Five Easy Pieces

There is purity in simple living. To indulge in the small ecstasies, the small pleasures. Coffee, croissant, books, t-shirt, black pants, slippers, sunshine, daisy, white wine… It is all malleable, atmospherically — our lives. You create your paradise out of all these simple luxuries, and that’s purely religious. True divinity wades in the warm oceans of bliss.

In The Mood For Love — Shigeru Umebayashi

In the Mood for Love —directed by Wong Kar-wai, 2000.

He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct…—Liu Yichang 

花樣年華 —王家衛 2000.

他想起了消逝了的歲月。那些消逝了的歲月, 彷彿隔着一塊積着灰塵的玻璃, 看得到, 抓不着。看到的種種, 也是模模糊糊的... —劉以鬯《對倒》

—Wong Kar-wai 王家衛, July 17, 1958. He is a Hong Kong film director, screenwriter, and producer.

—劉以鬯 Liu Yichang, December 7, 1918 — June 8, 2018. He was a Shanghai-born and Hong Kong-based writer, editor and publisher.

—Shigeru Umebayashi 梅林茂, February 19, 1951. He is a Japanese composer. 

 

The Power To Think

These photos were taken by American Journalist Harrison Forman after the WWII in Hong Kong. 

“Father, if I learn to do needlework… someday I can make kimonos. But what good will book learning ever do me?”

"But you know… book learning gives you the power to think. However the world might change, if you have the power to think… you’ll always survive somehow." —The Twilight Samurai

Food is not just food...

The Chinese and certainly the Japanese who standards of foods are absolutely so high that you rarely have anything bad to eat. 

Food is not just food. Food is about good time. Food is memories. Food is for sharing. Food is culture. Food is passion. 

Chinese might not be great at expressing their love for family in words. But they said I love you to each other through food. 

I served these to my nephew and his girlfriend when they came to visit.
 

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace Full Speech

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:

"This is water."

"This is water."

.....................

The full text is here: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

David Foster Wallace Feb. 21, 1962 – Sep. 12, 2008, 10 years after his untimely death.

Paris is always Paris

 

Because you can make a sentimental journey to a place that changed your life 40 years ago in the hope of finding some trace of your younger self, and then discover that this younger you has been living in Paris all these years, just as Paris has been living all these years in you... 

Looking for Jane...

Jane's home at Bath

Bath

Roman Bath

Bath

Bath

Jane Austen 1775-1817

I was born in a tiny island village, where the culture was, wealth is the foundation of a good marriage. I happen to read a lot as a teen, starting one book as I finished the last. In the island's only one room library I read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in Chinese translation, a young woman would reject a wealthy man because she didn't love him, when Elizabeth Bennet said to Darcy, "… I would now thank you. But I cannot — I have never desired your good opinion… " 

I turned down a few proposals later and my mother was not happy!