[Sensation]

For me, nothing can be worse than waking up to a grey, cloudy sky and raindrops falling on my window pane. Despite my obsession for fall/winter clothing and accessories, I find it depressing to admit that the days of spring and summer have gone and along with them, gone a bit of my cheerful spirit. I cannot express enough how much I love the golden rays of morning sunshine and the vast, clear blue sky. The shade of blue that makes my heart ache and my mind go blank every single time. It is like love at first sight over and over and over again.

For some reasons, gloomy days always put me in an extremely unstable state of mind and push that already established mood swing a little bit further on the edge. I hate it when my mood changes like Juicy Couture store changes their mannequins’ accessories: chaotic, unnecessary and it makes people wonder what the hell their problem is. If I could stabilize my mood just by hiring a better store manager with a better sense of what going on in the world beside his own, I could have done that long time ago. Unfortunately, that is just simply impossible.

A rainy day, a cup hot beverage and a glass window is all you need to shut my nonstop blabbering and over-energetic self off. Although I may make some attempts to cheer up my own day but they are all vain attempts. My mind wanders off, and most of the time, to the better, happier days of the past.

Memory is an extremely ambiguous concept. I hate the feeling that I can never get a grasp on my memories and never able to control them the way I want. They would fade away when I try desperately to hold on to them and they flood back in my head when I do not want any pieces of them. And rainy days are the times when they always seem to find their way back, whether I want it to happen or not.

Have you ever had that feeling when your Ipod plays a song that you have not listened for ages, and that song carries with it tons of images and emotions that bring tears to your eyes? That is exactly how I feel, often enough that it bothers my unsettling mind. And my senses are sensitive enough that even trivial things can trigger the flow of memories.

One of those days my Ipod would randomly play a song that makes me suddenly stop in the middle of what I am doing, and feel what I had felt ages ago. Those are the songs that I listened to on road trips with my family, songs that my friends and I practiced dancing to over and over again, songs that I listened to on the way to school and secretly during classes, songs that played in the background as I cried for the sad ending of my favorite drama, songs that played during the slow dance during homecoming, or songs that played on the guitar by an anonymous figure that I refuse to recall.

More often than needed, it would rain outside and the pouring rain replays the slow movies of my life. All the rains that have never failed to fall on my birthday. The freezing rain that I cursed out every morning on my way to school. The sheets of needles that colored the beach with a white and foggy shade and a feeling of solitude. The continuous rain that remind me to appreciate the warmth and the cup of coffee that I was holding in my hands. The stormy weather that made me feel lucky I had a hand to hold on to and an umbrella held steadily over me. It has dawn on me that I have just as many memories under the sunshine as those under the grey sky. However, for an unknown reason, I rarely reminisce those.

There would be days when I walk down the street and a faint smell of Love Spell would bring me vivid pictures of the days I spent in Boston or the times in FA that I was obsessed with Victoria Secret’s lotions. Smell of Vietnamese food reminds me of home and of the time I spent with the other Vietnamese cooking for International Day or just for fun. My hand itches when I smell of fresh baked cookies or cakes, I want to get into the kitchen and start baking cakes like I did for Zala and Pauline. I miss the smell of hot lemon tea and ramen noodles that I desperately tried to get rid of. Even the smell of gasoline, oil, hot dry sun or freshly painted wall can remind me of tons of things.

I can even recall feelings that I felt while watching movies, or all the excitement that I have felt while laughing in all the pictures I kept. All these extra sensitiveness really gets on my nerves. It gets in my way of rational thinking. I don’t feel being in control of myself. Those feelings are too sentimental for me to endure.

Then somehow I found myself thinking about fate, and about how many people have gone through my life. After all those good memories, the least we can do for each other is a “happy birthday”, in which the only reason I remember is because facebook reminds me. People come, people go. Some stay for a long time and do not leave much impression. Some come for only a short period of time but take away with them tiny bits of my heart. During those times, I feel sad but then I get over it fast enough that people may consider myself a bit cruel and cold-hearted.

I thought to myself, I have to move on. If I keep living in the past, then I would not be able to recognize all the good things that will come in the future. After all, things change, people change, I may not able to recall all of them, but I believe they will still be there in my memory, or my heart (figuratively speaking). Memories keep building up on themselves and if I have to rely on these trivial stimuli to trigger them, then let it be that way.

Sunday Oct 4th, 2009
Location: Carlson Library, Rochester, New York, U.S.A
Weather: Rainy, cold, and gloomy
Activity: supposedly reading Psychology chapter on Emotional Intelligence
Music: Goong OST