Playlists

Hardly have the chance to really just sit down and listen to music without doing anything else. Most of the time music is an accompaniment to say, housework, work, etc. Some records I must add to my collection are: james Taylor, Peter Paul and Mary, some kind of wonderful by Carole king, and don McLean.

I always thought Carole king and james Taylor make a wonderful pair but don't think they ever happened.  But then again, Taylor and Carly Simon also had something "electric" between them and when they sang, it was pure perfect harmony. Too bad they didn't last. 

http://youtu.be/E_D0i7UC9UY

Requiem

And they sang my requiem

As I lay reposed in my eternal sleep.

And the journey I embarked on,

Had met its grand finale.

Things acquired, remembered, lived,

They would become dust.

I brought with me nothing,

And with nothing I departed.

Figments

And I wait to be awaken. And then you will be gone. An illusion that's what you are. You belong to my overactive mind. A figment of my imagination. 

http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/11/17/leonardos-brain-leonard-shlain/

Rhythm

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-shakespeare-loved-iambic-pentameter-david-t-freeman-and-gregory-taylor

Never gave much thought to rhythm before. Honestly, my rhythm is quite terrible. I can't count and play at the same time. Most of the time I just play by "approximation" which spells trouble when it comes to classical music. One of the reasons I don't think I can ever do the blues or boogie on the piano, although I very much wanted to learn.

It's all or nothing,

You see. 

House of cards

The lawlessness of this world

Where right becomes wrong

And wrong becomes right. 

Where there once was black and white

Now it is only gray.

We are standing on quicksand,

And living in a house of cards.

When the storm comes

All will be blown away,

And all we can do

Is sink deeper into our hollowness.

1663 days

With his last dollar

He bought a rose

And laid it upon 

Her grave.

Her grave,

Tinted a color of green 

By time and moss.

She had once been full of life

But now she laid

A long way underground.

But he loved her anyhow,

Even now,

When she laid,

Six feet underground.

The rose,

A pale ivory color,

Was her favorite bloom

It always chased away her gloom.

Oh How he missed her.

The way the sunlight danced across her ebony hair,

The way her eyes shone with love,

The way she was,

He had loved her entire being. 

But now she laid

Cold,

Where the sun would never shine.

Oh how she must miss the warmth,

The old man thought.

How he wished he could lay there beside her,

In that cold dark grave.

The old man sighed

And walked unsteadily away from the grave. 

Another day apart,

Just another day added to that 1663 days.

The imitation game

Quite an awesome movie which tells of Alan Turing's role in the Second World War. Turing was a mathematician/cryptologist, who devised a computer of sorts to break the Nazi's Enigma code. When one thinks of wars, one always thinks of the "frontliners" as the war heroes but the brains behind the scenes are equally important. Anyhow poor Turing, for all his war efforts, was eventually persecuted for homosexuality and had to go through chemical castration. He later killed himself (debatable) at age 41. 

It is probably unthinkable now to prosecute/persecute people based on their sexual orientation but I wonder what the origin of moral codes/law is. How do we decide what is right or wrong, how do we decide which wrong is a heavier sin than the other, how do we decide which sin is punishable? 

How we judge morals are often based on what religion dictates as right/wrong. If following that line of thought, then yes homosexuality is a sin. But so is murder, stealing, lying, adultery, hatred, etc. Is one sin heavier than the other? We discussed recently during BS that all sins are created equal. Hence, it is not true that Christianity rejects homosexuals but rather it views homosexuality as just one of the many sins of mankind. Does a church reject someone from entering its doors just because that person had told a lie the day before? Obviously not, otherwise, all churches would be devoid of a congregation. But then again, at the back of our minds, we human beings do weigh and compare sins. We often ask can a serial murderer be pardoned if at the end of his life, he begs for forgiveness and accept God? A lot of us have issues with this because of the unfairness of it. Would we feel the same way about a serial liar? Or a serial "angry" person? 

Role models

During bible study, we were asked who our role models were. Honestly, I couldn't think of any at that time. There are people whom I admire for their talents, tenacity, etc but as a role model, there really aren't many. But after a while, started to realize that yes, I do have one and that is Jesus. I of course didn't say this during bs, because it would have sounded too politically correct. It's really hard to imagine anyone else who could love as much as He did and truly truly forgive others for their trespasses as He did. His 

wonder lies not in his miracles and power or even as the son of God but for his ability to love. 

After all they did to him, this was what he said:

Luke 23:34 Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 

Indeed, most of the times we do not know what we do. I think most of us have inherited God's capacity to love but sometimes, this capacity gets overshadowed by our inherent darker nature- selfishness, greediness, etc. for some, there may come a point where they lose all of that goodness. It often starts with a little anger, a little bitterness but if we are not careful, we can get engulfed by and trapped in our own shadows. 

Love of his life

"Of course you can't find what you are looking for! You don't even know what you are looking for, don't you?!" The old man looked askance at the boy who looked piteously lost. 

The boy stared at the old man for a brief moment. Then sadly, he bowed his head. Yes, the old man was right. He had packed all his treasured belongings (which included a teddy bear with just one eye, $10 worth of loose change, his favorite book "treasure island", and a photograph of his mother when she was very young) determined to find the love of his life, you know, the kind that made your every pore feel alive, the kind that occupied your every waking moment, the kind that gave you goosebumps, the kind that drove you out of bed each morning, that kind of love. 

And yet, he did not know how that love of his life looked like; that love of his life had no name, not even, yes not even a category. Was it the pretty girl with the long dark hair who sat in front of him in science class? Was it a piece of music, a book, a hobby, a musical instrument, a pet? He didn't have the answer. 

The flowers

The flowers bloomed

Under that eternal sunshine.

But those in the shadows,

They wilted and died.

Across that wide ocean,

The petals of the dead ones,

Were tossed and turned

with the ravaging waves. 

Forgiveness

It is no wonder God reminds us constantly to love one another and to forgive others. Human beings are such pain in the ass sometimes and to have a forgiving heart, despite all injustice and unfairness we experience and see, is a challenge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2_OOaP763k&sns=em

I leave myself with this clip as a reminder to have a bigger heart. What injustice is greater than that of someone killing your loved one? 

Stephen hawking- the grand design

This is like revisiting physics class... Which I like but totally suck at. From the look of the first chapter, it seems as if hawking is not very impressed with Aristotle. But yet, one gets the feeling that hawking is trying to blend philosophy with science. I kinda liked the part where he questioned if we truly have free will as perpetually all things on earth follow a set of laws. He quoted an example where during awake brain surgery, we can be made to do certain things by simply stimulating different parts of the brain.

Following that line of reasoning, could it be that there exists a set of laws governing our brain, which made us do the things we do? 

Not sure if that's exactly what he meant though. The next chapter looks equally interesting and philosophical- what is reality? 

Choices

At the end of it all,

We will remember the choices we made,

And what had brought us here. 

With you

And it is with you,

That I feel more alone than ever.

Stripped to nothing,

Not a single shred of joy left.

"Even as the flowerets, by nocturnal chill,

Bowed down and closed, when the sun whitens them,

Uplift themselves all open on their stems;"

Bossypants- Tina fey

Very entertaining read. Tina fey has a sardonic, self-deprecating humor that I like and the book also gives the readers a glimpse into showbiz. Certainly not the easiest of jobs to write scripts with the end goal of making people laugh on a short timeline. I'd never really watched SNL but remembered seeing Tina fey impersonating Sarah Palin. Guess she's quite something. 

I liked the part where she wrote back to those Internet haters with witty, sarcastic repartee. 

Nothing else to comment about the book except that I find it quite an amazing feat to be able to make others laugh just through a piece of writing, without the need for a comedian to deliver the lines. 

Patience and impatience

Finally completed the arduous task of tagging all the posts. Should have done that in the first place. I often rush into things without proper planning simply because if something interests me, I just have to have to do it NOW. A really terrible impatient trait. But for some areas of my life, it takes me forever to make a decision, forever to take action, so much so that sometimes things just pass me by. As old frank sang,"regrets I have a few." 

Heart and mind

The heart, it is simple 

But the mind,

It is not.

The things the heart chases,

But the mind,

It chastises.

Chasing after the wind,

The mind,

It laughs at the heart's folly.

The heart, it believes

But the mind,

It tears those dreams apart.

What the heart wants,

The mind,

It doesn't give.

2015

Another year... This year passed so quickly, it's scary. Getting old... Used to be able to stay up for countdown till the wee hours. And now, by 11pm, I would rather be in the comfort of my big old bed. 

On another note, I was lamenting the lost photos from an old calendar I liked. And I actually found it while scrolling through photobucket, a site I used to use for my xanga blog's photos. 

Here they are:

This white boat was my favorite from the calendar. But I had remembered it as a red one. Funny how memory gets altered over time.