I am unconscious

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere. 

- Inception

A thinker is vulnerable to ideas, I am a thinker,
Plant an idea in my mind,
And it will stay forever,
Conscious, subconscious, superconscious,
I am unconscious.

What's Real

What is real, are you real?
Am I talking real?
Is my interaction with you real?
Are you my reader real?
Is my impression on you real?
Will you remain real if I inadvertently forget you?
Is your impression on me real?
How much of you are just the figments?
Of my memory, my imagination, my fantasy or my dream?
I sure have dreamt high and well

One Hot Early Summer Night

Eyes burning from the chlorine infested swimming pool at the gym
but still reading on The Great Gatsby, chapter 7
on the bus heading in the direction of long island
going across Queensborough bridge
crossing Hudson River East that Gastby crossed to come into the city
with a girl sitting across flipping and reading her bible, how adorable.

One Summer Day

Today is not a perfect day in an idealistic way but it is a perfect day in an imperfect way for me. It was forecast to be raining the whole day and since there are enough summer blockbuster movies accumulated enough already in the theaters, I decided to spend a day at the theater. I watched several of them as I always do ever since I came to the States, in the following order:

Fast And Furious 6, which was awesome because all the action scenes are put together nicely and coherently with the great plot. It has to be one of the best action movies around to date.

The Hangover 3, it is as funny as ever for me and served its purpose well as a comedy.

Star Trek, I was pleasantly surprised and attracted to the world of star trek when I watched the first one, but this second one was kinda bland for me, a non-star trek fan.

Iron Man 3, entertaining but I didn't quite get it, with Tony Stark's thought patterns and decisions etc, compared to the previous ones, which have been going down hill since the first one.

The Great Gatsby, totally resonated with me, of fame, respect, effort, honor, loyalty, wealth, with all of them driven primarily by love (romance), in the great New York City/Wall Street/Long Island. Perhaps not a lot of people do, but for me the whole story and characters make perfect sense for me, especially with Jay Gatsby himself. Some nice quotes eliciting the themes in The Great Gatsby:

Of the attempt to comprehend the variety/heterogeneity of lives existing in this bustling city
“I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

Of holding onto the past
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Of a man's big dreams, which sadly almost always fall short in the face of reality, especially when imposed excessively on others, with much hopes and expectation invested
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Of a man too deep in own's "truth"
“No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”

Of the beginnings, the triggers in life
“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”

Though tragic, Gatsby lived a life short still complete, empty and full, blatant yet simple, deceitful but more honest than most, religious elements aside.

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

I Am Who I am, I Am Not Who I Am

I am who I am today, and I am not who I am, because of the past decisions I have made, in partial knowledge of what I know today.

真的很庆幸，更了解自己的需要，仅此，仅此。

Luke 9:23-24
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 
24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.

真的很庆幸，更了解大家的观点，仅此，仅此。

Luke 14:25-33
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:
26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?
29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you,
30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand?
32 If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.

其实，很久以前就放手了，虽然没有放弃，因为交给了神，也相信神的安排和超乎想象的回报，也知道那结果也不一定是我想象的。

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD

每一位神放进我生命里人，都已经成为我人的一部分
只能好好用神的方式去爱，用你们最舒服的方式去爱

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

爱是生命，生命也是爱
不能不爱，也不能伤害
最后的爱，是不爱的爱！
我‘不爱’你了，不要有压力了啦！

Systems of Life

At different stages of life, I worry about different things, especially at times I am forced to worry and make decisions. Until after the very moment I graduated from my academic life, I realized how much graduations have played a part in my life, in my decisions how to live. Because of the way most people, including me grow up nowadays, most of our lives are staged according to our academic lives.

At the tender age of 5, I was set innocently by the current norm of life to stop staying at home the whole time and to spend at least half of my weekdays at a place called school, for almost the next 20 years. In these 20 years, I was expected to spend ~6 years in primary school, ~6 years in secondary school and ~5 years in tertiary education institution, with temporary and transitional breaks in between. The beginning of each stage signifies the ending of the previous stage, of everything initiated, developed, established and stabilized in a harmonious  but imperfect system of behaviors and thoughts. 

For me, it is the imperfection that drove me to shatter up everything in life as I know to move on to the next stage in the hope of establishing a better system. As I progress, I leave part of my old self, some good and some bad, in order to accommodate newer elements. However, some things remain throughout every stage, that is the expectation of the coming new stage/stages, hopefully richer and better, as well as the worries that come with the expectations.

At current stage, I am blessed to probably have accumulated more resources than I have imagined and maybe more compared to the average of my peers. In the experience of forever chasing after more resources or rather, afraid of not accumulating enough/fast enough resources, I realized that it is never going to be enough and I am never going to create a perfect systems of living, nobody has, nobody will.

In the past, I used to be tempted to look forward to have current things be replaced with better things in the future, every single one of them, not realizing/distinguishing which of them are my soul. However, my old perfect world is never actually that big. Now that I have caught a glimpse of that old perfect world in real, it is a perfect world indeed.

However,

Mark 8:36 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul?

One Week One Lifetime

Ever experience one day, one week where it feels like it is worth one whole life time?

Run, don't walk.

But look, closer, carefully.

And fear no more.

To ask for more.

Steer diligently.

Work hard.

Get dirty.

Get creative.

More crying.

More enlightening.

How worse can it be.

Better is yet to come.

Worst, it has been.

Wish for the best.

Follow the light.

Only the best.

Together.

Create.

Happy New Year.

Ultimately, be sexy, why not.