Immerse Yourself in Japanese Films

When it comes to learning a language, the best way is to immerse yourself in it. Now for me I live in America and while there are plenty of Japanese, Korean, and otherwise Asian families living here, it’s really difficult to immerse myself in the Japanese language when there a very few people who speak it. That being said, I had to find another way to be able to get my daily dosage of Japanese. Radio and TV are a great way to really surround yourself in a culture that you can not directly interact with. In a very awkward, but interesting, turn of events I found a very interesting blog post by a gentleman who speaks multiple languages. He talks about that very topic, and focuses on the use of film as a way of immersing yourself in a culture, and names his top 10 Japanese films. He does an excellent job of explaining the concept of the films and I have decided to take them up on my “watch list” which I will be posting within the next week. That being said, below is a copy of his post, as I cannot directly share it due to the nature of how his website is being hosted and lack of WordPress share option. Enjoy!

Film is one of the best ways to immerse yourself in a foreign language from afar, giving you valuable cultural and linguistic insights from the comfort of your couch. Below you will  find my top ten favorite Japanese movies of all time, divided into three categories: 1) “Samurai & Fighting Flicks” for those who enjoy epic hero tales and aren’t squeamish of violence, 2) “Windows Into Japanese Culture” for those want to see different facets of life in modern Japan (some good, some sad), and 3) “Lighthearted & Humorous Films” for days when you need a good laugh. Limiting my list to ten movies was no easy task as Japan is home to prolific filmmakers and some of the best directors in the world.

Samurai & Fighting Flicks

1) Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai, or Shichi-nin no Samurai (七人の侍・しちにんのさむらい) as it is called in Japanese, represents the late KUROSAWA Akira’s (黒澤明・くろさわあきら) best known film, and was the first Japanese movie to gain international acclaim. The film stars a number of leading stars of the day, including SHIMURA Takashi (志村喬・しむらたかし) as SHIMADA Kanbei (島田勘兵衛・しまだかんべい), the leader of the samurai group, and MIFUNE Toshirou (三船敏郎・みふねとしろう) as Kikuchiyo (菊千代・きくちよ), an unpredictable wannabe-samurai who ends up being the real hero of the film.

2) Yojimbo

Youjinbou (用心棒・ようじんぼう), which literally means “Bodyguard” in Japanese, stars MIFUNE Toshirou (三船敏郎・みふねとしろう) of Seven Samurai fame as a “masterless samurai”, or rounin (浪人・ろうにん), who uses his cunning mind and warrior arts to help a town riddled with the violence and corruption of two warring clans. The heads of both clans end up hiring him for protection, unaware he is playing both sides.

3) Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman

Representing KITANO Takeshi’s (北野武・きたのたけし) largest commercial success to date, Zatouichi (座頭市・ざとういち) portrays KITANO as a blind masseuse roaming town to town. Not to spoil the story, but he is in secret a Robin Hood-esque hero with serious sword skills. When he comes across a town being bullied and extorted by powerful yakuza gangs, he shows that he doesn’t need the power of sight to bust heads. Despite the film’s blood and guts, it won the prestigious “Silver Lion for Best Director” award at the 2003 Venice Film Festival.

4) Hanabi

Literally meaning “Fireworks”, Hanabi (花火・はなび) is held by many as director-actor-comedian KITANO Takeshi’s (北野武・きたのたけし) masterpiece. Like most of his films, Hanabi portrays KITANO—who is also known quite aptly as “Beat Takeshi” (ビートたけし)—as a violent tough guy. In this case, he plays a former police detective who borrows money from the yakuza to help pay for his wife’s leukemia treatments.  The film bears many similarities to his earlier (and also well-regarded) film Sonatine.

5) The Twilight Samurai

Tasogare seibei (黄昏清兵衛・たそがれせいべい, lit. “Twilight Seibei”) is set in 19th century Japan, just prior to the Meiji Ishin (明治維新・めいじいしん, “Meiji Restoration”). The movie centers around IGUCHI Seibei (井口清兵衛・いぐちせいべい), played by SANADA Hiroyuki (真田 広之・さなだひろゆき), a frugal accountant who forgoes luxuries like bathing and presentable clothes to help care for his senile mother and daughters after his wife died of tuberculosis.  But what he lacks in grooming, he makes up for in bad-ass katana skills!

Windows Into Japanese Culture

6) Ikiru

Meaning “to Live” in Japanese, Ikiru (生きる・いきる) is a touching KUROSAWA classic about death, living for a purpose, and the absurdities of Japanese bureaucracy. Having worked for the Japanese government, I assure you the portrayal is spot on!  The film stars SHIMURA Takashi (志村喬・しむらたかし), of Seven Samurai fame, this time portraying a stoic bureaucrat instead of a stoic warrior.

7) Departures

Departures is known as Okuribito (送り人・おくりびと) in Japanese, a word which usually refers to someone who sends someone else off (e.g. at the airport). The story centers around a young cellist in Tokyo who moves back to his rural hometown with his wife after his symphony is shut down. Taking a complete change of course in his life, he takes a job at a sougiya (葬儀屋・そうぎや, “funeral parlor”) and finds himself handling dead bodies instead of expensive cellos. The movie won “Best Foreign Language Film” at the 2009 Oscars, and “Picture of the Year” at the 32nd Japan Academy Awards. The film is directed by TAKITA Youjirou (滝田洋二郎・たきたようじろう) and stars YAMAZAKI Tsutomu (山崎努・やまざきつとむ), HIROSUE Ryouko (広末涼子・ひろすえりょうこ), and MOTOKI Masahiro (本木雅弘・もときまさひろ).

8) Nobody Knows

Though it’s one of the sadder films I have ever seen, I highly recommend KORE’EDA Hirokazu’s (是枝裕和・これえだひろかず) 2004 film Daremo Shiranai (誰も知らない・だれもしらない, “Nobody Knows”). The movie follows the daily trials of four children left alone in a Tokyo apartment for months (and eventually years) by their less-than-motherly mother. Sadly, the film is based on actual events.

Lighthearted & Humorous Films

9) Tampopo

I love this movie.  A tour de force of Japanese cuisine, this Japanese comedy ties multiple story lines together in an almost Tarantino-esque style, with every sub-story involving the love of food.  The movie is claimed to be the first “Noodle Western” (a play on the term “Spaghetti Western”).

10) Kikujiro

Though Kikujiro (菊次郎の夏・きくじろうのなつ, “Kikujiro’s Summer”) may be light on character or plot depth, the film more than makes up for it with beautiful views of Japan, amazing piano music by FUJISAWA Mamoru (藤澤守・ふじさわまもる, a.k.a. “Joe Hisaishi”), and plenty of Takeshi-style comedy.

If you’ve already started using films as a way to help yourself learn Japanese, you’ve probably found that they are extremely difficult to use as a learning tool. The language and the speed make it difficult to understand and learn from. Without backup (transcripts, questions, explanations, etc.) a commercial film is difficult to easily use for learning purposes. My suggestion here would be to watch films subtitled in Japanese (or English if you are a beginner and can’t understand what is going on) and enjoy them first as a film. Try and get a feel for the overall rhythms and speed of dialogue. Then return to scenes and try them without subtitles. For words you don’t understand, use context clues to help fill in the blanks.

I’d also recommend TV series and more everyday themed films as the dialogue has more of a chance of being natural. Don’t try to understand everything if you’re not at that level yet. A very useful skill is being able to figure out what is going on when you don’t know everything that is being said.

Moving Past the Infatuation Stage

IMG_20150602_074723_268

おはようみんな。元気ですか？
(Ohayou minna. Genki desu ka?)

Happy Tuesday everyone! I am starting my professional work day with hot tea, thin mints, and a bit of Japanese review. Over the summer the university tends to slow down due to faculty being on vacation until August. With all of the extra time I thought I would write up a blog post about a pretty interesting topic. When it comes to things that are foreign to us, people tend to be really finicky. Many foreigners view Japan as some marvelous dreamland of technology and culture; a place where crazy is the norm and embracing fantasy in everyday life is acceptable. We read anime, we watch Japanese television, we listen to Japanese music and assume that is the sole representation of life over there. Eventually some us get to go, and we are hit with the cold hard reality that it is not everything we imagined it to be. Some people find after visiting Japan that they are no longer enthralled by the idea of Japan and lose motivation. How do you motivate yourself to continue practicing after the infatuation stage?

Like most people I fell in love with Japanese after seeing my first Japanese cartoon. For me it was あしたのジョ (Ashita no Jo) and ブルーシード (Burū Shīdo). A very literal translation of both of the title’s are “Tomorrow’s Joe” and “Blue Seed.” Between the two, Ashita no Jo was probably my favorite. It was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine, not to be confused with Weekly Shōnen Jump, in the late 1960s. The actual animated series didn’t air until the early 70s. At a time when considerable economic and social upheaval was transforming Japanese culture, Joe was the tragic hero who represented the struggle of the lower class citizen. Joe is a deadbeat. He is a troubled orphan who chooses to abandon his orphanage in an attempt to find his own way of life. After encountering a drunkard, he ends up in a scuff with members of the local gang. The drunk is impressed by Joe’s instincts and fighting ability. It is revealed that the drunk is Dampei Tange, a former boxing instructor, who vows to straighten up and fulfill his dream of creating a world champion in Joe. As a side note: バクマン (Bakuman) is one of my more recent favorites, and when Moritaka-kun states his favorite manga is Ashita no Jo you can probably imagine my excitement lol) Burū Shīdo, instead of being a reflection of the Japanese people, takes it’s origins from Japanese mythology. It is a representation of the tale of the Shinto god スサノオ (Susanoo) and the eight-headed, eight tailed, dragon ヤマタノオロチ (Yamata no Orochi). As excited as I was, over time my excitement dwindled.

At this point in my life I had already committed myself to learning Japanese though, and once the excitement of a foreign culture died so did a bit of my motivation to learn the language. This happens to a lot of us. We are so excited about the idea of something that once that excitement is gone, or if the something does not meet our expectations, we no longer like wish to continue with it. Why is it then that after the infatuation stage I can still continue to practice and enjoy it? For me it started with taking a moment to meditate on my reasons for liking the language and the culture. Did I only like the culture because I enjoyed the cartoons? Was it only that I liked the sound of the music? Was it only that I liked what Japanese television looked like, or was there something more behind my desire? It was then that I truly realized why I liked the culture so much. Why I liked those cartoons despite not being able to understand the language with subtitles and why I loved those songs. It was because the translation and meaning behind those songs were powerful; more pleasing to listen to than American music which had and still is full of foul language and suggestive images. It was because I could relate to those animated characters more than I could in my own country. There was and is more meaning in those images than in the ones I grew up with here in America. In my opinion the people who have a deeper reason than just what we see in the media are those who continue to enjoy something after the infatuation stage.

I recently read an article by a gentleman who went by the name N. Matt who speaks on his experience in Japan. While I have not been to Japan as of yet, one of his reasons stuck with me – courteousness, politeness, kindness, and friendliness. After speaking to a lot of my American friends who live in Japan and American friends who go to Japan frequently they confirmed his statement is true. Below is his statement:

Last month, I toured Japan for three weeks with G Adventures. As you know, I was very excited. I had high expectations for a country that I had for years dreamed about seeing. And when you have high expectations, you can be easily disappointed. But Japan didn’t disappoint—it exceeded my expectations. I loved Japan. Loved it beyond anything I expected. The food, the people, the architecture, the culture—it was bliss.

He then goes on to talk about how polite and friendly the Japanese are, even in the way their culture and language is structured.

I couldn’t get over how amazingly polite everyone was. People went out of their way to be helpful. While getting lost looking for my Couchsurfing host, a guy walked me all the way to the address to make sure I got there. A security guard who spoke no English just walked me to the ATM because he couldn’t explain the directions. There was always an offer of helpfulness at the slightest indication of confusion. There was always an apologetic “sorry” and even the signs, when letting people know something was not allowed, began with “sorry.” There is simply a courtesy and helpfulness that permeates the soul of Japan.

The woman who ran out of her house to talk to our tour group. The man who let everyone take 1,000 pictures of his dog. The college students to whom I gave English lessons. The owner of the noodle shop who spoke no English but wanted to have a fake game of baseball with me when I told him I was American. The old couple who just smiled at me while I ate at their sushi restaurant and gave me a thumbs up every time I said “oishi” (“delicious” in Japanese). The man who helped me place my order in Japanese and was shocked when I knew the names of fish in Japanese. Everyone was just helpful and genuinely friendly.

My love for Japan was deeper than just what I experienced on the surface. I had more of a reason than just “everyone else is doing it” or “that [the language] sounds cool.” My feelings were genuine, and so I continued to practice with newfound enthusiasm. It is important that you are doing something for the right reasons. It is especially true when it comes to language because it is so time consuming. You may hit walls, you may lose your motivation, and sometimes you may feel like you truly aren’t learning anything. In order to overcome those obstacles you need a strong motivating factor. If you are teaching yourself this is doubly important.

Remember, Japan is just a country with normal people going about their normal everyday lives. Let’s love Japan for Japan and not the idea of Japan.

It Never Happened

So I wanted to take a moment to share this post from Chelsea at Rookie Notes. Her post speaks very strongly about the use of technology in our lives. More specifically the use of social media in our lives. There used to be a point where people were simply happy interacting with each other in person. We would grab our spiral cord landline phone, place a call to a friend or relative, and make plans to go hang out with each other. Even if people weren’t hanging out with each other, they found themselves content to merely talk on the phone. Those days are apparently a thing of the past.

With the introduction of social media into our lives it not uncommon for friends, family, and even lovers to engage in internet activities for more than half of the day. How many people do you know who message each other through Facebook despite sitting right next to each other? Maybe you know someone who is constantly updating their Facebook status? I can name several people, my fiancé included, who spend 50-70% of their time on some form of social media outlet.

I’m not a social media guy so I might be one of a few, but does anyone else miss the days where people would talk to each other on the phone? Where people would take photographs on a Kodak and get them developed at the local photo shop. I am by no stretch of the imagination against social media, especially since as the graphic designer for a university I am responsible for all post and social media marketing campaigns. I just think there needs to be a good balance between the two.

How do you balance your time between social media and other activities? I would love to hear from you!

Japanese Writing Systems – Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji

Learning a foreign language can be extremely difficult. Specifically teaching yourself a foreign language. For some people this comes extremely easy, and for others it takes a lot of work and when you are teaching yourself there are various other factors that come into play as well. Are you certain you are teaching yourself appropriately? Is the information you are learning outdated? How does one stay motivated to keep practicing? Learning Japanese can be significantly harder because unlike English there are three writing systems you have to use, and you have to be able to distinguish between those systems and when necessary to use them. You also have to take into consideration a multitude of other factors that can be the difference between communicating effectively, or completely confusing your listener. In order to prevent this from happening, you have to become familiar with the independent systems and grammatical structure. Fortunately, finding out where to begin when learning a new language is easy. Start with the alphabet. When learning English the first thing we learn is the alphabet. When then use the alphabet to form words. Those words then become the sentences with which we speak. So it stands to reason we would begin learning Japanese with their alphabet.

As I stated earlier, The Japanese writing system is made up of three main written scripts. They are: Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji. Hiragana is the main writing system used to represent every distinct sound in Japanese. Because of its phonetic nature, you can use Hiragana to also learn how to pronounce all the sounds in the Japanese language. Next is Katakana, which represents the same sounds as Hiragana and it primarily used to represent words from other languages with no Japanese equivalent (this definition will vary depending on who you speak to, but the important information is still here. Katakana = foreign language words). The third and final script is Kanji, which are Chinese characters adapted for Japanese use and are heavily used in writing. There are no spaces in Japanese so Kanji is necessary in order to separate the words within a sentence. According to Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese: “Kanji is also useful for distinguishing homophones, which occurs quite often given the limited number of distinct sounds in Japanese.” The best way to learn Japanese is to start by learning how to recognize and pronounce Hiragana. There is also another writing form called Romaji, which I will touch on briefly later. Below is the chart I used when I first started.

2000px-Table_hiragana.svg

This is a really good chart because it also shows the proper stroke order for writing out characters. It is very important when writing out Japanese characters that special attention is paid to the stroke order and the legibility of the characters. For example, let’s look at “Sa” and “Chi” on this chart. They look very similar except the “chi” character is flipped horizontally. The character being turned the opposite direction turns one character into another.  Let’s look at another. “Ru” and “Ro” are very similar as well, except “Ru” has a small loop inside of itself where as “Ro” does not. That small loop is the difference between spelling “Ruku” (るく) and “Roku” (ろく) which have very different meanings. Once you learn Hiragana, you can then move on to Katakana. Just like the above chart, I used a similar chart to teach myself Katakana. I have provided the Katakana chart below as well.

Table_katakana.svg

Even after years of practice, because Japanese is not my native tongue, I often find myself reviewing these two scripts to make sure that I still know the characters. Don’t feel embarrassed if you find you have to do it as well. It’s not a bad thing at all. Writing 5 characters from each set a day should help with learning the characters. Let’s say on Monday you worked on the first column in each chart. That’s a total of 10 characters. If you continued this method for a single week. You will have learned 70 characters. 35 from the Hiragana chart and 35 from the Katakana chart. Learning languages takes time, so I wouldn’t dare say that is even remotely possible, but depending on how good your memory and recognition skills are you will have made a lot of progress in a short period of time. I wrote each character about 40 times a day as I was learning them to help commit them to memory. After I learned all of them I just did a daily review before I started working on other aspects of the language.

 IMG_0189
(Shot of my Katakana practice. I know, my handwriting is horrible lol)

It’s not going to be easy, but spend some time writing out the characters repeatedly. You want to be able to recognize the characters at a moments notice. It will also help you to stay away from associating the characters with their romaji equivalent while you are learning the characters. Romaji is a writing form in which Japanese sounds are written in romanized characters. As an example, るく is Hiragana and “Ruku” would be the romaji equivalent. This is not a form of writing that is widely, if at all, used in Japan. I found in my studying that American learners end up becoming dependent on associating characters with romaji because we are used to seeing romanized characters everywhere else, even in other foreign languages. I think our first step as language learners is to adapt a way of learning that is consistent with how native speakers use the language.

So just to review, here are examples of each of the writing forms:

Hiragana: わたし
Katakana: ワタシ
Kanji: 私
Romaji: watashi

If you want to use a book to learn the language, I highly recommend Genki. Though it is a paid book that you can pick up from most retailers, it is a very good resource and I feel that most people who are learning Japanese touch this book at least one time. The book is updated from time to time as well which makes the information extremely trustworthy. If you are struggling financially but still want to practice using a sound book, then A Complete Guide to Japanese Grammar by Tae Kim is a fantastic free resource. Most of my Japanese speaking friends recommend Tae Kim’s guide as well. Whichever resource you use, try and stick to it. You don’t want to read multiple books which present information differently and then confuse yourself. Once you learn the basic principles you can always refine the information later.

Work hard everyone!

A Step in the Right Direction

I would like to start this post by saying thank you to Monica. She runs a blog called The Beauty of Existence and has been a huge inspiration to me for the past few years. If you get the chance you should take a look at her blog. It’s very informative, especially regarding foreign languages. I’ve spoken with her a few times in the past and speaking with her recently made me realize what I want to do with my blog. There are other people who helped me as well simply by talking to me, but Monica has probably had the most impact on my decision.

So when I first made this blog I had a lot of visions for what I wanted to do with it. I thought about making it a Graphic Design blog because I really love what I do and do not have enough people to talk to about it. This idea is still there, waiting for me to do something with it. Eventually I will, but that day is not today and might not come for a long time. I also thought about a simple “slice of life” blog so I could talk about whatever I wanted. I have tried this, and I don’t feel like I am talking about anything specific. My post end up being all over the place and sometimes, to me, aren’t coherent. I disliked this, but I didn’t know what to do about it. There were times when talking about current events was an option, and I made a post about “The Colbert Report” a few months ago. There is a lot going on in the world that I could talk about, but it doesn’t make me feel as if I am actually saying anything. That is important to me.  I have grappled with what to do with my blog for quite some time, and I honestly had no idea. At one point I was going to just let it die. Recently I spoke to Monica and another friend called Devo who runs a blog called The Twisted Rope and realized that the reason I don’t feel like I am saying anything is because I am being extremely broad with my blog. After thinking about this for some time I have decided that I am going to speak specifically about learning Japanese, Japanese culture, and my own journey to find out who I am and the things I believe in. I will continue to speak about other topics (not that I was saying much to begin with :)), but I am trying to narrow down what I talk about to the things I care about the most. Hopefully this will help me confirm some things about myself.

The Astral in my Life

I’ve been away for a while. The combination of having three jobs and trying to have some semblance of a life is preventing me from being able to write on here the way I would like to. It seems like I’m always writing a lot for a few months, and then disappearing for more than that. And personally I just felt like I didn’t have much interesting to say. What would I talk about? I’m not really into politics and I don’t really follow current events. I am still struggling with finding a practice to follow, and even then my religious views are up for debate. Work is going well, and I have a job interview for a full-time Graphic Design job at my current place of employment. See? Nothing really to talk about. It would be nice if I could get this job though.

Working at a University I have learned all sorts of things, but being here part-time and working two other jobs which are not in my field is cutting into my time. It’s very difficult to schedule vacation time when you work at three places because the days you need off at each company to make an entire one week vacation may not necessarily be there. It’s also just annoying to be going to work every day of the week but Sunday. I normally like to go to my local card shop on Sunday but I’m running around so much that I don’t even want to leave the house on Sunday anymore. Now that would change if I could get this job. I wouldn’t have to work more than the one job to support myself and TG for starters. She’s still in school for nursing if you’re curious, however her health has been deteriorating for about a year. It’s not so bad that she will die from it, but it is affecting her ability to live a comfortable lifestyle even inside our own home.

We had a neurology appoint a month ago to discover what was wrong. The neurologist was nice, though she had us schedule an overnight electroencephalogram (EEG). For those of you who may not know, this is a test that detects electrical activity in the brain using small electrodes attached to your scalp. Your brain cells communicate via electrical impulses and are active all the time (and I do mean ALL of the time). This activity shows up as wavy lines on an EEG recording, and based on the movement of these lines the doctor will be able to tell us what is wrong with her, or what they think is wrong, so that we can begin trying to treat the problem. If you know anything about TG from reading her blog, it’s that she hardly (I love you sweetie 🙂 ) does anything immediately when she’s asked to. Now her health insurance is gone until about the middle of June maybe early July, which means we can’t schedule the EEG anyway because we can’t afford the cost without insurance backing us. It would seem that we are “up the creek without a paddle.”

In other news though, I think I am becoming more and more confused about religion and practices in general. I started reading up on Shintoism and have still been fiddling around with Kemeticism; and I use fiddling loosely because I am still trying to figure out what exactly it means to be Kemetic. I’ve been having some thoughts that just don’t add up to me. For example, a while ago while at work I randomly zoned out and I was in something like an alter/castle/empire thing. I remember feeling like I was imagining it purposely because I wanted to find some sort of clue to what I was supposed to be doing, but I’ve also learned just because I feel like I’m thinking about it on purpose doesn’t make it the case and just because I am thinking about it on purpose doesn’t mean it isn’t important. Either way I am standing on this alter/castle/empire (yes, it did look like some combination of the three) thing and suddenly I forget why I am standing there and how I got there. So now I’m standing here baffled about what I am doing here and not at work. Everything then fades and my zoning ends, at which point I’m in my office.

As another example right now I am at work typing this blog post and my mind keeps wandering off to random places. First it was a thick forest. It is very very dense with a small clearing. In this clearing there is a sparkling pond. I remember this place as my “comfort” zone in the astral. I don’t mean astral as in spirit work though. I mean astral as in whenever I am sleeping and something dangerous is happening, whenever I am stress in real life and meditate, or whenever I simply need somewhere to go and not be bothered this is often where I end up. This makes sense, as my house as been very stressful as of late. I invited my cousin in my space because he would have been homeless otherwise. His fiance is there as well. She is fine. He is driving me insane. I won’t stay on this too long, but just providing it as cause for why I have been ending up here a lot lately.

As a completely separate example, while I was typing that sentence just now, my mind wandered off back to this alter/castle/empire place and as I noticed I was “drifting” away from my physical body I shook my head and came back down. There are times at work where I feel elevated from my body because I am stressed or dizzy, and other times I feel that way for no explainable reason at all. There is probably a reason for this. Maybe it has something to do with why I haven’t seen or cannot connect to my fox spirit? I will mention her in another post. After all I am still at work 😛 My brain rambles a mile a minute regardless of what I am doing and sometimes it is hard to keep up with my thoughts and so I’ve learned to get them out while I can still comprehend my own messages. My plan is to ask Aine for some suggestions, but I’d also like suggestions from people with more experience than I. How do I know when something is a sign with respect to religion and the astral realm and when I am simply causing something to happen because I am overly concerned with it?

Dream Analysis: Let’s Talk About Weird Dreams

So last night I had this really weird dream. It should be noted that I don’t typically have them so any time I do have one it’s always a weird thing. However this was weird on an entirely new level. I actually had to wake the GF up and have her open my bedroom door before I would walk out of it this morning. I have a bad time remembering my dreams, but I remember this one and so this is my attempt to document it before I forget and get some feedback ( the GF’s idea was to get someone to interpret it) on what it means or why I had this dream. So, onto the weird as shit dream.

It’s starts with me outside of the GF house. I don’t know why I’m here and I honestly didn’t do anything while I was here. I assumed I was dropped her off for one reason or another. I got in my car and drove to this building where my family, (in my dreams), typically have parties. This is not the first time I have dreamed about this building and it certainly will not be the last I presume. It takes me about 47 minutes to arrive there and park. I could not find a parking spot and so I had to park in this weird parking area behind the building around some alleys.

I came inside the building with my parents, brother, cousin from Virginia and some girl who is irrelevant and we get on the elevator. First the elevator was being weird and we couldn’t get it to the 3rd floor where the party was. It went to the second, then went back to the first. Then never left the first even though we shut the door and kept pressing the 3rd floor button. Then some guy got on talking about how he made a iPhone looking pager and got off at the second floor. Only after him getting off, and more people getting on and us kicking them off did it finally go to the floor the party was on. Obviously, we walked around the corner, past the glass walls, and into the party room, which is on the other side of large grey double doors with a read trimming around the edges of the door and a gold handle. I feel like this color scheme is important.

Inside is a bunch of my family and they are doing party things, however for whatever reason my attention is drawn to some people playing a game called Vanguard. They were in the middle of a weird 2 (let’s call them AB) – 2 (let’s call them CD) trade. They had something I wanted though and so I tried to get in on the trade. They said no because they were doing this sort of tag trade because person A wanted to trade C but had nothing he wanted, so B offers to trade C for the card, however C has nothing B wants so he is going to trade D is going to trade to B on their behalf. It continues in this fashion until all parties end up being satisfied. I asked him to hold the cards for me until it was over but he said I should try and get them now because if one of the other people want them they get first attempt since they’re already in the trade. My brother walks by at this point, and I make a deal with him to get involved in the trade so it will be 3 – 3. They were okay with this; however my inventory is not with me. Brother agrees to stall them until I can get back with our stuff and I leave the party.

I leave the room and am going down the escalator when it essentially breaks down and I have to run through the building. While running through the second floor I pass a girl. Her presence is very important in this dream, but for whatever reason I don’t know. She is wearing all white. Very specifically a white hooded jacket, and the jacket has these cat/fox/animal type ears on them which are surprisingly apart of how the hood was made. Her face seems normal enough except her eyes are kind of slit-like and she has a very small animal like nose which is pinkish-red but leaning more towards the red side.

Running past, down the stairs, I got lost trying to find my car. While lost, my brother and these four boys are walking down the street. Brother says they were told to run and errand so I have more time to get our stuff. He opted to go with them to make sure they got back and we could continue the trade. Eventually I find my car after going down several wrong turns and it not being in the parking lot where I parked it. There are two fat cats sitting on my front window and they have and are dragging their nails along the window. The front window is now ruined to the point that I would have to buy a new window. Their are also other cats on crates and other discarded objects. A lot of cats. And they look essentially like demonized cats; angry and with long sharp claws and glowing yellowish-green eyes. They fur is raised up and they look like they could jump at me at any time. I need my car though, so I step towards the cats. The two on the car snarl, some on the ground run, and the ones on the objects snarl and their eyes glow more intensely. This repeats several times until eventually I step and the cats on the boxes charge towards me. Immediately run, and they gave chase.

As I was running around the building trying to find my way back inside, I noticed that there were demon cats everywhere. On the fences, running along the outside of the fences; even scaling the walls. After about 6 or so minutes of managing to outrun these animals, I eventually find the door I came outside from. There is a cat in front of it. As I am typing this my memory is starting to fad so I cannot remember how I got past the cat, but I manage to get past this cat and into the staircase on the other side of the door. I take a deep breathe and move to take a step. I am startled to find a cat there. It is a normal looking cat. I cannot remember details as far as color, but it doesn’t seem to be one of the evil cats. Still, cats seem to be evil in this dream and I am not taking any chances and so I open the door and softly punt her outside and slam the door shut.

When I turn around to go up the steps she is in front of me. This time however she looks like a gollumized version of the same cat with a third eye. Her skin texture, everything was so gollum like. If you do not know who gollum is, he is a creature in Lord of the (just google search gollum or smeagol and you should see him). This was alarming, but she didn’t appear to be evil despite that and I didn’t have time to process it more than why did she appear on this half of the door. I needed to get to people, my family. I bolted up the steps as hard and fast as I can. Along the way I dodge some demon cats here and there, sprint back across the cafeteria again, and up the last flight of steps to the 3rd floor where the party is. There are demon cats along ALL of the windows clawing and snarling. The smeagol cat turns towards the window and says something along the lines of this:

“Back off. I already told him about the lions!”

The other cats then stop snarling and the windows are free. Now on the 3rd floor I can see the grey doors with the red trim and the gold handles of which my family is on the other side of. The smeagol cat creature is simply sitting there blinking through her third all very nonchalantly. It should be noted that she is this weird but very alluring bluish purple color, or at least I remember her being that way. Looking around more I see male and female bathrooms across from me. It’s literally on one side of the hallway door where party is, and on the side of the hallway bathroom. Now I know I had to go to the bathroom in real life because I woke up needing to go and went back to sleep. This is why, at THIS moment, I feel like I need to pee.
The bathroom door has this see through part in the center of it. In the females bathroom I can see a person with her back turned to me. It is the lady I passed by earlier with the snow white jacket and the hood with animal like ears made into it. At that moment, a janitor lady comes by. Shes is wearing nurse scrubs but she appears to be a janitor cause she has a mop and bucket. She walks into the female bathroom, is in there for all of a few moments, and then runs out screaming. The woman does not appear to be injured. What could have happened in a few seconds?

The bathroom where the woman screamed is on one side. The room with the party is on the other. I still have to go to the bathroom, and I know there is no bathroom inside the party room. I can presume the smeagol like cat creature is strong as she managed to stop a horde of demonized cats from attacking me and she seems to be on my side. With all of this in mind, I step towards the bathroom. Not even completely through my first step, the smeagol like cat snarls, and while she is small she has a very powerful and terrifying snarl. Commanding is a good word as well. She seemed to only say a few words but I got the entirety of what she meant, which is this:

“Human! I was never on your side. I merely using you. I was patient with you. Waiting for you to open that door so I may enter and demonize them; but my patience wears thin and you dare step in the opposite direction!”

She then jumps at me and rips one of my ears off in it’s entirety. Terrified and instinctively, I move to punch her and run. With amazing speed she severs my hand from arm and it was my dominant hand at that. She snarls in that terrifying voice as if to say how dare you. I would have kicked her but I knew that if she took my dominant leg as well I would be done for. At this moment the bathroom door opens and the woman in the white animal hooded jacket steps out. She still appears as she did the first time I saw her. Not looking like a demon, and very unfazed by the situation. In this very nonchalant way she walks past us, opens the door to the party, and leaves. When the door opens, all of my family has already been turned into demon cats, and charge out of the party room.

This is where I die.

I don’t know what this means or why I had such a bizarre dream, but any help would be appreciated. My own cat made me nervous to walk out of the room this morning.

When In Doubt, Write It Out

When I was a wee lad, and I say this knowing I am only a quarter of a century old, I found myself not really knowing what to do when I was feeling down. At one point or another my mother suggested writing. That did wonders. As I got older, I continued to write when I felt sad or lonely. I developed a unique sense of style and eloquence, and eventually grew to love story telling. This led me to view writing as an art form and I have written over three dozen unfinished pieces of stories which I will eventually stop being lazy and compile them into a book of short stories. Over the years while I may still be good at writing I slowly began to lose interest in it, despite a very strong desire to continue storytelling. A combination of lack of time and drained muse. Now I use it solely for communication purposes and sometimes as a form of expression. All of this in the form of blogging. While I will admit that I have gotten a bit lazy, (thus seen by the disparity of my blog post), the desire is certainly still there. Today I am writing in boredom, and while I won’t prattle too long there is much I have to say.

To start, I haven’t posted in a while so you probably don’t know but I have a job doing Graphic Design at Temple University. It is certainly everything I expected it to be and I enjoy it very much. It is only a part-time job working 3 days a week though. I’m employed to work 20 hours a week exactly and make a yearly salary of $22,500. That is certainly not bad. It still places me close to if not below the poverty line though, and with my current expenses I find myself in need of more work. I attempted to do freelance work, however I still have not gotten my personal website up despite the need to. I may find work easier at that point, but right now I am not and I still have bills to pay. I don’t need much. Quite frankly I could probably pass with any job, even if it is minimum wage, since I only need about another $400 a month to break even on income + expenses. I am working on a holiday card for the university. I will likely put it on my online portfolio on behance.net. When I do if I can bring the copyright over as well I will showcase it here as well or just make a new deviantart. Either way, I will try to show you guys when I am done.

On a more positive note, in November I took the GF to the Poconos for a 3 day, 2 night trip as a birthday present. Saving up for that was difficult considering my financial plight however I made it work and she really seemed to enjoy herself. I have photographs so I will do my best to get those up here eventually. They currently reside on a camera I returned to my aunt and prayerfully she won’t delete my photos before I can get them off of there. We had a great time. The first night we went out to eat at an Italian restaurant and then went to a comedy show across the street where we had a few drinks and the comedian proceeded to poke fun at her. It was all in jest though and she was a good sport about it. My mother and stepfather went with us though they had their own space. They insulted her drink choice. On her 23rd birthday she decided to drink some chocolate martini. My stepfather bought her an “Ultimate Long Island Ice Tea,” plopped it on the table and went, “now that’s a real birthday drink.” It was a good time, which lead to some events that you don’t need to be apart of 🙂 .

To start day two we went out to Bushkill Falls. It’s pretty much the Niagra falls of the Poconos. We spent about 3 hours on the mountain trial taking pictures until my camera died. I had a back-up battery but apparently it did not charge despite the hours I spent charging all 3 of my back-up batteries. This ended our trip to the falls but we got some really nice pictures. Later that day we went to an Asian restaurant. Good food is good food after all. Oh, did I mention before that weekend I baked her a cake. It was my great grandmother’s recipe. I will be putting those pictures up when I get over being lazy as well.

While we are on the topic of birthdays, mine was this past Monday. It was not nearly that extravagant though. As much as I would have liked to treat myself to something that nice, I’m still struggling to make ends meet and so there was no weekend retreat this time around. Instead I had a very uneventful day. I went to work where my co-workers surprised me with a card and brownies. After work I went home where my mom gave me a card and a nice pair of jeans and shirt. I always wear clothes I get on my birthday from my mom on my birthday. Years of habit and honestly not a bad one in my opinion. This set me up for the evening. Before that though, I needed to look as good as possible; and so I drove to my uncle’s house who gave me a haircut and a gift of his own. It was a nice place watch with a gold rim and “hands.” Once I finally managed to get to my house from work, I briefly washed, changed, as was off to the mall.  That was it in a nutshell. See? No cabin in the woods by a lake. Just me, the GF, and the BGF (best gay friend if it isn’t on my acronym page), and 2 hours of hanging out at the mall.

I have another post coming soon, (most likely tomorrow), about where I stand religiously. I’m not necessarily Christian but I don’t know what I should practice. I may have finally found something that can satisfy my desire to be connected spiritually. Will have more on that tomorrow. Look forward to my pictures soon.

Frustration: The inability to make ends meet

There are things that I would rather not talk to people about and even more that I would not have to put onto WordPress; but I don’t know where else to turn. It’s been a rough few months and they don’t seem to be getting any better. I was previously working with a mortgage company, an experience that ended up costing me a good portion of my health. From there I have finally gotten a good job in my field of study, however I took a rather large pay cut for this job and because of it I do not make enough money to pay for all of the things in my life that I am responsible for. Rent, bills, credit card payments, etc. I was skeptical about taking this job to begin with despite how much I needed it; however the GF convinced me that it would be in my best interest to take it regardless and that she would support me. I had hoped things would get better. Apparently not.

Despite working hard I still cannot afford to pay for everything I need to and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve been doing my best though and trying to make ends meet. I’ve barely been scrapping by. At the end of the month I plan on moving into a new apartment that will help me save a bit of money. Not enough, but even a little amount is enough.

I’m not going to talk about it too long. I’m not really in the mood to make a particularly long blog post. The GF did something earlier that made me extremely upset. It made me feel like she does not appreciate everything I do to keep us afloat considering she is a full-time student and so I am providing for her pretty much 100%. I know what i’m doing is not enough. I’m sorry our food budget among other things had to be cut in half in order for me to get us by this month. Even if you aren’t pleased you you don’t have to show it. You don’t have to make me feel as if you’re angry that things turned out this way. I’m trying my best and financially I’m doing it alone.

Let me stop guys. Hopefully the next time I write it will be on better terms, as I still have to tell you all about my new job.