Fin

2012, I dub thee... The Transition Year. From childhood to teenhood, the path was rocky. Love and loss, hope and despair, tears of joy and tears of pain, have all marked my own personal journey toward growth and maturity. Gradually, I noticed that my opinions and views of many areas of life had changed and due to the influences (both positive and negative) on me, particularly from people. Each person I have met and gotten to know throughout this year has taught me a life lesson - some more valuable than others, but every single one important. I can only hope that the upcoming year will bless me with just as much experience and love as I had this year. These memories are priceless.
Everyone, let's make 2013 fantastic! I promise to try my best  ^_^

 

"Sometimes in our lives

We all have pain

We all have sorrow

But if we are wise

We know that there's always tomorrow"

Bill Withers, Lean On Me

iPhone 5

After three and a half years of using a brick, I can genuinely say that I am pretty happy that I got an iPhone 5. So happy, in fact, that I feel like screaming from the rooftops. Right now. Until daybreak.

on the same page

"You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope."

Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Yellow Ribbon

This makes me so foolishly happy~

on the same page

"I don't understand." In fact, I didn't understand. On the whole, I'm a regular guy. I say I understand when I do, and I say I don't when I don't. I try not to mince words. It seems to me a lot of trouble in this world has its origins in vague speech. Most people, when they go around not speaking clearly, somewhere in their unconscious they're asking for trouble.

Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

If I could...

Euthanasia

A brilliant representation of how little of a role spoken language plays in conveying emotions. Watching the video for the first time, I didn't pay close attention and couldn't fully grasp the storyline, simply thinking it was a nice song. Then, as I watched it again several days later, it struck me not as a beautiful music video, but as a small masterpiece of its own.
I started noticing the smallest hints of body language, the little details that made the story so much more tragic, so close to home. Loss is an incredibly difficult feeling to portray. Helplessness goes hand in hand with loss, the two mixing together to produce the worst heaviness of the soul. No words can ever explain the feeling.

Flights of Fancy

The flat fan of black hair seems too dark in the sterile white room. Lying on bed sheets that smell faintly of bleach and pain killers, she watches the dull sky behind the window glass. Mouth slightly ajar with words left unspoken, she wills her tongue to bring some color back to her chapped lips. She turns her head over to the other side, the pillow making a soft squelching sound that seems too loud in the tall, mute room. Her empty eyes slowly register a plastic green chair in front of the iron framed bed. How strange, she thinks. All visitor's chairs have been long removed from this room, as they were never occupied. She slides her arm up to the pillow, her bony fingers brushing away thin black hair that had fallen across her face. Examining her chipped fingernails, she dully thinks of what her mother would have said, were she around. She would have scorned her. Made her scrub the staleness off her body until her skin was raw. Tore through the knots in her dry hair, scolding her even louder to block out her cries of pain. She would have shamed her; were she around.
Silence presses against her ears, making the feeling of true loneliness seem all too close. The still, dead air never leaves the room, as if afraid of what lies outside the white door. A white hallway. A white courtyard. A white city. A white world.
Doctors come and go. They sit by the bed, thoughtfully poking their chins with their pens, asking her questions. She stares blankly at the floor, the ceiling, the blue blanket clutched tightly between her fingers. The blue blanket, once a lovingly made gift, now frayed with age and drained of feeling. She stopped answering their questions long ago.
The hours pass. The visitor's chair stands alone, facing the bed on which a frail young body is draped in white cloth. The tender spring sunlight fades, giving way to an early evening. The chair stands, patiently waiting for someone to walk through the door, or for the girl to move. But visiting hours end and the institution plunges into a deep night.
There are no more tears. Everything had gone, forgetting only a brittle shell. Pain, joy, curiosity, love. All of it steadily seeped out from her eyes, running down the worn-out tracks of her hollow cheeks.

(this piece was inspired by the song "The Story Only I Didn't Know" by IU)

Ten Toes

I have a long standing love-hate relationship with a certain someone. Actually, certain someones.
Feet. That's right, those wierd endings of the legs, composed of five stubby wanna-be fingers and connected to incredibly fragile ankles. Why do I hate them? They rarely breathe, which is unhealthy and sometimes gives them an odd odor - stuffed into socks in the morning, shoved into shoes during the day, and finally put into slippers in the evening. Feet look pretty ridiculous with the toes either sticking out, curving, bending, or missing altogether. Really, feet are just yucky.
But I also love them. And I understand why they are one of the biggest turn-ons for both men and women, as they are similar to hands but not shown as often. The turn-on effect is also psychological - if you see someone's feet, you are likely either on a beach or in a bed.

It's so ugly, it's kinda cute. Just like feet.

A Year in Quotations: 40/365

A Year in Quotations: 39/365

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves."

 

1 Corinthians 13:4