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Spoke to Largo today and the subject of her mother came up. I asked Largo why she respected her mother so much, and she said that it was because her mother, Yuki-san, used to give her really good advice. The funny thing was that she always gave advice when she was mending clothes. Largo told me one conversation they had that was really inspirational for her.
“Live the life you want to. Live in luxury, and give yourself the luxuries you can afford, because you only get one life and you should make the best of it. Do the things you say you want to do, as long as they don’t hurt others. Say the words you want to say, as long as they don’t hurt anyone. Appreciate the beauty of your surroundings. With the right mindset, even a rusted fence can be beautiful in its own style. “
“You must enjoy yourself, no matter what you’re doing. And if you can’t do that, don’t give yourself time to complain or to reflect on how tired you are, how busy you are, how painful things are. Don’t look up and feel overwhelmed by the distance to your goals; just take it step by step and you will be there before you know it. Enjoy the process of doing, instead of just striving for the product. When learning something, do not become frustrated with not grasping the answer. Learn to enjoy the effort you spend to get that answer. Then, you will appreciate the product more.”
“Your accomplishments and success should not be measured by the words of those around you. As long as one person knows your victory, your strength… as long as one person appreciates that you told the truth or that you controlled yourself, that is enough. Even when no one appreciates your pain, it doesn’t mean the pain isn’t there or that the pain isn’t making you stronger. Sometimes, the things that shape our hearts most hurt the most and are suffered alone.”
“Everyone needs their own sanctuary. A room filled with their favorite things, where they can invite their favorite people, where they can eat their favorite foods while listening to their favorite music. Life will never be perfect, so you should try to create that tiny room of perfect moments. A person without a home like that is like a flying bird with no place to land. That is the saddest person- the one who has no one to greet them when they return, the one who has nowhere to return to…”
Yuki-san’s words, spoken over the sound of the sewing machine running slowly, will stay with both me and Largo for a long time. They are the most precious heirloom she could give to her daughter, and now Largo gives them to me.
Listening to the song, I realized that I had the perfect words to put to the music, so I wrote lyrics for it. Enjoy.
To Zanarkand
Tell me where our memories went?
Tell me how our lives were spent?
Don’t close your eyes to the tears
Let go of all that you fear..
Follow as the time flows in everlasting waves
Hold on to the dreams you have every day
Wander to the lands that are so far away
Watch me, come with me into the pouring rain
Though the trail is so long, so cold
I still know, we will make it
Will our story be lost in the wind?
Will it live on to sing on again?
Follow as the time flows in everlasting waves
Hold on to the dreams you have every day
Wander to the lands that are so far away
Hear me when I sing to you, oh please won’t you stay?
Though the trail is so long, so cold
I still know, we will make it…
Will our story be lost in the wind?
Will it live on to sing on again?
-end-
I will have the music up via music video as soon as possible.
This is a drabble-y piece of horrid anecdote loosely based off of a conversation that took place in an online MUD game between me and my ‘brother’ (only online, not actually). Imagination was utilized to fill in the gaps with observations and actions.
“Renn, am I foolish?”
A silence. A young man, 22 years old, lifted the wide brim of his blue velvet hat from where it lay, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, which filtered through the leaves of the lakeside willow tree in spotted patches. Taking off the hat, he raked a hand through his short auburn hair and stared in bewilderment at the man sitting next to him.
“…Pardon? Edward, is the heat getting to your head already? Come sit over in the shade before you lose all your eloquence.”
The other young man, a few years younger than the first, quirked an eyebrow at the words. He chuckled and took out some oranges from his pack, tossing one to the man next to him.“It’s no heat, my dear brother, which prompted my question.”
“Then it’s just stupidity, and I refuse to be related by blood to such ‘foolishness’. What brought this on, Edward? Has citizenship been treating you unkindly? Did you fail to secure your lofty ambitions of political success? My god, please- stop acting like a spoilt brat. I will not babysit you.”
Edward looked at his brother, who waved the butterflies away with his blue hat, the silver plume waving gracefully in the air. A politician and a fishing bard. “We are certainly a dysfunctional family, Renn.”“Hm? You don’t say?” A yawn. Renn shook his feathery auburn bangs out of his face to properly aim a sarcastic glare at his brother. He juggled a few oranges, looking quite blase. However, inside, he could be thinking anything. “If you’re referring to ‘that’, I can tell you, that is no foolishness. Merely courage.”
Edward watched the oranges tumble midair, contrasting with the pure blue of the sky. He peeled his own orange, popping a slice into his mouth. As he savoured the tangy sweetness of the fruit, he mulled over his brother’s words.
“Isn’t that the irony, Renn? If I succeed, I will forever be remembered as courageous. If I fail, I will forever be remembered as foolish.”
“Your situation is like this orange.” Renn tossed one in midair and caught it with his hat, rolling it around the brim. “If you eat the rind, of course it tastes horrible. Eat it properly, and it’s heaven with pulp.”
“…That made absolutely no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense! The moral of the story is, it all depends on how you go about it.”
Edward shot his brother a disgusted look. “I didn’t need you to tell me that!”
“Well, you deserve useless advice for coming to a wandering bard for political instruction, you dolt. Who do you take me for? Machiavelli? I can’t even bear to set foot in the city-states, much less ponder how they are governed. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t been banned from any for breaking some and some law. ” Renn shrugged at the disgruntled Edward, resuming his orange juggling.
“But you wrote that beautiful article spurring on the Ashtanians during the war with Shallam!”
“Oh, I can’t take credit for that. That was in a spur of influence by the American Declaration of Independence. It reeks of Thomas Jefferson.”
“Careful Juliet or any other deity doesn’t punish you for such blasphemous words. ‘American’? ‘Thomas Jefferson’? You know how dangerous it is to utter such things.”
Sighing, Renn chucked a orange into the lake, watching it bob up and down before being snatched into the water by the lake’s resident monster. He turned with weary amber eyes to regard his brother, whose pale blue eyes, seeming almost grey, returned the stare with somber maturity.
“Good god, Edward. Learn to smile a bit more! You look 40, not 20. I look years younger than you. You’ll be bald before you know it.”
“Says the dandy.”
“Dandy!” Renn exclaimed, dramatically affronted. “You’re one to talk. It’s no bad thing. It runs in the family, you should know. Watch you walk into a room, ruffling those feathers- I know what you do. I do it too. Saunter, pose, smirk, stride, etc, etc.”
“We are both quite doomed, aren’t we?”
Renn watched a crane stalk by, pecking at a orange peel. A new adventurer ran by, chasing a butterfly. The two brothers watched the youngster become increasingly frustrated by the teasing butterfly, and finally whip out a shortsword, impaling the butterfly in his anger. Renn blinked and let out a low sigh.
“Yes. Indeed we are. Which is why, we should completely enjoy the time we have, before the civilized conversation is replaced by profane gossip and the race of sophistication achieves extinction.”
-END-
For me, it was quite a poignant conversation and I decided it was worthy of sharing, so I hope the readers do gain something out of it. It was pure roleplay. I’m not really a dandy. I think. I hope. (Yet.)
It’s bad to look for faults in others, not only because it’s just plain mean, but also because it inevitably leads you back to your own faults. Only the truly ignorant and the truly arrogant can criticize others without seeing their criticisms apply to themselves, in my opinion. Thankfully, I (hopefully) am neither of the above. I may be ignorant and arrogant to some degree, but not so much as to be able to look at the world with contempt so freely.
Every day, as ugly as it sounds, people around me disgust me to no end. Their mannerisms, their hypocricy, their selfish motives, all their “backwards modesty” (in which they ‘insult’ themselves, but actually use that humbleness to brag. think, opposite of a backhanded compliment). I’m so sick of it. How the girls watch the boys, how they talk about things they know nothing about, advise people on things they have no right to say- it all makes me want to just leave.
But then, I think, don’t I do all that too? I had once pretended I hated a person I liked, I have given advice on things I never understood, I still do selfish things, hypocritical things, humbling myself to make myself look good (as strange as it sounds). It’s a bitter thing to think, but when I list all the faults I share with this horrible population, I guess, this is where I belong. I’m no better or worse than any of them. We’re all just the same, as many faults as virtues, as many passions as secrets.
For the longest time, I saw people in 2D. I blame it on excessive reading of books and watching of movies, where each person is exaggerated and stuffed into a cliched role. Everyone was so diversified, so unique. However, in real life, people really aren’t so unique. Of course we are all unique as a whole person, but the parts that make up our personalities are shared.
Each person is like an English word- different, with different meanings, but sharing the same letters, Greek and Latin roots, prefixes, suffixes… Instead of those, people share jealousies, ambitions, faults, influences, and so much more. For example, if a movie becomes hugely popular (i.e. Pirates of the Carribean), and one character becomes hugely popular (i.e. Jack Sparrow), many people will be influenced greatly by that. A student may obsess over that character so much that he/she does intense research and end up believing that he/she is the biggest fan, to the point that he/she might believe he/she is the expert on the character, or even (this is crazy, I know) believes that the character is friends with him/her. What she doesn’t realize is that many other people are going through this exact same obsession.
So, today, something bad (in my opinion) happened and I was furious. No one seemed to care about it other than me, and somewhere along the way, I started thinking on the path to destruction: No one understands how I feel. Then, later in my car, I realized that what was I thinking? Of course they understand. Maybe they didn’t know that was exactly how I felt, but they have experienced events like this too, where they are frustrated and angry because they’ve lost something dear to them to someone else. All athletes know the feeling of losing by a second, all girls and boys know the feeling of being dumped for someone else… I was just one of them. They’ve felt that exact same burning pain, and who am I to be dramatic and insist I’m special enough that my pain should garner their attention?
Uniqueness is part of us all. After all, our feelings aren’t always identical to everyone else’s. If you’ve never been in an accident, you’ve never experienced the feeling of being a split second away from death. If you’ve never gone fishing, you don’t know how it feels to sit for hours, focused on one line. However, there is always someone out there who has felt the way you do in some situation.
To say that you’re absolutely unique, even for that one second… to me, that’s extremely selfish and ignorant.
Because I am lame these days and cannot find deep insight to share with everyone, I’ll just post a nice, depressing song’s nice, meaningful lyrics because this is how my life feels at the moment. Unfortunately, I can’t find a youtube vid with this song, so just go look it up on ensips. Enjoy.
She Said
Yoko Kanno
In the morning light,
She felt a new day coming in
Opened her eyes
In her quiet favorite place
There was no one there to break her heart
There was no one there to make her laugh
And she
She hid the secrets in a closet
In her room
Every time she felt sad
Doesn’t know since when
Sometimes laughing, crying felt the same
Lying, being honest felt the same
But then, she said
Life is getting better now
Just said
Life is getting better now
Tell herself cause
there’s always
Someone to lose
Someone to lose
She lied
Cause she never thought
No one ever knew
Puzzles inside her heart
But it was always incomplete
In spite of them
Things she had let go
For the first time
She liked being herself
~end~
I am in love with this song. The movie that featured it was kinda crack, though. Not a movie for the serious movie watcher. Unless they are in love with EGL and crack like that.
Irony: People telling me that I talk too much, but when I stop talking, they say I’m boring. It would be funny if it wasn’t so irritating.
Hypocrisy: When people tell someone not to gossip, then gossip about how that person can’t keep their mouth shut.
Patience: Sitting for two hours on the bank of a river waiting for fish to bite.
Obsession: Sitting for two hours at the computer waiting for the girl/guy to sign on.
Habit: What I do on autopilot, and can’t stop from doing on autopilot (see: biting my lip)
If I died (and if I actually don’t end up in hell, or whatever the worse afterlife is), I hope that heaven is how I imagine it.
(By the way, please, for all intents and purposes, ignore any religious beliefs while reading this blog. I sure ignore them when I’m writing it.)
I imagine endless hills and a vast blue sky with scattered clouds.
I imagine tall grass, wildflowers, and ancient trees with gnarled branches and thick trunks to climb.
I imagine butterflies and swallows flying by, hawks circling overhead, field-mice and foxes.
I imagine my friends, waiting there.
I imagine I am not forgotten, not hated, not annoying, not tired.
I imagine that they forgive what I’ve done in the past, my faults and my ambitions, my temperment, my mistakes, my resentment, all those things that pushed me away.
I imagine that some things no longer matter, like time or money, looks, academics, social hierarchies, crushes, success, family…
I imagine preferences should make no difference, be it the musical preferences that sometimes separates me and my friends, the sexual preferences that causes so much grief for a few friends, the career preferences that have earned me the disdain of those around me, or who to like, who to love, who to marry, who to live with, who to work for, who to believe in. These are personal things. They should stay personal, and they shouldn’t hurt anyone.
I imagine that there, I will be happy. Because I know, right now, with none of the above, it’s so hard to be happy sometimes.
When I know a friend is just putting up with me, when I know some people talk behind my back about what I am most proud of, when I know my friends are being targeted because they don’t fit in, when I know the closest person I have to a brother has to swallow his pride because his dream never came true, when who I thought loved me turned out to have forgotten my name, when I know so many friends who have considered suicide, when my voice holds no power, when it’s all hopeless, when my love for someone pushes them away from me, when no one can understand what I’m trying to tell them… Because of all that, whenever I smile at someone, god it hurts like fuck.
Sing along lyrics to Life by Yui. The message is really poignant. Enjoy.
Life
In this lonely city, unfamiliar to me, full of dust,
I can’t laugh the way these people do- so I just walk, staring at the ground.
People pass by me, brushing by so quickly, I want to ask-
“Have their fantasies all come true?” and am I left behind still struggling?
I want to try to live in the present,
Instead of running back to my childhood.
Why is it always I am afraid?
If I go to that sunny place and stretch my arms out to the world,
I wonder if I could go beyond that blue sky?
That’s what I thought.
These wings that carry me above clouds are still invisible to you.
It’s because it’s not easy to go on living
I picked up a puppy, sitting all alone in the rain,
And for just a little while I laughed, laughed so hard that tears spilled out.
“All ever I wanted, all I ever wanted was love”
are the words I kept sobbing out, but it’s no use to beg for anything.
When I was a child, I hurt those around me.
There were days when I thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be great
If I could change all about me?”
I went to that sunny place and tried to grab on to your hand, but
That place, that time, I can destroy it all in my mind
To change my life
And I just want to shout out these feelings, all these truths buried in my heart,
Just because it’s not easy to go on living…
I went to that sunny place and spread out this map of mine, but
I know you know though the path of doubt can not be avoided,
I can change my life!
Yeah, all the days passed make up who I am, the me who’s standing here right now.
All because it’s not easy to go on living…
~end~
Non-philosophical day. That will come once a week in this blog. Today, I shall quote stupidly funny things that I’ve heard/said this week.
Yesterday night:
Me: (playing video game while on phone with Largo and Ty) Augh crap! FCUK! THAT’S BUTTSECKS!
Largo + Ty: -silence-
Me: Wait, wha- Oh. Did I just say that? (chaotic laughter ensued from the other side of phone line, aka London)
At school:
Me: -pulls on Jessie’s backpack as we’re being squished out the door during passing period-
Jessie: Ack, Rachel, were you pulling my backpack?
Me: Yeah, what did you think it was?
Jessie: I was like, trying to get through the door, but not moving, and “Woah! This never happens!”
Art Studio class:
Me: Dude, I saw Yamapi naked on Youtube. (insert some chatting between me and Sophia about Yamapi and JE)
A while later…
Me: (While drawing human anatomy) Aw crap, his butt’s too big. Damn, redraw that…
Sophia: (Brain still on JE) Yamapi’s butt? What? You’re drawing his butt?
Me: (shows her the art and desperately wanting to bang head against wall)
(Yamapi does have a big butt, though…)
Email from Adrian from NYC:
Omg, my dog just like, ate Kelly’s purse. Fcukin… My dog’s gonna shit Coach. That’s just like, awesome.
After SAT:
Me: Largo, I just finished SAT I, and I feel like hibernating for a year after all the yelling from my ‘rents.
Largo: Forget hibernating, just go drink tequila or something. Oh wait, you’re underage. Just go… I dunno. Have sex.
Me: …Wtf.
Largo: But remember the condom. Unless it’s a girl. Then, go get therapy.
Me: … -hangs up-
At school (during a moment of extreme stress and frustration):
Me: FCUK GOD!
Jessica: … 8-(
Me: Wait, God doesn’t deserve it. FCUK AIR!
Jessica: XDDDDD
Forgot when this happened (It was like, yesterday, I think):
Ty: I need to get a girl.
Me: You have Largo.
Ty: She’s my sister! I need to get a GIRLFRIEND.
Me: Whatever, same thing. (I was doing calc homework, not really thinking)
Ty: I’m going call her at work and tell her you want me to screw her.
Me: You’re all talk, no action. (Still not thinking about the convo)
Ty: You want me to FUCK MY SISTER?!?
Me: (finally thinks about it) THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID. -hang up- -freak out-
Wednesday (chatting on MSN):
Ty: Largo, tell Ren she needs to stop stressing out about college.
Largo: Ren, if you don’t go to a good college, you’ll end up like Ty: neutered, wimpy, homeless, and dependent on his little sister.
Ty: Hey! I’m not neutered! I have a great sex life!
Me: Ty, hookers don’t count.
Largo: No, he’s just lying. He can’t afford hookers, either.
Ty: That doesn’t say anything about my sex life!
Me: Ty, why is it that, with you, we always end up talking about sex or relationships?
Largo: Sometimes, it’s difficult to tell whether he’s a boy just hitting puberty or a girl PMSing.
Ty: :’<
I love conversations. They reveal all the stupidities of people.
Oh right, during SAT, the room we were in had a sign on front door. This is what it was:
Stress Reduction Kit
(in a large circle) Bang Head Here
Directions:
1. Place kit on FIRM surface.
2. Follow directions in circle of kit.
3. Repeat step 2 as necessary, or until unconscious.
4. If unconscious, cease stress activity.
ROFLMAO. That just made my day. And, it was laminated.
Stay Away (L’arc en Ciel) Dance by Fans
Most awesome thing ever. Fans in Japan memorized the end choreography of Stay Away PV. Watch for the “invisible instruments” at 00:29 (secs left). I laughed so hard watching this…
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