11:54 pm: Happy post!
Now that I got the last post out of my system, I'm feeling remarkably better. I've actually been dealing with stress and family problems surprisingly well in the last two weeks. Things have been difficult lately, but it wasn't until today that I felt stressed out enough to bitch about them on livejournal, and I'm feeling back to normal faster than usual :) Some of it I'm sure it's because Hong Kong movies are thereupetic to my soul, but a lot of it was a phone call with enyka a couple of weeks ago and seeing her again last weekend. I wrote in an unfinished post about last weekend that she always grounds me and keeps above the miry pit of self-pity and melodrama, and I guess I'll have to replace that line now when I post it, but it's true. And seeing Essjayvee today also helped me feel more human and put things in perspective. I love my friends.
Anyways I wrote this on the train to Essjayvee's yesterday, when I was a in good mood, and I'm happy to say I'm feeling pretty good right now.
***
This one time I was on the Ottawa Public Tranpso bus, and there was this gigantic snarl of a traffic jam. Really, I should have gotten off and walked home. It would have been faster, an hour and a half to get home, but considering that I was stuck on the bus for two hours, yeah, faster. Of course I didn’t know I was going to be stuck for two hours. I’m sure you’ve all been there before – you think it may be a long time stuck in traffic, but you’re afraid the moment you get off the bus, it’s going to clear and everyone’s going to speed off right beside you.
I stayed on, going crazy because the bus never moved, didn’t even budge except maybe half an inch every ten minutes or so. People were grumbling, cars were honking below us, I sat there cursing myself for not having a book or some knitting with me.
And then I heard this song come out of nowhere, a man’s voice, clear but French accented, slow and curling like cigarette smoke. It sounded like a song from the fifties, one of those that you can imagine a man wooing his lover, though I tend to associate those kinds of songs with twisted acts of violence and murder where the soft crooning music floats above to contrast with the creepiness below (if you ever saw “the wall scene” in Angel’s Rm w/a vu, you know what I’m talkng about.) Naturally, me being me, I was creeped out, and trying to figure out where this song was coming from. It didn’t sound like it was coming from someone’s overloud ipod or MP3 player, or from outside the bus. It was, to take a phrase of the great Diana Wynne-Jones, a disembodied voice, just floating over us bus riders as we listened to this swaying, light-headed tune.
I’m not sure when I discovered it was the bus driver singing it over his microphone, but the moment I did, I was utterly charmed. He must have been as bored as we were, poor thing, and decided to past time by serenading his passengers. Luckily for us, he had the perfect voice for those fifty songs, low and rich and French. He also made a bunch of jokes inbetween songs, and gave us a tour of Ottawa, telling us which buildings we were passing and what we could find in them. One of teenage girls next to me gushed to her friends that she just loved the driver. I couldn’t agree with more.
Eventually the traffic cleared and the last few kilometers him he sped though in ten minutes, singing more fifty songs the whole time. He also told people over the microphone that if they needed new transfer because their old ones expire to please come to the front for another one. Nice man! Anyways, I was I the back seat and couldn’t get to the front because there was a huge blockage of people. I didn’t need a transfer – the bus dropped me off at home – but I did want to tell the bus driver how much I enjoyed his singing.
The bus got to my stop, and there was still this huge blockage of people, so I jumped out of the back door and ran up to the front. Luckily, he was still letting people onto the bus. I waved my arms so he could see me, and then yelled, “You have a lovely singing voice!” He looked surprised and then really happy. “Thank-you so much!” he said to me, and I must add heartily, but his tone was very hearty when he said that, and I just as heartily shouted back, "You're welcome!"
11:03 pm: Blimey, that week went by fast.
It was Sunday, I blinked, and it's suddenly the weekend. Apparently poor sleep screws up how one perceives time, and sleep has been poor of late, but really, when I think about it, no more poorer than it usually is. I'm just getting worse at dealing with it. Concentration has gone down the drain, and I still owe replies, emails, and SPAM >_< Not to mention I need to clean the place before my sister-in-law and the baby comes tomorrow. On one hand, I'm apprehensive at the thought of more noise, more distraction, more stress, less sleep and less time to catch up on online stuff. On the other hand, I can't wait to see my newest niece and to dote on her and hold her and love her as much as I love the other two. The other hand wins.
It looks like my contract will be renewed until Christmas, but for another position. I should over the moon with joy, but mostly, I'm just tired. Now I need to find another place to live for the fall, someplace close to work that's hopefully near an school that teaches Chinese.
I really want to learn Chinese. I can't describe the longing whenever I watch Hong Kong movies or listen to Chinese songs to understand what's they're saying. It was supposed to be be mine, the ability to speak those words and read the characters on the screen and understand the context of what's going on. I know I have no one to blame but myself for giving up on Chinese when I was teen, but it doesn't make the loss any easier. At least I have a great lifelong love for their entertainment which flares up every now and then.
Obviously, with the last few posts being about Hong Kong movies, right now is either a now or then. Warning that I will posting more on Hong Kong movies or Chinese music. I'll try to LJ-cut it so I don't clog up my flist, but yeah, more to come on that and on stars like Anita Mui, Sammi Cheng, and Sally Yeh, who's possibly the only female artist I'll like better as a *singer* (not an actress/performer/celebrity) than Anita Mui. I've been a fan of her singing and appropriately appreciative of her acting since John Woo's "The Killer". Then I saw her in "Peking Opera Blues" as the daughter of an opera theatre owner and she was just spectacular in that role (she also sang the two theme songs). In my opinion, she was the best thing in an already kickass movie, and had the perfect combination of screwball funny, determined heroics, and a down-to-earth girliness in a role that could have easily been bland and one-dimensional.
I also found out today that she practically Chinese illiterate. Turns out she spent her formative years in Canada - she's a big banana :D - and went back to Taiwan when she was 18 and basically learned Chinese as an adult. She could speak it, but couldn't understand written Chinese. They had to romanize the characters with English letters so she could sing or act them out. Hearing her sing and seeing her act, I find that hard to believe, especially her Cantonese. I remember her saying once that singing Cantonese was like swallowing a porcupine, but you'll never guess that with how clear her diction is when she sings it. I'm very impressed.
It also makes me feel better about learning Chinese as a adult (and I have been picking up more words and characters from all the movies and karaoke I've been watching, which is all sorts of exciting). Maybe there's hope for me too :)
11:36 pm: And this would be the second movie in as many days where I’ve seen Anita Mui kiss another woman
I wrote the following review on my bus ride home yesterday after seeing Who’s the woman, who’s the man? for the first time. I've since seen it again, and while I maintain the flaws of the movie are still as annoying as the first time I saw them, the movie is FAR FAR better the second time around. In my opinion, it and its predecessor "He's a woman, she's a man", are two of the best movies out about homosexuality, and they're definitely now my favorite movies on the topic, especially “Who’s the woman, who’s the man?" when it comes to lesbianism. Yes, I am well aware that Wing ends up with her boyfriend, not Fan Fan, but the exploration of her feelings for another woman were done with deft sensitivity, and I appreciated the fact that the movie was more about sexual and personal confusion than putting a label of one's sexuality orientation, admittedly, because I'm confused as fuck over my own sexual preference.
Before I confuse people more, here's the review I wrote yesterday, complete with recaps this time (heh) and lj-cut for length. A brief rant about the lack of good lesbian storyline in entertainment kind of jumped out during the writing of it. I also added more to the "Things I love about the movie" list at the end after seeing it a second time today. There was a lot of little bits of thoughtfulness and "just plain human being moments" that I missed the first time time around. Mostly, I love this movie, and the original, because they're a rarity in today's cinema: genuinely sweet movies on a contraversial topic, with not a bad bone in their bodies. Other than Pixar, it's been a long time since I've seen a good movie that was sweet, and even longer since I've seen an adult one.
Yeah, I've been so into the Hong Kong movie thing that I forgot about their birthday until I got home and saw Sarah's email entitled, "its my birthday XD yay!" O.o I called them right away. Don't worry, I have something planned for when I see them next in Ottawa. Haunted walks, turtle shaped cakes, a ridiculous amount of birthday money if I can't think of anything else.
So Hong Kong movie posts tomorrow. Today (what's left of it, damn laptop crash) will be about the girls, with lots of pictures from that Saturday when they last here and I took them downtown. It was a lovely outing, and yes, the above picture is from that day while we were waiting for the Subway. That's possibly my favorite picture of them, and pretty much describes the day in a nutshell ^_^
08:07 pm: I'm fourteen again!
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! OH MY GOD! SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I LOVE HE'S A WOMAN, SHE'S A MAN! LOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEITLOVEIT!
That movie has reduced me to your average teenage lovesick girl puppy who dots her i's with hearts and signs her lettes XOXO. I want to put up posters in my room now, and gaze at them adoringly while dreaming of love true happening.
I take back everything I said about romantic comedies. No, wait, most of them still suck, but every now and then you'll get one like this one that sends you out of orbit. I love this movie so much. No wonder it's considered a classic and was one of Hong Kong's big hit back in the days. It's also the only Hong Kong movie I think I can show people who's not into Hong Kong movies. I'm getting my sister to watch it. I think she'll love it. It's such a charming, thoughtful, wonderfully adult movie, even if it uses Sesame Street puppets.
Puppets! IT HAD PUPPETS!
And still manages to be a mature, honest movie about emotional and sexual confusion, with so much heart. Wonderful humour (I laughed as hard at this one as I did with Wu Yen.) One of more sensitive look at homosexuality, even without a gay OTP (but hey, it's a Hong Kong movie, and they can slip gay into the most heterosexual plotline.) A few very hot kisses ;)
I am such a girl!
Oh Leslie. You were such a hottie, and utterly convincing as a man who's likes women but begins to question himself about a certain boy. Not that I blame you, I dare anyone to watch this and not fall in love with Anita Yuen, in boy or girl form. Carina Lau reminds me why I'm such a fan of hers, and her character reminds me why I like Hong Kong movies so much better than Hollywood's so often - what Hollywood would have vilified because she's not part of the OTP, Hong Kong movies usually emphasize and shows she doesn't fit but she's still great in her own right.
I've been looking for a good romance for a while, and this satisfied that craving beautifully. I love that the characters aren't caricature, and I love that it made homosexuality an issue without making it an *ISSUE*, and I love the puppets, and that ending that left me squealing.
Now to look at more MVs and gaze adoringly at them.
08:47 pm: One of the most inspired casting ideas ever
Anita Mui as the skirt chasing highly incompetent very male Emperor Qi -- that was BLOODY BRILLIANT! If I wasn’t madly and passionately in love with the late great Anita Mui already, seeing her in Wu Yen would have made me fall down in adoration of her. Oh god, she was a riot. I can’t remember the last time I laugh so continuously through a movie. Well, the script help too. It did go twenty minutes longer than it had to (and twenty minutes longer than it *should*), but fufufufufu, I could look at Sammi Cheng’s lovely face all day, so what’s an extra twenty minutes?
I should probably explain what the movie’s about before this post turns into a public proclamation of my true true love for Sammi Cheng.
We have the aforementioned skirt chasing highly incompetent very male Emperor Qi (Anita Mui), who stumbles upon Wu Yen, played by Sammi Cheng, who’s the leader of the Yaksha tribe and, it turns out, Emperor Qi’s predestined wife. Just after they accept to marry each other, Emperor Qi discovers that Wu Yen has a blemish on her face and runs off in horror. Wu Yen then discovers that the blemish was put on her face by a genderbending fox, played by the always beautiful Cecelia Cheung, who has fallen in love with both the Emperor and Wu Yen, but thinks that Wu Yen is hotter so it’s going to assume male form and demands that Wu Yen marries it. If Wu Yen marries the fox, the fox will take the blemish away. Wu Yen refuses, so the fox assumes its female form and goes after the Emperor, who’s all too happy to have a beautiful woman near him.
Needless to say, hijinks ensues.
It’s just good old-fashioned genderbending Hong Kong fun that made me laugh pretty much nonstop at the first half. The second half falters unfortunately, but hey, seeing Anita Mui chase Sammi Cheng about the marriage bed, or yelling at her (his?) advisors in Monty Python style to stop recording her as they jot down her many incompetencies, or try to badly talk her way out of situation, or play a male character who at one point pretends to be a woman? Totally worth it. Anita Mui must have had a ball with this role. Sammi Cheng was terrific too, finding the right balance of comedy and heroism to make her character believable and keep the humour going. One person rightfully said that Sammi has buckets of charm, and even with a straightforward character like Wu Yen, she wins you over. Cecilia Cheung was a bit of a disappointment, mainly because the fox role has a lot of potential to be a Puck-like performance, and she just doesn’t channel the zing and mischief to make it that. I’ve seen her do a lot better. Still, she was sufficiently good as a troublemaker, I was pleasantly surprised how convincing she was as a boy.
08:41 pm: Update
or my excuses for why I haven't answered your email or comment on your post or reply to your reply or in a timely manner # 43069587216859
Yesterday - went through a day on only an hour of sleep, came home, watched Wu Yen, crashed Today - came home half an hour earlier than usual, realized I left my keys at work, and my brother decides he'll go groccery shopping after staying a hour later at work. I'm locked out for about two hours, which could have been spent watching "Who's the man, who's the woman" without being constantly interrupted by family. AUGH. Now finished eating, going to post entry that I wrote on the bus ride home, do dishes, bathe, will crash shortly afterwards.
09:39 pm: Don't trust your first impression with this one
When I was about six years old, I walked into my aunt's living while a Hong Kong movie was on and caught the torture scene where Brigitte Lin basically got scoured. That scene gave me nightmares for years (I was one of those kids who was scared of EVERYTHING - you really should have seen me when the doctor Who theme came on). Years later, I would find it out that the scene was from a movie called Peking Opera Blues, which people claimed to be one of the Hong Kong classics, a very funny movie, a great screwball comedy.
Me: A SCREWBALL COMEDY?
I just finished watching it for the first time, with essjayvee and Mr. Ess (who if you are watching a movie with bad subtitles are the perfect folks to watch it with) and oh yeah, it's screwball all right. One of the screwiest screwballs I've been ever seen, even with the torture scene and a high body count. It's also incapsulates everything I love about Hong Kong movie: humour, action, lovable characters who are resourceful as anything and who have wonderful chemistry together (I'm mostly into Hong Kong movies for how the characters interact and bond, and the five main leads totally deliver a fantastic if odd comradery) and outlandish plots. I had so much fun watching it.
Mind you, the subtitles were terrible, so I'm very hazy about the plot. I'm also torn about the subtitles issues because on one hand, not being able to understand what was happenng was frustrating, but on the other hand, those subtitles were hysterical. How could anyone not love "There's a girl. Knock her up!"
I love Hong Kong movies sooooo much ^_^
Then we saw Doctor Horrible Sing-a-long blog, which after the initial reaction, I have to say really really works. More on that on the bus ride home. It's past my bedtime again ~_0
10:29 pm: Social blogging!
Remember social blogging? Back in the short-lived pitas and blogger days where we could answer six different blogs in one post? And find interesting ways to weave different response to a number of people into your post? It was classic.
Okay, so my first Ammie-as-SPAM is a cheat, but I had all sorts of things clogging up my brain that needs to be purged onto LJ before I could get the creative wheels whirling again, and hey, I miss social blogging. Real spam to follow. Hopefully with ticky boxes (or lobsters!)
Awwww, Keiichi! He was the best kind of genki. I miss his genki. I still want a threesome between him, Kamui, and Daisuke. Genki, angst, and gruff stubborn mule (hey, Daisuke was pretty stubborn from what I remembered.) Can you imagine them trying to figure out whch movie to watch? Never did notice the difference betwwen his closed smile and his rare open smile? Must go re-read. I did remember that he had a hidden sadness hidden under his smile. He never did come across as if he was using his smile to hide his sadness though. His genkiness was genuine. He was just thoughtful as well. Awww, Keiichi!
Yeah, it's got to the point where I have to remind myself as often as possible, so that I don't lose count. ^_^;;; (LOL)
Heh. When I had to re-active my credit card, the rep asked me how old I was, and I said 27, then quickly went, "no wait! 28! 28! I just had a birthday!" Yes, like seven months ago O.o
Regarding your reaction to the latest Doctor Who epside: YES, I WAS THRILLED TO SEE X TOO! And I looooooooooooooove the first meeting between X and Y. X and Y are so sweet together :D
...there's been plenty of characters (call them Character Y)that I've liked well enough, and then - when directors/producers/etc start making hints about character deaths in the new season - I'm all "Noooo, don't take X! Take Y instead!" *lmao*
That part cracked me up so bad XD Now I want a list of those X and Y characters. I so know how that's like. For me, it's like, "Take Y instead! I know I said Y was the best and I would love no else, but X turned out to be cooler!" I am fickle. Fickle fickle fickle.
Ooh! Now I have another fandon question for you. Have you made any big changes in opinion over the years? Has there been something or someone that you thought was terrific or terrible in your youth that you re-watched and did a 360 in your opinion?
(Forget this SPAM thing, I must just spend the next few weeks asking you random fandom questions.)
I totally forgot about Kakyou, which I guess is your point about the WASTE OF PAGE SPACE. URGH. GET YOUR DRIPPY USELESS EMO AWAY FROM ME PLZ KAY THNX BYE. In which I say, yes, I concur. Plus he didn't put Hokuto-chan in a crazy outfit in his fantasy thing! And then he made it seem like she was not the lesbian I thought she should be. That upsets!
*blinks* I need to re-watch Pirates of the Caribbean (or watch the 2nd and 3rd movie) I have no idea who Beckett is. I'm curious to see this character that got such a reaction from someone who even likes evil tentacled Hinoto O.o
Gotta get a job where they pay me to read fanfiction. ;P
LOL. Me too. Though reading the novels on my bookshelf should probably be priority. I don't know if I would read Doctor Who fanfic, even if I had the time. I did read a couple of excellent Martha ones that talked about the race issue in HN/FoB, but I don't know. I can see Doctor Who as a breeding ground for Mary Sue fics (oh, I can so see someone inserting her version of the "perfect companion" in it, who cures all the doctor's loneliness and angst), and maybe that's why I feel no desire to read its fanfic. X, Jossverse, X-Files, and Bleach, on the other hand, seem to be made for fanfic.
03:55 pm: and more stuff
The volleyball game between Japan and U.S.A. was AWESOME! Yes, I'm watching the Olympics. I am NOT happy with China's human right issues or communism or "the Tibet thing", but then I'm not happy with the human issues of many countries including America and Canada. Plus the idea of using the Olympics to blackmail China into acting more like how the West wants them to act smacks of sanctimony.
So yes,Japan vs. U.S.A. One of those games I didn't want either team to lose because both played with such heart. I was an inch more hoping for Japan to win because they were SO MUCH FUN (as the sports announcer said, even when they missed they were terrific to watch.) Foget Price of Tennis, Japan should put their women's volleyball team on the stage to heart-swelling music and let them go. I would totally get a plane ticket and pay see to that. The U.S. of A was equally compelling, and it was neck-to-neck for the most part. Just a great game that got me very excited and wishing that I did something athletic with my life.
I've been watching a few eighties Hong Kong movies lately. Dude. The shoulder pads, the puffy hair, the flute-inspired background music, "Take my breath away" sung in Cantonese O.o I can't really say if I like them yet. They seem like movies of their time instead of the timeless classics I thought they would be, though having Chinese subtitles REALLY didn't help. AUGH. Why did I quit Chinese school so early? I must have had some misplaced notion that in the future all movies would be subtitled by a push of a button.
Now for the clean-up. Something that I wrote on the long bus ride home that's been cluttering up my C drive for a while.
06:34 pm: One (of many) reasons why Donna Noble works for me
No spoilers except for the fact that Donna Noble is the latest companion and she’s in her thirties. And maybe a brief one for S4 Ep1.
I don’t relate to the characters within my age group in shows like Friends, Sex and the City, or Grey’s Anatomy. They’re living completely on their own, far away from their family and their family’s influence, and in control of their lives. Sure, they may lose their job or screw up a surgery or be in a bad relationship (and ok, Meredith is still affected by her mom), but there’s the sense that they know who they are and what direction their life will take, even if that direction is to sleep with as many people as they can and go clubbing every night. They’re done with growing, it’s all about being the fully formed adult now.
Then you get to the crime shows and legal shows and soap operas where being in your thirties (or sometimes 21) mean that you have a house, a career, and family, and depending on the show, time to cheat on your spouse on the side with the good-looking neighbor.
After twenty years of watching shows like that, you wonder why I told my sister one day that entertainment never makes any show with characters that I can identify with (though there are characters who I can relate to, mostly in sci-fi.)
So you can imagine how much I appreciated it when we first see Donna go to her home and her mother yells, “Where have you been?” and Donna snaps in exasperation, “how old am I?”
As someone’s who nearing thirty and constantly being treated like a child who doesn’t know better by most of the people I know, it was such a “Oh yes, FINALLY!” moment to have a character who was actually in the similar situation that I’m in. Probably the same situation that many others in their late twenties to middle-ages are in. Not that we all still live with our parents, but a lot of us boomerang back to our family, and even those who don’t probably have family who are pressuring them to be a certain place in life. Even without the family pressure, I can see Donna speaking to a lot of people because she’s not fully established, she’s still growing, and not only is she still growing as a person, she’s still growing UP.
I’ve always had the impression, and this lasted until I was about a few months ago, that I was supposed to stop growing up after I hit 25. I would know everything about the “real” world that I would ever know, because don’t ask how this got stuck in my brain, I had the impression that the brain stopped taking in new information after that age. We no longer evolved after that. We found who we are, we establish ourselves, we know ourselves, we accept it if it turns out we’re losers, and we plunge into the next 60 years with no change, except maybe one day in our forties we’ll discover that we really like country music. Oh, and we will no longer have the teenage bouts of depression and angst, and we get no new internal issues (all issues will be external, like unemployment and debts, but no issues like identity or loneliness) and, well, in brief, we were supposed to be all grown up at 25.
You can’t blame me for thinking that. Seeing the way characters are portrayed in media, and media being our supposed mirror of reality, it seems society believes that one way or another, people are established around 25, and we hit a plateau where is there no more development or maturing to be done. We have matured as much as we ever will, and those who haven’t matured fully are either regressive or socially inept in some ways (slow is the word I’m thinking, with all the negative connotation in the recent usage of the word.)
So it’s actually rather revolutionary to me to see a character like Donna who’s over thirty who’s still growing up. She matures over the series, and really just blossoms as she discovers a place that she fits in, and you don’t get that a lot with older characters. It’s a role reserved for youths (especially females) within the teens to mid-twenties range that seems to be the arbitrary age acceptable to still be exploring. That’s the word I’m looking for! Explore. Asking questions, discovering more about the world. Young girls and youths explore. After 25ers stick their roots down and stay there. Not Donna. She’s still trying to figure out her place in the world, and she’s still trying to see where she fits in, and of course she encounters people who sees all the time it’s taking her to get there as a great waste, and she’s not fulfilling what they believe should be her duty in her life (oh, do I have several of her Mom in my life.)
Best thing about Donna though is that she kick ass. Let’s face it, the fans LOVE Donna. She’s a fantastic person. None of the usual “oh, she’s in her thirties and still exploring therefore she must be socially inept and unable to cope with reality” with her. Donna’s a warm, compassionate, highly capable person, who’s also responsible and intelligent. That means a lot to me, as I’m still in process of maturing, but consider myself a sane, responsible person who works hard at my job and takes care of my own messes (and unfortunately, the messes of others). Just because our lives lack a solid direction and status doesn’t mean we’re all out of touch with reality.
So I love Donna because she shows that just because you’re ignorant about the world around you as you approach middle doesn’t mean you can’t change. She shows that it’s possible to be over thirty and still ask questions, not only about the universe but about yourself, and that there’s still lots to discover and learn, and it’s okay to not know everything and have everything together when you’re over 25. She shows that it’s all right to be growing up even after the age society thinks you should have settled down and known everything you need to know, and you can still be a good, strong person while you’re at it.
Which is excellent because I’m 28 and I’m still growing up, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be done growing up anytime soon ^_^
10:05 pm: Yes, it's that time of year again
Time to make Ammie-Love feel like SPAM.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY DEAREST-AND-THEN-MORE-DEAR.
I am going to clog my flist with post about yooooooooooooooooou. It's going to be spectacular! Ticky Box Spectacular!
And for this first bit of spam, I'm going to doing something that will shock my Leeka-oh-you-computer-illiterate-thing mind and imbed a pointless youtube video that nonetheless made me squeal because, oh my god, Rose, Martha, Donna! Ammie-chan, you must stop getting me into shows with very attractive female leads!
02:48 pm: Lost Eden
I've never been a prolific book reader, but I used to be a very passionate one. The books I did read and love, I cherished them like jewels, like children. It used to amaze me, that mere marks on pages joined together to create letters, then words, then sentences that evoke a full and living universe with characters and action and enormous ideas. It was just series of dashes and curves on paper, but through some sort of sorcery I still can't understand, those dashes and curves would surround me in a solid world where I would taste and smell and feel things there as I would in the real world. I remember seeing and feeling the bark of the trees in varous forests; I remember going into someone's room and seeing their notebook on their table with its too-neat handwriting; I remember the taste of porridge with maple sugar and I remember how the abyss look when a character fell into it and died.
I remember so many times putting the book down because the sensory overload was getting to be too much and being shocked that I was only in my room at my desk, or on the bus, or in the library. A few times I was shocked that there were sunlight coming through the windows because there was a large dark thunderstorm raging in the book, and once I remember being shocked that I could see because the main character was blind, and I was going through the world with only the other senses along with her.
I've been readng "Abhorsen" over the weekend. I haven't read a book in months, and I haven't truly experience a book the way I used to for much longer. I've read the first two books of the Abhorsen series back when a book would send me to another world, and they were fantastic, especially "Sabriel." I saw the Old Kingdom so clearly, and flew with her on the paper wings that absolutely enchanted me. "Abhorsen" so far is excellent, better than the second book, and I'd have to say that it's just as good as Sabriel. Now I wish I read it earlier, when I would have taken those dashs and curves and created a world so solid I would feel as wet and as tired as the characters are right now.
I have not lost the total ability to create a world (or is that I'm tranported in it? No, it's more that it surrounds me and takes over my senses). I still saw the river, still saw the clouds coming in at the distance, still felt the exhaustion of the characters, but the solidness is no longer there. It's transparent, all the way in the back of my mind instead of all around me, constantly superimposed by the interior view of the bus or subway I was riding, or the reading room in the library where I spent a few hours with the girls as we got some quiet reading done. Never once did I forget where I was. If I put the book down, it was because someone got on the bus, or the doors of the subway opened, or one of the girls flipped a page. I was so above the surface of the world of "Abhorsen" that every tiny thing took me out of it.
But as weak and transparents as they were, I did see the clouds and the river and the character, and after so long of not being able to read a book because all I would get were sentences and words, that was such a relief.
12:23 pm: In bad need of time out
And I'm going to take it. My sister and her family just left and my brother won't be back from Ottawa for a few more hours so I'm going to take some time to let the nerves unravel and maybe even enjoy myself by watching some wacky Chinese movies.
Oh god, that ended badly. Saturday was excellent because it was me taking my girls out, just the three of us, and I'll post pictures of that to remind myself why life doesn't suck. Yesterday was all right, and today everything exploded. Hearing couples scream at each other as violently as my sister and her husband do makes my nerves shrivel up. You'd think I'd be used to it with the way my parents throw pots and pans at each other and screamed like banshees and threatened to kill each other throughout my childhood, but if anything, I'm far more sensitive to it now. Plus my parents don't totally hate each other. My sister and her husband hate each other so venomously it fills the room and everyone tiptoes around it and tries to ignore them when they're together in hopes that it'll go away.
Unless you're my mother and brother who's still trying to convince them that all they need is Jesus Christ and all their troubles will go away.
I'm just going to be thankful that despite how much their parents suck, my nieces are for the most part doing well. Sure, they want their parents to divorce because living with two screaming people who hate each other isn't fun (I actually never wanted my parents to divorce but that's because even when they're were threatening to cut each other up, I knew deep down inside they didn't hate each other; my sister and her husband, we all know deep down inside they would kill each other if they could), but they love their parents and they're sweet, sunny, smart girls. They are, by far, the best thing about this family, hell, they are the best thing about this universe, and I strongly believe they are my reward for putting up with so much family shit.
Less emo posts to come. I'm a pussy who hates it when people fight and it takes a while for the nerves to calm down.
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