Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
"The days are so long, but the years are so short"
I told S yesterday that I read something recently that really hit me, "the days are so long, but the years are so short". She asked me why I thought this was so. I told her perhaps it is just the way humans perceive time - we forget so quickly but we always live the here and now in all its intensity.
Today is the start of a short break. I won't really have much time for myself but I'm happy because I don't often have the time to be a good friend to someone I care about. So, very early on in the year, I applied for the leave, knowing that this would be the only way I could help Y in her wedding. I wonder how I'll feel when I see her walking down the aisle. Y was always like the moon to me - ever-changing, always morphing, and now she will leave us towards the other side. Literally, as she emigrates to Australia, and metaphorically, as she becomes someone's wife. I suppose I always believe that we remain true to ourselves, no matter the changes in our circumstances. But, even the shore, when repeatedly hit by the wave, will change - what more our souls that are perhaps made specifically to be pressed upon by the world's waves of joys and sorrows?
Today is the start of a short break. I won't really have much time for myself but I'm happy because I don't often have the time to be a good friend to someone I care about. So, very early on in the year, I applied for the leave, knowing that this would be the only way I could help Y in her wedding. I wonder how I'll feel when I see her walking down the aisle. Y was always like the moon to me - ever-changing, always morphing, and now she will leave us towards the other side. Literally, as she emigrates to Australia, and metaphorically, as she becomes someone's wife. I suppose I always believe that we remain true to ourselves, no matter the changes in our circumstances. But, even the shore, when repeatedly hit by the wave, will change - what more our souls that are perhaps made specifically to be pressed upon by the world's waves of joys and sorrows?
Monday, February 27, 2012
Love letters always makes me want to cry.
From: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/02/i-love-my-wife-my-wife-is-dead.html
In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988.
(Source: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman; Image: Richard Feynman, via.)
October 17, 1946
D’Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that — but I don't only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I — I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.
In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of the hugely influential physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after succumbing to tuberculosis. She was 25-years-old. 16 months later, in October of 1946, Richard wrote his late wife the following love letter and sealed it in an envelope. It remained unopened until after his death in 1988.
(Source: Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman; Image: Richard Feynman, via.)
October 17, 1946
D’Arline,
I adore you, sweetheart.
I know how much you like to hear that — but I don't only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you.
It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you'll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing.
But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.
I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can't I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the "idea-woman" and general instigator of all our wild adventures.
When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.
I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don't want to be in my way. I'll bet you are surprised that I don't even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can't help it, darling, nor can I — I don't understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don't want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.
My darling wife, I do adore you.
I love my wife. My wife is dead.
Rich.
PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don't know your new address.
Friday, January 27, 2012
A Kiss in Cyrano De Bergerac
I just finished Cyrano De Bergerac. Oh there are so many fabulous scenes! The opening theatre scene, the famous balcony scene and most of all the wonderful ending full of "panache". Oh Oh Oh Oh, I would pay anything to watch the play in real life!
CYRANO:
A kiss, when all is said,--what is it?
An oath that's ratified,--a sealed promise,
A heart's avowal claiming confirmation,--
A rose-dot on the 'i' of 'adoration,'--
A secret that to mouth, not ear, is whispered,--
Brush of a bee's wing, that makes time eternal,--
Communion perfumed like the spring's wild flowers,--
The heart's relieving in the heart's outbreathing,
When to the lips the soul's flood rises, brimming
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible
"In the plausible intimacy of approaching evening, as I stand waiting for the stars to begin at the window of this fourth floor room that looks out on the infinite, my dreams move to the rhythm required by long journeys to countries as yet unknown, or to countries that are simply hypothetical or impossible." - The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
It's funny when people tell me that I'm naive. My first internal response is always, "Oh gosh! If they only knew me in secondary school". Perhaps, everyone was idealistic in secondary school, but reading my blogs in secondary school and junior college even I want to laugh and hug myself. I sometimes worry that my younger self will be disappointed in me.
Even stranger, when I was seventeen I said, "Young love have a whole future to live up to, and old love a whole past." You were so right, my dear.
It's funny when people tell me that I'm naive. My first internal response is always, "Oh gosh! If they only knew me in secondary school". Perhaps, everyone was idealistic in secondary school, but reading my blogs in secondary school and junior college even I want to laugh and hug myself. I sometimes worry that my younger self will be disappointed in me.
I feel the great need to tell everybody to love love love and dare dare dare. I hate seeing people tired and worn out and weary and becoming disaffected and disinterested. Because i hate seeing my soul come out real life in all these people's faces. We must clutch on tight to our hopes.
Oh, everything is so fragile these days that when somebody turned and told me, "crystal, i think i can never be as idealistic as you", it went right into my heart and stayed there.
I'm scared one day my naive words would become signposts, signposts in a foreign country.
Words i no longer understand and unable to guide me to the places i want to go to.
But now, they are my signposts. And i own them.
So, love.
- 2006
Even stranger, when I was seventeen I said, "Young love have a whole future to live up to, and old love a whole past." You were so right, my dear.
Written on the 2nd day of Chinese New Year:
I used to carry a book everywhere as a child. Adults foist you into all kinds of awkward social situations - such that the only seemingly decent thing (besides nodding vacantly at the middling conversation) was to read. Unfortunately, what as a child was looked upon as a romantic whimsy is now as an adult seen as inconsideration.
It's a real pity because I could use more reading time.
It's a real pity because I could use more reading time.
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