lang leav

“That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.”

- Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

fearless, but not careless

‘I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say. 'Sad, yes. But I don’t fear it.’

You question my indifference.

'I must not mean very much to you, then’, you say.

In the frozen fragments of time between consciousness and slumber and back again, I find myself staring unblinking at the whitewashed ceiling as I have for the last 6 hours, and the same question ticks and tocks back and forth in my head. Steady and unwavering, never stopping, keeping time with the hourglass growing heavy in my heart, gently burying us beneath the sandy call of responsibility, promise, duty and family.

And as suddenly as the dawn spills into darkness, I understand- fear is anchored by uncertainty. Fear stems from instability, it sprouts from doubt.

You and I? We don’t stand a chance in this universe. This conclusion is certain. Definite. Doubtless.

And this is why the opposite of fear isn’t courage, or bravery, or fearlessness, even.

The opposite of fear is love. Unconditional, certain, absolute love. Unmovable. Unshakeable.

'I’m not afraid of losing you,’ I say.

Perhaps in a parallel universe, the sands of time would fall differently for you and I.

light

"He was a boy, just a boy, when I was a very young girl. When I was sixteen, I made the discovery -- love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me."

- A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams

may the odds be ever in your favor

Yesterday I picked up my iPad and carelessly flicked to my iBooks app, and right there, open, was the first book in the Hunger Games series. Next thing I know, 6 hours had passed, it was 4.30am and I had re-read the entire Hunger Games trilogy.

I love the Hunger Games series for one reason- Katniss Everdeen. She is an accidental, and unwilling heroine, and every choice she made was an inherent reaction to something. It was always circumstantial, and it was never her choice, never up to her. That's what sets the Hunger Games series apart from other fantasy novels. There isn't that moment of awakening of inner nobility, that turning point where she makes that decision to be all heroic and shit (well up until she decides to be the mockingjay at least, but even then it was to honour her promise to protect Peeta over anything), she just reacts to what circumstances she finds herself in. It's the survival instinct, the need to protect the ones she loves that really really gnaws at me long after I'm done reading the books. 

More importantly, she has this ability to separate her emotion from doing what is practical. This sounds so ridiculous but it's comforting. Her strength, despite the pain. I probably sound really silly considering she's a fictional character but if she were real I would really, really respect her so much. Plus the fact that she is human, she has nightmares long after the war is over, that things don't just go back to normal. She struggles, and she breaks, and there are moments where she thinks she is going mad, but she stays strong.

Infragilis et tenera- delicate but unbreakable. That about sums up why the Hunger Games series means so much to me. Here's hoping the movie doesn't ruin it for me. 

The stars looked like hope to me. They are two thousand years-away light and nothing in the universe travels faster than light. You would need a lot of patience to travel across time so fast and for so long bringing light.

Jeanette Winterson

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real, too. They live inside us. And sometimes, they win.

Stephen King

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

Jonathan Safran Foer

i am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, i am not sad. as if he might one day convince himself. or fool himself. or convince others.

everything is illuminated - jonathan safran foer

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. but that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.

Haruki Murakami

so, this is my life. and i want you to know that i am both happy and sad and i’m still trying to figure out how that could be.

the perks of being a wallflower - steven chbosky

they say that extroverts are unhappier than introverts and have to compensate for this by constantly proving to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life they are.

paulo coelho - the witch of portobello

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.

Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave."

- Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert