Heroes

...can be anyone from a larger-than-life, courageous as heck photojournalist in a war zone; to a snarky, cynically optimistic fashion photog' inked with some of the most impressive tats I've ever seen on skin; to the genuine love and respect your mom (it's cheesy, but damn it, it's true)--heroes are found scattered all over the place within your daily walks of life, so why don't we talk about them more often?

More than that, is it possible to get through your life without ever thinking, "Wow, if I ever get to be a better person in life, I'd like to be like so-and-so"? And if so, would that make you an anti-social, unimaginative putz? Or does that make you better the rest of us ant-like beings, who scramble furiously against the ebb and flow of time and humanity?

Lots of questions tonight, possibly because I haven't blogged in a couple of eons, am partially hopped up on caffeine, am tired to the point of slight limb vibration and just personally started thinking about how all my fears are of such tiny consequence in comparisons to the day-to-day dealings that are tackled by the people I look up to the most. These guys--Yunghi Kim, Dan Pak, Fuijiwara Motoo, Takui, and yes, my mom--have done and are still doing crazy awesome things. They're beings beyond the grasp of inconsequential me, that more often than not, I always imaginging myself looking up at them even though I know that their physical realities are all about my height or shorter.

So it's no wonder that when I explain to my mother how stressed I am about my school work and my job and my lack of confidence in my own field, she can only look at me in disbelief. She's lived, seen and experienced about five lifetimes more than I can even imagine (and though you might think that a lot of momma's girls will say the same thing, I'm telling you now that my household is matriarchal system 'cause she's just taken so much shit within a stride, she can handle just about any situation short of ruling a nation; definitely the real deal), so no wonder she can recognize my insecurities of childish self-indulgence.

I need to get bigger, I need to get better, and the only frustrating obstacle that's completely barring my path is me. Which is stupid.

But yes, heroes! Maybe I am a scrambling ant, but I've gotten the cool chance to be born in the same era as these awesome beings. They help give me a little bit of direction and a little bit of ass kicking when I need to remember that life just ain't as hard as I'm making it out to be.

And that's my post. I sound like a really proud kid, but at the moment, that's just what I am. Just wait until you see the rest of me.

back on the beaten path

You're the reason I can't sleep at night.

Live

This is really just for my personal reference, but every now and then, I like to do a self-reflection and shovel out old (and probably bad) habits to be replaced with new ambitions (as well as some new bad habits because I'm only human).

Today's spring cleaning started when I was looking through one of my many email accounts and decided to dump the emails I had written to one of my ex-boyfriends. I didn't think it would take too long, because my rusty memory informed me that the two of us didn't correspond THAT often. Maybe fifty emails, tops (it was a long relationship, fifty would be plenty). But of course, I surprised myself and found over a hundred emails, not counting the singular emails that branched out and became its own monster when the number of replies piled up. Needless to say, it took me a solid fifteen minutes to get rid of all of them (but this is only thanks to the "select all" option from gmail that allows you to delete all 20 emails that are present on the page /random advertisement) and I felt that much better that a somewhat shameful chapter of my life had been expelled from existance for good (or so I hope).

Yes, I looked in some of them, peeked over some of the lines and kind of fought the urge to regurgitate the pizza bun I had hungrily consumed a half hour beforehand. My young, immature and inexperienced love(s) was/were quite nauseating, but I'm glad I got it out of my system. At this point, I'm happily single, more sure of my sense of self, and will approach such relationships with much more caution and brain than my previous attempt(s).

See? Good lessons learned when you do that little spring cleaning jig. I'll stop using that reference to spring cleaning, I've used it twice and it's leaving a bad aftertaste on this blog.

And to think I started this just to list off yet another band I would be glad to see live before I die.

The previous list included L'Arc~en~Ciel, SADS (now not possible since the band split up), NELL, Epik High, Acidman and FAKE? (Luna Sea too, just for the record). But introducing my new love, Bump of Chicken, because they rock as much as their band name is grammatically awkward.

heart mumbles

The very seed of this thought was planted by a simple conversation where I was the one attempting to soothe the complications of another's skipping beat. I was independent and free to fall in love with the distant voice of this one, the poetic words of that one, or the charming smile of the one that has temporarily left my sight.

But a single night and the simple murmur of my heart for one particular man has turned into a shout, a song, and it's an odd feeling to contain when its sudden excitement is riding on the waves of nothing more than a dream.

A dream, really, a simple dream. The mind knows that all of this is just a shallow swim, but the less logical part of me is happily submerged in this thick but fleeting feeling.

It's all illogical, it's all insane, but this is my so-called love.

law & order

Love, love, love

Over dinner, the last thing you expect to hear come out from your mother's mouth is not a choking-almost-vommitty cough (the hazards of eating come hand-in-hand with its joys) but the word "sex" and the continuing monlogue that concerns your brother having it.

Take a moment to imagine yourself and your family members seated serenely around the table, consuming good, hot food, and yourself thinking only of the next dish you're going to dip into with your spoon. Of course, once aforementioned table taboo word is spoken, you can help but pause your digestion and lock eyes with the bowl of asparagus and mushrooms because it's just a little too uncomfortable to look at anyone else at the moment; even the vegetables looked uncomfortable with the situation.
Nevertheless, my mother had a point to prove and she pushed on with it. To sum it up, she didn't believe that having too many sex partners was a good thing, which I'm sure you all agree with because no one wants to be a hoe or end up being with a hoe (and hoes can be male or female, yo; don't discriminate), just because that says way too much about a person without a single utterance on their part. But, I also believe her thoughts were leaning towards the traditional sense that the sex-before-marriage thing was a bad deal too, though not as bad as the hoe situation.

This is where both my brother and I disagreed, since society has evolved (or devolved, depending who you're asking) to the point where there is substantially more sexual freedom, and carving those few figurative notches into your belt is not as heavily frowned upon as before. Some people even prefer that their partner has a bit more experience because it makes the entire process a lot smoother. But how can you explain that to your mother without having to draw up sociological and historical articles as empirical evidence to back yourself up? Trust me, I tried to do a one-on-one heart talk with her on this before and I couldn't make her see.

Perhaps it's the fact that we are seperated by a gaping generation gap, and the kids of tomorrow will seem much more radical than the kids of today. Still, it would be nice to be able to have all family members on the same page when it comes to topics like these (not to suggest that I want our dinner conversations to get spectacularly saucy) for the sake of the freedom to be expressive in a love relationship without having to cut back of filial piety.

Photo courtesy of ErikStum @ Flickr