i'd love the rain now. really.

The scene outside my house now bears great similarity to that of an old American film where the setting is where the Red Indians live- the true Americans. I see columns of smoke rising from those terraces not so far from my flat. Those white columns of smoke that wreck havoc to our atmosphere.
I'm as puzzled as I was eight years ago about our human cultures, especially the Chinese. Frankly, I feel that we Chinese are perhaps the most superstitious lot amongst the different races. We have so many occasions commemorating the different deities that merely calculating which send you bonkers. Anyway, that will not be going to affect me since well, I'm not that Chinese in terms of culture. Personally, I don't see why people must burn incense; be it those joss sticks or paper incense. I used to help out my granny in the past and would freak out should the flame roar too wildly. Come to think of it, perhaps I really did act like a Red Indian, running about a flame and howling like a monkey. Except that I traded the axe and hammer for an Ultraman figurine. By the way, one of them got a facial because I was dumb enough to put it too close to the flame. Hmm, my first chemistry lesson.
Since a couple years back, I had stopped questioning my parents about the roots and real reasons behind all this customs. Because, people do things for a reason..And this reason is usually either a deterrence or simply yearning for something like immortality. And I'm sure people don't burn incense to ask for long live.
So my room is now filled with carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide molecules. Some of which had already entered my trachea and most probably partying in my bloodstream as I am typing away. Figures why my head feels rather heavy, or is it the lack of sleep?
Mum told me that the act of burning incense was to keep those unfortunate folks who live in the Netherworld happy. And those getai- I am contemplating going to one of those these days...anyone wanna tag along?- are to keep them entertained. To put it in layman terms and more crudely, this period of time is where they can be "free" and happy? Hmm. I hope I'm phrasing the words right because I don't want to wake up tonight by a ruckus caused by supernatural beings.
So we burn incense to keep them happy. But seriously, I mean, isn't the Netherworld already a place of burnings? I mean, typically artworks portray that place as being so hot, so void of happiness, such an inferno that seriously, I doubt that those beings would want to see anymore burnings in our world right? So I persisted and asked mum continually. So much so until she got so fed up that she chucked the entire packet of incense into the hungry flames and stormed off.
That was 5 years ago.

I suppose every culture has their own idiosyncrasies.
Oh look, another column of smoke.