This is so touching.

What it takes to come out of the closet, rainbow-coloured or otherwise.

Any fictional text is profoundly experimental because the brain that interacts with this text is a dynamic system. (Hence, perhaps, the pleasures of rereading: no two encounters with the same fictional text are ever truly the same, for the brain that responds to the text changes ever so slightly with every thought and impression passing through it.)

-- Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and The Novel, Lisa Zunshine

See? There's a theory to explain my habit of rereading or re-watching or re-experiencing beloved stories. Even my rereading my old blog posts is subject to how my brain has changed, or in general how much as a person I've evolved. I get a great satisfaction from looking at the same thing at a different time, maybe in a different place, but certainly with a different brain. Sometimes, finally, things click into place in a beautiful way, that in the past, I couldn't see.

...

So, recently, I re-watched the insanely popular Taiwanese drama from our teenage past, Meteor Garden (heheeeeeh, and I can't recall now, why I had the impulse), and now I've started a Jerry Yan marathon-thing. I've watched two of his other dramas and become unexpectedly, quite mildly-obsessed. I think it has got something to do with how he is somewhat a reserved personality (i.e. mysterious, different and interesting), and the fact that there is this fascinating somewhat-OTP situation he has in real life with Lin Chi Ling, that I am so incredibly curious about. (And of course, it helps that this man has that gorgeous smile.)

I have crazy, funny, conversations about it on whatsapp, that evolves instead into philosophies about love and life.

love is more thicker than forget
more thinner than recall
more seldom than a wave is wet
more frequent than to fail

it is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
than all the sea which only
is deeper than the sea

love is less always than to win
less never than alive
less bigger than the least begin
less littler than forgive

it is most sane and sunly
and more it cannot die
than all the sky which only
is higher than the sky.


e. e. cummings

If you haven't seen Disney's latest animated movie, you should! 

It's about sister-love, and strong women. And very lovely and amusing.

Today, I realised I was a speech therapist. Heheee.

What I mean is...  I realised that I had these skills, Alhamdulillah, and they have now become part of me. One can only do something well, I feel, when things start clicking into place by intuition, and you just know how things are to be done. When I see a child now, I size him or her up almost unconsciously and then pitch my language at their level immediately.

So I have parents ask, "How come he copies you! He never copies us at home..." And then I pause and think in my head, "Eh, why ah?" and have to rewind a little bit before I can give them the strategy that I used... unconsciously.

:) Alhamdulillah wa syukri li Rasulillah, I'm happy with work.

Subhanallah, these moments when you realise how much of an idiot you were previously -- are so horrifying. But Alhamdulillah that they come along, right.

Also... eesh. How do I better myself; this is SO HARD.

): and what if there's something fundamentally wrong with your personality -- can there be such a thing? And you have to revamp or something. Oh my God, I need to stop thinking so I don't get a headache.



On other things, went for an overdue lunch outing with my Arabic-class-friends and we stopped by Wardah bookstore, and I was like, "Wardah bookstore, you got read my blog ah???" Haha, cause this shop always appears to be out for my heart -- I literally gasped out embarrassingly loudly when I saw Martin Lings' Muhammad, from the earliest sources on the main display area. And hello, didn't I rave about this book just months ago, and here it is! And it's not like this book is new; it's ancient (almost). So, hahaha. Just -- this store always has my favourite things (well not HP or Lymond, but other than that, eheh) and appears to read my mind! Not to mention, I swear, it has every book that was ever mentioned by Shaykh Hamza on its shelves.

I could literally sit in that shop for hours and stare at the book spines lovingly, if I didn't feel so much like an idiot for doing that.

Friday night again, and happy night! Alhamdulillah. (:



Today we had a group therapy session, and when we asked, Hey, you guys know what special day it is today? For a while, to my delight, all we got was, Total Defence Day? They were so clueless about it being Valentine's...

Haha, how wonderful it is to be in childhood bliss. Stay ignorant of this commercialization of love, my dears.

SPOILER FOR LYMOND CHRONICLES

"Perhaps you've married the wrong brother. And that would be a pity. Because Francis lives in a passionless vacuum and keeps his love for abstract things."

- Richard Crawford to Mariotta, in The Game of Kings

This line hurts so much. :(

Richard, I do love you -- you are a sensible, honourable, and good man. And you are not at all stupid, by most measures of society. But next to the complexity and sensitivity that is Lymond, you can be as dense as a block of wood.

This hurts because Richard makes Francis sound like an unloving, self-seeking, egocentric, cold, persona -- but as any reader would know, Francis in truth is the exact opposite under the mask he creates (which of course implies that the bad image people have of him is his own making, deliberate or not). He's so self-sacrificial, so self-deprecating, and so deeply compassionate and altruistic -- I would have been seriously upset if he didn't get the happy ending he deserved in this series.

Then I thought again about what Richard said -- that Francis keeps his love for abstract things. And it reminded me of a conversation I had with S a long time ago now (read: long time ago is anything 5 years previous or more), when we were discussing religion. I asked her what the highest level of love an individual could possess was, and she said, "Love for the divine."

If anything, the concept of God is abstract (I've always wanted to ask an autistic person who has such difficulty with abstractness, about God -- but that's another topic for another time). 

Now, the character of Francis is by no means religious, and I think at one point he did appear more as an agnostic than anything else. What I'm getting to instead is the idea that if you aspire to abstract things, or you long for abstract things -- I think it makes you bigger and greater. It is only through this reaching for this abstractness that one truly becomes selfless and all-loving. Anything other than the love of God / divine / great cosmos / BIG ABSTRACT THING, has its roots in selfishness. 

To think that Francis killed his own child at one point for the greater good -- a man who doesn't believe in abstract things would't have been able to do that.

 Had a hmmmmm night, for lack of vocabulary.

A night of quiet reflection in the company of a good friend. (:

Helping others eventually really comes round, in the cosmic realm, to help yourself.

Something hilarious that happened last night -- cockroach fiasco!

The women in the house were screaming, and all the men did was ask, "Oi, what is happening!"

Tonight I feel like Nodame.

Nodame when she had her world overturned, and suddenly realised, "You mean I can't play music the way I always loved before? You mean, I have to win?" Nodame when the real world crashed around her.

But just like Nodame, I hope I'll learn to shine bravely.

I choose truth and honesty any day

"For a humanist," she said, "you're very scathing on the subject of virtue. For one thing, you shouldn't confuse stolidity and self-control."

"You admire self-control?" he asked, and she took her chance.

"I admire candour."

He retorted instantly. "Oh, nothing better -- in the right place. 'It's only right you should know' -- I wonder how many that classic betise has driven to the river and the dagger and the pillow in a quiet corner. Truth's nothing but falsehood with the edges sharpened up, and ill-tempered at that: no repair, no retraction, no possible going back once it's out. If I told you I'd murdered my own sister you'd register appropriate feelings of hate and revulsion; and if you found later I hadn't, I'd be sure of your interest and sympathy in twice the depth of your hate. Whereas, if you simply found proof positive that I had killed her..."

"... I might loathe you, but I'd respect your courage," she said candidly. "Besides, that sort of truth wouldn't hurt me, would it? It might affect you, but then you'd deserve it."

She had surprised him into laughter. "Oh, God! Generously abstaining from the sword in order to macerate with a cudgel. Pax! Leave me some pride. Pretend at least that you wouldn't collapse in a delirium of joy as I dance a vuelta on the widdy. In any case, I stick to my point. Not ninety-nine women out of hundred really prefer that kind of honesty; and even if you are the hundredth, I'm the last to help you prove it to yourself. No. Si vis pingere, pinge sonum, as Echo rudely remarked. If you want a full study of me, then paint my voice. It's all there is on display at present."

-- Game of Kings

Oh, the layered meanings in all of this.

If there was anyone to hold a candle to Philippa, it would have been Christian, who I adore. This book is just filled with awesome and strong women.

And has there ever been a moment in his life when Francis didn't blame himself for the death of someone? Maybe only when he was 7 years and under or something!