Recently finished the Classic mystery of the "Woman in White" I had been suggested this book by one of my college professors and finally got around to reading it. It really keeps you on the edge throughout; wondering always how things will be resolved. I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed the way Men and Women are portrayed in the book. I love that such a smart woman character dominates and creates the vital movements of the story.
Below are a few favorite quotes, though most of what is great about this book cannot be quoted, just needs to be read from start to finish to really appreciate it.
The Woman in White
-Wilkie Collins
*This is the story of what a Woman’s patience can endure, and what a Man’s resolution can achieve.
*She was the woman who first gave life, light, and forms to our shadowy conceptions of beauty; she filled a void in our spiritual nature that had remained unknown to us till she appeared. Think of her as you thought of the first woman who quickened the pulses within you that the rest of her sex had no art to stir.
*“I shall believe all that you say to me” she answered simply. In those few words she unconsciously gave me the key to her whole character; to that generous trust of others which, in her nature, grew innocently out of her own truth. I only knew it intuitively then. I know it by experience now.
*At any time, and under any circumstances of human interest, is it not strange to see how little real hold the objects of the natural world amid which we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books. Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which modern poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilized accomplishments which we all learn, as an Art.
*Our words are giants when they do us an injury, and dwarfs when they do us a service.
*I loved her! Ah! How well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.
*When two member of a family, or two intimate friends, are separated, and one goes abroad and one remains at home, the return of the relative or friend who has been traveling, always seems to place the relative or friend who has been staying at home at a painful disadvantage, when the two first meet. The sudden encounter of the new thoughts and new habits eagerly gained in the one case, with the old thoughts and old habits passively preserved in the other, seems, at first, to part the sympathies of the most loving relatives and the fondest friends, and to set a sudden strangeness, unexpected by both and uncontrollable by both, between them on either side.
*Where is the woman, in the whole range of our sex, who can regulate her actions by the abstract principles of honor, when those principles point one way, and when her affections, and the interests which grow out of them, point the other?
*I am a bad man, am I not? I say what other people only think; and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
*Women can resist a man’s love, a man’s fame, a man’s personal appearance, and a man’s money; but they cannot resist a man’s tongue, when he knows how to talk to them.
*Surely you like this modest, trembling English twilight? Ah! I love it. I feel my inborn admiration of all that is noble and great and good, purified by the breath of Heaven, on an evening like this. Nature has such imperishable charms, such inextinguishable tendernesses for me! I am an old, fat man: talk which would become a ladies lips sounds like a derision and a mockery on mine. It is hard to be laughed at in my moments of sentiment, as if my soul was like myself, old and overgrown. Observe, dear lady, what a light is dying on the trees! Does it penetrate your heart, as it penetrates mine?
*Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.
*I had just entered on a lonely part of the road, with a sharp turn at some distance ahead, and had just concluded that I must be getting near to the town, when I suddently heard the steps of the men close behind me.
*The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?
*Through what mortal crime and horror, through what darkest windings of the way down to Death, the lost creature had wandered in God’s leading to the last home that, living, she never hoped to reach! In that sacred rest, I leave her—in that dread companionships, let her remain undisturbed.
*I thought of the disheartening circumstances under which the long struggle that was now past and over had been pursued. It was strange to look back and to see, now, that the poverty which had denied us all hope of assistance, had been the indirect means of our success, by forcing me to act for myself. If we had been rich enough to find legal help, what would have been the result? The Law would never have obtained me my interview with Mrs. Catherick. The Law would never have made Pesca the means of forcing a confession from the Count.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Step 47: Birdsong quotes
“When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.” - Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali
Below are my favorite quotes from the book BIRDSONG, written by Sebastian Faulks. It is a really wonderful book set in two different times--both the present and during the First World War. It is a story of faith, love, friendship, family...but ultimatley a story about if it's possible to find any meaning in our lives. Really beautifully written. I hope you enjoy the quotes.
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
*Throughout the building the floors made distinctive sounds beneath the press of feet, so that with its closed angles and echoing air, the house was always a place of unseen footsteps.
*The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings that normally we keep locked up in the heart. The great composers of the past were able to do this; to make the hairs of your head stand on end!
*Music is a democratic form of art. You don’t need money to buy it or education to study it. All you need is a pair of ears. The gift of God at birth.
*When any art is put to practical ends it loses its essential purity.
*But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it.
*This blood was supposed to be shameful, but she had never thought of it that way. She valued it because it spoke of some greater rhythm of life that would lead them away from the narrow boredom of childhood. Though she could never quite reconcile herself to the fact that this secret thing that promised new life and liberation should manifest itself in the color of pain.
*I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reasons and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.
*He watched as she spoke and wondered if he could have told that she was lying. Nothing in her manner was different. One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.
*The strain of his anguish lasted for another year, then went cold in him. He had no sensation of healing, no awareness that time had soothed him or lent him a longer perspective in which to view his passion. He experienced it only as a loss of memory. Her presence, which he had felt permanently in his mind, abruptly disappeared. He was left with the feeling of emotions undischarged, of a process uncompleted. The coldness enabled him to live more easily, to respond with some degree of conviction to other people. However, the sudden chill loss of her also made him uneasy. Something had been buried that was not yet dead.
*He saw half of his platoon die under the shells of the enemy’s opening bombardement. He grew used to the sight and smell of torn human flesh. He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.
*As the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. He could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war, to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.
*His innocence was not the same thing as ignorance; it was a powerful quality of goodness that was available to all people: it was perhaps what the prayer book called a means of grace, or a hope of glory.
*It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marveled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth. If this were true, then his fellow-human beings were not the rough, flawed creatures that most of them supposed. Their failings were not innate, but were the result of where they had gone wrong or been coarsened by their experiences; in their hearts they remained perfectible.
*He remembered a day when another woman had lain naked like this, her legs parted in front of his eyes, and he had kissed her there, allowing his tongue to open her, as though this unlocking would provide a way into her deepest self. He remembered her gasp of surprise. He had obliterated himself in her; he had purged his longing and desire; he had lodged and invested himself in her body. In her trust and love for him, he had deposited the unresolved conflicts of his life. Perhaps his self was still in her—betrayed and unhealed. The body was only flesh, but she had taken hers away from him; and in her physical absence there was more than missing flesh: there was abandonment.
*He found something more than humility, a feeling of complete inconsequence. He felt no fear for his blood and muscle and bone, but the size of what had begun, the number of them now beneath the terrible crashing of the sky, was starting to pull at the moorings of his self-control. He found the word Jesus in his mouth. He said it again and again beneath his breath. It was part prayer, part profanity. Jesus, Jesus…
*I believe his death was God’s will. We would have kept him, but God knew best.
*Nothing was divine any more; everything was profane. Bloodied beyond caring, he watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground. Death had no meaning, but still the numbers of them went on and on and in that new infinity there was still horror.
*He stood on the river bed, trying to hold himself together. The noise pressed against the skull on both banks of the river. It would not diminish. He tried to calm his thoughts. Bryne was dead. It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.
*They were built to endure and to resist; they looked like passive creatures adapting to the hell of circumstances that oppressed them. They had locked up in their hearts the horror of what they had seen, and their jovial pride in their resilience was not convincing. They boasted in a mocking way of what they had seen and done; but in their sad faces wrapped in rags were the burdens of their unwanted knowledge. They did not feel hardened or strengthened by what they had seen; instead they felt impoverished and demeaned.
*I heard a voice. There was something beyond me. All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond…flesh, the moment of being alive…then nothing. I had searched in superstition but there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so tender. I regretted that I had paid It no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me…I saw that those simple things might be true… I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. But now I see that you can believe in something without it compromising the burden of your own existence.
*He’s not afraid of gas or shells or being buried. He’s frightened that it doesn’t make sense, that there is no purpose. He’s afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life.
*It seems as though the random violence of the world runs supreme; there is no point in trying to find an explanation.
*I have made this mistake in my life: not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear.
*The hedgerows were deep and ragged where he walked, covered with the lace of cow parsley. The air had a feeling of purity, as though it had never been breathed; it was just starting to be cool with the first breeze of evening. He stopped, and leaned against a gate. The quietness of the world about him seemed to stand outside time; there was no human voice to place it.
*Nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness; he clung to the wood, he wanted to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world’s creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it.
*She smiled at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humor. It was not just her expression but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene.
*Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time when on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.
*Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us.
*Of all the human beings that I have met, if I had to choose one to hold my hand before death, I would chose my son. He died though two years ago. I miss him. I loved him so much. My world was in his face. I wondered what my life had been about until he came along. It was nothing. I treasured each word he gave me. I made myself remember each thing he did. It was as though I knew it wouldn’t be for long. He was from another world, he was a blessing too great for me.
*At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road. He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides like those of a farm boy about to fight. But then his arms began to spread and open. Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother’s killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.
Below are my favorite quotes from the book BIRDSONG, written by Sebastian Faulks. It is a really wonderful book set in two different times--both the present and during the First World War. It is a story of faith, love, friendship, family...but ultimatley a story about if it's possible to find any meaning in our lives. Really beautifully written. I hope you enjoy the quotes.
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
*Throughout the building the floors made distinctive sounds beneath the press of feet, so that with its closed angles and echoing air, the house was always a place of unseen footsteps.
*The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings that normally we keep locked up in the heart. The great composers of the past were able to do this; to make the hairs of your head stand on end!
*Music is a democratic form of art. You don’t need money to buy it or education to study it. All you need is a pair of ears. The gift of God at birth.
*When any art is put to practical ends it loses its essential purity.
*But I think if any song can touch the heart, then one should value it.
*This blood was supposed to be shameful, but she had never thought of it that way. She valued it because it spoke of some greater rhythm of life that would lead them away from the narrow boredom of childhood. Though she could never quite reconcile herself to the fact that this secret thing that promised new life and liberation should manifest itself in the color of pain.
*I am driven by a greater force than I can resist. I believe that force has its own reasons and its own morality even if they may never be clear to me while I am alive.
*He watched as she spoke and wondered if he could have told that she was lying. Nothing in her manner was different. One day she might lie to him and he would never know. Perhaps all women had this ability to survive.
*The strain of his anguish lasted for another year, then went cold in him. He had no sensation of healing, no awareness that time had soothed him or lent him a longer perspective in which to view his passion. He experienced it only as a loss of memory. Her presence, which he had felt permanently in his mind, abruptly disappeared. He was left with the feeling of emotions undischarged, of a process uncompleted. The coldness enabled him to live more easily, to respond with some degree of conviction to other people. However, the sudden chill loss of her also made him uneasy. Something had been buried that was not yet dead.
*He saw half of his platoon die under the shells of the enemy’s opening bombardement. He grew used to the sight and smell of torn human flesh. He watched the men harden to the mechanical slaughter. There seemed to him a great breach of nature which no one had the power to stop.
*As the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. He could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war, to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.
*His innocence was not the same thing as ignorance; it was a powerful quality of goodness that was available to all people: it was perhaps what the prayer book called a means of grace, or a hope of glory.
*It seemed to Jack that if an ordinary human being, his own son, no one particular, could have this purity of mind, then perhaps the isolated deeds of virtue at which people marveled in later life were not really isolated at all; perhaps they were the natural continuation of the innocent goodness that all people brought into the world at their birth. If this were true, then his fellow-human beings were not the rough, flawed creatures that most of them supposed. Their failings were not innate, but were the result of where they had gone wrong or been coarsened by their experiences; in their hearts they remained perfectible.
*He remembered a day when another woman had lain naked like this, her legs parted in front of his eyes, and he had kissed her there, allowing his tongue to open her, as though this unlocking would provide a way into her deepest self. He remembered her gasp of surprise. He had obliterated himself in her; he had purged his longing and desire; he had lodged and invested himself in her body. In her trust and love for him, he had deposited the unresolved conflicts of his life. Perhaps his self was still in her—betrayed and unhealed. The body was only flesh, but she had taken hers away from him; and in her physical absence there was more than missing flesh: there was abandonment.
*He found something more than humility, a feeling of complete inconsequence. He felt no fear for his blood and muscle and bone, but the size of what had begun, the number of them now beneath the terrible crashing of the sky, was starting to pull at the moorings of his self-control. He found the word Jesus in his mouth. He said it again and again beneath his breath. It was part prayer, part profanity. Jesus, Jesus…
*I believe his death was God’s will. We would have kept him, but God knew best.
*Nothing was divine any more; everything was profane. Bloodied beyond caring, he watched the packets of lives with their memories and loves go spinning and vomiting into the ground. Death had no meaning, but still the numbers of them went on and on and in that new infinity there was still horror.
*He stood on the river bed, trying to hold himself together. The noise pressed against the skull on both banks of the river. It would not diminish. He tried to calm his thoughts. Bryne was dead. It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.
*They were built to endure and to resist; they looked like passive creatures adapting to the hell of circumstances that oppressed them. They had locked up in their hearts the horror of what they had seen, and their jovial pride in their resilience was not convincing. They boasted in a mocking way of what they had seen and done; but in their sad faces wrapped in rags were the burdens of their unwanted knowledge. They did not feel hardened or strengthened by what they had seen; instead they felt impoverished and demeaned.
*I heard a voice. There was something beyond me. All my life I had lived on the presumption that there was no existence beyond…flesh, the moment of being alive…then nothing. I had searched in superstition but there was nothing. Then I heard the sound of my own life leaving me. It was so tender. I regretted that I had paid It no attention. Then I believed in the wisdom of what other men had found before me…I saw that those simple things might be true… I never wanted to believe in them because it was better to fight my own battle. But now I see that you can believe in something without it compromising the burden of your own existence.
*He’s not afraid of gas or shells or being buried. He’s frightened that it doesn’t make sense, that there is no purpose. He’s afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life.
*It seems as though the random violence of the world runs supreme; there is no point in trying to find an explanation.
*I have made this mistake in my life: not once but twice I have loved someone more than my heart would bear.
*The hedgerows were deep and ragged where he walked, covered with the lace of cow parsley. The air had a feeling of purity, as though it had never been breathed; it was just starting to be cool with the first breeze of evening. He stopped, and leaned against a gate. The quietness of the world about him seemed to stand outside time; there was no human voice to place it.
*Nothing was immoral or beyond redemption, all could be brought together, understood in the long perspective of forgiveness; he clung to the wood, he wanted to be forgiven for all he had done; he longed for the unity of the world’s creation to melt his sins and anger, because his soul was joined to it.
*She smiled at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humor. It was not just her expression but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene.
*Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time when on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.
*Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us.
*Of all the human beings that I have met, if I had to choose one to hold my hand before death, I would chose my son. He died though two years ago. I miss him. I loved him so much. My world was in his face. I wondered what my life had been about until he came along. It was nothing. I treasured each word he gave me. I made myself remember each thing he did. It was as though I knew it wouldn’t be for long. He was from another world, he was a blessing too great for me.
*At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road. He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides like those of a farm boy about to fight. But then his arms began to spread and open. Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother’s killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Step 46: Entertaining Angels
Below are quotes from a really good book I just finished called, 'Entertaining Angels' by Marita Van Der Vyver.
She is a South African writer and has a very unique point of view. I loved the stories, the whole way she went about this book was very clever. I highly suggest reading this book (if you can find it?) it is short, and you can read it in a week or less. I really enjoyed it. Here are some standout quotes.
*Whatever else has changed on the continent of Africa, the deep-rooted belief in magic, both white and black, has not. Africans base their fear of witches on the argument that somebody—some person or spirit—has to be responsible for the inexplicable.
*Women actually don’t like blood. Men might be less taken with it too, if they had to wash it out of their underwear every month.
*I will carry on making a fool of myself until the day I die, and then probably fuck that up too. I mean, have you ever read about someone who was saved from suicide by a cockroach in the oven? It could only happen in reality.
*Sex could become predictable after seven years with the same man. But it was a comforting predictability, like a well-loved poem that you read over and over again until you knew it off by heart, until nothing but a punctuation mark could still surprise you.
*The worst of her sins was using words to seduce people. She was a woman who wanted to play with sentences like Salome played with her seven veils. She was a woman who wanted to write because she believed that the pen was mightier than the penis. She didn’t realize that this was the eighth deadly sin in a phallocentric world.
*I’ve never had a decent relationship with a man who didn’t have an overload of intellectual pretensions. Of course, this says a lot about my own intellectual pretensions. But the best one-night stand of my life was with a gym instructor who’d never read anything heavier than the back page of a Sunday paper. The problem with clever men is that they talk too much and don’t screw enough. The trouble with stupid men is usually the same. But every now and then you find one who knows how to shut up and use his body. Then you must hang on to what you’ve got—and bite your tongue every time he says something stupid. But that’s what you have to do with all men, anyways.
*“You hold me too tight at night,” she told him that first month. “I’m not used to it, I get too hot, it feels as though I’m suffocating.”
“You’ll just have to get used to it,” he laughed. “I can’t sleep empty-handed.”
“You never hold me at night,” she reproached him years later. “I may as well be sleeping alone.”
“I can’t hold someone at night,” he answered. “It makes me feel claustrophobic, I can’t breathe.”
*Home is where the heart is; and if you no longer have a heart, home is probably where your books and your music and your most precious memories are kept.
*Marriage is a great institution, as they say, but who wants to live in a fucking institution?
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin.
*Masturbation is still a taboo subject. Even among her friends who had no scruples about discussing sex couldn’t talk about the Lonely Deed. A woman needs a man because a vibrator can’t push a lawn-mower, ha ha ha. Was it because you did it on your own that there was so much shame attached to it? There weren’t many swear words left for the last decade of the twentieth century, but ‘alone’ had to be one of them.
*We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons. We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them.
*What’s left to make life worth while after four miscarriages? Cigarettes give you lung cancer, marijuana makes you stupid, coffee brings on heart attacks, chocolate makes you fat, sunshine causes skin cancer, alcohol hammers your liver, money spells sleepless nights, make-up enrages the feminists, pregnancy leaves you with stretch marks, politics lead to despair and sex gives you Aids. She really couldn’t blame her children for refusing to be born.
*So this is what had become of all the witches in the world—now that they flew in Boeings instead of on broomsticks. This was how they made a living these days. They hadn’t lost their mystic powers. They’d become psychotherapists.
*Be kind to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.
*It would be nice to find someone who doesn’t run away when the “for worse” in the “for better or for worse” happens.
*Look for a partner who’ll eat seven bags of salt with you. Strength has nothing to do with muscles.
*We don’t need an excuse. Romance is for people who feel guilty about sex.
*You’re the kind of person who has to feel guilty before you can enjoy anything.
*There’s a difference between a wish and a fantasy. It’s like, you know, whishes are impossible. I wish I was you, I wish I was a movie star, that sort of crap. But fantasy can come true. Fantasy should come true! It’s like, something you can do, something you want to do, but don’t have the guts for. It’s like fucking a complete stranger in a train going through a tunnel! The stuff movies are made of! You should act out your fantasies. Go on, be a devil.
*The devil laughs about the senselessness of everything and the angels laugh about how wonderful it all is.
*The old Goths believed that all important matters must be discussed twice. Once while you’re drunk to ensure passion and once when your sober to ensure discretion.
*I know I’ll fall in love again. I’ll carry on being idiotic until the day I die. If only it was possible to fall in love without getting hurt. I’ve had a gutful of getting hurt.
*We get braver as we get older. The older we get, the more courage we need just to get up in the morning. We don’t leap off cliffs as we used to as children, but we have to make an enormous leap of faith each day just to stay alive.
*If I could only trust my PC; I blinked yesterday and the machine swallowed three thousand words. If a machine gets very complicated, it becomes pointless to argue whether it’s got a mind of its own. It so obviously does, that you had better get on good terms with it and shut up about the metaphysics.
She is a South African writer and has a very unique point of view. I loved the stories, the whole way she went about this book was very clever. I highly suggest reading this book (if you can find it?) it is short, and you can read it in a week or less. I really enjoyed it. Here are some standout quotes.
*Whatever else has changed on the continent of Africa, the deep-rooted belief in magic, both white and black, has not. Africans base their fear of witches on the argument that somebody—some person or spirit—has to be responsible for the inexplicable.
*Women actually don’t like blood. Men might be less taken with it too, if they had to wash it out of their underwear every month.
*I will carry on making a fool of myself until the day I die, and then probably fuck that up too. I mean, have you ever read about someone who was saved from suicide by a cockroach in the oven? It could only happen in reality.
*Sex could become predictable after seven years with the same man. But it was a comforting predictability, like a well-loved poem that you read over and over again until you knew it off by heart, until nothing but a punctuation mark could still surprise you.
*The worst of her sins was using words to seduce people. She was a woman who wanted to play with sentences like Salome played with her seven veils. She was a woman who wanted to write because she believed that the pen was mightier than the penis. She didn’t realize that this was the eighth deadly sin in a phallocentric world.
*I’ve never had a decent relationship with a man who didn’t have an overload of intellectual pretensions. Of course, this says a lot about my own intellectual pretensions. But the best one-night stand of my life was with a gym instructor who’d never read anything heavier than the back page of a Sunday paper. The problem with clever men is that they talk too much and don’t screw enough. The trouble with stupid men is usually the same. But every now and then you find one who knows how to shut up and use his body. Then you must hang on to what you’ve got—and bite your tongue every time he says something stupid. But that’s what you have to do with all men, anyways.
*“You hold me too tight at night,” she told him that first month. “I’m not used to it, I get too hot, it feels as though I’m suffocating.”
“You’ll just have to get used to it,” he laughed. “I can’t sleep empty-handed.”
“You never hold me at night,” she reproached him years later. “I may as well be sleeping alone.”
“I can’t hold someone at night,” he answered. “It makes me feel claustrophobic, I can’t breathe.”
*Home is where the heart is; and if you no longer have a heart, home is probably where your books and your music and your most precious memories are kept.
*Marriage is a great institution, as they say, but who wants to live in a fucking institution?
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” Anais Nin.
*Masturbation is still a taboo subject. Even among her friends who had no scruples about discussing sex couldn’t talk about the Lonely Deed. A woman needs a man because a vibrator can’t push a lawn-mower, ha ha ha. Was it because you did it on your own that there was so much shame attached to it? There weren’t many swear words left for the last decade of the twentieth century, but ‘alone’ had to be one of them.
*We may agree, say, that contemporary consciousness is incapable of conceiving of either angels or demons. We are still left with the question of whether, possibly, both angels and demons go on existing despite this incapacity of our contemporaries to conceive of them.
*What’s left to make life worth while after four miscarriages? Cigarettes give you lung cancer, marijuana makes you stupid, coffee brings on heart attacks, chocolate makes you fat, sunshine causes skin cancer, alcohol hammers your liver, money spells sleepless nights, make-up enrages the feminists, pregnancy leaves you with stretch marks, politics lead to despair and sex gives you Aids. She really couldn’t blame her children for refusing to be born.
*So this is what had become of all the witches in the world—now that they flew in Boeings instead of on broomsticks. This was how they made a living these days. They hadn’t lost their mystic powers. They’d become psychotherapists.
*Be kind to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it.
*It would be nice to find someone who doesn’t run away when the “for worse” in the “for better or for worse” happens.
*Look for a partner who’ll eat seven bags of salt with you. Strength has nothing to do with muscles.
*We don’t need an excuse. Romance is for people who feel guilty about sex.
*You’re the kind of person who has to feel guilty before you can enjoy anything.
*There’s a difference between a wish and a fantasy. It’s like, you know, whishes are impossible. I wish I was you, I wish I was a movie star, that sort of crap. But fantasy can come true. Fantasy should come true! It’s like, something you can do, something you want to do, but don’t have the guts for. It’s like fucking a complete stranger in a train going through a tunnel! The stuff movies are made of! You should act out your fantasies. Go on, be a devil.
*The devil laughs about the senselessness of everything and the angels laugh about how wonderful it all is.
*The old Goths believed that all important matters must be discussed twice. Once while you’re drunk to ensure passion and once when your sober to ensure discretion.
*I know I’ll fall in love again. I’ll carry on being idiotic until the day I die. If only it was possible to fall in love without getting hurt. I’ve had a gutful of getting hurt.
*We get braver as we get older. The older we get, the more courage we need just to get up in the morning. We don’t leap off cliffs as we used to as children, but we have to make an enormous leap of faith each day just to stay alive.
*If I could only trust my PC; I blinked yesterday and the machine swallowed three thousand words. If a machine gets very complicated, it becomes pointless to argue whether it’s got a mind of its own. It so obviously does, that you had better get on good terms with it and shut up about the metaphysics.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Step 45: NYC last days
NYC--final two days.
Saturday morning we woke up at a reasonable time and started getting ready for what would be a very adventurous day. With a recommendation from my friend Yuri to eat at a restaurant called ‘Café Habana’ we discovered when researching the address that today they were hosting a block party at their Brooklyn location. The crazy part was that one of the bands playing Yuri had met at Bonaroo (they were from Sierra Leone) and attested to their talent. From the pics it looked like it was going to be a sweet party so we decided to make a day of it. Along with that we would be joining Lauren’s cousin in Brooklyn for more fun later in the day.
Luckily it was a beautiful day. Dressed for the occasion we hoped on the 1 and rode it all the way to Brooklyn (which from Riverdale is a long ride!) Once off we set out to find the place and it didn’t take long before we heard the music. You know when you have expectations of something to be awesome and it turns out to be pretty lame how disappointing it can be? Well, this was not one of those times. The ‘Café Habana’ block party turned out to be unbelievable! To start their was a stage that throughout the afternoon hosted a wide range of talent that blew the diverse and jamming crowd away!
http://cafehabana.com/
People were dancing and having a blast; highlights were this crazy dance group from Canada, a Bbob group of highschool boys from Brooklyn who were insanely good, and then of course the talent of the group from Sierra Leone—“Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew.” All of it was amazing. http://planetbajah.com/
But not only was the music good, there was a sort of craft market being held which just made the whole thing even more perfect. Lauren and I had a blast dancing and just people watching. Brooklyn is definitely the place to be to see some amazing people.
At around 6pm we started making our way towards the bridge where we were meeting her cousin for a Geniis book of world records attempt. Her cousin was a restaurant owner/ chef, and this particular attempt was to break the record for biggest Pot Luck Dinner. Ridiculous sounding? Yes I know. But it turned out to be awesome. It was located in this old warehouse underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and was pretty much the most amazing location possible for a Pot Luck.
We found her cousin and his girlfriend and he handed over to us the dishes that we were bringing as our own to the event. First of all we had to sign in and get our photo taken with our dish, then we went in. It was insanely cool. I tried to ward off all fears of food poisoning and decided to just dive in and enjoy myself. The event was paired alongside some photography school in NYC showcasing it’s work which was pretty awesome. We spent the night watching slideshows of people’s amazing work under the stars. We didn’t break the record, but it didn’t matter; it was an unbelievable day.
When I woke up on Sunday I went out for a run in the beautiful neighborhoods around Lauren’s house. When I got back Lauren said she wasn’t feeling very well but agreed to drop me off at the train station.
I started the day by taking the 1 to the last Manhattan stop and walked a ways on the Brooklyn Bridge. After that I headed to Chelsea and Greenwich and enjoyed the markets there, people watching, and window shopping.
I walked all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to my friend Lisa and Kyle’s apartment on West 85th street. Despite that only being about 8 miles, it took me the entire day and I arrived at their apartment around 6pm.
We had some food and chats and dancing. And I said goodbye to them around 8:30 with hopes of seeing them in LA next spring. I got back to Lauren’s around 9 and went to bed early. Tomorrow I would be flying back to Aspen.
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| In Brooklyn...love this picture! |
Saturday morning we woke up at a reasonable time and started getting ready for what would be a very adventurous day. With a recommendation from my friend Yuri to eat at a restaurant called ‘Café Habana’ we discovered when researching the address that today they were hosting a block party at their Brooklyn location. The crazy part was that one of the bands playing Yuri had met at Bonaroo (they were from Sierra Leone) and attested to their talent. From the pics it looked like it was going to be a sweet party so we decided to make a day of it. Along with that we would be joining Lauren’s cousin in Brooklyn for more fun later in the day.
 |
| Heading into Cafe Habana (good thing we got there early, later in the day there was a huge line to get in) |
Luckily it was a beautiful day. Dressed for the occasion we hoped on the 1 and rode it all the way to Brooklyn (which from Riverdale is a long ride!) Once off we set out to find the place and it didn’t take long before we heard the music. You know when you have expectations of something to be awesome and it turns out to be pretty lame how disappointing it can be? Well, this was not one of those times. The ‘Café Habana’ block party turned out to be unbelievable! To start their was a stage that throughout the afternoon hosted a wide range of talent that blew the diverse and jamming crowd away!
http://cafehabana.com/
 |
| The stage, a Cuban group had the whole crowd dancing! |
People were dancing and having a blast; highlights were this crazy dance group from Canada, a Bbob group of highschool boys from Brooklyn who were insanely good, and then of course the talent of the group from Sierra Leone—“Bajah + The Dry Eye Crew.” All of it was amazing. http://planetbajah.com/
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| dance crew from Canada |
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| Local high school kids who were amazing!! |
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| Singing about war in their home country...unbelievable 'Bajah+ The dry eye crew' |
But not only was the music good, there was a sort of craft market being held which just made the whole thing even more perfect. Lauren and I had a blast dancing and just people watching. Brooklyn is definitely the place to be to see some amazing people.
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| Captured in Dance |
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| Lauren and I with our new necklaces from the craft market |
At around 6pm we started making our way towards the bridge where we were meeting her cousin for a Geniis book of world records attempt. Her cousin was a restaurant owner/ chef, and this particular attempt was to break the record for biggest Pot Luck Dinner. Ridiculous sounding? Yes I know. But it turned out to be awesome. It was located in this old warehouse underneath the Brooklyn Bridge and was pretty much the most amazing location possible for a Pot Luck.
 |
| Lauren's cousin with his dish at the Pot Luck |
We found her cousin and his girlfriend and he handed over to us the dishes that we were bringing as our own to the event. First of all we had to sign in and get our photo taken with our dish, then we went in. It was insanely cool. I tried to ward off all fears of food poisoning and decided to just dive in and enjoy myself. The event was paired alongside some photography school in NYC showcasing it’s work which was pretty awesome. We spent the night watching slideshows of people’s amazing work under the stars. We didn’t break the record, but it didn’t matter; it was an unbelievable day.
When I woke up on Sunday I went out for a run in the beautiful neighborhoods around Lauren’s house. When I got back Lauren said she wasn’t feeling very well but agreed to drop me off at the train station.
 |
| Walking the Brooklyn Bridge on a beautiful Sunday is insanity! |
I started the day by taking the 1 to the last Manhattan stop and walked a ways on the Brooklyn Bridge. After that I headed to Chelsea and Greenwich and enjoyed the markets there, people watching, and window shopping.
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| The sights of NYC on a beautiful Sunday afternoon |
I walked all the way from the Brooklyn Bridge to my friend Lisa and Kyle’s apartment on West 85th street. Despite that only being about 8 miles, it took me the entire day and I arrived at their apartment around 6pm.
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| My favorites!! Kyle, Sabrina, Lisa and I having some fun. |
We had some food and chats and dancing. And I said goodbye to them around 8:30 with hopes of seeing them in LA next spring. I got back to Lauren’s around 9 and went to bed early. Tomorrow I would be flying back to Aspen.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Step 44: Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior
Recently finished the book: Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior.
by: Dan Millman.
Honestly I'm not so sure I liked the entire book, didn't appreciate his holier-than-thou style of writing and it just seemed so manipulated and crafted. I also think he plagiarized in many areas. In fact, he quoted directly from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and yet never gave one mention to Whitman. I also think much of the wisdom in the book comes directly from Mother Teresa quotes. Plagiarized or original there were some jewels within the book. And those jewels are the quotes that follow. Hope you enjoy them.
*Until I awoke, I hadn’t realized that I’d been asleep. I wondered if enlightenment was like that.
*God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
*I grew thirsty and my fear intensified. It wasn’t the sudden fear of a gun in my ribs—just a quiet kind of knowingness, a stark inevitability that unless someone rescued me soon, I would die.
*To really help people, you first need to understand them—but first understand yourself, prepare yourself; develop the clarity, the courage, the sensitivity to exert the right leverage, in the right place, at the right time. Then your actions will have power and you will notice how just a little leverage can be very effective.
*Abe Lincoln once said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first five hours sharpening the axe. You have a great task ahead, but you are not yet sharpened. It will take time and require great energy.
*The road ahead might be difficult—even dangerous—but at least it was open.
*Ignorance, as well as wisdom, is handed down from one generation to the next like a precious heir loom.
*Just handle what’s in front of you now, and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of your life wondering which foot you’ll use to step off the curb when you’re still only halfway to the corner. Plans are useful, but don’t get attached to them; life has too many surprises. Preparation, on the other hand, has value, even if the future you planned never comes.
*All paths, all activities—professions, sports, arts, crafts—serve as a means of internal development, merely a boat to get across the river. Once you get across, you no longer need the boat.
*It’s not the way to the peaceful warrior; it’s the way of the peaceful warrior. The journey itself creates the warrior.
*Faith has little to do with belief. Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not.
*Our lives are like a flower. We appear so fragile, and yet, when we meet obstacles, we push through them, always growing toward the Light.
*Acting without understanding may create even more problems. Sometimes you need to simply relax into life, and to trust. No matter how pressing life may feel at times there’s no need to rush, and nowhere to rush to. You have plenty of time to accomplish what you wish in this life or the next.
*In the darkest, most chaotic times—when things fall apart—such times often mark quickening as your mind readies itself to make a giant leap. When you feel like you’re going nowhere, stagnating, even slipping backwards—your soul is only backing up to get a running start.
*Our prayers are always answered. But sometimes God says no.
Why would God say no?
Why does a loving parent say no? Sometimes children’s wants run counter to their needs. People turn to God when their foundations are shaking, only to discover it is God who’s shaking them. The conscious mind cannot always foresee what is for the highest good.
*Discomfort is one way our Basic Self gets our attention. Although pain may serve as a wake up call, it’s usually the Basic Self’s second-to-last resort. It only sends harsh messages when the gentler ones—your intuitions and dreams—have been ignored.
*Unless the roots of a tree are deep, it can’t blossom; unless the tower has a strong foundation, it will crumble. You’ve got to clean up the basement before you move into the penthouse.
*Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
*Every human capacity is amplified by energy. The mind becomes brighter, healing accelerates, strength increases, imagination intensifies, emotional power and charisma expand. So energy can be a blessing. But energy must flow somewhere. Where energy meets obstructions, it burns—and if energy builds up beyond what a given individual can tolerate, it demands release. Anger grows into rage, sorrow turns to despair, concern becomes obsession, and physical aches become agony. So energy can also be a curse. Like a river, it can bring life, but untamed it can unleash a raging flood of destruction.
*The body will do whatever it has to in order to bleed off excess energy. If it isn’t spent consciously, in creative endeavors and physical activity, the urge for release will take the form of angry outbursts, or cruelty, or nightmares, or crime, or illness, or abuse to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, food, or sex. Blocked energy—and the desire to feel release—is the sources of all addictions. Don’t try to manage the addictions; instead, clear the obstructions.
*Those who seek to escape the world through spiritual experiences are barking up the wrong tree, because their search only intensifies the sense of dilemma that motivated the search in the first place. The desire to rise above the boredom, fleshiness, and morality of this world is natural and understandable. But those who practice self-involved techniques to distract themselves from the dilemmas of daily life are going to ascend the ladder only to find out it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Daily life is your training ground. Spirit gives you everything you need, here and now. You evolve not by seeking to go elsewhere, but by paying attention to, and embracing, what’s right in front of you. Only then can you take the next step.
*Courage is like a muscle; it gets stronger with practice. People don’t test their spirit until they’re faced with adversity.
*My soul is one of those who came in the final rescue mission. There are many like me who feel a call to serve; who know deep inside that they are here to do something, but cannot quite articulate what that something may be. All have in common a certain restlessness—a deep sense of being somehow different, of being oddballs, visitors here, never quite fitting in. We feel at times a longing to ‘go home’ but we’re not exactly sure where that is. We often have giving, but rather insecure natures. But we are not here to ‘fit in,’ as much as we might like to. We are here to teach, to lead, and to heal.
*Life is hard either way, whether you space out and give up, or whether you go for it.
*If you want peace of mind, I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
Relax and stop trying to figure everything out. You don’t have to know everything about the ocean to swim in it.
*Seems like sometimes life is peaceful—like now. Other times there’s a storm—can’t control that storm—but you can trim the sail, tie things down, get through that storm and you’re a lot stronger.
*Now I understood the Taoist saying “He who says does not know; he who knows does not say”—not because the wise don’t speak, but because It cannot be spoken. Words fall as short of It as a rock thrown at the stars.
*Outer travel at best only reflects the inner journey, and at worst substitutes for it. The world you perceive only provides symbols for what you seek. The sacred journey is inside you; before you can find what you’re looking for in the world, you have to find it within. Otherwise, a master may greet you, but you’ll walk right past without hearing.
*There is no way to peace; Peace is the Way. There is no way to happiness; Happiness is the Way. There is no way to love. Love is the Way.
*I can summarize all I’ve learned in my life with six words: try to be…a little kinder.
*The quality of our lives is shaped by what we do, moment to moment—by each choice we make and each action we take. Will we choose the main highways or the back roads of life? Will we travel the mountain paths or seek the forest wilderness? Will we contract or expand, struggle with or embrace life unfolding? Each of us must answer such questions for ourselves and make our own choices on this sacred journey, as the winding path appears beneath our feet.
by: Dan Millman.
Honestly I'm not so sure I liked the entire book, didn't appreciate his holier-than-thou style of writing and it just seemed so manipulated and crafted. I also think he plagiarized in many areas. In fact, he quoted directly from Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and yet never gave one mention to Whitman. I also think much of the wisdom in the book comes directly from Mother Teresa quotes. Plagiarized or original there were some jewels within the book. And those jewels are the quotes that follow. Hope you enjoy them.
*Until I awoke, I hadn’t realized that I’d been asleep. I wondered if enlightenment was like that.
*God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.
*I grew thirsty and my fear intensified. It wasn’t the sudden fear of a gun in my ribs—just a quiet kind of knowingness, a stark inevitability that unless someone rescued me soon, I would die.
*To really help people, you first need to understand them—but first understand yourself, prepare yourself; develop the clarity, the courage, the sensitivity to exert the right leverage, in the right place, at the right time. Then your actions will have power and you will notice how just a little leverage can be very effective.
*Abe Lincoln once said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he’d spend the first five hours sharpening the axe. You have a great task ahead, but you are not yet sharpened. It will take time and require great energy.
*The road ahead might be difficult—even dangerous—but at least it was open.
*Ignorance, as well as wisdom, is handed down from one generation to the next like a precious heir loom.
*Just handle what’s in front of you now, and the future will take care of itself. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of your life wondering which foot you’ll use to step off the curb when you’re still only halfway to the corner. Plans are useful, but don’t get attached to them; life has too many surprises. Preparation, on the other hand, has value, even if the future you planned never comes.
*All paths, all activities—professions, sports, arts, crafts—serve as a means of internal development, merely a boat to get across the river. Once you get across, you no longer need the boat.
*It’s not the way to the peaceful warrior; it’s the way of the peaceful warrior. The journey itself creates the warrior.
*Faith has little to do with belief. Faith is the courage to live your life as if everything that happens does so for your highest good and learning. Like it or not.
*Our lives are like a flower. We appear so fragile, and yet, when we meet obstacles, we push through them, always growing toward the Light.
*Acting without understanding may create even more problems. Sometimes you need to simply relax into life, and to trust. No matter how pressing life may feel at times there’s no need to rush, and nowhere to rush to. You have plenty of time to accomplish what you wish in this life or the next.
*In the darkest, most chaotic times—when things fall apart—such times often mark quickening as your mind readies itself to make a giant leap. When you feel like you’re going nowhere, stagnating, even slipping backwards—your soul is only backing up to get a running start.
*Our prayers are always answered. But sometimes God says no.
Why would God say no?
Why does a loving parent say no? Sometimes children’s wants run counter to their needs. People turn to God when their foundations are shaking, only to discover it is God who’s shaking them. The conscious mind cannot always foresee what is for the highest good.
*Discomfort is one way our Basic Self gets our attention. Although pain may serve as a wake up call, it’s usually the Basic Self’s second-to-last resort. It only sends harsh messages when the gentler ones—your intuitions and dreams—have been ignored.
*Unless the roots of a tree are deep, it can’t blossom; unless the tower has a strong foundation, it will crumble. You’ve got to clean up the basement before you move into the penthouse.
*Before you can see the Light, you have to deal with the darkness.
*Every human capacity is amplified by energy. The mind becomes brighter, healing accelerates, strength increases, imagination intensifies, emotional power and charisma expand. So energy can be a blessing. But energy must flow somewhere. Where energy meets obstructions, it burns—and if energy builds up beyond what a given individual can tolerate, it demands release. Anger grows into rage, sorrow turns to despair, concern becomes obsession, and physical aches become agony. So energy can also be a curse. Like a river, it can bring life, but untamed it can unleash a raging flood of destruction.
*The body will do whatever it has to in order to bleed off excess energy. If it isn’t spent consciously, in creative endeavors and physical activity, the urge for release will take the form of angry outbursts, or cruelty, or nightmares, or crime, or illness, or abuse to alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, food, or sex. Blocked energy—and the desire to feel release—is the sources of all addictions. Don’t try to manage the addictions; instead, clear the obstructions.
*Those who seek to escape the world through spiritual experiences are barking up the wrong tree, because their search only intensifies the sense of dilemma that motivated the search in the first place. The desire to rise above the boredom, fleshiness, and morality of this world is natural and understandable. But those who practice self-involved techniques to distract themselves from the dilemmas of daily life are going to ascend the ladder only to find out it’s leaning against the wrong wall. Daily life is your training ground. Spirit gives you everything you need, here and now. You evolve not by seeking to go elsewhere, but by paying attention to, and embracing, what’s right in front of you. Only then can you take the next step.
*Courage is like a muscle; it gets stronger with practice. People don’t test their spirit until they’re faced with adversity.
*My soul is one of those who came in the final rescue mission. There are many like me who feel a call to serve; who know deep inside that they are here to do something, but cannot quite articulate what that something may be. All have in common a certain restlessness—a deep sense of being somehow different, of being oddballs, visitors here, never quite fitting in. We feel at times a longing to ‘go home’ but we’re not exactly sure where that is. We often have giving, but rather insecure natures. But we are not here to ‘fit in,’ as much as we might like to. We are here to teach, to lead, and to heal.
*Life is hard either way, whether you space out and give up, or whether you go for it.
*If you want peace of mind, I suggest you resign as general manager of the universe.
Relax and stop trying to figure everything out. You don’t have to know everything about the ocean to swim in it.
*Seems like sometimes life is peaceful—like now. Other times there’s a storm—can’t control that storm—but you can trim the sail, tie things down, get through that storm and you’re a lot stronger.
*Now I understood the Taoist saying “He who says does not know; he who knows does not say”—not because the wise don’t speak, but because It cannot be spoken. Words fall as short of It as a rock thrown at the stars.
*Outer travel at best only reflects the inner journey, and at worst substitutes for it. The world you perceive only provides symbols for what you seek. The sacred journey is inside you; before you can find what you’re looking for in the world, you have to find it within. Otherwise, a master may greet you, but you’ll walk right past without hearing.
*There is no way to peace; Peace is the Way. There is no way to happiness; Happiness is the Way. There is no way to love. Love is the Way.
*I can summarize all I’ve learned in my life with six words: try to be…a little kinder.
*The quality of our lives is shaped by what we do, moment to moment—by each choice we make and each action we take. Will we choose the main highways or the back roads of life? Will we travel the mountain paths or seek the forest wilderness? Will we contract or expand, struggle with or embrace life unfolding? Each of us must answer such questions for ourselves and make our own choices on this sacred journey, as the winding path appears beneath our feet.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Step 43:NYC continued
Wednesday afternoon I arrived fresh from Philadelphia
It was so weird that I hadn’t any of them for 5 years or more. When you haven’t seen people in that long it has you wondering if too much time has passed and if there will be anything to connect on; but as proved during my time with Leah in Florida, Marc in Florida, and even at dinner with Lisa the first night I was in New York…it seemed that wasn’t the case. In fact these people, despite not having seen them in years, had remained in touch with me through other avenues and seemed more interested in my life than my friends from Aspen
I connected with Sabrina and we caught up on all sorts of life --chatting away non-stop until Lisa arrived home. When she did, the three of us walked to their local Whole Foods and stocked up on food for dinner. Walking NYC with them felt empowering. They are both such fashionable, intelligent, and hot babes! It was seriously the best Whole Foods I’ve ever been to! Two stories, and the most insane salad bar you’ve ever seen!!
We ate and hung out with Lisa’s other roommates, including Kyle’s boyfriend (Geo) waiting for Kyle to arrive off his flight from LA. It was awesome catching up and when Kyle got there we all had massive hugs and screams --continued chatting for a while and then everyone crashed.
Thursday: EPICLY LONG DAY!
On a seriously limited amount of sleep over the past 4 nights I woke up having some major problems in my mouth and was determined to see a doctor but after about an hour wasted to discover my options I decided instead to seek out the all curing wheatgrass shot. Once that was accomplished I headed out on a run along Riverside Park
Lisa was working, Sabrina had errands, Kyle and Geo were packing (they were moving to LA soon). So for lunch I headed downtown to do some window shopping, hit China town, and my friend Doug (from New Orleans Rockefeller Center where I was meeting Ali Crum, a friend I grew up with from Aspen for a quick hello before she headed to the airport for a presentation in Brazil
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| Street performers in Central park |
After that I went back to Lisa’s to get showered and changed. The day had already been long, but there was so much more to come. Tonight I was headed to the theatre. I was meeting another Rollins friend in
Lauren was one of the first girls I met when I went to college. She lived in the room right across the hall from me and to be frank she intimidated me when I first met her. She’s from New York
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| Lauren & I in Times Square before going into the show |
Now there we were in
The show as bizarre yet fabulous. The music was amazing and acting superb. Despite the hallucinated plot line the fact that the actors regularly were out in the audience interacting with the people -even giving us all flowers- made me forget trying to follow the story and instead I was on my feet dancing away. At the end of the show they invite the audience onto the stage for an all out dance party and we had a blast. I literally danced on the stages of Broadway!!
After the show Lauren and I were pumped and so decided we had to keep the night going. We headed downtown to a Jazz club called ‘Fat Cat.’ Here’s the cool thing about ‘Fat Cat’ their open til 5am, they have live Jazz, and the majority of the room is dominated by games. All sorts of games. Pool, Shuffle Board, Ping Pong, even tables at which people are playing, and you can join in on, board games like Pictionary, Scrabble, Monopoly and exedra. It was packed!! It took us a while on the waiting list to secure a ping pong table, but once we did we kicked ass.
We were placed between these two tables of Asians who were essentially professional at ping pong so when we strolled up I don’t think they were expecting much, but we proved them wrong. It was a fun night of all sorts of games and music. And around 3:30am we went back to Lisa’s place to get my stuff and head to Lauren’s mom’s place up in Riverdale. We arrived there at around 4:15 am and my exhaustion hit me hard. I didn’t wake up the next day until noon.
It was Friday…or rather in Riverdale it was the day before the Sabbath. Lauren’s family is Italian Catholic, but the majority of Riverdale seems to be quite Orthodox Jewish. After spending some time with Lauren and her Mom at hom we headed out to treat ourselves kindly. And when we arrived that afternoon at the nail salon it was packed with women determined to get their nails done before the Sabbath. It was quite an entertaining afternoon locked up in that salon with all those women listening in on all their little life antidotes.
 |
| On Lauren's deck in my new HAIR tee shirt |
After that we found a place to have dinner, it was an Indian restaurant and we had the funniest waiter you can imagine—so Indian. He was so involved in our life and meal by the time we were ready to go that he insisted on hugs all around. After so many days on the go-go-go, it was nice to have finally had one to just relax and we went to bed early after making plans for what would be an epic Saturday.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Step 42: FL-NYC-PHLY
So I’ve decided I can’t go day by day for the rest of my USA vacation. It was taking me entirely too long and I’m just not up for it anymore. So I’m going to attempt to do a few days at a time and cut down my long windedness with highlights as I see worthy.
The day after the wedding Marc and I spent at the pool. But we also got the chance to do dinner with one of my other college friends, Jourdan Haynes. He and I were on the same study abroad program to Australia and he was now working as a lawyer in Tampa so he was a good person for Marc to meet as well. While in Australia, Thai food was our thing so we had to meet up for Thai. While researching the phone book for options I found a place called “Jasmine Thai” and figured that had to be the place.
Marc and I drove that way and we ended up in a somewhat abandoned neighborhood wondering if we’d taken a wrong turn. Suddenly we saw a small strip mall and there it was looking as shady as anything you can imagine. We almost called Jourdan to change the plans but decided to go in and look at the menu. Surprisingly, as we walked in we saw quite the elegant spot with a hoard of elderly people dressed up quite nicely and décor to match. We sat down and soon Jourdan joined us. It was wonderful to see him and catch up! Plus the service and food were perfect!
http://jasminetampa.com/
The next day, pool and study again and Leah came to pick me up in the early evening. We went to dinner and hung out to give Marc some alone time, then we said goodbye and she dropped me back off.
The next day. May 10th Marc took me to the airport and I said goodbye. Now I was off to New York City though my flight landed in New Jersey and I had to find my way into the city via a series of trains. Thankfully a nice flight attendant saw me looking lost and said, “Just follow me.” There I was in downtown NYC and my next challenge was finding the offices of Harper’s Bazaar Magazine where my friend Lisa works. I called her and she gave me subway directions. With my luggage in tow I made my way there and joyfully gave Lisa Luna a big ol’ hug. Lisa Luna…I always thought we were connected because we both have “Luna” in our names! She and I also went to college together and is by far the funniest girl I have ever known in my life! She seriously could be a comedian no problem! She also could have been a doctor which is what she was studying in school, but instead there she was in NYC working for a magazine cause she loves fashion.
She gave me her house key and another set of subway directions and my next mission was to find her apartment and drop off my stuff. Once there I found myself to be utterly exhausted yet determined to make the most of my NYC time. So I set out to give myself a walking tour until Lisa got off work. Lisa’s apartment was on West 85th street just off Broadway and on the “1” line. It was easy enough to find and easy to walk from. I simply walked down Broadway.
After a lot of window shopping I headed back to her apartment to meet her. We went to dinner at a Thai restaurant near her place and I seriously couldn’t stop laughing. Even when we were talking about the serious subject of my ex-boyfriend and our mutual friend from college she still brought humor to it. With Lisa around you don’t need a party because she just brings it to you.
The next day I got up early and headed back to Penn Station where I boarded the BOLT bus from NYC to Philadelphia. I’d left most of my stuff at Lisa’s so wasn’t carrying much but my computer bag (without a computer). The BOLT bus is genius! Cheap, convenient, even has wireless internet onboard—in fact I think I was the only one on board reading an actual book! The trip took a couple of hours…I can’t remember how long, and when I got close to Philly I called my friend Morgan.
https://www.boltbus.com/default.aspx
Morgan and I had worked together back in Aspen at the St. Regis and had always remained friendly. When he heard I was gonna be in NYC he suggested I head down his way if it was possible; when I heard about the BOLT bus I figured, why not. He was waiting for me at the bus stop in a crazy little sports car—apparently his company car. He drove me around the city showing me some of his fav spots, it wasn’t a great day weather wise so we couldn’t do much else.
After getting showered and changed he took me out to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in a new developing area of Philly that was really cute. The restaurant was called “A Full-Plate” We were having an early dinner so we were the only guests, but it was nice opportunity to catch up with Morgan on all his details and to grab some advice from him. Being that he is a Harvard graduate and quite successful at securing bizarre but good jobs I definitely wanted some career advice from him.
http://afullplate.com/cafe.html
After dinner we headed back to his –did I mention—amazing apartment. First of all it was in the crazy cool building with an awesome gym & pool. But the apartment itself was huge, had a great view, and was just a nice set up all around. Soon enough a few of his friends and his girlfriend showed up for what was their weekly “LOST” party. Apparently he and his friends love this show, or rather are obsessed with it. I had only seen a few episodes off and on and definitely wasn’t up to date…which with LOST apparently you have to stay up to date. They tried to give me a run down before the show started, but once it did it was all talking off and concentration on the show looking for clues and such. I have to admit, it was pretty funny.
After the show they did some analysis of what they think happened and any ideas they had about who is the bad guy after which they all headed home. Morgan and I stayed up late talking and then headed to bed.
When I woke up the next day he was already long gone to work and had left me a few maps of the city. I walked from his place (640 N. Broad) into downtown where I came across a protest, visited the Liberty bell and Franklin’s grave. Then had lunch at this cool indoor market that had all sorts of cool Amish stuff. Back at Morgan’s, I went to the gym, then showered and started walking to get my bus back to NYC.
The day after the wedding Marc and I spent at the pool. But we also got the chance to do dinner with one of my other college friends, Jourdan Haynes. He and I were on the same study abroad program to Australia and he was now working as a lawyer in Tampa so he was a good person for Marc to meet as well. While in Australia, Thai food was our thing so we had to meet up for Thai. While researching the phone book for options I found a place called “Jasmine Thai” and figured that had to be the place.
Marc and I drove that way and we ended up in a somewhat abandoned neighborhood wondering if we’d taken a wrong turn. Suddenly we saw a small strip mall and there it was looking as shady as anything you can imagine. We almost called Jourdan to change the plans but decided to go in and look at the menu. Surprisingly, as we walked in we saw quite the elegant spot with a hoard of elderly people dressed up quite nicely and décor to match. We sat down and soon Jourdan joined us. It was wonderful to see him and catch up! Plus the service and food were perfect!
http://jasminetampa.com/
The next day, pool and study again and Leah came to pick me up in the early evening. We went to dinner and hung out to give Marc some alone time, then we said goodbye and she dropped me back off.
The next day. May 10th Marc took me to the airport and I said goodbye. Now I was off to New York City though my flight landed in New Jersey and I had to find my way into the city via a series of trains. Thankfully a nice flight attendant saw me looking lost and said, “Just follow me.” There I was in downtown NYC and my next challenge was finding the offices of Harper’s Bazaar Magazine where my friend Lisa works. I called her and she gave me subway directions. With my luggage in tow I made my way there and joyfully gave Lisa Luna a big ol’ hug. Lisa Luna…I always thought we were connected because we both have “Luna” in our names! She and I also went to college together and is by far the funniest girl I have ever known in my life! She seriously could be a comedian no problem! She also could have been a doctor which is what she was studying in school, but instead there she was in NYC working for a magazine cause she loves fashion.
 |
| I "heart" NY |
She gave me her house key and another set of subway directions and my next mission was to find her apartment and drop off my stuff. Once there I found myself to be utterly exhausted yet determined to make the most of my NYC time. So I set out to give myself a walking tour until Lisa got off work. Lisa’s apartment was on West 85th street just off Broadway and on the “1” line. It was easy enough to find and easy to walk from. I simply walked down Broadway.
 |
| Reminded me of the NYC based movie "Nanny Diaries" |
The next day I got up early and headed back to Penn Station where I boarded the BOLT bus from NYC to Philadelphia. I’d left most of my stuff at Lisa’s so wasn’t carrying much but my computer bag (without a computer). The BOLT bus is genius! Cheap, convenient, even has wireless internet onboard—in fact I think I was the only one on board reading an actual book! The trip took a couple of hours…I can’t remember how long, and when I got close to Philly I called my friend Morgan.
https://www.boltbus.com/default.aspx
Morgan and I had worked together back in Aspen at the St. Regis and had always remained friendly. When he heard I was gonna be in NYC he suggested I head down his way if it was possible; when I heard about the BOLT bus I figured, why not. He was waiting for me at the bus stop in a crazy little sports car—apparently his company car. He drove me around the city showing me some of his fav spots, it wasn’t a great day weather wise so we couldn’t do much else.
After getting showered and changed he took me out to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in a new developing area of Philly that was really cute. The restaurant was called “A Full-Plate” We were having an early dinner so we were the only guests, but it was nice opportunity to catch up with Morgan on all his details and to grab some advice from him. Being that he is a Harvard graduate and quite successful at securing bizarre but good jobs I definitely wanted some career advice from him.
http://afullplate.com/cafe.html
After dinner we headed back to his –did I mention—amazing apartment. First of all it was in the crazy cool building with an awesome gym & pool. But the apartment itself was huge, had a great view, and was just a nice set up all around. Soon enough a few of his friends and his girlfriend showed up for what was their weekly “LOST” party. Apparently he and his friends love this show, or rather are obsessed with it. I had only seen a few episodes off and on and definitely wasn’t up to date…which with LOST apparently you have to stay up to date. They tried to give me a run down before the show started, but once it did it was all talking off and concentration on the show looking for clues and such. I have to admit, it was pretty funny.
After the show they did some analysis of what they think happened and any ideas they had about who is the bad guy after which they all headed home. Morgan and I stayed up late talking and then headed to bed.
 |
| Dude with a protest in Philadelphia behind him |
When I woke up the next day he was already long gone to work and had left me a few maps of the city. I walked from his place (640 N. Broad) into downtown where I came across a protest, visited the Liberty bell and Franklin’s grave. Then had lunch at this cool indoor market that had all sorts of cool Amish stuff. Back at Morgan’s, I went to the gym, then showered and started walking to get my bus back to NYC.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Step 41: Some Quotes
Here are some great quotes I recently collected from one of the books I've been reading that frequently quotes others:
*I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever. (Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go)
*What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Oh, what then? (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
*Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum; only that you can elect what you want to take at any given time. (A Course in Miracles)
*The important thing is this: To be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become. (Charles Dubois)
*Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular. (Carl Jung)
*When one is willing and eager, the gods join in. (Aeschylus)
*The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest of wilderness. (John Muir)
*You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
*The organs weep the tears the eyes refuse to shed. Unexpressed emotion is stored in the muscles of the body. (Wilhelm Reich)
*A great teacher never strives to explain her vision; she simply invites you to stand beside her and see for yourself. (The Rev. R. Inman)
*Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. (Jack London)
*Forget about likes and dislikes; they are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. (George Bernard Shaw)
*God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. (James Barrie)
*I slept, and I dreamt that life was all joy. I woke, and saw that life was but service. I served, and discovered that service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore)
*If I am not for myself, Who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, What am I? (Hillel)
*Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. (Andrew Jackson)
*Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. (David Lloyd George)
*True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. (Nikos Kazantzakis)
*I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me; ill and you comforted me. (from the book of Matthew)
*I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible. (George Bernard Shaw)
*Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
*We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to find that enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in that dance, and in that song, the most ancient rites of our conscience fulfill themselves in the awareness of being human. (Pablo Neruda, Toward the Splendid City)
*There are no maps; no more creeds or philosophies. From here on in, the directions come straight from the Universe. (Akshara Noor)
*I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. (Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried.)
*Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on man. (Francis Cardinal Spellmen)
*Whoever would be the greatest among you is the servant of all. (Jesus)
*I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how I think it is with us. It’s a shame because we’ve loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can’t stay together forever. (Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go)
*What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there you plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Oh, what then? (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
*Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum; only that you can elect what you want to take at any given time. (A Course in Miracles)
*The important thing is this: To be ready at any moment to sacrifice what you are for what you could become. (Charles Dubois)
*Enlightenment consists not merely in the seeing of luminous shapes and visions, but in making the darkness visible. The latter procedure is more difficult and therefore, unpopular. (Carl Jung)
*When one is willing and eager, the gods join in. (Aeschylus)
*The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest of wilderness. (John Muir)
*You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)
*The organs weep the tears the eyes refuse to shed. Unexpressed emotion is stored in the muscles of the body. (Wilhelm Reich)
*A great teacher never strives to explain her vision; she simply invites you to stand beside her and see for yourself. (The Rev. R. Inman)
*Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. (Jack London)
*Forget about likes and dislikes; they are of no consequence. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness. (George Bernard Shaw)
*God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. (James Barrie)
*I slept, and I dreamt that life was all joy. I woke, and saw that life was but service. I served, and discovered that service was joy. (Rabindranath Tagore)
*If I am not for myself, Who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, What am I? (Hillel)
*Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in. (Andrew Jackson)
*Anything can be achieved in small, deliberate steps. But there are times you need the courage to take a great leap. You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps. (David Lloyd George)
*True teachers use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create bridges of their own. (Nikos Kazantzakis)
*I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty and you gave me water; I was a stranger and you welcomed me; naked and you clothed me; ill and you comforted me. (from the book of Matthew)
*I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me; it is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible. (George Bernard Shaw)
*Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.
*We must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, to find that enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song. But in that dance, and in that song, the most ancient rites of our conscience fulfill themselves in the awareness of being human. (Pablo Neruda, Toward the Splendid City)
*There are no maps; no more creeds or philosophies. From here on in, the directions come straight from the Universe. (Akshara Noor)
*I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth. (Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried.)
*Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on man. (Francis Cardinal Spellmen)
*Whoever would be the greatest among you is the servant of all. (Jesus)
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Step 40: Sarasota to Clearwater, FL
Sarasota & Clearwater, FL
My last morning in Sarasota was a bit hectic as my friend Marc, who was studying for his law school finals, frantically tried to make plans to pick me up from, or near Sarasota, to take me to Clearwater where I was going to a friend’s wedding. I really asked too much of Marc. I didn’t intend on making his life a living hell but somehow managed to non-the-less. Initially when plans are made of course they sound reasonable, but when it came down to it I should have known that his finals would be overwhelming him.
Sida and I started the day off by going to the gym and getting some energy out. Then we returned to the house, showered, had lunch and headed north. We were planning to meet Marc around 3pm at an outlet mall about 1/2 way between Sarasota & Clearwater. We got there a bit early so I did some window shopping and when Marc called I could easily sense the distress in his voice. After shuffling my luggage from Sida’s car to his, I said my goodbyes and thanks to Sida (Sida!! Thanks again so much for having me! It was great seeing you and Gary and spending some time. Lots of love!!) and then began a hopeless attempt at cheering Marc up. The poor thing was at the end of his rope and there I was mucking with his schedule.
True to the friend he is, he attempted to apologize for his blatant stress and was as complimentary as ever. When we arrived at the location for the wedding he dropped me off with plans to go to the 24 hour Starbucks and study while I attended the wedding of Barb and Rohan. The wedding was being held on Clearwater beach and although I was certain I was in the right vicinity I couldn’t seem to find my way. There I was carrying a gigantic wedding package without a clue of where I was headed. Thank god I saw some other people who looked to be dressed for a wedding and when I asked them if they were there for Barb and Rohan they said yes and showed me the way.
It was a gorgeous day; a day built just for such a sunset wedding on the beach. I assumed, when I decided to attend the wedding, that I would not know a single other person there besides the bride and groom. Much to my surprise, when I walked up to the small set of chairs along the beach there behind a video camera was R.A. (Robert Archibald) Beattie. R.A. and I grew up together in Aspen in the same class and had been pretty good friends throughout the years.
I knew that he and Rohan were friends but had no idea he would be at the wedding-- I was so pleased that he was. We were among the few people to arrive early so we had time to catch up and it turns out he was living in Florida…in Winter Park (my college town) going to film school.
Soon enough Rohan arrived and I caught up with him a bit before getting to my real work. I had promised Barb that I would be her unofficial wedding photographer, so I sat down my bag and box and started snapping photos like mad. Throughout the service I never sat or stopped, and I got the shots the real photographer was apparently too lazy (or polite?) to get. It was such fun!
After the wedding was over two other familiar faces appeared in my view finder, Megan Brilbeck and her boyfriend Ian. Barb, Megan, Ian, and I had all worked together at the Ritz Carlton in Aspen, that’s how I met Barb. Again I had no idea Megan would be there, but it was great to see her and have another familiar face to hang out with.
After the sun set and all the photos were taken we headed to a Yacht club for the reception. I checked in with Marc on his studies and he not only sounded stressed but exhausted. I quickly made a few rounds in the room and then sneaked outside and jumped in his car so we could head back to his place. It was great to be able to see a few old friends so unexpectedly and to be able to attend a friend’s wedding.
One of the things I really had been so upset about missing while living in Japan were special events of friends and family. While in Japan I missed three of my best friend’s weddings: Ellen, Taylor, and Blake- I also missed my cousin’s funeral. Missing that kind of stuff is really tough when you are living abroad.
We got back to Marc’s apartment and both of us crashed into bed after I gave him a much needed massage. Marc…I’m so sorry I put you through that stress!! Love you so much!
My last morning in Sarasota was a bit hectic as my friend Marc, who was studying for his law school finals, frantically tried to make plans to pick me up from, or near Sarasota, to take me to Clearwater where I was going to a friend’s wedding. I really asked too much of Marc. I didn’t intend on making his life a living hell but somehow managed to non-the-less. Initially when plans are made of course they sound reasonable, but when it came down to it I should have known that his finals would be overwhelming him.
Sida and I started the day off by going to the gym and getting some energy out. Then we returned to the house, showered, had lunch and headed north. We were planning to meet Marc around 3pm at an outlet mall about 1/2 way between Sarasota & Clearwater. We got there a bit early so I did some window shopping and when Marc called I could easily sense the distress in his voice. After shuffling my luggage from Sida’s car to his, I said my goodbyes and thanks to Sida (Sida!! Thanks again so much for having me! It was great seeing you and Gary and spending some time. Lots of love!!) and then began a hopeless attempt at cheering Marc up. The poor thing was at the end of his rope and there I was mucking with his schedule.
 |
| site of Barb and Rohan's wedding |
True to the friend he is, he attempted to apologize for his blatant stress and was as complimentary as ever. When we arrived at the location for the wedding he dropped me off with plans to go to the 24 hour Starbucks and study while I attended the wedding of Barb and Rohan. The wedding was being held on Clearwater beach and although I was certain I was in the right vicinity I couldn’t seem to find my way. There I was carrying a gigantic wedding package without a clue of where I was headed. Thank god I saw some other people who looked to be dressed for a wedding and when I asked them if they were there for Barb and Rohan they said yes and showed me the way.
 |
| the camera man |
It was a gorgeous day; a day built just for such a sunset wedding on the beach. I assumed, when I decided to attend the wedding, that I would not know a single other person there besides the bride and groom. Much to my surprise, when I walked up to the small set of chairs along the beach there behind a video camera was R.A. (Robert Archibald) Beattie. R.A. and I grew up together in Aspen in the same class and had been pretty good friends throughout the years.
 |
| RA and I, having some fun with props. |
I knew that he and Rohan were friends but had no idea he would be at the wedding-- I was so pleased that he was. We were among the few people to arrive early so we had time to catch up and it turns out he was living in Florida…in Winter Park (my college town) going to film school.
 |
| Here comes the bride |
Soon enough Rohan arrived and I caught up with him a bit before getting to my real work. I had promised Barb that I would be her unofficial wedding photographer, so I sat down my bag and box and started snapping photos like mad. Throughout the service I never sat or stopped, and I got the shots the real photographer was apparently too lazy (or polite?) to get. It was such fun!
 |
| Saying the vows |
I really loved one of the things the person who was running the ceremony said about commitment. Commitment is loving this person even while you know the faults and strengths of the person…but more importantly, commitment is when you continue loving the person regardless of the strengths and faults that come up later on that you have yet to discover about the person you stand opposite of. When you can stand together despite change --that proves a real commitment to your love.
 |
| So beautiful, Barb |
 |
| the flower girls |
After the sun set and all the photos were taken we headed to a Yacht club for the reception. I checked in with Marc on his studies and he not only sounded stressed but exhausted. I quickly made a few rounds in the room and then sneaked outside and jumped in his car so we could head back to his place. It was great to be able to see a few old friends so unexpectedly and to be able to attend a friend’s wedding.
 |
| Barb and i at reception...bummer about the flash reflection. |
We got back to Marc’s apartment and both of us crashed into bed after I gave him a much needed massage. Marc…I’m so sorry I put you through that stress!! Love you so much!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Step 39: Sarasota day 6
Sarasota Day 6:
The morning was a bit lazy as we got ourselves dressed and ready. Sida had lunch plans with some friends’ in downtown Sarasota so I planned to spend that time walking around taking pictures. Sida first showed me where she would be having lunch and gave me a quick driving tour so I could orientate myself, then she dropped me off on Bay Front drive right near the Island Park.
I had quite a bit of time to kill via Sida’s instructions on how long her lunch would last-- so I lazily walked. I walked along the Island Park where people were running, exercising, strolling, playing with their kids or walking their dogs, and I captured what I could via lens.
After that I walked along Bay Front Drive along the water til I got to the massive structure that is both famous and infamous in Sarasota; the Unconditional Surrender Statue. Despite local complaints about the statue, it is quite a tourist attraction and I ended up taking loads of photos for couples as they stood beneath it kissing. The statue is a recreation of a very famous photo taken in 1945 and definitely has you feeling passionate and a bit silly as you stand beneath it. But I loved it.
After some time there I headed into downtown Sarasota and did some window shopping. I had lunch in Whole Foods and eventually met up with Sida when she was finished with her lunch. One spot I had seen on my walk was a frozen yogurt shop that looked awesome. So, I convinced Sida we had to try it. Whiteberry…cool décor and damn good frozen yogurt. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarasota-FL/Whiteberry/89327916872
Not only was it good, but the guy taking the orders was unbelievably passionate about selling the stuff. He was about 20 years old and when Sida and I asked for a bit of info he excitedly took off into a full description of why this stuff is so awesome and the differences between what they do and what other people do. It was invigorating to see someone who actually was passionate about what he was doing. It made the stuff taste even better to know the people selling it love it so much. http://www.sarasotatalk.com/2009/10/frozen-yogurt-oasis/
The rest of the day I spent packing, organizing the next few days, and I went to Amazon.com and purchased a new hand held camera. Sida made dinner and gave me a Buddhist chants CD and we said goodnight with our lists and plans made for tomorrow.
 |
| View from Island park |
The morning was a bit lazy as we got ourselves dressed and ready. Sida had lunch plans with some friends’ in downtown Sarasota so I planned to spend that time walking around taking pictures. Sida first showed me where she would be having lunch and gave me a quick driving tour so I could orientate myself, then she dropped me off on Bay Front drive right near the Island Park.
After that I walked along Bay Front Drive along the water til I got to the massive structure that is both famous and infamous in Sarasota; the Unconditional Surrender Statue. Despite local complaints about the statue, it is quite a tourist attraction and I ended up taking loads of photos for couples as they stood beneath it kissing. The statue is a recreation of a very famous photo taken in 1945 and definitely has you feeling passionate and a bit silly as you stand beneath it. But I loved it.
 |
| Unconditional Surrender |
After some time there I headed into downtown Sarasota and did some window shopping. I had lunch in Whole Foods and eventually met up with Sida when she was finished with her lunch. One spot I had seen on my walk was a frozen yogurt shop that looked awesome. So, I convinced Sida we had to try it. Whiteberry…cool décor and damn good frozen yogurt. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sarasota-FL/Whiteberry/89327916872
Not only was it good, but the guy taking the orders was unbelievably passionate about selling the stuff. He was about 20 years old and when Sida and I asked for a bit of info he excitedly took off into a full description of why this stuff is so awesome and the differences between what they do and what other people do. It was invigorating to see someone who actually was passionate about what he was doing. It made the stuff taste even better to know the people selling it love it so much. http://www.sarasotatalk.com/2009/10/frozen-yogurt-oasis/
The rest of the day I spent packing, organizing the next few days, and I went to Amazon.com and purchased a new hand held camera. Sida made dinner and gave me a Buddhist chants CD and we said goodnight with our lists and plans made for tomorrow.
Step 38: Shantaram Quotes Last
SHANTARAM: Chapters 37-42
The final quotes from the fabulous book by Gregory David Roberts
*There was that elated moment I’d called glorious as I ran into the guns: that stupid was of lives. There wasn’t any glory in it. There never is. There’s only courage and fear and love. And war kills them all, one by one. Glory belongs to God, of course; that’s what the word really means. And you can’t serve God with a gun.
*Every door is a portal leading through time as well as space. The same doorway that leads us into and out of a room also leads us into the past of the room and its ceaselessly unfolding future.
*My dear friend, you can stand to eat a meal—if you must—and you can stand to make love—if you are able—but it is impossible to stand and drink whisky. It is the act of a barbarian. A man who stands up to drink a noble alcohol like whisky, in all but a toast to some noble thing or purpose, is a beast—a man who will stop at nothing.
*She had been beautiful once. It was the kind of beauty that grows from the sum of its parts rather than from one outstanding feature: a beauty that strikes the eye rather than the heart, and a beauty that sours if it isn’t nourished by some goodness from within. And she wasn’t beautiful then, in that moment. She was ugly. She was beaten and broken and finished. She was floating on the black lake, and soon the dark water would drag her under. There was a deep silence where her mind used to be, and blank, uncraving emptiness where once her cruel and scheming life had ruled. Standing there, invisible to her, I was astonished and bewildered to realize I felt not angry or vengeful, but ashamed. I felt ashamed that I’d filled my heart with revenge. The part of me that wanted to—What? Had I really wanted to kill her?—was the very part that was like her. I looked at her, and I knew that I was looking at myself, my own future, my destiny, if I couldn’t rid my heart of its vindictiveness.
*It was foolish, and, like most guilt, it only told one half of the story.
*The host—our bodies—and the viruses—any bug that makes us sick—are locked in a competition with each other. When the parasite attacks, the host develops a defense. Then the virus changes to beat that defense, so the host gets a new defense. And that keeps on going. They call it a Red Queen contest. It’s from the story ‘ Alice in Wonderland.’ Alice meets this Red Queen, who runs incredibly fast but never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice that, in her country, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
*He was a natural leader but, like many men who have the gift of command and the instinct to rule, he was deeply troubled by every expression of the leadership art. He was, at heart, a humble man, and that humility made him an honorable man.
*Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honor is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honorable way and you can enforce the peace without any honor at all. In its essence, honor is the art of being humble.
*You can only ever be yourself. The more you try to be like someone else, the more you find yourself standing in the way.
*I’m not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.
*I could feel her eyes on my like a blush of shame.
*I looked at all those white sculptures, and I thought, that’s what I am. That’s what I’ve always been. All my life. Negative space. Always waiting for someone, or something, or some kind of real feeling to fill me up and give me a reason.
*It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive.
*The word MAFIA comes from the Sicilian word for BRAGGING. And if you ask any serious man who commits serious crimes for a living, he’ll tell you it’s just that—the boasting, the pride—that gets most of us in the end. But we never learn. Maybe it’s not possible to be an outlaw without being proud in some way.
*And money, if the pile gets high enough, is something like a big political party: it does as much harm as it does good, it puts too much power in too few hands, and the closer you come to it the dirtier you get.
*Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do.
*Oh Lord and Lady—infinite yin-yang spirit in the sky, we humbly ask you to hear the prayers, today, of five souls that you put into the world, and left in the temporary care of our bodies.
*“Silences can wound as surely as the twisting lash.” Sadiq Khan
*The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reasons and their right to be.
*I know now that when the loving, honest moments comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.
*Heroes only come in three kinds; dead, damaged, or dubious.
*I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts.
*To survive in such a writhe of hope and sorrow the people had to be scrupulously and heartbreakingly honest. That was the source of their purity: above all things, they were true to themselves.
*The only kingdom that makes any man a king is the kingdom of his own soul. The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world.
*There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get—who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.
*Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.
*Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.
*No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.
*This is what we do. Put one food forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for the truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.
The final quotes from the fabulous book by Gregory David Roberts
*There was that elated moment I’d called glorious as I ran into the guns: that stupid was of lives. There wasn’t any glory in it. There never is. There’s only courage and fear and love. And war kills them all, one by one. Glory belongs to God, of course; that’s what the word really means. And you can’t serve God with a gun.
*Every door is a portal leading through time as well as space. The same doorway that leads us into and out of a room also leads us into the past of the room and its ceaselessly unfolding future.
*My dear friend, you can stand to eat a meal—if you must—and you can stand to make love—if you are able—but it is impossible to stand and drink whisky. It is the act of a barbarian. A man who stands up to drink a noble alcohol like whisky, in all but a toast to some noble thing or purpose, is a beast—a man who will stop at nothing.
*She had been beautiful once. It was the kind of beauty that grows from the sum of its parts rather than from one outstanding feature: a beauty that strikes the eye rather than the heart, and a beauty that sours if it isn’t nourished by some goodness from within. And she wasn’t beautiful then, in that moment. She was ugly. She was beaten and broken and finished. She was floating on the black lake, and soon the dark water would drag her under. There was a deep silence where her mind used to be, and blank, uncraving emptiness where once her cruel and scheming life had ruled. Standing there, invisible to her, I was astonished and bewildered to realize I felt not angry or vengeful, but ashamed. I felt ashamed that I’d filled my heart with revenge. The part of me that wanted to—What? Had I really wanted to kill her?—was the very part that was like her. I looked at her, and I knew that I was looking at myself, my own future, my destiny, if I couldn’t rid my heart of its vindictiveness.
*It was foolish, and, like most guilt, it only told one half of the story.
*The host—our bodies—and the viruses—any bug that makes us sick—are locked in a competition with each other. When the parasite attacks, the host develops a defense. Then the virus changes to beat that defense, so the host gets a new defense. And that keeps on going. They call it a Red Queen contest. It’s from the story ‘ Alice in Wonderland.’ Alice meets this Red Queen, who runs incredibly fast but never seems to get anywhere. She tells Alice that, in her country, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.
*He was a natural leader but, like many men who have the gift of command and the instinct to rule, he was deeply troubled by every expression of the leadership art. He was, at heart, a humble man, and that humility made him an honorable man.
*Virtue is concerned with what we do, and honor is concerned with how we do it. You can fight a war in an honorable way and you can enforce the peace without any honor at all. In its essence, honor is the art of being humble.
*You can only ever be yourself. The more you try to be like someone else, the more you find yourself standing in the way.
*I’m not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.
*I could feel her eyes on my like a blush of shame.
*I looked at all those white sculptures, and I thought, that’s what I am. That’s what I’ve always been. All my life. Negative space. Always waiting for someone, or something, or some kind of real feeling to fill me up and give me a reason.
*It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive.
*The word MAFIA comes from the Sicilian word for BRAGGING. And if you ask any serious man who commits serious crimes for a living, he’ll tell you it’s just that—the boasting, the pride—that gets most of us in the end. But we never learn. Maybe it’s not possible to be an outlaw without being proud in some way.
*And money, if the pile gets high enough, is something like a big political party: it does as much harm as it does good, it puts too much power in too few hands, and the closer you come to it the dirtier you get.
*Fate always gives you two choices: the one you should take, and the one you do.
*Oh Lord and Lady—infinite yin-yang spirit in the sky, we humbly ask you to hear the prayers, today, of five souls that you put into the world, and left in the temporary care of our bodies.
*“Silences can wound as surely as the twisting lash.” Sadiq Khan
*The cloak of the past is cut from patches of feeling, and sewn with rebus threads. Most of the time, the best we can do is wrap it around ourselves for comfort or drag it behind us as we struggle to go on. But everything has its cause and its meaning. Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its reason and significance: its beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Sometimes we do see. Sometimes, we see the past so clearly, and read the legend of its parts with such acuity, that every stitch of time reveals its purpose, and a kind of message is enfolded in it. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure or clearer than sorrow. And in the tiny precious wisdom that they give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reasons and their right to be.
*I know now that when the loving, honest moments comes it should be seized, and spoken, because it may never come again. And unvoiced, unmoving, unlived in the things we declare from heart to heart, those true and real feelings wither and crumble in the remembering hand that tries too late to reach for them.
*Heroes only come in three kinds; dead, damaged, or dubious.
*I felt the urge to let go and surrender to a simpler, poorer life that was yet richer in respect, and love, and a vicinal connectedness to the surrounding sea of human hearts.
*To survive in such a writhe of hope and sorrow the people had to be scrupulously and heartbreakingly honest. That was the source of their purity: above all things, they were true to themselves.
*The only kingdom that makes any man a king is the kingdom of his own soul. The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world.
*There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get—who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.
*Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting.
*Every human heartbeat is a universe of possibilities.
*No matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.
*This is what we do. Put one food forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for the truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.
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