family – Page 46 – hannah ananas

Books for Previews

I read books in the movie theatre. It’s true. I really do. Not during the film, of course, but beforehand, and sometimes even during previews.

It all started when a friend of my dad’s gave me a book called Staying Alive in Year Five. I think it might be an Australian book. Whatever its origin, I loved reading the book. I remember being so excited to see what happened next that I took it with me everywhere, so I could read whenever I had the chance.

This, naturally, included the movie theatre. We always get to the film early in order to get good seats, and then the movie itself never starts at the specified time, anyway. So, I sat down in my seat by my family members, and I opened up my book and read. I was excited for the film, but I was also disappointed at having to stop reading, when it got to the beginning of the film.

Nowadays, I still read before a movie, if I’m there at all, of course. There hasn’t been much to spark my interest lately, so I haven’t often been at the cinema. And Japan was different, simply because I wanted to learn as much Japanese and Japanese culture as I could, so I watched all the previews and everything rather avidly. Aside from those specific circumstances, I read. I almost always have a book with me. Living in Japan meant that I ended up always having my Kindle, since hard copies of books in not Japanese weren’t so easy to come by. I would read at work, on the train, and at home. While walking around (once I bought earphones I could wear again [Thanks, Korea!]), I listened to audiobooks. Occasionally, I listened to music, but typically not. I just love books.

Post-a-day 2017

Mr. Right

I’ve been thinking tonight about my Prince Charming, my personal one, my desired future. It all started with thinking about musical theater as I showered. As most shower stream-thoughts go, I ended up on a very loosely connected tangent. Do you know the song by Chris August called “Stranger”? It’s a beautiful song, and I fell in love with it several years ago. A lot happened related to that song, but let’s not go there now. While some specific lyrics rolled through my head over and over again, as song lyrics so often do, something struck me.

I dreamed you.
Now, I’ve found you.
Call off the search,
’cause I found my stranger.

Those were the specifically inspiring words tonight. Though I have listened to the song more times than I know, and I know every word still, despite having stopped listening to it years ago (for reasons I won’t mention just yet), I have never had the thought that followed those words as they repeated in my head tonight.

“I have never dreamt you.”

Though I have wished and wished, and even hoped and prayed and asked for my partner in life, I have never dreamed him up. I have begun ideas before, but I have never come up with what my partner in life actually is. You could ask me now, and I would have no idea what to tell you about the partner I want. Sure, there are plenty of things I know that I don’t want, but everything else seems to change with how I feel each day, each time someone asks me about it.

Now, I don’t exactly see this as a bad thing. I just happened to realize that I have never dreamed him up. So, I can never have Chris August’s song become a reality for me – I can’t find my stranger. I don’t even have a vision in my head of what it looks like being with someone. Every time I have dreams where there seems to be a sort of partnership, I always seem to be the one taking care of someone else – the traditionally male role. Or, perhaps it is the mother role I play. I already seem to do that all over the place in life. It’s the reason I have always wondered if I can ever find someone to take care of me. But I digress…

I realized in the shower that I have no image of a person. I don’t know if I’m looking for someone tall, dark, and handsome. I don’t know if he is foreign or domestic made. I don’t even know what kind of skin he has. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as bad. I am just noticing it. I also notice how so many others seem to have dreamed up their partners years before they even have begun dating others. I mean, they seem to know what they want. By having that idea of what they want, they are able to seek it out. Sometimes, when they find it, they realize they didn’t want it after all. And sometimes they find something better along the way. But they have something to pursue. I don’t even have an idea to seek out, a type of someone or something to pursue. Perhaps that is an issue with being so open to the world and to new ideas, and for knowing that what I see or think isn’t always the best that the universe has to offer.

Post-a-day 2017

Freedom’s Indecision

The trouble with having freedom in my future is that freedom can sometimes means too many options to focus. Right now, I know what I am doing for the next six weeks. After that, I’m really not sure. My current job will be finished, and so my life is open to options from there on out. What will I do next? I have total freedom (within the bounds of financial abilities, of course). And with that freedom comes an uncountable number of possibilities for what I could end up doing.

It feels like I have a new path I am considering pursuing almost every day. One almost could ask me, “What’s today’s fancy, Hannah?” And I’d have a different answer almost every day. A week ago, I wasn’t too sure about my cat, and I found myself wondering that I rather preferred his living with a family with other cats, and who wants him. This weekend, I have felt as though all I want is to move into my own apartment and to live with my cat again. (Despite the fact that I said several times this past year that I probably never want to live alone again.)

Talking with my stepbrother tonight, I find myself really wanting to pursue coaching and teaching. It has me wonder if I don’t just get excited about other people’s dreams and their passions, and I long to have the dream, the desire, the passion that they have about something, as opposed to the actual something. Do I want to coach and teach, or do I simply want the clear desire and love that my stepbrother showed for the two activities tonight? To be fair, I really did love coaching lacrosse (assistant coaching, anyway), so I’m not looking at something in which I have no background or foundation here. Nonetheless, it is still something into which I am looking regarding my future and my means of making money.

Anyway, … that’s what I have for tonight…

Post-a-day 2017

beach day

Today, my first full day back in the USA, we went to the beach. I had planned to spend some time by and in the pool in my mom’s backyard, so as to acclimate myself to this time zone, using the sunlight on my skin as the main helper. But, when I went downstairs to find food to heal my headache, my mom suggested the beach. Obviously, the answer was yes.

My cousin, who lives in Galveston, walked down to meet us at the beach with her pup. I had a wonderful time just hanging out with her and my mom and the dog. We walked, we swam, we boogie boarded, we tossed a stick for the dog, and we, above all, chatted. We didn’t talk about much, which is something that I noticed much earlier on today, but we did talk. It were as though we were all really close, and we saw one another all the time, that we didn’t have much anything important to discuss. It was like we were just hanging out for our regular hangout time… which we don’t actually have, but hopefully you get the point.

We had a wonderful lunch afterward, and then my mom and I headed home to grab the rest of my stuff, and to head out to check my new bicycle’s height, before going to my friend’s house (where I’ll be staying for about six weeks). My friend and her husband were super stellar when we arrived this afternoon, and they have been just wonderful so far since then. I think I’m gonna like it here.

Post-a-day 2017

Shower heads and Showers

There is something about a shower that feels almost life-saving. I was in a huge sort of panic, which kept increasing in intensity as time passed, the other night, and I just felt like the world of my life was a decided failure and blah, blah, blah. I arranged with a friend to talk briefly about this, but she still had to finish something else first. I, having just arrived home, and needing only to shower and prep for bed, took a quick shower while waiting for my friend to finish up her things.

I went into it almost shaking with concern and nerves, yet came out of it just stressed a bit. No more feelings of insanity or utter failure remained. Yes, I was still a bit down and out, and yes, I was still concerned about my somewhat immediate future. But my experience of life was completely transformed from before the shower. I was essentially a hot mess about to break down before the shower, and I came out calm and just somewhat stressed about things.

I remember putting my face under the shower head, feeling the individual streams of water clink onto my face in what felt like a hundred different individual places – in that moment, everything else disappeared. It was almost as though my brain took a break from really existing for a few seconds, and all focus and attention was freely and passively noticing these streams of water hitting my face, stimulating something refreshing within and all over my body. Nothing existed outside of that moment of cleansing. For a few breaths, I was free (so much so, that I couldn’t even have told you from what or that I was free).

The rest of the shower typically seems to be the same for me – just a shower. But the effects of it all were immense.

Post-a-day 2017

My feet sit still

I have been sitting here for over an hour, not going home. The semi-excuse was that I was talking with my mom, but the phone call has finished, and here I still sit. I also had a high level (for me) of caffeine this afternoon, and so I wanted to get the jitters out as much as possible, while I still had the chance to walk around outside and all. Now I feel the sleepy sliding into place, wishing me to bed.

And yet, here I still sit.

I do not know if I am afraid of tomorrow, and am letting that stop me from ending today, or if I am afraid of tomorrow, but have some other reason that I still sit here on my little piece of green-light-backed bench. Either way, I can see clearly that I am afraid of tomorrow beginning. I leave in 12 days, and the planning I didn’t want to do would be coming into effect now, if I had done the planning. Instead, the events are all floating around, wondering if and when they will be accomplished by me. I can almost see the Super Smash-like challenge at play around me, each item fighting happily for a place on my life this week and next. But they all have so many lives, it is taking forever to figure out who ranks where – the current lowest position might still come through and win the whole thing in another 40 lives.

It is such a beautiful night right now, right here, I want to keep it. I want to roll into a hammock out here in the plaza, and sleep with the cool breeze brushing and rocking me all night, clouds floating slowly by above me, and slight coty noises rumbling off and on in the nearby distance.

But, even still, I don’t want to close my eyes. I don’t specifically have a desire to remain here on this bench. I also don’t specifically have a desire to walk the block home or to go to bed. It is not apathy necessarily. I just can’t figure out what feeling is there. Because I know that there is something there…

And so I sit, writing this, and taking my time to do so, pausing so as. It to finish and have no other reason good enough to keep me here on this bench. Here, I am intentionally on my own, alone. Once I move onward, that will not be the case. While I am here, there is not much of anything for me to do but to sit and to enjoy. Once I move onward, again, that will not be the case.

…

However, the plaza decided for me just now, as it turned off its lights. No longer is my bench wall green, and no longer are the ground lights shining. The plaza now sleeps, and I accept that as encouragement enough to send me home. I still do not want to go, but I certainly prefer that to being in trouble with the security guard who already stared me down earlier, when all the lights were still glowing.

Anyway… yeah…

Post-a-day 2017

Why you gotta be so…?

Why are we ever mean to others? Really, truly… why?

Can we go Taylor Swift on the situation, and have the cycle end right now?

I see potential in this, but are we brave enough? Is bravery even what it is that we need? Perhaps love is all we need. And not even in the cheesy way, but truly. Beatles it all the way, because all we need is love.

Post-a-day 2017

Don’t play favorites?

We grow up always hearing about not playing favorites. “Don’t play favorites,” and, “Treat everyone equally,” everyone always seems to say.

And yet, I struggled through the constant questions of “What’s your favorite _______?” I even made up a favorite color, because I didn’t have one, but people constantly asked what mine was.

What’s more, if we look at it purely on a human perspective, not to play favorites, then does marriage even really work? Exclusivity in relationships would be impossible. How could I treat someone else with the same passion, love, care as I do my partner? And then, how could I treat everyone that way?

How could I have an intimate and loving relationship with my mom, if I am to treat her as I treat all others, despite the fact that I spend most of my childhood with her, and not the rest of the world?

I’m not looking to cancel exclusivity or marriage or anything, here. I’m just wondering at our concepts of ‘treat everyone equally’ and ‘don’t play favorites’. There seems to me to be a sort of inconsistency in the thinking here – something is missing in our mentality, and I want it to come beautifully to light to save the day… something like that, anyway. 😛

Post-a-day 2017

Washington

My mom is on a sort of artist retreat in Washington right now. She called me up to show me the place where she’s staying for the retreat, and it’s gorgeous. The barn-like house and other beautiful, wooden buildings on the plot of land look fabulous amongst the unfamiliar greenery. I kept looking at it all, trying to place it. It looked somehow familiar and yet totally not. But I’ve never been to anywhere that has foliage like Washington, so it’s no wonder I couldn’t quite figure it out, place it all – it actually is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

The temperature was in the 50s, with humidity in the 80s, as it was early morning. I found myself asking my mom how far she is from Forks. I had to spell the name for her, as well as tell her that it’s a city in Washington. She had no idea that I was semi needing out. But that’s okay, because it turns out that she’s something like four and half hours away by ferry and car. So there’s no chance she’d be able to pop by for a quick look and a photo for me. (Aka I’m not missing out on a total nerd opportunity.)

So, that was fun, discovering that I’m a bit more of a nerd than I had expected. 😛 Gotta love nerds, though, right? I know I do. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

A free association?

Money is hard. In the middle of the boondocks is where to find I my life friend vest. Vestitude in the inn, bridgestone in the brimm. Grimm Reaper, till the soil, seap what you sow, sew a new crow, home a new phone.

Alas, my money comes to you, my sweet, not bitter, blessed, beloved fluttering sister-bye. My, oh, hi, lovely. Lovely my, yes. Thank you. Goodbye, why.

——————-

My cousin told me about an artist (singer) who had a journal, in which she wrote words that sounded good together, sentences and phrases that sounded nice and felt right, but hat didn’t necessarily make any real sense as sentences and such. She then made a CD out of the words in this notebook. I’m not sure who this is, though I have wanted to hear this album ever since he first explained about it to me – I find the idea bountifully beautiful. Or something positive like that, anyway – I like the idea. This was my own sort of exercise in that same sort of writing. It wasn’t about making sense, but about telling a story through the sounds, without the assigned meanings of the words. I’m guessing my effort to be a mediocre outcome, however I am nonetheless proud of my accomplishing it.

Thank you for reading. 😉

Post-a-day 2017