I love you

...All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase- 'I love you.'

-The Offshore Pirate, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Strength

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Sometimes All I See is Nothing But Stars

Human beings are good at understanding the world. We always have been. We were able to hunt game or build fires only because we had figured something out. There was a time before television, before motion pictures, before radio, before books. The greatest part of human existence was spent in such a time. Over the dying embers of the campfire, on a moonless night, we watched the stars.

- Carl Sandburg, Cosmo

I go cuckoo for you.

Source: bippityboppityboo's tumblr

"Do you want anything?"

After a while she says, "No. Not any thing."

— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

Source: typewriterblues' tumblr

Thought-provoking.

Source: observando's tumblr

You and I, Ingrid Michaelson

Source: Observando's tumblr

For the longest time, this song got me through commute.

Rare Sunday

It's a rare sunday I'm not at work or working. So, i guess, being sick has its advantages. Antidote for today: endless lovely pictures. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. *SNEEZE*

Joanne Woodward & Paul Newman

Image Source: Life.com


Whenever I fall sick, I like to read about Old Hollywood Legends. It may stem from my love of greek mythology (classic hollywood icons are our closest embodiments of immortality ) and my love for classic hollywood movies. I was struck again by Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman's long marriage and love story.

Can you see how Paul Newman only ever looks at her?

It reminded me of Louise Gluck's poem titled "Happiness":

A man and a woman lie on a white bed.
It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
of lilies; sunlight
pools in their throats.
I watch him turn to her
as though to speak her name
but silently, deep in her mouth--
At the window ledge,
once, twice,
a bird calls.
And then she stirs; her body
fills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.

Typewriter

When I was young, my mum gave us a typewriter and I loved it. You can't make errors when you use a typewriter. Or more wondrously, even an error is beautiful. As if every second of your existence can be embodied in the typewriter - and you can't hide your mistakes. You must be brave and say the truth.

I want to buy a typewriter. There are a lot of things I would like to type. And not have the ability to erase.

"The Habit of Loving"

Photo Credits: The Simply Luxurious Life

I bought a beautiful hard-cover copy of Doris Lessing's Stories. I love the weight of the book as I placed it on my lap or side-wise on the bed. I've aways wanted to write short stories, but it's a very difficult medium. Sometimes people ask me what does this story mean? And, I want to laugh, because I'm probably not the right person to ever say what something means. For me, short stories embody a feeling. They are like a dream - very short, very powerful or quiet, it really all depends, but it takes you out of your world and makes you live something vivid for that short moment. Not quite a song, but sometimes I have a feeling that I cannot describe - I would know it, it's just like A in that short story when A did that! Some short stories have made me cry. I'm always grateful for them... i suppose everyone will have that something special to make them feel human and words always have been the key for me.

I've just read "The Habit of Loving" in the collection... and I know, that I have not experienced heartbreak, at least not in its complete painful form, because I could not understand the emotional depths of the characters. I felt really sad, looking inwards, for I was still a child.

She had been living beside him, George, and he had no idea at all of her unhappiness. He went over to her, put his old arms around her, and she stood with her head on his shoulder and wept. For the first time, George thought, they were together. They sat by the fire a long time that night, drinking, smoking, and her head was on his knee and he stroked it, and thought that now, at last, she had been admitted into the world of emotion and they would learn to be really together.

Do I want to be admitted into this world of emotion?

“The woman who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been.”

–Albert Einstein

The World still revolves around You

Click for full effect

Let's go back

Let's go back. Let's get lost again. Let's buy the bus coupons from the mini stands in the middle of the train station. Let's grab our bags and run and catch our bus. Before we have to wait fifteen minutes again. Let's pretend we can actually pronounce "vondellan" and watch as the bicycles roll by. Let's grab a stroopwaffle and go on a long train journey. Let's never grow old. Let's grow old together. Let me wash some grapes, while you do whatever you do. Seedless. Let's run down to the river and count baby ducklings. Remember to bring the loaf of bread. Let's sit on the train, and wait for the announcer to say the journey is delayed yet again because of objects on the train tracks (identity of objects never to be revealed). Let's go back. Let's go back before it's too late. Before, everything changes. Even as I write this, I know some things are too late. Oh, but let's still go back. Let's do all the things we said we should do but never did. Let's make a fool of ourselves. In the only ways we know how. Let's go back. Let's go back and fall in love.

Grateful

It's a little ironic. The person I want to seem most impressive to, well, he doesn't require me to do a thing at all to be impressed.

A Little Lonely

I feel sad that most of the people whose blogs I read no longer write.

Nothing Compares 2 You

My favourite song of the moment is Sinead O' Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U". I don't know why but it reminded me of Bratislava. When we were there, everything was foggy. It was as if we were walking in mist. There were no attractions. Everything was closed. They had this funny exhibition on the street, cows after cows after cows. I laughed. We decided to try the local speciality - dumplings of some kind. There was no one in the bar. The bar was beautiful. I can't remember how it looked like, but I remembered it had many portraits... of beautiful blue, sea-blue, I think the people in the paintings were underwater, swimming with fishes. Slowly, everything becomes a blur. We see pictures, but they don't seem real. As my memories disappear, the only real thing I have is you.

A Quiet Reflection

Boat Quay at Night

Europe

I would really like to travel Europe. Go back to one of the cities I've visited and through my feelings in that city, figure out the changes that have happened within me. Or, really, I just miss the quiet-ness of it. How in certain monuments, it feels like, i'm living on the edge of history. I don't quite exist, only one figure, in a street that has seen and experienced centuries of figures. It's wonderful. As if the shackles of being human and living one full life is overthrown, if just for a moment, and one is just a simple pleasure-seeking, beauty-loving and sun-kissing breath of life.

I do actually have enough money to make my own pilgrimage to Europe. Still, I can't quite make myself spend it. I'll just let my dreams intensify. For these dreams are also part of the experience.

Happiness

Happiness is one of those words that evokes different feelings in people - perhaps, intrinsically, because different things makes us happy, or perhaps, circumstantially, it all depends on how we are feeling at that moment. I think there are also moments in which we do not know how we feel. Where it is neither happiness nor sadness, it is not nothing-ness, it is a feeling unplaced in any continuum. Kind of like being on a train, that wistful feeling, looking outside, watching houses, trees and random pieces of sky, roll by. Maybe if I sit longer, one more stop, two more stop, I'll figure out a destination. Maybe if I keep moving, regardless of aim, I will bump into something beautiful. This, in its own little funny and lost way, is the pursuit of happiness.