factory are sewing, hammering, and gluing together plastic pieces of two-thousand five-hundred purses, which will be shipped to Japan)
So I'm doing this thing at Surface, and also trying to intern with an architecture firm/developer that I respect. It'll take some time (probably dry up my funds for a few months), but each step and decision feels like it needs to be right. (A woman's hands working the plastic across the base of an industrial sewing machine). I'll clarify my intentions and plan ahead. I'll listen to where the wind blows. I'll find my way somewhere between (A woman's fingers slowly turning about the needle's hummingbird wing buzz) chance and decision.

(Workers in silhouette, panorama facing towards the bright factory window. Through the window, you can see the faded stretch of elevated freeway in the distance, with tiny cars moving across it, from left to right and right to left.)
I will, must, HAVE TO believe in it.
MUST be unafraid of failing.

(Do I sound like a corporate motto? Some galvanizing sloganeering:)

(The thunder of a building collapsing on a bright, blue-sky day. Debris scatters in all directions, along with grey clouds of dust. Short pan upwards. In the distance, a small airplane flies across the sky, from right to left leaving a thin trail of white)
FUCK CONDESCENDING BULLSHIT AND FEAR, SELF-GLORY, STAGNATION, AND REGRET.