books
my book reading experience lately is a magic so profound i do not dare to speak of it
but let's just say i think it healed me.
let's speak about it.
i feel that something magical happens when you let yourself be led to read whatever you damn feel like, and to stop at any point, to take as long as you need, to skim over if you feel like...to read based on a feeling.
and i feel that i've been magically transformed by the books i touch.
the biography of cleopatra made me feel as though 2000 years is NOT a long time at all, it made me step back and look at the timeline of human life, zoomed out and the vastness of this new perspective calms me and makes me feel that what we currently experience is so temporary
the historical account of the historical jesus and how christianity, a forbidden religion, spread to become the world's largest religion made me realize that: it is enough to have a few people who really believe in you but the power to convince people also lies in the fact that they're also just willing to believe you now. people get tired of their belief systems, especially when it fails to deliver what they'd been expecting. people are ready to accept new beliefs after a while. plus, i used to think that christianity was birthed one day but i realized that christianity is an evolution from judaism which is surely an evolution from something else. it is not such a "leap of faith" (so punny) as i thought it was. and putting it all into context, it is just one of many religions that could've dominated the world but the reason that it did is almost more logical than emotional because it is a religion that is exclusive...they make you stop believing in other things. it is like the homo sapiens who killed the other human-like species to extinction. and realizing all this makes the world and its beliefs feel somehow arbitrary.
i want to die but i want to eat tteokbokki made me feel so OK being so WEIRD and taught me something called "the freedom of thought" which means it's ok to have a bad thought sometimes, you don't have to kill yourself over it!!! it reminded me about the importance of self-soothing. i am now becoming convinced that self-soothing is one of the most important skills to learn
what you are looking for is in the library made me view problems with such a broad mindset because i no longer think that the end result has to look one exact way. this broadened view makes me see more possibilities and the solutions seem therefore more simple too. if everything can only be one way, then it might be tricky to get that one way to work, but if you have a whole array of possibilities, then you have a higher rate of possible success. it also made me realize there is nothing shameful about not having a fancy prestigious job. it may just be the exact thing you need to do your art on the side. this book is actually the perfect thing to read if you don't know what job you want i think. it completely rid me of shame and narrow-mindedness about jobs
isn't that all very very very magical?
one more book:
walking practice by dolki min had just ONE passage about how people think it's ok to ignore you and not respond to you and how this rudeness is a violence that cuts so deeply it actually trains a certain type of reflex to respond, because you're just so sick of that violence! and i feel the same way and i feel i'd been the only one seeing this and it made me feel so damn alone
well now i don't feel alone
really, i don't
i feel very very happy
books are somehow a meditative experience for me
reading has become a sort of religious practice for me
btw why is virginia woolf supposedly "stream of consciousness" when really her thoughts are just confused and disorganized? i also write stream of consciousness but you can follow what i'm thinking...what is the hype all about?? sometimes i think people think that art must be terrible for it to be considered good. the worse the art is & the less enjoyable it is, the more praise it gets, because maybe people think of themselves as too lowly to be able to derive enjoyment from "good" art