love

among all the methods by which love is brought into being, among all the agents which disseminate that blessed bane, there are few so efficacious as the great gust of agitation which, now and then, sweeps over the human spirit. for then the creature in whose company we are seeking amusement at the moment, her lot is cast, her fate and ours decided, that is the creature whom we shall henceforward love. it is not necessary that she should have pleased us, up till then, any more, or even as much as others. all that is necessary is that our taste for her should become exclusive. and that condition is fulfilled so soon as--in the moment when she has failed to meet us--for the pleasure which we were on the point of enjoying in her charming company is abruptly substituted an anxious torturing desire, which the laws of civilized society make it possible to satisfy and difficult to assuage--the insensate, agonizing desire to possess her.

--marcel proust, swann's way

the wind-up bird chronicle by haruki murakami

i'm saving the rest of proust for the next lazy sunday. the wind-up bird chronicle by haruki murakami, one of my favorite authors, has taken over the space next to my pillow.

"you've got to spend your money for the things that money can buy, not worry about profit or loss. save your energy for the things that money can't buy."
--toru okada's uncle

"but knowing what i don't want to do doesn't help me figure out what i do want to do. i could do just about anything if somebody made me. but i don't have an image of the one thing i really want to do. that's my problem now. i can't find the image."
--toru okada

active reading

i've started reading swann's way by marcel proust by making the mistake of reserving it as a bedtime read. when i'm working on a project, my day averages at 12 hours a day, leaving little time during the week for any leisure activity that requires intellectual effort. really, at the end of a work day, i just want to veg in front of the tv for about an hour and get my bills paid so i don't have to do it on the weekends. when the weekend rolls around, social engagements and mere exhaustion from the week leaves me little time and energy to motivate myself to attend to any intellectual pursuits.

yeah, these are all just excuses. maybe. but one sunday, i grabbed swann's way with me to read at a quiet college campus. it was that day, that i realize how much i had been missing out reading that book in a half-conscious state. to be able to focus on the book with minimal distraction, i remembered the pleasure of reading.

reading before going to bed is a must for me, even if it's just a page or two. otherwise, i don't think i would read very much. with most books, reading at this pace is not much of a problem, especially if they are plot driven. proust is just a little more difficult since it's a bit more in the style of stream of consciousness.

so in an effort be more of an active reader and stop squandering those precious moments with a book in bed, glazing over the words without extracting meaning from them, i'm devoting this blog to just random thoughts and quotes from my current nighttime read, like a shoebox of random notes. it's a commitment to pay attention.

anyway, here goes...