Shivering Hope

Grandmother looked at an old photograph of her dear friend, Annabelle. She put it down and said “Annabelle was a sad girl. People in town called her the girl who fell in love with a shooting star. We all knew once a shooting star had passed us by, that was it. It would never return. She was in love with something that would never be hers and was never really hers to begin with. She was a foolish woman, that Annabelle.” Grandmother smiled a sad smile and looked out the windows. The snow had melted and spring was knocking on the door. What that was had gone and things will never be the same again.

I looked at grandmother’s eyes and I saw traces of sorrow. It was true that no matter how hard one tried to hide and wipe away pain, it would creep up on you and drop by for a quiet visit once in a while. Even grandmother, with so many practices over the years, couldn't hide the pain that still lingered in her eyes when she thought nobody was looking. I wondered if she was really talking about Annabelle or the story she had just told me was actually hers.

“I think she was luckier than the girl who fell in love with the moon,” I said.
“The moon? Luckier?” grandmother asks.

“Oh yes, she was. At least Annabelle knew that the shooting star she loved so deeply was not returning to her embrace. At least she had the chance to move on. But the girl who was in love with the moon was always hoping and waiting. Every night, when the moon appeared and casted its soft amber light on her bedroom windows, she couldn't help herself but to think that she could finally reach the moon, her one true love. Of course, she couldn't and the moon would always disappears into the horizon when daybreak came. Soon enough, disappointment became her closest friend - along with heartache and despair. They stayed friends for life."

Grandmother said nothing and continued to stare at the clear blue sky, as if a shooting star might suddenly pass us by, although it was only noon. Looking at my grandmother, I suddenly realised that I was not alone. Maybe the girl who was in love with the moon lived in every woman who's heart was taken. No matter what people said, no matter what fate and logic told us, a part of us would always be waiting and hoping – hoping with a fragile hope.

Quotes by Haruki Murakami

She waited for the train to pass. Then she said, "I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells. Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes floating to the surface every once in a while."

Saul Leiter

"What is it?"
"It's not something you can get across in words. The real response is something words can't express."
"There you go," Sada replies. "Exactly. If you can't get it across in words then it's better not to try."
"Even to yourself?" I ask. "Yeah, even to yourself," Sada says. "Better not to try to explain it, even to yourself. 

Saul Leiter

 
Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. 

But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.

That’s how stories happen — with a turning point, an unexpected twist. There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story. 

Saul Leiter

And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about .

Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.

Saul Leiter

In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive. 

Saul Leiter

No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all.

- Quotes by Haruki Murakami

Quotes by John Mayer

If you never stop when you wave goodbye you just might find, if you give it time, you will wave hello again.

My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room.

 

When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.
You roll outta bed and down on your knees, and for the moment you can hardly breathe. 

She's just like a maze where all of the walls all continually change. And I've done all I can to stand on her steps, with my heart in my hands. Now I'm starting to see, maybe it's got nothing to do with me.

Lightning strikes inside my chest to keep me up at night
Dream of ways to make you understand my pain 

Push it in and twist the knife again. Watch my face as I pretend to feel no pain.

Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak warfare.

I love you more than songs can say,
But i can't keep running after yesterday.

Anything other than yes is no,
Anything other than stay is go,
Anything less than I love you is lying. 

- Quotes by John Mayer

Gone With The Wind

Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.
- Jacqueline Carey

But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, you denial, anger, and bitter loss. You'll come to your own peace, hopefully, but it will be on your own, in your own time.
- Cathy Lamb

Stand at the crossroads if you will, but if you'll not choose, I'll move on without you.
- Jacqueline Carey

Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
- Søren Kierkegaard

The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.
- Søren Kierkegaard

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
- Plato

Bitter Rain

As long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.

- Marguerite Duras

 It comes so soon, the moment when there is nothing left to wait for. 

 - Marcel Proust

Quotes by Arthur Golden

Quotes from one of my favorite books - Memoirs of Geisha by Arthur Golden.

 

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

How many times already had I encountered the painful lesson that although we may wish for the barb to be pulled from our flesh, it leaves a welt that doesn't heal?

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.

Can't you see? Every step I have taken, since I was that child on the bridge, has been to bring myself closer to you.

 He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.
 

After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.

I don't know when we will see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.

From this experience, I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there. What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.

Fractured moonlight on the sea

He just smiled and walked by her – like she was just another stranger who meant nothing more than the wildflowers he walked passed that morning. She stopped breathing for a few seconds and just like that, she could see her dreams and hopes shattered around her. Like drops of bitter rain falling down from the dark sky. At that moment, she felt like she had lost something that she never found.

But that wasn't exactly true. She thought she had found it. She thought she had the key to the lock. Just that the timing was never right to unlock it. Finally, on that gloomy Saturday afternoon, she knew she had been living a lie – a lie that she had told herself. She didn't have the key. In fact, there wasn't even a lock to begin with.

Quotes by Jodi Picoult

Torn between fear and something that resembled love, she wrestled with questions she never dreamed she would face: How could she leave? Then again, how could she stay?

If you loved someone, really loved them, would you let them go?

Until this moment, I had not realized that someone could break your heart twice, along the very same fault lines.

Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.

The damage was permanent; there would always be scars. But even the angriest scars faded over time until it was difficult to see them written on the skin at all, and the only thing that remained was the memory of how painful it had been.

If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?

I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting.

 - Quotes by Jodi Picoult

Quotes by Jodi Picoult

Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side.

You can tell yourself that you would be willing to lose everything you have in order to get something you want. But it's a catch-22: all of those things you're willing to lose are what make you recognizable. Lose them, and you've lost yourself.

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask.. with nothing beneath it?

You know how every now and then, you have a moment where your whole life stretches out ahead of you like a forked road, and even as you choose one gritty path you've got your eyes on the other the whole time, certain that you're making a mistake.

 In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime. It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; its the legroom for the lies you'll tell yourself in the future.

- Quotes by Jodi Picoult

Farewells

But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.

- Sarah Dessen

At a time

She sat alone in her room where the only thing that was shining was the full moon and wondered if it’s possible for a man to be in love with two different women at the very same time.

Darkness

Photography by Saul Leiter

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

- Terry Pratchett

Shades of love

As far as love is concerned,
Eternity is a second
Forever is a glance

Time is nothing