Ren-words.

Lie to Me

ren000 — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 18:06:27 +0000

Everyone lies. I just never understood how much. Just learning basic things to look for, only scratching the surface of this field, I have already seen so much- more than I needed to or wanted to.

I can see a couple where the girlfriend is cheating. I can see teachers who praise their students but feel only disgust. I can see a guy about to start a fight with his friend. I can see nervousness and shame in lecturers and wonder why.

What’s worse than seeing now, is knowing how much I’m not seeing. It makes you wonder- what else are they hiding? Was what they just said a lie (true most of the time) and why are they lying to you? Who can you trust to be honest with you? Did someone just see through you? Do they know your secrets?

It’s a headache to think about.

Legacy

ren000 — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 04:25:59 +0000

Today, I know I left something for the world, no matter how small or insignificant. I gave the world something that over 100,000 people heard.

Maybe you remember a post on this blog from years and years ago- http://ren000.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/to-zanarkand/

Well, those lyrics will now never die with this blog, or with me. I searched To Zanarkand on youtube today, just looking in hope that Square Enix gave it official lyrics. To my amazement, I found videos claiming they had lyrics. Imagine my surprise when I listened and recognized my own lines. I found one after another after another. I saw one of the videos ranked, another liked by over 900 people, and that feeling is something new. Something amazing.

There may be more, but just the fact that I’ve heard this many is overwhelming. Thank you, everyone. What started just from a song inspiring me to prose turned into so much more than I ever imagined.

Ice and Fire

ren000 — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 03:08:04 +0000

Two poems (not songs, just poems). Prompted by Ty for “Opposites”, and by Adrian for imagery and metaphors.

Ice

Crystal clear, these thoughts will ring
Through the fragile air of December
Beautiful silence sliced through, clean
By words echoing here forever

Lace-like dreams and misty spectres
Drifting into my days in December
Kisses of snowflakes and whispers of feathers
That touch of winter I will always remember

Frozen by your quiet voice and your serene eyes
Open to the dawns and clouds of December
That drop of sunlight at the tip of the ice
Is the key to a place I can never enter.

~end~

Fire

Dying embers deep inside glow with hope and warmth
Believing in a future of light and new starts
Keep this candle lit through the winter storm
With kind words, soft gaze, open heart

Closed eyes and held hands and warm covers and smiles
Dreams of shining suns and radiance
Fantasies of a summer when the world stopped for a while
Baskets of joy and patience

Slow songs, slow dances, in the candlelight
Roaring fires warming our lives
Deep down, I feel happiness, soaring high
Warm and gold, this courage is mine.

~end~

Summer Nights [Song]

ren000 — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:17:37 +0000

Set to Faye Wong’s LiuNian. Fourth chorus couplet deviates from original tune (It is AA instead of AB). Words are completely original.

Summer Night

In all our faults we find our virtues
And in our dreams we find our truths
The summer midnight sky
Is taking up my eyes
The stars shine through all these lies…

These nights are filled with bitter memories
I sew my mind closed, perfect seams.
The world, it turns so fast
That nothing good can last
And I’m just lost in my past

All these people haunting my days, lingering in my dreams
And my fortune telling never works on me

Perfect pairs and perfect futures I will never see
Wish you luck, thanks so much, now I’ll leave

My throat is hoarse from all the whispering
But I’m afraid to say these things
So I just write it down
Without any sound
And plant a seed in this ground

Friends so many but I treasure most my enemies
Because they are who can keep me truly me

Perfect words and perfect pain, I just cannot break free.
Will I ever find a reason to believe?

All these people haunting my days, lingering in my dreams
And my fortune telling never works on me

Perfect pairs and perfect futures I will never see
Wish you luck, thanks so much, now I’ll leave

~end~

Nightmare

ren000 — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:43:03 +0000

There are nights when I dream of a dark city, abandoned, haunted.

I hear people talking, laughing, running, but I see no one. I hear the flutter of bird wings, the grinding of gears in that far off clock tower, but I see no movement. I feel alone, yet suffocated by the crowd of countless invisible people. They muffle my cries, hide my existence… I know who these people are. They are society.

I see a little girl, dressed in white, transparent, ephemeral… She whispers to me. She beckons to me. I know if I follow her, I will be forever lost in a maze of imaginary fantasies and nightmares. I see the noose around her neck, disguised as a ribbon, and I know what she is. She is hope.

I smell a faint perfume which draws me to its source. That flower of ten thousand layers, gleaming with dew… It stands out against the dark grey cityscape, crimson as fresh blood. The rose invites me to pick it, to prick myself on its endless thorns, staining it an even more vibrant red. However, I see the thorns and I see the wilting petals and I know what that rose is. It is love.

I know. So, I close my eyes and walk through the city, through the people, through the maze, past the flower, to the brink. Looking down, I step into the abyss, because I know what that abyss is. It is reality.

Yuki-san

ren000 — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 01:19:16 +0000

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.

To Zanarkand

ren000 — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 03:12:17 +0000

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.

Oranges

ren000 — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 05:50:49 +0000

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.)

Unique

ren000 — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:43:24 +0000

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.

She Said lyrics

ren000 — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:08:39 +0000

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.