Blog?

My avid fans, my loyal readers and/or my sympathetic friends have yet to see a normal blog entry on my site. "Normal" in this sense means that my blog must consist of my daily activities, usually with some sort of revelation or epiphany.

Or sometimes, a normal blog entry simply means an update on my supposedly eventful life. But as with all bloggers typing away in the lonely hours of the night, I am torn between how much I want to reveal and how much I actually reveal.

Right now Joe, my roommate for the summer down here in Riverside is playing some Korean pop music. It sounds like a parody of Korean music, sung by other Koreans. Them Koreans have a strange way in the form of entertainment, they do. Regardless, Joe has been more or less a fun roommate. However, like the 6 (now 5) other people with whom I have opted to reside these candid 9 weeks, he has a problem with keeping a clean environment.

Now, I am not saying I myself am Prince OxiClean, which is a sodium percarbonate (C₂H₆Na₄O₁₂) detergent, according to Wikipedia, but there has to be some hint of cleanliness in these people. I have called them my good friends for the past school year, but they have little regard on the single resident who actually lives in the oft A/C-less apartment. I can't, by nature of distance, leave on weekends, unless I stay at a friends'.

I feel like a mother looking after five extremely intelligent children. They study hard enough, but leave their napkins and whatnot all over the place. They rarely take responsibility for their messes unless called upon and half of them complain about the other half. "So and so never does this" and "Such and such always leaves this hanging around."

It's mildly frustrating, to say the least, but hey, your friends are your loved ones. Do I complain about the mess? Yes, but only to people who don't live in the apartment. For now, I am content with living each weekend and cleaning the weekly mess that these children leave behind.

For those of you who have kept up, there were seven people who lived in this apartment until this morning. Christine's parents drove from Arizona and promptly took her back this morning, before the last three weeks of our purported nine-week hell was to begin. She and Lily were the first to greet me here, cheerfully saying to me the first night, "This is just like The Real World!"

I guess, like MTV's disgusting show, it was much more real than she imagined...

Wow, I'm dramatic. I guess it's weird since I spent the last two days with only Christine. We walked to the Village for our dinners and watched a few movies together. We talked a lot, too, and she is just a cool person.

But I guess I'll see her back at Pacific in three weeks so it's not that bad. =)

To update further, organic chemistry is far from riveting as a subject. In fact, I would go so far as to call it mundane and difficult, of all things. I mean, some classes are boring because there is no way on God's green earth they could be interesting. But organic chemistry is boring in a way that there's a hint of interesting stuff to come, but it never really does come. Instead, we are bombarded with pointless laboratory experiments and write-ups and weekly midterms.

I guess that's the nature of the beast. I miss Northern California. I never should have left, haha.

School starts soon. =D

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, it is required viewing. Lily Park: International Pop Star


I actually started this particular entry before posting my last one. I had the first paragraph written, but really had no idea how to finish. As usual, I found words to fill in the blank space.

I talk a lot, but I don't say much, do I?

Per usual, leave a comment here. If not, no hard feelings. >=/

We're not a married couple,
But we've duct taped these boxes
To put away firmly
In the back of our minds.

We don't have the heart
To throw out this stuff,
The miscellaneous mischief,
Missing all kinds.

The winds have been blowing,
Flailing the trees.
They were once so tense,
But now they unwind.

The redwoods, sequoias,
Reaching so high,
Wanting and grasping,
Just how I pine.

And like a broken valentine,
It's a symbol, a sign
Of how some things never shine
Once I've made it all mine.

I've lost the touch
Of Midas, my king.
I loosen my clutch,
Lose everything.

Because because because

The many differences that set each of us apart inevitably and inexorably force us back into the realms of conformity. We are all different, which makes us all the same. Thus, the many facets of blogging all force us into one, common hobby. We have all our own pages, our own words, yet we all must be thrust into the same capacity as a means of expression.

Well, I guess these capacities and media can vary, but in general, we as a modern society rely on cinema, music, blogging/writing, reading, gardening, running/exercising, playing video games, watching TV, sleeping, eating and any number forms of excess, superfluous action in order to assert what we hope and think is our individuality and what we hope gives meaning to our lives.

Yet we carry on, often without the thought of life in the absence of meaning. Does life have to have a purpose? Is there necessarily a crux or cruces that make our lives worthwhile?


I think not. Our lives should be worthwhile already without any added flavor.

But I guess it does help to have something for which we focus and into which we delve our noblest efforts and thoughts. The meditative among us wish to extend an invitation. Enjoy.



Let the Rivers and Rivulets, Pt. 1
A Short Story About One Man's Place in the World (or Lack Thereof)

The rocks that lined the Colorado River had seen their fair share of rough times. Millions of years had colored, shaped and thus defined them to their identities and their place along the banks of the often turbulent, always uncaring waters. There seemed to be an unnecessary anger to the motion of the Colorado's waves, and indeed to many waters familiar or unchartered. Nature minds her own, with little regard for the frivolities that are human desire.

Gary was minding his own as well, as he watched the water fall smoothly and succinctly into Feldman's Creek that flowed violently into Feldman's Lake. A lake, in Gary's mind, was a beautiful thing. So too, was the concept of an angry river. Feldman's Creek was no Colorado, but nor was it the gentle, passive and submissive rivulet that so often appeared along the sidewalks after a hard rain, disappearing with an hour of sunlight as the water rode quietly below the asphalt into their temporary homes, the sewers. Those lonely tunnels were foster homes to the orphaned rainwater, collected into a network of tubes and channels, finally placing them in a new home, once again without regard for their own desires. Too much is out of our control, but somehow, there is an order to things.

Feldman's Creek was simply a place to watch the water release its frustration. Feldman's water had no control over its fate. The water was comfortable somewhere, undisturbed and certainly not complaining, until it was forced to fall, as if nature deigned to drop all things, push all things off a cliff to her own liking. The water had no choice to go where it had to, but nor did it give up easily. No, Feldman's water was determined to fight until it was forced into submission by the clutching claws of the lake. The lake, it seemed, was a likely sedative to tame the wild nature of Feldman, but the creek had no such calm, no such submission. The creek made manifest all the contained anger, the bound rage the waters must have felt once subjugated to the inevitability of fate. And of course, this anger is again quelled by fate's forceful hand.

But Gary loved watching the creek scream and thrash. It calmed him to watch the waters fight against the inevitable. In the end, they must lose, as all things must, but their fight, their unending battle to escape their destiny brought hope in Gary's eyes. The taciturn life he led was made righteous because there would always be someone or something else fighting when he could not. Gary could settle for that. In a sense, he had to settle for that. The waters that settled in the lake had to settle, but maybe they felt better knowing that others still fought against nature and her uncaring plans.

Gary was the lake. He had no fight in him, and only remembered the fights that once were, the battles that raged and shaped him into his calm, uneventful life as it was now. He had drive once, Gary did, and it was a drive that thrashed every bit as much, if not more than these waters in front of him now did. Gary was old and had given up. His fights were battles lost and won, tiresome in their majesty and grandiosity. He was 18.

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoane`d moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end."
--Sonnet XXX by William Shakespeare


"Oh, how the waves of memory define
All love and labor lost in losing lines,
Parallel and pointing as I pine
To feed my failing fear that I can't find.
But still I search as silent as a cloud,
Drifting as dreaded grays impend.
Bring I rain and storm and fear so loud,
Or must I mesh and have my days depend
On what my life can offer to my soul?
Words were weakened all in weary woe
Trying and dying in finding now I need a goal
To which my failure's all I know.

Yet your eyes of beauty drown me still
The waves unmatche`d twixt your gentle will.
And a couplet more shall I add to show
How I'm lucky having beauty so bestow'd."
--me, 3 years ago.

The trees that sway so strongly in the wind
Have yet to feel the raw emotions flail.
The birds that in their somber sadness sing
Have yet to find the lack of comfort fail.
Tis nature's call to let the heart feel pain.
The agony allow'd when heads have rolled,
Heavy from the tears that their eyes drain,
Is but an agony my daily eyes behold.
Pure pain, despondent in its lonely form,
Has met the starless night so bleak and stark.
The meeting lasts from midnight til the morn
Maybe in time to let the Maker mold his mark.
But though the Lord has left us all to die,
He graced me with your death-defying eyes.

Ships of Relation

Beginning time: 3:50AM

I don't think I fully understand where to begin. I probably will blather on incessantly, losing all .5 of my readers. I guess I need to start out with an introduction, followed by my thesis. After that, I will pursue some body paragraphs and conclude in a quasi-corny fashion. I'll probably try to write a poem or sonnet of some sort. I don't know how long it'll take, and I'll probably get distracted along the way. But I guess this is where I begin.

Relationships are difficult, fickle things. They have a dual nature: They can bring you up to the highest of levels, or take you down as the weakest of beings. Having a lover will destroy you or will make you the best person that you have ever been in your life. The best relationships are the ones that last forever. Till death do they part. Yet, for lovers anew and oftentimes lovers old, many aspects of a relationship are overlooked. A relationship is monumentally difficult to maintain, and sometimes the ease of getting in a relationship overshadows the difficulty of keeping it.

But isn't it worth it? Doesn't having someone you can hold, someone upon which you can dote, some person you can call your own worth all the flak that accompanies the struggle? Aren't they wonderful the memories you can share, the times at which you can laugh?

Surely, over time you will forget a few memories here and there. You can't always recall the specific details, and even if you could, you can never really recapture the same feelings of the same moment. You will never have the same experience twice, and ultimately, you don't want to. Each moment you share with your significant other is unique, regardless of the emotion attached to it. Your angry moments and your blissful moments together create an amalgamation of your experience. The relationship happens for a reason, always. No matter how bitter the end is, or how eternal the feeling is, the relationship existed for the sole purpose of happiness. At one point, there was happiness.

This spark is the lifeblood that fuels the world. It is premature to love, a weaker form if a form at all. This spark of happiness is the definition of hope. Hope is the possibility of happiness. Where there is a memory of happiness, there is hope for humanity. We don't even need love. We just need each other.

So when heartbreak strikes, know that there is always hope.

I was searching around the vast majestic realms of the Internet for a prayer catered to the broken hearted. Alas, I came upon none, so I decided to write one myself. If God exists, then He wants solace for all walks of life, doesn't He? Heartbreak is a part of life and an unhappy part at that. I guess this is more of a reason for us to remember that God exists in all aspects of life, especially the difficult parts. He's always there for us to find him.



A Prayer for Heartbreak

Lord, I am helpless.
Vulnerable and shaken.
My faith slumbers and needs you
Once again to waken.

Lord, I am troubled.
Your loving arms have told me
To accept my flaws and my pain
To keep them since they mold me.

Lord, the demons of my nature
Have bid me into pain.
I'm suffering so silently.
I've nothing else to gain.

Lord, my sadness swells within me.
My tears have grooved my cheeks.
Though I sit tacitly and sadly,
My agony still speaks.

Lord, I am dying.
I am crying, not denying.
I am fighting for a happy end
I am fighting, I am vying.












Amen.

I gotta start letting it go.

End time: 5:47AM

Edit.
Thanks, ft =)