The Notebook
About
Grew up in a small town, and after traveling, I've officially decided that a big city is the only place to be. You know, with revolving doors, late-night cabs, street vendors, all that good stuff.
From LA to Beijing to New York, and back to LA again. Where to?
Current city: Shanghai
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Jeffrey Eugenides is brilliant. I need to look up some passages from Middlesex to blog as well.
(PS. Only fitting that I’m writing about the man who, in my humble opinion, is the master of modern-day Greek tragedies, whilst in Greece.)
Fall, fall, fall in love
words for everything:: Excerpt by Adrian Tan:
The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.
I didn’t say ‘be loved’. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.
Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.
Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth, the worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.
Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.
You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.
Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it. Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone. You’re going to have a busy life.
As a child I was taught what was right, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son (for many years an only child), I was spoiled by my parents, who, though good themselves (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable), allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own.
Such I was, from eight to eight-and-twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I owe you! You taught me a lesson hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You showed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.
- Pride & Prejudice
“To this point, I cringe when I think back to how complacent I became on the career front when I was with Leo. My love for photography never waned completely, but I certainly loved it with far less urgency—just as everything in my life became secondary to our relationship. Leo was all I could think about, all I wanted to do. He filled me up so completely that I simply had no energy left to take photos. No time or motivation to even contemplate the next rung on my career ladder. I remember riding the bus to the photo lab every day, well after I had learned everything I could possibly learn from Quynh, and saying things to myself like, “I don’t need to look for another job. Money isn’t important to me. I’m happy with a simple life.”
- Love The One You’re With
"Passion is passion. It’s the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn’t matter where it’s directed… It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith… the saddest people I’ve ever met in life are the ones who don’t care deeply about anything at all."
— Dear John (via ifihadwings) (via pineappleupsidedown)
"To Lincoln, self-improvement meant a combination of hard work and a single-minded unwavering pursuit of knowledge."
— Abraham Lincoln: Self-Made Man
The fact that her immediate anxieties were relieved did not blind her to a possibility of their recurrence; it merely gave her enough buoyancy to rise once more above her doubts and feel a renewed faith in her beauty, her power, and her general fitness to attract a brilliant destiny. It could not be that one conscious of such aptitutdes of mastery and enjoyment was doomed to a perpetuity of failure; and her mistakes looked easily reparable in the light of her restored self-confidence.
- Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Oh, to possess Lily Bart’s unflinching confidence! Although the “pride comes before a fall” idiom seems like it is likely to be realized in the coming pages. I’m not ready to finish this book; Edith Wharton’s words are so perfectly crafted.
Success=Republic of the spirit
“Ah, but I don’t suppose that: haven’t I told you that your genius lies in converting impulses into intentions?”
“My genius?” she echoed with a sudden note of weariness. “Is there any final test of genius but success? And I certainly haven’t succeeded.”
Selden pushed his hat back and took a side-glance at her. “Success—what is success? I shall be interested to have your definition.”
“Success?” She hesitated. “Why, to get as much as one can out of life, I suppose. It’s a relative quality, after all. Isn’t that your idea of it?”
“My idea of it? God forbid!” He sat up with sudden energy, resting his elbows on his knees and staring out upon the mellow fields. “My idea of success,” he said, “is personal freedom.”
“Freedom? Freedom from worries?”
“From everything—from money, from poverty, from ease and anxiety, from all the material accidents. To keep a kind of republic of the spirit—that’s what I call success.”
- Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
"Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement."
— Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
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