It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world. —Mary Oliver
Four years ago already since I arrived in Japan.
I wrote this as a caption to this photo taken in July 2005:
Much of my Tokyo experience is like this: empty night trains moving through a city of ghosts. It's taken me a long time to get used to this very public emptiness as, in America, I had the ability to move through these spaces at will. Here I wait on train platforms and in empty train cars for them to move through me.
By the time I am 25, I carry a feeling in my blood that something is very wrong; something has been done to me, but the words never seem to find my consciousness. All I have as confirmation is a deep, dark terror I try to slough off, but can never quite shake it.--Oriana Koren
Pride is a sense of worth derived from something that is not part of us, while self-esteem derives from the potentialities and achievements of self. We are proud when we identify ourselves with an imaginary self, a leader, a holy cause, a collective body of possessions. There is fear and intolerance in pride; it is insensitive and uncompromising. The less promise and potency in the self, the more imperative is the need for pride. The core of pride is self-rejection.--Bruce Lee
"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better." --Anne Lamott
"No black woman writer in this culture can write 'too much.' Indeed, no woman writer can write 'too much'. . . No woman has ever written enough." --bell hooks
“Courage is[. . .]knowing you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”--Harper Lee
"If you think you're spiritually enlightened, go home for Thanksgiving." --Ram Dass
"Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action'.”--Ian Fleming, Goldfinger
"The only emotion you can have in patriarchy is fear." --John Bradshaw
When one does what Buddhas do, one is a Buddha.
When one does what Bodhisattvas do, one is a Bodhisattva.
When one does what Arhats do, one is an Arhat.
When one does what ghosts do, one is a ghost.
These are all natural phenomena.
There are no shortcuts in cultivation.
--Master Hsuan Hua
A poem by James Tate:
"You're treated like other humans, so stop with the angst." --Batou, from 攻殻機動隊, Kōkaku Kidōtai, Ghost in the Shell
"...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it."--Flannery O'Connor
"We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth."--Ray Bradbury
"I am not a mystic and I do not lead a holy life. Not that I can claim any interesting or pleasurable sins (my sense of the devil is strong) but I know all about the garden variety, pride, gluttony, envy and sloth, and what is more to the point, my virtues are as timid as my vices. I think sin occasionally brings one closer to God, but not habitual sin and not this petty kind that blocks every small good. A working knowledge of the devil can be very well had from resisting him."--Flannery O'Connor
There is a German proverb: “Der Teufel scheisst immer auf den grössten Haufen” [“The Devil always shits on the biggest heap”]... Prepare yourself: there is never a day without a sucker punch. At the same time, be pragmatic and learn how to develop an understanding of when to abandon an idea. Follow your dreams no matter what, but reconsider if they can’t be realized in certain situations. A project can become a cul-de-sac and your life might slip through your fingers in pursuit of something that can never be realized. Know when to walk away.--Werner Herzog
"If [other people] hadn’t made me cry, I wouldn’t be able to cry on cue now.... If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable."
--Gabourey Sidibe
"When it's over, I want to say: all my life / I was a bride married to amazement."
--Mary Oliver
Chogyam Trungpa: “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hold on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground.”
"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I often hear voices...If you believe, as I do, that the mind wants to heal itself, and the psyche seeks coherence not disintegration, then it isn't hard to conclude that the mind will manifest whatever is necessary to work on the job...Going mad is the beginning of the process. It is not supposed to be the end result."
--Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Go where the search takes you.
Original: 子曰：“吾十有五而志于学，三十而立，四十而不惑，五十而知天命，六十而耳顺，七十而从心所欲，不逾矩。”
English: Confucius said:”When I was fifteen, I aspired to learn. At thirty, I could be independent. At forty, I am not deluded. At fifty, I knew my destiny. At sixty, I knew truth in all I heard. At seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.”
There's a point when you go with what you've got. Or you don't go.--Joan Didion
"There's a lot of ego, greed, stupidity, and insanity. And that's a really bad combination." --Matt Groening
"...so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave." --Cheryl Strayed
"As much as anything, I miss being insulted every now and then, which is probably the Virginian in me."--Richard E. Byrd
"Form is a straitjacket in the way that a straitjacket was a straitjacket for Houdini."--Paul Muldoon
"Art is the only way I know to heal from the inside, to see the world for what it really is, beautiful and bright."--Danny Gregory
"Love is bigger than being satiated by happiness. --Derek Cianfrance
"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
--Michael Jordan
“When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.”
--Adrienne Rich
“If you’re not sure you could love your children, please don’t have them, because they might grow up and kill us.”--John Waters
4 comments:
I like how eloquently you put it. One of my ISSUES is not taking pub trans... in NYC totally different..
NYC is totally different, no? I cab it in NYC, but subways & trains in Tokyo!
I think with the panic disorder I feel like I am not in FULL control in Japan so I have still been avoiding public trains... "I don't understand" this in myself...
No joke, huh? That's the amazing thing about gaijin women in Japan: There is really no "in control" there for us--yet we manage to live and thrive there, day in and day out.
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