These days, my gmail inbox always gets filled with newsletters from blogshops - all kind of blogshops. I have no idea how these shops get your email addresses but it's intriguing to watch how commonplace setting up a blogshop is becoming. I think buying from a blogshop is one of those phases every young girl will go through - fashionable peers setting up pretty things at such cheap prices. I'm quite happy, that I think I've finally reached that stage in life, where I don't feel the need to buy clothes anymore. In order to understand the weight of something that seems so trivial, one must understand that we all have our vices. And for me, my vice were clothes. Like all vices, despite knowing that it really doesn't do us any good, we can't see why we should stop when it makes us feel happy (even for a while) and it doesn't do us any harm . So, yes, buying clothes within your budget isn't harmful, it's just wasteful. It's not that I'm no longer going to buy clothes (i can hear disbelieving laughter already) but I'm simply going to just enjoy my wardrobe and leave it as it is. I'm going to re-wear things so often that people will stop telling me that they have never seen me in the same outfit twice (which really is more due to their poor memory than any inference as to the size of my wardrobe).
And so, it's not like I can now happily announce I've conquered all my vices - because as you'll often find, the demise of one vice is the acceleration of another. Happily, I'm returning to books (surprisingly finished 5 in the last 2 months). And cakes, yummy, scrumptious cakes.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
City lights
from: http://www.printedmatter.org/
Living in the city, it's hard to see the stars. So, we need to find our own lights.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Quotes from Grey's Anatomy (Season 7): Teddy & Henry
Teddy: I have great medical insurance.
Henry: Way to kick a guy when he's down.
Teddy: I'm... I'm saying... I'm saying that I'll marry you.
Henry: Uh, that's a really generous offer, but I can't.
Teddy: I'm a doctor. I took an oath, and I can't leave you now anymore than I could leave you bleeding out in the street.
Henry: I've been thinking lately, and I think...um...I think I've figured it out...why all of your dates go so bad, so, so bad, laughably bad, and it's not your fault—it's mine because I'm not the guy on them with you.
Henry: I really tried to be a gentleman about all this, but now you need to get the hell out. Letting you go was the worst thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever done, and I’m a guy who’s had 82 surgeries. My threshold for pain is pretty high. You need to get out. I’m not your best bud. I’m not your security blanket. I’m a man who’s been in love with you and you, you who waltzed you into the arms of a damn knight on a horse. So, go to Germany and have little spaetzle-eating children. And please, for God’s sake, leave me alone.
I love how marriages of convenience slowly become true marriages. Always a romantic at heart.
Cristina: Why would you want to put yourself through this again?
Her patient: Because I love what I do more than anything. You don't find something you love that much and let it go. You hold onto it and throw yourself in deeper.
The Origin of Stories
I used to find it difficult to write fictional stories. Poems were easier, spun out of dream images (which explains why I write bad poetry). Stories... I always felt had to center on some kind of truth... and when you are young, you don't know many emotional truths except your own. As you grow older, it's not that you necessarily become more mature, but you've observed truths not of your own but bestowed from others.
Most likely, the type of stories we will write have probably been written before. For example, the ever classical and reliable bildungsroman - youth experiences life and learns lessons while growing up. Sometimes I feel like shakespeare had written everything (and even he recycled from old tropes): the tragic romeo and juliets, the philosophical (anti-hero?) hamlet, the switched identities (twelfth night), I use this term very loosely "romantic comedies"/battle of the sexes (taming of the shrew).... so it's not that we need new ideas or even that we need to use these classical story types in fresh ways (although you should if you don't want to sound trite)... but People will always have Stories.
Most of the things we write are not growing to break any moulds. But every time I read a book, especially a book I really like, it feels immensely personal. And, when I see someone reading a book I've read before, I feel like we are kindred spirits - regardless if he or she would have felt completely different from my own subjective feelings. It just felt like, in one moment or another, we all took part in someone's story-telling. So, it's not like I've been writing fictional stories of my own, but I finally have had that realisation and courage to take a step forward from just being a reader. To emulate Isaac Newton so to speak and try to stand on the shoulders of (literary) giants... and hopefully not fall off too badly.
I don't think I have a voice yet, but at least I feel the stories forming beneath my feet.
Most likely, the type of stories we will write have probably been written before. For example, the ever classical and reliable bildungsroman - youth experiences life and learns lessons while growing up. Sometimes I feel like shakespeare had written everything (and even he recycled from old tropes): the tragic romeo and juliets, the philosophical (anti-hero?) hamlet, the switched identities (twelfth night), I use this term very loosely "romantic comedies"/battle of the sexes (taming of the shrew).... so it's not that we need new ideas or even that we need to use these classical story types in fresh ways (although you should if you don't want to sound trite)... but People will always have Stories.
Most of the things we write are not growing to break any moulds. But every time I read a book, especially a book I really like, it feels immensely personal. And, when I see someone reading a book I've read before, I feel like we are kindred spirits - regardless if he or she would have felt completely different from my own subjective feelings. It just felt like, in one moment or another, we all took part in someone's story-telling. So, it's not like I've been writing fictional stories of my own, but I finally have had that realisation and courage to take a step forward from just being a reader. To emulate Isaac Newton so to speak and try to stand on the shoulders of (literary) giants... and hopefully not fall off too badly.
I don't think I have a voice yet, but at least I feel the stories forming beneath my feet.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Morse Code
Is anything more difficult than liking someone
and hiding your feelings?
A game of morse code, in which
you invent the symbols
every minute,
every second, kind of like
a magician, hoping to achieve
the greatest sleight of hand.
To create an illusion of nonchalance
to shield a beating heart.
I confess to like having my feelings
kept a secret.
When something is out in the open,
it feels like it is waiting to be broken.
Can you break an egg that has
not been hatched?
Sometimes it feels like I've placed
my love for you in a bottle,
and thrown it out at sea.
A robinson crusoe-like survivor
will find it on some deserted island
and he will read it.
Can feelings be known that way?
Does our feelings become true
if read by a stranger?
He'll used the bottle now,
for some means of survival.
While my words, these words,
will fall away in the faraway island.
and hiding your feelings?
A game of morse code, in which
you invent the symbols
every minute,
every second, kind of like
a magician, hoping to achieve
the greatest sleight of hand.
To create an illusion of nonchalance
to shield a beating heart.
I confess to like having my feelings
kept a secret.
When something is out in the open,
it feels like it is waiting to be broken.
Can you break an egg that has
not been hatched?
Sometimes it feels like I've placed
my love for you in a bottle,
and thrown it out at sea.
A robinson crusoe-like survivor
will find it on some deserted island
and he will read it.
Can feelings be known that way?
Does our feelings become true
if read by a stranger?
He'll used the bottle now,
for some means of survival.
While my words, these words,
will fall away in the faraway island.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Traveling
June is always a period of "peak" traveling. Students graduate, the younger students get released for holidays, workers decide to celebrate the end of the first half of the year... it's a marker of sorts for time (even if we cannot truly fathom if time is truly chronological). However, regardless of the true nature of time, our bodies are aging, our minds are changing and the memories in our head have changed in intensity.
I always feel a great sense of happiness looking at other people's travel albums. We are always traveling, a-wandering in this place called earth, but it's only when we leave our homes, take a bus, train or plane of sorts, do people consciously realise they are embarking on a journey. It is that consciousness, that desire for discovery, that I revel in.
I always feel a great sense of happiness looking at other people's travel albums. We are always traveling, a-wandering in this place called earth, but it's only when we leave our homes, take a bus, train or plane of sorts, do people consciously realise they are embarking on a journey. It is that consciousness, that desire for discovery, that I revel in.
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