June 2011
May 2011
“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”
—Rumi
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
—C. S. Lewis
“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excrutiatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly…but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airports’ gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.”
—David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
“This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.”
—Jonathan Franzen | “Liking is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts” | NY Times Op-Ed May 28, 2011 (via evoketheforms)
I have a leftover baguette that will turn into french toast tomorrow~
It’s just a mini one, but it’ll sustain a person and go really well with all the fresh fruit I have and perhaps some nutella.
On snacking (or note to self):
When in doubt, eat cereal or fruit, and when it’s late at night, brush your teeth.
Cheers, toodles, & noodles.
“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
—Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
What do you do in your free time?
I do whatever suits my mood - read, write, doodle, tinker on the piano…cook, browse food blogs, etsy, & clothing sites that are much too expensive, watch period films, muse, delight in randomly coming across good music, admire people.
Play
Don't Blink.
I saw a hand-made sign on the road that said, “DON’T BLINK” and was about to get really excited…
but then further down I realised it was just an advertisement for some politician. buh…
I should have stopped and pulled up the politician bit and just left “DON’T BLINK” there to randomly stand in the breeze as a warning.
Except it wouldn’t be random, ‘cos hey, you never know with the weeping angels. One could be just around the bend waiting for the unsuspecting passerby.
So, don’t ignore the sign (if it’s just there by itself). Don’t even blink.
Cheers, toodles, & noodles.
“Anger cannot be overcome by anger. If someone is angry with you, and you show anger in return, the result is a disaster. On the other hand, if you control your anger and show its opposite – love, compassion, tolerance and patience – not only will you remain peaceful, but the other person’s anger will also diminish.”
—The Dalai Lama
Things you can do to be happier:
- Go to bed earlier
- Finish things ahead of time
- Eat whole-food
- Exercise
- Be present
- Organize
- Listen to music
- Think positively
- Drink lots of water
- Journal
- Read
- Be productive
- Eat fresh fruit
- Breathe deeply
- Go for a bike ride
—
confession: don’t know how to ride a bike.
but this is a pretty good list to follow.
“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.”
—Edgar Allan Poe
Argh.
Mosquito slapping season, it is. I’m rather good at it.
Hello.
So, I’m reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt again for…what, the third time? For some reason I feel like it’s the perfect summer book. Or maybe it’s just a good read — mesmerising and skillfully written. There’s lots of inspiration, language-wise, and I would be so happy if I could write like Tartt someday.
I haven’t had much motivation to write anything except research papers and am pretty burnt out, but it’s comforting and relieving to be able to read a book that still amazes and consumes me even at the third read. It’s very gradually oiling the screws and hinges in my brain and letting bits of ideas out that have been kept in storage. I glanced at a short that I never finished, crossed out a couple slow sections; I still don’t know where its going, but will figure it out, albeit slowly.
When I go back this summer, I’ll finally have some space to think freely and not have to concern myself with people who feel like writing has no point because it’ll never pay. (Really, does a published 15 page story look so insubstantial? Okay, I didn’t get cash for it, but that’s not why I do it. It’s just a bonus of writing well, and I haven’t gotten there yet.)
Anyways, I’m going to start writing daily again, and it’ll stick because I’m going to make it stick. (If you start to notice lapses, electronically poke me, please, even if you don’t care.)
Right, going back to reading now. By the way, has anyone read Tartt’s other novel - The Little Friend?
Cheers, toodles, & noodles~
Play
I don’t need to make anyone else proud or happy but me.
That’s the only way it’s real. That’s the only way it’s going to last.
I liked April much better.
May is not being very pleasant.
“It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear.”
—Marilyn Ferguson
“At present I absolutely want to paint a starry sky. It often seems to me that night is still more richly coloured than the day; having hues of the most intense violets, blues and greens. If only you pay attention to it you will see that certain stars are lemon-yellow, others pink or a green, blue and forget-me-not brilliance. And without my expatiating on this theme it is obvious that putting little white dots on the blue-black is not enough to paint a starry sky.”
—Vincent van Gogh
