personal legends

Paulo Coelho in his book, The Alchemist, said that everyone should find and strive towards their personal legend - what you’ve always wanted to accomplish. Everyone has their own personal legend, it could be something that has wide-reaching impact on human-kind or it could just be something that has a direct impact on yourself only.

What is my personal legend? Or rather, what is it that I’ve always wanted, my deepest desire? I think it would be related to books.

In fact, lately, I’ve been nourishing this dream to work in a bookstore. Not those big chains like Borders or Barnes & Nobles. Rather, to work in a small, independent bookstore where you actually know your customers and their likes and dislikes. Something like the bookstore that the character Meg Ryan portrayed in the movie “You’ve Got Mail!” owned.

I would either be doing inventory, stock-checking all the books, dealing with the publishers when certain books sell out, or I would be tagging price tags to the books on display. I could also be manning the cash register and packing the books in nice paper bags for the customers to bring home.

And at a corner of the bookstore, there would be a nice cozy little cafe where customers could sit down, sip a nice cup of latte and enjoy the book on hand.

The pay won’t be much, but that’s ok. As long as I have enough to feed myself, have a roof over my head and perhaps a little to squirrel away for my old age, that’s sufficient. I would be most happy to be amongst books everyday, inhaling the sweet scent of new books.

To see customers buying the books and bringing them home, and to imagine the joy that they would have when reading them would make me very happy.

Would I be able to realise this personal legend? It just doesn’t seem possible locally.

Shall I give up all that I have here to pursue my personal legend, wherever it takes me?

Idealistic me.

poppy red

What did Hamlet mean by, "words, words, words"?

The incapability of words to express true intention, the failure of proper representation or even perhaps the unfathomable inconstant nature of self.

Words in a novel seem to direct towards a possible reality, yet perhaps that reality does not exist at source. It is continuously expiring.

When I say something is poppy red, which poppy red would another see and would it even remain the same shade of red?

Or perhaps there is only a sense of the redness, a shadow of the sensation of redness, such that even the reader is only vaguely aware of it and the redness is merely a dream of it.

inertia

"Each life creates its own ties, each its own inertia, incomprehensible to any external observer and no less incomprehensible to the person observed."

One falls into a routine, even a detestable one, almost helplessly. Change, when it comes, is imperceptible and that aha moment occurs unexpectedly late and so I am making small incremental minuscule changes.

Ai, que preguiça

The golden hours of indolence give way to frenzied spurts of anxiety. Sometimes I wonder if those moments of over-compensation, so beautifully tinged with a certain clarity of self-doubt, are not self-willed destruction, carefree ambles to disappointment (but you had to do something on the way there, especially with deadlines hovering like apocalyptic heralds).

It is a great noise, the kind to mask silence, all this doing.

everything i wanted

"All I ask of the gods is that I should ask nothing of them."

I must strive to sleep less. Not that i even have the chance to in recent.

But it seems natural and inevitable to give in to the whims of comfort and luxuriate in the stillness of an endless afternoon, the easiness of muted light and caressing breezes. Evening brings anxiety and darkness.

I have been invited for a trip, old friends. There is a freshness and novelty to it, but the timing is awkward. And what do old friends talk about when they meet? Old times, past incidents, every gesture, every circumstance is held in that regard - how everything has changed, how it was.

There is nothing for the present or for the future.

The gulf between then and now falls away, is dismissed with a few explanatory words, nothing unpleasant to be spoken, only the easiness of burnished memories, the sweet caress of old camaraderie, everything else no longer matters and then the trip ends.

What self exists when one is alone?

a good year, a good life

2009 is going to be a good year. I know, because I can even feel the buzz in my bones.

Its kind of weird. While the world, as the media portrays it, is stuck in a “doom and gloom” mood, and here I am declaring that life’s great. Perhaps a decision to live a more meaningful engaging life has something to do with it.

Yes, that’s my resolution for 2009 and one that I will keep for all the days of my life.

I always find it troubling that being alive doesn’t equate with being engaged in the act of living. It is even more scary when I ponder on the past and think to myself on the purpose of my existence.

I will leave the ‘tough’ big questions on life to the academics, theologians and self-help gurus to answer. What I know now is that apart from having goals and dreams, one must decide to live one’s life and engage fully in it.

Perhaps I am one of those who realise this late in life, but I know that most of my life has been spent doing things which are meant to be done, without thinking of doing these things in an active/engaged manner. Imagine a robot in an assembly plant, and I being that robot.

And now suddenly, everything seems so alive to me.

the choice to swim

"You have to first take care of yourself before you can take care of others, and you have to be happy first before you can make others happy."

I actually said the above to someone today. YES, the irony.

How can I take care of others if I can’t even take care of myself properly? (Evidence - constant reminder from those around me to “remember to have your dinner”). And how can I make others happy and smile if I don’t see or feel the joy?

So maybe i need to love myself a little bit more, laugh at myself everyday and just accept life as it is - the calm, the waves, storms, floods and all.

I want to stay afloat. I think I have quite a bit to live for, don’t I?