Ameya Appreciation Group

It has come to my attention that many of you have yet to see Lord of the Rings (I know SY hasn’t seen it, I’m not sure how many others) and others are not familiar with some of the quotes.  Now many of you that haven’t seen Lord of the Rings, you may be thinking “That is not for me.  Just mindless gore and fighting and killing and fighting and stuff and fantasy creatures and fighting and stuff.  I’m more of a realist.  I like real stuff like cakes and mushrooms.”  (I’m assuming numerous people haven’t watched it.)  Well then you’d be wrong.  Not on the fact that you are a realist; you may well and truly be one, but rather the fact that Lord of the Rings is just about bashing of mindless orcs or uruk hai (who are no mindless orcs.  Their skin is thick and shields are broad.)  It is a story of hope, love, courage and other stuff.  I know that the fact that I usually say that about a lot of things, but you just gotta trust me on this one.  So to illustrate my point, I’ve handpicked some of my favourite scenes to talk about.  Yeah so if you don’t want the movie ruined or whatever spoiler alert blah blah blah.  Anyways, it is just the dialogue, but even then you’ll already understand how beautifully the tale corresponds to life.  Having said this, the dialogue is merely a fraction of the entire viewing experience, because Peter Jackson complements it beautifully with your favourite actors such as Viggo Mortensen, Hugo Weaving and the guy who acts as Samwise along with possibly the greatest soundtrack ever compiled.  It is definitely up there with Titanic.  No joke.

Anyways onto the scene for today.  So this is right near the end of the second movie, where the city of Osgiliath has been taking, and Frodo and Samwise are just alive and are sitting on the floor wasted and on the brink of tears.  So as all good sidekicks, bodyguards or in this case, gardeners, should do, Samwise breaks into monologue.  He is referring to Frodo and his seemingly impossible journey to destroy the ring and restore order and peace to middle earth etc etc.

Sam:      I know.  It’s all wrong.  By rights, we shouldn’t even be here.

But we are.

It’s like the great stories, Mr. Frodo.  The ones that really mattered.  Full of darkness and danger, they were.   Sometimes you didn’t want to know the end because how could the end be happy?  How could the world go back to the way it was?  When so much bad had happened.

But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow.  Even the darkness, must pass.  A new day will come.  And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.  Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something.  Even if you were too small to understand why.

But I think Mr Frodo, I do understand.  I know now.  Folks in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t.  They kept going, because they were holding onto something.

Having read that, tell me you don’t want to watch it now.  That is unbelievable.  It’s the kind of thing you hear and realise is so true and that we should hold onto hope or love or whatever knowing that bad times will pass, but like most awesome sayings and probably life in general, easier said than done.

And I can’t resist so I’ll slide in Faramir (David Welham I think) being a downright badass:

Faramir:  I think at last we understand each other, Frodo Baggins.

Random Guy:  You know the laws of this country, the lays of your father.  If you let them go, your life will be forfeit.

Faramir:  Then it is forfeit.  Release them.

Too, too awesome.  We should have a movie night just to watch all three.  Or actually nights, cos it’ll take a couple of months to finish each ones.  They are very long, but as you’ll realise when you watch them, it is like Titanic in the way you don’t want it to end kinda, it doesn’t matter how long it goes, because it is that good.

See you all around sometimes hopefully.  Supposedly Law Abiding Citizen is unnecessarily gory.

First I’ll start off with a big happy birthday to my brother from another mother, Rohan “Swarmz” Swami.  Hope being eighteen is whatever you imagined it to be in that crazy head of yours.  Haha kidding, but I hope life is plain wicked henceforth.  Awesome.

Anyways just a quick anecdote I forgot to tell people until today, was after afters after formal (that is crazy trippy), I was going to the Central station from the hotel.  Cos it was after formal I was in my suit.  And it was in the early hours of the morning so errbody was going to work and whatnot and were coming out of the station.  So I’m walking toward against the masses of the people and I realise I’m in a suit, so I do what anyone with a decent movie knowledge would’ve done.  I started to run.  I ran through the masses, and people looked at me funny.  To be honest, that isn’t much different from what I usually get when I am outside of my house, but I’ll tell that story in my next blog maybe. But yeah, it was awesome.  Just like in the movies.  Plus to cap it all off I ran onto the platform just as my train was pulling out of the station.  It was awesome.  Just like in the movies.

Anyways, what I wanted to talk about was we were chilling today and a couple of people were asking about whether West Ryde steak was any good.  Naturally I responded in true West Rydian fashion:

Couple of people:  Is the West Ryde steak any good?

Me:  Of course it is good.  It’s from West Ryde.

But following that response, I spent the rest of the day trying to think of what made West Ryde how awesome it was.  Maybe just cos I’d lived there for the entirety of my eighteen year life thus far, it was what I knew and yeah.  Many of you haven’t been to my place, but for those who have, it is awesome.  My mum’s cooking, the wastedness of 3am stuff, that night we watched Dawn of the Dead, remaking the music video of Jellieman’s Aisha, and much more.  But the question remained, would that be the same if I lived in a shithole such as Castle Hill?  I wasn’t sure.  (Kidding Gaby, I know you don’t read here, but I couldn’t miss a cheap shot).

Maybe the great thing about West Ryde is the people that live there.  It is the home to such greats as my mum, my dog and Simon Chow.  I think Mrs Chan lives in West Ryde too.  Some people reckon she lives in Eastwood, but I saw her twice at West Ryde Woolies so we’ll claim her.  Along with Mark Taylor who actually does live in West Ryde.  For those of you who are scratching your hairy heads over who he is, he is the guy on the Fujitsu ads and he also captained the Australian cricket team on the side for a bit too.

Anyways, I have this one hair doing place in West Ryde I go to.  It’s some Asian place where trying to convey the haircut you want in English is as useless as Denistone station.  But they give me my tenth haircut free, and my mum doesn’t want me to buy clippers for some reason, so for me who just rocks up to get my head shaved, it’s all good.  Speaking of which I got my head shaved again today and as I walked in my mum asked smayched noticeably and asked how it felt, to which I responded as I always do:  It’s always a little weird when the longest hairs on your head are your eyebrows.  Anyways, back to West Ryde.

So this afternoon, I was walking from the station to the hairdresser when it happened.  I’ve always seen movies where they say that when you are questioning something within ourselves that the answers often come to us in a flash of awesome and I never gave that kinda thing much credit but now I realise that it may be true.  He stood right in front of me.  Actually he walked straight past, pretending not to notice me gaping in awe, and walked towards the back entrance of the chemist.  Darrel Deigan.  For real.  The one, the only.  He must live in West Ryde.  Probably next door to Mrs Chan and opposite Mark Taylor.  But it was that moment I realised that West Ryde was indeed the greatest suburb in the world, and that I had been right all this time.  And thus, the world ended.

First thing I’d like to do is a shout out to Anthony “Phat” Le and Carol “Careezy” Kim, who may be leaving Sydney very soon for university studyings.  I’ve known Phat and Carol for ages (couple of years) and it has certainly been a pleasure to ride by your side.  I remember the first time I met Phat and Carol, back in the summer of 0something’ and it was a blah blah nostalgic story blah blah, and we have been friends ever since.  Good times. Nah, but honestly, you guys are heaps mad fun to be around, and it’s sad to see you go, but that’s life I spose and the best of luck for the future.  Same goes to anyone else that’s going away for uni or for whatever.  I might be joining you yet Phat in Avondale, so who knows.   Anyways, on to what I wanted to talk about and over the last week or so, I’ve had a couple of experiences in my cricketing adventures which have had very little to do with cricket.

So, last Sunday I was playing for my Sunday team and we were in a pretty comfortable position.  We’d put 160 or so on the board and ended up bowling out the other team around 30 runs short.  For you non-cricketers out there, that’s a pretty good win, just short of a bonus point.  Anyways, we finish the game and are walking off to shake hands and one of the other teams’ players walks up to us.  He’s some fully fob Indian guy.  He comes to a mate of mice, stretches out his had and goes in a fully curry accent: “Good bowling……….NOT.”  He then turns around and walks off chuckling to himself.  He even made sure he put on an extra strong fob accent for the ‘not’ so it became a “NAWWWWWWWWWWWT”, just incase we weren’t sure of his fobbiness.    It was a pretty weird thing to say when you consider he’d just been rolled by 30 runs.  Actually a pretty weird bloke in general.

So some cricket players are weird like that and others are weird in a funny way, like these two blokes at Saturday cricket.  They are Ian and Iain.  Iain is a little stocky bloke who is a wicketkeeper and Ian is a tall, skinny guy.  They are both mid to late 20’s I reckon.    Anyways on Thursday training, I hear them talking about Captain Planet.

Iain:  How about Earth?  That’s pretty weak.

Ian:  Yeah, you’re right.  That’s pretty shit.  But what about heart?

Iain:  Oh yeah!  Heart!  That was really weird.

Iain:  Yeah.  I’m convinced that Heart was definitely a closet.

OK, after typing that out, it was nowhere as near as funny as it was when he said it.  Oh well.  Anyways, later we were packing up and there is this other guy called Iqbal.  So Ian pegs a tennis ball at his back, so Iqbal walks back to Iain and jokingly bear hugs him and starts questioning him.

Iqbal:  That didn’t hurt Iain.  Didn’t hurt at all.  You think you’re funny, Iain?

Iain:  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!  Let go of me!  It wasn’t me!  It was the other Ian!

Iqbal:  Sure it was.  You think you’re funny, don’t you?

Iain:  Aaaaaaaaaargh!  Let go Icky!  It was the Ian with one I!  The Ian with one I!  It was the Cyclops Ian!

Even if no one else found that funny, I’m sure Weezy appreciated it.  Anyways, also at that training session, near the end they took the bowling machine, set it to max (which i reckon must be 160km/hr) and did catches with tennis balls for fun.  I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen a ball got at 160km/hr, wait, who am I kidding?  Of course you haven’t.  But anyways, let’s just say it was plain ridiculous.

I actually wrote this a couple of days ago, and now rereading it, it sounds pretty lame.  I spose all those things were stuff you had to be there for.  PS.  Word on the street is that dougy will be blogging again very soon.  Keep an eye out for that.  Anyways, I’m not sure whether you can pick up on how weird cricketers are from what I just wrote, but I spose we should all just be thankful that we don’t know any.  Nawt.

I hate TV.  Well most of the time.  Actually that was a bit harsh.  What I mean is, I find that a lot of it is real trash.  Like actually a lot of trash.  Being a dreamer myself, I hate to be saying that about what could be someone’s dream, but it’s true.  A lot of it is crap.  Pretty much all I watch on TV is sports, movies, Simpsons and ABC kids.  Well not much ABC kids anymore, but that’s what I actually wanted to talk about now.  So the other day, I was watching ABC 2, as you do, which is pretty much permanently kids shows and Postman Pat was on.  Having been a die hard fan as a kid, and still am at heart, naturally I decided to check out the new episodes.  For those who haven’t watched it since we were little, first thing you will notice is that the song is different.  Personally I do prefer the original, but then again I am a bit of a purist.  Anyways, I digress.  OK, I know that some of the dialogue I quote in this blog is sometimes a bit, say, ‘unusual’ or ‘hard to believe’ or whatever, but I swear to you this is deadset what I heard:

Postman Pat:  I think I’ll try and break a record and deliver ALL the post by TEA TIME!

Some fat bloke just strolls in:  And if you don’t then you have to run around the village in your pyjamas!

No joke.  This fat bloke just rocks up and chimes in with that.  For real.  Naturally, I was stunned. I looked across at my viewing companion (my dog) to notice that she had been stunned so badly that she had fallen asleep.  But yeah, it was a pretty crazy thing.  In the end Pat is cruising to victory, but decides to be the hero he is and helps some kid out at school who is being bullied and ends up just making it in time for tea.  I was on the edge of my seat for that one.  Nail biter.

Watching Postman Pat got me thinking back to the days when we used to dream like that.  Of being a postman.  Or a fireman.  Sam.  But yeah, those were the good times.  You’d be sitting in Kindy doing some colouring in, and would have a sudden urge to discuss the delicate situation of life and dreams with your best friend.

Me:  So mate, what you wanna do when you grow up?

Friend:  Dunno mate.  From the research I’ve been doing on The Three Little Pigs, I’m inclined slightly toward architecture so that I can make a real difference in the lives of pigs looking to live safely from the persecution of wolves with a lot of breath.

Kidding.  Never happened like that.  Except maybe if your friend was Bryan, cos he maintains that he was never a kid.  It was more like this:

Me:  So mate, what you wanna do when you grow up?

Friend:  I wanna be a librarian.  So I can swipe people’s cards.  It looks heaps fun.

Other friend:  Yeah, but I reckon I wanna work at Woolies cos then you get to swipe the vegetables and bread and toothpaste and stuff.

Me:  That’s pretty cool.  I wanna play cricket for Australia.

Friend: Oh yeah?  That’s pretty cool.  If I don’t become a librarian, I’ll probably play soccer for Australia.

Me:  Sweet.

Those were the days.  Good times.  Times when your mind could wander wherever it wanted to, and anybody that met you along the way gave you dap instead of telling you to turn around.  Speaking of playing cricket, (this is mainly for cricket playing readers aka rohan swami) I was going into bat at training.  About half way through my net session, I realised I wasn’t wearing my thigh guard.  A couple of the guys were bowling pretty good heat, and some had some sweet lift which isn’t that hard when you are about 238 feet tall.  Anyways I’m trying really hard to concentrate so I don’t get hit and then about 3 balls before it is time to switch batsmen, I cop one flush on the thigh.  Naturally everyone starts laughing including people in the other nets and I mentally note all the batsmen laughing so I can bump them when I am bowling to them.  Haha kidding, but yeah was pretty dumb.  I almost got through, but almost is never good enough I spose.

Speaking of getting hit in cricket, I recently remembered something that happened a long time ago.  I remember way back, I mean way back, ages, 1^st grade I think?  Feels like yesterday.  Anyways, me and my brother were trying the whole Sir Don Bradman thing of a-golf-ball-and-stump cricket in the back yard and my brother asks me to throw him a half volley.  Naturally I place it on a dime outside off.  Naturally he nails a drive straight back.  Straight back into my groin.  If you get what I mean.  I’m not sure how many of you are familiar with the bouncing properties of golf balls but when they get hit, they absolutely rocket.  And being a little kid, my only option was to run back inside the house crying.  Looking for a little sympathy due to a potential loss of any capabilities of having children in the future, I turned to my mum, who returned straight back coldly “Don’t come running to me.  If you wanna play the game, you gotta expect to get hurt.  That’s a part of the game.”  At the time I thought it was rough, but sitting here about 12 years older, and the fact that I still remember her saying it, I reckon it may be some of the wisest words she has ever said to me.  And I mean not just in cricket, but in life as well.  When you play the game, you gotta understand that sometimes you get hurt, and maybe more importantly someone always has to lose.

And there’s a little bit more from my “How to live 101”.  Haha lean, loved it.  I used to have two types of posts, some where I talked a lot of rubbish and others where I talked a different type of rubbish.  Kind of like two different bins for normal rubbish and recycled rubbish.  Now I just put them both into the same bin.  Anyways, keep it real errbody and see you some time.

OK I lied about not posting again before the new year, but I got something I just wanted to say.  A bit gloomy and serious and boring, so yeah.  Only for the bored.  (ps. think i may have got the quote wrong for the title, so excuse it if it is wrong.)

The other day a petrol tanker hit a car with a family in it just north of Batemans’ Bay, and exploded.  I’m sure many of you have heard about this on the news, about the two little girls in the back who died, the parents in hospital in a critical condition and the dead driver of the tanker who leaves behind three kids, the youngest being two months old.

This actually makes me really sad.  I’ve always said my greatest fear in life is to lose loved ones in something like a car accident.  Such a waste of life.  Imagine getting told that you could do nothing, that the game was over, for no reason at all.  I hate that feeling of no control.  I know this sounds like a silly comparison, but it’s kinda like being twelfth man on a cricket team, or being subbed off in the dying minutes of a game.  I hate that feeling.  I hate to lose.  Another thing I’m really scared of is childbirth.  I know this sounds crazy but I’ve seen so many movies like ‘Jersey Girl’ where you lose your wife unexpectedly in childbirth.  You are so happy cos you are about to get a kid, and suddenly your world decides to leg it.  Crazy world.

Back to the crash, I had left Bateman’s Bay that morning, a couple hours before the crash we had travelled the same road.  I was talking to my mum cos she was heaps gutted about those families and I brought up the point how easily that coulda been us.  She said don’t think of such things, just be thankful that it wasn’t us.  I asked her if she was afraid of dying.  She immediately said yes, and said that until my younger sister gets married, she won’t be ready to die (assuming my sister gets married last I reckon).  Anyways it was at that point I realised, I aint afraid to die.  I got nothing really that if God came to me this instant and said “Time to go mate”, that I would respond “Hold on, I got this little thing I gotta finish” or “Can’t you give me ten years?  I can’t leave now.”  I’d just get up and go I spose.  Nothing that I really want to do, to have, and this really worries me.  Cricket is just a fantasy, and it creeps me how the only things I want, I can’t have.  I’m starting to realise that sometimes in life, you just aren’t good enough, and that is that.

After the crash, I talked to my cousins who were with me at Bateman’s Bay with me about the crash and all, and another thing came up.  Me and my cousins don’t really have the most deepest conversations, so it didn’t really last long, but what I wanted to know was if heaven is the greatest awesomest place in the whole entire universe, then how come some people die just after they find love, or have a kid or something.  I mean, I don’t really see how heaven could be better in that instance.

Speaking of my cousins, the other day I was talking to them and I thought how smart it was to name a group of lions as a ‘pride’.  Lions look pretty proud.   I also wondered what are a group of humans called.  They could be called a pride also.  Humans are crazy proud.  That kid called deva included.  Another of my deepest fears is mucking up cos I’m too proud to do something.  Like my mum always says, it shouldn’t be an issue of I do something, then you do something and so on.  Or I do something, I get something back.  With the world or things you care about, you gotta keep going and a lot of the time you’ll get back without noticing.  Just keep trying, don’t care what people think, what people say.  If you want it, go get it.

Pride has to be swallowed a lot of the time, but you know we seem to have a lot of it, so sometimes our tummys get full and we can’t.  But having said that, you just gotta try pretty hard, cos pride is often a barrier.  Cos pride rises from that worry that the world seems to be obsessed with about what other people think about us.  Crazy world.

Well that’s all I had to say.  Just quickly, if anyone has seen ‘Blood in Blood Out’ or ‘City of God’, shout out, cos I thought they were mad and I’d love to talk to someone about them.  Awesome.  Have a great new year, hopefully a lot better than the one we just had and the best you’ve ever had, and I hope to see you all at the zoo tomorrow.  I spose its kinda like Jay Z says: “I hope the best of your todays are the worst of your tomorrows”.  Happy 2010 everybody.

Yesterday, me and my brother went Christmas shopping.  We grabbed my sis stuff, my dog stuff, my dad stuff but got stumped on my mum’s gift.  We finally found these two mad vasii (that’s plural for vase) and were trying to decide which one to buy.  I also found these mad magic potion bottles, but my brother reckoned we should play it safe and stick with a vase.  I reckon my mum’s always needed a bottle to store her magic potions.  Anyways, being stumped on which vase to grab, we decided to flip a coin.  Naturally.  I chose heads to correspond to the one I liked better, cos it’s common knowledge that heads has better percentages, even though everyone knows tails never fails in new south wales.  So we flipped, and it was a heads.  Naturally.  So we grab the vase and went to the counter place to pay for it.  A typically awesome conversation ensued:

Woman at desk place:  So Christmas shopping hey?  Let me guess, mum’s present?

One of me or my brother:  Yeah.  So is it nice?

W: Yeah it is awesome.  Ridiculously awesome.  Almost as awesome as you guys.

The next part is a bit blurry in my memory, just that a series of high fives then occurred.

O:  So is it a good price for one of these things?

W:  Yeah, it seems expensive, but all wine-pouring devices are expensive.

Damn.  Turns out it wasn’t a vase, but a carafe of something ridiculous like that.  I think it’s kinda pronounced in a way that rhymes with giraffe.  Anyways, so we went and picked up the other vase we were looking out, which was a real vase, not a disguised one, and bought that.  At the start, I thought that it was the first time that a coin hasn’t chosen the best choice, but then I realised that through the coin, my knowledge on carafes has increased significantly.

Anyways today I watched Avatar.  For the second time.  Cept this time it was at IMAX, but same difference.  Went with some friends, and was rather just an excuse to leave this house which I seem to be locked in and meet up with some of my out of school friends again.  It was just as good, and my friends all seemed to enjoy it also.  Some said it was better than titanic.  I told them that I would slap them.  That’s something else I realised.  Very little slapping goes on in this world.  A lot of ‘I should slap you’ goes on, but very little actual slapping.  Maybe it’s better that way though.

On the train back, we were talking, as you do, and we started talking about something when one of my friends pointed out something crazy and ironic.  I forget what it was exactly, just that it was something crazy and I remember comparing it to an optometrist without glasses, or a dentist without teeth.  Pretty crazy stuff.

Speaking of crazy stuff, a couple of days ago I was gutted cos I couldn’t find the Tim tams my mum grabbed for me from woollies.  They weren’t even mine yet, but I still felt as though I owned them, and I was kinda gutted.  I later found them in the plastic bag on the table, exactly where my mum told me they were, just that the plastic bag was doing a mad job of camouflaging them.  I just thought I’d let you know about that, cos it was kinda silly how sadifying it was when I thought that I couldn’t find em.  But that’s how it is a lot of the time.  It sucks hard sometimes to lose something that wasn’t even yours in the first place.

One last thing, while we are speaking of ridiculous stuff, I have been putting forward to the highest intellectual minds (aka the brains trust) I know a question that I was  thinking about and I’ve got a mixed bags of responses, so I was just wondering what you guys thought.  Say there was this penguin.  Said penguin wants to fly.  So the question I was wondering was if the penguin flapped his wings really, really hard and just went to the highest cliff with no fear of the splat that awaits him at the bottom and jumps, then can he fly?

Couple of things to take into consideration.  One, penguins can’t fly.  Or at least that’s what the world think.  Maybe penguins just don’t wanna fly.  Maybe they all can, just their ceebz factor is round about infinity million.  Another thing is, maybe penguins have just accepted swimming.  They like it more?  They are better at it?  Or maybe they just don’t want to hang with a swan or seagull or something.  OK, so the deal is, the penguin I mentioned previously has a strong desire to fly cos his best friend is a swan.  What’s the deal?  Jump off with blind faith, or just accept swimming and find a new friend.  It’s tricky, I reckon.

Well, through a series of educated guesses, otherwise known as estimates, I reckon my next blog will be in the year of the 2010, so yall have a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  See you all at the zoo or somewhere else maybe.

PS.  Anyone that hasn’t, check out ‘Ever the Same’ by Rob Thomas.  Best lyrics.  Ever.

On this site i found, there was some bloke who rights about life, seizing the moment, stress, etc.  I found this passage, which are excerpts from Roman philosopher Lucius Seneca’s ‘On the Shortness of Time’. Have a read if you are bored.

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.

“The part of life we really live is small.” For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: “I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.

You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply,
There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn.

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live!

“Why do you delay,” says he, “Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees.” Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time’s swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he says, not “the fairest age,” but “the fairest day.”

All the greatest blessings are a source of anxiety, and at no time should fortune be less trusted than when it is best; therefore, must the life of those be who work hard to gain what they must work harder to keep. By great toil they attain what they wish, and with anxiety hold what they have attained; meanwhile they take no account of time that will never more return.

Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness.

You win love in an office in which it is difficult to avoid hatred; but nevertheless believe me, it is better to have knowledge of the ledger of one’s own life than of the corn-market.

The condition of all who are preoccupied is wretched, but most wretched is the condition of those who labor at preoccupations that are not even their own, who regulate their sleep by that of another, their walk by the pace of another, who are under orders in case of the freest things in the world—loving and hating. If these wish to know how short their life is, let them reflect how small a part of it is their own.

Like Asher Roth told me, time isn’t wasted when you’re getting wasted.  Keep it real errbody and hope to see you at the zoo and to light those sparkle fire lighter thingys afterwards.

Every morning I wake up, I look out the window, my eyes searching for the mountain out in the distance that looks over our little village.  I must have discovered it very early on, because that mountain seems to outrun the reaches of my long memory.  It has always been there, tall and strong.  Sometimes the weather is clear, and I am able to see it easily, whilst at others it is foggy.

The other day it was one of those foggy days and I decided to climb out of bed and take a better look from outside the house.  This girl walking past noticed me looking and asked if it was the mountain I was searching for.  When I answered yes, a wave of disappointment washed over her face.   I soon learn that the mountain is fading; the winds are eroding it away, blowing the sands onto the road and the people end up stepping all over it.  Since I was little it had always been there, a constant in this ever changing life.  I tell her this, and she smiles.  That is life, she says.

She tells me life is tough.  She tells me life is cruel.  It knocks you down, and keeps kicking until you find yourself begging it to stop, and then goes again.  She tells me life makes the Mafia look like Mother Theresa.

She tells me life is a game.  A game that you need two players for.  You can’t play it alone; you just can’t, but still most of the time you will find yourself unaided.  You don’t get taught how to deal with it, you don’t even get taught how to deal with the little stories in between: dreams, love, illness.  There are few second chances and no pre determined storyline.  She tells me life is a game.

Well then, I tell her, let’s play.