an aroma of white leather seats,
parched and baked in years of stifling afternoons
crackling from an old radio,
a broken voice of the bereaved father
grieving the sudden loss
of his beloved only son
"Death by accident is worse than from illness.
At the very least, the family has some time to prepare themselves for the final moment.
I believe we should all have some about of promised time with our loved ones
before they are torn away from life.
The randomness of a fatal accident cheats and jerks the time out of our grasp."
a smear of pine tree silhouettes,
a rainbow sunset,
blurred through the eyes of a girl
touched by profound words
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Thought Scraps
While I was snacking in the car today, a lovely verse of prose came to me:
Slowly, but surely, she felt a heat spreading through her body, the warm flames licking her insides originating from her heart and coming to a smolder at her neck and cheeks; she had eaten too many hot cheetoes.
I hope you found some sort of entertainment from this small tidbit straight from my mind this hot, muggy California afternoon. Now, carry on with your wonderful life :).
Slowly, but surely, she felt a heat spreading through her body, the warm flames licking her insides originating from her heart and coming to a smolder at her neck and cheeks; she had eaten too many hot cheetoes.
I hope you found some sort of entertainment from this small tidbit straight from my mind this hot, muggy California afternoon. Now, carry on with your wonderful life :).
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Some Maybe Poetry
Random Fragments
a wisp of breath,
the chill of death
a rooster's egg,
an amputee's leg
a flawless moon,
the she-wolf's croon
hands raised in prayer,
neck wilted with despair
Love (a tentatively accurate description)
Love is
a gentle voice that scrapes down your spine
and sends tingles up your back.
Love is
a gaze that pierces through your soul
and leaves you breathless and gasping.
Love is
two pairs of wandering eyes
that connect for a moment too long.
Love is
a bright burning blush
that trickles hotly down your throat.
Love is
a bright burning blush
that trickles hotly down your throat.
Love is
the side that only you get to see.
Love is
frustrating and desolate and melancholy
but mostly magnificent and stunning and exhilarating.
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Rant on Morals (and Speech Camp)
Recently, at speech camp, through interesting circumstances involving a highly talented speech coach sending his students on an emotional roller coaster, I found myself, along with my new friends, sitting on Stanford's lushly green (and very much artificial) grass, watching PETA videos in an attempt to make ourselves cry.
Allow me to explain.
My speech instructor for a week-long public speaking camp at Stanford was teaching us how to use an "emotional trigger" for dramatic interpretation speech. With a demonstration. First, you pick an object that has emotional value to you. Allow the emotion to fill you up, to course through your veins and take over your body. Just before you lose control and start sobbing your heart out, deliver your line.
As my speech coach was once a national speech champion, he was clearly a pro at this. So, understandably, he had us practically freaking out as we watched his eyes get progressively redder.
Inspired by our teacher's demonstration, we were determined to take after the master and make ourselves cry.
So.
We were watching animal videos depicting chicks ground up alive and cows slaughtered mercilessly and pigs beaten for no particularly good reason.
There were many varied reactions from my friends. One could not comprehend what was happening and kept asking why they would be so pointlessly cruel. We had no answer. Another vowed to become a vegetarian FOREVER (he was unsuccessful). Me? I'm that weirdo who always posts weird, kinda philosophical things on this weird blog of hers, so here I am.
In the beginning. Is one species meant to be the dominating one? Sure, all species are created with completely different intellectual/physical capacities. Does that mean one species (ours??) is meant to domineer over all the others?
Right now, humans are sort of 'playing God', right? We decide whether a member of another species lives or not. For heavens' sake, we EAT the other species. I suppose one could argue that other animals also eat other species, but we humans eat an unnecessarily large amount of 'other species'. It's impractical, unethical, and yet we do it anyway.
I remember reading somewhere that humans are the worst species. Why? As far as I know, we humans are the only species that kills members of our own species. And not even to survive.
This time, dear reader, I won't try to impose my interpretations of this on you too much. It's up to you to decide whether to agree with me or not.
Allow me to explain.
My speech instructor for a week-long public speaking camp at Stanford was teaching us how to use an "emotional trigger" for dramatic interpretation speech. With a demonstration. First, you pick an object that has emotional value to you. Allow the emotion to fill you up, to course through your veins and take over your body. Just before you lose control and start sobbing your heart out, deliver your line.
As my speech coach was once a national speech champion, he was clearly a pro at this. So, understandably, he had us practically freaking out as we watched his eyes get progressively redder.
Inspired by our teacher's demonstration, we were determined to take after the master and make ourselves cry.
So.
We were watching animal videos depicting chicks ground up alive and cows slaughtered mercilessly and pigs beaten for no particularly good reason.
There were many varied reactions from my friends. One could not comprehend what was happening and kept asking why they would be so pointlessly cruel. We had no answer. Another vowed to become a vegetarian FOREVER (he was unsuccessful). Me? I'm that weirdo who always posts weird, kinda philosophical things on this weird blog of hers, so here I am.
In the beginning. Is one species meant to be the dominating one? Sure, all species are created with completely different intellectual/physical capacities. Does that mean one species (ours??) is meant to domineer over all the others?
Right now, humans are sort of 'playing God', right? We decide whether a member of another species lives or not. For heavens' sake, we EAT the other species. I suppose one could argue that other animals also eat other species, but we humans eat an unnecessarily large amount of 'other species'. It's impractical, unethical, and yet we do it anyway.
I remember reading somewhere that humans are the worst species. Why? As far as I know, we humans are the only species that kills members of our own species. And not even to survive.
This time, dear reader, I won't try to impose my interpretations of this on you too much. It's up to you to decide whether to agree with me or not.
Some more thoughts.
They say he looks fine. Just like he's sleeping. Eternally. You can't tell the difference, they say. They say.
To me. It's not him. It can't be. In the photographs, his jaw is clenched, his gray hands folded stiff. Brightly colored lilies, sunflowers, roses, wildflowers. Framing unfeeling flesh. Cold flesh. Dead flesh. The contrast is mocking.
But what do I know.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Japanese Netsuke
At CTY summer camp (see below post), we did an activity where we held actual artifacts: traditional Japanese netsuke. We were supposed to examine the little statuettes, taking careful note of small details, and tell a story based on the artifact.
For those of you who don't know what a netsuke is, here's the definition based on the International Netsuke Society:
A netsuke is a small sculptural object which has gradually developed in Japan over a period of more than three hundred years. Netsuke (singular and plural) initially served both functional and aesthetic purposes. The traditional form of Japanese dress, the kimono, had no pockets.
In short, netsuke were used as a counterbalance for the belts of traditional clothing (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They were gradually customized to sort of represent a story that had significance to the wearer.
My chosen netsuke was very interesting. It was made of dark wood, depicting a long snake-dragon creature with the face of a gruesome man with long hair, wound around a large bell. On closer inspection, it was revealed that the man-dragon held a mallet in its right hand, presumably to strike the bell with, and there was a large crack on one side of the bell revealing the face of a terrified man with his hands raised in prayer trapped inside the bell.
So here is my take on this netsuke*:
The time had come for the man. He was fifty years old, which was considered a ripe old age at that time. As he slept fitfully in bed one night, a bell outside chimed eleven times, signaling an hour until midnight.
As the man slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a cold, dark world, where everything was either a shade of black or red, where demons with bodies of long snakes but faces of ghastly men with horns soared like ribbons in the windless, ashen sky. Their skin was the color of old dried blood, and they all carried mallets in their filthy, cracked hands, the type of mallet that was used to tap bells in the olden days.
One such demon, larger and with a crueler face than the others, came spiraling down and down, chasing the fearful man, until he fell into a gaping, black hole that appeared to materialize right under his feet.
Down the old man spiraled, clawing at the air, watching evilly smiling faces with bulging eyes appear out of the gloom and cackling loudly, then fading away again.
His breath, already ragged from running, age, and fear, was knocked violently out of him as he hit the stone hard bottom of the hole. Wheezing horribly, the man creakily got to his feet.
The demon that had been chasing him in hot pursuit materialized from the darkness, close beside him, so close that the man could feel its hot breath against his face, smelling of stale tobacco and decay.
“Your time has come, old man,” the demon taunted in its dry, raspy voice.
The man did not answer. He was frozen in fear, unable to contain his trembling, even though he knew that this was only a bad dream.
Mockingly slapping its mallet against its other hand, the demon circled around the man crouched over in fear.
Suddenly, the man realized that he was trapped inside a huge bell with many broken holes in it. The demon hit the bell with its mallet, and, with a reverberating gong that pounded against the man’s ear drums like a hailstorm, one of the holes repaired itself instantly.
Shivering violently, the man slowly raised his hands in prayer, prayer to make this nightmare end soon.
“Prayer won’t help you here, old man,” the demon scolded teasingly. “Do you even know where you are right now? You might as well pray to Lucifer to give you a quick end.” The demon laughed nastily at its little joke, still striking the bell at regular periods with its mallet, repairing more and more holes, so that only one remained, the only one that could give the old man his freedom back. The demon had already repaired eleven of them.
Not hesitating for a second, the demon mercilessly struck the bell for the twelfth time with all of its might, sealing the bell once and for all, trapping the old man inside.
Carefully and almost lovingly, smiling sadistically, the demon wrapped itself around the bell prison and dragged it, along with the praying man frozen inside, into the deepest pits of hell.
******************************************************************************
The next morning, Father Sun rose out of his cloud covering, beaming benignly upon the face of Mother Earth, gently kissing each of the dewdrops on the flowering azaleas, to shine his warm light with surprised horror through the open window of a house upon the stiff, dead form of this man, still in bed, hands raised in prayer, a mask of terror plastered to his face.
*The true story to this netsuke is actually completely different to the one I wrote.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the true story's summary:
A princess was walking on the road when a monk walked by. She apparently fell in love with him right away, but the monk turned her romantic advances down because he was, well, a monk. This princess got mad so she turned into a horrible snake-dragon-person, and then she trapped the monk in a huge bell so she could keep him forever.
My first impression on the true story: "Wait, that monster thing is a GIRL?"
For those of you who don't know what a netsuke is, here's the definition based on the International Netsuke Society:
A netsuke is a small sculptural object which has gradually developed in Japan over a period of more than three hundred years. Netsuke (singular and plural) initially served both functional and aesthetic purposes. The traditional form of Japanese dress, the kimono, had no pockets.
In short, netsuke were used as a counterbalance for the belts of traditional clothing (someone correct me if I'm wrong). They were gradually customized to sort of represent a story that had significance to the wearer.
My chosen netsuke was very interesting. It was made of dark wood, depicting a long snake-dragon creature with the face of a gruesome man with long hair, wound around a large bell. On closer inspection, it was revealed that the man-dragon held a mallet in its right hand, presumably to strike the bell with, and there was a large crack on one side of the bell revealing the face of a terrified man with his hands raised in prayer trapped inside the bell.
So here is my take on this netsuke*:
The Nightmare
As the man slept, he dreamed. He dreamed of a cold, dark world, where everything was either a shade of black or red, where demons with bodies of long snakes but faces of ghastly men with horns soared like ribbons in the windless, ashen sky. Their skin was the color of old dried blood, and they all carried mallets in their filthy, cracked hands, the type of mallet that was used to tap bells in the olden days.
One such demon, larger and with a crueler face than the others, came spiraling down and down, chasing the fearful man, until he fell into a gaping, black hole that appeared to materialize right under his feet.
Down the old man spiraled, clawing at the air, watching evilly smiling faces with bulging eyes appear out of the gloom and cackling loudly, then fading away again.
His breath, already ragged from running, age, and fear, was knocked violently out of him as he hit the stone hard bottom of the hole. Wheezing horribly, the man creakily got to his feet.
The demon that had been chasing him in hot pursuit materialized from the darkness, close beside him, so close that the man could feel its hot breath against his face, smelling of stale tobacco and decay.
“Your time has come, old man,” the demon taunted in its dry, raspy voice.
The man did not answer. He was frozen in fear, unable to contain his trembling, even though he knew that this was only a bad dream.
Mockingly slapping its mallet against its other hand, the demon circled around the man crouched over in fear.
Suddenly, the man realized that he was trapped inside a huge bell with many broken holes in it. The demon hit the bell with its mallet, and, with a reverberating gong that pounded against the man’s ear drums like a hailstorm, one of the holes repaired itself instantly.
Shivering violently, the man slowly raised his hands in prayer, prayer to make this nightmare end soon.
“Prayer won’t help you here, old man,” the demon scolded teasingly. “Do you even know where you are right now? You might as well pray to Lucifer to give you a quick end.” The demon laughed nastily at its little joke, still striking the bell at regular periods with its mallet, repairing more and more holes, so that only one remained, the only one that could give the old man his freedom back. The demon had already repaired eleven of them.
Not hesitating for a second, the demon mercilessly struck the bell for the twelfth time with all of its might, sealing the bell once and for all, trapping the old man inside.
Carefully and almost lovingly, smiling sadistically, the demon wrapped itself around the bell prison and dragged it, along with the praying man frozen inside, into the deepest pits of hell.
******************************************************************************
The next morning, Father Sun rose out of his cloud covering, beaming benignly upon the face of Mother Earth, gently kissing each of the dewdrops on the flowering azaleas, to shine his warm light with surprised horror through the open window of a house upon the stiff, dead form of this man, still in bed, hands raised in prayer, a mask of terror plastered to his face.
*The true story to this netsuke is actually completely different to the one I wrote.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the true story's summary:
A princess was walking on the road when a monk walked by. She apparently fell in love with him right away, but the monk turned her romantic advances down because he was, well, a monk. This princess got mad so she turned into a horrible snake-dragon-person, and then she trapped the monk in a huge bell so she could keep him forever.
My first impression on the true story: "Wait, that monster thing is a GIRL?"
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