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

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

Forgetting is the Mercy of God, for it takes away what have been stupid in our lives

watched "Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" for the third time. dug out more meaning after i viewed it once again. and Beck's theme song "Everybody's gotta learn sometimes" (Original by The Korgis) sounds ever more touching and insightful.

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd

with memories erased,
in the purest state
the mind shines like eternal flame,
the deepest, sweetest and long lost sentiment revives,
against the worldly, knotty and dreary tide.



Change your heart
Look around you
Change your heart
It will astound you
I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Change your heart
Look around you
Change your heart
Will astound you
I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

A Thousand Country Roads

The epilogue to The Bridges of Madison County, A Thousand Country Roads, was published in 2001 due to the overwhelming requests from readers over the finale of Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson, as claimed by the author Robert James Waller. The book, of course, is not a sequel to the previous best-seller, since it deals with mainly another story, of Kincaid meeting with Carlisle McMillan, the son he begot after he had been discharged from the U.S. marines in the wake of WWII.

If you read it as a sequel, the narrative will disappoint you. There is not much to tell about Francesca, neither is Kincaid's passion towards the Iowa farmer's wife. There is a brief description on the lovers' almost re-encounter on the Roseman Bridge, the trysting place where the romance begins 16 years ago, yet the author never states whether the truck she heard up the hill is Kincaid's Harry(his car's name) heading away. Not knowing and afraid of what would happen when they meet again, the photographer has come to say adieu to his once and only great love, which is epitomized by the bridge.

The author does confirm that between Kincaid and Francesca great love has occurred though in his description, both are not certain whether the feeling sustains in the other's heart after all those years. Yet this is where the suspense lies. In the later years of Kincaid's life, he suddenly comes across a 'son' and a woman he has made love to forty years ago (which is the main part of this story). A new kind of emotion is stirred up, and he is thus filled with guilt and care. He confesses to Carlisle that he has not loved his mother back then (when free love prevails after war), and he instructs Carlisle to burn all his work, including Francesca's photos, for he wants no traces of his life in this world after death.

The author seems to hint at the end, that Kincaid, after meeting his son, desires to take back the will of sending all his personal properties to Francesca. But busying with seeing Carlisle and the mother, he is prevented to do so and dying of heart attack leaves his cameras and the old photos eventually at Francesca's hand. This has already been told in The Bridges of the Madison County but we do not know the details lying in between.

It is thus interesting, as a work of fiction, this two-part romance manifests itself in the form of research work prying into the real life of real people. So what else between Kincaid and Francesca? This is not we should ask about as we would on some simple melodramas. This is what life seems to be. Francesca loves Kincaid to the end but it MAY not be true in reverse. But it is this 'maybe' that gives life so much mystery and secret sparks that shine in the dark, as are stars that shine in our heart, at some epiphany moments for us to remember all through our lives.

photo from http://www.rosemanbridge.com/

日升日落，花開花謝，在遠方的那個人今天不知道還愛不愛我？
就這樣帶著一個千古之謎而終老。你不確定，但至少你還記得他。
陶傑（風流花相）

窮人含撚的經濟論述

林行止專欄 林行止 2007-08-24（節錄）

二、　　八月三日，路透社發自紐約的一則短訊，指出該市女皇書院的研究員在芝加哥、波士頓、明尼蘇達、達拉斯和紐約所作的調查，顯示本世紀以來，二十至三 十歲年階的全職女性，其收入已遠遠拋離同年階的男性（紐約市高百分之十七、達拉斯高百分之二十……）；三十歲以上的情況略異，即男性的收入稍高於女性，唯 負責這項研究的社會學教授認為這種差距很快會消失，因為統計顯示近二、三十年來，女性在賺錢上急起直追的勢頭未衰，男性若不「莊敬自強」，很快便會淪為 「論資（金）排輩」家庭中的次等公民。

　　「家庭」成員起碼必須有一對夫婦，隨覑女性「盈利增長較快」，家庭將愈來愈不易組成。

　　在先進的文明社會，絕大多數女性不會公開宣稱為金錢而結婚，她們只會「和富家子弟遊但為愛情而結婚」（go where the money is, then marry for love），不過，據游清源數天前提及那本《自然經濟學家》的說法（頁一八三─一八六），一項在八十年代所做的社會調查，顯示女性在金錢上不再猶抱琵琶， 「財政成功」已成為她們選擇對象的一項要素；在這方面，男性比較「落後」，進入新世紀後的數項社會調查，才得出男性亦會考慮結婚對象的財政狀況（主要見www.psychologytoday.com/articles ... 7-000008&page=1）。

　　男女性都向錢看的趨勢，令婚姻市場的活動非常「有趣」。女性收入提高，等於結婚後生兒育女當主婦的「機會成本」相應上升，加上醫學進步，超齡生產固沒 問題，儲存卵子備用亦日趨普遍，在適婚年齡結婚的女性遂愈來愈少；另一方面，由於女性收入增加，男性更會落力追求。結果也許是同居蔚成風尚而生育率持續萎 縮—法國前總統候選人羅瓦爾與男友同居二、三十年而「大量生產」，雖非孤例卻不常見！