Bittersweet

"If I could fall / into the sky / do you think time / would pass me by?"

          It's hard to put into words, but sometimes as I'm walking along a road and I see a heavy raincloud or gold-tinted leaf, it feels like I'm in Brookline again, for just a moment. I flicker back and forth in my mind, trying to deceive myself that I am still in Brookline - that the shriveled desert shrubs are actually great maples and oaks, that the crunching of dusty pebbles under my flip-flops is in reality a blanket of crispy leaves, and the breeze smells not of pesticide and freshly-mowed lawns but of dew and pine and autumn. 

          Any second now we'll drive away in our old red car to the nearest Dunkin Donuts and watch the frost blur the windowpanes, etching 'hello's with our fingers to a random passerby. Maybe if we feel like it we'll climb that boulder in your backyard again, and use it as our home base for the next top secret mission. This time around, I'll take in the faded chalk lines - the ghosts of our last hopscotch rendezvous, the click of our rollerblades in each crack of pavement as we try out that new trick Amanda showed us yesterday... I'll imprint every vine of twining ivy up our brick walls, all our pet ladybugs hiding in the pine, every wafting aroma of apple pie into my heart... and hopefully this time goodbye won't be so bittersweet.

"You are here in my heart and / my heart will go on, and on"

Story of My Life

Stress. Mountains and mountains of stress.

Then, an occasional happiness.

They're the only reasons that I'm still alive.

Every time I'm drowning in sadness, I find a buoy I can catch my breath on, until I have to dive back in again, striving for that next buoy in the distance. We all encounter sharks and cruise ships and dolphins and oil spills, but somehow we still manage to swim on in the ocean of life with the thought of the next buoy. The next smile. The next laugh.

Such is the power of hope.

But what happens when that buoy isn't really a buoy? Do you have the faith to go on?

When you're surrounded by sharks, where do you get the strength and speed to escape?

What if that oil spill is choking you over? How do you rise to the surface of sanity?

Perhaps Dory from Finding Nemo says it best: 

"Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming..."

CAPS LOCKS ABUSE

BLAMING OTHER PEOPLE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE *AMUSING*

STOP AND SHUT THE FUCK UP.

KKTHXBAI.

HAVE A NICE LIFE.

ps) I'm aware that I don't hate you. My only point is, shut up before I scratch your face off.

The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls

Do you ever have those random sparks of nostalgia?

I just had one.

All of a sudden I'm back in Lauro again, reading this poem.

The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The tide rises, the tide falls

The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;

Along the sea-sands damp and brown

The traveler hastens toward the town,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

Darkness settles on roofs and walls,

But the sea, the sea in darkness calls;

The little waves, with their soft, white hands

Efface the footprints in the sands,

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls

Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls;

The day returns but nevermore

Returns the traveler to the shore.

And the tide rises, the tide falls.

This poem is one of the very few things that have stayed with me throughout the years... (who cares about intransitive verbs and subject pronouns?) Whenever I read it, I can't help but to stifle a shiver... it yanks at my heartstrings.

I don't know. I just thought I'd share it with you.

PS) Heartstrings is a cool word.

PPS) Haha nothing too deep today... :P

Can't stop running

When your emotions storm your heart and your thoughts plague your mind, sometimes it helps just to pause your life for a little while - take a run.

Escape to a passive world, where all that exists is the current moment. The feeling of the world melting away at your feet, trees whooshing by, the stars bright overhead... and when you pant, you know that you have accomplished something. When you feel your heartbeat, you know that you are alive.

Your neighbors are staring, your mother is angry.

Your father is gone again, your dog died last week.

But what does it matter, in a passive world?

It'd be nice if we could just keep running... 

But time stops for no one.

We will have to face the moment, sooner or later.

Recycling is My Drug

You might've seen my AIM status recently..

What makes YOU happy?

I was asking because I wasn't completely sure about my own answer. But, today, I think I have found one puzzle piece in the jigsaw of happiness. (..so cheesy.. *dies*)

Today was our chinese school new year performance. 

USUALLY, I'd sigh and think to myself, this is gonna suck. I hate this. (Except for the free food.) But today was different. Right about now, you might expect me to rant about how our performance was great, or they had free brownies instead of those icky plastic-y sandwiches (haha I wish), but no.

Not very surprisingly, one of the first things I notice in every room is the food in it. So when they brought in three boxes of 24 bottles of water to our room of barely 60 people, the second thing that ran through my head (the first being, I'm thirsty) was: where are all those bottles going to go?

(Have you seen Story of Stuff?

Okay, I'll stop with the videos.. xD

I'll get to the point:

I saved 67 bottles from a landfill today! :D :D :D

With thanks to Grace for helping crush bottles and my mom for helping water trees with unfinished water bottles.

My fingers are possessed right now, I'm so happy.

I'll probably come back later and change this post to make more sense... :DDDD

Amnesty

Subliminal Messaging! :]

"So, how's life?"
"Mm... okay I guess.. :\"

..you guess?

Did you spend your toddler years learning how to fire guns at 'enemies'? Or sold to a man by your parents for seven dollars? Chained to a loom and forced to work by your master? Hiding underground and learning to read and write by candlelight? Do you walk three miles to get a bucket of water from a lake? Do you migrate to the city every night so you can sleep on the streets to lower your chances of getting abducted? Do you hear gunshots as you walk to school? Do you sleep in a cardboard box with newspapers for sheets if you're lucky? Do you go to sleep in fear that you won't wake up the next morning?

Who are we to complain about life?


As you can probably tell from my recent entries, I've been watching a lot of videos, and this video is so... moving. I just had to write another entry. xD

~Signature~
(By Amnesty International)

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." ~Gandhi

More subliminal Messaging! :D


PS) I was just thinking about Israel and Pakistan... I have childhood friends who live in both countries. I wonder how they are... Noam, Amal & Manal... IF YOU'RE READING THIS... DON'T DIE! D:<
To us, in our Irvine bubble, this whole conflict feels so unreal. Like the whole thing is something that only exists on paper and in words, similar to a passage from a textbook. But it is VERY real. Maybe at this moment Amal & Manal are in Gaza. Maybe Noam is in the West Bank. Or maybe they're all in heaven already... I don't know.

All I do know is that it has to end.
Last subliminal message :(

Not So Worthless

Every day, I sink deeper and deeper into the impression that altruism and humanity is fading from this world.
But every so often, I stumble upon something like these, and it changes everything.

(I took my list of the 30925739 best, most influential music videos and compiled them to only 3, JUST FOR YOU!! :D)

What About Now? By Chris Daughtry
Very moving... and very very very good message! :]
Shadows fill an empty heart / As love is fading / From all the things we are / But are not saying / Can we see beyond the scars / And make it to the dawn? / What about love? / What about today?

Concrete Angel by Martina McBride
Nobody really hears about child abuse, so people forget (or ignore) that it exists...
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask / It's hard to see the pain behind the mask / Bearing the burden of a secret storm / Sometimes she wishes she was never born / Through the wind and the rain / She stand's hard as a stone / In a world that she can't rise above / Through her dreams give her wings / and she flies to a place where she's loved / Concrete angel
I cried at this. :(

and this is my personal favorite, the BEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER CREATED:

What I've Done by Linkin Park
Eye-opening.
In this farewell / There's no blood / There's no alibi / 'Cause I've drawn regret / From the truth of a thousand lies / I'll face myself / To cross out what I've become / Erase myself / And let go of what I've done


[[PLEASE DON'T TURN A BLIND EYE... if you're still reading and haven't watched the videos... PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! They're worth it! :D]]

Maybe we humans aren't so useless after all.

reach for the S T A R S

It's no perfect world, I know.
Kids get kidnapped, purses get stolen, innocent people are killed on a daily basis... and that's just the start of it.

But that doesn't mean we can't try to make this world a better place. Just because the reality is that bad things are happening and we can't possibly stop them all doesn't mean we have to sit back and watch them happen. If that were the case we'd all still be sitting in our caves digging our faces into a freshly-killed deer.

It's these hopes, these dreams, these aspirations that help us thrive in the bleakest of circumstances, hoping that one day we will reach something bigger than us.
And oftentimes it's the people who embody these dreams that change the world.

Fact: On July 20th, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon.
But they couldn't have done it without every mechanics and astronaut, the extensive money and research and care that went into it - all when they were told, no, it‘s impossible.

"Be the change you wish to see in the world" ~Gandhi

And essentially, that's what life is. It's striving to be something more than bonds of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Something that will leave an imprint on the world, even when the physical body is long gone.

Shreds

NOTE: I WAS NOT IN THE RIGHT MIND WHEN I WROTE THIS.
Please disregard! Thankssss~

"Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt me."

That's a lie.

Words are the deadliest weapons ever.
You could tear someone to pieces without laying a hand on them.

A cut on the surface will heal in time.
A cut in the heart is permanent.

i'm in shreds...

each memory burns at my mind
I can't seem to find,
the right word to convey
why???

Your words eat holes in my heart
I want you to know
you're ripping me apart

Me, Myself, and I

If you wanted to in this instant, you could be anything. 

You could be caring, depressed, ecstatic, bitter, amazed, despondent, anxious, affectionate, intrigued, suspicious, angry, fearful, optimistic, or all of them at the same time.

There is no limit.

But whether you are aware of it or not, you have chosen a medium between happy and sad, caring and mean, optimistic and pessimistic, that you call yourself.

I guess it's part of growing up, where we decide what mindset we want to be in for the rest of our lives, which affects everything. How we act, how we react... and that's what life is, isn't it? Just a blob of actions and reactions that form a web we call the world.

So choose carefully.

You are what you make yourself.

Fleeting

Time.

Ever-existent, but never-changing.

Luckily and unluckily, it's only thing in this world that doesn't ever adapt to it's surroundings.

When the economy is fluctuating and friendships grow old, there is one thing you can count on.

That time will continue passing, at the same exact speed that it did for the dinosaurs, and the exact same speed that it will for your great great great great grandchildren.

So, how does it feel?

Every word you read, your life is slipping away.

Another second just went by.

And yet another.

Sometimes you begin to wonder why you are even doing everything we do, all that we say and think.

I came upon this poem in one of the most life-changing chain mail's I've ever received, supposedly written by a teenager in a hospital while awaiting her death... and since then I remember it every time I get too caught in life and forget to breathe.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids

On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain

Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast

Time is short

The music won't last

Do you run through each day

On the fly?

When you ask "How are you?"

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done

Do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores

Running through your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast

Time is short

The music won't last

Ever told your child

"We'll do it tomorrow?"

And in your haste,

Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,

Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time

To call and say "Hi"?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast

Time is short

The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,

It is like an unopened gift...

Thrown away.

Life is not a race

Do take it slower

Hear the music

Before the song is over.

Written in the Stars?

I was so, incredibly bored that I went an looked up my horoscope

Personally, I don't believe astrology. You can't have your personality determined by when you are born, because that's determined by when your parents decided to [not gonna go here]. Does this mean I can map out my child's destiny and personality by the time that [still not going here]??? That's ridiculous.

Anyhow, according to astrology.com, here's my "destiny":

In this lifetime you are very much concerned with what happens in the world, the larger sphere outside your own immediate personal concerns, and you cannot separate yourself from the issues and challenges of your generation and society as a whole whether you are active in politics, community service, organizing and managing groups of people for a unified purpose, promoting new concepts and innovations which will affect many people's lives, or simply living your life in a socially conscious way. You need to be involved in influencing the larger social fabric of which you are a part. Thus, Tina , you tend to look at the broad canvas, the political, social, or group context of any problem or situation. A simple fight between a man and a woman becomes, to you, how women are oppressed by the dominant male power structure in this society. The decision to eat a hamburger or a soy burger is not, to you, simply a matter of personal taste or health considerations but also a moral and politically relevant issue, considering the impact of the beef industry on the rain forests in South America... Even if you are at home raising children and not significantly involved in the public arena, you will try to raise them to be thinking individuals, aware of the effects their actions and choices have on the rest of the world. You foster a community spirit, a sense of connectedness with the rest of the planet.

In whatever field you pursue, Tina , you are likely to be an innovator, a maverick, a little unusual, or ahead of your time, and surround yourself with other free thinking individuals. While you are very much attuned to whatever group you identify yourself with, you are also very independent minded and this dichotomy between the freedom of the individual and the needs of the group can be the source of ongoing tension in your life.

I'm actually slightly startled by the accuracy of this... O___O
So far it is creepily true. :\
But still, it's only true half of the time and they're really general.

Anyways, the main purpose of this entry was to get this "destiny" down so I can look back and laugh at it in the future. :]

woulda, coulda, shoulda...

The world is so full of lies.

So many things gone unsaid.
So many actions gone undone.
So many dreams gone unfulfilled...

These days it's not the things that happen but the things that don't happen that hurt most...

Btw... this curry tastes really good! :D
... I have ADD, okay? ><

ANYHOW.

It's pretty depressing. Sometimes you can't help but wonder what might've happened if you did something differently.

Like if Shelly didn't throw an acorn into the street that fed a starving squirrel Fluffy whose grandson Scruffy caught a weird disease that spread to a man named Bob who, on the way to the doctor's added to the traffic that made Joe late for the important meeting of his lifetime that caused his boss to fire him and in his anger, threw a pencil onto the road that caused a passing biker to run over a snail, Sebastian III, whose mucus got caught on this girl Lindsay's shoe that made a twenty dollar bill stick to it which caused her to go to the candy store and put a man named Johnny in business that prevented him from going to the soup kitchen where he would've met the love of his life and had a grand-grand-grandson named Adolf.

And BAM there would've been no Hitler, no Holocaust, no millions of dead Jews..........
All if Shelly didn't throw an acorn into the street.

Beware of your consequences!

human C H E M I S T R Y

[begin nerd]

Life is like chemistry.

Life is about organisms and the interactions between them.

Chemistry is about matter and the interactions between them.

In both, there are many types of bonds. The ones that are strongest and hold the longest are between people who have many things in common (covalent bonds), or between complete opposites (ionic bonds).

The stronger the bond, the more violent it is when these bonds are broken.

We wander through life with the sole purpose of forming bonds, to fill our electron shells. Only when our electron shells are completely full will we ever by satisfied.

When a group of atoms form a perfect molecule and one is taken out, the remaining molecules will do whatever they can to find a replica to replace it.

Due to the Law of Conservation of Energy, souls are never created nor destroyed but simply reincarnated into another form of life.

Some people appear to be diatomic, in that they can never be without a partner.

And some people appear to be noble gases, in that they never bond with anyone.

Right now I feel like I'm in a particle accelerator... all these bonds are happening so quickly -some bonds are ripped apart and new ones form... where is the off button??

[/end nerd]

Weird, huh?

I actually thought of this a few weeks ago (while studying for a chemistry exam)(who would have thought?), but I've never put it onto paper. Or in this case, into... pixels..? Idk. 

Anyways, life has been a roller-coaster of wonder and stress, and I rarely get a chance to catch my breath before I'm hurled into another loop, around another sharp turn, and thrust upside-down, screaming.

This is a nice break. :]

Oh and for the record, there was a cloud that looked like Bowser today. xD

What's the Point?

What's the point of having a blog if everyone reads it?

How do you expect me to vent when it might hurt someone?

How do you want me to release the burden of these secrets when they were meant to be kept?

How do you expect me to say what I feel when every word is being analyzed?

How do you want me to blog when I'm going to be judged????