Tag: quotes

Book Passage of the Week (11/20/2016) – from The 50th Law

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From The 50th Law, by Robert Greene and 50 Cent:

You do not wait for things to get better—you seize this chance to prove yourself. Mentally framing a negative event as a blessing in disguise makes it easier for you to move forward. It is a kind of mental alchemy, transforming shit into sugar.

 

No matter how much money or resources you have accumulated, someone will try to take them from you, or unexpected changes in the world will push you backward. These are not adverse circumstances but merely life as it is.

 

What you must do instead is accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive. Marcus Aurelius compared this to a fire that consumes everything in its path—all circumstances become consumed in your mental heat and converted into opportunities. A man or woman who believes this cannot be hurt by anything or anyone.

If you buy the book (and I recommend it, because it’s great), then go for the paperback. Not only is it easier to make notes, but did you see the Kindle price? $14.99? Do they secretly want people NOT to buy the ebook?

Book Passage of the Week (2/28/2016) – from The Alchemist

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The Alchemist is one of my favorite books. I read it my senior year of college, right after France decided they didn’t want me as a teacher and a few months before China did.

I’ve read it several times since then. I underlined a lot of passages, took a lot of notes. What you see below is just one of many:

“Well, why don’t you go to Mecca now?” asked the boy.

“Because it’s the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That’s what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at that same horrible café. I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living.

“You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you’re different from me, because you want to realize your dreams. I just want to dream about Mecca. I’ve already imagined it a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it. I’ve already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I’m afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it.”

The plot of The Alchemist borrows from the folk tale “The Man Who Became Rich Again Through a Dream“, which itself has many variations throughout the world, such as Pedlar of Swaffham.

And the passage above reminds me of the following exchange from Collateral, a very underrated movie:

Vincent: Look in the mirror. Paper towels, clean cab. Limo company some day. How much you got saved?

Max: That ain’t any of your business.

Vincent: Someday? Someday my dream will come? One night you will wake up and discover it never happened. It’s all turned around on you. It never will. Suddenly you are old. Didn’t happen, and it never will, because you were never going to do it anyway. You’ll push it into memory and then zone out in your barco lounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln town car. That girl, you can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?

Guy gets on the subway and dies. Think anybody’ll notice?

 

Book Passage of the Week (1/2/2016) – from George Orwell

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Animal Farm was required reading in 9th grade English. I read 1984 several years later, but only recently have I dove into Orwell’s nonfiction.

Today’s rather short passage comes from the essay Such, Such Were the Joys, collected here.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

The essay is about Orwell’s experiences at a prep school. Besides life at an English prep school in the early twentieth century, it delves into class conflict, the effects of (and reasons for) corporal punishment, psychological abuse … and the authority figures who frightened you as a child:

What should I think of Bingo and Sim, those terrible, all-powerful monsters? I should see them as a couple of silly, shallow, ineffectual people, eagerly clambering up a social ladder which any thinking person could see to be on the point of collapse. I would be no more frightened of them than I would be frightened of a dormouse.

A good read. Check it out.

 

New Fiction + Book Passage of the Week (12/26/2015)

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If you haven’t already, check out my short story Ghosts, in the Eighth Anniversary issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. The story is a reprint, originally published in Terracotta Typewriter. Since Terracotta Typewriter’s gone (and with a cool name like that, it wasn’t long for this world), I thought Ghosts could use another run.

It’s actually from an unpublished novel set in 2007 Wuhan.The book acts as a prequel to Little Red King, featuring a side character from that novel, detailing how he goes from English teacher at Wuhan University to living illegally in Hankou’s back-alleys.

 

Today’s book passage comes from The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane. No commentary; it speaks for itself:

The limestone dunes recalled dreams Danny’d had, ones he’d forgotten about until this moment. Dreams in which he hopelessly crossed vast moonlit deserts with no idea how he’d gotten there, no idea how he’d ever find his way home. And weighing down on him all the heavier with every step was the growing fear that home no longer existed.

Dennis Lehane is a great writer. If you’re looking for a good read, you can’t really go wrong with him.

Book Passage of the Week (12/19/2015) – from Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Cave on Earth

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About a year ago I read Blind Descent: The Quest to Discover the Deepest Cave on Earth, by James M. Tabor. It tracks the efforts of two teams, one led by American Bill Stone to the Cheve Cave system in southern Mexico and the other, led by Ukrainian Alexander Klimchouk to the Kurbera supercave in the country Georgia.

Exploring caves is dangerous. It seems obvious, but Blind Descent opens it up in ways you wouldn’t imagine, from diseases to sound amplification (imagine sleeping next to a roaring 747 for months at a time) to The Rapture, an anxiety attack brought on by prolonged periods in darkness.

And by darkness, I mean complete darkness. Sometimes in spaces so tight you can barely wriggle through. All your light runs on batteries, and all your equipment must be protected.

You also have to deal with sumps, flooded underground tunnels which carry the risk of getting lost, damaging your equipment

And drowning:

Drowning is a cruel way to go. It throws two of the body’s most potent self-preservation reflexes into competition. Trapped underwater, you hold your breath as long as possible, with the urge to breathe growing from a whisper in your chest to a scream in your brain. As the carbon dioxide in your bloodstream builds up, you start to jerk and spasm. Gray fog closes down your peripheral vision. With your vision down to points of light, your fists clenched and toes curled as if in orgasm, your mouth opens not to scream but to inhale involuntarily. Finally, your lungs fill and you become negatively buoyant, floating slowly down, staring at eternity. There may be no good ways to die, but some are worse than others.

All in all, the book is great. Here’s a great interview with James Tabor about supercave exploration and be sure to check out this article about the Krubera Cave and the deepest point on earth, “Game Over”.