Excerpt 16 : Coincidence

Sometimes we call it coincidence, sometimes it is just something that is hard for us to brush it from our shoulder. Or rather, sometimes it is just something that we want so bad to see.

As I searched for a file, I mistakenly clicked on a random file. A linked file to be exact. 

The link linked me to here. It is an excerpt of a love letter from Stieg Larsson to his life-partner Eva. I wouldn't find it too exciting if I didn't write a post about him several days ago. Beyond 'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' saga, there is a small story, read here if you want to know what happened to Eva after Stieg Larsson died. 

And here is a beautifully written goodbye :

Stockholm, February 9, 1977  

Eva, my love,  

It's over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It's all over some day. That's perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I've never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I'd realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me...is infinitely small. Well, I'm not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I'm writing it to tell you "farewell." I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes...a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead. 

There are things I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I'm aware of what's waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it's something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn't born to sit in an armchair. I'm not like that. Correction: I wasn't like that...I'm not going to Africa just as a journalist, I'm going above all on a political mission, and that's why I think this trip might lead to my death. 

This is the first time I've written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don't suffer, I don't want that. Don't forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that's hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting... 

I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you... 

Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It's over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu. 

I kiss you goodbye, Eva. 

From Stieg, with love.

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Excerpt 15 : Der Steppenwolf

Image from Pinterest

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From this book, I wrote down these texts in my little book.
These excerpts came from the Harry Heller also known as the Steppenwolf's records | 1927  :

How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.  | pg 43

His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between 2 poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousand. | pg 66 ✮

Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made of many threads. | pg 69 

"If I could be a child once more!". He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. | pg 73 

All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All. | pg 73 ✮

It is true that every time my life was shattered in this way I had in the end gained something, some increase in liberty and in spiritual growth and depth, but with it went an increased loneliness, an increasing chill of severance and estrangement. | pg 78 ✮

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There are something about the language written in the old days that shower me smiles. The thought of having the long gone authors scrutinize about each line to be beautiful and worth spoken out loud over and over again like a poem. I always wonder whether they actually talk like that in those days, or their architecture of writing is just both as complex and simple as it is. 

I'm 2/3 part through, there will be more beautiful excerpts to be updated I hope.

These are all my favorites, but the ✮ excerpts are my favorite-favorite :D

Excerpt 14 : Hypothesis

5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will. - Carl Sagan

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I love hypothesis. I love how raw and random it be. I love how it doesn't end with a strict summary and opens a lot more possibilities. I love how it tickles my mind and raise my curiosity. I love how I don't have to say one final answer and put a full-stop. I love how it might be wrong and it might be right, but it doesn't matter, because after all, it is just a hypothesis. 

It is like Einstein telling me; "Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."

Hypothesis seems like an idea to go to places where you'll have reasons to find any answers possible and you have the ticket to be wrong or right. If you never did wrong, then how would you know that you are right? If you close your mind to just accepting the summary decided by other people, then how would you enjoy the whole process of having an experiment?

After-all, life should not be like reading a text book written by someone else.
You should craft your own text book.

Excerpt 13 : Your Voice

“If you spend enough time reading or writing, you find a voice, but you also find certain tastes. You find certain writers who when they write, it makes your own brain voice like a tuning fork, and you just resonate with them. And when that happens, reading those writers — becomes a source of unbelievable joy. It’s like eating candy for the soul. 

And I sometimes have a hard time understanding how people who don’t have that in their lives make it through the day.” 

- David Foster Wallace

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Excerpt 12 : The Important Thing About Becoming a Runner

From NR Project :

What you have to understand is that most runners out there have no special abilities, we all started somewhere and we all struggle – present tense. It doesn’t get easier, not for anyone, but you get better, you always do. If you run – you are a runner, and every runner you meet will respect you and accept you because they know what it is like, they understand what you are going through. If you are out of shape and you go running, you may feel that other runners are judging you – they don’t. They celebrate and admire you, because what you are doing isn’t easy.  

What they are doing isn’t easy either, they just had more practice in making it look easy. If you want to be a runner, be a runner. Even if you have never done it before, haven’t got any special gear and not entirely sure what you are doing. The form, the speed, the ability to cover serious distance will come to you eventually if you keep at it. Remember that a large part of it, all of the excuses and the reasons why you can’t do it or can’t do it today, are in your head.  

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to stop questioning and just go and run.

Read full text here. 

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PS : I like those writings a lot *in the blog, it doesn't feel like I'm reading an article. I feel like the writer is talking to me directly - and that is what we call a good writing :D 

No I, I, I just you, you, you. 

Excerpt 11 : Jim Carrey's Secret to Life

I've seen his speech before this, I've shared the link in this blog too,
and someone created a beautiful video out of it.

Enjoy;

❤

Post by Karim Metwaly.

Excerpt 09 : The Art of Losing

Read the whole essay here. - by Ruth Ozeki in Shambala Sun Magazine :

So what is the difference between losing and letting go? What makes losing feel like such a disaster? On an obvious level, it’s about control. When I let go, I’m in control; when I lose, I’m not. Letting go is a willful act; losing, a violation of my will.

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I think there’s a powerful link between creativity and death. We make things because we lose things: memories, people we love, and ultimately our very selves. Our acts of creation are ways of grappling with death: we imagine it, struggle to make sense of it, forestall or defeat it. 

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To care for a parent with Alzheimer’s is to practice losing every day. I wrote a lot during that time, which was part of my practice. These are some entries from my blog :    

May 25, 2004 

A lot has happened. My mother turned ninety last month and we had a little birthday party for her. 

“How old am I?” she asked me. 

“You’re ninety, Mom.” 

Her eyes widened.

“I am! That’s unbelievable! How can I be ninety? I don’t feel ninety.” 

“How old do you feel?” 

“Forty.” 

She was perfectly serious. 

I laughed.

“You can’t be forty. Even I’m older than forty.” 

“You are?” she exclaimed. “That’s terrible!” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

She shook her head.

“You know, I must be getting old. I just can’t remember anything anymore.” 

She looked up at me and blinked. 

“How old am I?” 

Later on, I asked her, “How does it feel?” 

“What?” 

“When you can’t remember things. Does it frighten you? Do you feel sad?”

“Well, not really. I have this condition, you see. It’s called os... oste... ” 

“You mean Alzheimer’s?” I said, helping her out.

She looked astonished. “Yes! How on earth did you know?” 

“Just a guess...” 

“I can never remember the name,” she explained.

 “Of course not.”

 “It affects my memory...”

 “...and that’s why you can’t remember.” 

She frowned and shook her head.

 “Remember what?” 

“There’s not a single thing I can do about it,” she told me, when I reminded her.

“If there was something I could do and I wasn’t doing it, then I could feel sad or depressed. But as it is...” She shrugged. 

“So you’re OK with it?” 

She looked at me, patiently. 

“I don’t have much choice,” she explained, “So I may as well be happy.”

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Excerpt 08 : Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

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- and all were not worth a passing glance, everything lied, stank of lies; they were all illusions of sense, happiness and beauty. All were doomed to decay. The world tasted bitter. Life was pain.

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Govinda knew that he would not become an ordinary Brahmin, a lazy superficial official, an avaricious dealer in magic sayings, a conceited worthless orator, a wicked sly priest, or just a good stupid sheep amongst a large herd. 

Excerpt 07 : Older & Younger People

We are all experiencing more or less the same lifetime now.

 

What is it the slightly older people want from the slightly younger people? They want credit for having survived so long, and often imaginatively, under difficult conditions. Slightly younger people are intolerably stingy about giving them credit for that.

 

What is it the slightly younger people want from the slightly older people? More than anything, I think, they want acknowledgement, and without further ado, that they are without question women and men now. Slightly older people are intolerably stingy about making any such acknowledgement.

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Everything I wish I wrote to represent my thoughts on human's relationship between older and younger people. Thanks Kurt Vonnegut.

Excerpt 05 : My Father's Suitcase

The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy. - My Father's Suitcase by Orphan Pamuk

After Murakami, I am definitely going to try Orphan Pamuk's writing.

Excerpt 04 : Missed chances and Regrets

Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森 (1987)  -- by Haruki Murakami

"But who can say what's best? That's why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives."

I think I missed all my chances and I'll live in certain unavoidable regrets throughout my life.

But oh well, it's life.

Excerpt 03 : Solitude

“Solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside. I think in my own way I’m aware of this danger—probably through experience—and that’s why I’ve had to constantly keep my body in motion, in some cases pushing myself to the limit, in order to heal the loneliness I feel inside and to put it in perspective. Not so much as an intentional act, but as an instinctive reaction.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Excerpt 02 : Dance Dance Dance

“As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?” — from Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami

Like Sofia Coppola, Haruki shows us how lonely he is from his works. The depth of his detachment from the social world is too visible, the energy and feelings he put in his works were touchable by reading his books. All the time I was reading, I kept on thinking "how he can put up with these kind of feelings and channel them into his works?".

His writing is a bit depressing, and I'm not going to recommend it to people as a 'must-read' books. But his works are phenomenal  indeed. It is understandable if the Westerners are impressed with Asian Literature only by reading Murakami's works. His ability to capture reader's feeling - phew.

He wrote beautiful things in the most simplest manner - almost blunt and direct, toneless but deep. His books that I've read : IQ84 and Norwegian Woods. 

Excerpt 01 : IQ84

You’re still young and healthy. Maybe that’s why you don’t understand what I am saying. Let me give you an example. Once you pass a certain age, life becomes nothing more than a process of continual loss. Things that are important to your life begin to slip out of your grasp, one after another, like a comb losing teeth. And the only things that come to take their place are worthless imitations. Your physical strength, your hopes, your dreams, your ideals, your convictions, all meaning, or, then again, the people you love: one by one, they fade away. Some announce their departure before they leave, while others just disappear all of a sudden without warning one day. And once you lose them you can never get them back. Your search for replacements never goes well. It’s all very painful—as painful as actually being cut with a knife. You will be turning thirty soon, Mr. Kawana, which means that, from now on, you will gradually enter that twilight portion of life—you will be getting older. You are probably beginning to grasp that painful sense that you are losing something, are you not? - Murakami , IQ84