Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Even with Tomas, she was obliged to behave lovingly because she needed him. We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions-love, antipathy, charity, or malice-and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

.
.
.

Her feeling was rather that, given the nature of the human couple, the love of man and woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love be-tween man and dog, that oddity of human history probably unplanned by the Creator.

It is a completely selfless love: Tereza did not want any-thing of Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

Milan Kundera, the unbearable lightness of being

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Stranger Than Fiction


as harold took a bite of bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank god for bavarian sugar cookies. and, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten danish, soft-spoken secrets, and fender stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. and we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. they are here to save our lives. i know the idea seems strange, but i also know that it just so happens to be true.”


"Whole Wide World"



When I was a young boy
My mama said to me
There's only one girl in the world for you
And she probably lives in Tahiti

I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her

Or maybe she's in the Bahamas
Where the Carribean sea is blue
Weeping in a tropical moonlit night
Because nobody's told her 'bout you

I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her

Why am I hanging around in the rain out here
Trying to pick up a girl
Why are my eyes filling up with these lonely tears
When there're girls all over the world

Is she lying on a tropical beach somewhere
Underneath the tropical sun
Pining away in a heatwave there
Hoping that I won't be long

I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her
Caressing her warm brown skin
And then in a year or maybe not quite
We'll be sharing the same next of kin

I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Just to find her
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
Find out where they hide her