So when sirens went off a few hours ago, my heart sped up a little, and I said to Jei, “Only in a small town can you wonder if you know the person.”

I just don’t know what to say. Everything I type seems so ridiculous.

I’m struggling with posting about it because I don’t want to draw attention to myself, like this is about me, because it isn’t. I feel so selfish writing about it. [Does that make any sense?] I don’t want people to feel like they need to message me or talk to me about it. Mostly because what can you say? I especially don’t want him to be the topic of gossip, as right now only a small few know, and in a small town nobody seems to have anything better to do than to spread bad news like a disease. The last thing I want is, “Did you hear about []…?!” in that almost excited, “I-know-something-you-don’t” tone that everyone gets. Like it’s a fucking privilege or something. There’s someone I want to call, but I can’t, and if I can’t talk about it here where will I?

This is my journal.
He was my friend.
And I am mourning.

I remember when he was helping out with the festival and he followed me all the way home and when I pulled into my driveway he turned his lights on and the police siren. I was so scared, I had no idea what was going on.

And he used the speaker, “Step out of the car with your hands where I can see them!”

And then he came out of the car laughing so hard I thought his sides would split open. But I was still too terrified to laugh. It was the best prank ever pulled on me. Ever since freshman year he’d wanted to be a police officer. He’d just recently landed his new job and was really, really excited when I talked to him about it three or so days ago.

I am so heart broken.

EDIT:

(Thanks to Bronwyn for emailing me this beautiful cover. The lyrics have nothing to do with this situation, but it’s moving and beautiful and I needed a new song of the week today anyway. Also, the lyrics fit how I’ve been feeling the last few days.)

I feel so relieved now that suddenly I realize how tired I am. And have been. A huge weight has been lifted that I didn’t even know I was carrying. I can breathe again. And so now I’m going to roll over and get some sleep because I finally feel like I can. Goodnight.

I have been extremely homesick lately. But the thought confuses me. If I were to go there, they most certainly would take one look at me and say, “外人!” To which I get confused. My heart is there. I grew up there. I feel more at peace there than here. And here, when I came “home”, everyone called me that weird Japanese girl.

日本人
日系
ウチナンチュ
外人

Don’t I get to belong anywhere?

Third Culture Kids (abbreviated TCKs or 3CKs or Global Nomad) “refers to someone who [as a child] has spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than his or her own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture, into a third culture”.

Since the term was coined by sociologist Ruth Hill Useem in the 1960’s, TCKs have become a heavily studied global subculture. TCKs have more in common with one another, regardless of nationality, than they do with non-TCK’s from their own country.

There are different characteristics that impact the typical Third Culture Kid:

• TCKs are 4 times as likely as non-TCKs to earn a bachelor’s degree (81% vs 21%)
• 40% earn an advanced degree (as compared to 5% of the non-TCK population.)
• 45% of TCKs attended 3 universities before earning a degree.
• 44% earned undergraduate degree after the age of 22.
• Educators, medicine, professional positions, and self employment are the most common professions for TCKs.
• TCKs are unlikely to work for big business, government, or follow their parents’ career choices. “One won’t find many TCKs in large corporations. Nor are there many in government … they have not followed in parental footsteps”.
• 90% feel “out of sync” with their peers.
• 90% report feeling as if they understand other cultures/peoples better than the average American.
• 80% believe they can get along with anybody.
• Divorce rates among TCKs are lower than the general population, but they marry older (25+).
• Linguistically adept.
• Teenage TCKs are more mature than non-TCKs, but ironically take longer to “grow up” in their 20s.
• More welcoming of others into their community.
• Lack a sense of “where home is” but often nationalistic.
• Some studies show a desire to “settle down” others a “restlessness to move”.
• Depression and suicide are more prominent among TCK’s

いちゃりば ちょをでえ。
Once we meet and talk, we are brothers and sisters.
An Okinawan saying.

What a way to start the new year. The greatest thing to come out of Bath and Body works is supposedly being discontinued. I’ve spoken to two different employees and they both say the same thing: We’re done with the Temptations line. Sad, sad, day. Everything in the store is 50-75% off, but there weren’t any Cinnamon Bun Heavens left. No more Cinnamon Bun Heaven for me. (If anyone feels kind enough to grab a Cinnamon Bun Heaven body lotion I’ll pay for it (or them) and the shipping!!)

**SPOILER WARNING**

So, let me start by saying I’m not one of those anal individuals who has the audacity to believe that everything written in a book can successfully be squeezed into a film. So when I watch a movie based of a book I’ve previously read, I watch it as it is: A movie based on a book. And usually, I’m pretty grateful that they saw in the book what I saw- a good enough story to make a film. And I realize that Hollywood is out to make money, not tell a good story, so probably what they’re thinking- is that it’s a big enough book to make into a film. Either way, I’m usually very grateful to see something I loved big enough and influencing enough people to make it into a film. And when I saw them making Lord of the Rings into a movie, I was waiting for His Dark Materials. The first series I cried reading. What I read in seventh grade.

Lord of the Rings was excellent; sure there were some differences from the book to film, as there always are. The same was true for Harry Potter. But it’s the little details that tend to get under my skin. Why would you change Harry’s scar from the middle of his forehead to the side? Why? What’s the point?

As an actress and director I understand the necessities that are pace, clarity, and conciseness. I can understand cutting scenes from the book that just can’t make it into the movie for sake of making the pace bearable. But changing a character’s name? What is the point of that? Switching entire scenes around? No. There are crucial parts that were left out of the movie and when later events occur- it doesn’t manage to miraculously make sense without them.

Now, when I watched the Golden Compass, there were those little things, like normal, that got under my skin. And I was completely fine with all those things, I was enjoying the movie. I clapped when they kept a scene that I didn’t expect them to keep.

I heard from someone, “They cut the last the last part of the book out and removed all the religious connotation.’” And since I’d actually read the book, and realized there wasn’t any real religious connotation at the end of The Golden Compass, I passed the person’s word off as something they overheard from someone else. An uneducated hearsay.

Yet at a certain part I leaned over to Cole and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if the credits started rolling right now?”

Cole: Yeah, right. They can’t do that or there is no second movie.
Me: Yeah, that’s such a detrimental part of the book, but… the music’s kind of swelling…
Cole: No way…
*THE SCREEN GOES BLACK*
Cole: WHAT?
(It was the midnight show, there wasn’t anyone in the theater but us and some friends.)
Me: *laughing, desperately begging that it’s some sort of fake cut scene*
Cole: Did that just happen?!
*THE CREDITS ROLL*
Cole: THAT DID NOT JUST FUCKING HAPPEN.

And yeah. It did.

I’ve never been so sad over a paper to film adaptation. I cannot believe they did this to my favorite story. They are making a second film from what I hear, but they already fired the guy who did this one and hired someone new for the adaptation. Hopefully they’ll put the end of the first book into the second movie. You couldn’t ASK for a more climactic ending then what Pullman pulled in the first book. It was handed to them on a silver platter. But no, they botched it up.

For those of you that have never read the book, enjoy the film. It’s exciting and fantastic eye candy. For those of you that, like I, cherished His Dark Materials as one of your favorite trilogies of all time- don’t. It will break your heart.

EDIT: Now that I’ve had time to recover I guess I should talk about all the things I loved about the movie.
• Seraphina. OMG.
• The Daemons. LOVED them.
• The armored bears, with the exception of renaming Iofur and the scrapping the whole arena and forgetting to mention that the bears can’t be tricked so when Iorek names her “Silvertongue” it doesn’t make much sense. Yes that was a run-on sentence.
• Lee Scoresby. FUCK YES. Double fuck yes.
• Daniel Craig managed to pull it off (with the exception of the begging line)
• LYRA and her imperfect teeth.
• The entire beginning.
• PAN. OMG SO FUCKING CUTE I WANT ONE MORE THAN EVER NOW. (I seriously carried Morn and Pumpkin around the house going, “Would you like to be my Daemon?!”)
• Mrs. Coulter’s daemon. CREEPY. (Though when she pulled the whole, “Luke, I am your father” bit, that was unacceptable.)

And last but certainly not least:

• Iorek still ripped Iofur’s (though he was renamed to something silly) jaw off. It bounced across the snow. HA. Yeah.

So I guess there were a lot of things I liked, in fact, like I said: I was enjoying the movie until the very end. I was just disheartened to see they didn’t actually end it the way I’d always dreamed they would. Bummer.