leaf

 Warm weather things

跟我的思念厚厚一叠

 I've finally rectified by mistake of not having 七里香 in my library. Still not sure how my file disappeared years ago, I definitely had it since I own the CD. 

But man, young Jay Chou is good stuff 😭😭😭

窗外的麻雀 在电线杆上多嘴
你说这一句 很有夏天的感觉
手中的铅笔 在纸上来来回回
我用几行字形容你是我的谁
秋刀鱼的滋味 猫跟你都想了解
初恋的香味 就这样被我们寻回
那温暖的阳光 像刚摘的鲜艳草莓
你说你舍不得吃掉 这一种感觉

雨下整夜 我的爱溢出就像雨水
院子落叶 跟我的思念厚厚一叠
几句是非 也无法将我的热情冷却
你出现在我诗的每一页
雨下整夜我的爱溢出就像雨水
窗台蝴蝶 像诗里纷飞的美丽章节
我接着写 把永远爱你写进诗的结尾
你是我唯一想要的了解
雨下整夜 我的爱溢出就像雨水
院子落叶 跟我的思念厚厚一叠
几句是非 也无法将我的热情冷却
你出现在我诗的每一页

那饱满的稻穗 幸福了这个季节
而你的脸颊像田里熟透的蕃茄
你突然对我说 七里香的名字很美
我此刻却只想亲吻你倔强的嘴

On a side note, I've been more aware of translation now that I'm learning Spanish. It's really hard to maintain both the meaning and the structure when translating, especially lyrics. But since I'm not a huge fan of the top translated result on Google, I'll embarrass myself and give it a shot:

Outside the window sparrow are chirping on top of transmission wires

You said this sentence has a strong feeling of summer

The pencil in my hand is moving back and forth on paper

I use a few lines of words to describe what you mean to me

The taste of saury fish, I want to understand both you and the cat

The feelings of first love has been found by us like this

The warm sunlight, like a freshly picked strawberry

You said you can't bear to eat this kind of feeling

Raining the entire night, my love overflows like the rain

The fallen leaves in the yard and my longings layer thickly 

A few sentences cannot cool my passion

You appear in every page of my poem 

Raining the entire night, my love overflows like the rain

The butterfly on the window sill is like the fluttering beautiful passages in my poem

I continue to write my everlasting love for you into the poem's ending

You are the only understanding I want to achieve

Raining the entire night, my love overflows like the rain

The fallen leaves in the yard and my longings layer thickly 

A few sentences cannot cool my passion

You appear in every page of my poem 

The plumb rice plants bless this season

And your cheeks are like the ripe tomatoes in the field

You suddenly say to me that the jasmine's name is pretty 

but at that moment I only want to kiss your pouting lips

Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life

oof it's been a while since I finished reading a book. 

This is an interesting contrast to all books on existentialism that I've read. In many of the pieces in this collection, Watts emphasize that it's a false notion to think of the (outside) world and ourselves as separate, in the same sense that "front" and "back" are separate. So if all is one, then there is no alienation to be felt. 

Another interesting idea is what faith means, apparently I've gotten it backwards the whole time:

lactonic

Belated post on the tower of cream puffs that I made for Mother's Day, caramel is a wonderful adhesive and mango caramel sauce is insanely delicious.

Made some osmanthus flavoured panna cotta to go along with some roasted tieguanyin tea today. Sort of a deconstructed osmanthus milk tea? 

gleam

So I finally tried the color corrector that I bought before leaving for Saskatoon on my face few days ago. It does work wonders. I'm not that late on starting on my goal of learning to do a clean base makeup right? It's still the first half of the year....

free

 Oh I actually have more quotations from Ethics of Ambiguity:

As long as there have been men and they have lived, they all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it. They have striven to reduce mind into matter, or reabsorb matter into mind, or to merge them within a single substance. Those who have accepted the dualism have established a hierarchy between body and soul which permits the considering as negligible the part of self that cannot be saved. They have denied death, either by integrating it with life or by promising men immortality. Or, again they have denied life, considering it as a veil of illusion beneath which is hidden the truth of Nirvana.

Reading about existentialism makes one aware of the limits of the English language and notice the odd (to English) compound words that are needed to (somewhat accurately) convey the concept. Makes me not want to read the original text as the difficulty in comprehension compounds. No wonder Satre taught himself German.

If this choice [of being] is considered as useless, it is because there exist no absolute value before the passions of man, outside of it, in relation to which one might distinguish the useless from the useful.

The truth is that outside of existence there is nobody. Man exists. For him it is not a question of wondering whether his presence in this world is useful, whether life is worth the trouble of being lived. These questions make no sense. It is a matter of knowing whether he wants to live and under what conditions.

seed

 Another dump of food I've recently made:

• Dinner roll (same recipe as the sandwich bread I've previously made, think its easier in roll form)
• Stir fried rice cake with gochujang 
• Tortilla soup
• Frittata with enoki mushroom and carrots
• Tacos of flank steak and potato in pasilla chile sauce 

Expect more upcoming chile centric food as I made an order of several types from spice trekkers based on friend's recommendation. 

ergo

It's been a while since I read a philosophy book by a philosopher (Ethics of Ambiguity), and I'm immediately reminded of why I don't do so. It's just too dense of a read for the amount of concentration I have remaining by bedtime. As usual, I got through one chapter before dropping. 

(this was before jumping into LotM)

Now I'm reading Eastern Wisdom, Modern Life, which sounds very much like the "Secular Buddhism" podcast but in book form. I very much appreciate the zen of washing dishes:

Praise The Fool

It won't be a post about the end of a series if I don't dump a bunch of fan art amirite (all from wiki)? 

Our dear poet looks much cooler in the fan art than he actually is:

I see why so many people stan Amon: 

Evernight Goddess is cool af too:

But Klein is still my bias:

Lord of the Mysteries

I've been MIA cause I was reading Lord of the Mysteries. Such a good web novel 😭. Actually started reading Embers, which is the author's second novel, first. But since mangadex went down and I needed something to take over all my manga reading time, I decided to take on the ~1400 chapters of LotM. And take up time it did, it's basically all I wanted to do in my spare time. The plot is so damn good, it's hard for me to think of another work that has an intricate of a plot as this, similar to Tower of God and Knight Run. Naturally the cast of characters are good as well, the side characters are actually well fleshed out and are like legit side dishes rather than garnishes to the MC. Now I wait (and keep reading Embers) for the second book of the trilogy to come out. 

Meanwhile, with the abundant spare time that's been recovered, I started learning Spanish on duolingo. Maybe I should finally order the next embroidery kit too...