Even if good is often not simple to find

"My mother said I’d have thousands of mornings to wake up and think about all this, when no one would tell me how to feel. It’s been many thousands now. What I know is, you have a better chance in life—of surviving it—if you tolerate loss well; manage not to be a cynic through it all; to subordinate, as Ruskin implied, to keep proportion, to connect the unequal things into a whole that preserves the good, even if admittedly good is often not simple to find. We try, as my sister said. We try. All of us. We try."

                          ~ Richard Ford, Canada, 2012 

Ten Years of Muffled Solitude

Ten years ago on this day, I wrote my first blog post:

Here's to ten more years of muffling solitude.

Most things don’t stay the way they are very long

“It’s been my habit of mind, over these years, to understand that every situation in which human beings are involved can be turned on its head. Everything someone assures me to be true might not be. Every pillar of belief the world rests on may or may not be about to explode. Most things don’t stay the way they are very long. Knowing this, however, has not made me cynical. Cynical means believing that good isn’t possible; and I know for a fact that good is. I simply take nothing for granted and try to be ready for the change that’s soon to come.”

~Richard Ford, Canada, 2012

Yesterday I heard some strange news

Yesterday I heard some strange news. A friend of mine has been planning to have a rhinoplasty at a clinic here in the Philippines. It turned out that the doctor she’s eyeing is now being investigated for the death of one patient he was operating on. The patient in question died just after undergoing three procedures: liposuction and breast and butt augmentation.

If I had the money to splurge on cosmetic surgery, would I have done something to enhance my body? I think not. If I were wealthy, I would travel the world. It’s more worthwhile to risk my life in an adventure in a far-flung place than expose my unconscious self to the perils of the operating table.

I thought it all rather wasteful, all rather decadent

“I suspect the reason I couldn’t celebrate the floating world was that I couldn’t bring myself to believe in its worth. Young men are often guilt-ridden about pleasure, and I suppose I was no different. I suppose I thought that to pass away one’s time in such places, to spend one’s skills celebrating things so intangible and transient, I suppose I thought it all rather wasteful, all rather decadent. It’s hard to appreciate the beauty of a world when one doubts its very validity.”

~Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World, 1986

When Every Day Feels Like a Saturday

I’m here at work, painfully aware that it’s only Thursday and there’s one more day till I can escape from the world and rewatch all seven episodes of Big Little Lies and a week to go before the four-day Lenten break that I plan to spend at the beach, and a few months more before I can go on a longer vacation where I don’t have to know or care what day it is. Don’t we all long for vacations that feel like every day is a Saturday and the only major decision we have to make is what and where to eat for lunch? But to be able to afford and deserve vacations like those, I need to embrace the quotidian drabness of my life.