Today's cover picture is from Studio Ghibli's production of When Marnie Was There - based on a novel by Joan G. Robinson. It's my latest Ghibli film so far, and has become an addition to my list of favourite works by the famed studio. I highly recommend it - both the film and the book - if you haven't tried it, especially if you're looking for a book with a quaint, peaceful plot to wind down and while your leisurely hours away. Then again, who actually has leisurely hours to begin with...
These days I've been in quite a daze, as if I'm just drifting along with the motions while the sounds around me get blurred out. Maybe it's my way of unconsciously trying to lighten the burden of reality. I get assignments and chores done as I go down a systematic checklist, but I'm not really thinking... about things like future plans, personal desires - the things that should really get me motivated to push on in life.
I daydream a lot - random old faces surface every now and then and I wonder how they're doing, what it'd be like if we were still close etc. Or I imagine myself with different personalities (like what if I were secretly a sleeper agent, or a mutant), just to keep myself entertained. I'd wonder about how I appear to the stranger sitting opposite me in the train carriage, or try to imagine what kind of lives the people I watch from my seat on the bus lead as it drives them by. As I lie on my bed in the darkness and turn to my side, I think about whether I would go to bed alone like this every other night for the following years to come, or whether I would sense the warmth of another living person next to me. Whenever I hold Skippy and look into his eyes with those slight cataracts, I let the cold realisation of his impending departure wash over me for a bit before I shake it all away...
I feel like nothing.
But that's something.
And even in this lonely, peaceful existence that I revel in, I want someone to notice who I am. I want to be wondered about. Maybe that's why I write, and write and write. I don't write useful, intelligent or even controversial articles that stir the sentiments of people who would eagerly pounce on them to share on social media. That's because I'm not looking for recognition or popularity, or any of those fleeting things. But I want people to know I existed somewhere, some time in this world. That one day in the distant future someone would read my words and know who I was.
I picked up my pen to write the first of many years' worth of diary entries in Primary 6 after I was inspired by The Diary of Anne Frank. She was a figure from the past, but she was real. She was human, with all her dreams and fears. I didn't meet her, but I know her from her own words. Not just Anne Frank - shows like Natsume Yuujinchou and When Marnie Was There with the similar plot of knowing someone from the past get to me as well.
I don't have to invent something or perform some miraculous act for me to claim a place in someone's thoughts when I've expired and gone from this world. I can just be the ordinary but very much existent person I am.
I never had that many friends growing up
So I learned to be okay with
Just me, just me, just me, just me
And I'll be fine on the outside
I like to eat in school by myself anyway
So I'll just stay
Right here, right here, right here, right here
And I'll be fine on the outside
So I just sit in my room after hours with the moon
And think of who knows my name
Would you cry if I died
Would you remember my face?
So I left home, I packed up and l moved
Far away
From my past one day
And I laughed, I laughed, I laughed, I laughed
I sound fine on the outside
Ha ha ha...
Sometimes I feel lost, sometimes I'm confused
Sometimes I find
That I am not alright
And I cry, and I cry, and I cry....
Ha ha ha...
So I just sit in my room after hours with the moon
And think of who knows my name
Would you cry if I died
Would you remember my face?
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