A dream inside a dream might not be a dream.

Last.... batch of quotes from the Border Trilogy. I really must be more concise with these next time... but these were truly lovely. Could not leave them.

The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.

His hands clasped behind him at the small of his back in a stance he had perhaps admired or read of but a stance native to some other country, not his.

“When you’re a kid you have these notions about how things are goin to be, Billy said. You get a little older and you pull back some on that. I think you just wind up tryin to minimize the pain. Anyway this country aint the same. Nor anything in it. The war changed everthing. I dont think people even know it yet.”

"Your friend is in the grip of an irrational passion. Nothing you say to him will matter. He has in his head a certain story. Of how things will be. In this story he will be happy. What is wrong with this story? 

What is wrong with this story is that it is not a true story. Men have in their minds a picture of how the world will be. How they will be in that world. The world may be many different ways for them but there is one world that will never be and that is the world they dream of. Do you believe that? “Maybe. Anyway, some men get what they want. No man. Or perhaps only briefly so as to lose it. Or perhaps only to prove to the dreamer that the world of his longing made real is no longer that world at all. ”

periodic click like a misset metronome, a clock, a protent. a meaure of something periodic and otherwise silent and vastly patient which only darkness could accommadate.

“The dead boy in his arms hung with his head back and those partly opened eyes beheld nothing at all out of that passing landscape of street or wall or paling sky or the figures of the children who stood blessing themselves in the gray light. This man and his burden passed on forever out of that nameless crossroads and the women stepped once more into the street and the children followed and all continued on to their appointed places which as some believe were chosen long ago even to the beginning of the world.”

He said that perhaps death took a larger view. That perhaps in his egalitarian way death weighed the gifts of men by their own lights and that in death's eyes the offerings of the poor were the equal of any. Like God.

Where do we go when we die? he said. I dont know, the man said. Where are we now?

In the middle of my life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it a long time. I tried to see the pattern that it made upon the earth because I thought that if I could see that pattern and identify the form of it then I would know better how to continue. I would know what my path must be. I would see into the future of my life. How did that work out? Different from what I expected. It was interesting. It looked like different things.

"When you look at the world is there a point in time when the seen becomes the remembered?"

“I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. What's the hardest? I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. Yessir.”

“If we do not know ourselves in the waking world, what chance in dreams?”

He said that the light of the world was in men’s eyes only for the world itself moved in eternal darkness and darkness was its true nature and true condition and that in this darkness it turned with perfect cohesion in all its parts but that there was naught there to see. He said that the world was sentient to its core and secret and black beyond men’s imagining and that its nature did not reside in what could be seen or not seen. He said that he could stare down the sun and what use was that?

Taiwan

 These two were taken on the train

The street below my grandmother's apartment - when darker, the white specks are stars

The sea from a plane - the white specks are boats. They too, are like stars

Taiwan from the sky

A beautiful sunset in Ping Tung 

The first catholic church ever built in Asia - right in Ping Tung. I'm not Christian but this was a lovely, lovely place. 

Busy Taipei!! 台北不是我的家，我的家鄉沒有霓虹燈...

Sifted clouds! Cut and jagged.

The sea... on the way to a large temple

The sky at 6 outside my aunt's home

I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.

I am BACK from Taiwan and this blog has suffered a one-month lapse of writing. But no fear... I will be uploading some photos soon and for the meantime, enjoy some quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I was meaning to upload these (it is one of my most loved books) but never had the time to. We studied it for class. A book not only expressing the injustice of racism, but also a successful bildungsroman that captures the growth of a young girl and her family through a small town poisoned with prejudice. Lovely book.

They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know 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. 

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Love the two above.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. 

It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you.

Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal.

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

Atticus had two yellow pencils for me and a football magazine for Jem, which I suppose was a silent reward for our first day's session with Mrs. Dubose.
"Jem, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible for what she says and does. Of course, I'd rather she'd have said it to me than to either of you, but we can't always have our 'druthers."

A person can't help the way they feel

Recently watched Dirty Dancing, and it is such a romantic movie - a must-see for every girl! 1) Patrick Swayze is swooning - really - such a slick dancer, there's only one word for it and that word is HOT. 2) The dancing really is groovy. 3) The music is a blast of fun - really happy.
A huge thank you to my lovely friend Justina who introduced it to me and made me watch it, I won't ever forget it!

   

“Happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.”

Digging through my blog drafts and I found a stack of Emma quotes I'd forgotten to upload! So... here they are!

"No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home than engage in schemes of pleasure."

Quote above sounds like me, hahaha.

I absolutely cannot do without music. It is a necessary of life to me; and having always been used to a very musical society, both at Maple Grove and in Bath, it would have been a most serious sacrifice. I honestly said as much to Mr. E. when he was speaking of my future home, and expressing his fears lest the retirement of it should be disagreeable; and the inferiority of the house too—knowing what I had been accustomed to—of course he was not wholly without apprehension. When he was speaking of it in that way, I honestly said that the world I could give up—parties, balls, plays—for I had no fear of retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to me. I could do very well without it. To those who had no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite independent. And as to smaller-sized rooms than I had been used to, I really could not give it a thought. I hoped I was perfectly equal to any sacrifice of that description. Certainly I had been accustomed to every luxury at Maple Grove; but I did assure him that two carriages were not necessary to my happiness, nor were spacious apartments. 'But,' said I, 'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life would be a blank to me.'"

The quote above compares the beauty of music to the material necessities of comfort living - love it - but one must remember priorities pragmatically - and it is unfortunately spoken by a rather annoying character in the book.

"The post-office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for." There was a little blush, and then this answer, "I must not hope to be ever situated as you are, in the midst of every dearest connection, and therefore I cannot expect that simply growing older should make me indifferent about letters." "Indifferent! Oh! no—I never conceived you could become indifferent. Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive curse." "You are speaking of letters of business; mine are letters of friendship." "I have often thought them the worst of the two," replied he coolly. "Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does." . . . "When I talked of your being altered by time, by the progress of years," said John Knightley, "I meant to imply the change of situation which time usually brings. I consider one as including the other. Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle—but that is not the change I had in view for you. As an old friend, you will allow me to hope, Miss Fairfax, that ten years hence you may have as many concentrated objects as I have."

Post office, letters of love, memories of young age! In comparison to old Knightley. Nice quote and conversing.