// Amelie//

I watched Amelie for the second time tonight, and tonight it stuck with me a lot more than it did when I first watched it.

When I first watched it, I was in a relationship, fairly optimistic about the future, and viewed it more as something I had to watch for class than as something I should watch for fun and feel the raw emotion and power of the movie as it is. Tonight, I am single, feel more pessimism for relationships than ever before, and watched Amelie to experience the movie for the great piece of art and love that it is.

I don’t think I can express how hard this movie hits, and how much hope and longing for love that it imparted upon me.

A brief synopsis: Amelie is a girl living in Paris. She is cripplingly shy, lonely, and about as introverted as they come. She feels nothing but disdain for her lackluster life, yet lacks the bravery or conviction to change her circumstances, until she sets out to make the lives of others better. In the process, she falls in love and begins to realize that, if she doesn’t change, all she can see for herself is dying alone and brokenhearted, having accomplished nothing to help mankind or enrich her life.

I love the way that the film handles the portrayal of love and intimacy between Amelie and Nino. The climax of the film is by far my favorite part of the movie. The way Amelie and Nino are hesitant with each other, yet Amelie is dying to let him know how much she loves him and how eagerly she has looked forward to the moment, the way the entire soundtrack cuts out and all you can hear is the breathing, movements, and kisses as they truly meet for the first time and share the quiet intimacy of the moment… a kiss on the upper lip, a kiss on the neck, and a kiss on the eyelid… the entire scene takes two minutes, but in the suspended atmosphere of time and space that occurs when such moments happen in real life, the scene seems to last forever, just these two, sharing each other…

I remember having that… and I desperately want that simple intimacy again… I’ve told myself it won’t work, I’ve told myself many things: that she’s too different, that she’s going away, that I don’t want to be in a relationship right now, that I want to fly solo and be my own person with nothing to worry about but myself.

But I think it’s all a lie. So what if she is different? If we truly find love for each other, our differences won’t matter. So what if she is going away? Enjoy the time you’ll have together, and maybe in the future we could become something more. I don’t want to be in a relationship right now? Yes, I do, just not the one I used to have, not one that will stifle me, that will change the very core of my being just to make her happy when I myself felt so much doubt and exhaustion for trying to change myself for her. Flying solo? Crawling with a friend is better than flying by yourself. Only having to worry about myself? I have a servant’s heart by nature, and making that one special girl feel protected, safe, warm, and loved in my arms is one of the feelings that I love the most…

If she says no? At least I tried… and someday, I will find the right one.

I think I’ll tell her…

// Let’s talk about smelling people.//

Running up to someone and just taking a big whiff of them is one of my favorite past times that no one else seems to share.

Naw, I’m kidding. But seriously now, for me personally, my nose if probably the thing on my head that works the best. Lord knows my eyes suck, I only hear what I feel like hearing, and my brain leaves much to be desired. But my nose has always been good to me. I respond the most to smell, whenever I eat, I take in the smells of my food first. Sometimes I’ll just sit outside and smell things. I can even psychologically mess with myself to smell things that I’m seeing on t.v., reading about in a book, or even just imagining. It only happens for a split second and it comes and goes, but I kid you not when I say I have watched the Food Channel before and suddenly smelled whatever was being cooked for just a fraction of a second, and then it’s gone.

One of the things I really pay attention to and even respond emotionally to is how people smell. It is said you can tell a lot about a person by what they wear or what kind of shoes they have on, etc… but personally, I like to smell someone before I cast my stones. 

Let me qualify this by saying that I don’t just walk up to people and smell them. I’ll catch whiffs of people in passing, or if I’m close to you, I’ll breathe through my nose to enjoy your scent.

Odd as that might sound, I do actually respond better to you if I like the way you smell. Call it pheromones if you wish, but the way some people smell just really pushes my buttons.

Emotionally, smell has much more power over me that sight or sound do. For instance, during my last break up, I got some of my stuff back from the ex. Seeing her was harsh, but I managed, and hearing about her was pretty rash sometimes too. But when I got my things back from her, which she had for about eight months, and they were infused with the smell of her house, her perfume, and just her… I couldn’t take that. I started tearing up in the car on the way home. The first thing I did when I got back was throw everything in the washing machine and set it to heavy wash with a deep clean, and everything that couldn’t be washed, like my letterman’s jacket, I rubbed down with a dryer sheet and stuck under a pile of my own dirty clothes. 

The only thing I didn’t outright wash was the quilt I had given her. I let that sit on the couch in my room for days. Washing it isn’t an option these days. It is very old, and washing it in the machine might ruin it. I didn’t think about placing dryer sheets on it either, so I just let it sit and re-absorb the smells of my own room. 

A couple of nights later, I slept with the quilt instead of the comforter I had been using. I love using that quilt the most out of any blanket in our home, so I was glad to finally have it back… as soon as the lights went off though and I tucked myself in, her scent hit me like a pile of bricks. It was still on the quilt, deep inside the cotton within… but I didn’t throw it off. I just lay there in the dark, letting her smell rush over me as I descended into a pit of raw emotion and stewed there for the rest of the night.

This was weeks ago. It is however a great example of the power smell has over me.

Today I was looking into fragrances for men. I rarely wear cologne; I’ve been told my body naturally just smells nice and deodorant has done me just fine. I usually only whip out the cologne for special occasions or when I’m feeling particularly debonair, but recently I’ve wanted to try more. I learned a lot about fragrances in my digging: they have base, medium, and high tones that respond differently to the natural oils of your body and will change with time, the high tones only lasting for 2-3 hours, the mid tones 5-6, and the base tones 9-10. There is also a difference between summer fragrances and winter scents. In the summer, sweeter, more citrusy smells are generally nicer to get a whiff of, and last longer in the heat as well. In the winter, spicy fragrances will last a long time in the cold, and are what is usually expected of when we think of wintery smells. Oranges and melons aren’t particularly a winter scent, more like cinnamon and sandalwood.

So smell nice to me. I’ll tell you if I think you smell good, it’s one of the first things I notice when I’m around someone, and I’m usually pretty blunt about saying it. I like vanilla, lavender is pretty too… but I’ll let you decide.

New Tumblr theme lets me share my favorite websites? Awesome.

// Leaving Facebook Behind//

I deactivated my Facebook account.

I did not delete it, as there are many pictures on there I’d like to keep and am just too lazy to download them now at this moment.

I also may be pressured into reactivating it, depending on how much of a fuss people put up (I already did this a week ago and I got a couple complaints so I came back, but I’m done. For real.)

If you care about me enough to want to speak with me, we can do it over text or have a nice old fashioned phone call. So I can actually hear you. Because I like that.

I could go into a rant on how Facebook is the biggest waste of time of our generation, how it give people a false sense of self based upon how many “friends” they have, how many likes they get, or what empty comments they might garner, but it’s not worth it right now.

I’m done.

// Rants of a Japanese Madman//

Sometimes I think deep thoughts and want to share them with someone. However Facebook is not the place, but then I remember I have a Tumblr.

I recently finished reading Ooka Shohei’s Fires on the Plain, a novel about a Japanese soldier trying to survive the American invasion of the Phillipines. 

Long story short, the horrors of war make Tamura go insane, and the novel ends with a personal reflection his therapist asked him to write. 

One of Tamura’s quotes from this reflection is “All men are cannibals. All women are whores.” This quote stood out to me. At first because of the outrageousness of it. Of course not all men are cannibals, and I know plenty of chaste women. So I dismissed it as the simple musing of someone who had lost their mind.

Which made me think of something else I had heard through the pipes, about how the people who go insane are the people who are truly enlightened, for how can any sane person see all the terrible things that go on in this world and continue to live like they don’t happen?

This quote has always made me think that insane people are indeed on another plane of thinking from our own. This seems like an obvious conclusion, but it also makes me wonder if there is a certain weight behind what they say; a sad and painful truth that they can get away with stating based upon the thought that, since they are insane, we can’t take anything they say as carrying any true meaning.

So I went back to the quote and tried to reason it out. In Tamura’s state, he could, and probably did, mean that statement literally, that all men do, at some point, eat another man and that all women are whores (this conjecture was based upon Tamura just learning that his wife had divorced him and was seen flirting with one of his doctors, even though Tamura himself sent her the divorce papers). But if there’s anything I’ve learned about literature and what people say is that you can’t always take things literally.

So I looked at it figuratively, and it began to make sense. 

Men have a desire to outdo one another. It doesn’t even have to be within the presence of a female or when something is at stake, many men just have a natural competitive streak in having to prove that we are better than everyone else. We usually don’t get anything except for the (sometimes false) satisfaction of knowing we are better, in whatever ways we hold valuable, be it physically, intellectually, socially, etc. We like to one up each other because we are focused on our own well being. What can I do to get ahead? What can I do to make my life better, even if it is at the expense of someone else? Even if I do trip someone else on the marathon run of life, does that make me a bad person, or does that just make me better?

And it is in that way that men are certainly cannibalistic. Many men are not afraid to step on a few toes and, pardon the expression, “eat someone alive”, to get ahead. In the business world it is often said that people in power are raised up on the shoulders of the weak. So in that sense, are men truly cannibalistic? Or do we simply desire power over others? Was Tamura’s descent into cannibalism grounds for losing his humanity and forever becoming a pariah, or was he just doing what he needed to do to survive? Is survival worth it at the cost of losing what separates you from being a human and being a beast?

Many women constantly seem to have a need for attention. Whether they try to get it through their looks, through whatever drama they can feed on, or through what outrageous things they can say that scream to the world “Hey! Look at me!”

Go look through a woman’s Facebook page. It’s full of pictures of her. Some women will upload a new picture of themselves every other day. Go listen to the average girl talk. See how many times she tries to steer the conversation toward herself.

There is nothing wrong with receiving attention, when it is attention well deserved. When you have accomplished something important, or when something groundbreaking happens to you, or when you are experiencing a major change, then talking about it is interesting!

But when I log on to Facebook and see nothing but what asinine crap happens to dribble out your mouth just so you can get a few extra likes or a desperately wanted comment, you’ve become an attention whore. When you upload a new picture of yourself every couple of days so people can tell you how pretty you look, even though every picture looks more or less the same, you are pining for attention. When you gossip or “nonchalantly and not so generally make a statement towards someone who knows who they are but I’m not brave enough to call you out” (and even then, on Facebook? Really?), you are just trying to stir up trouble. 

And these two categories certainly aren’t exclusive to the genders. When men show off, they are seeking attention. When women spread gossip about each other, they are seeking power over others. We both are just as guilty of doing both things as any other person on this planet is. 

But we can certainly overcome these faults. We can be generous and kind. We can be humble and thoughtful. We can raise others up and we can truly offer something interesting and worthy of recognition. 

We can transcend being only human and become something greater.