Expectations
I miss the days when being fulfilled in my life meant having a ton of friends on Runescape and skills trained higher than most players’. When I was satisfied with “hanging out” in my clan chat while “working on my goals,” and I never allowed myself to be distracted by time drains like Facebook.
I miss when I was satisfied with life and did not want anymore… Or at least I knew what I wanted: another 99.
I miss when I made my life uncomplicated and wish things could be that way again. When everything was easy and goals a straight path downwards.
I don’t know why I ruined my life to the mess it is today. I want to fix up things and tell myself it’s not too late, that I really haven’t screwed up.
But I am old and have wasted my time in indecision and will never have the chances I missed again.
But that’s exactly why I missed them.
I don’t know why I expect so much from life or the people around me. Plans aren’t so easy as in a video game. Real life isn’t the end all of all diversions. Castle Wars isn’t the only veering path. This unpixelated world, perhaps, is too much for me.
And I break down.
And I shrink.
Into my corners and walls.
And grow self-pitying.
And I write some words which flow in a senseless order on a page that was once clean. And I make that clean page messy with my words.
Because this is the way art is.
So I tell myself.
February 1, 2010 at 7:00 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Today I saw this last act of Heath Ledger by that one director who used to do Monty Python animation.
Imaginarium, I shall call it for short, was a disaster of a movie, a horrific mess of confusion, hard-to-follow plot, and random scenes glued together.
But, it is also now in my list of favorite movies for all its imagination, vision, and splendid acting.
The film is a nonsensical craze of well-made randomness, the sort of thing I love to mindlessly devour for a 122-minute span.
January 31, 2010 at 12:06 am | Lifepost | No comments
College Application Essay
On a rainy day, I stay home like any other sort of day. I do not go outside often because the inner world offers much, yet there are times when I must venture.
I had stayed after school to attend an Art Club meeting, but I was restless of drawing indoors. The art teacher’s room had two doors leading directly outside, and I took the first, sneaking to the woods behind the school. After short moments of wandering down the hill to straight among the trees, I found my scene, as tree-filled as any other forest segment on a day as clear as any other rainless day. The minutes passed, and I sketched my forest in pencil, then wandered back to the school.
A week gone by, and I forget the day. The time is Wednesday, and I am bored in homeroom, so I flip through my pages, and find my forest in soft, plain pencil marks, and I take my colored pencils and fill the leaves with green and blue and the skies with red and yellow.
A classmate sees me, walks over, so I look up to smile and wave at her. She asks what I am drawing, and I show her. “Wow, that’s really good, I can feel the tension,” she says. Our small talk continued in the typical ways small talk goes, but I can only remember seeing then that upon my forest I drew tension, and colored reds among blues where there were no reds. I took a forest which was and created a new one which never was, and I realize then this is the way life is.
That things come just as they are, nothing more and nothing less, and I, in my perception, create the good and the bad, the stresses and joys. That in venturing outwards I see, and in returning inwards, I create. That all the world around me is but food to my inner perceptions as I paint my own reality and life.
When on one rainy day I stay inside, I think. My life is my creation, and the world my tools.
January 24, 2010 at 4:48 pm | Lifepost | No comments
On Considering This Time of My Life
I remember the day I quit Runescape. I had already planned to quit the game I was addicted to at the end of Summer ’08, but on July 26, my dad shortened the journey.
I was hasty to sneak on my laptop, and rush to mIRC; I told my clan that I was quitting but never told the reason why. I proceeded to make an emotional statement of the thing by creating a video called “My Runescape Career”, featuring many screenshots I had collected while I had played Runescape.
Some people told me my video made them cry. I bitterly accepted that I had to quit the game eventually, so I did not try to fight it, but I couldn’t suppress tears over the end of a more remarkable period of my life.
Yes, among the remarkable periods of my life was the time when I was addicted to an MMORPG.
When I grinded at 15+ hours a day to get ahead of the level curves.
When random chatters lurked about my clan chat, and I would respond to their questions every few moments.
I cried over that.
I remember going outside one night with a sleeping bag onto the back deck, and crying ’til my eyelids had wrinkles. I remember regretting that I never finished my last major goal in the game: reaching 99 Runecrafting(often considered the “hardest” skill in the game).
I remember regretting the end of some friendships I had worked to develop though internet-based they may have been and regretting the loss of the support of those who acclaimed me as a great Runescape skiller.
But most of all I was afraid of change and the future. And I regretted that I would have to leave the lifestyle I had lived all too long.
And a week passed. And my video “My Runescape Career” got about 700 views on Youtube. And I had cried my cry, and reflected my reflections.
I remember smiling and telling myself “I will never regret because I have learned.” And I looked to the future with joy, and saw the beginning of a new era in my life, a time of new opportunity.
And for a while, I became that one person who always smiled.
But as I write this article, I am not smiling.
Today, it has been about a year and a half since I quit Runescape. My great accomplishments in life have been scarce and few. I have made many acquaintances, but few friends, and I am cruelest to those who I cherish most.
I am tired and bitter, regaining the lost cynicism of my childhood, that same cynicism I discovered when I first realized that death was the end.
And I look away from those around me so that they will not see that I am crying.
Because I am far too ashamed of the me who I have become, and the me who will come.
Because I realize that the stubborn me regrets and did not learn the lessons that history has taught. All in the me.
I start to wallow in self pity, and feel the endless despair, the inescapable cycle of sadness, the imperishable plague of self-bashing.
At the end of the day, I alone realize once again that I am an idiot.
January 17, 2010 at 10:34 pm | Lifepost | No comments
The Art of Randomness: a New Look
I was overdue by two blog posts for goal; I planned to create a custom theme for this blog upon reaching 25 blog posts. So, now that the busy world has been pricked in the side by 27 posts of Randomness, Rambles, and Reflection, I have taken it upon myself to make more sporadic the image of this particular not-so-bakery pie bakery.
Yeah, I made a new WordPress theme. Actually started it a bit before writing the story about the Whale Who Ate the Moon. Making WordPress themes from XHTML/CSS was alot simpler than I expected although I’m not sure exactly what I expected. Either way, this blog no longer has a default look, so cheers! And may that busy world know that randomness is a blessing yet.
November 25, 2009 at 12:44 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Shortening
Lifepost is more of a Blog News section. Really. Nonetheless, in the forecasting of this blog’s news, I must remark a trend of which I have caught myself at awares with.
There is an overall tendency, lately, in this blog Randomness, Rambles, and Reflection for the blogposts to grow shorter. Now, while being short has its advantages(such as giving a longer journey to rain droplets falling from the sky to your head), being tall is advantageous in sports such as basketball. Therefore, I must digress to mention that I would much prefer my articles to be proficient at the sport of basketball than for them to give rain droplets longer journeys to their heads.
However, my will is not enough to change this natural trend. Surely the writer of blog posts has no power over his own creations? It is solely the job of the writer to create then watch as the creations guide themselves among the infinitude of possibilities.
Seriously, though, guys. Anyone else notice the sudden bubble of poetry and short prose rather than long Quintessences of Rambling? No? Oh well, finding random trends in your own writing is fun anyways.
October 18, 2009 at 9:18 pm | Lifepost | 1 comment
The Confessions of an Aspiring Artist
Beauty can be found in the simplest things in life. Art can be made of the most trivial little details of the world. Art can be made from life. The making of art gives meaning to all these things.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to say, being an artist. Everyone wants to feel important, like the things they do–or create–have significance
I constantly am in notice of small details. I remember the simple things in life. I eat a dinner and slowly chew. I stare in awe at the little black shadows formed where grains of white rice overlap. I am inspired to a pattern; there is an incredible balance in the rounded ellipses of the white rice and the concave deltas of the black shadows. They create patterns which are logical. They create patterns which are meaningless. They create the food of my thoughts for the next hour.
It’s always so easy to imagine yourself doing something which you never do. You never even try to do that thing you imagined. I imagined my self sketching the rice, savoring that moment when it was arranged on my plate in a way it would never be arranged in again. But, the thought was too absurd. I had been calmly eating dinner for an hour. I was supposed to be eating dinner, not staring at rice, not observing rice, not admiring rice.
Being an artist, it is in my nature to observe. Inspiration comes from the most unexpected places, they say. I walk around in a random small-town parking lot, the kind that isn’t very paved. I am always looking down, looking up, and looking around me when I walk. Sometimes I become self-conscious of my observation; no one else I see seems to move their head around as much when they walk. But I must take full use of my own eyes.
It is this way in this parking lot. I feel the bumps of the little rocks below me, and suddenly I am drawn to their attention more than the sparse cars, more than the placid sky, more than the little rustic castaway furniture store. I see these rocks are variegated in shades of gray. There are many grays. But, every few rocks there is a perfectly brown-orange one. I am in awe of the way these rocks are arranged. In an instant, I stare. In an instant, I think.
I look at the rocks around. The whole parking lot has these same rocks scattered about, but in a cursory scan, I feel that no other patch of this lot is arranged nearly to the perfection of the one I stand on. There are too-numerous brown-orange rocks clumped together. There are too-vast expanses of gray rocks. This chance deeply humbles me, and I muse my gratitude for the small things in life.
I have played through such scenes in their entirety, continually. I am never truly bored because I am always occupied. People around me see me standing frozen looking down at the ground. People around see me with a faraway gaze. Perhaps I waste my time. I am looking for something which is not there; a meaning to it all.
But I live for the novelty of seeing more rocks, and I am constantly creating the nature of my mind. I create the structure of my thoughts. I observe, and I remember. Anything that can make a mark can sketch. Life is a tool to draw a portrait of existence. And the making of art gives meaning to these things.
Or at least that’s what I’d like to believe, being an artist.
October 11, 2009 at 12:16 pm | Lifepost, Reflections | No comments
6 Minutes
6 minutes before I leave the computer to the world of elsewhere. In 6 minutes, I will type a blog article. In 6 minutes, I could have drawn a very quick sketch. In 6 minutes, I could have read one tenth of an hour long read or watched two 3-minute long music videos.
A minute has passed, and I am now in 5 minutes left to write. It is in five minutes that I can type my thoughts regarding life, love, passions, and the number 42. 5 minutes is enough time to do alot, but then it becomes 4 minutes.
And it is at the strike of 4 minutes left, counting down so very quickly, I look at what I have written and pause for a moment. I consider my next few words for the time is short.
In my pause, in my thoughts, another minute passed by and went. At three minutes left, I have more to say and do not know how I wish to say it. I want to stop and think, but the time is late. I realize that I could have, from the start, spent two minutes to organize my thoughts then the other four to write and refine my means of communicating them.
And thus begins the time when I have only two minutes left. I have wasted much time looking at the clock. I realize it is ticking, ticking, and every moment of my life may pass such that I will never forget the time I spent.
It has been said that the only thing you cannot recycle is wasted time. I cannot say I have wasted my time up until now, but I am left with one minute left. One final minute for words, and I realize that perhaps, if I spent all my little moments proficiently as I have not, I may find truer the worth of each minute.
6:00PM. The time is gone.
September 13, 2009 at 6:00 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Spanish and Life Passions
Yesterday evening, I signed up for Rosetta Stone’s site Shared Talk. Ever since, I can only say that my life is now complete. Ever since, I can only say my Spanish knowledge has been incomplete. Ever since, I have foreseen that I would write an article about my experiences on the site.
I was seeking to truly personalize the language Spanish in my life. The nature of my academic career leans towards that I would cease to learn Spanish in my second year, after taking Spanish II. Since I have found myself genuinely passionate about the two foreign language classes I had taken in the past, Spanish I and Latin I, I had, upon realizing I probably would not continue the high school Spanish track, believed I could only overcompensate for my lack of classes.
Thus, I found the Shared Talk while searching for a way to find Spanish pen pals, native speakers who I could learn from. Seeing Shared Talk, I was surprised but truly ecstatic to have found an apparently omnipotent solution to my dilemma. Shared Talk was everything I was looking for; a facility beaming with lifefulls of native speakers of all languages and all the tools we’d need to teach each other… Chat, mail, and voice chat.
I had started off finding a few native speakers of Spanish on the site to mail, but while waiting for replies, I tried out the voice chat. I quickly met a nice man who was an engineer seeking to learn English, but I was all too easily intimidated. Though I never for once assumed that passing one year of Spanish with flying colors would equip me with all that I needed to hold a conversation with a native speaker, I was all too quickly struck full-blown with the force of my incompetence. And I was inspired.
It was then that I arranged for myself a fair schedule of learning. I would start off sending mails to native speakers of Spanish. In writing letters, I could take my time and look up the vocabulary required for me to write what I wanted to write. As I saw that I started writing letters more proficiently and knew the vocabulary needed for me to express myself properly, I would move onto real-time chatting, where I would be required to respond and read quickly.
All through this, I would softly read the Spanish I type and receive to myself out loud so that one day, I may voice chat in a foreign language without guilt of my awkward nonresponsiveness.
And at the end of the day, I can rest assured with myself that Spanish was not just a class; it was the start of a life passion.
September 12, 2009 at 8:31 pm | Lifepost | No comments
Physics Homework
A time when I was traversing down the truly, most definitely clear road of a teenage high school student who is most certainly NOT experiencing the identification stage of life(See Erik Erikson, the man with an awesome name), I realized that I had forgotten the preposition starting the first sentence of an article I was forming in my head to be written at a future time.
Disorganized was for the word my thoughts. Disarrayed was the word my thoughts for. Disastrous spelt it all.
Thinking, then, I remembered I was working on my physics homework. For the past few moments, a random passerby would have caught me with my eyes glazed over had not they been blockaded by the computer screen. Yes, computer-assigned homework is truly a marvel in its eye blockading abilities(to random passersby even!), but the content of the homework would, by all modus operandi, hold true to its mind-arresting aptitude.
Yes, I, for a moment, was blank-minded, suspended in the endless suspension of dumbfounded-ness at a single physics problem. I, with my eyes glazed over, ceased to continue any but that single physics problem. I, who ignored my own approach.
I, in a time before the writing of this article, thought. And, I, in an instant, learned the virtue of patience.
A computer accomplishes more than hide the eyes of its user from the view of someone staring upon the machine’s back. Despite my most reliably cited popular belief, the computer is more than a mere black or white or gray or beige or rainbow box obscuring the world. It is a call to convenience.
And at that moment, as I mused on computers, a thing(calculations) which eluded my difficulties in the past, was the impetus to my absentmindedness. I lost all focus. I lost it the minute I sat in that chair–No, the minute I turned on that power button the minute before I sat in that chair.
I remembered a past life of lesser laziness when calculators and notebook paper were instinct. And here I was, seeing an assignment on the computer, predisposed to venture the mental crunching of numbers in my mind. My finitely reserving mind! It was scarce a wonder that the solution eludes those who forget the value of circumspection!
And so I pretended to undust my pencil as if the time between now and the end of school, when I had last writ with that gratifying lead, were a lifetime of neglect. So quickly had I forgotten the treasure of written aid.
In a few short moments, I scribed that which was to be scribed so fancifully and cheerfully as I would choose to scribe the word scribe rather I write the word write. In a few short moments more, all became clear for the discord and chaos that was the disarray, disaster, and disorganization of my determinate critical thinking capacity was now bound and formed upon the indeterminate bulk of all the world’s paper.
In a few short moments later, I finished my physics homework.
September 7, 2009 at 7:05 pm | Lifepost, Reflections | No comments