State of the Journal address
I don't update much, and recently, even when I do, it's fluff and not stuff.
I think that moving the Everloom status reports off here killed the LJ to a good extent.
First subject: New Year
I have three New Year resolutions, none of which I have broken without good reason:
1. Write at least one page of story related material each day. This is a minium, and their's only been one day that I haven't written more. (broken yesterday because I went to a party with friends - see #3)
2. Learn how to drive. It's a life skill. (not done, but not actually broken)
3. Spent more time with my friends. All the ones who live in the area, anyway. (Working at it. Went to a party last night. Jackie and Julie were hosting, and many of my our mutual friends were there. I still need to see Ammi, Alec, Toli, and all the folks in my circle of Nerds. I also need to see my girlfriend and Jessie more.)
Second Subject: Last Year
What a year.
In 2005 I started writing, and I will term that the major event of importance. This was the culmination of events in '04.
Sub-subject: Writing
After Satori in 2004, I joined the Satori forums. Wonderful place at the time, and I posted a lot. I would have posted more, but at that time my typing speed was about three or four words a minute. I sped up some because of the forum, because for the first time, I was typing with motivation.
Other stuff I did on the web in 2004 was the reading of webcomics/webmangas. The one of importance here is Drowtales. Lovely webmanga, and I had always wondered about the forum.
Armed with a familiarity of forums, I decided to join the DT forum... wow. Those reading this from Inverloch know the term '[getting] Ninja'ed' - the DT forum moves so fast that being ninja'ed is a fact of life. I have started posts on page 2 of a thread, and by the time I submitted the post, the thread would be on page five. The DT Forumites are a crazy bunch, too. RPing sloshes together with talking, and all manner of strange stuff happens. I played an FreeFormRP(Was one of the best ones I've played), and tried to stay vaguely current... Which meant typing fast, and a lot.
Soon after that, I joined the much calmer atmosphere of the fledging Inverloch forum. It was a nice quite place, but what interested me was the 'writing section.'
You see, over the course of 2004, I had been writing the first chapter of tLR. I guess it makes a statement about my writing speed at that time that it took me the better part of a year to write eleven pages.
Anyway, I posted the first Chapter of tLR on Inverloch's writing section, and started on the second chapter. Ratharen's gloominess was to depressing for me to continue, and my writing wasn't good enough to convey what I wanted to.
Because of that, I started tToKE, or The Tale of Kal'Essirin. It's a long winding tale, but was good practice. I decided I would write a scene(three pages) a week.
I bumbled my way along the story, and my typing speed and ability to convey in words both improved. I got quite a bit of help from the forum, and some editing from Faile. Between the two, I kept myself motivated, and finished the first chapter of tToKE. I decided to take a week break from tToKE.
During that week, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As some of you may know, my writing voice is a reflection of whatever material I have read recently. If you look at tToKE, you may reccognise similarities between the prologue and The Silmarillion...
Anyway, after reading Hucklebery Finn, my writing was shot. I couldn't continue without my writing sounding like Huckleberry's narrative. I countered this by forcing my writing into another manner. I started Wander.
Wander or rather, in its full name, The Wanderworks Prophecies, started late one night with me being in a sleep deprived state. I started with a rather cliche sentence, and ran with it. Wander has grandiose descriptions, and was a lot of fun. As I wrote, I wove the world - a very interesting place, though not when I would like to live. I also wove the characters, and Eileen is my favorite of them. Poor girl, what happens to her. I found that the main character was rather shallow. X9084 is a interesting guy too, and is loosely modeled on the antagonist of Directions of Destiny.
Wander's descriptions were exhausting, however, and at one point, I got fed up with Wander and wrote "Broken". If you read Broken and Wander you might notice that Broken is low on description, whereas Wander is extravagant. Concidence? I think not.
Broken is my favorite short story, and I ditched Wander to edit it, have others edit it, and try to make it the best I could. I also marketed it a bit.
The reactions to Broken were interesting. Most people liked it, but almost unerringly, females reading it decided that Maureen wouldn't leave Benny. Well guess what - she did. Probably not on purpose, and she probably wouldn't have if she had sat down and weighed her morals. It's a mistake, I guess - I shouldn't leave loopholes so readers can rationalise why all this wouldn't happen. This will come up later in my discussion of House of Fog and Sand
After Broken, I got inspired by a contest on Earthsong's forum, and wrote "Wishes." The Tinman is right that I didn't leave enough open ends, and stated stuff into peoples faces. But with all the comments I got from Broken's feedback, it didn't seem like readers are very smart. I don't think that people reading Broken understood quite as much as I expected.
Wishes is a nice little story, with the aforesaid flaws. One interesting note is that it developed the south of Drahkimar in my mind, and now the map of Drahkimar has gotten much larger. One problem I ran into was that I was wordwise and choose exactly the words that described things best. Southern magic is something I know quite a bit of, and gosh darn it, I'm going to do an accurate description of what happens. I'm afraid that, yes, Southern Magic lacks flair and can be quite boring. But it's cool, because there's more logic to it than most other forms of magic in Drahkimar.
Anyway, after Wishes, I got busy with fall classes and college applications, and didn't do much until the winter.
Now I'm working on a story for a writers conference. Things have changed a lot since last year. Now I can write seven pages in a day, and they are seven good pages. I'm finally getting better at expressing character in their speech, and am much better at sticking to things. My writing speed is, while not insane, very useful.
-End of Sub-Subject-
Other stuff that happened in 2005 included me getting more socially adept. I'm not a socialite yet, but I'm not as crude and rude as I once was. My speech in english has improved a good deal.
Why? Well, I was in highschool. As such, I was actually forced to speak to people on a regular basis. This doesn't really mean that much until you realise that, before this, I only spoke to my parents and my professors. That and talking to myself, but that doesn't count because I can mispronounce things as badly as I want and I'll still understand myself.
The effects of Highschool were quite good. I would have had a much harder time when visiting, say, Bowdoin, if I didn't have the ability to speak to people with both social grace and comprehention without much strain.
What other noteable stuff happened in 2005? Well, I wound up with a girlfriend. Can't say I saw that coming much in advance. Indeed, I figured I would be lovesick for a particualr Sheppard all the way up through college.
It's a strange situation, and I'll give it it's own section a bit later on.
Third subject: Movie Review, and Review of Reactions
I don't watch movies much(almost never), but this last new year's my family rented a movie called House of Sand and Fog.
I love it. It's great. I want to make movies like that.
I recalled some reviewer describing a movie as a trainwreck in slow motion. It definately fits House of Sand and Fog.
Anyway, you people reading this should rent it and watch it. It's rated R for good reason, though my mother thought it was going to be nice.
One last thing - I loved the music. I'm going to see if I can get a CD of the soundtrack, because it rocked my socks. So dark and ominous, melodic and sweet. It would be great music for me to write too as well.
Moving on from the movie, I found the reactions of both my parents... interesting. They found fault at the basic scenario, and tried to prove to themselves that all of this would have never happened. Wistful thinking is nice, and very useful at times, but why watch such a movie and then try to negate the value? A movie that makes me cry is a good movie. A movie that keeps me up all night with my gut in a knot is a great movie. I never negate the value of such things, never harden my heart to the movies. If I had wanted to, I could have easily kept mself from being touched by the drama unfolding in the screen. If I wanted to, I could easily justify why none of this would happen. If I had wanted to, I could easily just put myself at peace.
But I don't. The point of watching such movies is to balance the happiness in my life. By knowing sorrow, I know happiness. If I wanted too, I would tweak my perceptions so that I would be happy all the time. Of course, then the value of happiness would drop, and what I had concidered to be happy would become normal. It would then take further tweaking to reach my new definition of happiness. Eventually, I would be living almost entirely within my own perceptions.
I lead a happy life. Shit happens everyday, but shit isn't that bad, now is it. There's worse shit that could happen. As long as I know that, I can be happy with what shit I have, and not what I would like shit to be.
You know, this reminds me of an episode of Prairie Home Companion. It was mentioned that some people in minnasota live with the eternal veiw that it could have been worse. That they didn't win the lottery, but it could have been worse - who knows. Maybe they could have won the lottery, got the money, then get addicted to gambling... I might proscribe to that view. Nothing's that bad because it could have been worse.
I'm probably the only Californian with that view. Maybe I don't get enough sun... (it was in the eighties this week)
Well, moving on from that line of thought:
Subject four: Girlfriend
For a good part of 2004 and a good part of 2005, I had fallen madly in love with a friend of mine named Julie. She's an absolutely wonderful person. She's extremely kind, very smart, quite innocent, and extraodinarily beautiful*. We share a few traits, such as handwriting and speech difficulties, and she is an absolutely wonderful influence on me.
She has a twin, Jackie, who is also a very wonderful person. Jackie is much more outgoing, and less shy. She also writes, and I really need to get it from her someday. In theory, I should be reading the stories of all my friends, but am procrastinating on Jackie and Emily. I haven't checked who else has stories though.
I first met the two of them at their older brother's eagle court, when I was checking out the troop. I was ten, they were eleven. I don't really remember it much. I think I said 'hi' or something, but the mists of time are often thick for me. That, and I didn't like girls back then.
Anyway, the next I saw of them was during a First Responder course offered by the red cross. There we gained the same medical training as policemen and firefighter. I also got to know them better, seeing as every other weekend I was up at camp. (their father is a park ranger, and they live in a Boy Scout camp) During this time, I got crushes on both of the twins, but largely forgot about it.
Next was when they both enrolled in Renaissance Academy. Julie was in my English class, and it was there that I got to know her as a person. Also when I fell for her. I suppose that if it were Jackie, things would be different right now, but that's how fate played the cards. After they switched everybody around for the spring semester, I was in Honors English, and both Jackie and Julie were there.
Since I left Renaissance, I've seen them every now and then. A perk of living in a Boy Scout camp is that they have the run of the place when it's not in use - they host parties every so often, using the lodge.(another perk is a fifteen minute commute up a winding wilderness road just to get into the edge of suburbia, which they have to pass through to get to a main road.)
I mentioned earlier that their father is a ranger, and had a son in the boyscout troop that I am in. I also should mention that Ranger Joe was the Scoutmaster of my troop for some time, and, at one point, said I was like a son to him. Great guy, I know him quite well. Longer than the twins, actually. He's also around at many of the scouting events that I leader my troop in. That and his camp is one of the ones we go too quite often. Oh, and the Order of the Arrow(BSA honor society that I'm a member of) does a lot of it's stuff at camp. So do the cub scouts, for that matter.
Joe's wife goes to the same community college I take classes at, and I've seen her there occasionally. Nice people - I can see where the twins get their traits from.
Now, Julie and Jackie aren't supposed to date, have boyfriends, etc. until they are adults. While Jackie follows her parent's requests, Julie doesn't actually need them. She has decided she doesn't want any relationships until she is out of college. If there's a person who would suceed at that, it's probably Julie.
And there lay the dilemma. I am not willing to A. Go against their father's wishes, betraying his expectations of me. (that is to say, I will not try to woo or otherwise tempt the twins) B. Cause Julie to possibly fail at her aspirations. C. Do anything that else that would be against my duties, as a friend, of acting in her best interests.
Currently, I don't think she has any idea of my wishes, and I suppose that's just as well. She is rather delicate emotionally, and to have to reject a friend would be as painful for her as for me. Jackie and I agree that it's probably not the best of ideas. Still, if I even did wind up asking her, I would consider it better for her to reject me than for her to... I don't know... to get into a relationship that she doesn't care for, just so she wouldn't hurt me.
Anyway, that's how things have been for a long time. Up until sometime after Ivegotanaxe's birthday party.
Enter Toshi to the mix.
I met Toshi at Ivegotanaxe's birthday party, and she was introduced to me as Ivegotanaxe's birthday party. The two of us hit it off quite well, which not surprising. We do have a lot in common.
After the birthday party, we continued to communicate via the web, using a chatroom and sometimes other means. I started geting attracted to her - her mind and personality at least.
Now, at this point, my history of getting attracted to people consisted of several crushes, and a love that wasn't working out very well. I supposed that any future occurances would be along the same lines. If I fell for Toshi, I would wind up with two onesided relationships, and more angst than you can shake a dog's tail at.
I did, however, ask if she wanted to come along with me to UCR for the open-day-thing they had there. That and an overnight program where we got to be hosted a night at the residency halls(Satorites, don't make any jokes). You can read one of Toshi's entries to see how that went for her - my host was quite decent, and I found out a good deal about the residency halls. I didn't see much of Toshi, and never acted in a way other than that of a friend.
Morning arrived, and I found myself... one hour early. I have to wonder about the guy who decided the date for this thing. Not only was it very close to halloween, with some atypicallness just from that, but over the night, daylights savings time changed. I sat around and waited. Toshi managed to guess I would make such a mistake, and appeared. So did another over-nighter that was chronomorphologicly challenged. Toshi read A Modest Proposal while I got bored. We pointed some people in the right direction, but I hope she enjoyed her book, because being bored is annoying.
My parent picked me up, and we drove up to about magic mountain, having lunch on the way. During the trip, we were both in the back seat, and tired. We lay down on each other, but didn't get much sleep anyway. We also cuddled, which is to say, made ourself comfortable. If you haven't noticed yet, I was flirting, or something to the effect, without letting myself do anything that I would consider wrong. I was as loyal to Julie as Ulysses was to Penelope... Well, on a kiddie scale.
Anyway, she departed with her father, and I came off curious. What if my affection for Toshi was mutual? So I asked. Using all the tact I could... Toshi, if you are reading this, stop laughing.
In any case, the answer was no. It was exactly what my head thought, and not what my instinct said. Strange, seeing as my instinct, while not going that much use, tends to be right.
Now, lets talk about Toshi. If you're reading this, Tosh, be warned that I'm going to objectify you, and compare you to Julie. I rarely objectify, and almost never compare my friends. Sorry, but for the purposes of this entry it makes sense to compare you too. Julie, if you are reading this by some weird stroke of fate, and by some weirder one you're still reading, sorry about the same stuff.
Anyway, Toshi is very kind, very smart, not-so-innocent, relatively outgoing, and very beautiful. We share more common traits than I do with Julie, and I feel that I'm a positive influence on her(I should hope). An interesting fact is that I feel that Julie is the same ge as I, whereas Toshi feels younger than me. In actuality, they both are older, though Julie is a year older than Toshi. I don't think that's why, though - Julie acts older. I can speak easier around Toshi than Julie. Toshi apparently has some family troubles too.
They both have speech problems, and both have names that start with 'J.' Actually, four of my lady friends, have names that start with 'J.' Maybe I have some kind of 'J' fetish... Nah...
Now back to relationship history.
After the UCR trip, I went to Bowdoin for a visit. There I met Floxonotic and Irena(if you want your name removed, just tell me). I enjoyed the company of both, and keep vague in touch with Flox. I should contact Irena. You should read the Bowdoin entry for specifics.
Sometime after I got back, something happened. Specifically, Toshi replied to one of my LJ comments that she had a crush on someone, and that he didn't know it. I persued the topic on the chat, as I am nosey into the working of my friends lives. She said that she didn't want to say on the Satori chat, be that she would email me. I went to sleep.
Next day I arose and read my email. There was a letter from Toshi, and I started to read it. There were some unneccisary promises of secrecy and stuff like that(If you ask me to keep a secret, I will, save for it being dangerous to you or others), and then some stuff about how embarrassing it had been for her to tell me. I got to the end no wiser, and a bit annoyed. Reading it again--the first time I had skimmed it for content--I found a short sentence that I had lumped with the swearing to silence stuff: "That person is you."
Jeez.
She could have at least made it, you know, visible. You paid attention to that "Jeez," didn't you?
Well, that made me... dizzy. Suddenly, I realised quite a few things in short order.
I would like to note that Toshi has always been in the know about me and Julie. Or rather, about me towards Julie.
I realised that my instinct was rather correct, and decided to trust it when it told me that Toshi was probably rather nervous on her end; I started a letter to explain and comfort her. It got about half done before I realised I had to go to class.
Other stuff I realised was that all the stuff in my dad's van was mutual. She wouldn't consciously flirt with me because that would be seducing me away from Julie, and that I would probably take it wrong. I found it quite odd. I also realised that she had been is a similar situation as myself. And I also realised that my love life had just gotten complicated.
Well, I emailed Toshi when I got back, and found that I was correct about her being a wreck.
So this left me in a strange situation: I love Julie more than Toshi(which is to say 'heaps' instead of loads' - both I love dearly), but Toshi returns my love and, to my knowledge, Julie did not(in the same way, anyhow). I had promised myself to stick to Julie until either rejection or acceptance.
Also tying into this is that I considered them both friends. I didn't want to hurt Julie by asking her, nor Toshi by being undecided. I resolved that I would have to figure things out one way or another, either accepting or denying Toshi. I would have to ask Julie.
I slept rather troubled that night.
The next day, I went to classes as normal, as well as attending the Americanism Award with my troop. Joe was there, and so was... Julie. (her mother couldn't make it because of night classes) Julie was pleased to see me, as she had been worried she would know nobody there.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked her that night, after the awards when as we helped her father pack up the gear he had brought. But I decided I wasn't in the best of shapes(I was in the bathroom most of the awards), and that she was having to much fun in the hotel(grandiose old place, the kind she loves) to ruin the night for her. I considered telling her at the very end, as she was going, but her father was there, and the goddess knows I don't want to sputter and faint in front of him...
In short, I chickened. But it also caused me to remember just way I was so in love with this young lady.
I did, however ask her to have Jackie contact me. At this point, Jackie knew nothing - I met her at our college, but we had no time, and I agreed to call her the next day, on Friday(neither of us have friday classes).
I called, but we didn't actually get in contact until Saturday. I explained the situation, and she found it... adorable. >.<
We agree that I had basically no chance with Julie, and that was no surprise. I also asked her if she thought I should ask Julie...
Now you see, she came to the same conclusion that I did - that asking Julie would really be terrible for her. Jackie decided that she would have to get back to me on that the next day.
On sunday, I made a LJ post you may have read. Titled "A Chapter Ended," I believe.
What had happened was that Jackie--undoubtedly more more tactfully that I could even manage--asked Julie as to her thoughts on dating and associated matters. I don't feel like repeating the entry, so you can go find it yourself.
Now, both my parently like Julie. Understandable, really. It wasn't that much trouble when I decided that I had decided to drop the matter of Julie.
But my mother doesn't like Toshi very much. And that is trouble. Continues to be trouble, actually.
I would note that at this point, with me having just found out that I had no chances with Julie, nobody knew about Toshi's love save for her and myself.
Anyway, because my mother wanted me to recoup from the disappointment with Julie, she let me go on a trip up to where Toshi lives(she's two hours or so away) ostensibly to see her preform ballet with Ivegotanaxe. The ballet was very good in my eyes, though I have no basis for this assessment, but more importantly, we got to talk. I gave her a silver moon pendant I had made for Julie
Things have moved quite a bit since then, with people being let know about us until she decided it was open, at which point people on my side started finding out.
The exceptions were her parents. Toshi feared their reaction to me, and currently has only told her mother(whose reaction turned out to be fine). I am almost certain that her father knows, but, fortunately, her siblings don't.
I haven't seen her since her ballet preformance, and will not until Australia day.
*: Where I say 'beautiful' or use other vague discriptors, I generally mean my perception of beauty. I perceive beauty in more than just the physical sense, and include how the person acts and reacts, the temperament of the person, the aura, and my knowledge of the person.
Part five: Current Events in My Life
This is the Entry That Never Ends, isn't it...
Last night I went to a winter break part hosted by Jackie and Julie. I had a great time there. With any luck, they will accept the gifts I tried to give them - they would accept them directly, so I gave then to their mother on the way out. Julie gets a pendant I made at Satori, and Jackie gets a tiny orgami crane I made that day.
And that's the end.
And questions? Pose them via comments.
I think that moving the Everloom status reports off here killed the LJ to a good extent.
First subject: New Year
I have three New Year resolutions, none of which I have broken without good reason:
1. Write at least one page of story related material each day. This is a minium, and their's only been one day that I haven't written more. (broken yesterday because I went to a party with friends - see #3)
2. Learn how to drive. It's a life skill. (not done, but not actually broken)
3. Spent more time with my friends. All the ones who live in the area, anyway. (Working at it. Went to a party last night. Jackie and Julie were hosting, and many of my our mutual friends were there. I still need to see Ammi, Alec, Toli, and all the folks in my circle of Nerds. I also need to see my girlfriend and Jessie more.)
Second Subject: Last Year
What a year.
In 2005 I started writing, and I will term that the major event of importance. This was the culmination of events in '04.
Sub-subject: Writing
After Satori in 2004, I joined the Satori forums. Wonderful place at the time, and I posted a lot. I would have posted more, but at that time my typing speed was about three or four words a minute. I sped up some because of the forum, because for the first time, I was typing with motivation.
Other stuff I did on the web in 2004 was the reading of webcomics/webmangas. The one of importance here is Drowtales. Lovely webmanga, and I had always wondered about the forum.
Armed with a familiarity of forums, I decided to join the DT forum... wow. Those reading this from Inverloch know the term '[getting] Ninja'ed' - the DT forum moves so fast that being ninja'ed is a fact of life. I have started posts on page 2 of a thread, and by the time I submitted the post, the thread would be on page five. The DT Forumites are a crazy bunch, too. RPing sloshes together with talking, and all manner of strange stuff happens. I played an FreeFormRP(Was one of the best ones I've played), and tried to stay vaguely current... Which meant typing fast, and a lot.
Soon after that, I joined the much calmer atmosphere of the fledging Inverloch forum. It was a nice quite place, but what interested me was the 'writing section.'
You see, over the course of 2004, I had been writing the first chapter of tLR. I guess it makes a statement about my writing speed at that time that it took me the better part of a year to write eleven pages.
Anyway, I posted the first Chapter of tLR on Inverloch's writing section, and started on the second chapter. Ratharen's gloominess was to depressing for me to continue, and my writing wasn't good enough to convey what I wanted to.
Because of that, I started tToKE, or The Tale of Kal'Essirin. It's a long winding tale, but was good practice. I decided I would write a scene(three pages) a week.
I bumbled my way along the story, and my typing speed and ability to convey in words both improved. I got quite a bit of help from the forum, and some editing from Faile. Between the two, I kept myself motivated, and finished the first chapter of tToKE. I decided to take a week break from tToKE.
During that week, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. As some of you may know, my writing voice is a reflection of whatever material I have read recently. If you look at tToKE, you may reccognise similarities between the prologue and The Silmarillion...
Anyway, after reading Hucklebery Finn, my writing was shot. I couldn't continue without my writing sounding like Huckleberry's narrative. I countered this by forcing my writing into another manner. I started Wander.
Wander or rather, in its full name, The Wanderworks Prophecies, started late one night with me being in a sleep deprived state. I started with a rather cliche sentence, and ran with it. Wander has grandiose descriptions, and was a lot of fun. As I wrote, I wove the world - a very interesting place, though not when I would like to live. I also wove the characters, and Eileen is my favorite of them. Poor girl, what happens to her. I found that the main character was rather shallow. X9084 is a interesting guy too, and is loosely modeled on the antagonist of Directions of Destiny.
Wander's descriptions were exhausting, however, and at one point, I got fed up with Wander and wrote "Broken". If you read Broken and Wander you might notice that Broken is low on description, whereas Wander is extravagant. Concidence? I think not.
Broken is my favorite short story, and I ditched Wander to edit it, have others edit it, and try to make it the best I could. I also marketed it a bit.
The reactions to Broken were interesting. Most people liked it, but almost unerringly, females reading it decided that Maureen wouldn't leave Benny. Well guess what - she did. Probably not on purpose, and she probably wouldn't have if she had sat down and weighed her morals. It's a mistake, I guess - I shouldn't leave loopholes so readers can rationalise why all this wouldn't happen. This will come up later in my discussion of House of Fog and Sand
After Broken, I got inspired by a contest on Earthsong's forum, and wrote "Wishes." The Tinman is right that I didn't leave enough open ends, and stated stuff into peoples faces. But with all the comments I got from Broken's feedback, it didn't seem like readers are very smart. I don't think that people reading Broken understood quite as much as I expected.
Wishes is a nice little story, with the aforesaid flaws. One interesting note is that it developed the south of Drahkimar in my mind, and now the map of Drahkimar has gotten much larger. One problem I ran into was that I was wordwise and choose exactly the words that described things best. Southern magic is something I know quite a bit of, and gosh darn it, I'm going to do an accurate description of what happens. I'm afraid that, yes, Southern Magic lacks flair and can be quite boring. But it's cool, because there's more logic to it than most other forms of magic in Drahkimar.
Anyway, after Wishes, I got busy with fall classes and college applications, and didn't do much until the winter.
Now I'm working on a story for a writers conference. Things have changed a lot since last year. Now I can write seven pages in a day, and they are seven good pages. I'm finally getting better at expressing character in their speech, and am much better at sticking to things. My writing speed is, while not insane, very useful.
-End of Sub-Subject-
Other stuff that happened in 2005 included me getting more socially adept. I'm not a socialite yet, but I'm not as crude and rude as I once was. My speech in english has improved a good deal.
Why? Well, I was in highschool. As such, I was actually forced to speak to people on a regular basis. This doesn't really mean that much until you realise that, before this, I only spoke to my parents and my professors. That and talking to myself, but that doesn't count because I can mispronounce things as badly as I want and I'll still understand myself.
The effects of Highschool were quite good. I would have had a much harder time when visiting, say, Bowdoin, if I didn't have the ability to speak to people with both social grace and comprehention without much strain.
What other noteable stuff happened in 2005? Well, I wound up with a girlfriend. Can't say I saw that coming much in advance. Indeed, I figured I would be lovesick for a particualr Sheppard all the way up through college.
It's a strange situation, and I'll give it it's own section a bit later on.
Third subject: Movie Review, and Review of Reactions
I don't watch movies much(almost never), but this last new year's my family rented a movie called House of Sand and Fog.
I love it. It's great. I want to make movies like that.
I recalled some reviewer describing a movie as a trainwreck in slow motion. It definately fits House of Sand and Fog.
Anyway, you people reading this should rent it and watch it. It's rated R for good reason, though my mother thought it was going to be nice.
One last thing - I loved the music. I'm going to see if I can get a CD of the soundtrack, because it rocked my socks. So dark and ominous, melodic and sweet. It would be great music for me to write too as well.
Moving on from the movie, I found the reactions of both my parents... interesting. They found fault at the basic scenario, and tried to prove to themselves that all of this would have never happened. Wistful thinking is nice, and very useful at times, but why watch such a movie and then try to negate the value? A movie that makes me cry is a good movie. A movie that keeps me up all night with my gut in a knot is a great movie. I never negate the value of such things, never harden my heart to the movies. If I had wanted to, I could have easily kept mself from being touched by the drama unfolding in the screen. If I wanted to, I could easily justify why none of this would happen. If I had wanted to, I could easily just put myself at peace.
But I don't. The point of watching such movies is to balance the happiness in my life. By knowing sorrow, I know happiness. If I wanted too, I would tweak my perceptions so that I would be happy all the time. Of course, then the value of happiness would drop, and what I had concidered to be happy would become normal. It would then take further tweaking to reach my new definition of happiness. Eventually, I would be living almost entirely within my own perceptions.
I lead a happy life. Shit happens everyday, but shit isn't that bad, now is it. There's worse shit that could happen. As long as I know that, I can be happy with what shit I have, and not what I would like shit to be.
You know, this reminds me of an episode of Prairie Home Companion. It was mentioned that some people in minnasota live with the eternal veiw that it could have been worse. That they didn't win the lottery, but it could have been worse - who knows. Maybe they could have won the lottery, got the money, then get addicted to gambling... I might proscribe to that view. Nothing's that bad because it could have been worse.
I'm probably the only Californian with that view. Maybe I don't get enough sun... (it was in the eighties this week)
Well, moving on from that line of thought:
Subject four: Girlfriend
For a good part of 2004 and a good part of 2005, I had fallen madly in love with a friend of mine named Julie. She's an absolutely wonderful person. She's extremely kind, very smart, quite innocent, and extraodinarily beautiful*. We share a few traits, such as handwriting and speech difficulties, and she is an absolutely wonderful influence on me.
She has a twin, Jackie, who is also a very wonderful person. Jackie is much more outgoing, and less shy. She also writes, and I really need to get it from her someday. In theory, I should be reading the stories of all my friends, but am procrastinating on Jackie and Emily. I haven't checked who else has stories though.
I first met the two of them at their older brother's eagle court, when I was checking out the troop. I was ten, they were eleven. I don't really remember it much. I think I said 'hi' or something, but the mists of time are often thick for me. That, and I didn't like girls back then.
Anyway, the next I saw of them was during a First Responder course offered by the red cross. There we gained the same medical training as policemen and firefighter. I also got to know them better, seeing as every other weekend I was up at camp. (their father is a park ranger, and they live in a Boy Scout camp) During this time, I got crushes on both of the twins, but largely forgot about it.
Next was when they both enrolled in Renaissance Academy. Julie was in my English class, and it was there that I got to know her as a person. Also when I fell for her. I suppose that if it were Jackie, things would be different right now, but that's how fate played the cards. After they switched everybody around for the spring semester, I was in Honors English, and both Jackie and Julie were there.
Since I left Renaissance, I've seen them every now and then. A perk of living in a Boy Scout camp is that they have the run of the place when it's not in use - they host parties every so often, using the lodge.(another perk is a fifteen minute commute up a winding wilderness road just to get into the edge of suburbia, which they have to pass through to get to a main road.)
I mentioned earlier that their father is a ranger, and had a son in the boyscout troop that I am in. I also should mention that Ranger Joe was the Scoutmaster of my troop for some time, and, at one point, said I was like a son to him. Great guy, I know him quite well. Longer than the twins, actually. He's also around at many of the scouting events that I leader my troop in. That and his camp is one of the ones we go too quite often. Oh, and the Order of the Arrow(BSA honor society that I'm a member of) does a lot of it's stuff at camp. So do the cub scouts, for that matter.
Joe's wife goes to the same community college I take classes at, and I've seen her there occasionally. Nice people - I can see where the twins get their traits from.
Now, Julie and Jackie aren't supposed to date, have boyfriends, etc. until they are adults. While Jackie follows her parent's requests, Julie doesn't actually need them. She has decided she doesn't want any relationships until she is out of college. If there's a person who would suceed at that, it's probably Julie.
And there lay the dilemma. I am not willing to A. Go against their father's wishes, betraying his expectations of me. (that is to say, I will not try to woo or otherwise tempt the twins) B. Cause Julie to possibly fail at her aspirations. C. Do anything that else that would be against my duties, as a friend, of acting in her best interests.
Currently, I don't think she has any idea of my wishes, and I suppose that's just as well. She is rather delicate emotionally, and to have to reject a friend would be as painful for her as for me. Jackie and I agree that it's probably not the best of ideas. Still, if I even did wind up asking her, I would consider it better for her to reject me than for her to... I don't know... to get into a relationship that she doesn't care for, just so she wouldn't hurt me.
Anyway, that's how things have been for a long time. Up until sometime after Ivegotanaxe's birthday party.
Enter Toshi to the mix.
I met Toshi at Ivegotanaxe's birthday party, and she was introduced to me as Ivegotanaxe's birthday party. The two of us hit it off quite well, which not surprising. We do have a lot in common.
After the birthday party, we continued to communicate via the web, using a chatroom and sometimes other means. I started geting attracted to her - her mind and personality at least.
Now, at this point, my history of getting attracted to people consisted of several crushes, and a love that wasn't working out very well. I supposed that any future occurances would be along the same lines. If I fell for Toshi, I would wind up with two onesided relationships, and more angst than you can shake a dog's tail at.
I did, however, ask if she wanted to come along with me to UCR for the open-day-thing they had there. That and an overnight program where we got to be hosted a night at the residency halls(Satorites, don't make any jokes). You can read one of Toshi's entries to see how that went for her - my host was quite decent, and I found out a good deal about the residency halls. I didn't see much of Toshi, and never acted in a way other than that of a friend.
Morning arrived, and I found myself... one hour early. I have to wonder about the guy who decided the date for this thing. Not only was it very close to halloween, with some atypicallness just from that, but over the night, daylights savings time changed. I sat around and waited. Toshi managed to guess I would make such a mistake, and appeared. So did another over-nighter that was chronomorphologicly challenged. Toshi read A Modest Proposal while I got bored. We pointed some people in the right direction, but I hope she enjoyed her book, because being bored is annoying.
My parent picked me up, and we drove up to about magic mountain, having lunch on the way. During the trip, we were both in the back seat, and tired. We lay down on each other, but didn't get much sleep anyway. We also cuddled, which is to say, made ourself comfortable. If you haven't noticed yet, I was flirting, or something to the effect, without letting myself do anything that I would consider wrong. I was as loyal to Julie as Ulysses was to Penelope... Well, on a kiddie scale.
Anyway, she departed with her father, and I came off curious. What if my affection for Toshi was mutual? So I asked. Using all the tact I could... Toshi, if you are reading this, stop laughing.
In any case, the answer was no. It was exactly what my head thought, and not what my instinct said. Strange, seeing as my instinct, while not going that much use, tends to be right.
Now, lets talk about Toshi. If you're reading this, Tosh, be warned that I'm going to objectify you, and compare you to Julie. I rarely objectify, and almost never compare my friends. Sorry, but for the purposes of this entry it makes sense to compare you too. Julie, if you are reading this by some weird stroke of fate, and by some weirder one you're still reading, sorry about the same stuff.
Anyway, Toshi is very kind, very smart, not-so-innocent, relatively outgoing, and very beautiful. We share more common traits than I do with Julie, and I feel that I'm a positive influence on her(I should hope). An interesting fact is that I feel that Julie is the same ge as I, whereas Toshi feels younger than me. In actuality, they both are older, though Julie is a year older than Toshi. I don't think that's why, though - Julie acts older. I can speak easier around Toshi than Julie. Toshi apparently has some family troubles too.
They both have speech problems, and both have names that start with 'J.' Actually, four of my lady friends, have names that start with 'J.' Maybe I have some kind of 'J' fetish... Nah...
Now back to relationship history.
After the UCR trip, I went to Bowdoin for a visit. There I met Floxonotic and Irena(if you want your name removed, just tell me). I enjoyed the company of both, and keep vague in touch with Flox. I should contact Irena. You should read the Bowdoin entry for specifics.
Sometime after I got back, something happened. Specifically, Toshi replied to one of my LJ comments that she had a crush on someone, and that he didn't know it. I persued the topic on the chat, as I am nosey into the working of my friends lives. She said that she didn't want to say on the Satori chat, be that she would email me. I went to sleep.
Next day I arose and read my email. There was a letter from Toshi, and I started to read it. There were some unneccisary promises of secrecy and stuff like that(If you ask me to keep a secret, I will, save for it being dangerous to you or others), and then some stuff about how embarrassing it had been for her to tell me. I got to the end no wiser, and a bit annoyed. Reading it again--the first time I had skimmed it for content--I found a short sentence that I had lumped with the swearing to silence stuff: "That person is you."
Jeez.
She could have at least made it, you know, visible. You paid attention to that "Jeez," didn't you?
Well, that made me... dizzy. Suddenly, I realised quite a few things in short order.
I would like to note that Toshi has always been in the know about me and Julie. Or rather, about me towards Julie.
I realised that my instinct was rather correct, and decided to trust it when it told me that Toshi was probably rather nervous on her end; I started a letter to explain and comfort her. It got about half done before I realised I had to go to class.
Other stuff I realised was that all the stuff in my dad's van was mutual. She wouldn't consciously flirt with me because that would be seducing me away from Julie, and that I would probably take it wrong. I found it quite odd. I also realised that she had been is a similar situation as myself. And I also realised that my love life had just gotten complicated.
Well, I emailed Toshi when I got back, and found that I was correct about her being a wreck.
So this left me in a strange situation: I love Julie more than Toshi(which is to say 'heaps' instead of loads' - both I love dearly), but Toshi returns my love and, to my knowledge, Julie did not(in the same way, anyhow). I had promised myself to stick to Julie until either rejection or acceptance.
Also tying into this is that I considered them both friends. I didn't want to hurt Julie by asking her, nor Toshi by being undecided. I resolved that I would have to figure things out one way or another, either accepting or denying Toshi. I would have to ask Julie.
I slept rather troubled that night.
The next day, I went to classes as normal, as well as attending the Americanism Award with my troop. Joe was there, and so was... Julie. (her mother couldn't make it because of night classes) Julie was pleased to see me, as she had been worried she would know nobody there.
In retrospect, I probably should have asked her that night, after the awards when as we helped her father pack up the gear he had brought. But I decided I wasn't in the best of shapes(I was in the bathroom most of the awards), and that she was having to much fun in the hotel(grandiose old place, the kind she loves) to ruin the night for her. I considered telling her at the very end, as she was going, but her father was there, and the goddess knows I don't want to sputter and faint in front of him...
In short, I chickened. But it also caused me to remember just way I was so in love with this young lady.
I did, however ask her to have Jackie contact me. At this point, Jackie knew nothing - I met her at our college, but we had no time, and I agreed to call her the next day, on Friday(neither of us have friday classes).
I called, but we didn't actually get in contact until Saturday. I explained the situation, and she found it... adorable. >.<
We agree that I had basically no chance with Julie, and that was no surprise. I also asked her if she thought I should ask Julie...
Now you see, she came to the same conclusion that I did - that asking Julie would really be terrible for her. Jackie decided that she would have to get back to me on that the next day.
On sunday, I made a LJ post you may have read. Titled "A Chapter Ended," I believe.
What had happened was that Jackie--undoubtedly more more tactfully that I could even manage--asked Julie as to her thoughts on dating and associated matters. I don't feel like repeating the entry, so you can go find it yourself.
Now, both my parently like Julie. Understandable, really. It wasn't that much trouble when I decided that I had decided to drop the matter of Julie.
But my mother doesn't like Toshi very much. And that is trouble. Continues to be trouble, actually.
I would note that at this point, with me having just found out that I had no chances with Julie, nobody knew about Toshi's love save for her and myself.
Anyway, because my mother wanted me to recoup from the disappointment with Julie, she let me go on a trip up to where Toshi lives(she's two hours or so away) ostensibly to see her preform ballet with Ivegotanaxe. The ballet was very good in my eyes, though I have no basis for this assessment, but more importantly, we got to talk. I gave her a silver moon pendant I had made for Julie
Things have moved quite a bit since then, with people being let know about us until she decided it was open, at which point people on my side started finding out.
The exceptions were her parents. Toshi feared their reaction to me, and currently has only told her mother(whose reaction turned out to be fine). I am almost certain that her father knows, but, fortunately, her siblings don't.
I haven't seen her since her ballet preformance, and will not until Australia day.
*: Where I say 'beautiful' or use other vague discriptors, I generally mean my perception of beauty. I perceive beauty in more than just the physical sense, and include how the person acts and reacts, the temperament of the person, the aura, and my knowledge of the person.
Part five: Current Events in My Life
This is the Entry That Never Ends, isn't it...
Last night I went to a winter break part hosted by Jackie and Julie. I had a great time there. With any luck, they will accept the gifts I tried to give them - they would accept them directly, so I gave then to their mother on the way out. Julie gets a pendant I made at Satori, and Jackie gets a tiny orgami crane I made that day.
And that's the end.
And questions? Pose them via comments.