I hope that it snows at home. It would be cool to make a snow sculpture a month after making a sand one. I was just thinking about sledding and why you should go feet first...so you don't bang your head if you run into something and jam your neck...then this brilliant (or not) thought came into my head...The only time you should go head first is when you're being born. Hmm. Well, time to go rinse the color out of my hair.
I think that websites should have something special to them, and are not just a random collection of things. Perhaps when I get my own domain I can dedicate this to one area...of course the problem with being so versatile in many different areas, I have no room to narrow my interests into one single focus.
What exactly is culture shock and how can you tell if you are really going through it. If it's a feeling of disheaval and discomfort in living in your current environment, I am sad to say I don't think I have gone through much culture shock at all. Well, not sad, but...I hear all kinds of stories of people undergoing culture shock here in Taiwan which I know is possible, but I wonder ihow much of it is because many of the people coming to Taiwan have never lived abroad before. I think back to my trip to France almost 4 years ago (that many already?) and all the culture shock I got there, mainly because of my host parents and the communication gap between what we knew and what we were supposed to have known before leaving the US but never learned. It makes one wonder. I am looking forward to seeing my niece for the first time and holding her and looking into her big (blue-grey eyes and falling in love with her). Again, I dream of having children. Not of getting married, but I think that's because despite how hard my mother worked to bring us up, she did it by herself pretty much which makes me wonder just how necessary a man is to being a parent (beyond the biological aspect). I honestly look into the future and see children, but never really a man, except when thinking of names for my future progeny and then adding the last name of my latest bust/crush. Surrounded by couples...on a plus side, I've never been a bridesmaid. On the downside, it's because I haven't been close to anyone who has gotten married. I wonder if I have become more socially introverted because of getting older or if that's just something that happened to me on purpose. I am hurting to get back into a social loop, but I don't have the energy or money to do so. Anyway...must get some sleep...I am already going to have to experience jet lag in less than a week from now.
January 1, 2003
I had a nice time back home, but it was also a time that scared me. I am realizing that my net of family, friends, and neighbors is becoming weaker and that soon I will have to build my own net. Well, I guess in a more literal way of speaking, I am growing up and my world is growing older. For instance, I remember when all six of my younger cousins were babies. I went home for Christmas and had a conversation with the youngest one, Olivia who is three (although she swears that she's only 2 years old). My brother has a wife and a little girl who is just so amazing. Baby Tristan's at that age where she smiles and still lets strangers hold her...like me, her aunt who will probably be a stranger in her life for some time. It's still so strange to call myself an aunt or my brother a father. And it snowed, a white Christmas...enough for making snow scultures a little, but ironically, I left my gloves in Taiwan. Anyway, back to growing old...er. My sister will be finishing college next year and she is the baby of our family. My mother's got a new boyfriend and he seems to be a keeper. He takes care of my mother who seemed too busy to spend any significant time with us three kids between work and being with Robert. And she's informed us that she will be taking blood thinners for the rest of her life thanks to her pulmonary embolism a little while back. The rest of her life is not a term I want to hear because it makes it sound so short-term. The neighbor's kids who I used to babysit are not only in their teens, but the three oldest ones are old enough to drive with Jessica being, probably, 18 years old. I think so since she was 11 when we moved into the house and I was 15, going on 16. Elijah was 6, Michael and Angelo (now Joel) were 2 years old. All of those babies can talk now too. Then one of the saddest signs that my former life is fading is that I learned my other neighbor, Ann has terminal pancreatic cancer. I think that despite wanting to be optimistic, I might have seen her for the last time. I brought over some oolong tea as a present and sat and talked with her and her son about what's been going on in our lives and they mentioned how my beads would be worth a lot of money in America. I don't know why I brought my blue prayer bead bracelet to America. I don't know why I wore it that day when I went to visit with Ann, but when I slipped it off my wrist and handed it to her, it seemed like that was the exact reason why I bought it that day in the Jade Market with Jessica. The smile on Ann's face was worth it. The other is that Randy, the only man worthy of being called a father to me, has had a stroke. No one told me any details, let alone that it happened, so I found out by eavesdropping on conversations between my sister and mother. Here he was, the man who I wanted to walk me down the aisle on my wedding day...the one who named me and took care of my mother and me (even in utero) when my own sperm donor of a "father" proved to be less of a man...the man who cried when, as a smart-mouthed little kid, I told him that he wasn't my father because in his mind he was. It seems like all the kids in my life are growing older and all the adults in my life are growing old.
Things are changing for me, but being away in Taiwan, I never really grasped onto just how much it was changing.
I'm trying not to cry.
I've decided that if I get my own domain, I will have a section dedicated to pictures I've taken from airplanes...shoot, I might just name it, www.pictures_ive_taken_from_airplanes.com unless someone's already taken that name. I love flying about the clouds snapping pictures of the world below. I may post the one I took of what I believe to be Mt. Fuji...that was really cool...a few wrinkly mountains and then this huge monolithic obviously a former volcano pops up out of nowhere and rises above all of the other moutains by at least a mile.
New Year's makes me think about the past. This time it was about regrets in love or what little I have experienced in love, if you could call it that...okay, so I don't think I have ever been in love. A few crushes...quite a few deep crushes actually and it makes me sad that I have probably never made anyone feel the same way for me as I have felt for people like Sean or Gary or Robert White or Kuami...little peanut head...or Kurt. But I just rewrote my old essay about the time with Kurt and it brought back a lot of memories, the feel of my brown soft leather backpack which I spied in my mother's trunk when I went home and the flowers I drew on it with metallic ink gel pens and how I wore it and regretted not taking it off so that I could feel more of his hands on my back when he held me that afternoon. How I turned my head and smelled his neck and felt a tear come to my eye while he held me although it was a tear of joy rather than one of rejection. How I stood there looking him in his blue eyes (almost the same color as this background) wanting to feel his lips with my lips and his skin with my skin. Oh shit...I feel another essay coming on...now the decision is if I want to blog it or biography it...blog it.
December 2, 2003 (3:30am)
I have been very shy and passive for most of my life and that has been the cause of many heartaches for me. I am not quite sure why...if it was due to a strict upbringing with my extended family where children were to be seen and not heard or if being bullied, teased, and picked on for almost all of my public school education had something to do with it, but if I could have been described in three words as a child, they would have been intelligent, oblivious, and shy. Shit...I think I am going to make this a biography.
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