Am off today but spent half of the day msn-ing work-related things. Feel lousy and so trivial.
At Stanley again. A tonic to a HK-based soul. It has recorded, witnessed a lot of personal stories now.
I said before Love is the only answer. And I didn’t only narrowly mean romantic love. Compassionate love for fellow human beings, tolerance, accommodation…is the only way out.
Saturday morning phone call.
I was happy; I was sad. Always.
Real opening up always involves vulnerability.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Putting away all summer clothes, packing up all those summer memories, taking out winter sweaters, toughing out next couple of months. Change of seasons always makes me sad.
From time to time, I yearn for pure escapism, completely divorced from reality.
Went for a brisk walk on Bowen Road. Glorious sunshine. But like Z said once, winter sunshine doesn’t warm your soul.
Anais Nin: “What we are really suffering from is just a lack of capacity for relationship. The difficulties of relationship have nothing to do with the partner we choose.”
So why men stray?
Biological need for more sex, sexual variety and opportunistic sex. To boost ego to feel special. For the thrill of the chase. To escape the inevitable existential futility, angst and terror.
Read something from somewhere quoting a transgender man saying: “There’s a significant uptick in casual sex, a lowering of inhibitions, and far more interest in sexual variety…personally, I have noticed I have a new-found ability to completely divorce sexuality from emotional commitment.”
The genesis of love. Nietzsche delivers the cruelest analysis of the human emotion known as “love”. The German said love is born of egoism and actually “may be the most ingenuous expression of egoism”. Two main ingredients of love are desire and lust, which are always seeking after the new, as we tire of existing possessions and crave new attractions. “Possessions are generally diminished by possession.” Brilliantly brutal.
“I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life” — a comment from the New Statesman which I could not concur more.
Just finished “Essays in Love” — a plain title but the content is anything but. Misery needs company and am not alone! Not alone in feeling sillily euphoric, pathetically obsessed, loving and resentful in equal measure, and in the end can only sadly sigh over the greatest riddle of life.
Another beautiful end-of-Summer day today. So divine that it hurts.
Ordered half a case of wines from Z’s friend in Lama. One stone two birds.
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