decadence

Was not feeling too well... was about to ramble here about my displeasure at myself and my longing for social connections... was about to pour me orange juice... Instead I just bought 4 CDs online and I feel much better.

April Story

April completes the last scene of Chiharu, her first graphic novel, a result of years of dreaming and pulling stories out of herself. April can see the kinds of praise Chiharu will earn -- visually stunning: Chiharu is the most emotionally complex character to ever appear in the graphic novel; beneath the mesmerizing exterior is a bottomless compassion that makes Chiharu a character you will never forget; Chiharu’s beauty reveals what makes us cry at night – April imagines her book-signing event. No, she will not have any book-signing events. She will receive fan mail. They will ask her how she has come to create Chiharu. You have to be your character, April will tell them. How cliché. But it’s true. April and Chiharu are one. There’s a place, where people are drawn to her, are intrigued, fascinated, aroused in the course of their conversation with her. The actual conversation, April knows, only lasts until the inevitable question is asked. In this place, this late evening, she meets neo_ranger22.


neo_ranger22: send me ur pic

chiharu: sure

neo_ranger22: send me a real one

chiharu: I did

neo_ranger22: a real pic, not a drawing!!

chiharu: but that’s me!

neo_ranger22: don’t lie


April is usually prepared for this, but tonight she is upset, because it looks as if this stranger from Portland, Oregon is bent on breaking her on this special day of her finishing her story.


neo_ranger22: come on i just wanna c u

neo_ranger22: just a photo


April looks at the mirror. She studies herself from the hump on her nose that she broke while trying out for the junior basketball team. The bedroom light gives her face an uneven brownish tint that highlights the scars she has carved into herself. Her lips, already thin and bloodless, are now chappy. The contour of her face and the features that hold their place within it call to her mind an image of a poorly made omelette, poor me, she says, and the black hole expands inside of her. Be nice, she says. She tries to calm. Then she takes a pencil and draws. Her strokes are fine and light. She draws the outline of her face, then the eyebrows and the eyes, the nose, shading from the cheeks to the chin, then the long strands of hair, and she ends up with the same flawless image she has created for Chiharu. Each time April draws herself, she ends up drawing Chiharu. She throws down her pencil, turns off the light, lies on the bed, laughs out loud, becomes tired, and falls asleep to the humming of the computer in this dark dark room. You’re nobody, she tells herself. You’re nobody.

Before she falls completely asleep, she reflects the best images of her childhood like a moving album. You’re nobody, she tells herself, but you make good stories. Then she falls completely asleep.


neo_ranger22: ok I’m sorry =)

neo_ranger22: just sent u my pic

neo_ranger22: u still there?

neo_ranger22 has logged off

simply punch pillow

Dear me help me help me help me what’s wrong with these students who leave work to the last minute like me who leave everything to the last minute, but do I really? Do I really? Dear me what’s wrong with these students who…

Checking grammar in an essay hurts my eyeballs.

Reading any sort of political essay make me want to kill somebody (tis a hyperbole) in the sense that I hate reading anything political or law related, anything kind of prose that’s poisoned with abstract nouns designed to confuse and paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs of sentences in the passive voice because they are too cowardly to say what they want to say.

I need to sleep. But I feel angry. I feel really angry because I missed my writing time.

I will punch my fist really hard on my pillow. Then I will sleep. Then I will wake up and eat an apple. In the meantime, I wish for sunshine tomorrow morning. Even if I don’t get sunshine tomorrow morning, I will still eat an apple and go to school. But before that, I must punch my pillow really hard. Then I shall sleep. Then I shall eat an apple. Then all will be as wonderful as it’s ever been. But before that I must punch my pillow really hard. Then I must sleep and think of apples.

just me talking to me

Me 1: Can’t you be more practical?

Me 2: Am I not practical enough?

Me 1: No, you’re always talking about your dreams and your ideals. What about making money? You have to live too, you know.

Me 2: Yes, I know I have to live, but tell me, how much money does one really need in order to live?

Me 1: …

Me 2: See? That’s what I mean.

Me 1: But you have to realize that when you get older you cannot think like this and you’ll be so sad when your little one asks you, “Daddy, can we go to Disneyland?” and you have to say no because you don’t have the money. That kind of regret will eat you up.

Me 2: If we can’t go to Disneyland, then we shall go have noodles in Chinatown.

Me 1: This is exactly the kind of thinking I’m talking about! One day you’ll pay for this and don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Me 2: Yes. Yes. I’ve heard all your warnings, and I’ve considered them, really, and my conclusion is that I want to live.

Me 1: Are you saying I’m not living? Are you saying I’m dead? Are you dissing me?

Me 2: No. I just worry that you might…

Me 1: Just say it. C’mon. Just say it. Be a man.

Me 2: I just worry that by the time you’re, say, 45, you’ll suffer from mid-age crisis and that wouldn’t be pleasant.

Me 1: Fluff.

Me 2: Don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.

Me 1: I can’t wait to watch you starve on the streets.

Me 2: Now you’re being mean.

Me 1 walks away and Me 2 raises both hands up in the air --- ding ding ding --- Me 2 wins.
Now, the next round.

zzz

1:23am

I’m so tired.

It is dark.

It is dark in the hallway and everyone’s asleep, lights out, but my bedroom door is open while I tap away at my keyboard.

I’m not gonna type anything to freak myself out.

I just shut my bedroom door. ^_^ hee..

1:25am

I’m so tired.

Thomas Hardy actually writes very sexy short stories. I didn’t expect fiction from nineteenth century England to be so readable and so sexy.

I’m so tired.

1:27am

I can’t think. And the more I say that the more I start to think weird things… About today… About today… About today…

…zzz…zz

back to school

First day back to university. Throughout my depressive undergraduate days, those winter nights I walked to the station alone, I kept saying to myself, “One day you’ll miss all this.”

So I was back today.

I’m taking two English courses this year, courses titled respectively ‘The Short Story’ and ‘The Short Story Collection’. Today I attended the first class of both of these courses. I made a point to speak to both of my professors.

^^^

In my first class…

Me: “Do you write fiction?”

Professor 1: “No. Well… If only I had more time…”

^^^

In my second class…

Me: “Do you write fiction?”

Professor 2: “Well… no. Why do you ask?”

Me: “I just wonder, since you know your fiction so well, if you ever feel the urge to create.”

Professor 2: “I do have an idea for a novel…”



I didn’t mean to challenge them or to put them in an embarrassing situation to make myself, ha-ha… the fiction writer, feel superior or anything. But I just wonder, how it would enhance their teaching experience, if they would step into the shoes of a writer and actually walk through the process of creating fiction. It baffles me as to why the people with such immense knowledge do not attempt to create, why almost all my friends who are talented in playing the piano don’t attempt to write songs.

Critics, especially, annoy me so much (though we all have the right to criticizes and express our likes and dislikes) because they seem to know everything about the art – But they don’t roll up their sleeves and do it! Snobbery.

But it is not to be mistakened that my profs are snobbish people. No, they are not. I didn’t get the impression that they are. In fact, it was so pleasant talking to them today. And yes, I made it a point to talk to my profs because in my four years of undergraduate studies I recall only three occasions in which I have talked to my professor. 1) One time I was being evaluated for acceptance into the International Relations program and I had to sit in Professor B’s office while he reviewed my grades and said something like, “very good… very good… you’re in.” 2) Another time during my very dark days in a history exam, instead of answering the essay questions, I scribbled a personal rant in my exam booklet with sentences that communicate how I was miserable and how I was dying, and I actually handed it to Professor M and before I could walk out of the exam hall, she caught up to me and asked, very sincerely, “Are you okay?” That was the first time I realized professors are human. 3) Another time I walked with Professor L across Queen’s Park on a September afternoon feeling the scholarly atmosphere while he… I totally forget what he talked about... but the whole time I pretended to understand what he was saying while in the back of my mind thinking and thinking of dropping his History of Alchemy course.

Anyways. I’m glad to be back in school.

On my way back it was dark. I passed by a new science building with tall clear glass that in contrast with the dark night shows the interior very clearly. Inside, a couple was playing paper-scissors-rock. The winner of each round walked down a step of stairs. How carefree.

the courageous garbage man and the miserable accountant

The tail of my jacket waves in the wind. I feel fresh.

The other day, a boy who is the same age as me, said that his parents forced him to study Engineering in university when he had really wanted to study History and Anthropology.

“They say you can’t make money by studying subjects like that,” he said.

“But do you regret you didn’t study Anthropology?” I asked.

“A little. I just want to retire when I’m forty,” he said. (Assuming he now has, with his spiffy Engineering degree, a full-time job that pays him fortunes.)

“What are you going to do after you retire?”

“I’m going to China to explore its history and do all the things I really wanted to do.”

“Okay.” (confused and thrown off).

One time in my late teenage years, I got into a heated argument with some middle-age family friends over the fact that I wanted to study Linguistics in university. This auntie told me to study Business and Commerce and make money and then when I retire I can use the time to do what I really want.

My response to her advice was: Fuck that.

Today, my response to this work-like-a-dog-and-then-retire-and-do-what-you-want-to-do attitude is: Fuck that.

I want to do what I want to do now. Maybe there’s something I’m missing. If so, I’m ready and willing to pay the price for it. I already know what the price is and I’m willing to pay it if it means living a meaningful life. I know I won’t be driving nice cars. I know I won’t be living in a big house. I don’t even know if I can even buy a house. I’ll probably marry later than my friends (if I even marry at all) and my kids will not have spiffy toys. But I’m willing to pay this price because I need to live life. I’d rather die than force myself to do something I don’t want to do for the sake of money.

It is when I say that last sentence, I think of the garbage man. Yes, on the bus today, while sitting there trying to see through the windows that were covered with gray slushy stains, I thought of the garbage man. The ‘garbage man’ in its generic definition. The garbage man who picks up garbage for money. Does he enjoy his job? No. But he has to do it because he probably has a family to take care of and garbage picking happens to be the job that’s available for him to earn some income. He doesn’t like to pick up garbage but he has to do it. I respect him a lot.

Then there’s always the Chinese mother who sees this garbage man and says to her child, “You see, son, this is why you need to study hard in school. If you don’t study hard, you’re going to be like him.” When the child hears that, he begins to think that all garbage men must have been lazy in school and that they deserve their miserable jobs because they have been lazy. It is proven that such children are more likely to become accountants and live miserable lives. Such misinformation. If the child grows up to disrespect the mother, the mother deserves it.

hidamari no tami

One of my Christmas presents is a 'hidamari no tami' roughly translated as 'the sunlight people'. It's a happy face figurine with a solar power strip on its base so that its smiley head tilts side to side when there is sunlight. It sits atop my bedside drawer which sits right by the window. It's night now. The happy face is not tilting side to side. But it's still smiling. There's a switch that has the option 'tomaru' meaning 'stop' if you find his head tilting side to side to be annoying. As I read the way I'm writing about it it sounds kind of freakish but it's really quite a cheerful cute little thing.

comfort junkie

The best thing about being home alone at night with a sore throat is making yourself Alpha-getti with mixed greens and plenty parmasean cheese followed by creamy mushroom soup and gulp... gulp down a spoonful of minty sweet cough syrup. It's best if while you enjoy this delicacy there's a Leaf game on the radio and the Leafs happen to win (and such is the case); and it's even better if you don't have to work next morning so you can stay up reading and writing all night (but such is not the case). Times like this I think I'm so hell-all-that special and begin asking for too much. What a fool.

cheesecakey

In the condo lobby with yellow walls my friend and I each occupied a puffy armchair. They were the last minutes of 2005.

We didn’t want to take part in any countdowns.

“The yellow walls remind me of New Year’s Eve 1997,” I said to my friend.

We were in Tokyo for New Year’s Eve 1997.

We talked about our days in Japan.

“We were living,” my friend said, the emphasis was on the word ‘living’.

On the long couch was a young Korean couple. They were snuggling.

“Let’s move upstairs,” my friend suggested, but I was so enjoying the yellow walls and the echoes made by the marble floors of the lobby that I wanted to stay there for a bit.

“You’re very considerate,” I said to my friend.

My friend’s girlfriend is half a planet away.

I had had a girlfriend who is half a planet away.

“I don’t know why I can’t be satisfied with just having one girlfriend,” my friend said.

“You better get this feeling sorted out,” I said.

My friend scratched his head and smiled stupidly.

“It’s exciting. The fact that I’m going back to school,” I said while staring into the Christmas tree and the reflection of the Christmas tree in the mirror behind the tree, “I have a feeling it’s gonna be a _________ girl.”

A man returned from walking his dog

The security guard stepped out from behind his marble fortress. With open arms he embraced the little black dog and said a very giddy happy new year to the pup.