Heartbeat

Where you stand, where you are, that's what your life is right there, regardless of how painful it is or how enjoyable it is. That's what it is. - Taizan Maezumi

Have you ever listened to your own heartbeat with a stethoscope? I have. Last week, Rubberface came home with a stethoscope, and taught me how to listen to my own heart. After much figuring about (Rubberface chastised me for not knowing the accurate location of my heart), I finally heard myself (literally, listen to your heart!).

Dum dum...dum dum... dum dum..

Wow, I said to her, that's what's keeping me alive.

In that moment, a revelation hit me. That life can be very simple and uncomplicated, but so fragile at the same time. At the end of the day, it's more important to keep your body healthy, and to keep that heart pumping. When it comes to the human body, strange things can happen without reason. The heart is not operated by chips and wires, can't be broken apart to analyze and put back easily. For some reason or another, it can just stop. No heartbeat, no pumping, no blood.

If the heart doesn't beat, there's really no need to sweat all the other things. It doesn't really matter.

Sleep has evaded me the past weeks, while vivid, weird and morbid dreams have taken over. I can't remember if I was terrified in those dreams, but I wake up recounting every scene, every feeling I had and wondering why I could have dreamt of myself swimming through marshland clogged with severed body parts and dead dogs, being chased by skeletons in black robes, and running/ flying/ fleeing down flights and flights of stairs.Maybe i should try sleeping on the other side of the bed or drinking less water before bedtime...

Being Happy

I was happy, i knew that. While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it do we suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

- Excerpt from Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba The Greek

How happy are you, on a scale of 1-10? If you're not at a 10, why not? What are your pre-requisites for a 10? Is it achievable, does it require adjustment? What about spontaneous moments of 10? Do you have them, or remember them?

When good things are happening, when you're experiencing happiness and contentment, let go of your bitterness and just allow yourself to be happy.

It's okay to be happy, and we don't always need drama or justification to be so.

Future, Woven of Dreams

The old world is tangible, solid, we live in it and are struggling with it every moment - it exists. The world of the future is not yet born, it is elusive, fluid, made of the light from which dreams are woven; it is a cloud buffeted by violent winds - love, hate, imagination, luck, God... The greatest prophet on earth can give men no more than a watchword, and the vaguer the watchword the greater the prophet.

- Excerpt from Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba The Greek

Wow

Wow....

I am tired, I feel like I have just completed a 3-hour run... not that i really know how that feels, but i imagine that to be pretty exhausting.

I'm not even sure i remember how it feels like to run for 30 mins...

Scarlett just wrapped up our first gig of the year, and the numerous weekends and nights of rehearsals paid off. I am bowled over how many of our friends came to support us, and to share this beautiful evening with us. We are not professionals, and we have day jobs.. I don't even know for sure how we found the motivation and energy to gather everyone for the practices leading up to this gig. I am enamored by the Scarlett girls, and I am overwhelmed by the love we received tonight.

What have we done, to deserve this?

February seems to have started on a much better note than January. A much anticipated long weekend trip to Phuket was balm to the frayed nerves, and it seems the Year of the Tiger promises good things to some of us. It's great, i think... considering how 2010 started. After chatting with some friends tonight, I realized that I wasn't alone in having a bumpy start to the year!! Guess it makes swimming in s**t easier when you've got someone swimming with you with whom understands how s**ty it is to be swimming in s**t.

*Sneezes 6 times*

WHOA... that's flu a-callin'!!!

Brilliant Ideas, Brilliant Minds

I spent a big part of today looking at some very inspiring websites, such as The Cool Hunter (www.thecoolhunter.net), globorati (www.globorati.com), The Sartorialist (thesartorialist.blogspot.com) and Garance Dore (www.garancedore.fr). Inspirations come in so many forms, and through so many channels - it feels great to be inspired.

While chatting with Niks Biks today, I suddenly had a mind image of a person lost in the middle of an ocean in chopping seas, struggling to stay afloat. It's thundering, it's dark, and the sea was of a blue so dark that it was almost black. And suddenly, he/she sees someone else who was also lost and struggling in the waters. There, in the middle of vast nothingness, the situation created instant soul mates out of the two persons, bonded by desperation and hope. It is easier to hope when one is not alone.

Immediately, I penned down this inspiration, and I will strive to write a short story out of it. If not, just an account of this fictitious experience of my actors.

And now, i have another inspiration to start something very VERY exciting (among the million other things that I'm currently doing... saxophone, yoga, greek lessons, scarlett... or and of course, work!) But i have a good feeling about this, so i'm going to continue to grow my seedling of inspiration for Project "Let's Go", stay tuned!

I've Gut a Feeling

Hello February! God, i need to improve on this blog writing. Penning once a month can hardly justify maintaining a blog. It's not that I don't have thoughts that I'd like to share, but i just have so many things going on that I find sitting in front of my computer writing my blog a luxury.

So anyway, recently, there's been a lot of talk about gut feelings.

"Go with your gut feel."
"Listen to your gut, what is it trying to tell you?"
"Trust your gut feelings."

Since when did gut feelings become reliable? And what do people without gut feelings do? How do they make their decisions? I've always had a hard time finding my gut feelings, because i'm weighing pros and cons, and thinking good and bad. On the contrary, i find gut feelings highly suspicious... i see it more as an emotional response masking itself as intuition. Wait a minute... is intuition and gut feeling the same thing? I don't think so. I think intuition is informed, but gut feelings are not. Intuition is backed by some rationale most of the time, but gut feelings are always more of a gamble.

Then again, in this uncertain and unpredictable (arguably) world, maybe all we have are intuition and gut feelings... and a belief that at the end of the day, everything will be all right and be for the best.