Saturday, December 31, 2011

2011

Last day of 2011!
Would like to wish everyone a very happy new year!
I look back satisfied with my year, for once. Evolved mentally and progressed stably in that mind-set, so I'm rather content. Read many wonderful books, improved my français and violin performance and listened to lovely songs. Want to begin 2012 the same way, but better, more mature.
Also, for those that pertain to the conspiracy that the world will end in 2012 should re-asses their grounds for such an estimation. Let's base the conclusion on factual evidence.
Hopefully it'll be a lovely year.
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Had some 'life-threatening' scenarios this year, but am thankful that I pulled through.
The sum of my goals in 2012 are essentially to maintain my inner spark and strive for achievement, production and above all: happiness.

Happy new year, everyone! Thank you for reading my blog!

Thursday, December 29, 2011

"Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value judgments. Man's profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man's fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important." -- Ayn Rand

Just finished reading Ayn Rand Anwers: The Best of her Q&A. Simply put: she's a genius.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright


Christmas



Tumblr_lukzi4uhed1r4d4e5o1_500_largeFirstly, I'd like to wish all my readers a very convival Christmas!

For me, the first few tender minutes of Christmas were spent in front of the TV, watching Star Wars, so I can't think of any way I'd rather have it.

Tumblr_lt3rt98gei1r1qkgio1_500_largeNaturally, I woke up very late today, so didn't experience the 'Christmas morning' feeling. But that's alright. Read the next letter from Oscar et la dame Rose, which coincidentally was written on Christmas Day! Had The Christmas Song on repeat; must have replayed it 37 times now since I discovered its existence.

Also listened to the full, free stream of the We Bought A Zoo Soundtrack. Had the loveliest surprise when I realized that it was composed by the one and only Jónsi of Sigur Rós!

Listened to Holocene on headphones in HMV and that was sublime as well... sort of a perfect Christmas song, in a way.

1191572-11-1321042272814_largeWe also built a lovey gingerbread house. Or, should I say, hut. Heated up a vat of chocolate for glue (yum) which proved to taste delectable although
not so ergonomically efficient. ended up snapping 3 of the 6 components required to build the house so had to work some modifications into it -- used corn starch and powdered sugar with water to create a substitute motar (but that didn't work either). Ended up sticking M&M's all over it. Sister wasn't too pleased but my brother was! All in all, a profitable experience.

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Don't really have a Christmas tree this year, more like two Christmas bushes. Small ones from IKEA... one a dark forest green and another that's lime and lighter. Draped lights over one of them and all around scattered shining bright globes of light. Real lovely. Between those two bushes, we've got a profuse poinsettia that sits on a rack. All in all, a nice arrangement.

Then of course we have got our presents scattered underneath the poinsettia. 

Most of our presents this year are food, so our stomachs are happily filling up. Received our first box of macaroons ever and they turn out to be not as overrated as I assumed. Will grow plump this Christmas but it's alright, everything's enjoyable. Thankful for this holiday! Will be sad to say goodbye to my Santa hat until next year, but I had a lovely time. Merry Christmas all!

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Wuthering Heights

Click play. The book was bitter but this sure is hilarious, and I mean that in the best way possible. The ending instrumental is real lovely as well.
"Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy, I've come home...I'm so cold, let me into your window."
Should mention that it's a cover, Kate Bush sang the original.
http://www.myspace.com/cubancigarcrisis/music/songs/wuthering-heights-62873380
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On another note, Mumford and Sons have released a precious 1 minute snippet of their song for the new Wuthering Heights movie (which I must watch). Don't know if the song above will be used as well.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

"Lots of the world seems to be a repeat."

Realized I unwittingly posted a whole slew of photos, sorry. Were meant to have saved them as I usually pick one for each post (below).
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Anyway, I finished Room and let's just say it will haunt me for life. Definitely miles more captivating than Wuthering Heights. Room is told in the innocent, childish narrative of 5-year old Jack. He lives in a room with his Ma, with not much to fill their lives but a TV, couple of picture books and nighttime visits from a suspiciously terrorizing 'Old Nick.' Doesn't take readers long to grasp the truth of the situation in its entity, and upon its full revelation we comprehend that:

1) Old Nick is actually a deranged, sick and bastardy rapist who kidnapped Ma when she was 19.
2) Old Nick raped Ma and thus Jack was born in Room.
3) Room is the universe to Jack and he's never known anything else. All this time Ma has had him believe so.

Then one grand day Ma tells Jack of the 'Outside,' and they conduct the Great Escape and succeed. I obviously won't recount it in rapt, enthralling detail so as to not ruin the book, but essentially Jack and Ma make it out -- Ma leaving her prison and Jack leaving his world. Both characters take everything in differently. for Ma it is a return (albeit a struggle) and for Jack it's like being reborn completely. Their story is "darkly beautiful" and Jack's voice is unforgettable. It stays with me still. When I put Room down yesterday (before their Great Escape) I felt a kicking in my gut urging me to go out, to get some fresh air. Now, I'm seizing every opportunity to live, to really go outside and see the world for all its beauty. Will email Emma Donoghue and tell her what of a genius she is. Below are my favorite quotes from Room:
“In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time...I don't know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well...I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter all over the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there's only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.”
“The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it's going to be the next minute.”

Sunday, December 18, 2011

I was brought up believing I was somehow unique

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Finished Wuthering Heights. Not even going to write a review, it's so bitter and angry.

Still need to properly check out:
1) The new Still Corners album
2) The new Crystal Fighters album
3) The new Laura Marling album
4) The new Fleet Foxes album
5) Bon Iver by Bon Iver (as Holocene means a lot to me)
4) The new Slow Club album

Need to find time once my internet stops lagging.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Again and again...



Being a knitter, sitting stiff at the edge of my seat and watching this video from beginning to end was quite a disturbing 6 minutes.

Below is one of the comments (should be top rated, don't know why it isn't) and I agree with it wholeheartedly. This clip also expresses the pain of sacrificing any personal value of toil... we go on trying to sustain it until we eventually break.
“You do anything long enough to escape the habit of living until the escape becomes the habit.” David Ryan
Agrees with this as well:

motivation

1:38



Itzhak Perlman: my favourite classical violinist! He came to HK but all the tickets were sold out...
And of course Yo Yo Ma is wonderful as always. This is probably my favourite classical song of all time... everytime it gets to 1:38 I feel like I've been punched in the stomach -- wham -- it expresses the painful loveliness of humoresque, comme la vie. 

Not to sound like a warped ball of melted cheese saying that.

List

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1) February 11th, 2012 -- Watching The Vaccines live! So, so exciting. One of my favourite bands.
2) Reading Oscar et la Dame Rose for French and its painful innocence is so beautiful.
3) Have entered the Christmas Holiday mind-set! Over these two weeks I will wrap up Wuthering Heights (which I cannot believe has taken me a month -- yes, I did deprive it of dedicated reading but I managed to finish Atlas Shrugged in this time...), Room, and Absalom, Absalom! 
4) Got Facebook back and feel bitter about posts I unfortunately glimpsed over... was better off without it.
5) Scouring band websites for free downloads as 'tis the season for giving. So far have managed to seize Night Bus, First, and a Driving Home for Christmas cover all by Lucy Rose (and acoustic), Woodland by The Paper Kites and a b-side to Never Trust a Happy Song: Gold Coast by GroupLove. Which, by the way, as I predicted months ago (not to sound snobby), rose to huge success. They've got 9/12 songs from their album up for the Triple J top 100 votes! Kudos to them.

Think that's it for this post. Will upload a Christmas post again, like last year. In the meantime, winter is at its loveliest and I'm seeing wonderful things that make ma coeur un peu branlante. Rather melancholy season.

Also, I'll be re-watching all the Star Wars movies (win!).

And...
www.sprawl2.com

Sunday, December 11, 2011

I'm not whole, oh you waste it all

Spent hours being shoved in a suffocating crowd by smelly drunks and stinky smokers, but all eventually reached the ultimate culmination -- I met Bombay Bicycle Club! Truly the sweetest guys, patient with annoying, excited fans (me). Best hour of my week, heck, month. Plus, they played all my favourite songs! Can't quite thank them enough. Have got their autographs pinned up on my wall already! Shame I couldn't get Suren's!
If I follow the light
That I deem the brightest
I won't believe that
It's always like this

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Weather

two_0016_web
3/4 through history homework when I found this:
http://indiecurrent.com/category/alternative/page/3
I mean, wow! Free downloads and all!

Friday, December 2, 2011

What?

This song is tuned with my mind presently...
listened to it maybe a month ago but never resonated with it until now.
I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

If I know only one thing, it's that everything that I see
Of the world outside is so inconceivable often I barely can speak
Yeah I'm tongue-tied and dizzy and I can't keep it to myself
What good is it to sing helplessness blues, why should I wait for anyone else?

If I had an orchard, I'd work till I'm sore
Someday I'll be like the man on the screen

White Winter Hymnal


So, the plan is to live as long as possible to explore the magic of winter.

December is here! Love the sharp, biting air.

Borrowed two lovely books from the libary for Christmas reading:

1. Room by Emma Donoghue
2. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner

Before I can bury my nose in those, however, I'm still reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. I have less time to read nowadays so it's taking me a while but have to admit I don't pick it up regularly as I very nearly loathe all the characters.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark.

  1. http://bethandcarissa.blogspot.com/
    A beautiful blog that deserves much attention and loving. The photographs captured resonate the essence of each chosen theme.
  2. http://weeklytapedeck.com/
    A rockin' indie music site, similar to Indie Rock Cafe but easier to scroll through.
two_027_2

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The sun's the only man for the pains and aches

Finished The Sea, at last.
A rare and special book, written with a poetic loveliness.
Strange but true, it was difficult to sustain my reading... was tripped with uncertainty of Banville's style but eventually found no escape to it. A painfully haunting story of the persuasive and poisonous power of memory.
“There are times, they occur with increasing frequency nowadays, when I seem to know nothing, when everything I know seems to have fallen out of my mind like a shower of rain, and I am gripped for a moment in paralysed dismay, waiting for it all to come back but with no certainty that it will.”
I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly.
I never had a personality, not in the way that others have, or think they have. I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone. I know what I mean.
How is it that in childhood everything new that caught my interest had an aura of the uncanny, since according to all the authorities the uncanny is not some new thing but a thing known returning in a different form, become a revenant? So many unanswerables, this the least of them.
I marvelled, not for the first time, at the cruel complacency of ordinary things. But no, not cruel, not complacent, only indifferent, as how could they be otherwise? Henceforth I would have to address things as they are, not as I might imagine them, for this was a new version of reality.
“Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky's indifferent gaze and the air's harsh damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.”
“These days I must take the world in small and carefully measured doses. It is a sort of homeopathic cure I am undergoing, though I am not certain what this cure is meant to mend. Perhaps I am learning to live amongst the living again. Practising, I mean. But no, that is not it. Being here is just a way of not being anywhere.”

Friday, November 11, 2011

Sun

Winter

It is the lovely and crisp time of the year once more.
I woke two days earlier to air fresher and sharper in a cleanliness. This was weather I yearned for -- yet temperaments that chilled my heart. What arrives with the cold reminds me of personal predicaments in the dark. And I don't want to recall some things... yet the winter bears it anyway. Where did the sun go!






















You used to have all the answers
And you, you still have them too























Wondering; thinking.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

The Sea

"Happiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things-new experiences, new emotions-and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self. And incredulity, that too was a large part of being happy, I mean that euphoric inability fully to believe one’s simple luck."

"The room was much as I remembered it, or looked as if it was as I remembered, for memories are always eager to match themselves seamlessly to the things and places of a revisited past."

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Morning Glories


Morning wakes in a breath of air damp with the sweet scent of dew,
with its silver sky a clustered fog from the early showers.
The sea laps its swift waves under a weary blanket of blue
Behind a rusted rail that bears trumpet-like purple flowers.
The vines twine and twist, weave and wreathe in long lines of summer green
That blossom buds which curl, furl and spiral in quiet blooming.
They stretch their necks to the wide-rimmed sun whose light shines clear and clean,
And soak in its warm heating rays to catch its golden glowing.
The papery petals burst sideways, streaked pale with pure sunlight,
Turning translucent, soft like tissue pulp, as the day runs on.
But as midday passes, they start to shrink, shriveling in sight;
Then at long last, all parched and wilted, they wither with a yawn.
Night sweeps its dark cloak over the trees and stubs the void with stars.
How fleetingly the morning glories live, lovely as they are.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

No, I haven't

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Just because I'm losing doesn't mean that I'm lost

Officially losing one by one.
When was the last time I wrote a lengthy post?
Suppose I've lost that too.

A continuation; A remembrance; A reminder.

And sometimes I recall things
That I do not want to remember




As I dig out the dregs of the apricot jar.

























What happened to these lovelies?



What always happens.



And I am thankful that I'm alive.

Friday, November 4, 2011

I struggle with the feeling that my life isn't mine

Twice, I sat by the window of a car during the rain
reminding myself to remember.


















And when I remember, I recall that I remind
myself to remember.

Thursday, November 3, 2011


http://slowlorismusic.bandcamp.com/

Genius of a musician.
Didn't have a splendid day.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

May the force be with you



Help me in my Jedi training as I confront Volkswagen's threats to Planet Earth http://vwdarkside.com/en/jedi/may-huang-458167

Help me in my Jedi training as I confront Volkswagen's threats to Planet Earth
http://vwdarkside.com/en/jedi/cynthia-huang-456887

Credits to my sister!

Click now.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

And it was all yellow

Have been toying with Plixr-o-matic. Also, finished 102 minutes of Coldplay's
Madrid stream last night, and mastering '42' by ear on piano. All is well.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Mine?

Didn't have a lovely week. In quite the foul mood right now. Questions of incompetence are nagging at the rear of my skull. What is the world and how does it work?
Just be patient and don't worry
I'll be counting up my demons, hoping everything's not lost
Just because I'm losing doesn't mean that I'm lost

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

"Don't stop imagining. The day that you do is the day that you die."

Youth Lagoon made some of the most beautiful music I've heard all week. Makes my heart swell and do little back flips in my chest. It's so precious, so beautiful.
Montana, July, Cannons, 17, The Hunt, Daydream

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Wordsworth

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To My Sister

by William Wordsworth

It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The redbreast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.

There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.

My sister! ('tis a wish of mine)
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.

Edward will come with you, -- and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We 'll give to idleness.

No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.

Love, now an universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth:
--It is the hour of feeling.

One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.

Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey:
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.

And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We 'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.

Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We 'll give to idleness.
Tumblr_lqp72k3n1q1qbfx8so1_500_large
Lines Written in Early Spring

by William Wordsworth

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?



The Tables Turned

By William Wordsworth

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?

The sun above the mountain's head,
A freshening lustre mellow
Through all the long green fields has spread,
His first sweet evening yellow.

Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland linnet,
How sweet his music! on my life,
There's more of wisdom in it.

And hark! how blithe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

She has a world of ready wealth,
Our minds and hearts to bless—
Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health,
Truth breathed by cheerfulness.

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.


Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.

Up in Flames


"Sunlight Is the Best Disinfectant."


This is beautiful. Can't get enough of it.

Freebirds fly away
They just don't stay

Friday, October 21, 2011

On and on, the silence seems to carry on, you are the one



So, Fossil Collective is following me on Twitter. No biggie?
Above, I've attached their rather eerie but enlightening music video of On and On.

We'll be glowing in the dark











YES, STREAMING CHARLIE BROWN TODAY!
Already one of my favourite Coldplay songs... has been on my mixpod for almost a month now,
I think! Very, very content.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Don't Panic

Listening to Parachutes a couple days before Mylo Xyloto hits stores. Classic.


So if you ever feel neglected
And if you think that all is lost
I'll be counting up my demons, yeah
Hoping everything's not lost

Us Against the World



Title is the new song Coldplay's streaming today on iTunes!
It's lovely and soft... but builds up later, which makes it even more powerful.
Can't wait for the album.
And if we could float away
Fly up to the surface and just start again
And lift off before trouble
Just erodes us in the rain
By the way, the 'Paradise' video is out and it's so crazy and happy, I love it so. Elephants!

Anyway, the message I'm trying to get across with this post is:
1) Listen to 'Us Against the World' on iTunes.
2) Watch the video for 'Paradise.'
3) I'm incredibly excited for October 24th.

Acb_qencaaexfk4_largeAb90ruzcaaac-om_large

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Mylo Xyloto

 
http://www.coldplay.com/newsdetail.php?id=823&page=0
So, the much anticipated Mylo Xyloto will be out October 24th, and not only has Coldplay created a 'personal MX artwork application,' they'll also be streaming a song a day until the 24th. So, I'm very excited and have downloaded iTunes for this very purpose.

Winter's coming -- I can smell, feel and see it. And, it's lovely.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Cambodia

First off, I'm listening to Swallowed by the Sea by Coldplay as I write, so my verbose message will be rather melancholy.

Well, I went to Cambodia for six lovely and
insightful days. I watched the world go by in a land I'd pinned my thumb on as a child to visit... never did I imagine the fundamental experience the trip would encapsulate until now.

Cambodia... it's exotic, urban and traditional. I arrived at night, and it seemed dark and musty. Then, morning came, and worked its wonders like always. Suddenly, Phnom Penh lost its luridness from the night before... it became France-like, the buildings so bright and colourful, the sky crisp -- and my heart lightened. There was the usual hustle-bustle of city life. Market venders with stalls stacked with fruits, splashed with colour, lined on the road. Bright yellow mangoes, oranges the colour of the setting sun, strawberries, ripe and red, and all other sorts of vegetables. The motorbikes would roar as they sped, and the bells of bikes would ring as cyclists passed our way.

It was on our seven-hour drive to Siem Reap that Cambodia touched my heart... the grass was greener than any I'd seen before -- the hue of the blades all massed into one was the true meaning of green, nothing else compared. And the sky... it was electric blue, with whiffs of cloud dashed across it in swirls and strokes, wide, sweeping and faint but precious. The trees -- they sprouted individually in their own territorial space of green grass, and the flood had run over the land so their reflection were mirrored -- mirrored so beautifully so you could only just differentiate between sky and sea. I fell in love with the view... the palm trees that sprouted its long bladed leaves in clusters, the clouded sky, and of course, the water, as always.

I tried new things -- I let a furry, live tarantula crawl up my arm, its legs tickling the inside of my elbow. Then, I tried a portion of a fried tarantula's leg. Crispy. The village children were so precious... they smiled widely... they lived in this magical place. And they loved it. They swam in their flooded back garden, they walked around topless, some even naked. They ran barefoot in the muddy roads I didn't dare walk. The squealed, leaped, and ran after us. Their childhood was so different from mine, yet beautiful in its own way.

We left the village at sunset. The grass was dark, but not the water or the sky it emulated. Brilliantly streaked yellow-orange from the gaps between the whirls of cloud in the sky, the water held the sap of the sky in its ripples and it couldn't be touched or held with hands, but I did so with my eyes and it stays with me now, the golden sap, in my mind, when I close my eyes, and when they're open. I'll never forget.

Then of course, there was the magical Angkor Wat. Broken, worn and ancient as it is, Angkor Wat is truly a wonder of the world. It's huge, stands majestically in its venerability, a powerful dedication to the Gods that throws its still image across the water, reflected as part of the Earth. It's domes rise pointed and spiraling towards the heavens shapes like the tip of lotus flowers. Everything in the temple was irrevocably connected to nature, to Earth.

Cambodia was magic.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

The Bluest Eye

Toni Morisson writes beautifull, bitterly and powerfully, but in a different way than Ayn Rand. Whereas the beauty of the ideas conveyed in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged astounded me, the words and descriptions in The Bluest Eye were so beautifully tuned it was painful to read.

All worth it.
Photography Graphics, Tumblr Photography
“Misery colored by the greens and blues in my mother's voice took away all the grief out of the words and left me with a conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet.”
“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. the lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glance of the lover’s inward eyes.”
“Lonely was much better than alone”
"Dandelions. A dart of affection leaps out from her to them. But they do not look at her and do not send love back. She thinks, 'They are ugly. They are weeds.' Preoccupied with that revelation, she trips on the sidewalk crack. Anger stirs and wakes in her; it opens its mouth, and like a hot-mouthed puppy, laps up the dredges of her shame. Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth."
“She left me the way people leave a hotel room. A hotel room is a place to be when you are doing something else. Of itself it is of no consequence to one’s major scheme. A hotel room is convenient. but its convenience is limited to the time you need it while you are in that particular town on that particular business; you hope it is comfortable, but prefer, rather, that it be anonymous. It is not, after all, where you live.
When you no longer need it, you pay a little something for its use; say, “Thank you, sir,” and when your business in that town is over, you go away from that room. Does anybody regret leaving a hotel room? Does anybody, who has a home, a real home somewhere, want to stay there? Does anybody look back with affection, or even disgust, at a hotel room when they leave it? You can only love or despise whatever living was done in that room. But the room itself? But you take a souvenir. Not, oh, not, to remember the room. To remember, rather, the time and the place of your business, your adventure. What can anyone feel for a hotel room? One doesn’t any more feel for a hotel room than one expects a hotel room to feel for its occupant."
“You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.”
“They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds - cooled - and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.”
“Jealousy we understood and thought natural...but envy was a strange, new feeling for us. And all the time we knew that Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.”
My favourite:
"These and other inanimate things she saw and experienced. They were real to her. She knew them. They were the codes and touchstones of the world, capable of translation and possession. She owned the crack that made her stumble; she owned the clumps of dandelions whose white heads, last fall, she had blown away; whose yellow heads, this fall she peered into. And owning them made her part of the world, and the world a part of her"
"But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer."
“When all us left from down home and was waiting down by the depot for the truck, it was nighttime. June bugs was shooting everywhere. They lighted up a tree leaf, and I seen a streak of green every now and again. That was the last time I seen real june bugs. These things up here ain’t june bugs. They’s something else. Folks here call them fireflies. Down home they was different. But I recollect that streak of green. I recollect it well.”

An impression of loveliness

Saturday, October 15, 2011

RIP Steve Jobs


I should have posted this sooner.
Steve Jobs was a true visionary... my family has never used or encouraged Apple products, but only now have I realized how much Steve Jobs reminds me of Ayn Rand and the heroes in her books... he never let his spark go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the note quite, the not yet, and the not all, or let the hero in his soul perish, leaving frustration for the life he deserved but had never been able to reach. The world he deserved was won -- it is real, it is possible, and it affects every one of us.


Rest in peace, Steve Jobs. There's an article by Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, where Brook writes:
Toward the end of the novel, when heroine Dagny Taggart is reunited with several men she had thought she would never see again, she says that the meeting is like a childhood dream "when you think that some day, in heaven, you will see those great departed men whom you had not seen on earth, and you choose, from all the past centuries, the great men you would like to meet."

One of the men replies: "And if you met those great men in heaven…. There's something you'd want to hear from them. [Y]ou'd want them to look at you and to say, 'Well done.' … All right, then. Well done, Dagny!"

If there were a heaven, filled with the great men of history, I have no doubt that they would say, "Well done, Steve Jobs."
Below are my favourite Steve Jobs quotes. They mean so much.
Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who wanna go to heaven don't wanna die to get there.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

"All men fear death. It’s a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven’t loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same."

I have work but I don't want to complete it.
My winter mood is already settling in... I love winter so dearly, I feel like a child again, which is painful in some ways, of course.