Song

Was strangely hit with a wave of nostalgia while watching Sylvia Chang's "20-30-40" during the weekend - I suspect, but cannot confirm, that it was because of the music (the film was okay only).

愛的代價 - 張艾嘉

还记得年少时的梦吗?
像朵永远不凋零的花
陪我经过那风吹雨打
看世事无常　看沧桑变化

那些为爱所付出的代价
是永远都难忘的啊
所有真心的　痴心的话
永在我心中虽然已没有他

* 走吧　走吧　
人总要学著自己长大
走吧　走吧　
人生难免经历苦痛挣扎
走吧　走吧　
为自己的心找一个家
也曾伤心流泪　也曾黯然心碎
这是爱的代价 *

也许我偶而还是会想他
偶而难免会惦记著他
就当他是个老朋友啊
也让我心疼　也让我牵掛

只是我心中不再有火花
让往事都随风去吧
所有真心的　痴心的话
永在我心中
虽然已没有他

The Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

- William Blake

Pearls before Swine

This is my favorite comic strip after Peanuts.

At its heart, Pearls Before Swine is the comic strip tale of two friends: a megalomaniacal Rat who thinks he knows it all and a slow-witted Pig who doesn't know any better. Together, this pair offers caustic commentary on humanity's quest for the unattainable. The title of the strip comes from the New Testament, and is taken from the phrase, "Don't cast your pearls before swine." In this case, Rat believes that he is an endless source of wisdom, and that it is wasted upon Pig, who is rather slow. In truth, neither of them is very smart, but while Pig is content with his humble status in life, Rat is always on a futile search for fame, riches and immortality.

It's super funny.





























One of the sharpest cartoons around, methinks.

But it's tender and honest too. Have loved sending and receiving Pearls before Swine e-Cards.



I'm bored.





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About the Cartoonist
Stephan Pastis is an attorney-cum-activist who maintained his interest in UCLA Law School by creating Rat stories in his class notebook margins. Stephan actually practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Area before succumbing to full-time cartooning. Pastis lives with his family in northern California. He says his first and strongest influence is Charles Schulz. I always wondered if he is a Christian like Schulz.

Blank_Joy

She who did not come, wasn’t she determined
nonetheless to organize and decorate my heart?
If we had to exist to become the one we love,
what would the heart have to create?

Lovely joy left blank, perhaps you are
the center of all my labors and my loves.
If I’ve wept for you so much, it’s because
I preferred you among so many outlined joys.

— Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926)

Was reminded of this poem a few times this week - walking with BF in the nurseries and talking about "falling short of certainty", with a colleague about "searching all over again for hope", with thePensiveOne about uber G gal, and generally thinking about "incomplete joy" in the here-and-now.

We know who left the blank. Looking forward to it being filled finally.

Pre-Book Review and Top Ten List

Sara Nelson, So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading. New York: Putnam Publishing Group, 2003.

"I have a New Year's plan: I'm setting out to read a book a week for the next year and write a diary of the experience," write Sara Nelson in her memoir So Many Books, So Little Time. But this book is much more than what she intended it to be. It reads like a memoir including interracial marriage, sibling rivalry, teaching an eight-year-old to hit a baseball, erotic literature, all these seemingly disparate elements of Nelson's life brought to bear on the art of choosing the next good read. By the end, Nelson admits, "[ ... ] for every moment that was exhilarating, there was one that was frustrating. For every reading experience that was edifying, there was one that was elusive. And just as I thought I had a handle on what I was doing and how important it all was, I realized I was as clueless as ever." But what a great read the year made for the rest of us.

Nelson begins the new year with a reading list and a plan "to read a lot of nonfiction, to pay attention to poetry, to fill in at least some of the holes in my [literature] education," but finds that by the end of week one even the best laid plans fall through. Nelson starts with Ted Heller's Funnymen but becomes distracted due to her physical location--a secluded Vermont lodge once inhabited by the exiled Russian thinker and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. As Nelson attempts to read Funnymen, she finds herself blending her present situation into the narrative of the novel. "But suddenly it's not so Funny. In the book, Heller is describing the honky-tonk vaudevillian atmosphere of a Catskills nightclub; I look up for a moment and see hard ground and bare, frozen trees. One character refers to the 'A-bomb' nature of the act because it 'kills' so well, and I wander into the Russian Orthodox chapel the author built for himself in the basement." Moments like this occur throughout the book as Nelson vividly draws us into her interior world of reading so we too can experience a year dedicated to reading--something most book lovers can only dream about.

I haven't actually read the book. The blurb above is from Barnes and Noble. Here are the other 9 books that I would (currently) like to read this year.

little i

While discussing the Riding Alone movie with a walktalk friend yesterday evening, I was surprised at the surge of emotion that rose up with the memory of a particular season of life that I associated with growing up -too fast. It was strange indeed that the memory could still bring back those feelings of reluctance to reliquish dependency and a childish envy for carefree-ness.

Later at night, while sorting my lunchtime treasurefinds from BooksActually, I saw that I had somehow picked up this poem by ee cummings, typed-produced line by line on graph paper on an Olivetti Lettera.

who are you, little i
(five or six years old) peering
from some high window;
at the gold of november sunset
(and the feeling;
that if day has to become night
this is a beautiful way)

- ee cummings

And it was true. That same reluctant period saw some of the greatest miracles of provision and mercies from the Father, who loved His child enough to let her grow up.

Movie: <千哩走单骑 > Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

He rode thousands of miles alone
In the wild blue mountains
Of a strange yellow land
To find the courage of Lord Kuan
Not for battle of the kingdoms
But to say sorry to a son.

Behind the black veil of a red mask
He weeps for himself and the boy
That hurts for his embrace
He sings to the loud suo na
Of brave deeds and war heroes
His voice drowned by tears.

A old man and a child are lost
In the wild blue mountains
Of a strange yellow land
They hold each other tight
One has ridden thousands of miles
So that the other is not alone.

(Written after watching the movie)

(Photo by In_and_out_of_Focus)

A Connecting Question

Fell asleep on this rainy Sunday afternoon counting the "funny-shaped sheep of God" one has encountered in the past week. Thinking quite a lot these few days about the potential for powerful kindness, and equally powerful cruelty, within the people of God in church. One heals, the other destroys. Crabb thinks that our ability to reach through the bad dynamics of sinful hearts and touch the holy appetites beneath depends on the answer to this question:

"Are we so empowered by the Gospel that we are disposed to continue believing in another's miraculously granted goodness, and to therefore find delight in the other, no matter what degree of ugliness we encounter?"

- From "Connecting", by Larry Crabb

Where the SideWalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

-Shel Silverstein