Entry 67: A Miracle

A miracle is something totally impossible that happens. At first miracle refers to the deeds of God, but people now can use it to describe something tremendously surprising or impressive. For example, an unprecedented accomplishment in medicine can be titled a "miracle" in medical science. A miracle is something good. You would not call a sudden death of someone young a miracle just because it's highly unlikely to happen. But if that person is someone harmful to the society and he or she dies that might somehow count as a miracle. I think the difference between something unusual and a miracle is that unusual means it's above 60 percent unlikely, while a miracle is 99.5 percent unlikely to happen. I believe in miracles, and I have to because I believe in God and science. There are always stories about how a person survives after being struck by thunder, or recovers from a deadly illness such as cancer. To whom each person attribute these things is another topic, but they would all agree that they are miracles. I can't remember if I ever witnessed any miracles. The word "miracle" today seems to be used more in a sarcastic sentence than a positive one. That's just my observation.

Entry 66: Something Unexpected

I really don't know what is "realistic" about the character's reactions when they see supernatural things. I mean, supernatural is already unrealistic, how would I know if people will really act that way? It also depends on the character's personality and background. Of course everyone will act differently to situations like that. A lot of times in fantasy stories the setting is completely imaginary so surely the characters must be very used to that sort of things and not be startled by them. Oh, maybe we're talking about how normal people in movies meet supernatural crap? Well then, that might contain some realistic elements. I'd say, even though each person may still act according to their traits, most of them will be awfully scared. In real life people usually get frightened when something abrupt and weird happens. In most of the stories I've read the characters indeed get very surprised by things like that. If they act as though it's funny or it's absolutely normal, it's usually for comic effects. Personally I get totally freaked out by those things. I used to be really scared of ghosts and monsters that I'm afraid to walk near a dark room. I've never really "seen" them, but my father likes to tell stories like that and I became even more scared. This is why I never watch horror movies. I only watch thriller movies like Psycho. And now I'm not as scared of them because when I see monsters and ghosts in movies or even video games I know exactly that they are fake.

Entry 65: Proving One’s Self

There must be some kind of biological reason behind why young people do all kinds of crazy things to prove themselves mature, since this happens to the very first human beings and to people today. Maybe this is just another result of our superior intelligence, because we not only learn from each other, we envy one another. When a person is growing up, he or she wishes to be just like the adults because there are certain things kids can't do and grown-ups can. There is also the awful thing called pride and vanity. We humans always want to do thing to make ourselves feel like we are better than the others. The same concept applies to why young people like to show-off, I guess. Most of the time this need for proving oneself mature leads to pretty foolish decisions. I remember the time when my mother and I sent my sister to university she made us really upset by acting rude. She claimed that it made her feel childish to have us helping her carrying stuff to her dorm and she fussed about things a lot. We understood that she wants to be independent, but still her behaviors during that time hurt feelings. I would say it was rather pointless for her to act like that, although it did help us to want to get rid of her sooner. But that was only temporarily. My mother cried and prayed for her on the airplane back home.

Entry 64: Rites of Passage

I believe I have gone through quite a few rites of passage in my life so far. The first days of kindergarten and elementary school, even though I don't remember much, were the start of me being a student. The day I came to PAS marks another period of my academic life. I began to have motivation and goals and of course, to learn another language. Being a girl, my body "transformed" as I grow. I was the more, if not the most, mature-looking girl in my class. In about forth grade I already had visible breasts while other girls were almost flat. (I had a class full of girls and only two guys) The actual rite of passage for that would be the day I start to wear bras, I guess. Then, of course there was the time my period came.
Time for some other rites of passage. Now just when I say that I realized how few rites of passage have I gone through. Dang. I know there are a lot of those rites in our lovely aboriginal tribes, like the Atayal tribe's tradition of face tattoos. Only grown women who can weave and grown men who can hunt have the honor to get tattooed.
"Passage" is definitely a symbol for the journey of life, and "rite" is ceremony, often religious.

Entry 63: Being Tested

I hesitated a bit about writing this character and this movie - Pink from Pink Floyd the Wall, but here it is. Pink is a mentally and emotionally unstable rock star who slowly builds a metaphorical wall of alienation around himself. When he was a kid his father died in World War II. He longed for a father figure throughout his childhood while raised up by an overprotective mother. At school, Pink was humiliated by the teacher for writing poems in class. (This is where the absolutely awesome music video Another Brick in the Wall kicks in.) He got married eventually, but his wife cheated on him while he was on tour. When he learned of the affair he was traumatized. He brought a groupie back to his hotel room but had a fit of violence and began smashing things. The groupie fled in horror. Pink broke down again and started to go insane. He shaved all his body hair off, including eyebrows, and lay faintly in his room. His manager found him and inject him with drugs to make him perform a concert. He hallucinated that he is a neo-Nazi dictator speaking at a rally. As the scenes got more and more intense, he screamed, "Stop!" and hid himself in a bathroom. In his mind he put himself on trial. In the end, he managed to destroy the "wall."
The movie is highly symbolic, but Pink did have to go through an ordeal. He is driven crazy by the things happening in his life. He at first isolated himself, but eventually overcame the challenge even though we don't know what exactly happened to him. I also thought of writing this movie because we're on the unit of symbols; the film is loaded with symbols.

Entry 62: Symbol of the House

In "House Taken Over," the house is a symbol of a country. It is big and old. Irene and her brother live in it for a long time and never change their daily routines. The regular routines represent their culture and customs. They follow their traditions strictly, never question or think about them. The mysterious invading forces are people or cultures from other countries. Irene and her brother's land and culture are violated by these foreigners. The closing of the oak door separating the front and back of the house could be that Irene's brother is trying to block away the foreign influences or that he tries to put those group of people in a restricted area. When that is done, they still lose some of their traditions but they managed to keep on with their lives. In the end however the foreign influences spread over to their side. Irene and her brother, who are the native-born, is forced out of the house/country. The foreigners have taken over the country.
There had been multiple times in history when a native group of people is invaded by foreign groups. Europeans persecuted Native Americans when they came to America. Later the different ethnic groups that immigrated to American also got segregated.

Entry 61: Taken Over

In the story "House Taken Over," I think the thing that was really taken over was the speaker and his sister's lives. Their lives, which were regular routines and basically nothing else, were invaded by either some outside forces or their own minds. However, the fact that after they heard the mysterious voices they could hardly sleep well, suggested that whether or not the noises are outside, they sank into the minds of the characters. Irene talked in her sleep, and every time she did the speaker woke up and couldn't fall asleep again. The brother and sister seemed to be living in their own worlds, but they are aware of the outside world. That's why when the speaker heard the noises he and Irene were not surprised. They knew how it was when other things mess up their regular lives. When they had lost the back part of the house, they simply adopted a new schedule to fit the situation. But, as the unknown forces grew nearer, they had to leave the house. They didn't want to change their ways of life, or the state of minds, even at the last moment. They avoided the problem instead of dealing with it. I did some research, and I think the author Julio Cortazar was indeed trying to capture the strange feeling in dreams.

Entry 60: Symbols

A symbol is an object or a sign that represents something else. It carries some of the qualities of the thing it symbolizes. All numbers are symbols. The Arabic numbers, for example, represents the quantities. "1" represents having only one thing. The ancient Egyptian symbol, the "ankh," is the key of life. It's shaped like a key with a loop on top. It's the hieroglyphic character that symbolizes "eternal life." Another very common symbol is flags. For example, the rainbow flag that represents the LGBT. It's composed of six different-colored stripes. Each color represents a thing; red (life), orange (healing), yellow (sunlight), green (nature), blue (harmony), and purple/violet (spirit). The flag as a whole represents the diversity in the LGBT community. I think symbols can both be created by will and be occurring naturally. The symbols I mentioned earlier were all created. However, some symbols such as animals contain qualities that we would instinctively associate with something else. For example, dogs symbolizes loyalty, lions for strength, and owls represents wisdom. In my own life, I see and use symbols every day. Written languages are symbols. Chinese, English and French, the ones I can write, all have different characters and letters that represent almost everything.