Hey blog, it's been so long!
Decided to quit my first full time job out of university, and have enjoyed a 5-weeks break since.
During the past 5 weeks, I managed to travel to Taipei with my mom, catch up on some rests, and read a few books.
Two of my favourites are The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and The Song of Achilles.
Just thought to share some of my favourite lines here, before I start my new job next week!
Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
1. So do yourself a favour and learn how to grab life by the balls, dear. Don't be so tied up trying to do the right thing when the smart thing is so painfully clear.
2. For a brief moment, I wonder if I would have listened to him if he hadn't died. Would I have clung to his every word so tightly if his advice had felt unlimited?
3. You're an idealist and a romantic, and you have a beautiful soul. And I wish the world was ready to be the way you see it. I wish that the rest of the people on earth with us were capable of living up to your expectations. But they aren't. The world is ugly, and no one wants to give anyone the benefit of doubt about anything.
4. Forgiveness is different from absolution.
5. But if you have to go, then go. Go if it hurts. Go if it's time. Just go knowing you were loved, that I will never forget you, that you will live in everything Connor and I do. Go knowing I love you purely, Harry, that you were an amazing father. Go knowing I told you all my secrets, Because you were my best friend.
6. It's luck and being a son of a bitch.
7. Nobody deserves anything. It's simply a matter of who's willing to go and take it for themselves. No one is just a victim or a victor. Everyone is somewhere in between. People who go around casting themselves as one or the other are not only kidding themselves, but they're also painfully unoriginal.
The Song of Achilles
1. And as we swam, or played, or talked, a feeling would come. It was almost like fear, in the way it filled, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright where they were dull. I had known containment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less than a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread: my father was not near, nor boys. I was not hungry, or tired, or sick. This feeling was different. I found myself grinning until my cheeks hurt, my scalp prickling till I thought it might lift off my head. My tongue ran away from me, giddy with freedom.
2. And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.
3. We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
4. I could recognise him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths cane and gas feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
5. The sorrow was so large it threatened to tear through my skin. When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.
6. Will I feel his ashes as they fall against mine? I think of the snowflakes on Pelion, cold on our red cheeks. The yearning for him is like hunger, hollowing me. Somewhere his soul waits, but it is nowhere I can reach. Bury us, and mark our names above. Let us be free. His ashes settle among mine, and I feel nothing.
7. In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.
:')