Odelia Chan

When I think about heroes, the chorus of Livingston’s “Fairytale” comes to my mind every now and then: “Then my mother asked me Could you find confidence Beyond Lightning McQueen? ‘Cause stories won’t last once you wake from your dreams I looked her in the eyes and asked her what it all means If my…

Following the previous posts on imperfection as beauty and mistakes as negative beauty, there is one more bit of nuance nearly as indistinguishable from the focus of those two posts as the focuses of those posts are from each other. (Confusing and somewhat redundant, no? Bear with me.) That “bit of nuance” is this: Realizing…

When you look at something, how do you tell whether you are also looking through something else simultaneously? What if you are looking through so spotless and subtle a substance that you almost cannot tell that it is even there? Answer: You look for a reflection of yourself in the space between yourself and the…

I was at a local thrift store last week, and came across the carved egg below, made of solid black marble.It was selling for a dollar. $1. A good deal for me, I suppose. My dad could not believe the egg was made of actual marble until he held it, felt its weight and coolness,…

In a previous piece, I mentioned the role mistakes play in highlighting the beauty of a certain creation or performance. But what of imperfections being beautiful themselves? Contrast, for a moment, the ancient Japanese’s compassionate perspective towards the deepening of patina on aging silver with the Western polishing of silverware and abhorrence of all flaws/sighs…

A number of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a friend over potential connections between suffering and brilliance. At one point, I included the following phrase in my response to his argument point: “…assuming there is a God.” (For context, we both claim to be Christians. It makes sense for these four words, so…

A small thought: A friend of mine who had worked for some time as an architectural technician decades ago told me, upon hearing of my taking a similar path, to save all my drafts and sketches. Doing so would help, he said, with forming the concepts and design arguments of the project, with finetuning the…

One hundred, one ten, and one. That is how many days it has been since I opened an account on a social platform I remember cringing at the first time I came across it a decade or so ago. The reason I have been on? To connect with an old acquaintance who uses Snapchat for…

One aspect of being me I find frustrating is how directionless my life seems given the hundred-and-one interests I pursue. Opinions differ on that, of course. Some suggest I force said pursuits to take turns, focusing on one or the other in different seasons of life – a car, after all, does not move when…