but it is time for this blog to be retired officially. i’ve enjoyed writing here.

my new blog also powered by wordpress is at http://jeiemji.com/blog ; please update your bookmarks as i will no longer be posting here! all my posts from here will be there.

hope to hear from you all soon and happy reading

http://jeiemji.com

please feel free to comment here on anything about the website. i’d really appreciate suggestions.

also, this is kinda important, i am in the process of getting myself a new blog hosted on my server… so this one will be retired at that point.

just an in general heads-up

i got my credit and got out of there.

starting a life, however short it may be, without classes will be strangely hard to deal with. well, i still have photography class but that’s not academic.

i’m actually looking for more classes to take this upcoming summer semester. i’m even thinking i might add a minor or cognate simply to stay the normal 4 years of university. so my question for you is, what classes should i take?

am i crazy? i’d rather have you not answer that question.

the sky reflected in a puddle between a rainstorm and a thunderstorm.

today, i was in a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam coming home from east lansing. kind of annoying but you just have to be patient and deal with it.

but there’s another jam in my life that is weighing on my mind once again. my ‘jam’ is that i am perceived to be much younger than i really am (again with the age thing- i’m beginning to sound like a broken record). i know that for most people this would not be a problem but sometimes it hurts to be treated like a child.

this jam is not one you can just be patient and deal with, at least i don’t think so… i am really making my best efforts to seem more mature but so far i have not met with success. sometimes i feel, even by my own family, like i’m being treated as a 15 year old. a 15 year old is someone who can see and understand the world but does not yet know how to deal with it, is that what i am?

let me tell you a story (sorry to those of you who’ve already heard it), when i was 18 (so ~2 years ago) i went to the movie theater with my mother and younger brother (he’s like 1 1/2 year younger). the age range for children is all who are under 12, adults are 12 and over. the ticket attendant said: “so 2 adults and 1 child?” we all seriously did double takes. she had assumed i was a ‘child’. for those who know me, you know i am not particularly short or tiny.

so am i 13 now? do i look older than 13? please say yes.

to lighten the mood quite literally…

a day lily. they die after one day, in that way they have eternal youth. another image epitomizing summer.

a non-rhetorical question for you: based purely on sight, how old do you think i am?

june 20.

the longest day of the year.

summer with its fireworks, fairs, and festivals leaves most people with a feeling of complete freedom.

honestly, if i hadn’t heard the announcement on some new york radio station i would have never realized the season change.

i gave him a card. it read on the cover (a cute chihuahua pictured): you’re 29 today? on the inside: yeah, and i’m a great dane.  understand? i liked it.

below, some quintessential summer favorites.

chocolate chip cookies.

and…

strawberry pie with whipped cream.

oh, if you ever want any of my recipes (from this post, breathe in dessert?, or any future post) just let me know! i’d be more than happy to give them to you

a question for you, at what age will you start telling people you’re younger than you really are?

i’ve just recently (okay almost a week ago) finished two books that i started A LONG TIME AGO. i tend to start books, get distracted or tired, and then forget about them.

(goodbye)tsugumi by banana yoshimoto and the bastard of istanbul by elif shafak. both are tremendous novels, quite different but i liked each of them equally as much.

tsugumi is a summer story chronicling the lives of the protagonist and tsugumi herself. there’s not a clear plot but still yoshimoto is aptly able to convey her characters emotions. i hate to use the cliché  but ‘coming of age’ is quite appropriate here. the girls, in their late teens, deal with familiar emotions of love and saying goodbye; saying goodbye to the familiar  and trying to recall, when all is said and done, the precious memories of the past.

the style in the bastard of istanbul is much different from the previously mentioned novel. while tsugumi is simple, lean, and plain bastard is a much longer novel with almost every single character being intertwined in some way with one another. here, everyone is connected by a single thing/event revealed in the last pages of the story. bastard is rich with detail and a quite humorous look at a complex (family) history. the novel’s tone is rather light and airy making the, at times, serious subject matter much easier to digest.

beware, if you like serious, depressing, or melodramatic novels, the above titles may not be for you.

i’m currently struggling through anthony swofford’s exit a which seems to me a more action based novel rather than an emotion based one. however, i have not gotten through more than a few chapters. anthony swofford wrote the non-fiction work jarhead of which i have no intention of ever reading.

i don’t like non-fiction. for me i love when a story can take you to a far way place without having to try. non-fiction is too real.

have you ever had a day or two where all you felt like doing was reading pretty much every book in sight? i love that feeling.

i know that sounds lame but both are actually beyond cool and seriously fun. is my inner nerd coming out again?

for those of you who don’t know, the parade of homes is where you get to tour all these brand-new houses in the area. not only can view some really spectacular houses but you also get a good idea of all the current design concepts and color combinations.  the ones i like to see most are the ones priced above $500k and yes, there are quite a few of them. if you want to get a better idea of what i’m talking about go here

i’ll leave you with this.

i took this a few days ago in the rain. i really love this picture. to me this is summer. for more on the picture go here

in short, what a beautiful movie it was. the plot was interesting but certainly not the most compelling element here.

what so intrigued me was the utter lack of dialogue. the two main characters never say a word to each other and yet are able to perfectly express their feelings. the key feeling here is that of love.

i’ve never seen a silent movie in my life but this one would have to come close. i guess, for me, this movie shows that you do not need to have lots of words to have such an impelling story. you don’t even need the subtitles for the maybe 10 lines or so of dialogue (which in my opinion is mostly peripheral anyways).
and i’d be lying if i said that the visuals weren’t also so lush and evocative.

i haven’t seen kim’s other well-known work, spring, summer, fall, winter… and spring although i’ve heard that it’s also fantastic. i keep on meaning to see it but always forget about it.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there’s a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase, ‘each other’,
doesn’t make any sense.”

such beautiful words to be found at complete random… i don’t even remember why i was checking that email account. i’m far too tired to surmise what rumi really meant. perhaps just that beyond the surface of the world there exists a place where all our earthly things cease to have understanding. is our world too full of meaningless ideas?

i’d like to find rumi’s field.

btw, for more on rumi go here.

and on a lighter note, continuing the random…

garden gnomes! Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain anyone?

暗闇で盲目になる。

でも、今朝、暗闇で、私は嬉しかった。

今日は、雨が降りました。この雨を降ると夏の湿気を思い出す。この雨を降ると色々な感情を思い出す。

I know how to say many things yet I can say nothing.