The Last Flower

Cleaning out my house during the last few days of break, I discovered this poem I apparently wrote on April 4th, 2003 for American Studies Period 8/9:

The Last Flower

Disappeared from the Earth
... the last flower was dying
Together the young man and the girl nurtured the flower and it began to live again
Love was reborn into the world
Towns, cities, and villages sprang up.
Songs came back into the world
So presently the world was at war again
This time the destruction was so complete that nothing at all was left in the world.

Except...

The Last Flower

~~

I think I spent half an hour laughing like crazy... what terrible BS I came up with for that class. It's presented in the form of a poster, too: each verse is written on a "petal," which has my very own illustrations of every scene. See:



I don't write creatively that often anymore, but this just goes to show that you can't force your muse.

veronica mars

i freaking love that show. to the point of wasting hours watching the episodes. just gotta love the wit of v. mars. i wish i could be that cool.
i don't know what i'm going to do once i finish the third season. probably go back to gossip girl. it's kind of sad that i get into bands because i've listened to their songs on these cw shows. like the dandy warhols -- "a long time ago" is the theme to v. mars. it's just not as cool to say "oh, i heard of these guys from a tv show." oh well, at least it's better than "i heard of you guys from guitar hero" (it happens more than you'd think...).

on another note: who wears eye makeup before going to bed? v. mars, apparently -- season 3, ep 3.

2009. I feel old.

Yikes, another year. This is really freaky, because on some levels I don't feel much older at all.
But I guess I do look older and (maybe) act older. For example, today I went out to dinner with my parents, and I saw a couple who were maybe a little older than my parents sitting at a table near us. I pointed them out to my parents as a very romantic pair.

We ended up leaving at the same time, and the woman was standing in front of the coat rack. She excused herself and moved aside to get my coat. Normally, this would be the end of the story. Except the woman and man made small talk with me about the weather and things like that. Sure, you could chalk my bizarre feelings to those of a girl who's too caught up in the Parisian way, in which la conversation is an art and one does not engage in it for a few seconds with strangers. Yet I prefer to see it as a kind of acknowledgment that I'm on their level... I mean, if I were in high school, they would not have talked to me the same way, right?

EDIT: a day later, re-reading this makes me feel kind of stupid. So what if I can make polite conversation with other people; doing so maybe says more for my sociability skills than anything else. On the other hand, lately I've had this gnawing feeling of getting old... and it's really sad.

How Caramel Developed a Taste For Salt

"President-elect Barack Obama has taken to salted caramels, too. He likes to treat himself to a Seattle candy maker’s version, robed in dark chocolate and sprinkled with smoked sea salt."

I love reading "cultural" things in the NYT

... for what it's worth, I've loved Ladurée's caramel à la fleur de sel macarons since last year in Paris.

p.s. Starbucks's Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate is divine.

sometimes i get so weird

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a great movie. Ironically (or not, I don't really get irony anyways), it took a movie about aging backwards to make me realize how quickly I'm aging forwards.

21 isn't old, obviously, but scarily I'm just not that young anymore. I can't even watch crappy shows like 90210 without thinking that I'm never going to be in high school again. Whatever happened when I was Sweet 16 or whatever, that's it.
(and apparently it's amazing to be young and in love, but I can't fathom what that feels like at all)

Pretty soon, I won't even be a student. And that's so scary, having to take responsibility for things... to run my own life, in a way. I actually discussed this with a couple of friends, and somehow I feel like the only one who appreciates having free time. Sure, it's nice to be doing things at school, but I occupy my time pretty easily at home, too. I read a lot, write some things... There is a world of things to do, and I can't believe that given leisure time, some people would just be "bored."

(quite honestly, I think being perpetually "bored" is just a synonym for "too lazy to find other things to do")

Or maybe I'm just easily amused. After all,

sometimes i get so weird
i even freak myself out

EDIT:

wait a minute, why do all these high school tv shows have like 100000000 episodes that involve big parties at someone's house where everyone is drinking?!?! okay, the drinking age is 21. i think i've been to a party like that a total of once in my entire life (and that was at college, and only for 1 millisecond). sure, people drink in high school, but don't make it seem like it's a major fixture that's representative of every freaking high school in the country. if you do, then the real high schoolers will just aspire to be like the ones they see on TV. geez.

no wonder i didn't think my high school experience "lived up" to what i saw on the WB (or CW, w/e)

Q: Since when did I get so "emo"?

Let's hear it for America's Suitehearts
I must confess
I'm in love with my own sins

A:

I'm currently in an "emo music" (if we want to use judgmental superficial labels) phase. It's strange; I've liked Fall Out Boy since high school (Sugar, We're Going Down, to be specific) and The Academy Is and Panic At the Disco came to my attention in college, but I've never been majorly obsessed or anything. These days, my playlists consist of little else (besides some holiday music, but even that can be "emo" -- see A Punk Rock Christmas).

Admittedly, it doesn't always feel good to share the same music tastes as high school *fangirls*, but whatever. I went to the TAI concert, and no matter what anybody says, from a muscial point of view their performance was spot-on. Not to mention their intense connection with the audience. The show was so exhilirating, and I will always proudly call myself a devoted fan.

And the new FOB album, Folie à Deux (which basically means f*cking en français, by the way), undeniably shows off their musical prowess. I'm sorry, but there is no way you can contest the fact that Patrick, the lead singer, has an extraordinary voice, no matter your views on the song melodies themselves. Personally, I find the lyrics refreshingly introspective as well.

I guess I'm trying to say that for the moment, this is the type of music I like, and I will never really understand why people say that this is so "typically emo." Because I don't see anything "typical" about these particular bands or songs. Just listen to them; not all of the songs are about being sad and hating life, and if a few of them are, so what? Haven't you ever felt that way before? Maybe you don't need music to help you deal during those times, but don't try to undercut those of us who do.

Besides, I'm sure that eventually, I'll listen to other music. For now, I'm just reveling in the exploration, kind of like when I discovered Asian pop via Jay Chou.

~

these are the trials of our youth

On a different note, I had an interesting conversation yesterday that shed some light into a lot of aspects of gender/sexuality issues I've been going through in my head ever since first year. (for example: why use gender neutral pronouns? I mean, if you are born a girl and want to be a guy, wouldn't you just want to be called "he" instead of some awkwardly constructed ambivalent pronoun? etc.) Some things I won't ever understand on a personal level (yeah, I might have body/self-esteem issues, but I've never felt the urge to identify as anything other than female), but it really felt good to ask questions and have them answered by someone who didn't seem offended or hurt at all, which was my main concern.

If only everybody could be so non-judgmental, on both sides of the spectrum.

these are the fast times

December puts me into a contemplative mood

Saw a production of the play Big Love today. It was beautifully done, and I am glad I could get tickets at the last minute. Basically it's about 50 Greek sisters who run away to Italy in order to escape an ancient marriage contract with their American cousins. Wacky plot, but powerful themes. I liked the way the play presented all of these different perspectives on love and on gender roles (afterwards, a friend remarked that it was "very Smith"); in a way, you agree with at least one thing that each character says, even though they are all so distinct from each other.

At one point, the youngest and most romantically-minded sister steps forth and asks herself, "But why should I settle?" And I'm just reminded of my whole philosophy on love right now. I refuse to settle for something less, even if ultimately my reach exceeds my grasp and I end up alone.

~~

Of course, now I can't get out of this reflective mood, so instead of going to a Winter Weekend party where apparently I could have written my name on Harvard guys' butts (... okay, maybe not my scene regardless), I was a hermit and stayed in with chocolates and tea. ABC family was showing the first HP, so I watched.

The weirdest commercial EVER came on... it was for Marshall's and at the end, literally said "in this crummy economy, you'll find shopportunities at Marshall's" or something as disgusting as that.

This just reminded me of a speech I heard recently where an iBanking executive stated that the financial crisis might be just a wholesaler crisis now, but pretty soon it's going to become a consumer crisis. And then we'll really all start feeling screwed. I guess Marshall's is just anticipating that sentiment...