Hemingway

Cannot resist the impulsion to wanting to share this with you, because it made my heart throb.

From A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway:

"A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin...

...I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wish I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

...I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
   Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor oder any more rum St James. I was tired of rum St James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she's gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

...After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day."

The Moments

The Enlightenment, the revolutions, the Modern era, the Jazz Age... like Kazuo Ishiguro writes in his novel The Remains of the Day, enormous changes and turning points as such do not arrive in the public realm of media and acknowledgement as they are—the changes that take place are more so as the conclusions and results of numerous discussions and exchanges of intellectual thoughts that happen in different small corners of the world, where one may not even expect to host the key moments to the growing and developing of grand ideas, and perhaps even to the betterment of humanity.
This makes my every day life and some small movements just that much more exciting.

Have you ever had one of those moments, take a vague example, when you venture to write an email to the staff of an institute requiring questions of what are the possibilities and opportunities that you may entail, either out of an impulse or after nights of thinking and “life” decision-making in the shower (you should try that), and you feel this rush of exhilaration of ambition, happiness, hopes, and basically adrenaline through your body to your mind, and you think: “this is it.” That could be just it—one of the moments, and let me emphasize again, THE moment, that brings you onto the path which leads you to somewhere you may have been dreaming to be, or which actually pushes your own limits which you thought were the most you could do with the underestimated ability and courage that you have, or more so, had, since now you have overcome your underestimation of yourself and successfully “exceeded” yourself. No matter where the path takes you, which may not be the destination where you want to be exactly, but it is certainly on the way there, and many steps away from where you started.
Recently I came across one of Bruce Lee’s inspirational philosophies: “Running water never grows stale. So you just have to keep on flowing.”
I am so blessed to have encountered those opportunities that I took, which are now opening more and more doors to new possibilities. Be the running water, and keep flowing. Like the saying, “The only thing that is constant in the world is change.” Only constant changes will bring you to continuously expand your world and maintain the energy that we all once have. Push and pull to constantly make “the moments” happen. Motivation is not something that is possible of staying by our side at all times, but it is surely something that if we keep flowing, we will come across it and emerge into one great magnificent energy without even knowing.
Roller coasters have ups, downs, and loops. WIthout any one of them, especially the downs, the ups will not be as fun, the loops would not even exist.

Rehab (A Secret Confession Of A Cynic)

Tonight, my fear was that the memories of how it felt—every sensation: the hearing and the speaking to every exchanged word, the sights of your features, fingers running through the hair—fading away over time.
The certainty, as convinced as ever—in fact, as I have never been before—becoming unfamiliar.
The chemistry, although inexplainable, turning into nothing but part of the past, part of the temporary, part of the non-existence in the future.

You want to know the key? The key is timing. Everything depends on timing.
Time is our friend, who fixes everything. It is great company, but everybody for himself, time is just another tool of fate, of Plans.
What if this is the chance and we missed it? What if, in the future, we have regrets because by then there is nothing we can do about it. That is the worst position to be in, a situation where there is nothing you can do about it.

What if we were the lucky ones this time? No? Are grand romantic beliefs so much rejected and frowned upon as to no exceptions allowed at all?
Can one stay hopeful and believe one-sided without looking, or being, a fool, but to be genuinely admired, or even to be rewarded?

The act of falling for someone, when not responded to, will gradually and eventually (also hopefully) change to helplessly and inevitably the needly mandatory act of getting back up; an image of falling on your knees, then with effort standing back up on your feet.
Usually, I feel hopeful for this “recovery”, but at this moment although it has not occurred yet, I fear it. For the reason that I simply want to believe and don’t want to forget.

Suddenly, I don't want to think.

Don’t you sometimes just want to let time go by without a sense of guilt or resentment? It is real guilty pleasure.

Get cozy on your couch (I would not suggest going to your bed because then you are just bound to fall asleep), wrap yourself in a blanket, put some soft music on, and drink a cup of... whatever you like.
Read, write, do whatever you like in the meanwhile, or not do anything. Comme tu veux. The Italians have a term for this, they call it “dolce far niente”: the art of doing nothing. Nothingness is often regarded as empty, miserable, and lonely. Somehow though, at this moment, it’s very comforting to me.
Sometimes you got to lose sight of what you’ve been fixing your focus on, just to breathe and reboot. We, humans, have this mad tendency of making something out of nothing—to make a meaning out of everything just for the sake of having something that gives us a sense of ground—putting so much effort into making things count while knowing that at the end, nothing really counts. We come to the world naked and we will leave with nothing with us. That being said, the nothingness is in a very physical sense. Contribution to the world or to one’s soul is obviously important, such as learning and experiencing, then giving back to the society, to the world. We spend lots of time doing things, but not enough on thinking why we do things. No, we indeed think a lot of why we do things. Perhaps the truth is then, we do not spend enough time to figure out solid answers as to why.
“I actually really like this photo, it’s really relaxing for some reason. Not like I want to smoke and relax like him, but when you look at the photo, it just makes you think, ‘why do you have to worry about that?’ you know?” said my German friend, talking about a poster on his wall. It is of an album cover of the band Arctic Monkeys’, whose lyrics give an impression of as if the band members simply sit down and observe what goes on around them. Berlin here is my friend’s home, a city full of life. Him being a mathematics major once told me his biggest fear of becoming literally insane because all he does is maths. “I’m actually afraid that I will go crazy one day” said he. While he was pausing for a second from his studies and staring out the window, his back profile reminded me of our conversation of his fear of going crazy. It also projected to me a perspective of the “another way of thinking” that he mentioned about what requires one to do maths. Merely the picture of his back profile seems to have brought me to another world for a blink of an eye. How nice it is to be swept off the ground like that and be taken to another level of consciousness, another stage of knowledge where I get inspired through grasping an observation of others, while they have no specific intention in their action. What do I know after all? At moments like these, it feels as if making observations as such then being thrown into another dimension of thoughts, and as if nothingness—doing, chasing after, and worrying about nothing for just mere moments—are sufficient for my knowledge.
Why not pause, if affordable, a day or such to turn off your thoughts and take a break from running after whatever you are running after. You need it. Plus, you will appreciate it. Afterwards you might find that after all you do not give two shits about it, or you might see why it means so much to you.