4 posts tagged “associate”

Ah, here we are again.  After Christmas I went to Japan for New Year's.  I had lots of fun and took about 400 pictures and some videos as well. Don't expect to see them all - most will probably die a quiet death.  Perhaps I will get around to slogging through them at some point, though with my past record... yeah.  We'll see.  I'm going to try to be more productive this year. Try being the key word there.  Anyway.

Things I missed about Japan. 

--Actual houses. 
--Being able to talk to people. 

--Rayuu and shichimi - the things that make Japanese food spicy.

Rayuu and shichimi

Afternoon Tea!

--Coco Ichibanya Chicken Katsu/Cheese Curry.
--ramen!!
--Caffe Veloce Iced Cocoa.

Yeah, food is clearly associative for me.

Before Christmas, I decorated my apartment.  And then, when I went to Japan, I got some other thingys.  So now my place looks thoroughly lived in, cute, and boasts a random collection of art, Christmas cards, and small figurines. 

First up, my puzzles. Which, I might add, were a pain in the butt.  Had to get mr. lee to come drill holes in my cinderblock walls. Hope they aren't going to charge me for that when i leave...

The first one, Starry Night, a classic.  The second one is Art Nouveu, by Alphonse Maria Mucha.  I love his art.  I would like to find more of them in the future.  He really likes painting women, and series. For some reason his works remind me of neechan.  Probably cause she likes Art Nouveau as well.

Anyone who has ever visited a room I have lived in for a significant period of time has probably noticed that I like small figurines, usually animals.  Especially cats.  I kind of collect things like that.  When I was in Japan I discovered hashi-oki (chopstick rests) are great for that sort of thing. They are invariably small and usually cute.  I had two already, a tiger and a dragon from a series on the Juunishi (Zodiac Animals).  This time while I was in Kyoto, I picked up a few more.

Tigers and Dragons

Off to the left are the ones I had before, and then from the left - chirimen dragon and tiger, a normal dragon and tiger, but bigger and more cartoonish than my others, and lastly, a pair in Heian-period robes.  I like the chirimen ones the best, but chirimen things are just so adorable - I found out while I was there this time that it's a mostly Kyoto thing, and it's made by twisting the silk thread while weaving. 

Found these in Kiyomizudera at a handmade family-run shop and thought they were adorable. No dragons, unfortunately.  They did have lots of cows though, since that's this year.  Next year is my year!!  I hope I will get to visit Japan at some point during the year of the Tiger.  These two are very different styles, but both cute.

Kiyomizu Tigers

Last but not least - on New Year's Eve day I rode a bike down the Philosopher's Path in Kyoto and found these watercolors.   I thought they were beautiful, and so I picked out the ones I liked best.  There's some of my other stuff visible on the ledge, including my Hina Matsuri figures that Gizmo loves to play with when I'm at work.

Watercolor Postcards

And one last one, entirely out of order.  My museum postcards and Christmas cards.

Art and Xmas Cards

Okay, now that's it's almost 3 AM and I have just paid $1,000 worth of bills (most of them student loans), I'm going to bed. I feel rather accomplished.  Tomorrow... other stuff.

~~Dammit! I hate it when Vox decides I've just spent half an hour typing an empty post. GRR. Try again, as Aaliyah used to say.~~

As I was saying, Most of my friends already know this.  But for those of you who don't, here's your warning.  I listen to lyrics and find all kinds of associations and them share them with my friends. Now that I have the helpful blogosphere, you won't be subject to emails of these things!!

I mentioned earlier, I'm not really into Jack's Mannequin's new album, The Glass Passenger.  I'm still trying it, but I only have found a few songs on it that I really like - "Annie use your telescope" and "The Resolution" among them.  And I don't care that the video is bad, neechan.  :P It's still a good song.

~~random thought: I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I have to actually eat dinner at a table again instead of on my bed in front of my computer.  It will feel strange, I'm sure.~~

I have, however, been listening to Something Corporate recently, since I finally got around to dling their discography, and I'm quite enjoying it.  For the uneducated out there, it's Andrew McMahon's first band - Jack's Mannequin is a side project. (His name's not actually Jack, neechan. Jeez! Read the wiki!!)  I think it's cause I've been in the mood for upbeat stuff lately.  ~~Excuse me while I throw my furball across the room for attempting to steal my dinner.~~  Tonight two of the songs really stuck out while I was cooking dinner, and I thought I would share.  The first one is first, because, well, because it came first.  And it's related to my last post.  Here it is, and lyrics below:

10 - Something Corporate - Good News

"Good News"
by Something Corporate

She's trapped inside her room
With reruns on the screen
Old books and movies
But she can't stop thinking
I'm torn between myself
My radio my friends
I want to write this one off over and over and over again
And then she looked at me to scream
"My castles are falling"
But I can't look into the street
Without everything changing

I wanna read good news good news
I wanna be innocent again
I wanna read good news good news
But nothing good is happening

She waits all day
She stands a stranger in her skin
She moves the science with her hands
She lines her walls
With every paper she can see
These words consume her
But they never set her free
And then she looked at me to scream
"My castles are falling"
But I can't look into the street
Without everything changing

I wanna read good news good news
I wanna be innocent again
I wanna read good news good news
But nothing good is happening

nothing good is happening
nothing good is happening

I wanna read good news good news
I wanna be a little kid again
I wanna read good news good news
But nothing good is happening
I wanna read good news good news
I wanna go to sleep at night again
I wanna read good news good news
But nothing good is happening
But nothing good is happening
But nothing good is happening

~~~~~
Relevant?  The content vaguely reminds me a lil bit of that Rob Thomas song I posted a while back, and attendant thoughts on music as social commentary, though this one is more personal and less universal.  Makes me think high school.  But still apt.   More bad news: I did my nails! And then I washed the dishes.  ;_; So there are three of them left looking nicely.  -sigh- Maybe I should just give up doing my nails.    And Google keeps bringing up pages in Korean.  I hate it when I does that.  And my stuff keeps failing in the middle of uploads...

Next one!! Entirely for fun, but it's a fun song.  Makes me think of Nick, a lil bit.  And me.  And driving in the middle of the night around Atlanta, just because we could.

11 - Something Corporate - 21 and invincible

"21 and Invincible"
by Something Corporate

Some days go by, I wish I were famous
Or maybe religious, so I could go to heaven
Just like you
I can have a big house, complain about taxes
Payoff my ex's, ain't that living
No one makes fun of me, cause I can't stand up for myself

We're 21 and invincible
Can't wait to screw this up
We're 21 and invincible
I'm in power for the hour
I guess today's gonna blow us away

I've got a girlfriend
She tells me she needs me
And she loves me
We'll probably get married
Oh no, and everyone will bite their tongues so hard they bleed

When mom hears this song
She'll tell me I'm crazy
She'll say to me:
"Son you're much too young, go have some fun don't waste your youth like I did"

We're 21 and invincible
Can't wait to screw this up
We're 21 and invincible
I'm in power for the hour
I guess today's gonna blow us away

And it's been Autumn since the day that I met you
If I hit bottom must I crawl out alone?
And I dont wish to know the secrets of summer at all

We're 21 and invincible
Can't wait to fuck this up
We're 21 and invincible
I'm in power for the hour
I guess today's gonna blow us away

~~~~
Okay, I'm off to go upload more of my drive to the tubes, maybe do some knitting, since that was what I was supposed to do this weekend, before I decided to reformat my computer. But I can't finish it tonight, even if I had time - no more DVD-RWs.  Have to go shopping for house things tomorrow anyway.

I've been up since 530 am.  I feel like i should be tired. hmm.

in other news, i finished another book the other day.  please don't laugh at me, i think it's really interesting. i've had it for a while, and decided to re-read it the other day.  while i will admit that the writing can get a lil preachy at times (this guy totally has it in for "orthodox science", I think it's interesting. and being naive/gullible as I am, the science seems fine to me.  plus, i love stuff like this - i should have been and interdisciplinary studies major.  I associate.  And this equals history/myths/religion/astronomy/other science.  Fun stuff. For you skeptics, I offer the same advice as those who look down upon my choice in trashy vampire romance novels or citrus fan-fiction: Don't knock it 'til you try it. 

The Atlantis Enigma

Herbie Brennan

In more serious thoughts, even if I don't leave Atl completely, a move to a different locale might be in order.  It's a big city, after all.

Plans for today: do all the crap I was supposed to do yesterday.  Maybe sleep in there somewhere.

I’d forgotten how beautiful Atlanta can be, sometimes.  Sure, it’s hell in the middle of the day, when it’s ridiculously hot and humid and full of traffic.  And the tornadoes, not really all that fun (though, I can’t say we’ve ever had one at Emory, while I’ve been here anyway).  But there are other times: in the middle of the night when the buildings are all glowing, the sunset from the top of the hill where both the skylines are visible against the sky that is more colors than orange, but impossible to describe.  The afternoons when the clouds pile up purple in the sky and the storms that come afterward, sometimes thick and warm, or cold and drenching.  In the forest when the fireflies are out, and then the stars.  The full moon at sunrise, which is rainbow-colored, but paler than the sunsets.  It’s cool then, even in the summer, and I was glad I had brought Nick’s black shirt with me yesterday.

I spent most of the night reading a back issue of Cosmo, chatting up people I don’t know about inane subjects, listening to conversations that I was not a part of.  I suck at hanging out with people since I’ve come home.  Although, I can’t say that’s true, actually – I’m fine with small groups of people, who I know, who are actually interested in me.  But I’ve never had very much patience for carrying on boring conversations with people I will never see again, and it’s gotten less, since I’ve been gone.  It was good to see people again, but out of 8 or so, there were only two I was really interested in, and I couldn’t very well monopolize them.  Since we’ve been abroad, we all had stories to catch up with, but I’m not a part of that group, so people listened, but didn’t really care.  And after all, study-abroad stories are only interesting to people who haven’t gone for so long.  Ah, reverse culture shock. 

Things like that… make me depressed, somehow.  So much so that I’ve started hearing my life in song lyrics again.  Here we go, from Jack’s Mannequin, “The Lights and Buzz.”

 I’m coming home from my hardest year
I’m making plans not to make plans while I’m here
And this life has been no holiday, a complicated situation
I’m fine with all my memories, so I could use vacation… 

I’m coming home to the lights and buzz
Streets look the same, still nothing’s as it was
This place is Paradise I’m sure, here’s my reservation
I’ve gotten lost here once before, inside a good vibration…

I’m sitting outside the library, next to my fountain (which no longer runs).  Walking back from Highland Lake was nice, but it also reminded me that here I am again, in Atlanta, and as much as I love this place, I might need to leave.  Past Bethany’s apartment, where I broke up with Fez, finally.  Down the hill, and the moon is setting over Jon’s building, that I stormed out of on graduation night.  Up the hill to Clairmont – how many times have I taken the shuttle from there early in the morning, to change clothes or catch a nap before a class after spending the night out?  I can’t go anywhere here, without remembering things, and for someone like me, who remembers places, and people, it’s almost debilitating.  It’s worse when I’m lonely and depressed.  I wonder what a map of Emory would look like for me… I could do an overlay, of places and memories.  Do other people remember in this way? 

It’s worse with people, to remember them this way; when you see them again, they’ve changed, and you’re not sure if they’re the same person.  The answer, of course, is invariably no, but that’s not what I mean… it’s hard to put my finger on.  I have to re-evaluate them, and it confuses me, sometimes.  We’re still at Emory, right?  Why are you a different person than I remember?  It seems stupid to ask that, but I can’t help associating people and places, and the changes take me by surprise.  Perhaps only because I haven’t been here in so long.

Leaving Atlanta might be a good idea.  Getting away from this place.  I’ll probably never completely disassociate the memories from the place, which isn’t a bad thing.  But right now, it’s too strong; I’m too young to remember things the way that I do.  Maybe, when I come back for my 10-year reunion, or something, it will be different.  

All this is percolating because it’s only me, I think.  Until I saw friends today, it was just me.  I have a feeling that even though they are here, that won’t really change. 

But I’ve got friends who
(La la lie)
Will help me pull through
(La la lie lie lie)

-Jack’s Mannequin, "La La Lie"