Can I rebuild my life

at 25?




Father, thank You for giving me a second chance... I'll do my best...

be a good person... little by little... step by step... become strong again... and a better person than before.

Stand By Me (1986)

"Do you think I'm weird?"

"Definitely."

"No man, seriously. Am I weird?"

"Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."

I just watched Stand By Me. All the actors were amazing. They were only around twelve to fifteen then... River Phoenix (Chris) was fifteen and Wil Wheaton (Gordie) was twelve. The other two boys Corey Feldman (Teddy) and Jerry O'Connell (Vern) were really good too.

I've watched quite a few Stephen King movies... he always have this character, the writer, or the to-be writer, who's unsure of himself... about writing. When the grocery store man asked Gordie what does he do, "Do you play football? What do you do then?" he replied "...I don't know." I thought about it afterwards... during the railway bridge scene... I thought maybe it's a little like what I feel about architecture.

And also, this guy, the leader of that Scorpion gang, he was driving on the wrong side of the road, racing the other car, when a truck comes from the far end. He just keeps on going... the rest of the guys laughed at first, thinking he'll dodge soon enough, but he kept on going, and everyone started panicking and yelling for him to swerve, and the truck kept on sounding the horn, but he kept going... at the last minute the truck swerved out to avoid a collision, spilling logs all over the road... and the guy, he just drove on. He had a look on his face, which may seem like smugness, you know, from having not chickened out... but I felt, that maybe he was just flipping the coin. Not 'just', but flipping. I felt, maybe, he wasn't sure the truck would swerve out, but he just wagered... I mean, he's a real douche bag, this guy, but just these few seconds, that look on his face...

And earlier in the movie the boy Teddy stood still on the railway tracks while the others scrambled off when a train was approaching. The others shouted at him to get off but he just stood... he said he'll dodge it... but the train just kept coming closer and closer... and it's sounding the horn and all... but he still does not move. Just kept standing... with that look in his eyes...

Chris dragged him off in the end. But anyway, it was like... both Teddy and that Scorpion guy...

Would Teddy have dodged, really?

"I just wish... that I could go some place... where nobody knows me. ...I guess I'm just a pussy, huh?"

River's character Chris just shows such intelligence for a kid of his age... the tragic hero kind, the really-smart-but-in-beat-circumstances kind... the kind you (I, at any rate) really feel for. You wish he will, somehow, manage to get out of the circumstances and succeed because he deserves it, he deserves it. To be good, to be free.

"I'm never gonna get out of this town am I, Gordie?"

"You can do anything you want, man."

He was the big brother, the strong one, and wise. He has his troubles, and not mean ones either, but he doesn't let it show... most of the time. He just really looks out for Gordie... He recognized Gordie's talent in writing and tried to encourage him... and that scene where he was so pissed, so fucking pissed with Gordie's parents because he neglected and completely failed to see Gordie's ability and failed to encourage him...

"You're just a kid, Gordie..."

"Oh, gee, thanks, Dad!"

"I wish the hell I was your dad. You wouldn't be going around talking about taking these stupid shop courses if I was. It's like God gave you something man, all those stories you can make up. And He said, "this is what we got for ya kid, try not to lose it." Kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them. And if your parents are too fucked up to do it, then maybe I should!"

I wanted Chris to have a good ending... but in movies you know that guys like this...

"Chris did get out. He enrolled in the college courses with me, and although it was hard, he gutted it out like he always did. He went on to college and eventually became a lawyer."

This was good enough for me. He also went on to fulfill his tragic hero destiny in the next few lines, but that's that...

I watched this movie because of River Phoenix. After seeing My Own Private Idaho. Well, yea, it's just two movies... But I really like him. From his name to the way he looks. I mean, not the way he looks, but the way he looks, you know?

But anyway, this movie just gave me a lot to think about.

Garden

Piet Oudolf

Photograph by Andrew Lawson

Photograph by Juergen Becker

Photograph by Marianne Majerus






Peter Zumthor


Interview: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2011 by Peter Zumthor from Dezeen on Vimeo.

目の前には困難しか見えないだろ。でっかい壁が四方に立ちはだかって何処にも進めないように思えたりする。だけど絶対に忘れないで欲しいんだ。壁の向こうには君だけの特別な景色が、胸打つ未来が必ず待ってる。俺は、この壁を越えて必ず君に会いに行くよ。必ず。

＠ヒュウガ／小川輝晃




http://twitter.com/tokusatsuhero より

Jeff fights from underneath.
Jeff's the guy that's too small to be in the fight,
that should never be in the fight,
that shouldn't be in the main events,
that shouldn't be able to do the things he does,
but he does them anyway.

-Triple H on Jeff Hardy (from Jeff Hardy: My Life, My Rules)

Carry On Wayward Son

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher, but I flew too high
Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I hear the voices when I'm dreamin',
I can hear them say

Carry on my wayward son,
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man, it surely
means that I don't know
On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune, but
I hear the voices say

Carry on my wayward son,
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

Carry on, you will always remember
Carry on, nothing equals the splendor
Now your life's no longer empty
Surely heaven waits for you

Carry on my wayward son,
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry,
Don't you cry no more,
No more


– Kerry Livgren, Kansas

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.

(2 Corinthians 12:9)

Lecture by Peter van Dijk

I didn't fall asleep at all watching this lecture... he's really interesting. And the things he talked about... How one should get a solid grounding as a person (history, literature, philosophy, etc), how heritage is not a cosmetic but something living and evolving, how instead of focusing on trying by hook or by crook to be original one should first try to be good... things like that, I might turn them over in my head for a while... How architecture is a social art, living, interacting with people... how a building should have a soul, a church that looks like a church... Louis Kahn's buildings will be great ruins... the play of natural light in the interiors of buildings, the amazing gothic cathedrals... How 'modern' is a spirit, not a style... a spirit where one tries to improve existing conditions through the methods available at the point in time... how he misses the spirit of the early avant garde, where it is not all about ego...

I'll think about it for a while...




"Design is about exploring the possibilities, not just pulling something out of the clouds. It is about finding the best solution. A lot of it ends up in the waste basket, but you can go back to it. It involves a lot of self-criticism... but eventually, you get there."

From Lecture by Jacques Herzog at Harvard GSD 5/5/11

"I repeated what I said many times in the past - that I don't believe in books about architecture, they are bound to fail and then disappear, even faster than architecture. Architecture sometimes last for a few generations, maybe sometimes even centuries, as everything else it goes and it disappears, which is also great to know, somehow.

"What I wanted to say is not that I have no respect for people who write books, because we have since the beginning written a lot. We have always felt the need for an intellectual and conceptual approach which uses the word and involves the word. But we said it for totally different reasons. I want to point out, once again, how important it is that a discipline is just what it is. Poetry is poetry, architecture is architecture, literature is literature, painting is painting, photography is photography. We don't- we're not so interested in things about things, illustrative things, narrative things, because they use something else to exist. And especially talking about architecture, the great thing, as everybody knows here, when you are facing a piece of architecture, a new one or an old one, the sheer experience, the immediate physical experience is what counts and what makes this piece of architecture survive. Whether it's fragile and made out of paper and wood like the old Japanese imperial palace which lasted centuries even if it's not very solid or whether it's a comtemporary building or whether it's an old medieval church. And this immediate sensation which involves all the senses we have, it's very key today that we are not involved in only visual senses, reading, so as to speak, architecture, but really living it is what we continue to underscore. We try to teach this to our students and we try to realize it in our work.

"I think it's very important that things come on the table, you lay them out like you are cooking. The project and the program is laid out, then one option is of course that you start to play with this and then you do all these possible things, you know, which are sometimes very ridiculous or childish, then sometimes it leads to really unexpected qualities, and sometimes you have to reject it and start again. So, you know, there is really no recipes in how you do architecture, but once it's there, the analytical potential of what you've done is very important. If you cannot somehow try to understand that what you've done seems to attract you for this or that reason, that it has a real coherence or it has a real complexity in it - that, you can talk about. But before, you could not talk about. Before, you cannot say well I do this, then I do this, then I do this, then I do this - this will lead to some kind of boring and architecturally worthless thing. But once it's there, you could say why it potentially is interesting or why not, and we have that dialogue. I mean we are training ourselves, we want to, you know, trigger these discussions in the same way as I did now. I could perhaps do a lecture using mostly the same projects and tell you totally different things, you know. And that is more important for me than to say or to insist on saying this building or this project belongs to this or that category and I would love you to see it this or that way. I think that's not interesting, and then we come back to the very first statement I made, it's not interesting because the only thing that is interesting is you who go there, and you like it or you don't like it. Because in a generation or two generations, people don't use the building anymore, and it's worthless because people also don't care about it, it disappears, and that's ok. But some of the greatest buildings survive, because people love them. Because people just love them, and that's much stronger than someone telling you it's interesting, important, because of this, this, this and this. Because nobody cares about what you explain to them. It's like a love affair, it is or it is not. Nobody has to explain.

"Maybe it's more interesting to hear from you, about what you believe is our value system. I don't think that I have a value system per se... I think it's important that architecture appeals to the different senses, you know, and not just to the visual one or to... but I couldn't put this on the table, up front... maybe the gentleman in the blue cloak could give you further explanation, he seems to have a value system. Yah, that's exactly... yah maybe you have a value system. That's exactly the point, this kind of ideological preconception which I think is really the reason why there is so much bad architecture.

"I again say something dangerous, but somehow, architecture is like nature. Let's say a tree is here, a house is here, and some just see this is a tree, this is a house, and that's it, and that's fine- there's no problem with this. If you like, you can see more, if there is more. You can smell it, you can take a fruit, you can whatever, you know, and the house may offer you other opportunities, you may discover other beauties or other advantages or even smell or even whatever, and that's what it is. I mean it's interesting to do- complexities define what it is, that if you look at it more carefully, you discover something that goes beyond. Let's say advertisement is not complex, advertisement can be analysed in a way that- it's an interesting analysis but advertisement has a clear purpose, it tells you you should smoke this or that brand or you should whatever - but that's it. There's a clear message. Architecture has no clear message. No message at all. And art has no message. If you look at a piece of red paint on the wall and you just see it is a piece of red paint, but if you look more carefully maybe there is more. And what you see more is not what the artist wants to tell you but it is what you see in that piece, and that's much more interesting than what the artist wants to tell you. Or what the architect wants to tell you. Or what the stupid book wants to tell you. Because it's about power, the book is about power, and it wants to tell you how important the author is who has written the book. Whereas poetry is never about power, it's just about this or that poem. That's it."









x-x-x-x-x-x-x

I'm actually taking a break from binging on Supernatural. Well... I never knew or probed much into Herzog and De Meuron's works... but I really enjoyed this talk. Mostly the beginning pre-slide show talk and the ending QnA session where I got the above excerpt from. The rest of the time, I was trying to keep awake, as it is with all talks about works. But from the way he speaks about architecture, about doing it, experiencing it, it really hit something in me. It cheered me up a little. I think, all the good architects, they have something in common. Like all the great writers... they always hit the same note, somehow, some way. Just my opinion. And on we go.

Interview tomorrow.





Ah, I will binge on Supernatural after the interview. Who knew I would be so hooked on Sam and Dean... they're really funny. I like Dean.





I'll do my best.

I'll make it. I promise.






Ah... interview coming up next Thursday. I'll do my best.





Merlin is returning this Autumn, September or October. Yes! Haha. I'll be in Boston at that time... new place, new life, and I'm not sure when I'll be back. But I'm really looking forward to it. To both, my journey and the show.



Ah, hopefully, in July, I'll get great news yet again.




Father, thank You so much.

I really like Princess Elena... she might be my favourite female character in the whole series.

Black Books

-No! I want the weekend off. I mean it! I want a life!

-This is life! We suffer and slave and expire! That's it!

-We have needs! Fran's got a piano, I want some time to myself, you want to go out with a girl.

-Don't make me laugh... bitterly. Fran will fail, you'll toil your life away and I'll die alone upside down on the floor of a public toilet.

(from Black Books Season 2 Episode 1 "The Entertainer")

Haha I love Black Books. I think Dylan Moran is the cutest thing since Tony Slattery.

In the mid-1990s, after leaving Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Slattery suffered what he described as a "mid-life crisis" — triggered by excessive drinking and cocaine use (spending up to £4000 per week on the drug) — culminating in 1996 with a six-month period of reclusiveness, during which he did not answer his door or telephone, "or open bills, or wash... I just sat." Eventually, one of his friends broke down the door of his flat and persuaded him to go to hospital. He was diagnosed as suffering from bipolar disorder. He discussed this period and his subsequent living with the disorder in a documentary made by Stephen Fry, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, in 2006; Slattery claimed that he spent time living in a warehouse and "throwing [his] furniture into the Thames".

-From the Wikipedia article on Tony Slattery

実は、みんなも同じ…　そう思ってるときもある。 I don't know the reason for other people's sadness and pain, but the pain itself, it is the same, is it not...

@YoshikiOfficial Yoshiki
Wish I could sleep forever....
13 hours ago via web

@YoshikiOfficial Yoshiki
and never wake up...again...
13 hours ago via web



@YoshikiOfficial Yoshiki
Why do we sleep?
30 Mar via web

@YoshikiOfficial Yoshiki
....to forget the pain.....
30 Mar via web

Yoshiki's tweets... He's still the way I remembered...



何時まで続くのかな。ね、よしきさん。　人は何処まで行けば、幸せになれるんかな。

On my wish list

To catch Whose Live Anyway? live!

Ah... but the dates and locations don't look good... and I have absolutely no idea how much a ticket would cost. We'll see! :):)

カカオよりココロ

I just watched Gintama Episode 204, or Season 5 Episode 3. The second half is about Kagura trying to give chocolates to Gin-chan and Shinpachi during Valentine's day.


Kagura coated in chocolate because of a misadventure with Sacchi the kinky ninja (haha, her seiyuu is awesome)



Kawaii Kagura in the shower at the end




This is from the first half, Katsura being the nonsensical entity that he is, is waiting on stand-by for a non-existent wedding. And Elizabeth too. Haha, I love Katsura. (And his seiyuu is awesome)







Anyway, all in all, I'm glad Gintama is back!






「そんなことないよ。みんなと一緒に女の子ぽいことをして楽しかったある。もともとキャラじゃなかったね。これでいいね。」

Grateful

In a post I wrote in December last year, I was hoping that when April comes, there will be good news together with the start of the new Gintama season. Back then, I didn't know if I would get into grad school or not.



And it came true! :) I'm accepted.




I just watched the first two episodes of the new Gintama season... it's hilarious... and I was reminded of how I felt last year...


Thank You so much, Father.





There will be more ups and downs from now on, but I will do my best

別に、落ち込んだりなんかしてないんだからね

一直想扮演公主的角色



有一天，发现了。


其实，早就察觉到了

只是一直执著，不想面对



自己被安排的

是小丑的角色



现在开始
不再有幻觉

就算是小丑
也要有颗温柔的心

たとえ太陽の下

たとえこんなんじゃないなら、


きれいなドレスを買いたい、


ルージュをつけたい、


恋がしたい。





でも、私は大丈夫よ。
わたし、諦めないからね。





いい人になりたい。