BOOK 1: The Time Keeper, by Mitch Albom

  Time. What is time? Who started to first measure time? We all know the answers to these questions (even if you don't, you can always use Google!), but have any of us really grasped the immense significance of time? Maybe and maybe not.

  Time is a gift, as commonly said, but sometimes we think it could be a curse, so in this book yo will find both these kinds of thinking and you will be able to see how time is indeed precious.

  The story is the author's own fictious take of the legend of Father Time, who was a young man with an obsession for measuring time. He was the first man who ever though of and measured time, thus becoming Father Time in an unexpected event.

  This book has been written in a very interesting format, weaving together what seem to be three different and completely separated stories. The whole book has a quite a quick pace, trust me, you will never find yourself in a bored lull in any page of this little, wonderful book! In fact, I did finish the entire book in a couple of hours, because it was so interesting that I just had to read one more chapter (you know where that kind of thinking leads to!).

  Below is a YouTube video of the author, Mitch Albom, talking about this book.

One of my favourite quotes from the book is:

"Time is not something you give back. The very next moment may be an answer to your prayer. To deny that is to deny the most important part of the future."

Repeated Words

I came across this post while scrolling through one of my social networking site's newsfeed. The credit for this photo goes to its respective owner, of course.

What came to my mind when reading this was whether love could be considered, or could become, a meaningless habit that can be driven out by the simple act of repetition. 

I first thought that it could happen only when concerning sad love, be it one-sided love or a love that has faded away in one person but still stays very much alive in the other, but then i disagreed with that thought.

Just like when you repeat the most common or most meaningful word you can imagine many times, love can lose its meaning too, because love is something that isn't static. It needs nurturing and a great many more ingredients that can change over time, so if you stick to love the way you have always known it, in the end, I believe it will lose its meaning. When it comes to love, you need to be able to go along that road with an attitude easily receptive for change. 

But does sad love lose its meaning? Speaking within the confines of my own experience, it does not. I do concede though, that the repetition of a specific event or specific word (name, pet name and etc.) may bring about a certain numbing feeling that you may be lulled into believing such feeling to be oblivion. But trust me, oblivion it is not! The moment someone else mentions a word, or you hear a voice, or listen to a song, you will learn that repetition is indeed a waste of time in this particular case. I sat up many longs night too, repeating things, and yet everything still has meaning.

Wedding Gowns

A few nights ago, when I was navigating through Pinterest in the search for new nail art inspirations, I came across these two photographs; one of a wedding gown and the other of a wdedding couple.

There is something, something like a little tug, happening inside of my heart each time I happen to come across photos like these. It really is a sad little tug, but also a sadly painful one. It is the tug of a multitude of unfulfilled promises and hopeful dreams, waiting in the shadow of the knowledge that perhaps, some things were never meant to be fulfilled nor reached in the end.

So that is how, after an year of poetic inactivity, my mind decided to make a come back, because I finally understood what really fuels my poems. It is Sadness.

My poem below is called Wedding Gowns, and I wrote it entirely guided by the feelings that those two photographs stirred up.

As my eyes come to rest on white gowns

with flowing lenghts of lace and pearl

as beautiful as a nascent blossom's petals

my heart beats to the rhythm of one question

Will i ever adorn myself with one?

And as that beat pounds through my blood,

it reaches my mind, which protests

No, that is not the question

What is it, then?

Close your eyes and search your darkest corner

What do you hear?

When I will wear such beautiful bridal vestment,

will i do so for a pair of eyes that have seen my soul?

Every ragged corner and dusty old ridge,

left behind by a tumultuous past,

every memory and truth and lie.

Will those eyes have seen me in all of my soul's nakedness?

Will those eyes brim with love nevertheless?

Will those eyes be the ones looking into mine, on that fatidic day?

The downside of Music

I really did not think this would be my first post, but it's 3am in the morning and I just finished one assignment and reading on for the next one. The stress level is high and the tired feeling is slowly winning the battle (yes, I will probably sleep in a while).

Anyway, as a habit I always listen to music in the background whenever I do work. A lot of people have asked me how it does not bother me to have music playing while trying to focus on academia, but really the answer is very simple. I don't pay attention to the lyrics, I just listen to the music.
But yes, there is one big drawback about this. When the stress level is high (like right now), my brain tends to divert its focus onto the lyrics and that, right there, is where the problem lies. When the focus goes into the lyrics, you start to naturally pay more attention to the feelings that the songs resuscitate in your heart. That brings up something that I find even scarier than feelings: Memories.

The power of a song is that its lyrics or its music is always able to struck a chord in your heart that triggers up your brain to conjure memories that you would prefer to keep locked up, so as to keep them in check. But what would you do if all the memories that start surfacing up are the sad kind, the kind that you never want to forget but that you are also afraid to remember? There, that is the downside of music when studying!