The quest for truth seems a noble endeavor. Generally I want to know more about the world and how it works. Why people do something instead of others? How to live your life to its best potentials? At the same time, I know I will have a short life, limited time, limited resources, and there is no way for me to know the world. At most, I am just experiencing my little world, family, a few friends, and a few colleagues. Still the quest is always on. ...
The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
Here is one piece on Cormac McCarthy’s two books, The Passenger and Stella Maris, by Nicolas Medina Mora on Nation (Apr 3/10, 2023). Ned Rorem jokes that everything in the world from music to food to people was either German or French. In the same facetious spirit, the author says every era in the history of taste can be classified into one of two categories: those that prefer the Opera Prima and those that prefer the Late Masterpiece. Periods that favor debutantes are romantic and avant-garde, or else give rise to a classicist revival in which the old forms are imbued with youthful vigor. Times that admire maturity gravitate toward the baroque and the mannered, or else to a modernist refashioning of tradition. When the essence of art is associated with youth, a whole generation rediscovers Mozart; when it’s associated with wisdom, Bach becomes fashionable yet again. ...
“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, “then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.” 君子之交，其淡如水。执象而求，咫尺千里。问余何适，廓儿忘言。华枝春满，天心月圆。
我已堕入无边的黑暗 只靠自生的光亮四处摸索
Call me Chihiro I watched a show, Call me chihiro. This reminds me of the opening sentence of Moby Dick, Call me Ishmael. I like it. Chihiro’s ex-boss opened a shop of tropical fish. Chihiro thought he’s kind of her father. When I was in Singapore, somehow I’d like to visit Spain, Mexico or Argentina. I love that kind of passionate songs, dances, lives and spanish language. There is some happiness deep down there. ...
This Vlak1 lamp is a beauty. Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. -― Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? ―- Orhan Pamuk, Snow Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space. ― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence ...
“In modernist art, obscurity can be a conscious strategy. It is one of the ways in which the artwork can avoid being consumed too easily. Poems need to thicken their textures and scramble their syntax if they are not to slip down too easily, which is the fate of the commodity. Everyday language is no longer a medium of truth. It has grown stale and threadbare, and only by wreaking violence on it can you force it to yield something of value. Literary modernism sends language on a spree, but that’s because it is so distrustful of it. Jameson has some comments here on Benjamin’s idea of an ur-language, an original speech in which things speak their own names. Then comes the Fall, in which the bond between word and thing is broken. Words become arbitrary signs of things, and language degenerates into a Babel of tongues. ...
Here are some quotes from Alex Rosenberg. Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Does prayer work? Of course not. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding? Is there free will? Not a chance! ...