Michael > Recent Status Updates

“For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor. Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. At least that’s why I’ve put in the effort day after day: to raise my own level. I’m no great runner, by any means […] But that’s not the point. The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday.”

“Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness — so say the oldest legends. When a human being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fade.”

“For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafes and houses of their past […] I have nowhere to return to.”

“I often wonder why we find some people attractive and not others. And I have a Theory about it, which is that there is such a thing as a perfectly harmonious shape to which our bodies instinctively aspire. We choose in others the features that seem to match this ideal. The aim of evolution is purely aesthetic — it’s not to do with adaptation at all. Evolution is about beauty[.]”

“I grew up in a beautiful era, now sadly in the past. In it there was great readiness for change, and a talent for creating revolutionary visions. Nowadays no one still has the courage to think up anything new. All they ever talk about, round the clock, is how things already are, they just keep rolling out the same old ideas. Reality has grown old and gone senile[.]”

“It is in the feet that all knowledge of Mankind lies hidden; the body sends them a weighty sense of who we really are and how we relate to the earth. It’s in the touch of the earth, at its point of contact with the body that the whole mystery is located — the fact that we’re build of elements of matter, while also being alien to it, separated from it. The feet — those are our plugs into the socket.”

“Where will these song-seeds land? It’s the parable of the Sower. Often, usually, they land on barren soil and don’t take root. But sometimes, they land in a mind that ‘is’ ready. ‘Is’ fertile. What happens then? Feelings and ideas happen. Joy, solace, sympathy. Assurance. Cathartic sorrow. The idea that life could be, should be, better than this.”

“‘How music works — the theory, the practice — is learnable.’ Jasper prises the lid off the coffee. ‘Why it works, God only knows. Maybe not even God.’”

“[S]he came close and planted a small kiss on my cheek. Then she slipped through the door and vanished. I sat there on the bed, dazed, for a long time. The kiss had shaken me up so much I couldn’t think straight. At the same time, my anxiety had turned into an anxiety quite lacking in anxiousness. And any anxiety that is not especially anxious is, in the end, an anxiety hardly worth mentioning.”

“There are only three ways to get along with a girl: one, shut up and listen to what she has to say; two, tell her you like what she’s wearing; and three, treat her to really good food. Easy, eh? If you do all that and still don’t get the results you want, better give up.”

“… Should memories return, and among them of times I disappointed you. Or yet of dark deeds I may once have done to make you look at me and see no longer the man you do now. Promise me this at least. Promise, princess, you’ll not forget what you feel in your heart for me at this moment. For what good’s a memory returning from the mist if it’s only to push away another? Will you promise me, princess?”

“‘Last night in a village below,’ Beateice said, ‘I sooke with a woman wise with medicines. She had much to tell about my sickness, but when I asked her about this mist, the same that makes us forget the last hour as readily as a morning many years past, she confessed she had no idea what or whose work it was…’”

“The opalescent substance you’ve just absorbed has now made possible a very interesting relationship between us, my red red rose. The drug has rendered you fantastically sensitive to the shaping influence of a certain form of energy, namely that which is being generated by me, or rather ‘through’ me. To put it romantically, I’m now dreaming you.”

“‘…I wonder if what we feel in our hearts today isn’t like these raindrops still falling on us from the soaked leaves above, even though the sky itself long stopped raining. I’m wondering if without our memories, there’s nothing for it but for our love to fade and die.’”

“You may wonder why Axl did not turn to his fellow villagers for assistance in recalling the past, but this was not as easy as you might suppose. For in this community the past was rarely discussed. I do not mean that it was taboo. I mean that it had somehow faded into a mist as dense as that which hung over the marshes. It simply did not occur to these villagers to think about the past — even the recent one.”

“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel.”

“Our viewpoint camera lingers in here for a while, observing the restroom. Mari is no longer here. […] A closer look reveals that Mari’s image is still reflected in the mirror over the sink. The Mari in the mirror is looking from her side into this side. Her sombre gaze seems to expect some kind of occurence. But there is no one on this side. Only her image is left in the Skylark’s restroom mirror.”

“For most digital-age writers, writing ‘is’ rewriting. We grope, cut, block, paste and twitch, panning for gold onscreen by deleting bucket-loads of crap. Our analogie ancestors had to polish every line mentally before hammering it out mechanically. Rewrites cost them months, metres of ink-ribbon and pints of Tipp-Ex. Poor sods.”