Drinks and a Movie

I’m currently drinking instant apple cider, and it’s better than I expected. On the front of the pouch it proudly proclaimed, ‘A Rich Source of Vitamin C,’ and on the back, it cautioned in thick bold letters, ‘Contains 0% Juice.’

I think I need vitamin C because my gums hurt and I’m worried that I might have scurvy. Sometimes I think I know too much. Whenever I wrote a report on scurvy, they said severe cases can have blood spots on the buttocks and hemorrhoid around the eyes. It could be the other way around, but I wouldn’t want either. While I read through several scientific journals, there were papers that mentioned less severe vitamin C deficiencies can be common among single males who live alone and don’t cook. They may suffer from common malaise, which means generally not feeling well, tiredness, and depression.

It’s like they’re watching me.

The instant apple cider packets were left behind by my previous roommate along with a few packets of pasta, a sack of rice, a can of cream corn, and a bag of pinto beans, most of which we couldn’t cook because we didn’t own any pots to use our stove. I still don’t have an oven pan for the biscuit batter that he left in the refrigerator. He moved out two months ago, and I don’t think he’s coming back for pasta and instant apple cider.

I just finished the cup of apple cider, and I already feel better. Given, the pouch of ‘apple dust’ also included 20 grams of sugar.

I think I’m severally deprived in folic acid, also known as natural green stuff. Usually I acquire my daily serving of vitamin C from fruit cups, but I don’t think they make vegetable cups with light veggie syrups … and cherries.

I thought about walking to the nearest fast food restaurant to buy a teriyaki bowl for some carrots and broccoli. And I don’t know how you gauge your nutritional standards, but when you’re legitimately considering a substantial diet from a fast food chain, you’re not doing so well.

I’m currently watching ‘Grave of the Fireflies,’ and it’s very hard to imagine that it was in a double feature with ‘My Neighborhood Totoro.’ I wonder how we’re affected by the movies that we watched throughout our childhood. It’s odd to imagine a generation without hand drawn Disney movies. A while ago we tried to give our little cousins a box of Disney movies on VHS, but they said that they don’t have a tape player anymore. I think good children’s movies transcend generations; it’s like sharing a memory because we can all remember how the movie originally affected us.

I guess it depends on the movie because I remember watching ‘Dr. Doolittle’ with my other cousins, and after the movie was over and the lights turned on in the theater, they asked when the animal movie was starting. Maybe it is a generational gap, but I desperately hope it isn’t. Plus, it was only ‘Dr. Doolittle.’

Sometimes I wonder which personal characteristics are trivial and what’s actually important. Whenever I want to get to know someone, I usually ask them what’s they’re favorite Disney movie. It’s like asking them about their childhood dreams or aspirations before they even considered them goals or fantasies. It’s like finding out what spurred their sense of wonder and magic, and it’s like sharing something literal, something with substance and matter. The more I think about it, I don’t know if it matters what you ask someone, whether you ask someone their favorite color or song or movie. I think it’s the attempt that matters the most; it’s the interest and the vain feeling that we can truly know someone.

More instant apple cider, please.

Response to video

I like writing. When I was younger, I wrote a couple hundred pages documenting skewed memories of the previous school year. A lot of it was irrelevant inside jokes and stories told between friends; most of it was dialog. Some people thought it was a journal, but the facts and details were distorted in hindsight; I knew others would read the story so I was bias toward certain characters and events. I’ve always been reserved and I think writing helped process and organize my thoughts, but looking back on the documents and short stories, I was probably trying to lie to myself. I was trying to convince myself that everything happened rationally through the eyes and mindset of different characters and through my own eyes. A lot people thought I wrote it to get attention, and they were partly right, but I wanted all of my memories and thoughts to mean something; I wanted them to be somewhere other than in my mind, where they were passing thoughts that slowly faded. Writing always helped validate my thoughts as more than just a fleeting waste of time.

If you haven’t noticed, majority of my videos have been inspired by a girl, and normally that would be a complement. Hundreds of sappy love songs and whimsical poems have been inspired by the profound love of certain girls, but on the other spectrum, just as many self deprecating break up songs and suicide notes have mentioned previous loved ones. Unfortunately, most of my videos have leaned toward the latter. There were several nights where I regretted meeting her at all, and needless to say, I had a lot of baggage when I first started making videos.

And if you haven’t watched a lot of my videos, I never blame the girl. In the end of the videos, the girl turns out prominent or successful, and that’s the ending that I desperately hope will occur. What’s real in majority of the videos, at least emotionally, is the guilt and regret that the guy usually experiences.

In real life, I think that I ruined her and she just had to continue living her life. We were a few years apart, and I feel like I took advantage of her trust; I feel like I should have raised her better and appreciated her more, but it’s all in the past. Whenever I think about her, I feel regret, and it's the same emotion that I experience when I watch several of my videos.

I look back on that relationship and all I can think about is how much I messed her up, like every detail that went wrong and how I could have done it better. It’s so easy to forget and appreciate how much I helped her through a few rough times in her life, and that I was supportive, and that I loved her. We were happy once or twice too.

Everyone needs to walk that fine line between remembering all that we’ve done to from some sort of self identity and purging a lot of things to stop living in the past. The video’s about someone who wanted to experience a time when he affected someone, when he felt more than just bare and melancholy. When he remembered the girl, he vaguely remembered the good parts and regressed back to how they first met. And the girl said to remember her, which signifies that you should remember all of it, even the good parts. Forgetting the bad parts isn’t worth entirely forgetting the person who you loved, how they made you feel, and how much you affected them, good and bad.

Take the good with the bad, breathe in and out, and repeat.