"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."
Friday, April 21, 2017
Even if good is often not simple to find
Friday, April 21, 2017
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Friday, April 14, 2017
Most things don’t stay the way they are very long
Friday, April 14, 2017
“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
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
Yesterday I heard some strange news
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
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.
Saturday, April 8, 2017
I thought it all rather wasteful, all rather decadent
Saturday, April 8, 2017
“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
Thursday, April 6, 2017
When Every Day Feels Like a Saturday
Thursday, April 6, 2017
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.
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