Living / Surviving, a view
Living
~ Sipping a cup of warm mocha on a chilly Calgarian day, in a small cafe by the corner of the library, watching the people who passes by that are staring at your cool home-made devil-santa hat.
~ Sitting on the steps of olympic plaza sketching out how you want to dye your hair one day.
~ Watching the city lights from above a canyon, while a slight gust play in your hair.
~ Carefully putting on lipstick over your readied fair complexion with a dash of blush, in front of a giant mirror, under a dimmed blueish florescent light, and not going out afterwards, only taking pictures of yourself with your camera phone.
Surviving
~ The cup of mocha you have is actually a cheap powder mixture you bought at a chinese supermarket in a packet of 52 packs per bag. Because you can't afford real mocha in a cafe.
~ You're sitting in Olympic Plaza because you're out jobbing, because you just lost your insecured job and have only 2 weeks until rent is due again.
~ You're sitting there on top of the stairs in Canyon Meadows, hungry, but know that if you bought food, you can't afford a train ticket. So instead, you sit down hoping the hunger will go away if you starve yourself enough.
~ You can't go outside in makeup because the redneck hobos loitering outside the homeless shelter you live in, will beat the shit out of you and take your money.
And thus is the contrast of my life. It's hard to find solace in my situation, but 1 out of 60 times, I do manage to come upon very very slight moments of happiness. Not quite the word. Kiku once said, when she's eating, she's truly happy, but the word is shiawase. I reflect upon this a lot. When I'm sitting in my room, doing absolutely nothing because I have no money, but I have a purple blanket given to me by "Auntie Annie" on my birthday, I wrap myself in the blanket and becomes shiawase for a dreamy, yet abrupt moment.
I thought. I need to come back to Vancouver. Because I'm not welcomed in this redneck town. I only saw ONE not-normal person in this town, of all 5 months I've been here. And it's this black goth-punk guy. I mean, Afro-American. He has shaved half his head, with blue dreads on the other side. Demonia boots, a plain black short skirt and extra-long sleeve truncated jumper coat. And many piercings. I felt ashamed that day I saw this man, because I was wearing plain black pants, plain white shirt, tucked in, and the translucent black shirt over that. Looking relatively "normal". I hate that, in one of those moment where you're incidentally normal looking when someone more cool appears around you. THat's why I wanted to look as I do in Vancouver everyday, so I'll make sure I out-VK everyone at any time. Unfortunately I'll get killed in this city, because there's no VK scene at all. Not even a Goth scene. There's a punk scene, because Calgary is like.. cowboy-punk city. Punks and cowboys somehow gets along. I think it's because punks derived from the cowboy culture. Just as Goths derived from the aristocrat culture (True Goths). And fake Goths derived from the rock and Emo culture.
And because of this, I'm sad. Nothing keeps me here anymore. I lost jobs, I lost loves, I lost self, I no longer am the person who came looking for a new beginning. All I find is a million new ends. It's not fun anymore. It's like you bought a can of an exotic foreign food you've never tried before, getting all excited over it as you read the ingredients label, but when you finally open it, it's rotten with a sheet of swirling maggots crawling within.
My appearance = My ego. When I have no appearance at all, I basically threw away my self, my confidence, into the mocking abyss of redneck goodness. Their unwashed, shaggy hair laughs at my consciousness. Their grotesque facial hair and furry caterpillar eyebrows mocks my existence, I don't think I can take much more. While I had hoped to create a new presence here, it suddenly seem impossible because the people are so stuck in their hick ideals, that they'll never see the light of change, and never accept new culture. Come here if you're looking for low-pay construction work, dirty hands-on experiences, mundane-repetitive lifestyles. Don't come here if you're looking to expand your horizons, spread fashion influences, or new ideas. Calgary is Canadian-Texas. >_<
On other news, I have officially beatened all the Silent Hills except the first, un-findable one. (it's too old now, you can't find it except on ebay). I have to recommend 2 and 4 to everyone who enjoys survival horror, or just asian horrors in general. But really, play all of them. In order. Someone told me none of them are connected. That's not true. They're all connected, vaguely. There's references in each of the ones before that'll make you smile if you like that kinda homage stuffs, I know I do. And even though I think 3 has some really bad controls and camera angles (it fluctuates horribly, and makes you dizzy sometimes, with horrible angles at some boss fights that makes a normally easy fight into a struggle of gaining control of the camera angle before you get stabbed in the face), the story is slow in the first parts, it picks up later, and you can tell where Silent Hill 4 gets some of its great visuals from this predecessor. Like the jittery-head movements seen in Ringu and Ringu 2, is used a lot in here, and repetitive torture motions, and faceless-zombie creatures in Silent Hill 4, all have its roots here. Moving texture is also from here, like those swarming-blood-meat-walls. Silent Hill 3 also has a massive amount of weapons, more than all other Silent Hills, which I think one of the idea is that you grab normal objects (wine bottles, wooden sticks, kitchen knives) as weapons. But this one has Submachine gun, katana, ... lightsaber... O_o But all in good taste, because you really do need them, as this one also features more rampaging enemies such as dead nurses, living-carousel-horses and such, everywhere.
Wow, I've typed this thing for an hour now, I must submit for I have only 4 minutes left.
~ Sipping a cup of warm mocha on a chilly Calgarian day, in a small cafe by the corner of the library, watching the people who passes by that are staring at your cool home-made devil-santa hat.
~ Sitting on the steps of olympic plaza sketching out how you want to dye your hair one day.
~ Watching the city lights from above a canyon, while a slight gust play in your hair.
~ Carefully putting on lipstick over your readied fair complexion with a dash of blush, in front of a giant mirror, under a dimmed blueish florescent light, and not going out afterwards, only taking pictures of yourself with your camera phone.
Surviving
~ The cup of mocha you have is actually a cheap powder mixture you bought at a chinese supermarket in a packet of 52 packs per bag. Because you can't afford real mocha in a cafe.
~ You're sitting in Olympic Plaza because you're out jobbing, because you just lost your insecured job and have only 2 weeks until rent is due again.
~ You're sitting there on top of the stairs in Canyon Meadows, hungry, but know that if you bought food, you can't afford a train ticket. So instead, you sit down hoping the hunger will go away if you starve yourself enough.
~ You can't go outside in makeup because the redneck hobos loitering outside the homeless shelter you live in, will beat the shit out of you and take your money.
And thus is the contrast of my life. It's hard to find solace in my situation, but 1 out of 60 times, I do manage to come upon very very slight moments of happiness. Not quite the word. Kiku once said, when she's eating, she's truly happy, but the word is shiawase. I reflect upon this a lot. When I'm sitting in my room, doing absolutely nothing because I have no money, but I have a purple blanket given to me by "Auntie Annie" on my birthday, I wrap myself in the blanket and becomes shiawase for a dreamy, yet abrupt moment.
I thought. I need to come back to Vancouver. Because I'm not welcomed in this redneck town. I only saw ONE not-normal person in this town, of all 5 months I've been here. And it's this black goth-punk guy. I mean, Afro-American. He has shaved half his head, with blue dreads on the other side. Demonia boots, a plain black short skirt and extra-long sleeve truncated jumper coat. And many piercings. I felt ashamed that day I saw this man, because I was wearing plain black pants, plain white shirt, tucked in, and the translucent black shirt over that. Looking relatively "normal". I hate that, in one of those moment where you're incidentally normal looking when someone more cool appears around you. THat's why I wanted to look as I do in Vancouver everyday, so I'll make sure I out-VK everyone at any time. Unfortunately I'll get killed in this city, because there's no VK scene at all. Not even a Goth scene. There's a punk scene, because Calgary is like.. cowboy-punk city. Punks and cowboys somehow gets along. I think it's because punks derived from the cowboy culture. Just as Goths derived from the aristocrat culture (True Goths). And fake Goths derived from the rock and Emo culture.
And because of this, I'm sad. Nothing keeps me here anymore. I lost jobs, I lost loves, I lost self, I no longer am the person who came looking for a new beginning. All I find is a million new ends. It's not fun anymore. It's like you bought a can of an exotic foreign food you've never tried before, getting all excited over it as you read the ingredients label, but when you finally open it, it's rotten with a sheet of swirling maggots crawling within.
My appearance = My ego. When I have no appearance at all, I basically threw away my self, my confidence, into the mocking abyss of redneck goodness. Their unwashed, shaggy hair laughs at my consciousness. Their grotesque facial hair and furry caterpillar eyebrows mocks my existence, I don't think I can take much more. While I had hoped to create a new presence here, it suddenly seem impossible because the people are so stuck in their hick ideals, that they'll never see the light of change, and never accept new culture. Come here if you're looking for low-pay construction work, dirty hands-on experiences, mundane-repetitive lifestyles. Don't come here if you're looking to expand your horizons, spread fashion influences, or new ideas. Calgary is Canadian-Texas. >_<
On other news, I have officially beatened all the Silent Hills except the first, un-findable one. (it's too old now, you can't find it except on ebay). I have to recommend 2 and 4 to everyone who enjoys survival horror, or just asian horrors in general. But really, play all of them. In order. Someone told me none of them are connected. That's not true. They're all connected, vaguely. There's references in each of the ones before that'll make you smile if you like that kinda homage stuffs, I know I do. And even though I think 3 has some really bad controls and camera angles (it fluctuates horribly, and makes you dizzy sometimes, with horrible angles at some boss fights that makes a normally easy fight into a struggle of gaining control of the camera angle before you get stabbed in the face), the story is slow in the first parts, it picks up later, and you can tell where Silent Hill 4 gets some of its great visuals from this predecessor. Like the jittery-head movements seen in Ringu and Ringu 2, is used a lot in here, and repetitive torture motions, and faceless-zombie creatures in Silent Hill 4, all have its roots here. Moving texture is also from here, like those swarming-blood-meat-walls. Silent Hill 3 also has a massive amount of weapons, more than all other Silent Hills, which I think one of the idea is that you grab normal objects (wine bottles, wooden sticks, kitchen knives) as weapons. But this one has Submachine gun, katana, ... lightsaber... O_o But all in good taste, because you really do need them, as this one also features more rampaging enemies such as dead nurses, living-carousel-horses and such, everywhere.
Wow, I've typed this thing for an hour now, I must submit for I have only 4 minutes left.