To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

~Anatole France

quoting Kundera (again)

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

~Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

8

Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all.

~Toni Morrison

new light

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
~Jonathan Swift

…

…

Las relaciones amorosas no sólo son importantes debido al acento general que la cultura moderna otorga a la satisfacción de las necesidades ordinarias; también son cruciales porque son los crisoles de una identidad que se genera internamente.

~Charles Taylor, “La política del reconocimiento”

 

weekly reflection

This last week was definetely not only a week to rest but to realize. It’s amazing how you can realize and reassert thoughts or feelings or events, even those you thought you have already solved. Sometimes they come back to you in a new way and once you have been sad or distressed or worried about them, once you’ve fought them, you feel a greater calm, and you can go on pleased with the present and looking forward to new cycles. And right now I feel an internal imperative to begin a new cycle.

Just a moment ago I shuffled all my cards. Let’s see what happens and where I’m heading for… Reformulate and draw together, strength and optimism are the key words for this new beginning.

One of the things I saw through a different lens is how I cherish my reading moments. I’ve always known I do cherish them. However, I had this wonderful sensation of intimacy and insight and flight while reading that made me revalue it.

And, it’s true what people say, love and cowardice cannot exist side by side. One must kill the other, invariably.

In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

~Milan Kundera

at the proper time

I’m still reading Kundera’s  The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I bought the book in Banff, more than a year ago, and though I really wanted to read it, I didn’t till last week. I’m delighted with it. But beyond the fact I’m really enjoying it, I’m surprised and grateful. It’s amazing the way narrative can illuminate our lives. People say that things come to you in a special moment. Well, this book came to me at a very particular eventful troubled moment, and its pages give rise to thoughts which have really helped me to rethink and comprehend what’s going on.

I reproduce here some lines I liked:

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.  We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup.

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

… when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave. 

While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and exchange motifs […], but if they meet when they are older […], their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

~Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

worthy enough

All I kept thinking about, over and over, was ‘You can’t live forever; you can´t live forever’.

~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

And since life doesn’t last forever, it’s important to act coherently and do what you are convinced is the best to do no matter disapproval, rejection or idle gossip. Life must be enjoyed.

what other places are there in the world
than those discovered on a lover’s body?

~Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body