Relics  (39mb, requires Quicktime 7 to play) is my first attempt to properly document interactions between 2 people.  This is a silent film without a single word spoken.  I am not sure if it actually gets the point across.  I would appreciate any kind of feedback.

I used to wonder what’s the big deal with children, these naive, useless younglings whose purpose of existence is to spend their parents hard-earned money, pose adorably in front of camera, for the parents’ bragging rights.  Oh, and to carrying on (somewhat) of the blood line.

Yes they are innocent and pure, but eventually, they will all grow up, start buying make-up, things, create dramas, destructions, and they will not be innocent anymore.  So tell me, what’s the big deal with these precious little 15 years of short-lived facade of cutesiness?  I could care less about children, about being a child, only because back then, childhood was right around the corner.  I knew if I wanted, I could close my eyes and these images of me being a 6 year old, holding onto my grandpa’s hand going to a store to buy a toy truck will pop into my head, just like yesterday. 

But one day I woke up in my bed in my apartment in New York City, and I realize, my childhood was gone.  It has sneaked out from the back of my head, and I couldn’t picture my grand father that clearly anymore.  Was he wearing glasses that day?  Did he ever buy me that yellow toy truck?  Did it actually mean anything at all?  These memories, images, are fading like cheap photographs left out in the sun, yellowed, tainted, and I had become an adult, just like the rest of the world. 

I once read an article claiming that a child is a true human being and all that one could ever want, is already in a child.  Now I agree, and now I understand.  I felt an honest, an undeniable happiness when I was a child.  The moments that are still lingering in my head, they seem so much bigger, meaningful, believable.  I was a $2 piggy bank that only wanted pennies.  Allow me to rephrase that, a small capacitated container of trivial, but completely happy, wonderful things.  That’s what a child, being a child is about.  To be happy just play cards with cousins.  Completely emersed in what life offers.  Better yet, a child does not even know “life,” he just is, living it, with the utmost sincerity.  Now, I am talking about those lucky bastards who have decent parents that provide and protect.  And yes, today is the day that I vow to be such a father, not to spoil him, oh no, but to protect my child’s childhood, so that one day when he wakes up in his own bed, he will think back and smile.

Tomorrow is Chinese New Year, and I want to thank you, my parents, for providing what you did.  My childhood was there, I am now merely lamenting its slow decay, my slow death.