Ayumi

[She] had a great emptiness inside her, like a desert at the edge of the earth. You could try watering it all you wanted, but everything would be sucked down to the bottom of the world, leaving no trace of moisture. No life could take root there. Not even birds would fly over it. What had created such a wasteland inside her, only she herself knew. No, maybe not even [she] knew the true cause. 

 As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create the sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abyss of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically—on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone . 

Running away to London

"She could feel his hand on the back of her neck, the other arm around her waist, holding her to him. Her head lay against his chest; she could hear his heart beat.  She blinked in the darkness, her eyes wet. She had not been held, not by anyone, not since she was a little child."

- Longbourne, Baker

Quotes of the Day

“I took my time, running my fingers along the spines of books, stopping to pull a title from the shelf and inspect it. A sense of well-being flowed through me as I circled the ground floor. It was better than meditation or a new pair of shoes- or even chocolate. My life was a disaster, but there were still books. Lots and lots of books. A refuge. A solace. Each one offering the possibility of a new beginning.”


“Heartbreak is more common than happiness. No one wants to say that, but it's true. We're taught to believe not only that everyone deserves a happy ending, but also that if we try hard enough, we will get one. That's simply not the case. Happy endings, lifelong loves, are the products of both effort and luck. We can control them, to some extent, and though our feelings always seem to have a life of their own, we can at least be open to love.”


-- Jane Austen Ruined My Life, Beth Patillo

How To Break Up

I've been reading quite a bit lately, catching up on the last eight months, one might say. Anyways, I'm currently reading three and a half books and the latest one I picked up is written by one of my once-upon-a-time favourite fiction writers, only this time it is non-fiction. I haven't been too happy with what I have been reading and a thorough review will be forthcoming, but I'm sitting on my bed cross-legged in my shorts after my shower and reading when I came across the following passage,which, upon reading I burst out laughing with a belly-aching laugh and fell off my bed.

"If I had wanted to end my marriage it would have been easier. I'd say, 'We need to talk.' Then, 'It's not you, it's me.' Or, 'I just cant do this any more' (the current favourite phrase from relationship-enders), and that would be it. I'd be free!"
- Making It Up As I Go Along, Marian Keyes

Love Story in a Cemetary

 She stopped, and we set down the water. She looked over to a grave. 

"He died last year," she said. In front of his grave was a lush flower garden. She bent down to pull a few weeds. 

"We lived in a small apartment nearby," She said. "He always wanted to give me a garden." I told her I was sorry for her loss. 

"Don't be, dear," she said. "I loved him enough to want him to go first. I was always better at handling the difficulties." 

She smiled wide. "He was better at the lighter side of life. He may be gone but not everything is gone. He left me with enough good memories to see me through until it's my time."

— Paris Letters, Macleod

There are no more perfect moments

"I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, its quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy,  generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: it you think about it you don't do it."

— Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

You are a milestone

"Here we are back to these alexandrine discussions I had to go through before when in my heart I had the simplest, commonest desires, such as telling her I loved her, taking her in my arms."

— Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

Qotd

"Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t."

-- Alan Watts

Hazel Motes

"... there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth," he called. “No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place

“Nothing outside you can give you any place,” he said. “You needn’t to look at the sky because it’s not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn’t to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can’t go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy’s time nor your children’s if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.”

- Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor

Constance

"She realised, with a secret thrill of horror, that the moment had at length come when she must look full in the face the lurking anguish of which none but herself knew the existence; and which, in the press of more immediate miseries, she had hitherto contrived to keep well in the background of her thoughts. Only, she had known dimly throughout, that face it she must, sooner or later; and now her hour had come.

There was some one, bound to her by every tie but the tie of words, who had let the days of her trouble go by and had made no sign; a fair-weather friend, who had fled before the storm."

— The Romance of A Shop, Amy Levy

Qotd

‘This rose is not so fragrant as a summer flower, but it has stood through hardships none of them could bear: the cold rain of winter has sufficed to nourish it, and its faint sun to warm it; the bleak winds have not blanched it, or broken its stem, and the keen frost has not blighted it.  Look, ... it is still fresh and blooming as a flower can be, with the cold snow even now on its petals.—Will you have it?’

-- Anne  Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Qotd

There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school.

-- Sharon Olds

Bay At Midnight

I liked to have at least the illusion of control over what happened to the people I love. [He] said that’s why I wrote fiction: it gave me total control over every single character and every single thing that happened. He was probably right.

- Diane Chamberlain

Reading

If there is anything that has always been a constant for me, it has always been reading. Even before writing, which is sort of obvious when you think of it, since of course we learn to read before we write.

Reading has always been a thoroughly personal experience for me. Other than simply a relaxing pastime, which definitely it is, the process of reading (fiction, specifically) has always meant so much more. Perhaps, because I've always sought ways of evading reality (having had a not very pleasant childhood), and being an innate escapist, it's only natural that reading became my portal.

In one aspect, we could view reading as the way one simply forgets reality and escapes to other worlds to live vicariously through the characters. Interestingly however, I've realized that somewhere along the way, a different aspect of reading developed. Rather than superimposing upon my reality the more appealing fictional world, somehow my process of reading became such that reading only emphasized, highlighted and enhanced my reality.

Maybe that's simply the process of growing up. When you're young you are expected, and encouraged, to use the imagination to develop new worlds and make-believe stories. Then somehow while growing up, you aren't. 'Grow up, already': get your head out of the clouds, stop daydreaming, get your feet on the ground, face reality. That's growing up. And it makes sense, because the process of growing up entails assuming more responsibility, and to do so you can't be always in the twilight zone of imagination.

Growing, 'becoming an adult' means that you have to come to terms with reality, with your life. You need to face it head on, and not engender futile daydreams that would detract from your execution of what actually needs done. I'm hardly lecturing here, if that's the tone it seems; these are lessons I especially have had to learn, and am constantly being reminded when I tend to go emo and trail away in my own Lalaland.

What I have discovered is that what I enjoy most about reading now is that ability for an author to be able to speak to me, heart to heart. The ability to relate is what ranks highest (or at least up there with some other variables) for me in reading. One line a character utters could make the entire book for me. Hence, the process of reading is entirely too personal for me.

Which brings me to the point of reviewing books. I find myself hard-pressed to be able to write book reviews for amazing books because it is difficult for me to extract myself out of what had just happened while reading. To accurately review a book would mean that I need to extricate the many tangles and knots of the story out of myself, or else only attempt to describe to others who could not possibly understand my entire life. Rather, my whole being - because for some reason referring to 'life' seems lacking in what I am trying to explain,  life seems to just mean the series of events occurring to make it up, almost distinct from me, or me-ness. I mean me, as a product of my life in conjunction with my cognitive and emotional self.  And to simply write a review without this is difficult, if not entirely impossible.

Sometimes I want others to experience what I had in reading a certain book, so I recommend it. But this is also a bit tentative and shy on my side since I can't expect that another person with their own 'me' would be able to appreciate what I did in the same way. It also occurs to me that this process of sharing something one truly likes and appreciates is another medium for us to understand or learn more about one another. We could open to the thought of what and why exactly did this person like it, and rather than just the literal context of the plot, what is it that makes a person receptive to a certain theme or concept or mood. I guess that is how we sort of gauge where another person is on a mental frequency. You send out vibrations and they hit that person and bounce back and you absorb the return frequency to learn that person's aura. (If that went over your head, think of a bat and their sonar echolocation. No kids, I said bat, not Batman. Focus.)

This morning I get an update from Goodreads that another person had finished reading a book and rated it 5 stars. Why am I telling you this? Because I recommended said book to that person and THEY RATED IT 5 STARS. I mean, that's awesome - they liked a book I LOVE.

This book is coming out as a movie. At first I  had huge, and I mean HUGE, misgivings about this news. Cmon, by now we all know 1. how absolutely screwed up books made into movies are, and also 2. how much I detest this happening. But apparently the trailer has been released and everyone is absolutely raving about how amazing the trailer is and how this movie will be absolutely great. And this is a "hey, wait" moment for me because it's not just anyone raving about the movie, it's like-minded book readers who really love the book just as I do, so it could be said that their comments have more credibility. At least, to me. I  have yet to see this trailer.

In case you were wondering, the book in particular is The Fault in Our Stars, written by John Green. It's a YA book, and yet there are so many wonderful things about it.  It isn't a long read at all, and I would love for everyone to read this before they watch the movie.

(Quote from The Fault in Our Stars)

Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.


Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.


- Walt Whitman

Ingenuity

Today I read an article with the quote below,  in perfect timing with respect to my previous post:

As Dave Gray, an innovation consultant and author of Gamestorming, says:

“Creativity is driven by constraints. When we have limited resources, creative thinking is enhanced. That's because the fewer resources you have, the more you are forced to rely on your ingenuity.”

(courtesy: Golden Girl Finance)

Pig

I have never been one to be much into politics. Mainly because I'm such an idealistic person that I see rainbows, stars, and unicorns floating about my head most times. And no, I'm not on crack.

Of course, if you put those two words - politics and crack - together, you get one result: Rob Ford. Who's that, several of you may ask. He's the mayor of Toronto, and has been in the headlines for his 'crack scandal' (and other similar reasons) putting the biggest metropolitan city in Canada on the global map for its shame.

Still, I didn't much care, except to scoff, roll my eyes, and shake my head with aplomb; what else was expected, anyways? He's a politician.

Granted, not every politician gets busted for smoking crack, and other drunken and under-the-influence behaviours. Certainly, other politicians already beat that (re: )

And many other politicians are worse: when you've been familiar with the 'Indian' bureaucracy and all that which happens (often depicted in hindi movies- so I confess, maybe my idea is a bit, err, skewed) you only expect the word 'corrupt' to go hand in hand with politics. And I don't only mean to highlight India, so do not be offended; the infamy of politics and government through history has only highlighted those famous words "Power corrupts". (For more background on this quote, go here. Because I'm linking it, I obviously recommend you do.)

So, if I'm not really shattered to pieces by any of this happening, why am I writing about this so called issue? Well, I actually got to thinking about it, in my idealistic moralist way. About what exactly? Well to better answer that question, it should be rephrased as "why exactly":

Yesterday evening, I grabbed the Metro (mini-newspaper-thingy-for-commuters) to read on the way home. I came across this article about this other Toronto MP pushing for a chance to pose beside our Prime Minister at the holy site of the Western Wall in Jerusulem:

The Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem is considered one of the most sacred and holy sites in Judaism.

But when Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited the spot on Tuesday, a Conservative MP nearby was apparently focused on how joining the PM's photo-op may improve his re-election chances.

(excerpt courtesy Huffington Post; read full story here)

So, of course, following that, the man had no choice but to show some sort of remorse with his lack of tact (for lack of a better word) so he makes a statement saying - wait for it - "I was joking".

Err, yeah buddy.

So, all this got me thinking. This man goes to this place where it's all about international relations and diplomacy and he's pushing and shoving and yelling for a photo-op just because it's going to get him re-elected. Then you have Rob Ford, who again gets splashed on front lines because a video is released showing him drunk, cussing and insulting chief police officers, among other people, and yet he asserts that it's what he does in his own time and no one should give him grief for whatever he says or how he talks while with friends. Which is, of course, a point.

But what exactly does that say? That who you are in front the cameras will be different from who you are in reality? That you're only mucking up, hogging for the cameras, showing a 'good side' and yet it's still an act, because what you do in your time is solely your business?

If he were only, say for example, a mere celebrity, maybe I'd be okay with that. Even then, celebrities have to kind of pay attention to their own actions because of the inevitable (unfortunate) effect of being 'role models'. But being a politician is one step further isn't it? You have to really buck up, make good, and stand by it. Sure, no one is dumb enough to expect glowing and flawless candidates; we know no one is perfect. But, by being a politician, you are stepping into a position where you make decisions crucial to the well-being of thousands upon thousand of people. You are representative of their moral compass.

Who you are does have everything to do with the public. Because your beliefs, philanthropy, and politics are an extrapolation of your personality. And when your true personality - exemplified by derogatory, disgusting behaviour - is splashed out for your people to see, that's pretty damn telling.

Inspiration

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.”


― Chuck Close

Snow All Winter

I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?”

― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

Luxury

Emotional isolation is usually conducive to the optimization of creativity. Experience, at least, indicates this is so. I have always found a natural rapport with my creativity through the inevitable sense of loneliness that has always accompanied me wherever I went. Wherever I go. Even in the closest intimacies of friendship and love, in companionship with those closest to heart, it accompanies me. Perhaps this might be concerning, and definitely would be to one more practically and logically inclined, but to my own mind - inexplicably emotional and sensitive - this is only natural.

Duality has always existed; black, white, dark, light, good, bad. It exists as existence itself. To be, therefore somehow only balances this immeasurable sense of loneliness. Maybe, therefore, it exists for each and everyone  of us, but as each individual is as unique as its DNA, our own capacity to recognize it varies on millions upon millions of frequencies.

I have always seemed to find a mutual and comfortable rapport with those similar in emotional-frequency to myself - which after having been said, seems already an obvious observation. But I do: I feel at home with those who also recognize and bear witness to their solitary dependency on feeling. I hesitated there to label the sentiment and restrict it to that label; that feeling is melancholy, even sadness, but it is not only that. The poignant place within oneself where words clash with emotions and churn out beautiful masterpieces on one end of its spectrum, or equally nullify themselves into a white noise of a blank canvas of silence.

Labeling to maintain order sometimes makes things more confusing. This post, for example, would naturally be posted in my "Prose" blog at Lucid Iridescence, for all the emotional sentiments shared herein, but for some reason, I am not posting it there. This post was initiated by a intention to explain myself - perhaps once again, and maybe at the risk of becoming a tedious repetitive bore - and my inability to write the way I have been used to. Oh, I know that I don't need to explain a thing, but for some reason I do.

Maybe it is only to myself, afterall that I seek explanation. January has seemed to come in its own stead a whiteness and coldness that has isolated us all within the warm cocoons of our own being. I miss a lot of people, and yet, somehow I do not. Because I accept that we are all in our own places and that this too will pass. But I do miss them. I miss you. If it has been understood, perhaps I feel a need to have it said regardless. Friendship is that which I have always maintained as important, crucial. And when you make some which are deep and resonate beyond normal frequencies of superficiality, sometimes it is often as if we have merged as one and consequently become incomplete without that strong resonance coming down the string of our instrument.

As an empath, I've always felt the being of others very profoundly. It has allowed me to understand and absorb the aura of that person within me, and to learn to be another person through that connection. This is a phenomenon that is almost indefinable because it involves letting go of words and descriptions, because they only form barriers and restrictions, and to open oneself up to actually being. 

Like my prior post which entails the conversion of "ME" to "WE", I have found myself observing a number of abstract ideas all superimposing: in one way, maybe we have all been submerged under the waters of recovery; under water we do not dare open our mouths to speak for we shall drown. Our silences could be our time for 'me'. And yet, it has been noted, we have also been quite much more busier with the practical aspect of life, and consequently had less time to devote to 'me'. Even as I have been loitering around on my own blog, and those of others, I had undergone a phase of not wanting to actually 'talk' - I felt an inexplicable resistance to comment, or respond to comments. In sorting out cause and effect, I am not entirely sure which came first. Was it because I had grown used to being silent because of being too busy 'with life' that I was more reluctant to communicate more? Or was it because of something deeper within, which had triggered a phase of radio silence and only prolonged more through the excuse of being busy?

Another blogger recently wrote a post that put to words another of my thoughts: the disparity in walking in another person's shoes vs. still not being able to be able to see life through their eyes and mind. This blogger is one of the few persons who this entire post is somewhat dedicated to. This blogger has made an effort recently to write more often, and interestingly, though no longer surprisingly, the thoughts which have been expressed have been mirroring my own. Another blogger, impressively, has been writing (obviously) undeterred, and the theme and sentiments which always pour forth from this blogger's mind and heart have always soothed my own because of how easy it is for me to slip into that same melancholic place.

I somehow stumbled on a quote a few days back that said something with regards to melancholy (one of my favourite words), by one of my favourite authors. And I find it again for my reader's sake:

"..Melancholy - that cheapest and most accessible of luxuries . . .” -- Charles Dickens

For, despite it being a torrential affair that could involve a plethora of negative connotations, it is a beautiful luxury. I firmly assert that it is this state wherein some of the most beautiful creations are born. 

Maybe, we are given the opportunity to rail away at what we do not like or want just for the realization what exactly it is that we do like, what we want. If we were always appeased and content, we would not know better. 

I want to be able to write again, and I want to because I know I have done so and done it well in the past. But then I have to remind myself, that most often in the past writing has been my sole companion; it is because of my loneliness that most of my best writing has occurred. Once, in longing for that one soulmate to be able to share and tell everything to, I turned instead to the pen and paper, and put words down to keep my memories intact. Now, I am at a loss for things to write, but again, this is because what I wanted most has happened. Brings to mind that classic warning: be careful what you wish for. Because I got it, I guess...and yet I shouldn't be railing against this fate, because it is the best thing life's given me. 

In duality again, perhaps one passion could be viewed to oppose another, one as a substitution for another. But why, exactly does this have to be that way? It doesn't. That's all.