What drains the passion from a person? There used to be a time when there wasn't enough time for me to say all the things I wanted to. Now, I can hardly think of anything worth saying. I've been thinking about the hair story I started some time ago and have been feeling a little interested in working on it and seeing where it goes. The main problem is I'm not entirely sure what I want it to talk about. At the time I started it, I was playing with the idea of how asian beauty is processed in the American psyche, which I still think is a good motivator. But what do I want to say about it. I think there are still a lot of stereotypes about people of asian decent in America--primarily that they are somehow still foreign and not actually from America. People always ask where are you from. What's your nationality? As if America and American cannot be the answer. So we're back to the way asian beauty is processed and how asian woman view themselves in relation to the American ideals of beauty. I like to see how the "hipper" asian women do things like have their eyes widened and dye their hair blonde. I should say Korean women, because I don't know if Japanese-, Chinese-, etc.-American women do these things. But Korean-American women love looking good. They love their DKNY, they love their cellphones, they love their platform shoes, they love their razor-sharp hairstyles, they love their cosmetic tattoos.

I've been thinking lately I should concentrate more on my writingómy real writingónot this thing. I'm feeling the old desire creep up on me again. The question is what's the story? In a lot of ways, you're always writing. The stories are turning round in your head and they never stop. It's just easier to let them run their course in the brain rather than put them down on paper. But the stories are there. I used to feel really passionately about a lot of things and none of those things seem so important anymore.

Last week I was watching some teenagers at the mall and they were dressed up in prom outfits and they were all very conspicuous because how can you not be in prom clothes at the mall. Obviously the dance was being held somewhere in the mall because there were a lot of kids. When my friends and I saw the first couple of them, we thought the boys had decided to take their dates to dinner there and we wondered would you want to be taken to the mall for your prom dinner. We all decided no, but then we started seeing more of them walking around while they held hands trying to look as glamorous as the clothes they were wearing.

The girls all wore strapless gowns or, at most, spaghetti straps. I guess I'm entering the phase of my life where I begin thinking like my parents because I wondered how their mothers let them leave the house in outfits that bared so much. Not that they really did bare so much, but I don't think I would have felt comfortable wearing a strapless gown at 16. I don't think I'd feel comfortable wearing a strapless gown now at 34. Mainly because you're pulling up on the thing all night long and it's just not worth the aggravation.

But it was nice to watch the girls and see in their faces the look that on this one night they got to be beautiful. They got to be fancy and dressed up and beautiful. The boys all looked puffed up and ridiculous as they most often do, but the girls were all beautiful and happy.