On the topic of: Meaning

Over the past year I've realised, I add meaning where there is no meaning. And I've thought about it well, it just comes natural to me because like most, you see the world as you are. It could have made me feel outright delusional having assumed the greater more colourful story line at every point if I had not met the people I did in Barcelona. 

Barcelona changed me in a lot of ways. To know that there is a whole army of people who express love in the same way as you coming from a place of authenticity where it never was an act (yay!) is probably my go-to thought as of late, when I draw the bar for which I set my standards.

I've also realised that no matter what you've been through or where you've been, you're still in your own company at the end of the day. I am even stretching to the notion where I could  be sleeping next to someone, but it won't even be that same thing anymore. Because now I want strength, not codependency. I want it so it's like, two people on separate paths that cross more frequently than most and when they do it is the purest moment -- always "home" -- and when you look at them you are looking at the extension of your very own being -- and it is a feeling of comfort, peace, confidence, strength and so much love it does not have to be said.

And I feel most at home when I can be my purest self with someone I trust and love, but I've realised that being this way, even if you trust and love them, to someone that doesn't come from the same place can inflict the worst kind of pain.

Sometimes people think I'm a little idiotic, and it's okay to step on me. It's hard for me to express the point sometimes, because I can't believe it just isn't known. I've always encouraged people to be their most outspoken, authentic self around me -- because that's where real bond is built for me. Without it, I find it waste of time, energy -- because I am being that authentic self with you. So if I'm displacing it, then that's my own fault. But my approach is always this -- over time, you learn about someone -- gaps that needed filling get filled, questions you have get answered -- and I'm not the type to cut someone off because they've behaved really poorly towards me (except the one), because after time and immersion with that person, I stop taking it personally. Even to the questionable characters - I stop taking that personally. I will still honour you as a human being, but it will only ever go so far, you know?

I think that allowing people to reveal their ugliest side helps in some way. They might think I'm a doormat, but they don't know I'm actually watching them. When people like me it's generally because they think I'm smart -- I don't really know how they forget sometimes. Maybe because I struggle a lot. Maybe forgiveness looks stupid to some people.

Whenever I am upset, it's out of disbelief and betrayal that I was revealing my authentic self to said person, and that was taken for granted. 

This week I've found out, my passionate, hyper self is actually really calm with the right company (he will be called Z). My mind can be on 10 different planets at the same time but with the right person, I'm no where else. So much so I haven't had a suicidal episode in 2 weeks. So much so I'm starting to wonder about the relationship I have with myself, and what it could turn into, if I start to treat myself the way said person (Z) treats me.

Before I left Barcelona, my housemate who became a big brother of sorts, Alfonso, told me something like, "I really hope you have become closer to yourself, discovered more of yourself after this, and more so when you are back in Australia."

You know sometimes you can be the clumsiest, craziest, or reserved, observant, whatever - but around the right company, you really don't need to explain yourself.

 “So many went on a quest to tame her,
The only man to win her heart was the one
Who was also free.”
― Nikki Rowe

“It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.”
― John Joseph Powell

eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4

"Daemons. They don't stop working. They are always active. They seduce. They manipulate. They own us. And even though you're with me, even though i created you, it makes no difference. We all must deal with them alone. The best we can hope for, the only silver lining in all of this, is that when we break through, we find a few familliar faces waiting on the other side."

Words

“Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak.”

—Margaret Weis, Dragons of a Lost Star

being impeccable in one’s actions and feelings

“The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You’re after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one’s actions and feelings.”

—Carlos Castaneda 

The Land of Tears

If someone loves a flower, that which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself, my flower's up there somewhere. But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him its as if all the stars went out, and that isn't important? 

He couldn't say another word. 

All of a sudden he burst out sobbing. Night had fallen. I dropped my tools. What did I care about my hammer? About my bolt, about thirst and death? There was on one star, on one planet, on mine, the Earth, a little prince to be consoled. I took him in my arms. I rocked him. I told him, 'the flower you love is not in danger. I'll draw you a muzzle for my sheep. I'll draw you a fence for your flower. I.... I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to reach him, where to find him. It's so mysterious, the land of tears.

―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Transcript: Hannibal S03E03 - Secondo

What your sister made you feel was beyond your conscious ability to control or predict. 

Or negotiate. 

I would suggest what Will Graham makes you feel is not dissimilar. 

A force of mind and circumstance. 

Love. 

He pays you a visit or he doesn't. 

Same with forgiveness. 

And I would argue, the same with betrayal. 

The god Betrayal. Who presupposes the god Forgiveness. 

We can all betray. 

Sometimes we have no other choice. 

Mischa didn't betray me. She influenced me to betray myself, but I forgave her that influence. 

If past behavior is an indicator of future behavior, there is only one way you will forgive Will Graham. 

I have to eat him.

What is REAL?

“What is REAL?" asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day, “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick–out handle?”

 "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When someone loves you, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

 "Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

 "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

 —Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

I won't

(source: http://langleav.com/post/125616015056)

Penny Dreadful Season 2 Episode 8: Lily Frankenstein's Monologue to the Creature

Lily Frankenstein: What in God's name do you want of me?

The Creature: What I want I cannot have. You are incapable of it

Lily Frankenstein: Yes I know. You want to walk in the village and hold my hand. And when people are cruel you want me to love you even more. Do I hurt you? You pathetic creature. How can you imagine that I could care for you? Does that face belong alongside this? Doesn't the world smile on us? Don't we make a beautiful couple "thee and me"? Should we wander the pastures and recite your fucking poetry to the fucking cows? You are blind; like all other men.

The Creature: And you're unlike all other women.

Lily Frankenstein: You tell me how. We flatter our men with our pain. We bow before them. We make ourselves dolls for their amusement. We lose our dignity in corsets and high shoes and gossip and the slavery of marriage. And our reward for this service? The back of the hand ... the face turned to the pillow. The bloody aching cunt as you force us onto your beds to take your fat heaving bodies! You drag us into the alleys my lad and cram yourselves into our mouths for 2 bob when you're not not beating us senseless when we're not bloody from the eyes and the mouth and the ass and the cunt! Never again will I kneel to any man. Now they shall kneel to me. As you do monster. My monster. My beautiful corpse. How clever he's been, our creator. But our little god... has brought forth not angels. But demons. Thee and me. And what should we do with this power, undead thing? You're a thoughtful man, a philosopher even, so tell me, why do we exist? Why have we been chosen? Tell me.

The Creature: I don't know.

Lily Frankenstein: Is it to suffer?

The Creature: Yes.

Lily Frankenstein: Must it be?

The Creature: How can it be other? We long for that we can not have.

Lily Frankenstein: Women? I'll bring you a dozen we can fuck them together. Me? Then you shall have me. I want you. I want a man unlike all other men. My brother, my equal. I'll take you by this beautiful white, dead hand and lead you to my bed right now. I'll bleed for you. I'll love you, for your sadness, and your poetry and your passion and your rage and your infinite, luxurious ugliness. I'll lick your sins away. And when Victor comes home, we'll put our hands around his throat together, and watch him die. And then this will be our home. And then? What then, undead thing? We were created to rule, my love. And the blood of mankind will water our garden. Us and our kin, and our children, and our generations. We are the conquerors. We are the pure blood. We are steel and sinew both. We are the next 1000 years. We are the dead. No being who ever was or will be shall love you like I do.

Bravo Billie 

David G. Allen #qotd

#qotd -- Anaïs Nin

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
                                Anaïs Nin

Imogen Heap - Neglected Space

Hello.
I watch you come and go.
I know you can hear my voice
Don't walk away

Come daydream with me
In closed loops and future-proof cardboard to caviar.
Let’s show them how good we are.
If you look after me, I’ll look after you.

[...]

I'm a story in mourning
And you're the author
So pour out your masterpiece

Entropy increasing
How long before I'm dust?
Can we discuss?

Love Camus —#qotd

“I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are. Do not go around asking for honesty in what people think; much of what they perceive as thinking is empty anyway because it’s thought out again and again and comes out refined and muddy. The ones who know how to feel might have to say to you a couple of interesting things or not and when they do that, you ought to know how to listen. So learn how to listen. You can’t make someone open up about their feelings in case they don’t want to. But you can remain open yourself through listening deeply and completely; they might want to talk about the weather and keep it simple — allow them to feel the simplicity. They might wish to throw a tragic metaphor to you and whisper “fucking hell”, then shut off again. Still, the feeling is there because the moment is. Emotion pours out directly or indirectly each time people engage themselves in the process of genuine interaction. Keep it genuine. Keep it simple.”

—Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

Lana Del Rey - Ride

"I was in the winter of my life, and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three years down the line of being on an endless world tour, and my memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. 

I was a singer - not a very popular one, I once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet, but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again, sparkling and broken. 

But I didn't really mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted, and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I'd been living, they asked me why - but there's no use in talking to people who have home. They have no idea what it's like to seek safety in other people - for home to be wherever you lay your head. 

I was always an unusual girl. My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean... And if I said I didn't plan for it to turn out this way I'd be lying... 

Because I was born to be the other woman. 

Who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone. 

Who had nothing, who wanted everything, with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn't even talk about it, and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me."

Ms. Bradshaw

I am obsessed with Sex And The City. I've tried to get into it before with no success but these days I guess everything's just a little more relatable (I guess a kinder way of saying, I'm not getting any younger).  

"There's some real truth about you. I can vouch for you."

I won't ever forget those words leaving my friend's lips. That's the best thing you could ask for in a friendship, I think. Every so often when I'm feeling down, I wonder what it is that I give to people that make me worth their time. Sometimes I get so clouded in my head I can't even remember who I am or what I want anymore. That's when it really helps, I guess.

I was on the right path when I first left home; I had life by the balls back then, but I was young, extremely naive, extremely happy and  about to make the worst decisions of my life. For some strange reason (that isn't so strange afterall), I turned my first priority to fixing a relationship that was never meant to have happened in the first place. For four years I did that. 

That's what happens when you and the guy have no common values and very different priorities -- if that wasn't obvious enough already. And then I decided to make the most retarded decision of my life by jumping into a relationship with a psycho. So.

I spent about 6 years focused on - not me. 

Point is, I never thought Carrie Bradshaw from Sex And The City would be a character I'd be relating to. She's a dream for any woman who neglected herself for so long and that - untameable side to her, so to speak. I'm probably romanticising that a little bit, but whatever it is, it isn't square.

Just finished the second season of SATC and it ends with some beautiful words from Carrie, as she watches her ex, Mr Big crawl into his limo with his new fiance. She says to herself:

"Then I had a thought. Maybe I didn't break Big. Maybe the problem was he couldn't break me. Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free, until they find someone just as wild to run with."

Until then.

The Symposium

Went down memory lane in my inbox last night. Found these two excerpts from Plato's The Symposium emailed to myself in 2008.

'These are the lesser mysteries of love, into which even you, Socrates, may enter; to the greater and more hidden ones which are the crown of these, and to which, if you pursue them in a right spirit, they will lead, I know not whether you will be able to attain. But I will do my utmost to inform you, and do you follow if you can. For he who would proceed aright in this matter should begin in youth to visit beautiful forms; and first, if he be guided by his instructor aright, to love one such form only—out of that he should create fair thoughts; and soon he will of himself perceive that the beauty of one form is akin to the beauty of another; and then if beauty of form in general is his pursuit, how foolish would he be not to recognize that the beauty in every form is and the same! And when he perceives this he will abate his violent love of the one, which he will despise and deem a small thing, and will become a lover of all beautiful forms; in the next stage he will consider that the beauty of the mind is more honourable than the beauty of the outward form. So that if a virtuous soul have but a little comeliness, he will be content to love and tend him, and will search out and bring to the birth thoughts which may improve the young, until he is compelled to contemplate and see the beauty of institutions and laws, and to understand that the beauty of them all is of one family, and that personal beauty is a trifle; and after laws and institutions he will go on to the sciences, that he may see their beauty, being not like a servant in love with the beauty of one youth or man or institution, himself a slave mean and narrow-minded, but drawing towards and contemplating the vast sea of beauty, he will create many fair and noble thoughts and notions in boundless love of wisdom; until on that shore he grows and waxes strong, and at last the vision is revealed to him of a single science, which is the science of beauty everywhere. To this I will proceed; please to give me your very best attention:

'He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, and who has learned to see the beautiful in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty (and this, Socrates, is the final cause of all our former toils)—a nature which in the first place is everlasting, not growing and decaying, or waxing and waning; secondly, not fair in one point of view and foul in another, or at one time or in one relation or at one place fair, at another time or in another relation or at another place foul, as if fair to some and foul to others, or in the likeness of a face or hands or any other part of the bodily frame, or in any form of speech or knowledge, or existing in any other being, as for example, in an animal, or in heaven, or in earth, or in any other place; but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without increase, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things. He who from these ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is. This, my dear Socrates,' said the stranger of Mantineia, 'is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute; a beauty which if you once beheld, you would see not to be after the measure of gold, and garments, and fair boys and youths, whose presence now entrances you; and you and many a one would be content to live seeing them only and conversing with them without meat or drink, if that were possible—you only want to look at them and to be with them. But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty—the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life—thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine? Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may. Would that be an ignoble life?'

On Reading And Running

"The keys to life are running and reading. When you're running, there's a little person that talks to you and says, "Oh I'm tired. My lungs are about to pop. I'm so hurt. There's no way I can possibly continue." You want to quit. If you learn how to defeat that person when you're running, you will know how to not quit when things get hard in your life. For reading: there have been gazillions of people that have lived before all of us. There's no new problem you could have–with your parents, with school, with a bully. There's no new problem that someone hasn't already had and written about it in a book." –Will Smith

Geraldine Brooks - The Idealists

"Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table, making sure everybody's socks match, the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists, but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon, who pays the bills and sweeps up after them." - Geraldine Brooks

Not taking the men vs. women notion from it, but rather, idealists vs. realists. Speaking from a place of extreme idealistic tendencies in the past, this is something I was seriously blinded to. Funny shit, Sherlock.

Quotes from Ellen, Portia, Will

Watched a good few. Inspired by many of the themes spoken about. Love, relationships, family, career, spirituality, purpose, goals etc. Y'know it's Hollywood and all this but it is what you take from it, and this is just bliss for me. Seeing people come out not only stronger and wiser from life experience; but more loving, open and compassionate, too.

"Greatness is at the edge of destruction. The reason someone becomes great is because they survived death. That's what made you great; You were almost over." Will Smith, the Smith family interview on Oprah

"I work really hard at trying to see the big picture and not getting stuck in ego. And I think there is an energy. spirit and soul and an intelligence that we can't possibly fathom, and I want to be connected to that."

We're all put on this planet for a purpose, and we all have a different purpose. It's our journey, if we follow that journey, - if we connect with that love, and that compassion, that's when everything unfolds." Ellen, on Oprah

"I used to think the way to be strong was to be tough. The way to be independent was to not need anyone. But she's taught me that the more vulnerable you are, and the softer you are, and the more you allow people into your life and into your heart, the happier you are, and the more valuable you are to other people. She's taught me that who I am is perfectly good enough, and that I don't have to pretend to be anyone other than who I am. And that's the most incredible gift, that anyone could give to anybody that they love." - Portia, on The Ellen Show

Einstein's Letter To His Son

My dear Albert,

Yesterday I received your dear letter and was very happy with it. I was already afraid you wouldn’t write to me at all any more. You told me when I was in Zurich, that it is awkward for you when I come to Zurich. Therefore I think it is better if we get together in a different place, where nobody will interfere with our comfort. I will in any case urge that each year we spend a whole month together, so that you see that you have a father who is fond of you and who loves you. You can also learn many good and beautiful things from me, something another cannot as easily offer you. What I have achieved through such a lot of strenuous work shall not only be there for strangers but especially for my own boys. These days I have completed one of the most beautiful works of my life, when you are bigger, I will tell you about it.

I am very pleased that you find joy with the piano. This and carpentry are in my opinion for your age the best pursuits, better even than school. Because those are things which fit a young person such as you very well. Mainly play the things on the piano which please you, even if the teacher does not assign those. That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes. I am sometimes so wrapped up in my work that I forget about the noon meal. . . .

Be with Tete kissed by your

Papa.

Regards to Mama.