Category: blog

I check my guestbook once in awhile and I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see new entries in them. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say, THANK YOU for signing my very old-school-relic of a guestbook. It might be me holding on desperately to the nostalgia-tinged days of the early web, but thank you for indulging me. And also, I lost my password to the guestbook so I can’t reply you guys. Yet. When I find some time, I will log in again and reply to each of you.

In the meantime, if you have included your website/blog link, know that I’ve definitely checked you out and bookmarked you 😉

Stay close!

A thought related to moving – I have so many things I feel positively haunted by my possessions. Incidentally it’s also the first day of Ghost Month here in Singapore, so I guess it’s kind of apt, this feeling.

But really, why do I have so many things? What happened to wanting to be a minimalist?

*

“Living out my small life in a spiraling megacity, I often feel like an 8-bit creature composed mainly of a mouth roaming a spontaneously generated set of white-walled malls, hungrily swallowing products: ordinary products, but also lifestyle-as-product, ethics-as-product, individuality-as-product. Sometimes the marketing is devilishly creative, and the consumption at times satisfying—the equivalent of haute cuisine. But I am pursued by a hangover that seems to locate me no matter where I am, and an incredible, relentless urge to purge my body of the aftereffects of my things, as well as my job, my ambition, my aspirations, my expectations, and to keep only my little and lonely life.”

– Conscience Round

Wow.

Very excited to finally be moving into my own (tiny) home. No more landlords!

More updates to come 😉

Interviewer: “You seem to be fearless, that’s the other quality I’ve noticed about you.”

Maya Angelous: “I’m afraid all the time but I’m not afraid of anything. I gave into that. Which was a great freeing production for me. Once I really admitted that I would die, that it is the one promise I can be sure would not be reneged upon. Once I understood that, then I could be present. And I’m totally present, all the time. I try. Now, I don’t make it all the time. But I try to bring all my stuff here in this studio. Everything I’ve got is here. And when I leave here, everything I’ve got will be in that cab, will be in the hotel.”

Interviewer: “That could be a dangerous philosophy, if you think that you gotta live every single moment, cause you could be greedy. You’re not saying that, are you? You know, take everything I can now, now now. You don’t mean that…”

Maya Angelous: “No, maybe just the opposite. Give everything I’ve got! Not take. I mean, what is that? Give everything. All the time. It’s great fun. And it is liberating. Absolutely liberating.”

Kathleen Fisher is one of my favourite writers on the internet. Everything she writes draws me in effortlessly. I don’t know how she does it.

From her latest blog post “From That to This”:

“During that awful time when Covid was ravaging the world, I watched a news report about a woman whose mother died, like most alone in a hospital ICU. The funeral was held in a parking lot and she sat on a folding chair underneath a canopy next to her mother’s casket where friends and family drove by to pay their respects. Such a contrast to Mark’s funeral, and I wondered how it is possible to survive the heartache of not only losing your mom, but then having to say your goodbyes on top of asphalt while people shouted condolences from car windows.

And yet somehow, I, like so many others have survived the heartache of the unimaginable. I’ve learned, I’ve changed far more than anyone realizes, I have oh-so-delicately dipped my toes into the pool of life and tested the water. This go ’round, though, is different. Because I am too familiar with how fragile this all is, the best approach for me is to live smaller and quieter. Will it always be like this? I don’t know, but I do know it’s the reason the beauty of a single blooming bulb in the darkest time of the year made me yearn for more of that.”

Our brain craves focus.

When it is focused, it is happy, still, powerful.

But a focused brain is a rarity in today’s world.

What do you do to keep your brain focused?

“I think in terms of the day’s resolutions, not the years’.” – Henry Moore

I really like this quote by Henry Moore because it reminds me that it’s better to live our life in days, not years.

Also, it’s in line with my desire to not over-plan my life. I feel it’s enough to have a vague idea of which direction I want to travel in and to leave the path open for sneaky surprises. It’s too boring to plan one’s life out in meticulous detail. And the last thing I want is a boring life.

Anyhow, writing this from Finland. It’s at least -10 degrees outside and the whole day it’s been snowing nonstop. I wonder why we aren’t buried under snow yet.

I fell sick yesterday/today and had some time to think about why I haven’t been writing as much as I want to. I opened my blog (this wonderful place) and realised the last time I posted was in January. If only I’d written more. Then I’d have recorded a little more of my life. Then the memories wouldn’t have slipped away.

Going to New York City next week and I’m looking forward to refreshing my impression of that place (change my mind, NYC), but mainly I just want to eat all kinds of deliriously good Chinese food there.

All I think about is noodles these days.

I almost forgot about my guestbook but I just read it and I’m surprised that there are new entries! Thank you for writing in my guestbook 😉 It’s such a wonderful feeling to read these words written by people I might never meet. But for some reason these connections feel very real. If you’d like to sign my guestbook too, you can click here. And if you have a blog too, let me know. I’d love to connect.