A Year Ago Today
A year ago today, I found myself sitting on the polished floorboards of the King George V Rec Centre tucked underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, clutching at my wrist.
A year ago today, I found myself sitting on the polished floorboards of the King George V Rec Centre tucked underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, clutching at my wrist.
As quickly as November was ushered in, it has been rushed out. Things seem to be moving faster now, and I find myself worrying again about time. Where did this year go? How is it possible we’re a month today from Christmas?
Winter is in full swing here in Chicago. And now there’s no denying it.
Here’s what it life currently looks like here: -8C with a real feel of of -19C.
In the few minutes it took me to drop my grandmother home with her shopping, a majestic Sulfur-crested cockatoo was struck and killed by a passing car. I saw the members of the flock arriving, big white birds swooping in over the road ahead, a lifeless white body lying on the asphalt.
I’ve been reading a lot lately (lots of Alain de Botton and Her Holiness Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi) and thinking more comprehensively, discerning more comprehensively, yet I don’t feel any closer in finding what it is I seek. “We can conclude …that we are drawn to call something beautiful whenever we detect that it contains in a concentrated form those qualities in which we personally, or our societies more generally, are deficient. We respect a style which can move us away from what we fear and towards what we crave: a style which carries the correct dosage of our missing virtues.” — Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness I’m at an interesting point of my life. I desire simplicity, freedom, adventure, beauty, awareness, zest for life and an open heart. These are all qualities I feel I am lacking, and as de Botton says, these are things I am drawn to other aspects of my life such as art, artefacts and architecture. The reality is that I just don’t believe… in anything. I used …