Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams — Both Sides of the Ocean
We'll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether we like it or not.
While Northern Indiana winters have never really been my thing, there are plenty of ways to maintain a stiff upper lip. Escaping via daydreams and isolated thought streams are just par for the course, at any rate.
More than one draft sits desolately in the backend of this website. Words caught on a page, waiting for the cohones to publish. 2015 is already in the second month, and this is the first post of the year. Not the most aggressive start.
Speaking of working like a slave,
Work, Command, Create: Tips on Hustling, Leadership, and Hobbies from Winston Churchill
I'm not overworked, by any means, but I often find my attention overtaxed and waning with each social media swipe or scroll. Churchill's prolific writing career and legendary focus went hand in hand. Breaking past the writer's block, the internal censor that seems to grow with age — this is something I need to work on.
We have a new client who wrote her first book at 50. Her inspiration and motivation are rather catching as well, she's already working on book number two (plus her own podcast series, videos, blogs, and a newsletter). It's never too late.
You are the average of the five people closest to you. Who are those five people?
An English flatmate of mine in Beijing brought all kinds of Britishisms into my daily life. When my mind wanders, most often, it's back in Asia. Seven years, and now, two years back home in the US. While I remain appreciative of the wide open spaces, clean air, and uncensored internet of America — there is a haunting wildness that will most likely always pull my thoughts back east.
The roller coaster ride that was expat life, for me, was highlighted with a sense of singularity. From being alone in a foreign land, to the unity of the globe through technology, it was a newfound perspective on oneness with the universe.
I felt like the only human being alive on Earth, transcended to the pre-civilisation days, engaged in an intimate conversation with nature ... the alluring deserted beach and its silence were more powerful than a thousand cries. It was difficult to ignore the call.
Solidarity with oneself and the world, with the merest of pushes, can switch into something else entirely. Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 is a beautiful combination of parallel universes and, “after you work your way through the thing, with all its faults, it leaves a real impression — it gets to you.” Much like Beijing did to me.
I read it when I lived there, a Christmas present from my mother. This passage still sticks out in my mind, for some reason almost epitomizing a reoccurring undercurrent in my years across the ocean.
Now there are not even traces left of those cabins, and, gazing round at the wilderness, the tall, beautiful female soldier seems like some kind of myth. They are building a new house here, for overseers' offices or possibly a weather center, and that is all. The roaring sea is cold and colorless in appearance, and the tall grey waves pound upon the sand, as if wishing to say in despair: "Oh God, why did you create us?" This is the Great, or, as it is otherwise known, the Pacific, Ocean. On this shore of the Naibuchi river the convicts can be heard rapping away with axes on the building work, while on the other, far distant, imagined shore, lies America ... to the left the capes of Sakhalin are visible in the midst, and to the right are more capes ... while all around there is not a single living soul, not a bird, not a fly, and it is beyond comprehension who the waves are roaring for, who listens to them at nights here, what they want, and, finally, who they would roar for when I was gone. There on the shore one is overcome not by connected, logical thoughts, but by reflections and reveries. It is a sinister sensation, and yet at the very same time you feel the desire to stand for ever looking at the monotonous movement of the waves and listening to their threatening roar.
- Chekhov's Sakhalin Island excerpt in 1Q84
You can stare into the abyss, but it's staring right back. Human beings are the same and have always been the same and will always be the same, no matter what corner of the globe you run off to.
I'm still making sense of the ineffable adventure of my twenties; hopefully I can find the words before the twilight of my thirties.
Time is a created thing.
To say ‘I don’t have have time,’ is like saying ‘I don’t want to.'
- Lao Tzu