Sentences

Have never read anything by Jhumpa Lahiri, but this was magical and sums up how I feel about books and writing. A good sentence – like a really perfect combination of words – just makes me feel so good, and they can be found anywhere from blogs to judicial opinions. I savor a good sentence [...]

On chasing perfection

This article is kind of pornographic good for the type A, OCD prone  among us. The titillating sensation of reaching “perfection” is truly exhilarating; it’s also universal beyond making an omelette. Actually reading this reminded me of the first “essay” I had to write, in 3rd grade, in Chinese, in which I used a “chengyu” [...]

love language

An aspect of 2046 that’s always confounded and fascinated me is how Tony Leung spoke Cantonese while Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi spoke Mandarin. Or really just scenes where two parties in a conversation are speaking to each other in essentially different languages. I have always always wondered why or what the point of it [...]

toska

Edit: apparently, there’s a similar term for this in Czech, per Kundera. Anglo emotions must not be that nuanced, because humina humina, anglo barbarians. Vladmir Nabokov: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific [...]

On beauty

This is going to sound just a little pretentious, maybe a little arbitrary, therefore unnecessary in sum. However: Don’t you think the word “beauty” is so bastardized these days? I mean, listen, what do you think of when you hear the word beauty? It’s not the same as, say, Plato’s ideal of beauty. #amiright? So [...]

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper

Tweeted this earlier today. I’m realizing the concept is not only applicable to grand schemes, but to anything that meets an end. Isn’t it true, that most things end with a whimper. There isn’t much flair, drama or climax in life; mostly plateaus, melodrama and disenchantment.

libertinage du sentiment

came across this phrase earlier today in a marivaux play; this could make for an interesting post.

New favorite blog

Leisure class He makes me feel like I’m pandering to the camp.

Essentially, I was writing about the romantic temperament. Jim Willard is so overwhelmed by a first love affair that he finds all other lovers wanting. He can only live in the past, as he imagined the past, or in the future as he hopes it will be when he finds Bob again. He has no [...]

So if the Devil wear Prada, Adam, Eve wear Nada

1. Do you enjoy the recent increase in posts? I feel like I might as well have a tumblr sometimes since pitching Rih Rih against Charli doesn’t exactly do justice to the kind of blogs that WordPress is supposed to maintain. And I increasingly feel like sharing less on fb and more random bits on [...]