Lookie at the Dragons Dance!! ^_____^

So offline life has been filled with action! Though admittedly, I haven't really been offline. >.> But still--in the time I haven't been using AIM, I've managed to get ahold of a new DDR pad, play for like 3 hours, read 2 library books and return them, finish the manga I borrowed from Carol, color four watercolor pictures, watch a movie with my dad and brother, go to work (duh), and attend the August Moon Festival in Chinatown with Wen. While, upon closer inspection, that all doesn't really amount to much, I still feel accomplished about it. ^^;

The Festival was a lot of fun, even though we got there after Wen had planned to, and we didn't get to see a martial arts presentation she had been interested in. But we got to see a lot of cool street vendors and eat Chinese pasties and I got a watermelon slushie that totally made my day with its deliciousness. :D Oh, and yes, we did get to see a dragon dancything. ^^
I also learnt some things about Chinese. Apparently, Chinese speakers don't think of words in terms of vowels and consonants, but rather as the way of pronouncing a particular character. Each word is pronounced a certain way, and that's just how it -is-...you don't think about phonetics at all, because you can't. It's pretty much like...you learn a word, and then you learn its tone/pronunciation along with its meaning, and that's just how it goes. There are also apparently 4 different types of tone, and while my mind automatically continued 'for every vowel', Wen insisted that Chinese shouldn't be thought of in a phonetic way. Still, that's the only way I can fathom it, so I'll make an example like that. Imagine a long o sound--as in orange. the first tone is kinda with a rising inflection, like a question. 'oh?' the second type of tone is kind of down, and then up, and about impossible to explain in text. Kinda like the first one, only deeper, but still dragged up at the end. 'ouh?' The third tone is deep, at the bottom of one's throat, in a kind of 'ouuuh?'...and the fourth one is the sound without inflection. 'oh.' It's really hard, and I'm not sure I'm even thinking of it right, but if that IS correct, then I found that the most I pushed it through my brain, the more clear the difference was, and sometimes when Wen and her mother were speaking relatively slowly, I could pick up the difference between the 3rd tone and the others, and notice what I think was the 1st one. According to Wen, my Chinese pronunciation (based on me repeating her words) has somehow become really good, in spite of the fact that only a year or two ago she described my pronunciation as deplorable and my repititions as unintelligible, even though I don't know that I'm repeating what she says in any radically different way.
...But yeah. With nitpicky differences like that, and no way to phonetisize(sp?) it, Chinese just isn't the language for me. Yet.
...Though, I recognized some of the characters on the signs, like there was this sign for a discount and I saw the character for what Carol had taught me was 'less, or least, or lower'...or something. Lower price? ...Maybe. ^_^

I also am starting to believe that I may've found my artistic niche in watercolors. I got a beginner's watercolor set, just to try it out. I've rarely had so much fun with art supplies. Even with linearts done hurriedly so I could get to painting, most stuff I've finished so far has come out wonderfully. It's not even technically skillful, because I'm shading using the same sort of techniques as I do with any medium, and sometimes with the watercolors, the shading doesn't even show up so well. I think it's more like the style of the watercolors allows for some overflow and flexibility, whereas mistakes and inconsistencies in colored pencil/marker/digital art are much more glaring. Either way, I've come up with some stuff that even I think I would favorite, were it someone else's, and that makes for a happyhappy Rai. AND IT'S SO MUCH FUN! <.>;

I'm thinking I need to get into a kind of schedule if I'm going to get anything done while working. The thing about work is that it requires getting up at 8, and if I'm lucky, releases me back into the world at 3. That leaves my day with about 5 hours of sunlight, anywhere between 2 and 6 hours to go places before they close, and naturally, I'm entering into it pre-exhausted. It's verreh hard to get myself to do anything after work, and that means that unless I force myself, 4 out of 7 days, I'm not doing anything productive at all. So maybe 7-8, if I'm home, could be time I should be exercising. And then 10-midnight could be time for reading or studying or watching anime...or something like that. I don't know if I'd be able to keep a schedule like that even if I made one.

I think my half-cousin Ryan is coming to visit tonight, and I have to 'escort' him to Logan on public transportation early tomorrow morning. Our relationship has been somewhat rocky over the several years he's been my cousin, so...I just hope that he gets off the train when I tell him to. --; It would be bad to lose him in Boston, I think.

Anyway. That's enough banter.

<3 for..nevermind.
~Rai

Mmmm, lichi pudding.

Second entry of today...lame, I know. But I figure it's better to write what I'm thinking here, rather than on a peice of paper that'll either clutter my room, or get chucked out anyway. What a waste of a peice of paper.

This is all because I read something...a true story you could say, about a person who adored another person very much. That could describe countless, countless stories, each one as cliché'd as the next...but it was kind of a wakeup call, because it's amazing how much your awareness of a concept can disappear if it's not an important factor in your life. Like religion. Some people don't even think about it, discount it as something trivial and unworthy of contemplation...yet others allow it to consume their lives, and look to it as a mode of regulating their entire behavioral pattern. It's amazing. And that's why what I read shocked me, because it reminded me what it's like to love someone. I haven't felt that sort of obsession with another person in so long...the constant hoping, expecting, yearning for contact with them, the feeling that you would gladly die, if it would save them, if it would help them, if it would make them happy. Have I really ever felt that way? The feeling seems so familiar, and yet not...as though I experienced it in another life, or in a particularly vivid dream. But my senses have dulled so much that I can scarcely even imagine feeling like that again.

I just feel...detatched. Not apathetic, since my thoughts are wrought with anxiety and guilt. Not assexual, since I'm horny as hell sometimes. Just...uninterested. I don't know anyone who I could even fathom caring about so deeply. I look around at people and I see friendship there, yes, good conversations...but no connection. Nobody I find myself thinking about, even when I promised myself I wouldn't... Yes, I had a crush at school, but he didn't really mean anything to me--I wouldn't die for him. I wouldn't stay up til dawn, staring avidly at a buddy list in hope he'd sign on. (Though, to be fair, I don't know his sn.) There was none of the deep-rooted will to please, will to cheer, will to kindle the relationship to further intimacy. Crushes are just interest, the bottom step of a staircase to greater heights. Nothing more...the caring comes later.

I used to adore the song "Flinch" by Alanis Morissette, because it seemed to hit so close to home--
Soon I'll grow old, and I won't even flinch at your name...
I hoped to god that that would be the case. I guess there was a time that it burned me to think of him, because he was so cold to me...but we've split contact to such a degree that frankly, I don't feel a thing anymore. Giancarlo. No shudder, no bitterness, no pain. Only an idle curiosity of where he is and what he's been doing. He's probably graduated college. He might even be married. In a totally different country. Who knows? I wonder if he's happy. No lingering sadness at these ruminations. When it comes down to it, I don't think I really care, it's just out of deeply ingrained habit that I wonder these things once his name floats to mind.
Even though I was once obsessed with him...there are many who would not consider what we had as anything at all. Was it really love? What counts as love, and how can you tell? So many people ask these questions everyday. It's subjective, I suppose--because while I was involved in whatever it was, I never questioned that I was feeling total love and adoration for him every moment of every day. It's only in the aftermath of a something that you start to question things like that, like if it ever really happened or existed...since it's no longer there, in your face, reassuring you that it is and was as real as you'd hoped. And it's just as well. I just wonder if I'll ever really...understand it. Or know anything of this nature for sure.

I must admit, I doubt it. Stuff like this, which is based on faith and trust in one's feelings...is only as real as you make it, or believe it to be. And I tend to dislike people--frankly, the thought of not ever loving someone...it bothers me very slightly, but not a lot. Seeing how much grief and agony other people go through in relatively NON-bumpy relationships, I wonder if my jadedness isn't somehow a good thing.

All of this makes good fodder for consideration, in any case.