May 2012
“Maybe the only thing I can definitely say about it is this: That’s life. Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what’s going on. Like taxes, the tide rising and falling, John Lennon’s death, and miscalls by referees at the World Cup.”
—Haruki Murakami (What I Talk About When I Talk About Running) (via kelly-literary)
Summer stop (II) Phuket
Off to the beach for sun and healing…
“I don’t suppose anybody ever deliberately listens to a watch or a clock. You don’t have to. You can be oblivious to the sound for a long while, then in a second of ticking it can create in the mind unbroken the long diminishing parade of time you didn’t hear.”
—William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (via bluesandbarebones)
I have an internal timer in social situations; some unknown amount of time passes and suddenly, I feel the overwhelming urge to be alone and any time someone touches me I want to cry. Some people thrive off of company, but it drains me.
“Hard dreams. The moment at which you recognize that your own death lies in wait somewhere within your body. A lone ship defines the horizon. The rain is not safe to drink.”
—Ron Silliman, from “You” (via awritersruminations)
“Living one hectic day after another in the city, you tend to look down at the ground. You forget to even look at the night sky.”
—Haruki Murakami (via murakamistuff)
“There’s nothing worse than waiting and not knowing what’ll happen to you. Your own imagination can be crueller than any captor.”
—Frostbite by Richelle Mead (via lostinthesounds)
“The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.”
—Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities, 1938 (via inthenoosphere)
“‘What does “real” mean,’ Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. Tengo had no answer for this, of course.”
—Murakami, 1Q84 (via thomaskerwin)
“Another thing is no matter how much you think you love somebody, you’ll step back when the pool of their blood edges up too close.”
—Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters (via languagemagic)
“‘What does “real” mean,’ Fuka-Eri asked without a question mark. Tengo had no answer for this, of course.”
—Murakami, 1Q84 (via thomaskerwin)
These days...
These days I’ve been thinking about that abandoned chinese novel I’ve planned to write last summer. And about cities, visible and invisible. About the fellow commuters who shared a destination with me for that brief period of our lives. I’ve thought about the giving up and trying harder. About the conflicting battles I fight within everyday. About my conversation with Jasmine last night. About my reply to her question of “what do I want from a relationship?”, “to be cared for”. About my efforts in vain to be independent, and how it makes me see more clearly than ever my dependencies. About the quote that replays in my head - “if all you can do is crawl, start crawling..”. About being a pet like Tong. About meaning…
I’m still doing too much thinking…
“What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities.”
—South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakama (via clownwithlatte)
“An uneasy feeling …
This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I’ve somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles. Whatever it is, at times like these I toss down a whiskey and hit the sack. And when I get up in the morning, things are even worse.” —Murakami (via quetuagoniajamastermine)
This uneasiness comes over me from time to time, and I feel as if I’ve somehow been pieced together from two different puzzles. Whatever it is, at times like these I toss down a whiskey and hit the sack. And when I get up in the morning, things are even worse.” —Murakami (via quetuagoniajamastermine)
“Neighborhoods built up all at once change little physically over the years as a rule. The little physical change that does occur is for the worse - gradual dilapidation, a few random, shabby, new uses here and there. People look at these few random, differences and regard them as evidence and perhaps as cause of drastic change. Fight blight! They regret that the neighborhood has changed. Yet the fact is, physically it has changed remarkably little. People’s feelings about it, rather, have changed. The neighborhood shows a strange inability to update itself, enliven itself, repair itself, or to be sought after, out of choice, by a new generation. It is dead. Actually, it was dead from birth, but nobody noticed this much until the corpse began to smell.”
—Jane Jacobs, The Death and LIfe of Great American Cities, pg. 198 (via fourstorylimit)
“Sometimes it is harder to deprive oneself of a pain than of a pleasure.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (via unknowneditors)
