You know what's kind of beautiful?

Having spent half of the last ten years in a constant state of yearning, I think, has resulted indadvertedly in me missing the actual feeling of missing someone.

In Bridget Vreeland's words, "I think I was missing the idea of missing."
And that's how it was, even though these words floated past the back of my eyes every time the phrase crossed my mind.

Source: rebloggy

I hardly use the phrase, "I miss you". But in recent days and conversations, it has just really made a pang in my heart.

You are missing from me.
I cannot be whole without you.

Which leads me to the memory of reading The Missing Piece by Shel Silverstein - and that grand, transcending moment of bittersweet comprehension. Read the book again. It's the kind of understanding I wanted as a kid - "You'll know when you grow up."

Bookbinding with Paperlab

Learnt how to make a hard cover notebook over the summer holidays!

Really, really enjoyed this.

Paperlab.co
http://paperlab.co/make-a-book-case-binding/

Written in the stars

And if I told you I wanted to publish my thoughts?
All that I've accumulated under the title of Errant Thoughts.

To make it into something I can leaf through.
Something to keep.

Would you laugh in my face and tell me it's folly?

Bookworm

1972.
Inscriptions to keep and treasure.

落葉歸根。

"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made of the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

-- Carl Sagan,

In a billion years' time, our sun will explode and all that we have been, all that we have done; evidence of human civilisation, our existence, will have been for naught.
But does that matter?
Do we have to leave behind a legacy?

Such a selfish reason.
To have need and want for signs of our existence to remain.

The Chinese have an idiom for it, "落葉歸根".
Fallen leaves return to their roots.

Leaves decompose and provide nourishment for the tree in the coming months.
Endless cycles of life and death.

One day, we too will return to our roots.
Won't we?

5 Centimetres Per Second - a film

Photo credits: iifatree.blogspot.com

Language, for to all its subtleties, are not easily translated. For that, I truly wished I could understand the dialogue of this film first hand, rather than through an interface. There are so many minds out there to be explored, so much to grasp, yet all at once limited by my meagre capabilities.

Every time I walk into Eslite Bookstore, I leave with a new reading list. Yet always, I will be drawn to the other books. Those are ones I would have to forge through. The ones that would now take me days to read and understand. The ones not easily beget, not due to scarceness and rarity, but that I could not easily obtain from where I am. The ones publishers have put enormous effort into translating from Japanese and Korean. Or even other foreign, non-English books. The ones I would pick up and have an immense desire to read, but other constraints will come calling - time, family, commitment - and I'll be forced to put it down.

I have never been able to find the same environment as Eslite in Australia. Maybe because I haven't looked hard enough. But with the closing of Borders in late 2010 due to changing reading cultures, the little window of exploration and opportunity just seemed to have completely disappeared.

I miss that. I miss wandering through bookstores, picking up books here and there and reading snippets. I look at the books written in Chinese on our family bookshelf and wonder how I ever fell out of the habit of reading them. How had I ever? How could I? Not knowingly, slowly gave up on those other worlds out there.

I'm rambling and nothing makes sense, but after watching 5 Centimetres Per Second, all these feelings mixed with my experiences have surfaced. As always, I wanted to write it down. If not as a record, as a means of better understanding myself. Even now, I'm still trying to figure myself out.

That said, I absolutely loved, loved the scenery in this film.