Tag: nostalgia

Childhood Movie Review

Bl@ckBe@nsLeave a comment

Credit: Google

Since it’s about to be Christmas, I will be reviewing Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Personally, I think it’s a 10/10 movie. The plot: 10/10, characters: 10/10, and theme: 10/10. It was my favorite movie to watch as a kid during Christmas time. So, the cast invloves Scrooge mcDuck as Ebenezer Scrooge, Mickey Mouse as Bob, Cratchit, Goofy as the spirit of Jacob Marley, Jiminy Cricket as Ghost of Christmas Past, Williw the Giant as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and Pete plays the Ghost of Christmas Future. In March, I randomly would have it on. In June, with the weather at 100 degrees, you bet I was watching it. To me, it was just that good. I especially liked the version where it was the House of Mouse, with a marathon of other short stories that ended with the Christmas Carol. If you have young children, I highly recommend this movie for parents wanting a nice holiday movie to show their kids or anyone who just loves a good Christmas movie.

Motivation

ackley4167Leave a comment

Lately, I feel like I have been losing motivation for almost everything. Even just getting up out of my bed and getting a glass of water. I don’t know if it’s because winter is creeping up, or if it’s because I work myself out of energy. But I think about when I was little and how much more energy I had. Clearly, kids have a lot of energy, but it feels different now that I’m older. I miss being a kid so much, but growing up has just been dreadful lately. I remember when school used to be fun. It would just be a place where I would see my friends. But now the only thing that motivates me to get out of bed in the morning is if I have a free block that day. I usually don’t, but sometimes I wait until the last minute to do my homework or anything else I need to do before bed. I’ll be lying down on my phone, and when the clock hits 9, I say 5 more minutes. Next thing I know, it’s 11. Hopefully, I will get my motivation to do things back soon.

Nostalgia

zombiegxrlLeave a comment

I’ve been attending this school for four years. I’ve had many firsts and many lasts right here in its walls. I’ve been through every whirlwind of emotions. I seem to remember something new with each step I take around campus. As the weather changes so do I. My mind flutters through the past at a million miles per second. I don’t always recall specific memories or events, instead I feel. I feel old emotions and my mind and body retreats back to the state they were in during years prior. Nostalgia is such an odd sensation. Last winter I dreaded coming to school and wanted to jump into the future so badly. Now, when I smell a certain scent, feel a familiar breeze, see the returning clouds, or hear a familiar bird, I regret not enjoying it before. I long to go back into the past and experience these smells, feelings, sights, and sounds for the first time. Nostalgia brings with it the deepest sense of longing one could possibly feel. This longing used to bring with it an unbearable sadness and yearning, but I’ve learned to appreciate and embrace it. You can never go back, never experience the past again, so why not take full advantage of the fleeting nostalgia that finds you at the most unexpected times. The next time the ominous sensation of nostalgia finds you, embrace it. Stand still and take it all in, because it’s the closest to the past you will ever get. Even more importantly, live in the moment, don’t long for the future because it’ll cause you to soon long for the past. Don’t waste your life longing, spend life enjoying the present, and enjoying nostalgia when it finds you.

Picture Credit- Google

Nostalgia

leapingwaterLeave a comment

When I was younger, just a few years ago, I hated to remember things from when I was younger. If it were a song that I used to listen to, a movie I had watched, a picture of me from years before, or even just a memory – I hated it. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. It gave me this unexplainable icky feeling. Over the past couple of years I’ve grown to miss all of the times that I used to not like thinking about for some reason. I never thought I was a really sentimental person until I started missing all of these things. If you know me, you’d probably pick up on me often saying, “when I was younger…blahblahbla” and I understand that is probably really annoying, and I’m sorry LOL. Maybe it’s because there wasn’t too much I felt like I needed to worry about back then, but I think about what life used to be like every day. I am happy that I can look back on those memories as happy ones now, even though I still don’t understand why I had such negative feelings about what once was.

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<< Childhood

graceovsLeave a comment

I miss being little. Everything was so much easier then. I had no significant responsibilities, no pressure, and no school stress. 

My days consisted of barefoot cartwheels in the grass, sweet mango lassies, and swimming lessons in the fading afternoon light.

I fell asleep cuddling my mom under mosquito net canopies, or listening to “Quelqu’un m’a dit’ if my parents were out for date night. I took baths in a red bucket just big enough for a petite 6-year-old with her knees folded to her chest (the shower was too scary). I collected shards of shattered glass behind the school gymnasium, which my friend and I called our secret treasures. I read stories on our yellow balcony overlooking a sea of rice paddies. I accompanied my dad to the grocery store just to get a Chupa-Chups lollipop at the register.

PC: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/13/00/8b/13008b1ed60cb04d439612a649da70b3.jpg

These were the simplest of times. Back then, my greatest challenge was pulling a comb through my tangled hair or remembering my times tables. How quickly things changed.

Best Asian Parent

horseman69Leave a comment

My mother is the best asian parent ever.

She always wanted me to be good at everything, and if not, good at something in particular. 

Ever since my childhood, she had been pushing me to be great. 

Therefore, under her influence, I signed up for the concert band and the ping-pong ball team of my elementary school. I started doing all these things, and then I just stuck to it for years.

My childhood was filled with practicing tenor horn and table tennis, and I did that for the whole six years of my elementary school life. 

Not to brag, but I was placed the third in a city-wide table tennis competition, and after 9 times of examination and evaluation of the China Conservatory of Music, I was considered to be on the highest level of performing tenor horn. 

Now that I think of it, I’m very impressed by the old me. It’s amazing what my mother pushed me to do. Now that I think of it, she gave my old life so much more colors than an ordinary kid’s. Looking back, I just think of so much more my mother has taught me, how she would buy bundles of English or math test materials, then make me take them and go through and answers together. I remember her putting a big question mark on the side when there is a question wrong, because I always argued against the answer key. I remember how she made me recite ancient books of poems and passages that the recitation of it to a teacher would have given me a recognition. It meant reciting multiple books of poems and recite them in a single time. She tested me, gazed at me every time when I struggled to find the right words — it was so painful. It was like she knew I had some kind of talent and wouldn’t have been like that to me if it weren’t for that gift I had. Now that I think of how much heart my mother has put in me, I never want to disappoint her again.

Oh, how I love my mother. But now I cannot ever go back, she isn’t always going to tuck me in at night.

Photo Credit: onlinelabels.com

Nostalgia hits hard

horseman69Leave a comment

Nostalgia isn’t just a feeling, it’s a crash of emotions that befalls you when it’s the most unexpected. Not just homesickness, but a mix of remembrance and sadness, as you’re only nostalgic when you are not home, stranded, helpless.

Nostalgia may be a current of water. It flows from your head to your stomach, then back to your eyes, uncontrollable, rolling out like a waterfall. Sometimes you don’t realize its existence until your mouth takes a sip of that salty drop.

You’d laugh at your woe and call it odd, but the current will not halt. So I comfort myself. Don’t cry, child, for you don’t have time for it now.

Nostalgia is more than a feeling. I hope whoever has it can return to their loved ones in a short while. 

Nevertheless, will you still miss your home, if your lover is stranded as well?

(I’m a Chinese international student in the US. Because of certain policies that were made for the coronavirus, I cannot go back home. I don’t know when I’ll get the chance to meet my family and friends. The uncertainty is a real menace, it’s eating me alive. What if something happens to someone whom I love while I’m overseas? What if at the end of the day I’m left behind as the only one living? The uncertainty is killing me. I hope everything goes well in China, I hope there’ll be an antidote for this madness. I feel really helpless and overwhelmed because there’s literally nothing I could contribute to better the situation, I could only sit and watch the number of infected and deaths go up and wish that my circle of people has nothing to do with it. It’s truly rotten when you are a spectator of your fellow countrymen’s deaths. 

I just hope things go well. I’m praying for a change.)

Photo Credit: phys.org

Nostalgic Pride

slimjimsilversLeave a comment
I like divulging stories and experiences from my childhood so I think I’ll do that again.
 
5th grade was an interesting year for me. I spent the whole year knowing it was my final year in China, that I would soon be moving to the promised land that I had only know as Hollywood from movies and the few visits I had made to the southern coast of California. I fostered friendships I knew wouldn’t last, I got moved up to the highest reading group, and I ALMOST kissed a girl. All the subdued craziness afforded to an awkward twelve year old was incredibly liberating, however at the same time, it was shrouded in the despair of having to leave behind everything I knew.
 
Aside from all that depressing stuff, my fifth-grade year was the perfect culmination of all the time I had spent in China. My friends and I released more videos in a single year than we ever had before, under the name of our production company, “Yovodka United.” My homeroom class won the elementary school dodgeball tournament, even defeating the teachers somehow, making for one glorious pizza party. I finally read the final book of the TinTin series from the library, after waiting nearly two years for someone to return it, and I gave my final goodbyes to the friends, the school, the city, that had raised me and taught me so much, walking off stage, throwing glow sticks into the audience, after our heartfelt class song.
 
The Skype calls that seemed to go nowhere but made hours fly by in minutes. The new era of pop music, Maroon V, Imagine Dragons, Taylor Swift, The Script, and Gotye, creating a perfect soundtrack that could encapsulate my memories into a single playlist. The Minecraft LAN parties that involved poor WiFi, pizza bagels, and lots of griefing. I don’t know if I can ever recreate a year as packed with mixed emotions and shameless exuberance as my fifth-grade year, but I only hope I can one day look back on my high school experience, my senior year even, with the same kind of nostalgic pride.

Chinese New Year

hwan6031Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year, Asian new year. Asian new year is one of the biggest holidays in countries like Korea and China. We get to gather around with families that we weren’t able to meet for a while and celebrate each other by eating different kinds of food and talking about how their life has been. This is time of the year, where I want to go back to my own country. I always think about how fun it would be to spend time with family and relatives and laugh about stupid stuff, while I’m in my room laying on my bed. I wish one day I could celebrate Asian new year with my family and relatives.

Itchy

icaruswithwarmwingsLeave a comment

I have a bad case of itchy foot

The itchy foot runs through my leg

When I itch the itch it numbs my toes

Through my foot it goes

And all the way into my calf

It feels like the beginning of poison oak

The sweltering alergic reaction

That has plagued me since days old

I feel the familiar itch

The friendly ooze

The glorious disgusting hot irritated mess that is poison oak

But not quite

It’s just one singular bulb

One little plague bubonic

A tiny little boil

A reminder of bare feet in mosquito territory

A reminder like a cracked phone screen

Or a scar on your arm

Something you see everyday

A reminder of something you forgot

Like her face in my camera roll

Like looking back at just how perfect it has been

Because so often I took photos when things were good

When I wasn’t staring at a blank google doc

An image stamped in my skull

When it was incredible

Or when it was supremely funny

Or when it hurt like a mountain insurmountable

And when I scroll back and see these myrtle memories

For an instant I feel that excitement that takes me back

That yearning for days old

But not for a million dollars

Not for an ounce of that love that I felt

Would I miss a second of the now

It’s weird

But I scratched the itch

And honestly it doesn’t itch anymore