Awakening

“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”

Dr. Seuss

The rainbow lies on at the end of the journey.
A stream flows gently, tapping the pebbles.
The smell of flowers and the coming of spring.
This is not the end.

Nearing the end of Gavin Menzies’s 1421 – The Year China Discovered the World, he mentions:

One of the fascinating ‘what ifs’ of history is what would have happened had lightning not stuck the Forbidden City on 9 may1321, had fire had not roared down the Imperial Way and turned the emperor’s palaces and throne to cinders. Would the emperor’s favorite concubine have survived? Would the emperor have kept his nerve? Would he have ordered Admiral Zheng He’s squadrons to continue their voyages? Would New York now be called New Beijing? Would Sydney have an English quarter rather than a ‘Chinese’ quarter? Would Buddhism rather than Christianity have become the religion of the New World?

He continued:

Instead of the cultured Chinese, instructed to ‘treat distant people with kindness’; it was the cruel, almost barbaric Christians who were the colonizers. Francisco Pizarro gained Peru from the Incas by massacring five thousands Indians in cold blood. Today he would be considered a war criminal.

The old Spanish couple. Foreign, alien and poor in English. The young Swedish couple. Cuddles to watch a comedy. The guy with severely damaged and frayed hair slouches deep in his book. The Indian wife frowns over her boy who talks too much. A cabin of strange people.

A stranger one sits. Thinking, contemplating, smelling the rain. Two nights in the Lapland, fight squalls. Serendipity, of many emotions and the rise and fall of every single one.

The past, oh the hurtful past. The bliss, oh the had-beens. All to naught. He reasons, he tried. Always easier to think logically than to feel with the heart. Many mistakes, he mused. Many regrets, he discovers…

His pen drops, like a heavy bell to the bottom of the deepest ocean, snaps on his hand. Seeing the past, present and future in this cabin of people, running through the mists of time, he asks, what matters? What truly matters?

The feeling of nature, the awesome, wonderful purity of the trees and clouds. Whispering to my ears, and bending me low to mere insignificance. He humbles at their call, at their hinterland. Drinking mountain dew, tasting sweetness from the earth are images that are unable to capture on lenses. The connection, the oneness, he never denies.

Then where is the reason?

Every breath is a waste of time – sitting in this train listening to the cacophony of strange people. He takes out his pen and starts writing. To find the reason, he thinks. Yet, somehow deep in the recess of his heart, he already knows.

Ok no more zen quotes. Here’s something else (maybe not..haha):

I pray I never need the reminder to either love or live. The mere thought of becoming so all-consumed with a task, deadline, or even life itself that I might forget how to love wholly or live well, causes me to look inward. Often. Perhaps, and sadly so, we really are in need of these word or word phrase reminders. And while it’s true that we are technologically superior to the generations before us; more intelligent, ambitious and independent than ever before, we might want to ask ourselves if, in our quest for success, we are in fact trading our “diamonds for stones”

- Judy Carden

You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you’ll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say “I’m old,”
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

- Han Shan, 630
Translated by Peter Stambler

A few months ago, I asked my friends to complete this sentence

If life gets any better…

Here is a compilation of their answers:

“If life gets any better, I’m a leaf dancing in the autumn breeze.” – Yuan Ye

if life gets any better, I am a bunny in candyland!! – Mel

“If life gets any better, I am Alexander the Great’s shield”-Suba

If life gets any better, discharge him and slap a $200 bill on his forehead.-Adarsh

If life gets any better, I am a comet hurtling towards the sun. -Skyfire

Life is great…but if get any better, i am dead then. -Mengyi

If life gets any better, I would be in love under the stars -Sze Min

I will be glad to add to this list!

Here is a quote from dear Li Che to me. I wanted to cast this comment online for blog-eternity so that I will get a good laugh whenever I see this. hahaha =)

At least ur were blind!! I wasn’t blind with all the things u did behind me back! Hah! you brought gals out to eat dim sam huh, and only make me salmon n frozen veggie!!.. u know how bad I felt to eat frozen veggie? U think every gals are like junice like to eat the frozen veggie? U weren’t sensitive!!

- Li Che