In Praise of the Shadows Re-read

Mundus ipse est ingens deorum omnium templum

The world itself is a huge temple of all the gods

-Seneca

When I am called to pay taxes on life, I find some relief in the stoic meditations of yore.

I hope I always remember that Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and so on are a page away, a thought away.

But most importantly, I hope I can always meditate enough their teachings that it would stick once and for all and be part of my psyche.

I sometimes worry that I don't assimilate well enoug ideas that I find worth keeping and applying. 

But in the deafening silence of administrative procedures and the instabilities over my future, I realize that many things that used to get to me no longer get to me, and things I never faced before are easier to confront, perhaps not so much to deal with, but at least to confront in the first meeting.

So I am enclined to think that I understand how to deal with a range of life taxes, and that with more life, more diverse forms of life taxes come. And it may be that I need some first digestion and loss to adapt, assimilate and think them through first.

But in the end...

Oh fuck me, it just keeps getting hardcore and I hope I can keep getting hardcore with it as well.

 

- You are rude and abrasive and you are rough and stoïc and hurting and mean and and non-linear and and and

I get mistaken for a fractal sometimes.

XD

They say it's no laughing matter but this coranic verse always cracks me up.

As soon as possible, I will have it developped and framed then put it in the entrance of Going Merry.

Oh! and this english translation is crappy as hell. It doesn't begin to convey the deep way the sentence was structured or the organic one the idea is portrayed with.

Oh Arabic I love you so much.

This.

Bob Dylan

 I'm Not There on rewatch today:

I absolutely adore that Haruki is a fan as well, to the extent of mentioning him in his books.

besides, he gives an accurate perspective about one of the singer's aspects.

I can tell Bob Dylan in an instant," she said … "I really like his voice. It’s like a kid standing at the window watching the rain.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

How to Learn

Muad’Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It’s shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad’Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.

from The Humanity of Muad’Dib by the Princess Irulan (Dune)

The Zeitgeist Movement: Moving Forward

Zeitgeist first movie on rewatch:

"In a society where success and status are measured by material wealth, not social contribution, it is easy to see why the state of the world is what it is today"

"The entire money-structured and materialistic-oriented society is a false society. 10 or 15 years from now, our society will go down in history as the lowest development in man. We have the brains, the know-how, the technology, and the feasibility to build an entirely new civilization."

I'm done. Trying to.

"We’re all kind of weird and twisted and drowning."

— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood was my first Haruki. Back then, I thought maybe I won't read something of this author again: he speaks often of two things I really can't relate to: love relationship and solitude.

Then I remembered I adored One Hundred Years of Solitude because of the second and Wuthering Heights because of the the first and I just decided I can go ahead and enjoy his style without the necessary empathy to dive in with the characters.

Harukis are the books where I watch actually. I just belong to the landscape there and it's awesome in its own way.

I had a unicorn skull in my hands...

...Quotes from my favorite Murakami:

Deep rivers run quiet.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

Open your eyes, train your ears, use your head. If a mind you have, then use it while you can.

But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return.

…my head swimming with abstract shapes. Do I occupy the body of another? Everything is so ponderously heavy, so vague.

The absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.

I like the moments of darkness before dawn… Probably because it’s a clean slate. Clean and unused.

I wasn’t particularly afraid of death itself. As Shakespeare said, die this year and you don’t have to die the next.

----Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

I myself kept wondering for a little while

On Time and Money

Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy. 

---The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami

This is one of the lines that reminds me again why I like this author and hope he will get the nobel prize: just like Dylan ad Sting, he's able to give consistency to intuitive ideas I had in my mind.

Haruki Yet Again

-'We cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever. We must stand up and move on to the next action.'


I'm not going out this Sunday and I'm obsessing over my beloved Murakami collection. It's going to be a promising period.


I need to Metal Slug it on a little bit though: I have been craving those for a small while now. Maybe it was because of the HALO session at Abhi's. I need to look into that.

Here is what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird

"Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What I’d really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. But I can’t seem to do it. They just don’t get it. Of course, the problem could be that I’m not explaining it very well, but I think it’s because they’re not listening very well. They pretend to be listening, but they’re not, really. So I get worked up sometimes, and I do some crazy things."

---The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

On Expectations' shape

"Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”

— Haruki Murakami

To be explained to understand...

❝ If you need to be explained to understand, it means that no explanation will never make you understand. ❞

---- Haruki Murakami,1Q84

Victimization is Over

“In a sense, I’m the one who ruined me: I did it myself.”

---- Haruki Murakami

Just like a Coriolis Storm

"And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about."

----Haruki Murakami

Common Heritage

Human nature is much the same all over the world, and in all times. We find the same rivalry and claim of ”the only real thing” existing today, both in the case of the rival Voodoo doctors of Africa and the polished leaders of the fashionable metaphysical cults of America – and among all who come in between these two poles.

Alas for these claimers of a monopoly of one of Nature’s great forces – these people who make cures in spite of their theories, rather than because of them! Nature’s great recuperative force is as free as air and sunshine, and may be used by anyone who cares to do so. It is not owned or controlled by any person, cult or school – and no particular form of religious belief is necessary to one in order that he may obtain benefit from it.

God’s creations amuse themselves with many forms, sects, and creeds, but He knows them all as his creations and smiles at their childish desires to form themselves into cliques of “chosen people,” attempting to shut out their brethren from the common heritage.

From Personal Readings