It Is Not An Assignment Anymore

        This week, my professor assigned my class an essay.  He said that we should write something about our understanding of language of culture.  As soon as I heard the topic, I decided that I will start this essay by describing my trip to Japan when I was a child.  In the following paragraph, I kind of just picked out the part I think is worth putting on my blog because by doing some amend, I tried to trim this essay to really express the real feeling inside my mind instead of just an assignment.

        Prismatic light shone from the crystal I was going to insert to the keyhole.  Satisfied with the intricate grooves I forged, the metal gate swung backward automatically with surprisingly silence.  Iridescent streaks stream toward me triggering my instinct to hold up my arm for the protection of my eyes.  Tentatively, I peeked out from behind the gate.  My nostrils flared with the smell of lavender as the early morning sunbeam and cool wind soothed my face with their gentle touch.  Stunned, I gaped at the room with a view.  Stretching out from the exit was a field of lavender with various patches of colors: purple, indigo, lilac, sapphire, pink, red, yellow, green, to what seems like the endless.  They picked up with the resemblance of gemstone glittering to life due to the sunlight. Suddenly, my cell phone rang, and I stood up leaving the journal kept my trip to Japan on the table.  Language and cultural as I just mentioned are key and the gate of view.

To further illustrate, I shall explain language ── the key and the culture ── the view, respectively.  To begin with, the key is made from a rough metal, which is like the mind that once was occupied by biological need.  As we grow up, and experience the world around us, we chisel the metal trying to shape a way to open a door toward the society.  However, in the era of global village, we cannot always use the same key and that is the reason to learn the second language. To learn it means to accept the culture of the people who speaks it: that is to say, to embrace a different perception toward the world from another group, their way of thinking, their point of view.

Recently, I have been reading a series of fantasy novel, The Secret of Immortal Nicholas Flamel, by Michael Scott.  In the book, there is a word drawing me a lot of attention──Awaken.  Aside from its meaning in the novel, there is another definition to me in my brain.  It is just like a sudden understanding of something.  People just understand without any reason.  To me, as a native Mandarin speaker, I suddenly understand the pattern of English when I read Fly Away Home.  It just came to me. My five senses are triggered and attention are drawn into the another land created by the author who carefully notch the words onto his bow to shoot on the right target.  When the sudden understanding comes or I am Awakened, it like being soothing by a cool wind; the images the thought flow through and poured into the body as well as mind  and he blood is rushing circulating the whole body.  It's awesome and comfortable. 

        "Die Grenzen meiner Sprache sind die Grenzen meiner Welt ", said by Ludwig Wittgenstein.  I started to attend a German class, recently.  My German teacher wrote this sentence on the blackboard on the first day of my first German class.  He explained the meaning is "the limit of my language is the limit of my world".  Right at that time, I made a wish to myself── I want to be Awakened again.

 

A Sudden Understanding
drawn by Angel Pao

Surprise!!!

        You serve, I price; we both get surprise.  Everybody love surprise!  According to my electronic dictionary, the word, surprise means an unexpected or astonishing event, fact, or thing.  And today, I got a very special surprise.

        It is about a month ago.  After I went back to my hometown during my summer vacation, my brother told me that a Taiwanese style shop next to our high school just opened recently.  In addition, it serves great sesame seed cake which tastes even delicious with sizzled pork slice, over-easy egg wrapped inside.  Upon hearing this, we discussed with our parents for having breakfast there.  "Oh, that's one.  "Ok, since you have not tasted it, we will go eat there tomorrow", my father agreed while my mother protested, "No, last time we went there, I had that and I think it is too greasy.  You three are not going to have that again!"  That's why we did not put this plan into practice until...

Sesame seed cake with pork slice
and over-easy egg 

        This morning, my mother and brother went out.  On the other hand, I stayed at home packing for my new semester because I have to go back to the city Kaohsiung where my college is located.  Suddenly, I heard a key-put-in cracking, then the bolt thudded back.  The door opened.  Standing by the door with a villainous smile was my brother smirking at me proudly.  He strode inside, one hand taking off the helmet, a plastic bag was swaying on the other.  The bag was whitened with steam drifted upward. 

     "What is it?", I asked.  "It is the sesame seed cake with pork slice and egg I have said", he lifted the bag higher enough to let me see the loot of sin, then continued," I bought it because after tomorrow we will not be able to eat it.  Besides, Mom was out."  This time both of us smirked.  The sesame cake was still steaming when we put it on a plate.  My brother took out a knife, stacking the pork on the egg, which took the half size on the cake, pushing them to one side, cutting it to half.  I asked why he took the pure sesame seed cake part.  His answer is because I haven't tasted it.

P.S.

Drew by Angel Pao
Left: My brother/Right: me

Summer Night

        Ok! Let's see.  I believe people have at least one memory they will cherish for the rest of life.  I am no exception, too.  In this article,  I want to describe an extraordinary experience which is still etched in my heart and which I considered to be the one that people still remember: the twinkling, twinkling stars.

Drawing by Angel Pao
Left: Angel (me)  Right: My brother
My brother and I were enjoying looking at stars
during the summer starry night.

        When I was one-year grade, every summer night in my neighborhood, my family and I would take a walk at a square in front of a huge Chinese temple.  We lived in a small community in suburb.  Due to such small amount of people living there, the whole area appeared to be very quiet.  Besides, with few cars passing by, with no factories standing nearby, ecosystem had thrived, especially at night.  Within earshot, chirps from crickets showering through the quietness accompanied with the pounding of the tide.  As the sea was washing the port, it breezed cool to fill lungs of passersby with salty, refreshing air, to rid people of pressures from work, from school, from everyday life.  This made us cannot help but throw our head back as we look up into the sky with ruffled hair.

        Scattering up up on the dark canopy were those glittering stars so bright so spectacular that it looked as if a sea of diamond was swirling.  Every time, we looked those shimmering stars, my mother and my father would start to tell my brother and I some old folktales and we would also start to run around at the square pretending we were fighting a Star War.  Later, on the way to home,  I would wonder what it would be like if one day I could travel into space.

        However, because of the reason like greenhouse, environmental change, so far so forth, this sacred performance shows up scarcely and almost no child can be so honored to witness this wondrous natural firework.  Nevertheless, this picturesque view has been smeared into my heart and will live on throughout my whole life.  That's why by writing this, I hope I can share such an ordinary scene into extraordinary.