Wandering with the Wind...

Monday, November 15, 2010

This is just the second post in months and I'm already starting to realise just how much I had missed this world here. Talking to the wind, talking to that perpetual, unmoving sunset...to that distant bank on which whoever stands I have yet to know...there are so many things here that feel like home. So many things reality would bereave me of, and of which I will not let go.

Life to me lately has been like some kind of pot filled with all kinds of flavours. Things just blended in, with as much rigor like they did in normal semesters but with much less intensity and with gaps for reprieves. I finished the bulk of the illustrations. I started learning a bit of parkour. I continued going for tuitions. I got an art award. I attended a sort-of disappointing AFA. Life just went on. Everything, from bitter to sweet, sour to spicy, they all formed a strange unperceivable blob of something for which I do not know what to feel.

And that blob is life.

After fifteen years I still find it difficult to understand what life means to me. I know of a distant purpose, some instinctive idea that there is a task I have to complete within my designated period here, but I just can't put my finger on it. An ego way of putting it would be that I have felt, from the day of my birth, that I was born not to pull myself through the sludge and conform to societal norms; I needed to do something big, and to achieve that I would have to walk a way different from others. I need to find the courage to walk away from the rest in pursuit of what I truly want and need to do.

But courage is a strange thing. I do not believe many years will make me understand it. I do not think that I - no, anyone ever will.

It is difficult to understand something that shuns you.

Ah well. Enough with the mindless emoing. I guess I've been missing out on the...more physical details of life lately so why not go into that? I'll list all the things that made me happy over the course of the past month.

1) I got honorable mentions in Extravaganza art comp.
2) My parents surprisingly did not explode at my horrid GPA.
3) I got to improve in the parkour roll and managed to do a bit of lazy vault.
4) I've been going to Az's house for the past 2 weeks, and she came to mine too. Had a lot of fun (RS is not counted).
5) Naruto manga is going into climax. Hope the anime can get rid of fillers soon.
6) Talked with the counsellor. Made me feel better.
7) Attended AFA for the first time, and saw cosplayers up close for the first time! :D
8) Az bought me Naruto's frog pouch gama-chan. It was so cute! >.<
9) Read an awesome (-ly sad but bittersweet) Naruto fanfic.
10) This is kind of long ago (in Oct) but - AZ GAVE ME THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER, complete with presents, drawing, movie, and homemade cake. It was really awesome! Thanks Az!
11) Az and I are planning to start our own manga.
12) I fixed my blog background music! :D And got to check out some of Joe Hisashi-sensei's awesome piano compositions in the meantime.

Hmm. Now for the things that made me sad, or moody, or just generally feeling some form of negative emotion...

1) Daily bickers with parents. The old thing. Getting really sick of the prevalent disharmony.
2) RS is taxing.
3) Pressurized by the other winning artworks at Extravaganza. The truth of my standards hit me.
4) Tuition teachers are getting serious with my results. I do not want to be reminded of Physics and Chem experiences after EYA.
5) Had to be coerced into reading extremely boring and loooong Chinese texts everyday.
6) Father seems not happy enough about my artistic accomplishments and pursuits. It seems he can only be appeased if I gave up art and turned in the science direction. (Rest assured I will not.)
7) My computer crashed from trojan virus. D<>
8) K up-ed the tension in our friendship by getting jealous.
9) Getting increasingly displeased with a friend's attitude.

Yup, that's about it. I have 12 main happy things and 9 sad things. 12>9 and enough said. I have more happy things I can think of compared to sad ones and thus I really shouldn't emo so much anymore. I should be content whoo! *pumps fist in the air*

Hmm so speaking of which the manga Az and I are planning to work on will no longer be durarara fan-comic-ish, but instead it's gonna be fully original. Well sort of at least. We kinda went to random plot generator at 7th Sanctum site and pieced some bits and pieces of inspiration we got from there. Now we can actually see a tiny story bud sprouting from the mud. I'm gonna drag in Seiran who's gonna be this newcomer to the city and also a wanderer / mercenary who has a serious misunderstanding with his father, and I will also be creating another character who's gonna be a poor peasant boy / commoner boy. Ah well. Everything's still in the form of a temporary hashed out plan. Nothing can be said for sure.

At least I know I'll be in charge of two main characters so far and will make sure I take good care of them. *Evil grin*

That reminds me of the bittersweet Naruto fanfic I read today morning. It was so beautifully sad, so purely and cleanly touching, I cried for dunno how many times whilst reading it. The loneliness and pain Naruto underwent...it must be a lonely existence, to be a hanyou when all the rest of the world remains perfectly human and shuns you for exactly who you are. He didn't get a chance to be understood. He didn't get a chance to understand himself.

And the way he was taught to view himself! Oh heavens! He thought of himself as a mere gift to his father and thought he would be deemed a burden if he wasn't good enough. He didn't understand what love was. Not when he believed he should have been his father's servant instead of a bloodkin, a son. And Minato showed him, step by tender step, the gentle ways of a father and the heartwarming bonds of family. From simple actions such as being there during a nightmare Naruto leaked over through the connection...to greater things like accepting his son's demon half...Minato is a great father. He is a great father just like the Father of the Konohagakure people regard him as. He was a great father to Naruto.

(I would love to have a father like that.)

It was so beautiful, so fragilely touching, I lost myself utterly in those heartwarmingly hearbreaking words. It was sadness and joy. Fire and water. Acceptance and rejection. Love and hate. It was bittersweet.

Sigh. Good fanfics like these are so hard to find nowadays. Whenever I search for something good that could keep me submerged within its alternative universe...somehow whatever is desired no longer pops up. I've scoured through the more prominent Naruto communities on fanfic.net. Maybe it's cuz I've read all the good stuff I can find there, and good ones are coming too slow and too few at a time. Oh well, guess I'll just wait.

After all, like courage, good things are best received when they are unexpected.

Like a pleasant surprise. Hm.

***

~~~*Played with the winds at 9.59pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 7:54 PM

Roaming the Winds

Sunday, November 14, 2010

14th Nov 2010 (Sunday) *Extravaganza Art Competition

Finally! After one month of inactivity I've finally decided to drag myself back in here and post something about life. Life. Ah that big, sophisticated, annoyingly confusing thing.

The results for the Extravaganza '10 Competition were out yesterday. I got an honorable mention in the Trad Ink Category, along with Ch who got about the same and Bella who got honorable mentions in the Graphite Category.

Hmm I guess I'm pretty happy. I mean it IS my first art competition ever and also my first time getting a proper award thing for my art. Not that the prize was actually very nice, considering how they somehow took out the original $50 bucks from the prizelist and replaced it with the Animax Goodie Bag, but who cares. I'm just after the certificate. It's all I need to tell myself there is proof of recognition for my artwork, money doesn't count.

Though no matter how elated I should be I can't help but feel depressed after the entire event. It's strange, my person that is. I always just seem to feel the opposite of how I should feel for happy occasions, and this irks me that it prevents me from enjoying what I have earned. The pressure follows me everywhere. The inconfidence. The notion that whatever I do does not match up to what others can do.

I hate myself for being this competitive, but I felt this pang of depression when I looked at the other winning artworks. I mean, seriously, what's up with mine? A rushed piece of work within 3 hours filled with unfinished brushstrokes and unblended splotches, along with a clashy colour theme (which is the kind I really hate). Can't I do better? I should have, really. I should and could have done so much more. But somehow things just don't come out the way I want it to sometimes. Especially when life gets on me and my inspiration gets all blocked up...I feel frustrated, so frustrated.

And then my parents. They were happy. Well at least I'd assume they'd be considerably glad. But for some danged reason (or maybe none at all) my dad kept talking about how much prize money I'd be getting, whether there'd be interviews, whether my friends and teachers would be there etc etc. Come on! Give me a break. He made it sound as if he expected Extravaganza to be a horridly huge and formal competition - the kind like UOB in which winners like Bai Tian Yuan get shot up to national fame. But it isn't! Stop trying to hope that it is! Because it isn't, and by that I really mean it isn't! I dunno, I guess I really am too sensitive but it makes me feel as if I wasn't good enough, that I got an award for a small informal competition instead of the prestigious kind that my parents would just love to see me winning in. But isn't this good enough? At least for now?

When is anything ever going to be good enough for you?

When am I ever going to be good enough for you?

I don't know, I'm just trying my best. I'm trying to be the best kid for you too in a sense, but I'm also trying to be the best person for myself. I know all about the filial piety thing. And I feel obliged to repay all that you have done for me with sincerity. But when in doing so you're living someone else's dream instead of your own, it's no longer called filial piety. It's mindless sacrifice, a horrific lack of personality and purposeful direction in life that leaves you lost and alternating between others' wishes. Others' wishes. Others' desires. Others' hopes.

For you, perhaps, but not your own.

I know what is best for me. Trust me, I do. I know the age of fifteen is mid-adolescence and it is difficult for you to let go of me so easily, but someday, a very inevitable someday, I'd be off and away, beyond your hold and beyond your line of vision anyway. It is just a matter of time. And when my time comes I'd have to be on my own, no matter how both you and I may wish otherwise.

People keep telling me to be who I'm not. People keep believing I'd be better off if I were a different person from who I am now. But I want to be nothing but myself, to live with the persona I have created like I would in a house I've built a long time ago. By that I mean, and I sincerely mean, that I want to go with art.

I want to hold art's hands. I want it to hold mine. I want the two of us to be crossing those wild, wild moorlands which nothing but time can trespass. I want it to be just the two of us, a piece for each other, in an eternal, unbroken, poetic friendship.

I love art. I love art. I love art. I love art. I love art. I love art. I love art.

I love art to the infinitum.

Will you love me back?

***
~~~*Played with the winds at 10.14pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 9:50 PM

Roaming the Winds