A horrible tragedy has hit my hometown. Please pray and send thoughts for the injured and the families of those who have lost loved ones. This horror has truly left me speechless...Emotions well up in my chest and spill over in tears by this senseless carnage. God have mercy on us all.
Sammy
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boston. Show all posts
Monday, April 15, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
"Future" Problems
Happy Monday, folks! Okay, I know Mondays don’t rank high in
everyone’s favorite day, but any marker that signals the start of
something is all right in my book. Maybe it’s my obsession with beginnings and
endings. Anyway, I hope you had a great weekend. I saw Invisible Man yesterday
night at the Huntington Theatre with my friends and it was more spectacular
than I expected. Be careful out there with the flu outbreak if you live in the
U.S. Virtual hugs if you are sick! :)
 |
| Couldn't resist. I want a Kitty now! |
SO, in the midst of my personal devotion today, I took some
time apart for meditation. I focused on breathing and the three principles of
love, kindness, and compassion. My meditation has no complex formula. It just
is. My thoughts meandered about while I tried to refocus them back on the circular path of breathing and the three chosen principles. I filled my lungs to
full capacity, deflated them of all air, and filled them again, deflated and
back again. In the next second, I reached farther into myself because anxiety
had been an issue lately and I wanted to address it before the day ended. What
happened next surprised me.
A flurry of thoughts burst through one after the other like
an onslaught of black arrows that rained from an unseen enemy: “I want to be
successful now. I want to help my family financially now. I want to be
financially independent now. I want my own place now. I want a cool apartment
now. I want to be published now. I want to hold my book in my hands now. I want to enjoy time with my friends in
New York now. I want to be in Japan now. I want an acceptance letter to a
school in California now. I want all these things now. Now. Now. Now! I want
them now!”
 |
| Help. |
My eyes opened and I exhaled. Okaaaaay. Apparently I wasn’t
aware of the two-year-old living deep inside the recesses of my mind. And what
an annoying two-year-old she is. With a rise of embarrassment, I pinpointed the
source of my anxiety. You know how people tell you to forget your past or how
not to let your past control your present and determine your future? Well, my
problem was that I let the future intrude on the peace and sanity of my present.
I wanted the future I desired now and my refusal of the present brought
irritability and pain. I fell back to an old habit of ascribing value to my
life through a negative mind frame: my life is valuable if I have these future things
now. False.
When I resumed meditation, I told myself that this present
moment mattered the most and I already had everything I needed right now: the
breath that gave me life, my mind, food for my physical body, shelter, good
friends here in Boston, my family’s health, a teaching gig ready to start
in a few weeks, memories of an unforgettable experience in Korea, and so on
and so on.
When the future happens and I have those things I wanted
today, I will say same thing: I already have everything I need right now.
How about you? Ever have “future” problems? How did you deal
with it? Would love to hear your responses!
Thanks for reading,
CSS :)
Monday, November 19, 2012
Ryker and Cloud Atlas
Before I start I want to let you know that I’m writing from the Boston Public
Library right on Copley Station. If you ever have a chance to visit
Boston City, I highly recommend visiting this amazing public space. I posted
some pictures!
SO! Reworking the opening scene with Ryker had not been as bad as I thought it would be. His personality burst through quite easily and I found myself very loosely basing his character on a friend of mine. Zackaria and Meliz responded well to him as well. In this scene, Ryker is the troublemaker that the girls have to give extra attention to or else he will kill himself unintentionally.
COT opens up with the Kato siblings engaged in a high risk activity because they all share a love for thrills now and then, not just Ryker. Ryker's problem is that he likes taking it several notches higher above the girls' comfort levels, which is exactly what happens in this scene. He performs a variety of stunts that flame the ire of his sisters, especially Zackaria. A mistake or rather freaky malfunction sends him plummeting to his death and Z desperately tries to save him.
Ryker's reaction to facing death was different than that of Chrisa's. While Chrisa screamed everything her life was worth, crying to Z to do everything she could to save her, Ryker told Z to stay away because she might be pulled into death with him. He accepts his imminent demise. The precarious situation presents the siblings with a horrifying truth: there is no way to save Ryker. Unless of course a supernatural event takes, which is what happens, except this supernatural event can be explained through COT's pseudo-science, but the siblings don't know that yet. COT doesn't have magic; anything super that happens is a result of science. I'll explain more of COT's universe in a later entry. :) *****
I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about the movie Cloud Atlas I saw yesterday with my best friend from high school. We missed a good twenty minutes of the movie's beginning because we were late. We didn't mind since the movie was 2 hours and 44 minutes long.
However, jumping in that point of the movie, we were confused by the multiple story lines taking place in six different eras, along with the same actors playing different people. Thankfully, I read a bit about the structure of the movie so I wasn't totally baffled but my friend was so I offered as much insight as I could without spoiling it. The most difficult part of the movie for me was the post-apocalyptic vernacular. I wish they had given us subtitles because although they spoke English, the accent and broken English made it almost a foreign language to me.
Overall, the movie had a grand, ambitious plot and delivered scenes, visually speaking, I would never forget (One scene made my stomach turn inside out; you'll know if you catch the movie). Other lines and scenes even got laughs out of my friend and me. I liked the whole Buddhist vibe of a character forever living from one life to another and so on; how all our lives are connected; and how our actions, however simple they may be, rippled through and across time and people. The movie collects itself rather nicely toward the end, making better sense. I found myself caring more for the characters and feeling satisfied once it finished. After some cautious pause, I decided it was a good, rather interesting movie that made me think. I’m not surprised the Wachowski siblings made it. This is just their kind of stuff. Haha
Well that’s all for today.
Thanks for reading,
CSS
 |
| The Boston Public Library |
 |
| The Trinity Church across from BPL |
 |
| John Hancock Building |
 |
| Old South Church |
SO! Reworking the opening scene with Ryker had not been as bad as I thought it would be. His personality burst through quite easily and I found myself very loosely basing his character on a friend of mine. Zackaria and Meliz responded well to him as well. In this scene, Ryker is the troublemaker that the girls have to give extra attention to or else he will kill himself unintentionally.
COT opens up with the Kato siblings engaged in a high risk activity because they all share a love for thrills now and then, not just Ryker. Ryker's problem is that he likes taking it several notches higher above the girls' comfort levels, which is exactly what happens in this scene. He performs a variety of stunts that flame the ire of his sisters, especially Zackaria. A mistake or rather freaky malfunction sends him plummeting to his death and Z desperately tries to save him.
Ryker's reaction to facing death was different than that of Chrisa's. While Chrisa screamed everything her life was worth, crying to Z to do everything she could to save her, Ryker told Z to stay away because she might be pulled into death with him. He accepts his imminent demise. The precarious situation presents the siblings with a horrifying truth: there is no way to save Ryker. Unless of course a supernatural event takes, which is what happens, except this supernatural event can be explained through COT's pseudo-science, but the siblings don't know that yet. COT doesn't have magic; anything super that happens is a result of science. I'll explain more of COT's universe in a later entry. :) *****
I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about the movie Cloud Atlas I saw yesterday with my best friend from high school. We missed a good twenty minutes of the movie's beginning because we were late. We didn't mind since the movie was 2 hours and 44 minutes long.
However, jumping in that point of the movie, we were confused by the multiple story lines taking place in six different eras, along with the same actors playing different people. Thankfully, I read a bit about the structure of the movie so I wasn't totally baffled but my friend was so I offered as much insight as I could without spoiling it. The most difficult part of the movie for me was the post-apocalyptic vernacular. I wish they had given us subtitles because although they spoke English, the accent and broken English made it almost a foreign language to me.
Overall, the movie had a grand, ambitious plot and delivered scenes, visually speaking, I would never forget (One scene made my stomach turn inside out; you'll know if you catch the movie). Other lines and scenes even got laughs out of my friend and me. I liked the whole Buddhist vibe of a character forever living from one life to another and so on; how all our lives are connected; and how our actions, however simple they may be, rippled through and across time and people. The movie collects itself rather nicely toward the end, making better sense. I found myself caring more for the characters and feeling satisfied once it finished. After some cautious pause, I decided it was a good, rather interesting movie that made me think. I’m not surprised the Wachowski siblings made it. This is just their kind of stuff. Haha
Well that’s all for today.
Thanks for reading,
CSS
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