ディレイノーモア。。。delay no more...

How much of human life is lost in waiting...?

Time flies, and waits for no-one... no matter how much we may wish otherwise. In the blink of an eye, life slips between our fingers, and the years march on, unceasing... I guess we all have regrets. Small and large. They are inevitable. A necessary consequence of the human condition: The conversations we never had. The time we did not spend. Never telling the people who mattered, that they made us happy, when we were in their company... that our world was the better for them being in it... Even if, it is for these things alone that we now regret: things left unsaid... it is regret enough. For now the moment is passed, or they are gone, and we are old... but let us not dwell on that...
For a new decade is upon us, as one year draws to it's inevitable close and another stands poised to begin... Another chance to get things right... And so, if you will forgive me, I must ask for your forbearance once more, as I borrow the words of another, one last time... You must understand by now that I altogether lack my own... Yet borrowed as they are, I hope you understand that the sentiment is sincere... I may have even added a bit of myself within, somewhere in the passing :) And so, these then are my last and first words to you, of the previous decade and the next...

I hope you have a wonderful year. May your days be filled with magic and wonder and just that little bit of madness :) I hope you read some good books, watch some fine films, and at the strike of midnight, kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful (which you are :) I hope you continue to dream grandly and outrageously - and then wake up and make those dreams a reality... Live a life without regret, leave no path untaken and find whatever it is you are searching for... Make something in this world that did not exist before you made it: write or draw or dance or sing or live or "be" as only you can :) And somewhere in the next year, be sure to surprise everyone, including yourself :)
I hope that you will be loved and I hope that you will be liked, and I hope that you will have people to love and like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and wisdom in the world right now), I hope that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind...

simple questions and complicated answers...

It has been a long time. I am afraid I must apologise for my lack of any proper update of late. Time and distance have a way of getting the best of all of us...

But the world continues to turn. Days come and go. The sun rises and sets (as it has a habit of doing :)). Seasons change, leaves gently fall, and life goes on as it must...
But I cannot really complain. For my days remain full, my work worthwhile, my worries few and I continue to enjoy an altogether uncomplicated existence...

Perhaps that is why, when asked a very simply question by one of my elementary school students, I was taken completely aback by my inability to answer:

"Sensei... Are you happy?"

Voiced with such complete openness. So naive in its innocence. Not yet jaded or weighed down by the perceived responsibilities and everyday complications of life... as each of us eventually becomes...

I often wonder if I was ever so young...

For a long time after I could not find the words, and I was left to ponder the question late into the evening and many days hence. Sometimes the questions can seem so simple on the surface yet hide layers of complexity underneath... or mayhap I simply complicate them in my own mind :).
Whatever the case, I think I found myself walking through the motions of my recent existence in somewhat of a daze, wondering where in fact I was going with my life. Wondering how I could possibly approach the question, let alone the answer...

I think in the end we are all searching for some kind of meaning, and the path that leads to that altogether elusive sense of happiness and fulfillment. Contentment if you will, of time richly spent and a life well lived. I sometimes wonder if such things are even meant to be. For if we were ever truly content, what more would there be left to strive for...? I think I may have shared this with you all before, but it is worth repeating. There is an old middle-eastern proverb, or blessing if you will, that roughly translates into "may all your dreams, but one, come true...". I think there is a truth in that. To achieve everything you set out to do in this life, but always have something more to look forward to, some other road to explore, some distant country to discover, all lying just over the horizon...

But in this life, it really is to each their own and we must find our own sense of meaning to our own set of questions. There is no way of knowing what another person truly feels, or understanding entirely where they are coming from. No matter how well we may or may not know another, we each live such individual lives, so unique and multifaceted in their complexity, that we have trouble enough understanding our own – let alone anyone else's.

Yet I think we can all understand in part the feeling of getting older and reflecting on a life that was... or could have been. I think we are all doomed and blessed to forever be questioning "why?" and never really reaching a satisfactory answer. It is simply part of the human condition. The endless "what if...?"

But in the end, do not stress overly much. We all simply live in our own ways. And we all have doubts about whether it is right or wrong. But there is no "right" or "wrong" way to live. Simply different paths...

And while I sometimes wish someone would simply come along and tell me what to do. I understand that there are no easy answers in this world. Life is hard. It is supposed to be. And in the end, that is ultimately what makes it all the more worthwhile. The world is not perfect, but it is out there trying the best it can, and that is what makes it so darn beautiful :) It may not seem that way now, but if you will forgive me for saying something that "old" people say... but one day, you will see... :)

And so in closing I ask you all an echo of the question that took me so aback...

so... are you happy? I mean, would you call yourself a happy person...?

...and the answer which comes closest to encapsulating my own. Something I saw in a film or read in a book or heard in a song, I cannot remember which, but they seem to be the source of more and more of my answers in this life... :)

so... well, if you are asking me an honest question, I'll tell you. I'm happy enough. I don't expect much. I don't give much. I don't get much. I generally enjoy whatever comes my way. That's my truth. Summed up for your judgment... I'm happy enough..."

But is enough, enough...?

What is your answer? Or is this even the right question?

imaginary worlds... or a life less ordinary...

When do you stop imagining the life you want to live and start living the life you imagined...?

We spend our days wondering what could or should have been. We watch other peoples' stories in film and television, read other peoples' tales in books and novels, and lament how so much more wonderful they are, compared to our own. We console ourselves that these are nothing more than "imaginary" worlds, "fictional" lands, stardust and dreams – that such things could never happen in the "real" world, to "ordinary" people.....

But why can they not?

We have been brough up to believe in the mundaneness of our own reality. Become mired in the routine hum-drum of daily life. Resigned ourselves to the inevitablity of everyday existence... That we sometimes forget how to breath. We fail to appreciate the wonder in little things. We lose sight of the the magic, lying just over the horizon...

Why can you not say "yes" to every opportunity that lies before you?
Why can you not pack up your life, leave everything behind, hit the road and go wherever the wind may take you?
Why can you not be that person who falls asleep content on that hidden cove, listening to the ebb and flow of the ocean lapping the shore, under the waxing moon and those altogether too bright stars?
Why can you not climb that mountaintop and catch a glimpse of that most unforgettable sunset, and later wake to that impossibly breathtaking sunrise?
Why can't that special someone in the elevator next to you, day after day, finally catch a snatch of that music you've been listening to and finally say that they love that band too?
Why can you not talk to that beautiful stranger on the train and convince them to spend a day wandering around Vienna with you?
Why can you not open that door, pick up that phone, step on that path, get on that plane... Talk to that girl?

We hardly every stop to notice how amazingly free we truly are...

And then the moment fades and we fall back to earth... They are movies stars we tell ourselves. They are the "beautiful people". Their lives are full of glitz and glamour... so much more exciting than our own... We are sometimes our own worse enemies in this regard...
We allow ourselves to get weighed down by perceived responsibilities, externally imposed restrictions, that we sometimes forget how to move. Or we get caught up in conforming to everyone else's expectations of what our lives "should" be, that we lose sight of our own path. And then we find ourselves, many years down the road, staring back at the end of sombody elses' life...
And rare indeed may we find a quiet moment to stop and simpy be, or wonder whom, after all, we are... That is the beauty and the tragedy of the human condition. The endless questioning. The great unknowing. Simply making it up as we go along. It is sometimes all that makes it ok sometimes... The freedom to believe also means the freedom to believe in the "wrong" thing. Just as the freedom of speech affords us the freedom to remain silent.

At the end of the day, aren't we all the stars of our own stories? The tellers of our own tales? The singers of our own songs? We are each the everyday poets and sidewalk philosophers of our own reality... authors of our own existence... The truth or fiction of our lives is of our own devising. The melody and music of our own composition. We may add nuance and form and verve in any manner we choose. Follow any path, wander any road...

Why are we content to tread the straight and narrow? Lead pedestrian lives and unexceptional existences? Why am I writing these words instead of putting them into practice? :)

I guess what we all sometimes fail to realise is that none of us are "ordinary". We are each "extraordinary". In our own ways. If we simply take the time to notice. So open that door. Pick up that phone. Step on that path. Get on that plane... Talk to that girl.... You may just discover a world you knew nothing about... and it may just be a wonderful world after all...

what a long strange road it has been... and is yet to be...

It has been a long time. I am afraid I must apologise for the lack of updates of late, but time and distance have a way of getting the best of all of us. I can claim being victim to circumstances beyond my control, as the establishment of a reliable internet connection has eluded me until only recently. But that is a poor excuse and I can offer none better. If anything, this brief period of disconnection has given me pause to consider my words carefully - unlike the rest of my life - and at the very least provided an unexpectedly refreshing detox from technology :). Suffice it to say, I somehow find myself back in a place I once knew so well, slowly settling back into the ebb and flow of life here. But time flies and a month has already passed as if nothing at all. That is it's nature I suppose and is want to leave us behind if we do not pay close attention. So I have tried. In the intervening period, I've met some fine new friends, spent time exploring and discovering some wonderful sights off the beaten track, attended numerous summer festivals and witnessed the skies ablaze with countless fireworks, and somehow along the way I've managed to start setting up my apartment with the little things one sometimes forgets that slowly make it feel like "home". It is a hard thing to explain, but there is a definite "rightness" to being back here. Half forgotten but fondly remembered sights and smells and sounds surround me as I slip back into the familiar pattern of bygone days as if no time has passed at all. I am not really sure what it all means, but that is the point after all. The "not knowing" and the eventual "finding out". The journey, still searching for a destination. All I know for certain is that for the first time in a long time, I may just be able see somewhere on the horizon, a "real" life stretching out before me... or at least something very much like it :). With summer classes over and the real ones about to begin, I feel that perhaps I can do more than simply go through the motions and pass through this time around. Perhaps, in some small way, I may just be able to do something of value and make a difference that is truly worthwhile. I guess that remains to be seen, but I will definitely make the most of the opportunity before me. Whatever the case, it is good to be back. What a long strange road it has been, as they say... and the road goes ever on...

do you know anything with a happily ever after...?

"And then she woke up..." I suppose there are worse endings...

-from Rose Walker's diary, in Sandman #16: "Lost Hearts"

a good rain knows... or if this is my lie...

None of this is real, if it makes you feel any better. This tale was in no way true, but based on just a fiction... aren't they all? I was not here, nor there, and I have never really been anywhere before... Life has a way of underwhelming you that way... These have been nothing more than a collection of blurred photographs and borrowed words, for lack of my own. About everything we've forgotten to remember or cannot help but forget... But one should never trust the story-teller - only trust the story... For we all wear masks, and we all have tales... and we all must remain on this journey, still searching for a destination... But a good rain knows when to fall... all good things must come to an end, and all truths must be revealed, in time... For the first time in a long time, I can honestly say I have no regrets... for along the way, I discovered a world I knew nothing about... and it's a fabulous world after all...

I have heard it said that we are all, in reality, artists and liars. And that when we lie, we are in some ways revealing more of ourselves than we care to realise. For in those lies, we must create an entire world of our own devising. A world that in turn becomes wholey real in the telling. Wherein rest truths that we sometimes fail to recognise or do not wish to admit to ourselves...
Tell me your lie and I will tell you who you are...
If this is my lie, then who, in fact, am I...?

memory is an unreliable thing...

"Goodbye doesn't always mean the end. Sometimes, it means a new beginning, even though we may not know it at the time..."

"Looking back, I'm not sure if this is exactly the way it all happened... but it's definitely the way I want to remember..."

-from Wong Kar Wai's "Blueberry Nights"

I believe it was John Ed Pierce who said: "home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to...."

"These then, are my last words to you - believe that life is worth living, and that belief will help create the fact..."

hellos and goodbyes...

"My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm Happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right...?"

"Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves and then we have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos..."

-Snoopy

I love mankind, it's people I can't stand...

-Linus Van Pelt

I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong...

-Lucy Van Pelt

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia..."

-from "Peanuts"

something lost along the way...

Jet Black: When you and I first met, you told me something. You said that you had died once, that you had seen death. Why can't you just let it go? Forget the past.
Spike Spiegel: There was a woman, first time I'd found someone who was truly alive. At least, that's what I thought. She was... the part of me I'd lost somewhere along the way, the part that was missing, that I'd been longing for...

Julia: It's all... a dream...
Spike Spiegel: Yeah... just a dream...

Jet Black: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye Valentine: Ordinary. The kind of dangerous, beautiful ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet Black: I see.
Faye Valentine: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from paradise...

Vicious: There's nothing in this world to believe in...

-from "Cowboy Bebop"(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)

wor(l)d's end...

"When a world ends, there's always something left over. A story, perhaps, or a vision, or a hope. This inn is a refuge, after the lights go out. For a while..."

-The innkeeper, in Sandman #56: "World's End"


"So, like everyone else, I was staring out of one of the windows of the inn at the end of the words..."
"Worlds. I meant worlds..."

-Brant Tucker, in Sandman #56: "World's End"

"Hey. Thanks for listening. I suppose you must think I'm crazy."
"No. I don't. Maybe I ought to. But I don't. You hear a lot of weird stories behind a bar..."

-Brant Tucker and the bartender, in Sandman #56: "World's End"

endings are mixed blessings...

mistakes... or final days...

"I doubt I'm any wiser than I was five hundred years back. I'm older. I've been up, and been down, and been up again. Have I learned aught? I've learned from my mistakes, but I've had more time to commit more mistakes..."

-Hob Gadling, in Sandman #13: "Men of Good Fortune"

"Death is a mug's game..."

-Hob Gadling, in "The Doll's House"

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due..."

-Hob Gadling, in "Season of Mists"

"We are always living in the final days. What have you got? A hundred years or much, much less until the end of your world..."

-the film director, in "Signal To Noise"

my so-called life... or a doll's house

"The one I hate is where I'm just an actor on a strange television version of my life. Have you ever had that dream?"
"Doesn't everyone?"
"I don't."

-Superman, Batman, and Martian Manhunter, in Sandman #71, part two of "The Wake"

"It means that we're just dolls. We don't have a clue what's really going down, we just kid ourselves that we're in control of our lives while a paper's thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they're tired, or bored..."

-Rose Walker, in "The Doll's House"

"I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life's problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear fashionable clothes, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think...?"

"Why isn't my life like a situation comedy? Why don't I have a bunch of friends with nothing better to do but drop by and instigate wacky adventures? Why aren't my conversations peppered with spontaneous witticisms? Why don't my friends demonstrate heartfelt concern for my well being when I have problems? ...I gotta get my life some writers..."

-Calvin & Hobbes

rooms that are no longer there...

"It is a fearful thing to be haunted by those who loved us once. It is a fearful thing to haunt those one loves..."

-Destruction orates about death, in Sandman #55: "Cerements"

"I mean, does this always happen when a girlfriend walks out on him?"
"Not at all. For example, after the Nada affair he razed the Dreaming. It was a bleak, lonely desert for centures. I remember the first flower that grew. The first time he smiled again...

-Matthew and Lucien, in Sandman #42: "Brief Lives:2"

"I remember waiting for his return. I remember the strange strained grey days that stretched into years and into decades. The slow crumbling of walls... the rooms that were no longer there..."

-The Corinthian remembers Dream's absence, in Sandman #67: "The Kindly Ones:11"

changeless... or sometimes i forget...

"Some things are changeless. People love, and die, they dream, destroy, despair, go mad. They fulfill their destinies, live out the course of their lives. We fulfill our function, as they fulfill theirs... That will not change..."

"You think not...?"

-Despair and Destruction, in Sandman #41: "Brief Lives:1"

"Lucien? Were you ever alive?"
"I don't think so, no."
"You don't think so?"
"I can remember the title, author, and location of every book in this library, Matthew. Every book that's ever been dreamed. Every book that's ever been imagined. Every book that's ever been lost. Millions upon millions of them. That's what I remember. It's my job. Other things... I forget sometimes..."

-Matthew and Lucien, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

i never thought it would end like this...

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending any time. You know where you are with an ending...

-The eldest of the three Fates, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

"It's never what they want, and if we give them what they think they want, they like it less than ever. "I never thought it would be like this." "Why can't it be like the one I had before?" I don't know why we bother..."
"We bother because we have no choice. Because that is what we are, in this aspect..."

-The eldest and youngest of the three Fates, in Sandman #57: "The Kindly Ones:1"

"What did we make? What was it, in the end?"
"What it always is. A handful of yarn; a little weaving and stitching; some embroidering perhaps. A few loose ends, but that's only to be expected..."

-The Fates, in Sandman #69: "The Kindly Ones:13"

everyday miracles...

Dr. Manhattan: I don’t think your life’s meaningless.
Silk Spectre: Oh no, well, obviously that’s what you’re going to say because anything I’m stupid enough to believe is true, you just disagree with it and…uh… You don’t?
Dr. Manhattan: No.
Silk Spectre: But…listen, you’ve just been saying life is meaningless, so how can…?
Dr. Manhattan: I changed my mind.
Silk Spectre: But…why?
Dr. Manhattan: Thermodynamic miracles…events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter… Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold… that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.”
Silk Spectre: But…if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle… I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!
Dr. Manhattan: Yes. Anybody in the world. …But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace, and we forget… I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another’s vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away. Come…dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes…and let’s go home…

-Dr Manhattan and Silk Spectre in "Watchmen"

Ozymandias: I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end.
Dr. Manhattan: "In the end?" Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends...

-Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan in "Watchmen"

"It would be a stronger world. A stronger, more loving world... to die in..."

when we fall...

“People look to you to save them – probably most of the time – from their own mistakes. They do things – knowingly – wrong. And they look to you afterward to make them right. Why do you bother?”
"Because I Can..."

"Then why are we here?"
"To catch them if they fall..."

-Father Daniel and Superman in "For Tomorrow"

"You asked for my help. That's all that matters..."

"I'm someone who does what he can. Aren't we all...?"

-Clark Kent or Kal-El or Superman

"No. A finer world is small thing to ask for..."

-The Midnighter from "The Authority"

"You act like you think there's always hope..."
"Well... there is."

-Winged Victory and Samaritan from Kurt Busiek's "Astro City"

"Everyone's worth it..."

fear of flying...

"Birds of a thousand colours danced in the sky when I was a boy. They brightened the day with their intricate songs. "We are who we choose to be," sang the goldfinch, when the sun was high. "I dream about dreams about dreams," sang the nightingale, under the pale moon..."

-Master Li, in Sandman #74, "The Exile"

"Nothing to fear? I thought I heard the beating of mighty wings, as in a nightmare that rode me when I was a boy..."
"You do. But have no fear of them..."

-Shakespeare and Dream, in Sandman #75, "The Tempest"

"Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost..."

-The true end of the series, in Sandman #74, "The Exile"

a million lives...

"Once, there was a tiger striped cat. This cat, died a million deaths, revived and lived a million lives. And he had various owners that he didn't really care about, the cat wasn't afraid to die. Then ONE day, he met a white female cat, the two of them fell in love and lived together happily. Well, the year's went by and the white female cat got old and passed away. The Tiger Striped cat cried a million times, then he also died. But this time.....he didn't come back..."

Jet: That's a good story
Spike: I hate that story
Jet: Why?
Spike: I hate cats...

-Spike Spiegel and Jet Black from "Cowboy Bebop"
(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)

certainty...

"The true Atlantis is inside you, just as it's inside all of us. The sunken land is lost beneath the dark sea, lost beneath the waves of wet, black stories and myths that break upon the shores of our minds. Atlantis is the shadow-land, the birth-place of civilization. The fair land in the west that is lost to us, but remains forever, true birthplace and true goal..."

-The Atlantean sorceror, in Books Of Magic #1

"The past is always knocking at the door, trying to break through into today..."

-Dr Occult, in Books Of Magic #1

"All we know for sure is that we don't know anything for sure."
"That is a particularly foolish thing to say, John Constantine. Light and darkness, life and death. These things are eternally certain..."

-John Constantine and Dr Occult, in Books Of Magic #1

sometimes... i remember how to fly...

"When I dream, sometimes I remember how to fly...
You just lift one leg, then you lift the other leg, and you're not standing on anything, and you can fly... So what I want to know is, when I'm asleep, do I really remember how to fly? And forget how when I wake up? Or am I just dreaming I can fly?"

"When you dream, sometimes you remember. When you wake, you always forget."

"But that's not fair..."

"No."

-Chloe Russell and Dream, in Sandman #43: "Brief Lives:3"

selective reality... or forever...

"I'm not in denial, I'm just selective about the reality I choose to accept..."

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere is the fact that none of it has tried to contact us..."

"I hate to think that all my current experiences will someday become stories with no point..."

"There is never enough time to do all the nothing you want..."

"We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us that we don't take time to enjoy where we are..."

"Childhood is short, maturity is forever..."

- Calvin & Hobbes

awake...

"Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, 'Why me?', then a voice answers 'Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up...'"

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night...' "

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love..."

-Charlie Brown

"I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it..."

-Sally Brown

一年ののち... in a month, in a year...

「いつか貴方は　あの男を愛さなくなるだろう」　と　ベルナールは静かに言った。
「そして　いつか僕もまた　貴方を愛さなくなるだろう。」
「我々は　またもや孤独になる　それでも同じことなのだ。」
「其処に　また流れ去った　一年の月日があるだけなのだ。。。」

-F.サガン　「一年ののち　と　すばらしい雲」

"One day you will not love him anymore..." Bernard said softly.
"And one day, doubtless, I will not love you anymore, either..."
"And we will be alone once more, and in that be alike..."
"And another year will have gone by..."

-Francoise Sagan, "In a month, in a year" (Dans un mois, dans un an) and "Wonderful Clouds" (Le merveilleux nuages)

before sunset... or things left unspoken...

"We were never loves, and we never will be, now. I do not regret that, however. I regret the conversations we never had, the time we did not spend together. I regret that I never told him that he made me happy, when I was in his company. The world was the better for his being in it. These things alone do I now regret: things left unsaid. And he is gone, and I am old..."

-Lady Bast, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

I cared for him, very much. He was so wise; he seemed so certain of the rightness of his actions. And I, who do nothing but doubt, admired that in him. He was a creature of hope, for dreams are hopes, and echoes of hopes, and I am a creature of despair...

-Despair, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

I think of the first Despair sometimes, said Despair. It must be over a hundred thousand years since anyone thought of her but me. An eyeblink, and she is forgotten. And you will forget: death or life will take him from your minds. I know, whispered Despair, in her distant, empty voice. But I shall remember him...

-Despair, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

dusk... or this is not the way the world ends...

"I've spent the weekend walking around in a daze wondering, what has happened to the great men and women that helped define the legacy of this place? And then last night I figured it out...you've grown old. Here, at the end of human history, we sit on the verge of a transformative time. Never have we lived longer, eaten better, worked less or possessed more things. We are more advanced than any species that has ever walked the earth, and now, with our promethean urge truly unleashed, we stand on the precipice of scientific marvels that will catapult us into the next millennium. Despite all this, evidence presented here suggests that most of you have never been more pessimistic for our future. You fear tomorrow. Throughout the day, the shock of this mindset has turned to disappointment and finally now to anger...the future of man is not one billion of us fighting over limited resources on a soon-to-be-dead planet, but one trillion human beings spanning an entire galaxy. The future of man is not here...it is out there...

-Reed Richards, in Fantastic Four #579

a long, long road...

"It's astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself into, if one works at it. And astonishing how much trouble one can get oneself out of, if one simply assumes that everything will, somehow or other, work out for the best..."

-Destruction, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

Something Dian used to say to me. She'd say, "Wes, don't say anything unless you've got something to say." Advice I took to heart. She would also say, "It's a long, long trail that has no turning." And how right she was...

-Wesley Dodds, in Sandman #72, part three of "The Wake"

places...

"If you bring me back to life, my death will have no meaning. I had a fine existence. I was a good place. I spent a little time in the waking world. I even fell in love, once, a little. I lived a good life and it ended. Would you take that away from me...?"

-Fiddler's Green, in Sandman #70, part one of "The Wake"

"Sometimes a really good friend can be a where instead of a who..."

self-deceptions...

"The two biggest self-deceptions of all are that life has "meaning" and that each of us is "unique". One can see that evolving a built in obscuring mechanism, for those depressing and inevitable insights might be of practical use..."

-Talking Heads frontman David Byrne in "Bicycle Diaries"

"We are not meant to pursue happiness..."

destiny's garden...

"The garden of Destiny. You would know it if you saw it. After all, you will wander it until you die. Or beyond. For the paths are long, and even in death there is no ending to them..."

"The paths fork and divide. With each step you take through Destiny's garden, you make a choice; and every choice determines future paths. However, at the end of a lifetime of walking you might look back, and see only one path stretching out behind you; or look ahead, and see only darkness..."

-from Neil Gaiman's Sandman: "Season of Mists", episode 0

dreams do not come true...

어느 깊은 가을밤, 잠에서 개어난 제자가 울고 있었다.
그 모습을 본 스승이 기이하게 여겨 제자에게 물었다,
"무서운 꿈을 꾸었느냐?"
"아닙니다."
"슬픈 꿈을 꾸었느냐?"
"아닙니다, 달콤한 꿈을 꾸었습니다."
"그런데 왜 그리 슬피 우느냐?"
제자는 흐르는 눈물을 닦아내며 나지막이 말했다,
"그 꿈은 이루어질 수 없기 때문 입니다..."

One late autumn night, the disciple woke up crying.
So the master asked the disciple,
"Did you have a nightmare?"
"No."
"Did you have a sad dream?"
"No," said the disciple, "I had a sweet dream."
"Then why are you crying so sadly?"
The disciple answered quietly while wiping his tears,
"Because the dream I had can't come true..."

-from "A Bittersweet Life" (달콤한 인생)

탈콤한 인생... or a bittersweet life...

어느 맑음 봄날 바람에 이리저리 휘날리는 나뭇가지를 바라보며 제자가 물었다,
"스승님, 저것은 나뭇가지가 움직이는 겁니까?"
스승은 제자가 가리키는 곳은 보지도 않은 채 웃으면 말했다,
"무릇, 움직이는 것은 나뭇가지도 아니고 바람도 아니몌 네 마음 뿐이다..."


One fine spring day... a disciple looked at some branches blowing in the wind. He asked his master...
"Master, are the branches moving or is it the wind?"
Not even glancing to where his pupil was pointing... the master smiled and said...
"That which moves is neither the branches nor the wind... it is your heart and mind..."

-from "A Bittersweet Life" (달콤한 인생)

science and magic... or is it far...?

"Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality.
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "Books of Magic"

"Is it far?"
"It is as close as the harvest moon in the evening sky, as distant as a dream on wakening;
Near as a rainbow, and so remote you could walk forever and never reach it..."
"Is it far?"

-Tim Hunter and Queen Titannia of Faerie in Neil Gaiman's "Books of Magic"

vantage points...

"None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father, a city, a house of many rooms, a watchmaker who left his prize chronometer in the desert, someone who loves you — even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition. Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"

“This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it, human and otherwise, are imaginary, excepting only certain of the fairy folk, whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof...”

-Neil Gaiman

雲のむこう、約束の場所... or beyond the clouds, our promised place...

"You know the best thing about aeroplanes? Apart from the peanuts in the little silver bags, I mean. It's looking out of the windows at the clouds, and thinking, maybe I could go walking in there. Maybe it's a special place where everything's okay. Sometimes I do go walking in the clouds. But it's just cold and wet and empty, but when you look out of a plane it's a special world..."

-Delirium (who was once Delight...), in "Brief Lives"

“A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such a speed...It feels an impulsion...this is the place to go now. But the sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons...”

-Richard Bach

(100) days... or no endings...

"He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough..."

"Not only are there no happy endings," she told him, "there aren't even any endings..."


-from Neil Gaiman's "American Gods"


"The world is always ending for someone..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "Signal to Noise"

someday's dreamer...

"Sometimes, we get too possessive of something or someone we don't even own... it's a side-effect of loving too much... and receiving too little..."

"I'd give anything for a love I believe I can never have, for a joy of contentment that I doubt I can ever feel..."

"The ways of knowing move, often in unexpected ways..."

"And we tremble blind for the stars and love..."

-anon

wandering...

"They will eventually walk their own paths, live their own lives. It is not parting but embarking on a journey. Not the end, but the beginning. It will be lonely, but that's how it is..."

"When I first met you, you didn't care about my past. I was happy about that. Thank you for everything...
I am a wanderer. I must be wandering again. Sayonara..."

-from "Rurouni Kenshin" (るろうに剣心) by Watsuki Nobuhiro (和月 伸宏)

infinity's end...

Spike Spiegel: Look at my eyes... One of them is a fake because I lost it in an accident. Since then, I've been seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. So, I thought I could only see patches of reality, never the whole picture. I felt like I was watching a dream I could never wake up from... Before I knew it, the dream was over...

Faye Valentine: You told me once to forget the past, cause it doesn't matter, but you're the one still tied to the past...

Faye Valentine: Why do you have to go? Where are you going? What are going to do, just throw your life away like it was nothing?
Spike Spiegel: I'm not going there to die. I'm going to find out if I'm really alive...

Spike Spiegel: Whatever happens, happens...

-Spike Spiegel and Faye Valentine from "Cowboy Bebop"
(カウボーイビバップ) by Watanabe Shin'ichirō (渡辺 信一郎)

all kinds of time...

"She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars..."

"Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while..."

"Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "Stardust"

“I lost some time once. It's always in the last place you look for it...”

-Delirium (who was once Delight...) from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"

realities and illusions...

Hachi: You're idealizing me that's why you fell in love with me. If you knew the real me, it would shatter your illusion...
Nobu: Then come on. Shatter my illusion. Because I don't know what else I can do to stop loving you...

-from "Nana" (ナナ) by Yazawa Ai (矢沢あい)

"If happiness had a form what would it look like? It might be something like glass, because one doesn't notice it normally. However, it is actually there. As proof, if you change the angle you look at it, the glass will reflect light. It will state it's presence and existence more eloquently than any other thing in this world...

-Lelouch Lamperouge from "Code Geass"

"Don't come into my world. I can't see any exit from this love..."

-Makino Tsukushi from "Boys Over Flowers"

patterns... or a secret world...

"Nobody's creepy from the inside, Hazel. Some of them are sad, and some of them hurt, and some of them think they're the only real thing in the whole world. But they're not creepy..."

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "Sandman"

more than you think...

A girl asked a boy if she was pretty.
He said no.
She asked him if he wanted to be with her forever.
He said no.
She then asked him if he would cry if she walked away.
He again said no. She had heard too much. She needed to leave. As she walked away, he grabbed her arm and told her to stay...
He said, "You're not pretty, you're beautiful.
I don't want to be with you forever, I need to be with you forever.
I wouldn't cry if you walked away, I would die..."
You mean more to me than you think...

-anon

"The magic of first love is our ignorance that it could ever end..."

merely being alive... or the will to smile...

"I don't think anyone is born knowing the reason why they're here. It's just something you have to find as you go along..."

"Can you understand? Not having a dream ... not being needed by anyone ... the pain of merely being alive...?"

"All that I can do now is watch over them, so that they don't make the same mistakes. So that they don't lose the will to smile..."

-from "Fruits Basket" (フルーツバスケット, Furūtsu Basuketto) by Takaya Natsuki (高屋 奈月)

the park swing... or purposes...

Yamada: I thought that Hagu-chan was in love with Morita...?
Mayama: She is in love with him.
Yamada: Then why?
Mayama: I think its a matter of what her purpose in life is.
Yamada: Purpose in life...?
Mayama: Yeah. Love is the reason for some but not for others. Hagu-chan is motivated by her desire to accomplish something... I believe.
Yamada: Is that more important than love?
Mayama: It’s not a matter of which is more important or which is right. It is not an act of selfishness either. She chooses instinctively before she has time to think it through...

-from "Honey and Clover (ハチミツとクローバー)" by Umino Chika (羽海野 チカ)

choices... or the sound of emptiness...

"...what is my purpose in life?
What should I do to find it?
Once I've found it, will I become stronger?
....Oh no, my mind is blank.
A strange sound keeps ringing in my head.
What sound is that...?
Ah, I know.
It's...
The sound of emptiness..."

"If to get happiness, I have to make someone miserable, and these two situations will happen at once... how should I choose then...?"

"To wish for your own happiness is sometimes coupled with another’s unhappiness. Since I couldn’t pray for my own happiness, I prayed to the moon in the night sky for the happiness of the one whose warm hand I held..."

-from "Honey and Clover (ハチミツとクローバー)" by Umino Chika (羽海野 チカ)

brief lives... or you can stop being anything...

"I know how gods begin, Roger. We start as dreams. Then we walk out of dreams into the land. We are worshipped and loved, and take power to ourselves. And then one day there's no one left to worship us. And in the end, each little god and goddess takes its last journey back into dreams, and what comes after, not even we know. I'm going to dance now, I'm afraid..."

-Ishtar, in "Brief Lives"

"I didn't know you could stop being a God..."
"You can stop being anything..."

-Delirium and Dream, in "Brief Lives"

honest lies and false truths...

"The art of lying begins wih the worship of the truth. The best liars are the ones who can lift a fiction to a reality. Who can bend and twist the way things are until they have sculpted it into the way they want things to be. They do it with loving care for what's true - they study it carefully like an artist does his model. They adore it at every step. Fact is, the liar loves truth far more than the honest man..."

-from "Shuddertown"

waking... or long after they are gone...

"If the city was dreaming," he told me, "then the city is asleep. And I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear," he said, "is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise..."

-the man who got lost in the dreams of a city, in "World's End"

"You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they've served their purpose.
But you've got to learn to throw things away eventually..."

-Death, in "Dream Country"

a point of view...

"I must confess, I have always wondered what lay beyond life, my dear."
"Yeah, everybody wonders. And sooner or later everybody gets to find out..."

-Norton I and Death, in Sandman #31: "Three Septembers and a January"

"I thought you could foretell the future?"
"I don't need to know the future. When the future's over, then it's me..."

-Orpheus and Death, in Sandman: "The Song of Orpheus"

"If you had stayed with us, we could have given you life until death..."
"Don't I get that anyway?"

-Stheno and Lyta Hall, in Sandman #61: "The Kindly Ones:5"

"Your life is your own. Your death, likewise. Always and forever your own. Farewell. We shall not meet again..."

-Dream, in "Fables and Reflections"

"Nobody died. How can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?"
"Then what died? Who are you mourning?"
"A puh-point of view..."

-Cain, Elbis O'Shaughnessy, and Abel, in "The Wake"

passing...

"Wear good shoes, and those shoes will take you to good places..."

"I guess we just passed by each other in life..."

"It's sad, but that's the truth. It had to be then, or never..."

"The night has ended...
The dawn will follow everyone's worries... and arrive..."

-from "Boys Over Flowers (花より男子, Hana Yori Dango)" by Kamio Yōko (神尾 葉子),

the road less travelled...

"...I still can't be entirely certain whether people's fates simply coast along like the clouds in the sky... or if each person can choose his own path to follow... I suppose the destination might be the same either way, but when you decide to follow your own path, you can strive to achieve your own dreams...
I finally learned that people with dreams are the ones who are truly strong...

-Neji from "Naruto"


"Everywhere you go, the sky is the sky and people are people..."

-Jubei Kibagami from "Ninja Scroll"

"If you only face forward, there is something you will miss seeing..."

-Vash the Stampede from "Trigun"

rules and responsibilities... or the ties that bind us...

"My sister has a function to perform, even as I do. The Endless have their responsibilities. I have responsibilities.
I walk by her side, and the darkness lifts from my soul.
I walk with her, and I hear the gentle beating of mighty wings..."

-Dream, in "Preludes & Nocturnes"

"Our existence deforms the universe. That's responsibility..."

-Delirium, in "The Kindly Ones"

"Rules and responsibilities: these are the ties that bind us. We do what we do, because of who we are. If we did otherwise, we would not be ourselves. I will do what I have to do. And I will do what I must..."

-from Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman: Book of Dreams"