Surround yourself with people who are intellectually stimulating. Vada Sultenfuss of My Girl, rings a bell? Anna Chlumsky? Jack Crawford's protege in Hannibal? The arm girl? Nothing? Okay, I'm done trying. To the point now. Today, I'm going to talk about something I find particularly intellectually stimulating. What is going on with me and Mondays anyway? The posts have been that irregularly regular because of the fact that developing film takes time, getting a full film used does too. I've moved onto the 24 frames film, so maybe that will speed things up a little bit.
It's Friday as I'm starting to write this post, but I already know it's not going to be up until Monday when I get my current roll of film developed. Oh schedules. I'm being really weird recently and I am deeply, deeply sorry about that, guys. I know it's the time I put my shit together. My excuse is, I, myself, know best when I need a couple of days off alone and if I decide to be a freak who spends her days under a blanket, with a book and/or coffee in her hand or Orange is the New Black (9 episodes in and I'm already starting to talk like a stereotypical black person on that show does) playing on her laptop, then be it. And origami, lots of origami! I noticed paper cranes while stalking Erin's blog and since I really dig them as a room decoration [and I'm already in the phase of decorating my new room in my mind] (switching rooms again) - I decided to give it a try before I order some fancy origami paper off ebay. If you're a beginner like me or, oh, you just suck at anything manual - see for youself - how to fold a paper crane in 25 steps, easy peasy! I'm going through some serious withdrawal, but I finally have time to do things I love the most. Eating, sleep and reading Murakami.
He's a contemporary Japanese writer, you might or might not have heard about. Even my dad has read a book of his, or two, but on the other hand, my best friend truly despises him. I don't judge. I understand that some people might find the complexity of Murakami slightly hard to approach. For me, stuff he writes is extremely inspiring. So far, I've read 4 books of his and I am currently reading the fifth one, 1Q84, which I received as a birthday present. Someone once told me that you should not trust people who don't read books. Don't get me wrong, I'm not some kind of a bookworm. Not as big as my flatmate anyway :) Aren't people who don't read much, or basically never read much, slightly less sensitive about the world? There are certainly various ways of expressing yourself or taking the world in - sensitivity is definitely not defined by the number of pages one's read, but I can't help feeling that books and lives we live with the characters, that carry inside of us later on, help us shape what kind of people we are, almost as significantly as our own actions. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. One of my favourite Murakami quotes. Norwegian Wood - named by the name of one of the Beatles' songs. So I started a year ago, with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and let me just tell you, it brough so much joy, acceptance and understanding into my life. Also, I finally found a perfect tune for cooking pasta, because apparently, that's what The Thieving Magpie is.
I never buy books, because I can never find anything for myself in a bookstore. They are so poorly stocked! Only one shelf of books in foreign languages? Really? For some time, most of the books that I managed to buy was in English. I always thought it would help me to develop the language, because I feel that my progress in that field stopped a long time ago, but now slowly cease to do so, going back to my native Polish, mainly because the importance of the plots I deal with is hard to grasp not knowing half the words. I hate PDFs though! I own an iPad mini and sometimes it's definitely more comfortable to just "wave" my finger like a wand, turning pages, but guess what, there is completely no magic in that. I love books in their original form, with pages so sharp that they're cutting fingers and the wonderful, irreplaceable smell!
(favourite reading spot in my garden)
Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can't buy. I bought a new Helios lens and then I purchased a Praktica MTL3 body. I cannot wait for those to arrive and I hope my new babies will get along together.
Just a quick selection of my favourite Haruki Murakami quotes;
▲ “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
▲ “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.” 1Q84
▲ “As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.” Dance Dance Dance
▲ “Find me now. Before someone else does.” 1Q84
▲ “And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.” Sputnik Sweetheart
▲ “Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.” Kafka on the Shore
▲ “Have you ever had that feeling—that you’d like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?” The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
▲ “A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else.” 1Q84
▲ “The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there's no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness.” The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
▲ “Maybe she thought the garbage and rocks in your head were interesting. But finally, garbage is garbage and rocks are rocks.” The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
▲ “Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.” South of the Border, West of the Sun
▲ “Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.” Kafka on the Shore