So recently I’ve watched three Asian action movies. Two of them starred Jet Li: Kiss of the Dragon and Hero. The last one, Curse of the Golden Flower, was pretty bad-ass. The first words that came out of my mouth when [CERTAIN CHARACTERS] died was “Aw, man! He was the only one I wanted to live!” but still, the movie was… it was pretty good.
Watching The Hours, which starred Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, and Nicole Kidman really weirded me out. I mean, the three things that all the women had in common: depression and lesbianism. I didn’t even really get what the theme of it all was supposed to be. It was just stupid. But it did pique my interest of Virginia Wolfe and get me to write some pretty depressing vignettes.
For example, I spent some time chewing on this. It’s incomplete, but it’s not like I’m ever going to finish it, so I’ll just post what I have and get over it.
I think it is with the ticking of the clocks, the ever persistent question: how long? How long can you wait? How long can you push it off? It is a temptation to which I have no resistance despite years of exposure. It is a feeling, a moment, an instant where the only words you can think are, Do I really have to?
It is with the blue of this necklace, deep and understanding. The light shines on it as it sucks on your soul, pulling you rather away from your first dreams, now vague and foggy. Now far-fetched but comparatively innocent. Why must it be far-fetched? Wasn’t I full of vigor and potential? Haven’t I the talent, haven’t I the opportunity to reach them? What happened between the fleeting past and the miserable present that the future looks so irrevocably bleak? I fear it’s something I have done but can’t remember.
It is with the tapping of the keyboard, the teeth marks on the chew toy, the electronic melody blasting from my sister’s headphones, the scratches on the wooden floor, the guilt of striking a consistently naughty child, the snores from that sleeping body. It is with the oil in my hair, the half-used on papers strewn thereabouts, the used sock stationed in that corner for the last week, the chill when stepping out of a heated building on a February evening.
It is the paradox that organization and neatness comes from clutter and mess. It is the sharp-mindedness that, being mixed with its lethargic brother, is never noticed. It is the simultaneous disgust and gratitude for unpredictable routine.
It is life, at its fullest and at its worst. It is mine, but not for me to grasp. It is a poem recited often but never understood. It is the connection between flirting couples in denial. It is the same hate reserved for a cheating lover and a broken pencil tip during a test. It is impossible, and yet common to the point of triviality.
Anyway, I was trying to express a feeling somewhere along the lines of “I could be better but I’m way too damn lazy and I just want to portray the complexity of a single moment in a smart-sounding poem” feel. I really suck at it, though. I went to the library yesterday, and it suddenly dawned on me to check out Japanese poetry. Who knew that the library had so many? Right now I’m reading this 1972 book, Anthology of Modern Japanese History, translated and compiled by Edith Marcombe Shiffert and Yuki Sawa. I’m trying not to type in text-speak but, OMGEE THIS STUFF IS THE SHIZZNITS.
You know how I suck at portraying the “complexity of an empty moment”? This poem, my favorite so far in the book, is my ideal.
Mars Is Out
- Kotaro Takamura
By the way, the translation above isn’t the one provided in Anthology of Modern Japanese History.
Onee-san, my wonderful older sister whose opinion I hold in high regard, hates it, but I’m practically in love with it. Every fifteen minutes, my mind keeps wandering back to the lines:
I do not know what a human being must do. I do not know what a human being should try to get. I think that a human being can become part of nature. I am feeling that a human being is great because he is equal to nothingness. Oh I am shaken, how hopeful to be equal to nothingness! Even nothingness is destroyed by natural spreading.I think these lines match very well with my current state of mind right now, although admitting that makes me a little… peeved. Today in my sociology class, we learned about the eight stages of life as defined by Erikson. Most teenagers are in Stage 5 (Identify v Confusion). I just hate being associated with kids my age. =_=’||
Anyway, it’s almost the end of class and I have piano lessons today [I barely practiced. Eep! >_<] so I have to put this laptop away. Ciao, minna-chan, and happy living! :D
-Seewah
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