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Welcome to Rain Symphony (formerly known as Forgotten Hope), phoenix's weblog/personal site. Here you will find my thoughts about my life, as well as whatever other random things I decide to put on here. Enjoy your stay.
Death
Today, my parents told me that a childhood friend of mine had been hit by a train and died.
She was a senior in high school, just starting the college application process with high hopes and dreams. It is true that we had drifted apart in later years and couldn't really consider ourselves "close friends" anymore, but I still never forgot how many hours we spent playing together as children; how many laughs we shared. She was a gymnast and later a dancer who went around to all sorts of competitions, and recently, I heard, she had been made an assistant dance instructor in the prestigious dance troupe she had been part of for many years.
My parents and her parents have known each other for a long time, longer than my friendship with her. She was an only child. I cannot imagine what her parents are going through right now.
Still, even as I'm crying, I can't really believe it. How could she have died? Why didn't she see or hear the train before she was hit? How could this have happened? Why? Why wasn't she more careful?
How could she have died before her life had even begun?
Teenagers, young adults (myself included) often can't feel death. It seems such a distant concept; you know people die, but you don't feel like it will happen to you or anyone you know. You know, theoretically, it could happen, but it doesn't feel like it would. This is the first time a death has touched me so near my heart; even the deaths of my grandfather and a good neighborhood friend didn't move me this much.
I suppose it was because, in both cases, my grandfather and that neighborhood friend had been ill for a long time, and so though we all wished fervently for the better, we knew the end was coming. But with this friend, my childhood friend, it was so sudden, so out of the blue. No one could ever have thought that this would happen.
It is a reminder for me that I have to be careful, for life can end any time, anywhere, without warning. That I must never live life in vain, and remind myself of my purpose and all the goals I want to accomplish, of everything I love and treasure. Each day is something to be cherished. For life is too short and too precious, both for ourselves and those who love us.
I have to remind myself. My friend was never given a chance to live. I have to remind myself of the chance that I have, and all the things that I can do. Of all the good things that are yet to come, and the opportunities I cannot waste.
Rest in peace, Jessica.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-11-07 ~
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Where do I go from here?
Evidently my computer hates me, because not only am I unable to edit the CSS for my new LJ account, but RS's layout appears screwed up in my browser, even though the code and images are perfectly fine. Bleh.
I realized that I haven't really been talking about college in much detail over here, so I guess I should fix that. But, as always, I tend to blab when I have bad news.
Recently I've hit a bump in the road. I was suddenly aware of the fact that I seemed to have almost no motivation to try my hardest in my classes anymore, and that bothers me. The reason, I think, is that I'm really not sure about what I'm doing in the future, and as I don't have a concrete goal in mind, plus the fact that most of my classes this semester don't interest me, has led to my performance suffering and mental stagnation. The only class that I prepare well for and even read ahead is Japanese, because (as you may know) I love languages, but in that case I've begun to slack off a little since I've been doing so well. Well, that's not as much of a problem, I suppose, as Japanese is a hard language and it won't take much for me to buckle down, but my other classes are bigger concerns.
My seminar is not what I thought it would be (turned out to be a philosophy sort of class rather than a history class), my history class--the lectures are interesting, but our grade is based on all of two papers, and I don't like the...papers (I can't explain too well right now, but maybe later). Then there's Chem...ugh, why did I ever bother? At least it's clear to me now that I hate Chem the subject, and not because of the teacher (which is what happened in high school).
As I mentioned, I thought I would major in history, but now I'm not so sure. English was always a drag in high school, not because I disliked it, but because I thought I wasn't so great at it. Now, though, I realized that I really do like analyzing text and literary devices; my childish lifelong dream of just writing a story has matured into a fascination with narrative style and the use of language to convey a conflict, a story, an emotion. And let's not forget my love of foreign languages and my interest in psychology.
So, I'm not sure what I'm aiming for any more--I know college is about finding what you like, but I'm pretty much stuck with these classes for the rest of the semester, and there's nothing I can do until the spring.
But (to add to my dreary picture) I have to say something more about this feeling of "mental stagnation" that I talked about--and it's about my friends/acquaintances at college. My dad always tells me to stop being so picky and always looking for something inspiring in each conversation, but...I can't help it. I don't necessarily want my mind to be blown away each time, but I do look for a sort of intellectual or emotional fulfillment at least on a regular, if occasional, basis. So far I haven't found anyone (well, maybe one) here who meets that.
Again, I'm unable at the moment to really explain the problem, but I feel like there aren't many people whom you can just approach and talk about anything you want. I want to talk about writing, languages, video games, Hetalia--no one else is really interested. (Not to mention anime/video games is still seen as dorky by many people.) I want people to ask me things, I want people to debate with me--but no one wants to get into a debate. People are just content with saying, "Let's agree to disagree."
I am both grateful and somewhat chagrined by the diversity of characters I've met on campus. Grateful, because this diversity makes each conversation interesting; chagrined, because I've had to deal with many more annoyances than I did in high school. For example, one guy on my floor (who I end up hanging around a lot because we both study in the same area) often makes sweeping generalizations about me and my life, which, considering we're not very close and haven't had any really personal conversations, irritates me to no end. (One thing I hate is when people try to analyze me without knowing anything about me.) And it's starting to become clear to me that no one can measure intelligence. I know some people in high school who couldn't get into Amherst, but are vastly more interesting conversation partners than some people here.
Argh, I think I've spent enough time ranting here. I should really start doing my homework now (after having basically wasted all of my time yesterday)...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-25 ~
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Sigh...
Inadvertently spent some time today shedding tears over the grade I received for my history essay. Well, whatever. My history class seems to be a lost cause at this point (partly because this was one of two essays that will basically determine my whole semester grade).
I'm actually being deterred from a history major at this point, but I think I will try one more class and an English class and other things to figure out for sure. I only just realized that I like writing English essays much more than writing history essays. But I still haven't lost my interest in history (courtesy of Hetalia), so...what to do, what to do...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-21 ~
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Urgh...
I've had a headache the entire day, and now I'm feeling unable to do homework, writing, or art.
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-17 ~
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Identity, Culture, the World, Where I Want to Go
Long time no see. I apologize for not updating more frequently; I think I've mentioned it before, but lately my Livejournal has been seeing a lot more action, if only because I feel the need to ramble about trivial things every day.
Nevertheless, I've decided that I should spread my entries more evenly between LJ and RS, so here, today I'll talk about something that has been bothering me for a while. Or several related things, actually.
When I came to college, I hardly anticipated that this place would soon become a battleground for me in terms of my racial identity. I'm an ethnic Chinese who has grown up entirely in Western culture (in North America, to be precise). Thus far, it hadn't caused any major issues for me, except that I hated Chinese school. At regular school, everyone spoke English (because, well, we're living in the U.S.), no matter what background you were from, and the diversity or our student population unified by a single language made things even on all sides.
I've had a pretty strange relationship with Chinese culture throughout the years, partly due to the fact that I've run into many downright nasty Chinese people both in China and the U.S. It's not fair to generalize, of course, but the negative impressions became deeply ingrained into my mind and memory to the point where I lost most of my interest in the culture. There's also the fact that my parents, who are pretty enlightened (in my opinion), are also very critical of Chinese culture and often tell me and my sister that the U.S. is the best place in the world to live.
Well, none of this had caused any particular stress for me...until I came to college.
When I started filling out my housing questionnaire, I considered putting down that I would not want to be with a Chinese roommate. Then I told myself that was being too narrow-minded, and I thought that the people who arranged housing tried to put roommates of different backgrounds together anyways. So I didn't write anything down about the matter. I received my housing information, and, what do you know, I ended up with a Chinese roommate.
Okay, I thought. I assumed that she was another one of those children of Chinese immigrants, and I had nothing against that (a bunch of my friends before college were like that).
As it turned out, she had grown up in China and came to the U.S. only four years ago. Again, I wouldn't have had a problem with that, or with the many other Chinese-speaking students who ended up in my dorm.
But they often speak Chinese together, even in front of people who either can't speak Chinese or (like me) don't speak Chinese in an English-speaking setting. They talk about the good ol' times in China, American public education sucks, China China China...
At first I felt insecure because my Chinese skills are rather dubious (though I understand and can participate in casual conversations), but then after a while the familiar rebellious feeling came back and I started to get annoyed. This was one of the reasons why I originally wanted to avoid having a Chinese roommate.
I am not against people speaking Chinese (my parents do at home), but I just think that if you do so beyond just private conversation it's a way of isolating a particular group and excluding other people. These people are perfectly capable of talking in English. A rejection of the language seems, to me, on some level a rejection of the culture.
I may sound like a stereotypical American citizen who thinks that "America is the best, everyone else sucks." (Actually, I just got my citizenship at the end of August, but that's a tad irrelevant.) But let me explain myself a little: when I was younger, I, too, went through a phase in which I was in love with everything Chinese. I even planned to write a novel based off of China at some point. I didn't hate English, but I definitely thought it was boring; that other languages were much "cooler"; and that my future lay outside the U.S. I was very critical about the U.S. government and foreign policy under Bush. When I took a course on American history, I became even more conflicted, thinking, "God, America has done so many terrible things in the past, and they still think they are the best? What kind of BS is this?"
Some time has passed; I've grown older, somewhat more knowledgeable, and hopefully a little more mature. I now think that, yes, America was pretty horrible at times in the past, and yet it also has many good qualities. English was boring to me because it was my native language, but I've grown to appreciate its expressiveness and the depth of the language. So, I think I have considered Chinese culture from several points of view, and I still can't seem to muster the interest in it that other people have. That's yet another source of trouble for me, because I feel like I should be invested in my heritage...and yet I'm not.
Now I'm going off on a tangent, but I'd like to return to the point I made about how I sort of wanted to live outside of the U.S. I went to Europe over the summer, and afterwards I came to realize...I don't think I want to live in Europe. I loved London, and that may be the closest place (thought the pound is expensive!), but France? Paris? Eh...
I feel really bad for thinking this way, because Paris is regarded as one of the most sophisticated, cultured cities in the world, but I just can't see myself living there. My dad used to say to me that Europe was "xenophobic," to which I laughed and thought he was wrong, but it's true in a way. Perhaps "xenophobic" is too strong, but I definitely noticed we were stared at a lot in Paris (and a little in Italy), and I felt rather unwelcome. And it definitely felt that some people (not all, but some) didn't like English-speakers. And my sudden disinterest in Paris resulted in a disinterest in learning French, even though I've always believed that the mark of an educated person was multilingualism, and I'd spent so much time learning the language. There's another source of discord that I'll have to deal with at some point or another.
So, although I've grown to love traveling, I think that unless I become fluent in another language and get a job as a teacher or translator or something, I'll stay in the U.S. for the rest of my life. It's not a bad thing. After all, the U.S. merits travel itself, as parts of it can be so different and it has its fair share of natural beauty...
Posted by phoenix on 2009-10-04 ~
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