Monthly Archives: Nov 2010

To Go or Not to Go

Indecision stems from not knowing what you want. I always feel I greedily want everything, but what I actually want, are only a few. Once that is clear, the only natural thing to follow is go straight for them.

Good yoga session this morning. The weather has been insanely beautiful for more than two weeks!

Was sitting on the roof top of the Fringe Club yesterday having veggie lunch and sipping a glass of Chianti. Feeling content for a few seconds.

I made one friend from Saturday night’s Big Game viewing party, but saw a lot of desperation floating around. Hanging out with people does have a leveling psychological effect, in which sense, can keep one sane.

Had a long phone conversation with F last night. I subconsciously demand absolute openness from close friends and got slightly annoyed when not getting it. Utterly unreasonable I am.

Don’t impose on others what you yourself dislike. That’s the basics.

Silence Must Be Heard

Morning jogging on Bowen Road — one of the most solid sources of joy.

Thoughts are just oozing out of me during the run.

The means will eventually be abused — because it would lose its effectiveness on the long run and because its only existential value is utilitarian — whether it can be used to achieve the ends. So the subject matter would beat the means like a dead horse over the course to achieve what it had been achieved before but not now, since it’s losing its functionality. The means has no intrinsic value. Never turn anything into the means itself. That’d be the starting point of nullifying it.

Personality can be assessed through observation of physical qualities — movement, voice, speech patterns and mannerisms. The general movements are simply outer energetic expressions of inner temperament.

The body literally holds all of its history.

I noticed I always got blood rush to my face and short-breathing when trying to prove myself on something. Queasy in the stomach and almost a stabbing feeling at the heart when unable to make the right choice. It’s well known that liver is the site of anger. It seems to be the site of regrets as well.

Our first experiencing of loving and belonging was formed when we interacted with the bodies of our chief caretaker — usually the mother. Love bloom first and foremost as a physical interaction.

MBA

My MBA finally arrived…no sooner no later. Now, I have no excuses not to update my blog more frequently.

I feel I have neither time nor energy to digest every piece of my experiences. Some of them just got gobbled down without being properly digested and ended up lumping together into a gigantic cognitive mystery. Or confusion.

But why do I crave for lucid explanation for everything? Low threshold for uncertainty/ambiguity is a defining OCD symptom. Why not just a simple noticing of what is — not an attempt to justify or explain, but simply “being with” current experience.

Blur

All things will become a blur one day.

Spent a lazy afternoon with the visiting S at Stanley yesterday. Better than I expected. Downed 2 fruity beers and one glass of Pinot Grigio. S was in a good mood with his newly-gained freedom. Am more than convinced that he needs a woman with a whip to be happy. That’s the essential force that stimulates his personal growth. And he’d always need that.

The weather has been insanely beautiful recently. So divine that you’d think the only way to savour it is to get lost with a loved one.

Got Z’s text message. I had been wallowing in the fatalistic thoughts that one day, there’ll be one day, all things become a blur, and nobody, and nothing will even matter. But a simple message from thousands of miles away pulled him closer, and pushed that dreadful but inevitable prospect away, at least for the time being.

In the Mood

Office jerks. Shouldn’t allow that to spoil my mood.

Mood is prior to perception. Mood is basic and paramount. Literal expression tends less capable to capture the mood than non-literal channels — like music and painting. Nietzsche says, many times I can’t tell the difference between tears and music.

Wagner around the ears.

Any ideas you don’t take action on within ten minutes turned sour. The three feelings that cause the most trouble when left to fester rather than being communicated simply and straightforwardly — anger, fear and sadness

You’ll Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger

Watched Woody’s new flick. Very mediocre. Worse than his last one Whatever Works (2009), which I actually quite enjoyed. You should pace yourself to one movie every two years, perhaps.

Is there any good body-centered therapist out there in HK? Or Gestalt therapist? That’s why I still don’t see it as a cosmopolitan city.

Reich views orgasm as an important function because it discharges excess energy and leads to a breakdown of neurotic character structures. He says, full orgasm is absent in neurosis and that only a free mind in a free body can experience and express a total body orgasm, not just a genital one.

Body and mind are functionally identical and that unfinished, blocked energy must be released from muscles of the body and expressed through movement as well as be psychologically finished.

Orgiastic potency! The ability to express all emotions fully!

Work is a Comfort

Finally got a day off. Actually a couple. I don’t even know how to deal with this sudden rush of luxury of time.

Work is a comfort, or can be a blessing, from time to time. It is a nice distraction from mulling over mid-night life questions.

What do people think when they wake up in the middle of the night? Now it’s becoming a routine for me, like an old friend. 3:40 am, or 4:15. Waking up 5am is normal.

I like to keep it dark…so that sleeping can crawl back in easily. Reading Kindle against this dim backlight is now a new favorite. But this morning was watching the new season of “In Treatment”. “My life was broken,” Paul said. Gabriel Byrne does age very well, doesn’t he.

“That after a while all these stars are going to burn out and everything is going to be gone,” that’s Woody’s mid-night musing.

It must be difficult. Difficult for everybody, or at least those who have a tender heart. “It’s always difficult and always hard to find someone that you can relate to in the world, in a lasting and a fulfilling relationship. It’s very hard to have a relationship for one’s entire adult life with one person that’s good for them and good for you. It’s a difficult problem.”

Went to a boring media luncheon yesterday. Hated the vibe. I came for the fish, I’d have to say.

Reader of His Own Self

Proust says, in reality, every reader is, while he is reading , the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely  kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof its veracity.

The experiences of fictional characters afford us a hugely expanded picture of human behavior, and thereby a confirmation of the essential normality of thoughts or feelings unmentioned in our immediate environment. Yeah. Reading fictions makes us feel less lonely.

Alain de Botton: “An effect of reading a book which has devoted attention to noticing such faint yet vital tremors is that once we’ve put the volume down and resumed our own life, we may attend to precisely the things the author would have responded to had he or she been in our company. Our mind will be like a radar newly attuned to pick up certain objects floating through continuousness; the effect will be like bringing a radio into a room that we had thought silent, and realizing that the silence only existed at a particular frequency and that all along we in fact shared the room with waves of sound coming in from a Ukrainian station or the nighttime chatter of a minicab firm. Our attention will be drawn to the shades of the sky, to the changebility of a face, to the hypocrisy of a friend, or to a submerged sadness about a situation which we had previously not even known as we could feel sad about. The book will have sensitized us, stimulated our dormant antennae by evidence of its own developed sensitivity.”

A Secret Erotic Need

“To be violated is perhaps a need in women…a secret erotic need,” says Anais Nin.

To be loved is a mysterious thing, even under the best of circumstances. And it does not help much to try and inquire about love; if anything, asking about it muddles the situation further.

At best, the other person cannot tell you why he loves you; at worst, his reason for loving you turns out to be something about yourself you have never thought to be particularly lovable.

Watzlawick’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion was, do not simply and gratefully accept what life offers you by way of your partner’s affection. Ponder. Ask yourself — but not him — why he is fond of you. For he must have a vested interest or some other selfish reason that he is not likely to reveal to you.

Such as — to maintain the illusion that he’s still got possibilities life can offer … there’s still an “Other” way, an “Other” person, an “Other” life…few people can bear staring life at its bare, naked face.

The Hendricks say close relationship is the short path to revealing and sustaining essence. I never feel more alive than when I’m in an intimate relationship with another human being.

With Z, what felt like conflict initially often turned out to be the relationship trying to deepen. We’re moving closer to and further away from each other simultaneously.

The Situation is Hopeless, but not Serious

“We might only have been living a half-life before we faced up to the implications of death, but what exactly does a whole life consists of? Simple recognition of our inevitable demise does not guarantee that we will latch on to any sensible answer when it comes to filling in what remains of the diary. Panicked by the ticking of the clock, we may even resort to some spectacular follies.”

On Steroid of Lurve

Woke up around 3am. Can’t sleep, can’t read, can’t do anything serious…wandering around on the VS website and Etsy. I need to knock myself out in brainless consumerism to escape that menacing sense of loss and forced missing-out!

Probably I just rushed down too much magnesium in my system too quick.

We’re listening to Nick Cave’s No More Shall We Part at the same time, but thousands of miles apart.

I feel the heavy weight of destiny.

Reality is Opaque

Was a very quiet news day yesterday. Had to blow up the Beidou satellite story which I’d only use as a photo-caption story on a busier day. Turned out it was a quiet day for everybody and every other news desk; the Beidou story ended up as the splash; this morning unknowing readers picking up our paper would be put under impression that something huge has been achieved in China’s space program. A piece of reality was socially constructed.

Not “Why?” But “How?”

“Why?” is not the ideal question to ask if you want to get closer to the nature of things; “How” would provide more hints than “Why”. The renunciation of the classical ideal of causality didn’t come from some fluffy post-modernism theories, but from hard-core science of quantum mechanics. According to Heisenberg’s Uncertain Principle, it’s impossible to determine simultaneously both the position and velocity of an electron or any other particle with any great degree of accuracy or certainty.

Where do moral sentiments originate? Perhaps we’re really only “a bundle of sensations” that Hume described? Sentimentalists say ethics is based on (gut) feelings rather than absolute moral principles. It may sound wacky but feels closer to the answer. Reason cannot be behind morality. One cannot be motivated by reason alone; it got to involve the input of the passions.

Philosophy can be defined as the human desire for the fundamental explanation that is never met. It is the constant attempt to understand a reality when we know we can never get beyond our limited consciousness. Therefore we are locked in a process of continuously philosophising in a futile attempt to deify our place within reality.

A miracle is a violation of all prior experiences.

The Art of Slowness

Slow down, you’re moving too fast. You’ve got to make the morning last!

Internet fragments our attention span in a way that is so scary. It actually erodes, slowly, one’s sense of self.

It certainly erodes one’s capacity for the kind of pleasure in isolation that reading has. The printed book serves to focus one’s attention, promoting deep and creative thoughts. In stark contrast, Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from various sources. It worships speed and efficiency of optimized production and consumption.