the road to happiness is paved with rice

I got back from piano lessons two hours ago. And then I went out to coffee with my mom. Afterwards she wanted to buy gifts and cards for Secretary's Day. I ended up picking out all of the aforementioned gifts and cards. Two pairs of earrings, a crystal vase, a Snoopy card, and a card with a conga line of tumbling kittens. (There were no hugging bears or dogs with spots.) I didn't even know who it was I was choosing gifts for. I mean, I know their names, and I've spoken to them on the phone. When I visit my mom at work, they ask me what grade I'm in and exclaim how much I've grown. And I told my mom what to buy for them. Even though I needed the help of a salesclerk when I was getting Pat a birthday gift. He doesn't understand why finding presents for close friends is so difficult for me. And I don't either. But I remember when Resa drove me to GameStop and I scanned the video game titles. I don't know what he wants, I repeated exasperatedly. And I kept hearing the conversation Pat and I had had over the phone the night before. I asked what he wanted for his birthday, and he replied offhandedly, I don't know, you know what I like. If I had a large sum of money (instead of the two crumpled dollar bills sitting by my jewelry), I would know exactly what to buy. A new computer, a new guitar. A better place to live. A bed, cable television. I would buy you a new life. (Everclear!)

Everclear reminds me of the bed and breakfast inn I stayed at last year in Boston, because I listened to an old CD of theirs while I laid on my parents' bed and drew a picture of Link in a spiral notebook. It had Link with a sword across his face with blood running down the blade, and I remember showing it to Nick and giggling at the way his eyes widened in fear. I ended up scanning it and e-mailing it to a website that posts art and writings based on various video games. You can see it here. Seeing it again makes me want to draw, because I know I can do better now. And I like to draw. I don't know if I ever mentioned that here. I like drawing anime, but I don't practice enough to be all that good at it. I'm better at still-life. Hi.

I've noticed lots of people have been complaining about school lately. I guess I've gotten used to it. After eleven years. I wrote a poem in seventh grade, about school. Some people read it and never spoke to me again, because they didn't know what a hyperbole was. Somebody's children. I found the poem upstairs, in a maze of folders on my old computer. This is the first version. The revised copy is in a notebook in my closet.

In the darkest corner of the city
there is a great stone building;
the torture chamber of the city,
from which ghastly screams emerge.
Children's souls are trapped in boxes
for which there is no key,
and from the battered and bruised walls,
parasites emerge.
Frightened spectators gingerly enter,
fearing for their safety.
They find a weak and beaten child,
hidden in the mud.
Beside the victim
there is a dagger,
which the child has used.
Because lightly etched on the cabinet
is the word "school."

I sent it in to a high school newspaper. I received a friendly rejection letter a few months later. It instructed me to not be discouraged. It felt like a response to a suicide threat. Calm, collected. I wasn't depressed until after I read the letter. I crumpled it up and threw it away. I felt better after that. There's something about rejecting a rejection letter. It's like a massage or a box of chocolates.

Today in Japanese class we read a children's story. It was about an old woman who made lunch for her husband, and then the old man took his lunch onto a mountain. When he got hungry, he opened his lunch, and a rice ball rolled down the mountain and into a hole, whereupon mice began to sing. Thinking this very interesting, the old man put all of his rice balls into the hole, and eventually fell into the hole. A mouse adorned in a pinstriped suit thanked the old man for his rice balls, and said that in return, the mice would make the old man rice cakes. The old man found them delicious and stuffed himself, and then brought the rest home to his wife.

The end.

I don't know. I guess I thought the point of children's stories was to communicate good morals and ethics. Not that I didn't like the story. At first I thought that the moral was, "You get what you give." But the old man dropped the rice balls into the hole because he was entertained by the singing, not out of generosity. So I concluded that the message is, "The path to happiness is paved with rice," or something. (I like making things sound like fortune cookies.)

Anyway. It's almost nine-thirty, so I'm going to bed.

Goodnight.