"Once an order is submitted, we are unable to cancel it for any reason." - textbooks.com
Back in Japan I used a dual title for a lot of freewrites. No, wait, that was France. In Japan I didn't use a dual title for anything. I haven't used a dual title since I got back from Paris. Well, here's a triple title. And one of the rare times I finish an unfinished blog post that has been autosaved for my future potential attention.
Tonight I ate a piece of one of my aunt's two (!) birthday cakes, cutting out a square on the cardboard of the pizza box that appeared to be headed to the trash without much use, or to the recycling bin. Anyway, I used that as a dish for the cake and then threw it out in the trash an hour later. Hey, I can't believe it's almost 4 AM now!! And I was めっちゃtired at 12 AM too, and all day before that. Putain.
So, so, so so. I haven't used the word "so" this much since high school, which kind of implies that I am trying too hard to deduce things. Logic only works so often, which is something I always try to point out to other people, but never quite get my heart (or brain) to accept.
But there's no real logical or fluid way to get to this, so I'll just jump on it like I would on a guy if I were in a relationship right now. For some reason Greg has decided to explain his interest in film to me by contrasting it, and not so much comparing it, with my interest in music. He was right about pointing out something - music without words is on the surface a hard way to express things because it is independent of the language that we think we use the most to express ourselves to other people, that is, English or whatever you're speaking depending on what country you're in. (Yes, this applies for foreigners in Japan, too, I think. THIS IS IMPORTANT, if you're in France you should get to speaking French or you will feel alienated, it doesn't matter if you speak it well, just if you speak it. I spoke it well but not enough and the result was alienation.)
But yeah, new paragraph because the last one is too long, although I think expression under-the-surface is underappreciated and badly understood and I think it's important, sometimes surface expression is what I need. And music without words can't really do that, although I bet you can tell if I'm frustrated by how I'm playing. I don't pull shit when I'm playing either so you can tell. Anyway, music, words, whatever, nothing is really capable of explaining right now the pain that I feel when I go to bed at night and think about how I really should've been in Japan last semester. Well, I don't know that. I enjoyed Paris to a certain extent. Not as much as the semester before and there's no denying that but, uh, yeah. I think about how much less painful and less boring my life could've been if I returned to what is now a kind of motherland to me last semester, and it hurts. Fuck it, man, I can't get everything right. But I don't like it when I get big things wrong.
I think something has changed about me, I'm finding it harder to have fun. I don't know why this happened or when it did, but I think it happened sophomore year. I also think I know why and whose fault this is, but honestly if I can't get out of the funk it's my fault and nobody else's. Also, this happened because there's a certain part of me that hates it when other people are more efficient than I am and I'm nowhere close. It's not about whether they're better at stuff than me, I'm fine with that. It's about efficiency. This was beyond annoying in Paris and was never a problem in Japan. Never, ever. And Japan is the most efficient place in the world, bar none, except their government messes up for them because it tries to protect everybody. Whatever, though, gaijin smash.
Paris, what a mistake. I really hate that city and don't want to go back. Oh, and there was a point where in my AIM profile I put "I love Paris." Yeah, I thought I'd found solace, finally.
No. Gotta keep looking, and looking for it in myself, while keeping my eyes open to other people. What a contradiction. And by the way, the dark night makes you think instinctively that there is no world around you, ignoring light and noise pollution. But there is, and I've got to absorb as much light I can and cast it around that. Sometimes I think that that's the way you've got to live in a world where it's acceptable for the US government to fucking bomb a funeral in Pakistan. I found that shit outrageous, I can't wait to hear the justification on that one. Well, with a brief look, Wired reports that it may not have been a US attack. Guess what, how about we change our foreign policy so that it isn't possible to blame us for the attack? Why are we ignoring Pakistan's territorial sovereignty anyway? Ughhhhhhhhhhhh the list goes on and on and I don't really have anyone but my dad to sympathize with me on my arguments.
But yeah, efficiency. I want to use everything and understand everything in an economical way, and when I see people get ahead of me on these things I have the instinct to get ahead, but also a reluctance to satisfy the instinct. In other words I get unhappy that I'm not where other people are. It's not that complicated, and I just can't get over certain things.
Right now I can't get over not being another self that went to Japan 2nd semester and didn't engage in a stupid affair or get really bored in a city that didn't suit him. And that's dangerous. I've gotta get over it like OK Go, but it's over my head like The Fray.
This shit is all over my head. That's what it is.
The first blog post I made on 日本でMY感動 acknowledged that I was already considering whether I should stay another semester or go to Paris. This was in fucking September and I just couldn't pull the trigger. Why? I guess I couldn't pull the trigger on a future self. Now I have to pull the trigger on a self that didn't happen, the ghost I talked about that went to Japan 2nd semester.
But this is life, there are regrets all the time and it's those ghosts that we've gotta melt or vacuum like Luigi in his mansion. I thought exercise was a good way to exorcise but apparently it's very inadequate. Ghosts of a past that could've been (and therefore a future that could've been!), ghosts of a future that could be. You have to get rid of both, and especially the former, but me being unable to say no to Paris was an example of how the latter need to be erased too.
Eventually you've just gotta look yourself in the eyes, in the mirror or in your imagination, and say, this is me, this is me now, this is the most accurate picture I have of myself, I work from here. Isn't there a famous quote in a Vonnegut novel? Well, Vonnegut basically made it famous by himself, if it is famous. But it's great, and it's from Timequake: "You were sick, but now you're well, and there's work to do" (193, Berkley Signature Edition, softcover, year 1997). What a great quote, and I'm glad I read that book, which doesn't appear to be acknowledged as one of the greater Vonnegut novels. But it's worth reading for that quote alone.
I was sick. But now I'm well, and there's work to do.
Work starts Tuesday, Tufts, 1 PM.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Nocturne
A father and his daughter were sitting on the precipice of somewhere unknown, foreign even to the milky sky whose low clouds hovered on by. She was sitting, bracing her knees together with her soft, nervous arms, her shivering only illuminated by the light of the moon and the stars, the stars that seemed so close to the girl who at that moment would never have believed her absent mother's voice even had it rang out through the dark night, telling her "THEY'RE GONE, THEY'RE FAR AWAY, NO ONE'S THERE TO PROTECT YOU NOW"...
She had just been startled awake from a nightmare that shook her to her spine, so much that it really did do that even though at that age the girl shouldn't even know what a spine is or be aware of its existence... shouldn't be aware of the very delicacy of the network upholding her very life. She felt the charge, however, and sprang awake.
She awoke to the universe of another dream.
She sat around. She shivered, then stopped. Then she thought about how alone she was, and she shivered again. The stars seemed to falter for a second, and at that moment she called out with a voice that she herself didn't hear, "I NEVER MEANT THE FAULT." It was something childish, and yet there was something of a certain maturity in there. The maturity that only dreams can teach to young kids.
But she didn't know what she herself had said, or meant. Or was it "meanted"? She puzzled over that question for a second, thinking to herself that thinking about "past participates" and other "grammars" she'd learned at school would awaken her rational mind and ease her out of her dream, yes! she knew she was in a dream, but she almost got there, and she didn't. She sat down, took a deep breath, took a short breath and almost cried, upset enough for her entire mouth to turn into saliva that she let slip out of her mouth before she eventually spat it all out, an action which made her cry. Grammar and English language rules tossed aside, she was still young after all.
The sky turned navy blue. It was navy black before. She knew the sun was rising, and that she had to get out, or she would never be allowed to wake up in the real world again, the real world. But what was that real world? Where was the key that allowed her to get back into it? She didn't know. Finally she turned to her father, who had been there the whole time, but never active until she reacknowledged his existence, and said:
"Daddy - " she sobbed, " - why am I stuck in a dream? I just dreamed!"
"Julianne, it's because sometimes we need to go into a fantasy world. We need - " even he hesitated, " - to work out our problems in the real one."
"And why are you here?" she said. And before she could demand why he wouldn't let her out, he opened his mouth wide to breathe in deeply and say:
"Because we need other people - friends, cousins, family - to come with us on these journeys to the other world. Otherwise we might get stuck here forever, alone, every single one of us, alone."
A pause. Then one of them spoke:
"But we're not."
She had just been startled awake from a nightmare that shook her to her spine, so much that it really did do that even though at that age the girl shouldn't even know what a spine is or be aware of its existence... shouldn't be aware of the very delicacy of the network upholding her very life. She felt the charge, however, and sprang awake.
She awoke to the universe of another dream.
She sat around. She shivered, then stopped. Then she thought about how alone she was, and she shivered again. The stars seemed to falter for a second, and at that moment she called out with a voice that she herself didn't hear, "I NEVER MEANT THE FAULT." It was something childish, and yet there was something of a certain maturity in there. The maturity that only dreams can teach to young kids.
But she didn't know what she herself had said, or meant. Or was it "meanted"? She puzzled over that question for a second, thinking to herself that thinking about "past participates" and other "grammars" she'd learned at school would awaken her rational mind and ease her out of her dream, yes! she knew she was in a dream, but she almost got there, and she didn't. She sat down, took a deep breath, took a short breath and almost cried, upset enough for her entire mouth to turn into saliva that she let slip out of her mouth before she eventually spat it all out, an action which made her cry. Grammar and English language rules tossed aside, she was still young after all.
The sky turned navy blue. It was navy black before. She knew the sun was rising, and that she had to get out, or she would never be allowed to wake up in the real world again, the real world. But what was that real world? Where was the key that allowed her to get back into it? She didn't know. Finally she turned to her father, who had been there the whole time, but never active until she reacknowledged his existence, and said:
"Daddy - " she sobbed, " - why am I stuck in a dream? I just dreamed!"
"Julianne, it's because sometimes we need to go into a fantasy world. We need - " even he hesitated, " - to work out our problems in the real one."
"And why are you here?" she said. And before she could demand why he wouldn't let her out, he opened his mouth wide to breathe in deeply and say:
"Because we need other people - friends, cousins, family - to come with us on these journeys to the other world. Otherwise we might get stuck here forever, alone, every single one of us, alone."
A pause. Then one of them spoke:
"But we're not."
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Business Unfinished
「でも、I STILL LOVE HER 本当E RAP」
There are two areas I've left unfinished in my academic life, those being math and Japanese. French is done, though. At last.
Whatever that means?
No, well, I've got a paper to get back to for math; I haven't heard from the other two guys on it, so I guess I'll go it alone motivating myself. That is, I'm the only person around who can motivate myself to do it. That's not good. Someone else motivate me! It was like almost done!!!
For Japanese, I've got that whole year that I missed of Japanese. Well, that whole Japanese semester, which means basically a year of material. That, I intend to get done by the end of this summer.
Also, I meant to get my body into really cool shape by sometime somewhere. Never really happened. Time to learn how to use the gym. I'm not really interested in lifting, unless it boosts my chest. Chest chest chest. I'm already seeing results from the Perfect Pushup on my stomach, and it's awesome. Looks real. Now I need to get the $30 grips, so that my hands don't slip. I feel like 50% of doing good pushups is keeping control of where your hands are. If they slip or if you don't get them in a good position, you're doomed. The problem with the "basic" Perfect Pushup grips is that they slip. Didn't know the 30-dollar grips were different and had that awesome grip. Oh well, $50 for a better upper body is a bargain, compared to what some people pay for physical trainers and gym memberships, or compared to me driving down to Tufts every day to use the gym or getting a sublet for that reason. That would basically be the only reason I'd get a sublet for the summer.
So I still need to register for classes. That, too, is unfinished business. It probably requires sending in a check for the tuition before registering, too, though I don't know. I'd think they'd let me register online anyway and just harangue me later. I think I'm taking discrete mathulus and history of japanulus. That's going to be fun, or odds are at least one of the two classes will be fun. Right, probability-san?
I've got some emails to send out, too. Some greetings to send. Some thanks to express to my host mother in French. I don't really want to write in the language, though. Or do I? I saw Mr. O'Loughlin the other day, my freshman and sophomore year high school French teacher, and that was one of the best conversations I've had in recent times, partially because it was so fun to talk in fluent French to someone who's so fun to talk to.
Wow, I did my last 30 pushups like an hour ago; has this much time really passed since then?
Business over.
There are two areas I've left unfinished in my academic life, those being math and Japanese. French is done, though. At last.
Whatever that means?
No, well, I've got a paper to get back to for math; I haven't heard from the other two guys on it, so I guess I'll go it alone motivating myself. That is, I'm the only person around who can motivate myself to do it. That's not good. Someone else motivate me! It was like almost done!!!
For Japanese, I've got that whole year that I missed of Japanese. Well, that whole Japanese semester, which means basically a year of material. That, I intend to get done by the end of this summer.
Also, I meant to get my body into really cool shape by sometime somewhere. Never really happened. Time to learn how to use the gym. I'm not really interested in lifting, unless it boosts my chest. Chest chest chest. I'm already seeing results from the Perfect Pushup on my stomach, and it's awesome. Looks real. Now I need to get the $30 grips, so that my hands don't slip. I feel like 50% of doing good pushups is keeping control of where your hands are. If they slip or if you don't get them in a good position, you're doomed. The problem with the "basic" Perfect Pushup grips is that they slip. Didn't know the 30-dollar grips were different and had that awesome grip. Oh well, $50 for a better upper body is a bargain, compared to what some people pay for physical trainers and gym memberships, or compared to me driving down to Tufts every day to use the gym or getting a sublet for that reason. That would basically be the only reason I'd get a sublet for the summer.
So I still need to register for classes. That, too, is unfinished business. It probably requires sending in a check for the tuition before registering, too, though I don't know. I'd think they'd let me register online anyway and just harangue me later. I think I'm taking discrete mathulus and history of japanulus. That's going to be fun, or odds are at least one of the two classes will be fun. Right, probability-san?
I've got some emails to send out, too. Some greetings to send. Some thanks to express to my host mother in French. I don't really want to write in the language, though. Or do I? I saw Mr. O'Loughlin the other day, my freshman and sophomore year high school French teacher, and that was one of the best conversations I've had in recent times, partially because it was so fun to talk in fluent French to someone who's so fun to talk to.
Wow, I did my last 30 pushups like an hour ago; has this much time really passed since then?
Business over.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Tadada ki atte
The wonderful thing about learning a new language is being able to listen to songs and not understand what they mean, but to enjoy them for what they are. I'm one of the people who thinks lyrics aren't always relevant in a song. If you want to argue this it's always easy to cite examples from the listening record of the person you're arguing against, although he or she might not want to admit it. Then again, we can go all semantics on the word "relevant" and debate what that means. Whatever. Still it's true that knowing some of the lyrics is pretty すごい. And being able to pronounce all of them if given the lyrics with hiragana readings is even greater.
In Japan they sell singles and albums for much higher prices than in any other country, except maybe Korea (I don't know if it works the same way over there, but it could) and France (because nobody knows what a good price is over there), but even in France they're not as expensive. You've got singles going for about 10.5 dollars and albums going from 25 to 30 or higher. Hmm, I should've bought more Japanese music in Japan. Like, the cheaper used albums and such. Because right now, as of now, I am really feeling this music.
Japanese music has something distinct about it, there's no doubt. Mr. Children and Perfume both sound the same in certain areas because in America there's nothing like it, and the same is probably true for other countries nearby to Japan and ones not so nearby. I think now's a pretty bad time to be getting into it, because I'm not in Japan anymore and haven't been for more than two months. (Almost was more than 6 months, but I changed my mind, albeit a bit late if you know what I mean.) Man, I miss Japan, most of all the people I met when I was there.
And I can't really go back, at least to expect the same experience. Because the people would all be so different; none of my foreign friends would be there. What on earth would Kansai Gaidai be like in the fall? Geez, I don't know...
That's a real heartbreaker. Brings a real tear or two to my eye.
I can still remember about a half a year ago now, no, more than that, when I would be sitting in my room and the room would be cold, because Japan's weather switches temperature fast, and I'd be chilling and chattering in my room. And then I'd put on my Adio jacket, which has finally come back into my life after 5 months of French-ass separation, and listen to Freeze by T-Pain (featuring Chris Brown). Man, I got so bored of my music selection when I was in Japan. There was literally nothing new to listen to, for some reason. It's because my ears weren't looking for it. Why did I get tired of Japan?
Wait, did I? Maybe I did. Because it worked me to the hilt.
When you've got so many new experiences and so much excitement, how can you expect anything else but to be so tired? And the exercise was part of it too. It helped, not failed to help. Without it, it wouldn't have been the same wonderful thing.
I wonder what my host family thought about me singing in my room. They couldn't have known I was dancing in it. The glass window on my door was not see-through on either side. I wonder what anyone would think about me if they had to live with me all the time. Well, some people have. I guess I've only had the experience once in my life of living with someone new who hasn't ever known my before they started living with me. That's Brian freshman year. And it worked out, that was an awesome experience. I guess it worked out in Japan and France (not always all the time but it still worked) too.
I guess I can get by without having lived the second Japan experience I know I wanted to now. Makes your heart feel real empty, though. My heart. Yeah.
But sitting by my computer, and dancing by it, and reciting the lyrics out loud makes me relive a fundamental part of my Japan experience. Where I was alone. Me. In my room, dancing and singing my heart out, to songs like "Green Light" and "Freeze" and just jiving as I always did in my heart, in myself as I know I am.
Damn, sometimes words just fail. And that's when joy prevails.
In Japan they sell singles and albums for much higher prices than in any other country, except maybe Korea (I don't know if it works the same way over there, but it could) and France (because nobody knows what a good price is over there), but even in France they're not as expensive. You've got singles going for about 10.5 dollars and albums going from 25 to 30 or higher. Hmm, I should've bought more Japanese music in Japan. Like, the cheaper used albums and such. Because right now, as of now, I am really feeling this music.
Japanese music has something distinct about it, there's no doubt. Mr. Children and Perfume both sound the same in certain areas because in America there's nothing like it, and the same is probably true for other countries nearby to Japan and ones not so nearby. I think now's a pretty bad time to be getting into it, because I'm not in Japan anymore and haven't been for more than two months. (Almost was more than 6 months, but I changed my mind, albeit a bit late if you know what I mean.) Man, I miss Japan, most of all the people I met when I was there.
And I can't really go back, at least to expect the same experience. Because the people would all be so different; none of my foreign friends would be there. What on earth would Kansai Gaidai be like in the fall? Geez, I don't know...
That's a real heartbreaker. Brings a real tear or two to my eye.
I can still remember about a half a year ago now, no, more than that, when I would be sitting in my room and the room would be cold, because Japan's weather switches temperature fast, and I'd be chilling and chattering in my room. And then I'd put on my Adio jacket, which has finally come back into my life after 5 months of French-ass separation, and listen to Freeze by T-Pain (featuring Chris Brown). Man, I got so bored of my music selection when I was in Japan. There was literally nothing new to listen to, for some reason. It's because my ears weren't looking for it. Why did I get tired of Japan?
Wait, did I? Maybe I did. Because it worked me to the hilt.
When you've got so many new experiences and so much excitement, how can you expect anything else but to be so tired? And the exercise was part of it too. It helped, not failed to help. Without it, it wouldn't have been the same wonderful thing.
I wonder what my host family thought about me singing in my room. They couldn't have known I was dancing in it. The glass window on my door was not see-through on either side. I wonder what anyone would think about me if they had to live with me all the time. Well, some people have. I guess I've only had the experience once in my life of living with someone new who hasn't ever known my before they started living with me. That's Brian freshman year. And it worked out, that was an awesome experience. I guess it worked out in Japan and France (not always all the time but it still worked) too.
I guess I can get by without having lived the second Japan experience I know I wanted to now. Makes your heart feel real empty, though. My heart. Yeah.
But sitting by my computer, and dancing by it, and reciting the lyrics out loud makes me relive a fundamental part of my Japan experience. Where I was alone. Me. In my room, dancing and singing my heart out, to songs like "Green Light" and "Freeze" and just jiving as I always did in my heart, in myself as I know I am.
Damn, sometimes words just fail. And that's when joy prevails.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Friday Night Free
While others are at Fenway watching the Red Sox probably losing right now (yep, losing), I'm here at my computer, where the house is relatively silent. Yes, I just talked about the location of the house in reference to the computer. Funny how you can have this whole house and yet my attention is concentrated on this screen which is obnoxiously displaying light white at me.
Bright lights forecast the descent of a car down the driveway. Down it goes. Other lights there to guide the way of something that already has lights. No lights elsewhere except those given off by this house. For some reason the house across the way doesn't have any lights on; I guess they're away for the weekend, all of them. That's a big family. Didn't someone advise them when they got robbed to put a light in the house like we do? Ah well, for us it doesn't matter, because there's almost never a time here when everyone is asleep, and there's almost always someone here.
Sounds of beings that have managed to survive the intense onset of human civilization leak through the night. The silence tries to penetrate the noise but, no go. There's a revolution outside if you listen closely. Foxes and deers, frogs and crickets are all there, and of course the birds, but we always see birds anyway.
I get up, I go to wash my hands and look in the mirror, and I see my slight facial hair, unshaven. Wonder if anyone wants to touch it. Return and think. And type.
I use the drawers of the cabinet included in this desk as a footrest, one drawer for the foot to rest on and the drawer above to block my foot from falling into the drawer. I don't know why I do this. It's comfortable in an obsessive-compulsive sense.
The night goes on. Drones on, if you really don't like it. Peters on is more like it. Wait, what?
Meaning is lost in the confusion of the night; it evaporates, regenerates and presents itself as the morning dew on the flowers the next day. Sweeter than it was before.
Bright lights forecast the descent of a car down the driveway. Down it goes. Other lights there to guide the way of something that already has lights. No lights elsewhere except those given off by this house. For some reason the house across the way doesn't have any lights on; I guess they're away for the weekend, all of them. That's a big family. Didn't someone advise them when they got robbed to put a light in the house like we do? Ah well, for us it doesn't matter, because there's almost never a time here when everyone is asleep, and there's almost always someone here.
Sounds of beings that have managed to survive the intense onset of human civilization leak through the night. The silence tries to penetrate the noise but, no go. There's a revolution outside if you listen closely. Foxes and deers, frogs and crickets are all there, and of course the birds, but we always see birds anyway.
I get up, I go to wash my hands and look in the mirror, and I see my slight facial hair, unshaven. Wonder if anyone wants to touch it. Return and think. And type.
I use the drawers of the cabinet included in this desk as a footrest, one drawer for the foot to rest on and the drawer above to block my foot from falling into the drawer. I don't know why I do this. It's comfortable in an obsessive-compulsive sense.
The night goes on. Drones on, if you really don't like it. Peters on is more like it. Wait, what?
Meaning is lost in the confusion of the night; it evaporates, regenerates and presents itself as the morning dew on the flowers the next day. Sweeter than it was before.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Burn
I guess there's only so much productive work in a day you can get done. And that's very little.
And for me it's either in the morning or the late night. I'm best during the AM hours for some reason. During the afternoon forget it. And I woke up after 12 today, which isn't good. I've still got some of that morning energy that I usually have, though, so I can probably get to learning a few kanji or maybe even working on the math paper I'm supposed to be looking at. But even then the math paper is hard, so I don't really know if my brainpower can handle it. Well, willpower. But then again sometimes the two are one in the same.
Hey, is Mark Bellhorn still single? He's batting .272 in AAA. I'm hoping he'll get a call-up. Come on, Colorado, you're 10.5 games back and one under .500, why don't you experiment for a bit? Put someone on your team who can actually break the Sports Illustrated cover curse and win you the World Series like Marky did. I guess the only relationship status they put online is "Single" or "Married" for baseball players. "Separated" or "Girlfriend" don't really work, do they.
Another cloudy day. You could hardly believe it's almost summer, what with the cold temperatures, except that when you're up until like 4 AM you can see the sunrise starting already. Oops.
And for me it's either in the morning or the late night. I'm best during the AM hours for some reason. During the afternoon forget it. And I woke up after 12 today, which isn't good. I've still got some of that morning energy that I usually have, though, so I can probably get to learning a few kanji or maybe even working on the math paper I'm supposed to be looking at. But even then the math paper is hard, so I don't really know if my brainpower can handle it. Well, willpower. But then again sometimes the two are one in the same.
Hey, is Mark Bellhorn still single? He's batting .272 in AAA. I'm hoping he'll get a call-up. Come on, Colorado, you're 10.5 games back and one under .500, why don't you experiment for a bit? Put someone on your team who can actually break the Sports Illustrated cover curse and win you the World Series like Marky did. I guess the only relationship status they put online is "Single" or "Married" for baseball players. "Separated" or "Girlfriend" don't really work, do they.
Another cloudy day. You could hardly believe it's almost summer, what with the cold temperatures, except that when you're up until like 4 AM you can see the sunrise starting already. Oops.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Indecision/Confused Alex - Indecision confused Alex
Now I am having massive regrets over going to Paris last semester and not returning to Hirakata, Japan, where I had so much fun in the fall semester. I did not have too many of these regrets when I was in Paris, because I was always expecting it would reach a plateau of amazing awesomeness like Japan did. No, Paris never even came close. Sorry guys, it just wasn't as fun there. And I'm regretting not being able to pull the trigger on that decision - in the end I decided to go to Paris for two reasons, both of them fundamentally weak: 1) because that was my original plan and 2) because I had some insecurities over my social situation in Japan. Funny thing, I realized how stupid #2 was the instant (well, a few days after) I told my mom to send the check off to the Paris program. Friendship is a thing that takes time, and for me not to remember and understand this was the lamest thing ever. Why couldn't I have been more decisive and gone with the positive choice, to trust in and return to someplace I found so fun?
Because that just isn't me, I guess. And that's the regret I have - my indecision.
However, there's a very important irony to this. It was fundamentally indecision that got me to Kansai Gaidai in the first place. I couldn't decide what I was doing for study abroad until basically the last second, when the deadlines for the Kyoto programs had passed and for almost all full-year programs. That's why I ended up with Gaidai - it was the last thing open that wasn't IES. And oh man, that was the best indecision I ever made in my life. But the lesson here is this - you can only get lucky so often with indecision, and eventually you've got to listen to your gut, listen to your heart and jump for it. Hell yeah I got lucky by choosing to go to Gaidai. Gaidai was the perfect fit for me. Hell, Tufts was the perfect fit for me with my indecision on where to go to college. But eventually I'm going to have to decide - next stop, grad school. And this time I'll go with my gut.
Because that just isn't me, I guess. And that's the regret I have - my indecision.
However, there's a very important irony to this. It was fundamentally indecision that got me to Kansai Gaidai in the first place. I couldn't decide what I was doing for study abroad until basically the last second, when the deadlines for the Kyoto programs had passed and for almost all full-year programs. That's why I ended up with Gaidai - it was the last thing open that wasn't IES. And oh man, that was the best indecision I ever made in my life. But the lesson here is this - you can only get lucky so often with indecision, and eventually you've got to listen to your gut, listen to your heart and jump for it. Hell yeah I got lucky by choosing to go to Gaidai. Gaidai was the perfect fit for me. Hell, Tufts was the perfect fit for me with my indecision on where to go to college. But eventually I'm going to have to decide - next stop, grad school. And this time I'll go with my gut.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Momentum
Funny thing about art; eventually there's so much to say that you've just gotta let the art speak.
And that's when you've gotta let the heart speak.
And that's when you've gotta let the heart speak.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Triwrite (pronounced "treewrite"?)
Actually this isn't even going to be what it claims to be because I'll just start by talking about my current physical situation first. Last night I went to bed, and men would understand why (considering what I said two posts ago about what kind of surgery this was) when I went to sleep I suddenly woke up with awful pain. I knew this would happen and I know that tonight it might happen again, except with worse pain because the local anesthetic might wear off. Ick. Also, my sense of smell has been especially powerful for the past month (I don't know why) and I seem to be smelling blood. Well, now that I've completely grossed you out I hope you bother to read the rest of this, assuming I'm not talking to an empty-set audience. Well, I'm not; I'm potentially talking to myself as well. You think I don't go back and read what I write? Well usually I don't, but as of late it's been easier to shrug off the usual artist's embarrassment at his own work and I'm looking back more easily now. Reminds me of when my host father in Paris was drunk at dinner and explained his first time going to a peep show. One time the embarrassment leaves, it's gone forever. (Actually, this isn't true in a general case, and I'll get to that in the part 2 of this triwrite that isn't really a triwrite.) And so yeah, he could explain that without hesitation to us at the dinner table (well, when drunk).
Only-child syndrome
I suppose that just as alcohol changes the way you act the same is true for painkillers, no matter how weak or strong. And I've been taking painkillers as recommended by the doctor to follow my surgery (and for further justification go down two posts and see what the surgery is, if you haven't already), and it does change the way you perceive things and act. Slightly, if not completely. But I feel like it just adds on to other stresses. One stress is being tired. I didn't sleep very well last night because of the awfulness of waking up with, well, yeah, and so that certainly added to how the painkiller worked today. Secondly, the other side effects of the painkiller add to the slight changes in perception and action, two of these being constipation and nausea. Anyway all these things add and overall make you act in a way that you only act when you're stressed. And when you're stressed, that's when the heart comes out and speaks its mind. If not through your voice and out into the open world, at least to your brain. And today it spoke something to me.
I guess this was just a minor feeling. But when I was talking to my dad about a topic I don't even remember, ah, I think it was about the cooking I was in the process of doing, my sister interrupted in her usual energetic voice and part of me got really annoyed. But I was like, hey, by logic (which I'm about to state), that isn't unusual. It feels unusual though. And that's because 1) it's rather minor and I honestly am not in that much of a rush right now and have no need to be stressed and 2) Lately I haven't been around my sister and my dad that much, since I've been in other countries. So I forgot that this kind of a thing could rub me the wrong way a bit.
When I was a kid, though, we adopted my sister when I was 7 years old, I believe. No, probably 6. And apparently when we first met we fought a ridiculous amount. Now a reason occurs to me why that might be. It may not be solely because I always wanted to be the only child. (Everybody wants to have 100% attention at the times that he or she wants attention.) It might also be because I didn't get to know her starting from the day she was born.
I feel like that's an important building process in relationships in general: there has to be a toned-down or soft (or gradual?) start to things, a sort of introduction phase. That sort of seeing a younger sibling grow up from day one is what was lacking in this context, that sort of introductory process. And believe me, when you're age 7 and the person you're being introduced to is age 4, it's hard to introduce the concept of "you're going to be sharing this world with this person from now on" with a soft, toned-down introduction. And so we fought. And up until I went to high school we always had been like that.
So in some situations with relationships like this (or it might just have something to do with the kind of person I am), you need time. I need time is what I want to say as well. Sometimes the reality is that you can fit really good together, but there are certain things you need to get over to reach that. But it's like skiing a trail with moguls that has a dip in the middle and starting from that dip in the middle. You can't do that and expect it to be easy.
Maybe I'm just slow. If there's one legend I believe, though, it's that there was once a tortoise who beat a hare in a race...
Daschund
Our dog Samantha is a daschund. Daschunds are hunters, or at least I'm sure that's true about the males. My dad and sister say that female daschunds are hunters too. I told them that was hard to believe.
You see, our dog Samantha is not a hunter, at least not right now. She hears a dog barking outside, she runs away and scrambles up the front steps to be let back into the house. She sometimes runs away from what's not apparently anything. A fox barks at her (my dad and I didn't know they could bark prior to this), she runs back inside. As for motionless objects, you throw a ball near her, she doesn't have the instinct to chase after it. (Or she's been trained to control this instinct. I don't know. We're at least her 3rd owner.) Danielle threw a treat near her, she didn't go after it until some more urging from my sister.
But she's been looking braver recently. She seems to be less afraid of people in the house, including most importantly me, and she doesn't whine all the time in desperation like she used to. But she did in December, and I felt so bad, but at the same time I didn't go out and pet her continuously for 5-20 minutes like I could've, at least most of the time I didn't. And even now I don't pet her that much. But anyway, she seems to be able to stand the foxes off and look them in the eyes now and communicate if not to them, to herself, that this is her home, and she's staying there, and she doesn't have to run back into it to assure herself that it's her home.
You see, Samantha reminds me of... me.
Bravery is something that is much easier to show when you know where you stand, and I don't think it's necessarily true that this is less of a bravery than in a situation where you don't know where you stand. Perhaps I'm mincing my words or delving into semantics, but I think that a lot of the time, when you go off on your own and you do something brave, you can add the adjective "ballsy" as well.
This digression is leading nowhere. Ugh. In any case, I think not knowing where you are is similar to not knowing where your balls are (sorry female readers, I guess substitute "boobs"?): it can throw bravery out of the question, out of the realm of acceptable behaviors. (And hey, that makes the action "ballsy"! whatever, read on, I'll stop trying to say every single thing I'm thinking of...) In any case, it would not have been Samantha to have been brave in that situation. It would have been acting like some other dog. And for dogs that would probably be hard to do, for them to think of some prime example of some brave dog and then act like that dog did in that situation.
But we humans do that.
And in doing that, it can lead us away from acting like we truly act. And if it does lead us to pursue some example of someone else... that's really dangerous. It's one of my fears. It's a trap I've led myself into several times, especially recently, where I've exemplified one person for his bravery and wished I could act like him. In my case it was a mistake; I overdid it. There's always a part of me (and I think this is true for anyone else) that is vulnerable to overdoing respect for one person into wanting to be that person and do everything that they do. Foolish thing; the best thing is to do better and to do differently. If you can't be them, beat them. At a different game. Then you'll be yourself again, because you've led yourself into limbo. That's what I've got to do now, after my Paris experience.
And I've led myself away from my original point... but sometimes digressions get at what you're truly thinking. And for sure all of those thoughts as listed above have been in the back of my mind constantly these past months.
And this kind of digression of thought is sometimes what you need on your own, a sort of meditation that takes you around, whirrs around in your head until you discover what you really need to do, who you really are, what you really need to do to get back to who you are. And that takes me back to Samantha. There was one point where I looked at her today, and I said to myself "you're brave now." Haha, when I write "I said to myself" I meant "I said in my head" those words, in reference to Samantha. But the funny thing is that I think I've been getting back to saying that about myself.
That's what we all need to say. Because we're all brave, but in our own individual ways. Hobbes would tell you, if I've got him right, that nobody's special, that everyone has the same faults to work over. But don't tell me that everybody has the same bravery, the same good points, because they don't. And don't tell me that bravery can't be conditional, because it can. And for true bravery, it's up to you to find what it is for yourself... and of course, in order to find it, you need to take the path that gets you there, whatever that path may be, however many or few paths you have to your use... it's your bravery, Samantha. It's your bravery.
Taking time (before hearing news)
As many of you were probably informed about by somebody who was in a hurry to tell it to you or who said it in an (obviously not happily) excited manner, somebody killed two people at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC today. That's all I know right now, and I will check after I write this to make sure the number's right, but I will write knowing this for now. First I will go to the bathroom; this is a long freewrite, whoo!
But no, this is no "whoo" about what happened. I honestly can't believe somebody would go in and do that. Well, I can, and that's the hard part: two questions come to mind. The first one is, what stops us from being insane (except for this situation where nothing stopped this guy) and doing things like this when we're emotionally distressed? I know it's unusual that that's my first question, read on. The second one, and it's the second one because I've already considered it times and times before, is what makes us go insane and do these things? Also, don't eat me out here; I'm not claiming implicitly that the person was legally insane when he did this. I'm just using a loose definition of "insane," because honestly it is a loose definition to the best of my lack of knowledge. And let's add a third question: why am I using the word "us"?
Well, none of these questions have an answer. It's hard enough to answer the questions, and I guess they don't 100% need to be asked, because with more knowledge about the story there are probably solutions out there that you could easily refer to depending on what your opinion is (wow, my sentences are long nowadays; am I getting more mathematical or just more grown-up? I think the latter, and in an academic sense. ok i need to stop writing vague shit that can be interpreted in several different ways). But I don't know; I'm getting tired and I'm not sure I really can address those questions and tie it back to what I originally wanted to write about. So I won't. They will be left as open as the door that let the cold, harsh reality the winter air makes you feel into our summer, which should be full of warm, fuzzy, peaceable and harmonious meanings. God, I didn't mean for that last sentence to feel cheesy in such an inappropriate place as this topic. But I'll move on.
And it's getting late so I'll just throw in a few other notes before moving on with my main topic instead of trying to address these things later. First of all (I think there's a "second of all"; I don't know yet...), I might know somebody who died there. There's a really small chance, because all of a sudden I know tons of people in that area... wow, I almost googled the link. I just remembered what I said at the top of the freewrite; I'll try to hold true to that promise in a minute. Wait, did I even promise that? Well, I want to check... see, this is how good I am with promises that I don't make wholeheartedly. But yeah. There's a small chance that somebody I know died there. And they were talking about the fact that Holten-Richmond Middle School had some kids there (none of whom were hurt), and that middle school is in the town next to me, Danvers, where I went to elementary, middle, and high school! But does that make anything more or less likely? No. Sit down, Alex, and continue writing. So yeah, there is a small chance that someone I know died there. I didn't realize it. And it is an important story anyway, and ordinarily I would probably have looked into it by now, since I heard about it at about noon today, maybe the news broke later? So yeah. It's pretty crazy, so ordinarily I'd have known more details by now.
But tonight, my family and I had a relaxed dinner; I whipped up a pretty damn good spaghetti sauce (which is a testament to my luck on trying things for the first time, at least for the first time in a long time), yeah I don't really cook, and ate that with the spaghetti and some salad and watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees afterwards. And it was fun, we had a good conversation or two and yeah.
What is the point I'm trying to make? It's that we really rush to hear things and see things if we think they're necessary. It doesn't occur to us enough that we can take some time before we hear these things and the outcome will still be the same. This idea from the news that you have to know, you have to know this now, is similar to the mentality we've picked up naturally from the existence of Wikipedia and the fast advancement of, oh now I'm sounding like a geezer. Jeez, what was I trying to say?
I'm tired. I'm sorry. But sometimes it's just good to enjoy a family dinner and hold off on getting concerned about these situations where you can't change anything and where you don't really need to take in all this information all at once and make quick assumptions about everything and isn't the news kind of like a run-on sentence like there where it just goes on and on we report you decide and they want you to decide now right away tout de suite and it just goes on, and on, and on? Sometimes you need to slow down. Commas help. A comma that splices isn't a real comma, though. But anyway... I'm sorry for all this poor writing form. But right now I'm really not going for that. I'm going for the hits, the on-base percentage, the contact. The mixed metaphors that don't completely go together, especially in the last sentence, whoo that was bad. The feeling. Even if I have to go back and change things. I can't go back to the past now, my past writing style, where I didn't have to go back and change things. Now I have to go back. It leads to things that are difficult to read and comprehend, but I sure as hell have fun writing them for you, the theoretical reader, to perhaps enjoy and/or maybe make a face at. But it's fun. Haha, that last mix-up was really cool.
But sometimes we need time. Just to let go before something else is piled up onto our train of thought. And now I'll check the news. Who died? Why (well, the news always claims to try to get at that even when it's not fully possible)?
Wow, I was wrong, or high on my painkiller when I was watching the news or something. I guess the two that I thought were killed were wounded...? A security guard died. In all probability, I didn't know him. In any case, now I maybe don't feel as good about the world having read a few articles about the shooting.
Maybe. Freewrites, treewrites, triwrites, whatever, they're at least here to be here to talk for me when I can't talk out everything I want to talk to people about. So I guess yeah, I feel pretty good.
And if I didn't, that would be weird. But still I think we should be bombarded with violent imagery from Pakistan and Iraq and Afghanistan (and you notice that at the beginning of this year or whenever it was, journalists weren't really allowed to enter Gaza). It's only fair, that's what happened in the Vietnam days.
Anyway, I will end this 'write by saying that the latter third of this is mostly tired writing, and I do not take complete responsibility for what I have said in that part. Also, I am recovering from a pretty life-changing surgery, and that includes accompanying painkiller. I don't know what effect that has. So don't get offended and lose respect.
But hopefully, if you read all of this, you were moved, or enjoyed reading it. Or parts of it at least.
Give me some sugar. "I am your neighbor!"
Only-child syndrome
I suppose that just as alcohol changes the way you act the same is true for painkillers, no matter how weak or strong. And I've been taking painkillers as recommended by the doctor to follow my surgery (and for further justification go down two posts and see what the surgery is, if you haven't already), and it does change the way you perceive things and act. Slightly, if not completely. But I feel like it just adds on to other stresses. One stress is being tired. I didn't sleep very well last night because of the awfulness of waking up with, well, yeah, and so that certainly added to how the painkiller worked today. Secondly, the other side effects of the painkiller add to the slight changes in perception and action, two of these being constipation and nausea. Anyway all these things add and overall make you act in a way that you only act when you're stressed. And when you're stressed, that's when the heart comes out and speaks its mind. If not through your voice and out into the open world, at least to your brain. And today it spoke something to me.
I guess this was just a minor feeling. But when I was talking to my dad about a topic I don't even remember, ah, I think it was about the cooking I was in the process of doing, my sister interrupted in her usual energetic voice and part of me got really annoyed. But I was like, hey, by logic (which I'm about to state), that isn't unusual. It feels unusual though. And that's because 1) it's rather minor and I honestly am not in that much of a rush right now and have no need to be stressed and 2) Lately I haven't been around my sister and my dad that much, since I've been in other countries. So I forgot that this kind of a thing could rub me the wrong way a bit.
When I was a kid, though, we adopted my sister when I was 7 years old, I believe. No, probably 6. And apparently when we first met we fought a ridiculous amount. Now a reason occurs to me why that might be. It may not be solely because I always wanted to be the only child. (Everybody wants to have 100% attention at the times that he or she wants attention.) It might also be because I didn't get to know her starting from the day she was born.
I feel like that's an important building process in relationships in general: there has to be a toned-down or soft (or gradual?) start to things, a sort of introduction phase. That sort of seeing a younger sibling grow up from day one is what was lacking in this context, that sort of introductory process. And believe me, when you're age 7 and the person you're being introduced to is age 4, it's hard to introduce the concept of "you're going to be sharing this world with this person from now on" with a soft, toned-down introduction. And so we fought. And up until I went to high school we always had been like that.
So in some situations with relationships like this (or it might just have something to do with the kind of person I am), you need time. I need time is what I want to say as well. Sometimes the reality is that you can fit really good together, but there are certain things you need to get over to reach that. But it's like skiing a trail with moguls that has a dip in the middle and starting from that dip in the middle. You can't do that and expect it to be easy.
Maybe I'm just slow. If there's one legend I believe, though, it's that there was once a tortoise who beat a hare in a race...
Daschund
Our dog Samantha is a daschund. Daschunds are hunters, or at least I'm sure that's true about the males. My dad and sister say that female daschunds are hunters too. I told them that was hard to believe.
You see, our dog Samantha is not a hunter, at least not right now. She hears a dog barking outside, she runs away and scrambles up the front steps to be let back into the house. She sometimes runs away from what's not apparently anything. A fox barks at her (my dad and I didn't know they could bark prior to this), she runs back inside. As for motionless objects, you throw a ball near her, she doesn't have the instinct to chase after it. (Or she's been trained to control this instinct. I don't know. We're at least her 3rd owner.) Danielle threw a treat near her, she didn't go after it until some more urging from my sister.
But she's been looking braver recently. She seems to be less afraid of people in the house, including most importantly me, and she doesn't whine all the time in desperation like she used to. But she did in December, and I felt so bad, but at the same time I didn't go out and pet her continuously for 5-20 minutes like I could've, at least most of the time I didn't. And even now I don't pet her that much. But anyway, she seems to be able to stand the foxes off and look them in the eyes now and communicate if not to them, to herself, that this is her home, and she's staying there, and she doesn't have to run back into it to assure herself that it's her home.
You see, Samantha reminds me of... me.
Bravery is something that is much easier to show when you know where you stand, and I don't think it's necessarily true that this is less of a bravery than in a situation where you don't know where you stand. Perhaps I'm mincing my words or delving into semantics, but I think that a lot of the time, when you go off on your own and you do something brave, you can add the adjective "ballsy" as well.
This digression is leading nowhere. Ugh. In any case, I think not knowing where you are is similar to not knowing where your balls are (sorry female readers, I guess substitute "boobs"?): it can throw bravery out of the question, out of the realm of acceptable behaviors. (And hey, that makes the action "ballsy"! whatever, read on, I'll stop trying to say every single thing I'm thinking of...) In any case, it would not have been Samantha to have been brave in that situation. It would have been acting like some other dog. And for dogs that would probably be hard to do, for them to think of some prime example of some brave dog and then act like that dog did in that situation.
But we humans do that.
And in doing that, it can lead us away from acting like we truly act. And if it does lead us to pursue some example of someone else... that's really dangerous. It's one of my fears. It's a trap I've led myself into several times, especially recently, where I've exemplified one person for his bravery and wished I could act like him. In my case it was a mistake; I overdid it. There's always a part of me (and I think this is true for anyone else) that is vulnerable to overdoing respect for one person into wanting to be that person and do everything that they do. Foolish thing; the best thing is to do better and to do differently. If you can't be them, beat them. At a different game. Then you'll be yourself again, because you've led yourself into limbo. That's what I've got to do now, after my Paris experience.
And I've led myself away from my original point... but sometimes digressions get at what you're truly thinking. And for sure all of those thoughts as listed above have been in the back of my mind constantly these past months.
And this kind of digression of thought is sometimes what you need on your own, a sort of meditation that takes you around, whirrs around in your head until you discover what you really need to do, who you really are, what you really need to do to get back to who you are. And that takes me back to Samantha. There was one point where I looked at her today, and I said to myself "you're brave now." Haha, when I write "I said to myself" I meant "I said in my head" those words, in reference to Samantha. But the funny thing is that I think I've been getting back to saying that about myself.
That's what we all need to say. Because we're all brave, but in our own individual ways. Hobbes would tell you, if I've got him right, that nobody's special, that everyone has the same faults to work over. But don't tell me that everybody has the same bravery, the same good points, because they don't. And don't tell me that bravery can't be conditional, because it can. And for true bravery, it's up to you to find what it is for yourself... and of course, in order to find it, you need to take the path that gets you there, whatever that path may be, however many or few paths you have to your use... it's your bravery, Samantha. It's your bravery.
Taking time (before hearing news)
As many of you were probably informed about by somebody who was in a hurry to tell it to you or who said it in an (obviously not happily) excited manner, somebody killed two people at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC today. That's all I know right now, and I will check after I write this to make sure the number's right, but I will write knowing this for now. First I will go to the bathroom; this is a long freewrite, whoo!
But no, this is no "whoo" about what happened. I honestly can't believe somebody would go in and do that. Well, I can, and that's the hard part: two questions come to mind. The first one is, what stops us from being insane (except for this situation where nothing stopped this guy) and doing things like this when we're emotionally distressed? I know it's unusual that that's my first question, read on. The second one, and it's the second one because I've already considered it times and times before, is what makes us go insane and do these things? Also, don't eat me out here; I'm not claiming implicitly that the person was legally insane when he did this. I'm just using a loose definition of "insane," because honestly it is a loose definition to the best of my lack of knowledge. And let's add a third question: why am I using the word "us"?
Well, none of these questions have an answer. It's hard enough to answer the questions, and I guess they don't 100% need to be asked, because with more knowledge about the story there are probably solutions out there that you could easily refer to depending on what your opinion is (wow, my sentences are long nowadays; am I getting more mathematical or just more grown-up? I think the latter, and in an academic sense. ok i need to stop writing vague shit that can be interpreted in several different ways). But I don't know; I'm getting tired and I'm not sure I really can address those questions and tie it back to what I originally wanted to write about. So I won't. They will be left as open as the door that let the cold, harsh reality the winter air makes you feel into our summer, which should be full of warm, fuzzy, peaceable and harmonious meanings. God, I didn't mean for that last sentence to feel cheesy in such an inappropriate place as this topic. But I'll move on.
And it's getting late so I'll just throw in a few other notes before moving on with my main topic instead of trying to address these things later. First of all (I think there's a "second of all"; I don't know yet...), I might know somebody who died there. There's a really small chance, because all of a sudden I know tons of people in that area... wow, I almost googled the link. I just remembered what I said at the top of the freewrite; I'll try to hold true to that promise in a minute. Wait, did I even promise that? Well, I want to check... see, this is how good I am with promises that I don't make wholeheartedly. But yeah. There's a small chance that somebody I know died there. And they were talking about the fact that Holten-Richmond Middle School had some kids there (none of whom were hurt), and that middle school is in the town next to me, Danvers, where I went to elementary, middle, and high school! But does that make anything more or less likely? No. Sit down, Alex, and continue writing. So yeah, there is a small chance that someone I know died there. I didn't realize it. And it is an important story anyway, and ordinarily I would probably have looked into it by now, since I heard about it at about noon today, maybe the news broke later? So yeah. It's pretty crazy, so ordinarily I'd have known more details by now.
But tonight, my family and I had a relaxed dinner; I whipped up a pretty damn good spaghetti sauce (which is a testament to my luck on trying things for the first time, at least for the first time in a long time), yeah I don't really cook, and ate that with the spaghetti and some salad and watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees afterwards. And it was fun, we had a good conversation or two and yeah.
What is the point I'm trying to make? It's that we really rush to hear things and see things if we think they're necessary. It doesn't occur to us enough that we can take some time before we hear these things and the outcome will still be the same. This idea from the news that you have to know, you have to know this now, is similar to the mentality we've picked up naturally from the existence of Wikipedia and the fast advancement of, oh now I'm sounding like a geezer. Jeez, what was I trying to say?
I'm tired. I'm sorry. But sometimes it's just good to enjoy a family dinner and hold off on getting concerned about these situations where you can't change anything and where you don't really need to take in all this information all at once and make quick assumptions about everything and isn't the news kind of like a run-on sentence like there where it just goes on and on we report you decide and they want you to decide now right away tout de suite and it just goes on, and on, and on? Sometimes you need to slow down. Commas help. A comma that splices isn't a real comma, though. But anyway... I'm sorry for all this poor writing form. But right now I'm really not going for that. I'm going for the hits, the on-base percentage, the contact. The mixed metaphors that don't completely go together, especially in the last sentence, whoo that was bad. The feeling. Even if I have to go back and change things. I can't go back to the past now, my past writing style, where I didn't have to go back and change things. Now I have to go back. It leads to things that are difficult to read and comprehend, but I sure as hell have fun writing them for you, the theoretical reader, to perhaps enjoy and/or maybe make a face at. But it's fun. Haha, that last mix-up was really cool.
But sometimes we need time. Just to let go before something else is piled up onto our train of thought. And now I'll check the news. Who died? Why (well, the news always claims to try to get at that even when it's not fully possible)?
Wow, I was wrong, or high on my painkiller when I was watching the news or something. I guess the two that I thought were killed were wounded...? A security guard died. In all probability, I didn't know him. In any case, now I maybe don't feel as good about the world having read a few articles about the shooting.
Maybe. Freewrites, treewrites, triwrites, whatever, they're at least here to be here to talk for me when I can't talk out everything I want to talk to people about. So I guess yeah, I feel pretty good.
And if I didn't, that would be weird. But still I think we should be bombarded with violent imagery from Pakistan and Iraq and Afghanistan (and you notice that at the beginning of this year or whenever it was, journalists weren't really allowed to enter Gaza). It's only fair, that's what happened in the Vietnam days.
Anyway, I will end this 'write by saying that the latter third of this is mostly tired writing, and I do not take complete responsibility for what I have said in that part. Also, I am recovering from a pretty life-changing surgery, and that includes accompanying painkiller. I don't know what effect that has. So don't get offended and lose respect.
But hopefully, if you read all of this, you were moved, or enjoyed reading it. Or parts of it at least.
Give me some sugar. "I am your neighbor!"
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Green tea ice cream
So my sister said in a tri-hallway-walking conversation that green tea ice cream was better than green tea. I disagreed, saying that green tea was better than green tea ice cream, and adding that I don't like green tea ice cream. This brings me back to April vacation in Japan when Tiki showed me around Uji and we had green tea ice cream together. (Well, he had some super cone that had hazelnuts in it, so I couldn't have it, and the ice cream's flavor might've been different.) I told him I loved it. And I did. The mountain air around me, the warm spring temperature, the silently flowing river shielded from my view at that point by the bridge that traverses it... topped off by the green tea ice cream I ate with my small clear plastic spoon off the cone, as I would and anyone would in Japan.
Then later on I was having a conversation with somebody and I said I didn't like green tea ice cream. "But I thought Tiki said you went and had it with him and you liked it." My reply: "Yeah, I did, but..." I forget the rest of the reply. Let me think... what did I say? I think I said "...but it wasn't really that great."
A short sample of how honesty can be lost in the flavors of life, or maybe rather how the concept of honesty can disappear when your sense of taste changes depending on how your other senses change. Or something. It's confusing.
I'm probably high on painkillers (as prescribed) but I don't think it's changing this freewrite too much. I am more relaxed than usual, though, and less on edge about making the usual "freewrite point" that I try to make when I write a freewrite. You know when you're writing an essay and you can tell whether you're satisfied by when you notice you've written something that feels like you're striking a gong and you've hit exactly the right spot to get the perfect sound? Yeah, something like that. But all in all, if you give me green tea ice cream again, I think I can tell you whether I like it.
As for the green tea ice cream story that's strictly confined to Japan, well, it struck me when I was in Japan because I had just gotten thrown in my face again the question of whether I'm being honest. This time by myself, I threw it in my own face. But it was thrown in my face by someone just prior to that visit to Japan, specifically about 5 days before. "That's really dishonest" said he. At this point in this freewrite, right now, I feel a slight tension. I heard that same shit about 4 years ago. Again, I'm not as honest when I'm tired. Funny thing, though, because I don't think that's the whole truth. I don't know the whole truth to the honesty matter. That's part of the reason if not the major underlying reason I started this blog.
Because I think it was honest, what I said. That was my heart speaking, if only after my brain spoke.
Wonder what it'll say next. Now I'm (still) tense.
Then later on I was having a conversation with somebody and I said I didn't like green tea ice cream. "But I thought Tiki said you went and had it with him and you liked it." My reply: "Yeah, I did, but..." I forget the rest of the reply. Let me think... what did I say? I think I said "...but it wasn't really that great."
A short sample of how honesty can be lost in the flavors of life, or maybe rather how the concept of honesty can disappear when your sense of taste changes depending on how your other senses change. Or something. It's confusing.
I'm probably high on painkillers (as prescribed) but I don't think it's changing this freewrite too much. I am more relaxed than usual, though, and less on edge about making the usual "freewrite point" that I try to make when I write a freewrite. You know when you're writing an essay and you can tell whether you're satisfied by when you notice you've written something that feels like you're striking a gong and you've hit exactly the right spot to get the perfect sound? Yeah, something like that. But all in all, if you give me green tea ice cream again, I think I can tell you whether I like it.
As for the green tea ice cream story that's strictly confined to Japan, well, it struck me when I was in Japan because I had just gotten thrown in my face again the question of whether I'm being honest. This time by myself, I threw it in my own face. But it was thrown in my face by someone just prior to that visit to Japan, specifically about 5 days before. "That's really dishonest" said he. At this point in this freewrite, right now, I feel a slight tension. I heard that same shit about 4 years ago. Again, I'm not as honest when I'm tired. Funny thing, though, because I don't think that's the whole truth. I don't know the whole truth to the honesty matter. That's part of the reason if not the major underlying reason I started this blog.
Because I think it was honest, what I said. That was my heart speaking, if only after my brain spoke.
Wonder what it'll say next. Now I'm (still) tense.
Circumscribed
So I got circumcised today.
It's really weird not feeling it when you pee. Also I'm feeling slight twitches of pain but I'm on some sort of painkiller so hopefully that'll take care of things. They said "1 or 2 pills every 4 to 6 hours"; I took 2 and hopefully that'll last me 6 hours. I haven't felt extreme pain yet just twitches of pain.
But yeah, this had to happen. Actually there's a slight chance that it didn't have to, but, well, whatever. It's called phimosis, look it up. If you're not uncircumcised and you don't have problems with your foreskin then don't. There was something about a cream with a topical steroid but I don't know if that would've worked.
So root canal, ear cleaning, heartbreak, and circumcision. 3 horrible experiences I had to go through, and one not so horrible (that being the ear cleaning), since like January or February. And 3 of these in the past 4 weeks. Yippee! and I have to get the crown down on the root canal with my incompetent dentist who didn't notice there was something wrong with the bone structure or something on or near my tooth I don't know my anatomy okay.
Ow. OW.
Oh well. I guess "Ow" can be an acronym for "Oh well." That's not a good philosophy, though...
And there you have it, I'm a new man. Caps lock almost made me type that in caps. NEW MAN.
And so starts the adventure.
It's really weird not feeling it when you pee. Also I'm feeling slight twitches of pain but I'm on some sort of painkiller so hopefully that'll take care of things. They said "1 or 2 pills every 4 to 6 hours"; I took 2 and hopefully that'll last me 6 hours. I haven't felt extreme pain yet just twitches of pain.
But yeah, this had to happen. Actually there's a slight chance that it didn't have to, but, well, whatever. It's called phimosis, look it up. If you're not uncircumcised and you don't have problems with your foreskin then don't. There was something about a cream with a topical steroid but I don't know if that would've worked.
So root canal, ear cleaning, heartbreak, and circumcision. 3 horrible experiences I had to go through, and one not so horrible (that being the ear cleaning), since like January or February. And 3 of these in the past 4 weeks. Yippee! and I have to get the crown down on the root canal with my incompetent dentist who didn't notice there was something wrong with the bone structure or something on or near my tooth I don't know my anatomy okay.
Ow. OW.
Oh well. I guess "Ow" can be an acronym for "Oh well." That's not a good philosophy, though...
And there you have it, I'm a new man. Caps lock almost made me type that in caps. NEW MAN.
And so starts the adventure.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Fire
So I have been "working out" recently, if you can call perfect pushups, crunches, DDR, and one run in the last 7 days working out. The upper body workout is a lot for me, though, and the lack of sleep I suffered in Paris has added to that and created a fairly exhausted me. I hope that's what it means for your pee to be almost always yellow, that and I should drink more water. Either way I'm somewhat bothered that they didn't take a blood test because I "looked so healthy," so I hope that doesn't mean surgery is a very dangerous thing tomorrow morning at 7 AM (well, I have to be there at 7 AM, and then they actually start the thing at 8:30 AM, why???). I guess not. Oh, and two moms have said I have lost a lot of weight since they last saw me, and they last saw me 5 months ago and probably 9 months ago respectively. Actually, that's completely false. It's just that muscle is more dense.
Or at least that's the only thing that makes sense. Anyway, I'm going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow, and I will probably be so nervous I will piss about 5 times before they actually start the surgery. Which isn't good because you're not allowed to drink anything before it starts. But I'm so scared. For this is no normal surgery...
Anyway, they burnt down the coffee shop with the topless waiters in Maine. Idiots don't have any respect for private property. They probably think they're being conservative. You can't be a conservative if you don't have any respect for private property. Well, you can, but I don't know what you're conserving.
My hips have been really sore recently (it started in Paris) and I'm not completely sure why. DDR is not helping, of course, since DDR is an awkward exercise. I'm thinking of ditching it completely and switching to running. Of course, for the next 2 weeks (hopefully only 1) this isn't going to be at all relevant, because I will not be able to do any exercise. Aside from walking VERY carefully. Actually, I could lift weights, if I had any. Pushups might be difficult. And piano is exercise, though perhaps more mental than physical. But yeah. Will I gain any weight? No, because I have a metabolism of gold and I do care about what I eat (I actually enjoy food more when I know it's healthier, and I don't like it when I can taste fat).
Ugh, I don't know what it's going to be like after those ~5.5 hours in the hospital tomorrow that start at 7 AM. I'm going to pray to God that I'm at least alive after the procedure, and also I'll pray that what's being operated on will be usable after the surgery. That's why my mom was telling me yesterday I should've gone to church...
Do they have a thing called "substitions"?
The sun is setting. It's so early, though. I guess I should go to bed at 9:30 PM if I want to be up at 5:30 AM to make the typical hour I like to have free before I have to go anywhere...
Or at least that's the only thing that makes sense. Anyway, I'm going to be in a lot of pain tomorrow, and I will probably be so nervous I will piss about 5 times before they actually start the surgery. Which isn't good because you're not allowed to drink anything before it starts. But I'm so scared. For this is no normal surgery...
Anyway, they burnt down the coffee shop with the topless waiters in Maine. Idiots don't have any respect for private property. They probably think they're being conservative. You can't be a conservative if you don't have any respect for private property. Well, you can, but I don't know what you're conserving.
My hips have been really sore recently (it started in Paris) and I'm not completely sure why. DDR is not helping, of course, since DDR is an awkward exercise. I'm thinking of ditching it completely and switching to running. Of course, for the next 2 weeks (hopefully only 1) this isn't going to be at all relevant, because I will not be able to do any exercise. Aside from walking VERY carefully. Actually, I could lift weights, if I had any. Pushups might be difficult. And piano is exercise, though perhaps more mental than physical. But yeah. Will I gain any weight? No, because I have a metabolism of gold and I do care about what I eat (I actually enjoy food more when I know it's healthier, and I don't like it when I can taste fat).
Ugh, I don't know what it's going to be like after those ~5.5 hours in the hospital tomorrow that start at 7 AM. I'm going to pray to God that I'm at least alive after the procedure, and also I'll pray that what's being operated on will be usable after the surgery. That's why my mom was telling me yesterday I should've gone to church...
Do they have a thing called "substitions"?
The sun is setting. It's so early, though. I guess I should go to bed at 9:30 PM if I want to be up at 5:30 AM to make the typical hour I like to have free before I have to go anywhere...
Trinary
0 1 2
As I discussed in the last freewrite, a lot of times we only seem to see things in dichotomies. Katy Perry in fact makes the observation that we frequently see ourselves as being one of two poles or two opposites when really we have elements of both these poles. Your head can be hot while your feet can be cold and, in terms of decisions we make, you can say yes to sex when you're drunk when really it's a no. Well, whatever. Sometimes it's useful to see things in 2 anyway, and other times even more useful to see them in terms of 3.
There's the typical "three's a crowd" argument that has as its resolution that it's better to have a couple and a single. If person A wants to get into this group of 2, he does it in order to get with one of the people (generally not both), or in other words to force a 2, whereas in reality it forces a temporary 3, and nobody wants to be just 1. But this is a 1-2-3 case. I want to focus on the 0-1-2 case.
In life many people are in a closed monogamous relationship, and once they're in that, they can't imagine life without the other person. A person in a said relationship becomes like a "2." Others, like me, have to at least for now live life as a "1": the individual strong on his own, not needing to depend on anybody else. But as a "1" it's so easy to slip into feeling like "0", feeling like you need to be "2" or else you're "0." And I feel like the "2" to "0" slip is easy when the relationship suddenly ends. (Even in terms of when my grandfather died; my grandmother never really got over it.) So my question is this: Why is it so hard to be number "1"?
Haha, if you redefine "number 1" as this, isn't that interesting? Land ahoy!
As I discussed in the last freewrite, a lot of times we only seem to see things in dichotomies. Katy Perry in fact makes the observation that we frequently see ourselves as being one of two poles or two opposites when really we have elements of both these poles. Your head can be hot while your feet can be cold and, in terms of decisions we make, you can say yes to sex when you're drunk when really it's a no. Well, whatever. Sometimes it's useful to see things in 2 anyway, and other times even more useful to see them in terms of 3.
There's the typical "three's a crowd" argument that has as its resolution that it's better to have a couple and a single. If person A wants to get into this group of 2, he does it in order to get with one of the people (generally not both), or in other words to force a 2, whereas in reality it forces a temporary 3, and nobody wants to be just 1. But this is a 1-2-3 case. I want to focus on the 0-1-2 case.
In life many people are in a closed monogamous relationship, and once they're in that, they can't imagine life without the other person. A person in a said relationship becomes like a "2." Others, like me, have to at least for now live life as a "1": the individual strong on his own, not needing to depend on anybody else. But as a "1" it's so easy to slip into feeling like "0", feeling like you need to be "2" or else you're "0." And I feel like the "2" to "0" slip is easy when the relationship suddenly ends. (Even in terms of when my grandfather died; my grandmother never really got over it.) So my question is this: Why is it so hard to be number "1"?
Haha, if you redefine "number 1" as this, isn't that interesting? Land ahoy!
Sunday, June 7, 2009
遠回しみたいなroutine (でも繰り返すみたいじゃないの）
In Paris I had a root canal and an ear cleaning. The next thing that's going to be done to me is going to be so ridiculous that you'll wonder how fun it is to be me. I'll detail what it is after it happens and after I start feeling the awful, awful pain.
I've felt kind of anxious the past few days, but I don't think it's more than 50% about this surgery. It's about the past semester and about this summer. Today I managed to wipe off the sticky mess of anxiousness and get to work, cleaning up my desk area to the point where it looked decently organized. That finally happened after spending a morning and half an afternoon extremely bored out of my mind. I finished the graphics I started working on last night, and apart from that today I didn't really do much of anything. Listened to music, played music, sang music. I did my pushup routine without the crunches and felt the soreness in my chest as I struggled to wolf down my dinner. Paced back and forth. Our dog must have wondered what was going on. I put more stuff in the blue New England Patriots storage plastic locker box thing (eventually I have to put "thing" to denote my uncertainty as to how skillful my description is) we have on the porch (well, it used to be a porch) and thus made it hopefully easier for me to finally convince myself to get back to work on finishing up the paper my team started and should've finished last summer but didn't have the time to. After that (provided it actually gets finished, or provided I feel like I've done enough) I intend to get back to work on Japanese, memorizing Kanji and going through Kansai's Spring 2K9 Level 5 Speaking textbook, and once I can move without feeling pain again, it's time to establish an awesome exercise routine. And find something to put on my resume for the summer.
Honestly, if it weren't for the resume thing to worry about, I probably could feel alright spending a whole summer learning Japanese and bettering myself physically. But unfortunately that's not how things go. Admittedly I don't have to worry about money but I could probably do without buying much of anything, which would require I learn how to cook a diverse selection of dishes, which would be very good for me for the upcoming year in which I hope to be doing that every day for every meal so that I can fully control my diet (ok, Tufts' dining halls let you do that but I'd like to learn how to live without them, regardless of the usually pretty good taste) and feel accomplished otherwise.
Do I have a routine now, surgery aside? Yes, but it's the kind of routine described in the title: one that doesn't repeat very often and one that, uh, kind of encourages me to step around things rather than to get to the point of things. For instance I have intended to email someone who is a dental surgeon currently aiming for something pretty high up I forget, who I was talking to on the plane coming from London to Boston... yeah I should've done that more than a week ago after I got back. But I didn't. Still have his email address though so I surely will email him. Just when? Also I have to email my professor to ask if I can get my paper with stuff written on it back from him. I have been avoiding both of those emails for awhile, and also I probably have other stuff I should be getting to as well. Phooey.
I get really tired before midnight nowadays. That'll help me wake up at 6 AM, ugh, check-in time at 7 AM why are you guys making me wait it out like that???
They didn't take a blood test at the pre-surgery appointment because they said I looked "so healthy" that it wasn't necessary. Well, let's hope that's okay. In related events my mom told me I should've gone to church by myself this morning because I didn't make it in time to go with her and my grandmother on Saturday evening. Ugh, no thanks, I don't want to hear the pastor with his horrendous 大げさな話し方 (exaggerated speaking style). All the other priests we had talked in the usual boring voices you'd hear in any church, and all of a sudden the new one talks like that. The content is probably decent but I generally take that time to talk to myself.
Isn't that last bit odd? It's part of the routine... the routine that involves a lot of pacing back and forth in my head, and if I'm not at mass, a lot of pacing back and forth in the house. Getting nothing done. At least half the time I can keep it in my head, whereas my dad generally starts speaking out loud regardless of whether there might be people nearby.
I was thinking to myself on the road tonight and I realized that I have combined my desire to be reassured that I'm doing fine and dandy with my sexual desire. These are not two good things to combine because once you do that they're so hard to separate. And then I just basically think about sex because I'm a guy, and I forget it's really the former thing that's bothering me. Hopefully I'll keep these two things separated when I need them to be that way.
I've felt kind of anxious the past few days, but I don't think it's more than 50% about this surgery. It's about the past semester and about this summer. Today I managed to wipe off the sticky mess of anxiousness and get to work, cleaning up my desk area to the point where it looked decently organized. That finally happened after spending a morning and half an afternoon extremely bored out of my mind. I finished the graphics I started working on last night, and apart from that today I didn't really do much of anything. Listened to music, played music, sang music. I did my pushup routine without the crunches and felt the soreness in my chest as I struggled to wolf down my dinner. Paced back and forth. Our dog must have wondered what was going on. I put more stuff in the blue New England Patriots storage plastic locker box thing (eventually I have to put "thing" to denote my uncertainty as to how skillful my description is) we have on the porch (well, it used to be a porch) and thus made it hopefully easier for me to finally convince myself to get back to work on finishing up the paper my team started and should've finished last summer but didn't have the time to. After that (provided it actually gets finished, or provided I feel like I've done enough) I intend to get back to work on Japanese, memorizing Kanji and going through Kansai's Spring 2K9 Level 5 Speaking textbook, and once I can move without feeling pain again, it's time to establish an awesome exercise routine. And find something to put on my resume for the summer.
Honestly, if it weren't for the resume thing to worry about, I probably could feel alright spending a whole summer learning Japanese and bettering myself physically. But unfortunately that's not how things go. Admittedly I don't have to worry about money but I could probably do without buying much of anything, which would require I learn how to cook a diverse selection of dishes, which would be very good for me for the upcoming year in which I hope to be doing that every day for every meal so that I can fully control my diet (ok, Tufts' dining halls let you do that but I'd like to learn how to live without them, regardless of the usually pretty good taste) and feel accomplished otherwise.
Do I have a routine now, surgery aside? Yes, but it's the kind of routine described in the title: one that doesn't repeat very often and one that, uh, kind of encourages me to step around things rather than to get to the point of things. For instance I have intended to email someone who is a dental surgeon currently aiming for something pretty high up I forget, who I was talking to on the plane coming from London to Boston... yeah I should've done that more than a week ago after I got back. But I didn't. Still have his email address though so I surely will email him. Just when? Also I have to email my professor to ask if I can get my paper with stuff written on it back from him. I have been avoiding both of those emails for awhile, and also I probably have other stuff I should be getting to as well. Phooey.
I get really tired before midnight nowadays. That'll help me wake up at 6 AM, ugh, check-in time at 7 AM why are you guys making me wait it out like that???
They didn't take a blood test at the pre-surgery appointment because they said I looked "so healthy" that it wasn't necessary. Well, let's hope that's okay. In related events my mom told me I should've gone to church by myself this morning because I didn't make it in time to go with her and my grandmother on Saturday evening. Ugh, no thanks, I don't want to hear the pastor with his horrendous 大げさな話し方 (exaggerated speaking style). All the other priests we had talked in the usual boring voices you'd hear in any church, and all of a sudden the new one talks like that. The content is probably decent but I generally take that time to talk to myself.
Isn't that last bit odd? It's part of the routine... the routine that involves a lot of pacing back and forth in my head, and if I'm not at mass, a lot of pacing back and forth in the house. Getting nothing done. At least half the time I can keep it in my head, whereas my dad generally starts speaking out loud regardless of whether there might be people nearby.
I was thinking to myself on the road tonight and I realized that I have combined my desire to be reassured that I'm doing fine and dandy with my sexual desire. These are not two good things to combine because once you do that they're so hard to separate. And then I just basically think about sex because I'm a guy, and I forget it's really the former thing that's bothering me. Hopefully I'll keep these two things separated when I need them to be that way.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
I'm sweet like sugar
It's Saturday night. Having not the slightest clue what to do with myself I proceed to try to make graphics for a DDR file. Yes, you saw all those words in one sentence. I will explain for those who don't know:
DDR means Dance Dance Revolution; if you think it means something else you've been lied to by computer hardware makers. This is a game where you have arrows representing the directions up, down, left, and right on a pad on the floor, and you use your feet to hit the arrows in time with the beat of a song. At advanced levels you don't only copy the main beat but also the other musical elements of the song, so this turns into the most athletic video game of all time, essentially. Even today (DDR was first released in 1998) Wii whatever (except Wii DDR) has nothing on this for exercise. There's also sports, like, real-life sports, but I think of it this way. There's running while listening to music - a constant workout with lots of pounding the ground - and there's dancing. DDR is the brilliant combination of the two.
There's a sort of aesthetic involved, though, that goes beyond the pleasure of getting through the song without failing, or getting a really good score. I (and many other people, though interest has died down nowadays on the internet) see an art in the arrows they choose to put on the screen. There's a logic to how they're put there so that if you go at the game with the proper technique, it's not just a battle to stay up standing or a boring foot-shuffle game but a fun way to move your body along with the music, albeit with an unfair bias given to your lower half. But yeah, the arrows mean something. It's not just the second-dimensional plane formed by these arrows but the third dimension you add when you take into account the movement of the human body. Pretty cool, huh?
Well, I think it is. What I do (and what many people do or at least used to do) is I make use of a DDR simulator on the computer called Stepmania, and make DDR arrow "charts" (as they're called) to songs I like to listen to. For instance, I've done "Back That Thang Up" by Juvenile, "I Don't Love You" by My Chemical Romance (nothing prevents DDR and non-dance genres of music from mixing!), and "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas (yes, I enjoy listening to it, shoo). Basically what you do is you find the tempo (we say BPM = "beats per minute," a term DJs use too) and the time in seconds of the first beat of the song, use that info to chop the song down to standard DDR length which is between 1 and 2 minutes, insert in the DDR simulator and invent your steps. It's fun but lately I've been losing interest because the community online where we share our stuff has gotten really disinterested and uninteresting. That's double the drop in interest, boy.
But yeah. And right now what I'm doing is making the background, an image that gets displayed behind the arrows when you play a particular song, and the banner, the image that you see for this particular song ("WOLVES OF THE SEA" by Pirates of the Sea, Latvia's 2008 Eurovision song) when you're scrolling through and picking which song you want to dance or rather DDR to. I just go on Flickr.com, look for pictures that are legally usable for this purpose under a Creative Commons license (I'm a softie), and put text over it, sometimes modifying the background image to make it look cooler.
In any case, it's a dying hobby. But I have nothing else to do where I've had this much creative fun in recent years. And I'm not easily distracted anymore by time-killing or chilling endeavors that aren't very creative (video games, movies, books) so this is what I stick with. At times it can be pretty easy, but sometimes it's hard to really make something you like, and being the perfectionist I am I seem to have that problem a lot. It's a great hobby for me for this reason, though: it combines small amounts of several different endeavors. Ok, that wasn't very well expressed. Basically, in life I tend to get very into, well, anything I'm into. Or at least that's what my friend Greg tells me. I think he's right, though. If I have a hobby I have to be good at it, and I can never stick with just one hobby, whether that be because I genuinely cannot abandon my interest in these various things or because I lack the confidence to put all my lot into one thing and try to excel at it to the best of my abilities. I think it's a little of both.
But yeah, my DDR-making hobby requires graphical, musical, math (slightly...), and logical skill. Still, even then there's only so much you can do with four arrows and with an old routine. Today, instead of playing DDR, I learned the Nor Par. If you search "Nor Par" on Youtube the (very brief) instructional video is the first thing that comes up. It's the dance for Armenia's Eurovision song this year, "Jan Jan." It's a lot of fun; you should try it.
And yet here I am again back with the old hobby. I think this says a lot. And no, I'm not particularly focused on this one thing, since I can hardly get anything done. I guess I'm just focused against things like TV, movies, books... I have to be doing something more active or creative. What a strange mindset I've been in for so long, ever since high school started.
All these things I know, too. All the above. All the above! All the above, oohoh, oohoh... What I was just type-singing was the bizarre hook of a new hip-hop song. But yeah, I know all these things. Why did I just write them all out?
I guess I just want other people to know. And how well did I publicize this blog... not at all. Wha?
DDR means Dance Dance Revolution; if you think it means something else you've been lied to by computer hardware makers. This is a game where you have arrows representing the directions up, down, left, and right on a pad on the floor, and you use your feet to hit the arrows in time with the beat of a song. At advanced levels you don't only copy the main beat but also the other musical elements of the song, so this turns into the most athletic video game of all time, essentially. Even today (DDR was first released in 1998) Wii whatever (except Wii DDR) has nothing on this for exercise. There's also sports, like, real-life sports, but I think of it this way. There's running while listening to music - a constant workout with lots of pounding the ground - and there's dancing. DDR is the brilliant combination of the two.
There's a sort of aesthetic involved, though, that goes beyond the pleasure of getting through the song without failing, or getting a really good score. I (and many other people, though interest has died down nowadays on the internet) see an art in the arrows they choose to put on the screen. There's a logic to how they're put there so that if you go at the game with the proper technique, it's not just a battle to stay up standing or a boring foot-shuffle game but a fun way to move your body along with the music, albeit with an unfair bias given to your lower half. But yeah, the arrows mean something. It's not just the second-dimensional plane formed by these arrows but the third dimension you add when you take into account the movement of the human body. Pretty cool, huh?
Well, I think it is. What I do (and what many people do or at least used to do) is I make use of a DDR simulator on the computer called Stepmania, and make DDR arrow "charts" (as they're called) to songs I like to listen to. For instance, I've done "Back That Thang Up" by Juvenile, "I Don't Love You" by My Chemical Romance (nothing prevents DDR and non-dance genres of music from mixing!), and "My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas (yes, I enjoy listening to it, shoo). Basically what you do is you find the tempo (we say BPM = "beats per minute," a term DJs use too) and the time in seconds of the first beat of the song, use that info to chop the song down to standard DDR length which is between 1 and 2 minutes, insert in the DDR simulator and invent your steps. It's fun but lately I've been losing interest because the community online where we share our stuff has gotten really disinterested and uninteresting. That's double the drop in interest, boy.
But yeah. And right now what I'm doing is making the background, an image that gets displayed behind the arrows when you play a particular song, and the banner, the image that you see for this particular song ("WOLVES OF THE SEA" by Pirates of the Sea, Latvia's 2008 Eurovision song) when you're scrolling through and picking which song you want to dance or rather DDR to. I just go on Flickr.com, look for pictures that are legally usable for this purpose under a Creative Commons license (I'm a softie), and put text over it, sometimes modifying the background image to make it look cooler.
In any case, it's a dying hobby. But I have nothing else to do where I've had this much creative fun in recent years. And I'm not easily distracted anymore by time-killing or chilling endeavors that aren't very creative (video games, movies, books) so this is what I stick with. At times it can be pretty easy, but sometimes it's hard to really make something you like, and being the perfectionist I am I seem to have that problem a lot. It's a great hobby for me for this reason, though: it combines small amounts of several different endeavors. Ok, that wasn't very well expressed. Basically, in life I tend to get very into, well, anything I'm into. Or at least that's what my friend Greg tells me. I think he's right, though. If I have a hobby I have to be good at it, and I can never stick with just one hobby, whether that be because I genuinely cannot abandon my interest in these various things or because I lack the confidence to put all my lot into one thing and try to excel at it to the best of my abilities. I think it's a little of both.
But yeah, my DDR-making hobby requires graphical, musical, math (slightly...), and logical skill. Still, even then there's only so much you can do with four arrows and with an old routine. Today, instead of playing DDR, I learned the Nor Par. If you search "Nor Par" on Youtube the (very brief) instructional video is the first thing that comes up. It's the dance for Armenia's Eurovision song this year, "Jan Jan." It's a lot of fun; you should try it.
And yet here I am again back with the old hobby. I think this says a lot. And no, I'm not particularly focused on this one thing, since I can hardly get anything done. I guess I'm just focused against things like TV, movies, books... I have to be doing something more active or creative. What a strange mindset I've been in for so long, ever since high school started.
All these things I know, too. All the above. All the above! All the above, oohoh, oohoh... What I was just type-singing was the bizarre hook of a new hip-hop song. But yeah, I know all these things. Why did I just write them all out?
I guess I just want other people to know. And how well did I publicize this blog... not at all. Wha?
Instantane
Just now I did a few "perfect pushups" (with those rotating grips, you know. PS Don't buy Push-Up Pro because those never stay in one place) and stomach crunches; I limited myself for the day because I did a lot of exercise the day before. I took my shirt off and I went outside on our front steps and the cool was nice. But the cool didn't cool down the front of my body, which had heated up due to the strain upon it. So I decided to lay face down on the top, wide-enough granite step and allow the coolness to soak into my body (or the hotness to soak out. Physics aside...). I was swimming on stone. The alternative would be to take a dip in the sea. The water is too cold now but I don't care. I dipped in Marseille and it was nice, even when it was only May.
I'm too exhausted to correct the words I use because my arms, yeah. Actually, I just clarified the last sentence. But anyway...
I wonder what people think when they drive by and see somebody lying flat out on their driveway. A corpse? My reply: a human. But where I live nobody drives by on the street so it wasn't a problem. This isn't the happy-days era either, so nobody's outside in their yards being social with each other either. I just used "either" twice in that sentence but I think it makes sense. Wait, this makes less sense: why aren't we in our yards being social? Internet and TV and phone conversations aren't full-on what-we-need human communication. But I guess we resort to these, scared. Scared of communication. Not so much scared of interaction as much as communication.
Communication is also something I am scared about. Somebody didn't get this about me and asked me about it, and I guess I don't get it myself. You know, I try. But we all have that little Samantha inside of us. Samantha is our dog. We got her when our (well, I guess my) uncle died and she was left behind all alone in the doghouse outside. She's very undoglike (犬らしくない). She's scared of everything. Whenever she sees something moving she runs away from it. She doesn't like playing or catching balls or moving around. Maybe it's just because she's a female dog and I haven't seen too many of those, but I don't know.
When I was lying chest-down on the wide granite step I was thinking to myself about human progress and how it's possible for me to do such a thing. I could do something similar inside if I wanted to, like lie down on a cool couch with cool air-conditioning. That's what I'd have to do if it were like 7 PM and the mosquitoes were out. Actually, it's just about 7 PM now and it's still sunny. Go summer! But anyway, imagine if I were a human way back when, with very limited possibilities of communication or means to obtain knowledge, and I tried to do that to please my body and fell asleep, and the next morning I woke up with many, many mosquito bites. Imagine if I thought it would be the same as if I were in my cave or my hut, where I'd have a fair number of mosquito bites anyway. Yeah. But now, I can go without any mosquito bites. And now I can go and live in this house. I have no idea how it was constructed; other people constructed it. I guess my thoughts were all about the sacrifices that people make for other people to get a situation that ends up being more rewarding for each individual. And then I thought about animals, and how we realized, well, they didn't really help out in the whole progress thing, so I guess we're better than them. And plus, we need to eat something anyway, so, voilà, instant separation.
Reminds me of fighting between political action groups, including ones that aren't necessarily opposed to each other. Well, they're not all completely opposed to each other; all in all they all want happiness, and we call the people who don't want happiness medically depressed or medically something else.
I guess one thing I believe is that whatever it means getting happiness, it means reducing others' stress upon you and ainsi not putting stress on others. As much as possible. The Golden Rule says don't do to other people what you wouldn't want to be done to yourself. But it's increasingly true that I don't know what I want to be done to me. Hence I take the limit, the contrapositive and, with my Filipino accent, say just don't do to others. Because the best approach is just to not try to mess things up.
Life isn't a series of proof by contrapositives, though. Good thing there's math. The anti-life?
I guess "anti-social" is better than anti-life. Social situations can be violent, too, so sometimes that means being more peaceful?
Look at how I'm going back and forth with opposites and negatives in the wordplay above. This freewrite is too dichotomous. If that's not a word, that's propisterous.
Is everything eponymous?
I'm too exhausted to correct the words I use because my arms, yeah. Actually, I just clarified the last sentence. But anyway...
I wonder what people think when they drive by and see somebody lying flat out on their driveway. A corpse? My reply: a human. But where I live nobody drives by on the street so it wasn't a problem. This isn't the happy-days era either, so nobody's outside in their yards being social with each other either. I just used "either" twice in that sentence but I think it makes sense. Wait, this makes less sense: why aren't we in our yards being social? Internet and TV and phone conversations aren't full-on what-we-need human communication. But I guess we resort to these, scared. Scared of communication. Not so much scared of interaction as much as communication.
Communication is also something I am scared about. Somebody didn't get this about me and asked me about it, and I guess I don't get it myself. You know, I try. But we all have that little Samantha inside of us. Samantha is our dog. We got her when our (well, I guess my) uncle died and she was left behind all alone in the doghouse outside. She's very undoglike (犬らしくない). She's scared of everything. Whenever she sees something moving she runs away from it. She doesn't like playing or catching balls or moving around. Maybe it's just because she's a female dog and I haven't seen too many of those, but I don't know.
When I was lying chest-down on the wide granite step I was thinking to myself about human progress and how it's possible for me to do such a thing. I could do something similar inside if I wanted to, like lie down on a cool couch with cool air-conditioning. That's what I'd have to do if it were like 7 PM and the mosquitoes were out. Actually, it's just about 7 PM now and it's still sunny. Go summer! But anyway, imagine if I were a human way back when, with very limited possibilities of communication or means to obtain knowledge, and I tried to do that to please my body and fell asleep, and the next morning I woke up with many, many mosquito bites. Imagine if I thought it would be the same as if I were in my cave or my hut, where I'd have a fair number of mosquito bites anyway. Yeah. But now, I can go without any mosquito bites. And now I can go and live in this house. I have no idea how it was constructed; other people constructed it. I guess my thoughts were all about the sacrifices that people make for other people to get a situation that ends up being more rewarding for each individual. And then I thought about animals, and how we realized, well, they didn't really help out in the whole progress thing, so I guess we're better than them. And plus, we need to eat something anyway, so, voilà, instant separation.
Reminds me of fighting between political action groups, including ones that aren't necessarily opposed to each other. Well, they're not all completely opposed to each other; all in all they all want happiness, and we call the people who don't want happiness medically depressed or medically something else.
I guess one thing I believe is that whatever it means getting happiness, it means reducing others' stress upon you and ainsi not putting stress on others. As much as possible. The Golden Rule says don't do to other people what you wouldn't want to be done to yourself. But it's increasingly true that I don't know what I want to be done to me. Hence I take the limit, the contrapositive and, with my Filipino accent, say just don't do to others. Because the best approach is just to not try to mess things up.
Life isn't a series of proof by contrapositives, though. Good thing there's math. The anti-life?
I guess "anti-social" is better than anti-life. Social situations can be violent, too, so sometimes that means being more peaceful?
Look at how I'm going back and forth with opposites and negatives in the wordplay above. This freewrite is too dichotomous. If that's not a word, that's propisterous.
Is everything eponymous?
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Embrace
I'm searching for that, yeah.
Picture this. Exit the town store, step into the parking lot whose silence is smoothed over by the regular moans of satisfied car engines, look up, sunset. And your eyes cannot capture without moving your head to the left the entire panorama in front of you. To the left of the sunset pink with dashes of purple clouds and slight touches of yellow and orange, you see trees, a community bank, and a gray, satisfied, peaceful sunless sky, like the color of a harmonious Paris morning. (In Paris, there are no colors other than black and white, and people there only see gray.) And when you think about this, you think of how nice it is that in the end, these two are the same sky. The beautiful sunset and the normal setted-sun gray.
I love that picture in my head. Sometimes it's not the sunset that's as satisfying as the fact that you saw it and can relax in the harmony afterwards, when all other people see is gray. Unfortunately the mosquitoes force you to agree with them.
I clamor for independence. And also something unique that I like to work on and do. And a coach. There is no strict mathematical intersection for these things other than the empty set. I guess I can always have the empty set. Or just ditch the mathematical thinking that seems to pervade my attitudes. Is that my heart speaking like that? Mathematically? No, that's my brain...
Mathematically, that paragraph that I had fun (and trouble, don't get me wrong) writing up there wasn't the "complete picture." Or the right picture in your mind. The town store was Market Basket. The parking lot also had people talking and teenagers probably unable to drive competently. How can you ruin the sky, though? The sky is always as it is. That's at least one thing that us humans have difficulty obscuring. In any case, this isn't math.
This is me.
Picture this. Exit the town store, step into the parking lot whose silence is smoothed over by the regular moans of satisfied car engines, look up, sunset. And your eyes cannot capture without moving your head to the left the entire panorama in front of you. To the left of the sunset pink with dashes of purple clouds and slight touches of yellow and orange, you see trees, a community bank, and a gray, satisfied, peaceful sunless sky, like the color of a harmonious Paris morning. (In Paris, there are no colors other than black and white, and people there only see gray.) And when you think about this, you think of how nice it is that in the end, these two are the same sky. The beautiful sunset and the normal setted-sun gray.
I love that picture in my head. Sometimes it's not the sunset that's as satisfying as the fact that you saw it and can relax in the harmony afterwards, when all other people see is gray. Unfortunately the mosquitoes force you to agree with them.
I clamor for independence. And also something unique that I like to work on and do. And a coach. There is no strict mathematical intersection for these things other than the empty set. I guess I can always have the empty set. Or just ditch the mathematical thinking that seems to pervade my attitudes. Is that my heart speaking like that? Mathematically? No, that's my brain...
Mathematically, that paragraph that I had fun (and trouble, don't get me wrong) writing up there wasn't the "complete picture." Or the right picture in your mind. The town store was Market Basket. The parking lot also had people talking and teenagers probably unable to drive competently. How can you ruin the sky, though? The sky is always as it is. That's at least one thing that us humans have difficulty obscuring. In any case, this isn't math.
This is me.
?Healthy human¿
On boxes of Special K cereal and other food products you will see text saying that you need to have a healthy heart. In this interest I am starting this blog.
One of the things that kept me going in Paris was exercise. I kept my body healthy. Yes, I got sick my usual 3 times (which is generally the number of times each semester) but after some adjustments I stayed fine and didn't fall to bacteria or virii at all, save my gums, but that's my dentist's fault largely.
In Paris I realized a large number of things. The most important thing, as far as I can tell, that I realized is that I have a disconnection with my heart. Well, for one thing, a disconnection with feeling. I don't feel that much pain. Sometimes it's that I don't like feeling it; sometimes it's just that I'm good at avoiding it, so I do. I mean, like I stretch to prevent pain and soreness before and after running or other physical activity, I do other things to avoid pain and soreness in the mental sense. Everyone does this. But this is instinctual, and sometimes you don't know your own instincts. In any case, stretching doesn't always prevent injury, meaning you don't feel the pain until it all really hurts. That's kind of what happened in Paris. I'd been ignoring what my heart had been yelling at me. I didn't really understand that it was there, that something separate from the control of the brain could really be such an integral part of me. Something that couldn't be summed up with an integral.
So I guess what it's time for me to explore is what my heart feels. I understand that it's there now. After my incidental story in Paris came to a finis I've started saying things that I don't really feel before I say them, but that seem rather honest after I speak them out. I guess that's the heart speaking for me. And I guess that means one thing - you need to speak the heart too in order to be honest.
No wonder honesty is such a scary thing. But the thing is, it's like I don't know what my heart feels until the right words leave my mouth, and then I've found it. It's like trial and error, like let me start expressing opinions regardless of whether they're true by my brain's deduction, and then I've found the one I believe in. Sometimes the brain just stops anyway and it can't get any further. That's why a lot of people try drugs. You can get the same without them, though. To sum it up, though, I mean, my brain doesn't completely know my heart. Can it?
And finally, a blog whose direction I can't predict. This should be fun. I've got a good full three months ahead of me. Of course my heart and my brain combine to tell me that not even that is guaranteed, but then again is it really guaranteed that the flavor in your blueberry muffin will be what you expect every time? I guess my heart still cares, though, and my heart wants to knock on wood. Remember what I did that one time when someone told me to knock on wood, though? Knocking on wood is the brain's process. Knocking on something with which one can commonly associate the word "wood," though, is the heart's wild-ass silliness. That's what I did.
I guess my heart really is there. Good. Time to welcome it back into my life, just like America welcomes me back when I leave. Is it really necessary to have such a celebration? No, but why not?
I remember when I was a kid, I asked a question in class asking why we don't have Christmas and Easter every 32 years instead of year. Because Jesus died when he was like 32, right?
Oh, the brain of a child. Apparently I'm supposed to be incapable of "truly" new mathematical discoveries now, because I'm too old. They keep pushing back the age of incapability, though; apparently now it's 25? What does that even mean? Does it mean that if at a certain point you're still making those discoveries, you haven't matured past childhood? You're dangerously immature, vain and naive?
Weirdness. I guess I personally get to a certain point where I realize that I don't care for the progress of mathematics as much as my own personal progress. And that makes things okay in regard to the last thing.
The free time of summer passes freely as the birds chirp gaily and I don't have to think about things like this or anything in particular. Nice.
One of the things that kept me going in Paris was exercise. I kept my body healthy. Yes, I got sick my usual 3 times (which is generally the number of times each semester) but after some adjustments I stayed fine and didn't fall to bacteria or virii at all, save my gums, but that's my dentist's fault largely.
In Paris I realized a large number of things. The most important thing, as far as I can tell, that I realized is that I have a disconnection with my heart. Well, for one thing, a disconnection with feeling. I don't feel that much pain. Sometimes it's that I don't like feeling it; sometimes it's just that I'm good at avoiding it, so I do. I mean, like I stretch to prevent pain and soreness before and after running or other physical activity, I do other things to avoid pain and soreness in the mental sense. Everyone does this. But this is instinctual, and sometimes you don't know your own instincts. In any case, stretching doesn't always prevent injury, meaning you don't feel the pain until it all really hurts. That's kind of what happened in Paris. I'd been ignoring what my heart had been yelling at me. I didn't really understand that it was there, that something separate from the control of the brain could really be such an integral part of me. Something that couldn't be summed up with an integral.
So I guess what it's time for me to explore is what my heart feels. I understand that it's there now. After my incidental story in Paris came to a finis I've started saying things that I don't really feel before I say them, but that seem rather honest after I speak them out. I guess that's the heart speaking for me. And I guess that means one thing - you need to speak the heart too in order to be honest.
No wonder honesty is such a scary thing. But the thing is, it's like I don't know what my heart feels until the right words leave my mouth, and then I've found it. It's like trial and error, like let me start expressing opinions regardless of whether they're true by my brain's deduction, and then I've found the one I believe in. Sometimes the brain just stops anyway and it can't get any further. That's why a lot of people try drugs. You can get the same without them, though. To sum it up, though, I mean, my brain doesn't completely know my heart. Can it?
And finally, a blog whose direction I can't predict. This should be fun. I've got a good full three months ahead of me. Of course my heart and my brain combine to tell me that not even that is guaranteed, but then again is it really guaranteed that the flavor in your blueberry muffin will be what you expect every time? I guess my heart still cares, though, and my heart wants to knock on wood. Remember what I did that one time when someone told me to knock on wood, though? Knocking on wood is the brain's process. Knocking on something with which one can commonly associate the word "wood," though, is the heart's wild-ass silliness. That's what I did.
I guess my heart really is there. Good. Time to welcome it back into my life, just like America welcomes me back when I leave. Is it really necessary to have such a celebration? No, but why not?
I remember when I was a kid, I asked a question in class asking why we don't have Christmas and Easter every 32 years instead of year. Because Jesus died when he was like 32, right?
Oh, the brain of a child. Apparently I'm supposed to be incapable of "truly" new mathematical discoveries now, because I'm too old. They keep pushing back the age of incapability, though; apparently now it's 25? What does that even mean? Does it mean that if at a certain point you're still making those discoveries, you haven't matured past childhood? You're dangerously immature, vain and naive?
Weirdness. I guess I personally get to a certain point where I realize that I don't care for the progress of mathematics as much as my own personal progress. And that makes things okay in regard to the last thing.
The free time of summer passes freely as the birds chirp gaily and I don't have to think about things like this or anything in particular. Nice.
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