Hello Stranger

”Pleasant surprises, silent resonance, and natural healing."

“The Museum of Innocence” is the physical embodiment of Pamuk’s novel. The protagonist, Kemal, constructs a fortress against time using Füsun’s earrings, hairpins, and 4,213 cigarette butts. Terrified of forgetting, he chooses to solidify memory into physical space. This stands in stark contrast to Proust: while the taste of the madeleine cake visits Marcel by chance, Kemal’s collecting is an act of voluntary imprisonment. Instead of waiting for memory to find him, he builds a space with his own hands to lock it away....

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation. –The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes Someone once said: “History is actually a higher-dimensional entity. What we see as history is merely a low-dimensional image projected by ordinary people from their own standpoints and angles. The more people study it, the closer that image gets to its higher-dimensional essence.” Although a projection is imperfect, the more projections we have, the closer we get to the truth....

The contrast between rationality and the spirit of Dionysus has been a central theme in Western thought, particularly in philosophy and literature. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche explored this dichotomy in his work, “The Birth of Tragedy”, where he introduced the concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian. Apollonian: Represents order, logic, and rationality, named after Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, light, and knowledge. Dionysian: Represents chaos, emotion, and the irrational, named after Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, ecstasy, and revelry....

We often say that the sun rises, but on the moon, one would see the ‘Earth rise.’ When the frame of reference changes, what seems natural becomes astonishing. In the vast expanse of space and time, our beliefs and assumptions are merely part of a larger plan. As the stars shift and the heavens turn, certainty is a fragile thing, bound by the limits of our perception and time. The truths we choose to believe in...

The so-called “I” is the sum of all past experiences—composed of the people I have met, the things I have touched, the love I have felt, and the pain I have lost myself in. All of these together form the “me” of this moment; take away even one slight of me, and I am no longer the same. Hermann Hesse’s spiritual journey of self-discovery, as portrayed in Siddhartha and other works, reflects this notion of the self as an evolving entity shaped by life’s myriad experiences....

The thing now becoming increasing important is control over where we put our attention. We can hide from each other even if we are constantly connected to each other. “When I ask people, what’s wrong with having a conversation, people say, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with having a conversation. It takes place in real time. And you can’t control what you’re gonna say.” “So that’s the bottom line. texting, email posting all of these things let us present the self as we want to be....

When you’re a kid, everything is astonishing. Everything is new. And so your brain is awake and turned on. So every second, your brain is learning something new: how the world works. And so the muscle of your brain is activated. And as you get older and your brain has figured out the patterns of how the world works: this is how you make money; this is how you graduate school; this is how you get a mortgage; this is how you have kids… And once your brain establishes a routine, it stops....

“Living only for the moment, turning our attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maples, singing songs, drinking wine and diverting ourselves in just floating, floating, caring not a whit for the poverty staring us in the face, refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world.” From A Tale of the Floating World, by Asai Rydi, about 1665 (translated by Richard Lane)

“The worst thing about procrastination is not to delay, but to make yourself hesitant or even lose confidence.” “Whatever you do, decide, and do it right away, which in itself makes people lively and maintains a sense of initiative and happiness.”

“Political correctness” was quietly discussed at the time of the victory of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. This view arose early when Moonlight Boy won the award that year; after all, it was another hard look at the rise of minorities. Some people say that “political correctness” is the biggest source of antipathy for hypocrisy - a polite and friendly way to give way to smiling may follow the social identity of “good citizens,” as to the extent to which this act of kindness is due to “you” is hard to know....