“You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them… there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.”

I love that line. It was delivered by Rob Lowe’s character Billy in the movie St. Elmo’s Fire, with an understated tone of hopeful poignancy, if there even is such a thing. It took me a while to really, fully understand what he meant.

That’s the thing with humans. We get all up in our heads and we forget that we are not the center of the universe. We are not the main plot in a movie. We are just human beings all trying to make it in a “big bad world,” and we all gotta go through crap sooner or later. Sometimes we don’t win, sometimes we don’t get what we want.

Or maybe I’m just using “we” instead of “I” so I don’t feel so alone and pathetic right now. Maybe.

Attraversiamo.. Let's cross over.

i was planning to write about something else but i saw this movie on tv so i took a break from work, got some chips and decided i do need a break from all the grading and checking and chores and...everything. (from writing what i intended to, as well)


so, in honor of "eat, pray, love", i would like to share my favorite quotes/lines from the book and the movie.

"Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort."

"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake"

"When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and its time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you dont even know from which direction the sun rises anymore."

"Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark."

"A friend took me to the most amazing place the other day. It's called the Augusteum.
Octavian Augustus built it to house his remains. When the barbarians came they trashed it a long with everything else. The great Augustus, Rome's first true great emperor. How could he have imagined that Rome, the whole world as far as he was concerned, would be in ruins. It's one of the quietest, loneliest places in Rome. The city has grown up around it over the centuries. It feels like a precious wound, a heartbreak you won't let go of because it hurts too good. We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we're afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Then I looked at around to this place, at the chaos it has endured - the way it has been adapted, burned, pillaged and found a way to build itself back up again. And I was reassured, maybe my life hasn't been so chaotic, it's just the world that is, and the real trap is getting attached to any of it. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation."


"Letting go, of course, is a scary enterprise for those of us who believe that the world revolves only because it has a handle on the top of it which we personally turn, and that if we were to drop this handle for even a moment, well – that would be the end of the universe. But try dropping it….Sit quietly for now and cease your relentless participation. Watch what happens...The trees do not wither and die, the rivers do not run red with blood. Life continues to go on…. Why are you so sure that your micromanagement of every moment in this whole world is so essential? Why don’t you let it be?"

"One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?"

"Be with them who know what they have when they have you"

"Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots."

"The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice."

"This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something."

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."

"Sometimes, to lose balance for love is part of living a balanced life."

"You have no idea how strong my love is!"


will write more in the next days

awwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Ashton Kutcher, you got this one right!

"I was shooting a scene in my new film, No Strings Attached, in which I say to Natalie Portman,

“If you miss me, you can’t text, you can’t email, you can’t post it on my Facebook wall. If you really miss me, you come and see me.”

I began to think of all of the billions of intimate exchanges sent daily via fingers and screens, bouncing between satellites and servers. With all this texting, emailing, and social networking, I started wondering, are we all becoming so in touch with one another that we are in danger of losing touch?

It used to be that boy met girl and they exchanged phone numbers. Anticipation built. They imagined the entire relationship before a call ever happened. The phone rang. Hearts pounded. “Hello?” Followed by a conversation that lasted two hours, but felt like two minutes and would be examined with friends for two weeks. If all went well, a date was arranged. That was then.

Now we exchange numbers, but text instead of call because it mitigates the risks of early failure and eliminates those deafening moments of silence. Now anticipation builds. Bdoop. “It was NICE meeting u.” Both sides overanalyze every word. We talk to a friend, an impromptu Cyrano: “He wrote nice in all caps. What does that mean? What do I write back?” Then we write a response and delete it 10 times before sending a message that will appear to care, but not too much. If all goes well, a date will be arranged.

Whether you like it or not, the digital age has produced a new format for modern romance, and natural selection may be favoring the quick-thumbed quip peddler over the confident, ice-breaking alpha male. Or maybe we are hiding behind the cloak of digital text and spell-check to present superior versions of ourselves while using these less intimate forms of communication to accelerate the courting process. So what’s it really good for?

There is some argument about who actually invented text messaging, but I think it’s safe to say it was a man. Multiple studies have shown that the average man uses about half as many words per day as women, thus text messaging. It eliminates hellos and goodbyes and cuts right to the chase. Now, if that’s not male behavior, I don’t know what is. It’s also great for passing notes. There is something fun about sharing secrets with your date while in the company of others. Think of texting as a modern whisper in your lover’s car.

Sending sweet nothings on Twitter or Facebook is also fun. In some ways, it’s no different than sending flowers to the office: you are declaring your love for everyone to see. Who doesn’t like to be publicly adored? Just remember that what you post is out there and there’s some stuff you can’t un-see. But the reality is that we communicate with every part of our being, and there are times when we must use it all. When someone needs us, he or she needs all of us. There’s no text that can replace a loving touch when someone we love is hurting.

We haven’t lost romance in the digital age, but we may be neglecting it. In doing so, antiquated art forms are taking on new importance. The power of a hand-written letter is greater than ever. It’s personal, deliberate, and means more than an email or text ever will. It has a unique scent. It requires deciphering. But, most importantly, it’s flawed. There are errors in handwriting, punctuation, grammar, and spelling that show our vulnerability. And vulnerability is the essence of romance. It’s the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say,

“This is me, and I’m interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more importantly, all that I am not.”

— Ashton Kutcher

"Dance," said the Sheep Man. "You gotta dance. As long as the music plays. You gotta dance. Don't even think why. Start to think, your feet stop. Your feet stop, we get stuck. We get stuck, you're stuck. So don't pay any mind, no matter how dumb. You gotta keep the step. You gotta limber up. You gotta loosen what you bolted down. You gotta use all you got. We know you're tired, tired and scared. Happens to everyone, okay? Just don't let your feet stop."

- excerpt from "Dance Dance Dance" by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes, when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

- Haruki Murakami

today

told myself i'll take some time off today, so earlier this day i started with these




and by mid afternoon...and now that i'm about to end my supposedly rest day, i'm ending with these...


just can't get away from schoolwork.

"Star people are rare."

I chanced upon this book yesterday and immediately got a copy coz my old book got lost. As soon as I got home, I read it again and as always, it tugged at my heartstrings.

This book will forever be one of my favorites. In a world where people tend to be scared of not fitting in, this may be a book for young adults but the message is applicable for everyone. At it's heart, the book is about individuality and nonconformity, but the writer accomplishes much more than that.

allow me to share my favorite quotes from the book:

Stargirl

• “Because I didn’t feel like Susan anymore.” –when asked why she changed her name
• “I’m not my name. My name is something I wear, like a shirt. It gets worn. I outgrow it, I change it.”
• “I root for everybody!“
• “Nothing’s more fun than being carried away.”
• “Nobody has the time. The time cannot be owned. Time is free to everyone!”
• “It (enchantment) started when the earth was born. It never stops. It is, always. It’s just here.”
• “It’s really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There’s a whole commotion going on inside us.”
• “The earth is speaking to us, but we can’t hear because of all the racket our senses are making. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then–maybe–the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper.”
• “I’m erased. I’m gone. I’m nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl…. And… I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I’m not outside my world anymore, and I’m not really inside it either. The thing is, there’s no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain.”

Leo

• “In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn’t the opposite of say, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.”
• “We had no one to compare her to, no one to measure her against. She was unknown territory. Unsafe. We were afraid to get too close.”
• “It was a rebellion she led, a rebellion for rather than against. For ourselves. For the dormant mud frogs we had been for so long.”
• “We wagged our head and agreed what a goofy girl this was, maybe even officially crazy, but we walked away smiling and maybe not saying but all thinking the same thing: it felt good to get credit.”
• “She did not seem to notice. Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. Our bad things stuck very much to her…. All of her feelings, all of her attentions flowed outward. She had no ego.”
• “She was the opposite of cool; she held nothing back.”

Archie

• “My school is everywhere and always in session.”
• “On the contrary, she is one of us. Most decidedly. She is us more than we are us. She is, I think, who we really are. Or were.”
• “She’s anything but. She’s an earthling if there ever was one.”
• “If anybody is acting, it’s us. She’s as real as–as real as Barney.”
• “Every name is real. That’s the nature of names.”
• “Maybe that’s how names ought to be, heh? Why be stuck with just one your whole life?”
• “You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”
• “The trouble with miracles is, they don’t last long.”
• “How did this girl come to be? I used to ask myself. Sometimes I thought she should be teaching me. She seems to be in touch with something that the rest of us are missing.”
• "Whose love do you cherrish more? Hers or theirs? when you deside that, it's all downhill from there."

• “You know, there’s a place we all inhabit, but we don’t much think about it, we’re scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day…. It’s in the morning, for most of us. It’s that time, those few seconds when we’re coming out of sleep but we’re not really awake yet. For those few seconds we’re something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, unnamed, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We are, for a few brief moments, anything and everything we could be. And then… and then–ah–we open our eyes and the days is before us, and–we become ourselves.”

I hope you, friends, get to read this wonderful book, too.