Sonder

Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Sonder. You are the main character—the protagonist—the star at the center of your own unfolding story. You're surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit.

Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness.

When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you'll never be able to see. That you'll never know exists.

...In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk...

Stainless - Shinjuku (slow motion video)

"An endless row of living sculptures brought together by the same subway line, the same direction, the same intention of taking the train to get caught and carried away by the urban flow. All their motions slowed down, they are graceful and stainless, holding their breath waiting for their train to pull into the station." - what the video shows in Adam Magyar's words.

Slow motion video of people waiting at train station. Open  this piece by Chopin along with this one and enjoy the mesmerizing video.

He also captured the same video in Berlin(Alexanderplatz) and NYC(Grand Terminal). You can check them here: http://vimeo.com/adammagyar

Paul Valery's "The Graveyard by the Sea" read by Elizabeth Fraser

English Translation of Paul Valery's poem "Le Cimetière Marin" read by Scottish singer Elisabeth Fraser.

Absolutely wonderful reading, beautiful and hypnotic voice. However, it omits the last 6 stanzas, the last stanza is my favorite one. This is the last stanza of this poem, the ending:

The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live!
The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.

Viktor Tsoi - A star Called Sun / Виктор Цой Звезда по имени солнце

Great song by Russian rock legend Виктор Цой (Viktor Tsoi). 

The song is about cycle of human history, meaningless wars, unachievable dreams and inevitable death under the star called sun.

White snow and black ice
On the cracked earth.
As a patchwork blanket lays on it -
And this city is in the road loop.
Floating clouds over the city,
Closing the heavenly light.
Over the town - yellow smoke
And the city two thousand years old,

Lived under the light of a star named the Sun

And for two thousand years there is war,
War without special reasons.
War is a matter of the young,
İt's medicine against wrinkles.
The red, red blood -
In an hour is simply earth,
And after two on it is flowers and grass,
And after three it is alive again

And warmed by the rays of star called the Sun

And we know that it has always been,
That the fate would like special ones,
Those who lives by the other rules and laws ,
And who were born to die young.
He did not know the words "yes" and "no"
He did not know the orders and ranks,
And he was able to reach the stars,
He did not think it was a dream.

And he fell scorched by a star called Sun

Stell dich mitten in den Regen - Bayon

OST of one of my favorite films , Das Leben der Anderen / The Lives of Others (2006)

Das Lied vom Kindsein, Gedicht von Peter Handke / The Song of Childhood Poem by Peter Handke

Song of Childhood 

By Peter Handke

When the child was a child 

It walked with its arms swinging, 

wanted the brook to be a river, 

the river to be a torrent, 

and this puddle to be the sea.

When the child was a child, 

it didn’t know that it was a child, 

everything was soulful, 

and all souls were one.

When the child was a child, 

it had no opinion about anything, 

had no habits, 

it often sat cross-legged, 

took off running, 

had a cowlick in its hair, 

and made no faces when photographed.

When the child was a child, 

It was the time for these questions: 

Why am I me, and why not you? 

Why am I here, and why not there? 

When did time begin, and where does space end? 

Is life under the sun not just a dream? 

Is what I see and hear and smell 

not just an illusion of a world before the world? 

Given the facts of evil and people. 

does evil really exist? 

How can it be that I, who I am, 

didn’t exist before I came to be, 

and that, someday, I, who I am, 

will no longer be who I am?

When the child was a child, 

It choked on spinach, on peas, on rice pudding, 

and on steamed cauliflower, 

and eats all of those now, and not just because it has to.

When the child was a child, 

it awoke once in a strange bed, 

and now does so again and again. 

Many people, then, seemed beautiful, 

and now only a few do, by sheer luck.

It had visualized a clear image of Paradise, 

and now can at most guess, 

could not conceive of nothingness, 

and shudders today at the thought.

When the child was a child, 

It played with enthusiasm, 

and, now, has just as much excitement as then, 

but only when it concerns its work.

When the child was a child, 

It was enough for it to eat an apple, … bread, 

And so it is even now.

When the child was a child, 

Berries filled its hand as only berries do, 

and do even now, 

Fresh walnuts made its tongue raw, 

and do even now, 

it had, on every mountaintop, 

the longing for a higher mountain yet, 

and in every city, 

the longing for an even greater city, 

and that is still so, 

It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees 

with an elation it still has today, 

has a shyness in front of strangers, 

and has that even now. 

It awaited the first snow, 

And waits that way even now.

When the child was a child, 

It threw a stick like a lance against a tree, 

And it quivers there still today.

Short Story by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100%  perfect girl one beautiful April morning 

(Above is short film fully based on this story)

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku 

neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good­looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either ­  must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards  away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and  my mouth is as dry as a desert.  Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl ­ one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or  graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I  have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.

"An Imperial Message" by Franz Kafka

An Imperial Message

The emperor, so a parable runs, has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the
insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun; the
Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. He has commanded the
messenger to kneel down by the bed, and has whispered the message to him; so much
store did he lay on it that he ordered the messenger to whisper it back into his ear again.
Then by a nod of the head he has confirmed that it is right. Yes, before the assembled
spectators of his death -- all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and on the
spacious and loftily mounting open staircases stand in a ring the great princes of the
Empire -- before all these he has delivered his message. The messenger immediately sets
out on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now
with his left, he cleaves a way for himself through the throng; if he encounters resistance
he points to his breast, where the symbol of the sun glitters; the way is made easier for
him than it would be for any other man. But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have
no end. If he could reach the open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you
would hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. But instead how vainly does
he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the
innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing
would be gained; he must next fight his way down the stair; and if he succeeded in that
nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to be crossed; and after the courts the
second outer palace; and once more stairs and courts; and once more another palace;
and so on for thousands of years; and if at last he should burst through the outermost gate
-- but never, never can that happen -- the imperial capital would lie before him, the center
of the world, crammed to bursting with its own sediment. Nobody could fight his way
through here even with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window when
evening falls and dream it to yourself.

Flickering Lights

Give me all the flickering lights!

tiny specs of fluttering rays

and city glitters shimmering

but only from far away.

i want them all it’s an addiction

i want the christmas lights buried in snow

and the blips in science fiction

films from years ago. 

give me all the night sky’s twinkling sprinkles

and the red pulsing eyes

on tvs that standby

fading, flirting in and out

like a game of cat and mouse.

bits of foil in the distance

blowing kisses from the sun to me and

showing no resistance to the photons

that consistently pass notes on

from one lover to the other

like cupids tiny brothers.

give me all the flickering lights.

light every candle and wave every phone

glinting and bleeping and

imprinting glowing circuses

that linger while I’m sleeping.

an orchestra of weeping light

swan singing like star crossed choirs

who play themselves to me

all night.

(poem by Wirrow)

Some thoughts

"Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way."
                                                                                         -Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness

Wonder how life was without concept of time was invented by human. Was eternity understood by someone at that moment? Maybe eternity wasn't that far for primitive human minds... maybe some thought it would be eternity after surviving few days and night. When time got invented by human mind, eternity was murdered. The concept of eternity became something that is something that will never be achieved. However, maybe there is eternity and that is simply just ignored? Internal time flows differently for not only different people but also for different occasions. 

How long is eternity? Is this is a span of time that ends after countless of hours of boredom and nothingness or is it time when we lose all our limitations and starts seeing things as they are and engulf in perpetual momentum... If we observe a falling leaf, it has a mathematical infinite possible soon to come future outcomes. Leaf may tilt to right by such and such way, to left such and such way. Although the leaf is about to fall off and rot in coming days, at that exact moment before hitting the ground, it experiences a spectra of infinite choices. Thousands of possible near futures and past chain events colliding to create a perpetual moment of everything and nothing. When we face a decision, we think of possible actions. Pessimists only see only few possible future, a dreamer sees an infinite possible future. All in all, the beauty of eternity lies in exact moment before the phenomenon occurs. It contains absolutely everything and yet nothing but one possible soon to occur event. 



More interestingly, It may seem B caused A but in reality it is more like A, X,C.....V etc caused B. Certain phenomenon's are caused by uncountable number of causes. If we try to explain me writing this post then we have to explain entire history of the universe. And interesting fact is that 99.99% of it will not be related with me and whatever happened in past 2000 years. 99.99% will be about how the planet was formed, how species originated and how first human kinds victoriously hunted their dinner. Irrelevant, yes, but out entire action is based on infinite causes that stretches back to who knows how long. This creates the eternity and we are the part of eternity. The phenomenon that is about to happen endured billions of years. Imagine how we impatiently waits for 3 minutes for cup ramen to get ready when we are really hungry and craving for it. Multiply the 3 min wait by infinite. After waiting for eternity, it finally occurred and It sets a path for next event to occur. Gravitational force between the next event and previous event must be the force of loneliness of those events that waited for eternity. The momentum is set a long ago. How it was set is unknown. Maybe gravitational force or just a mistake or it just happened because it happened. How far it should go depends on how long the eternity is. But if we trace the certain near future event then it seems the first mover of that event will stretch way back to big bang. There are billions of events (if we bound our timeline by big bang, otherwise it could be infinite event) that happened in between and some events may happened spontaneously and some events may happened deliberately (if we assume we have free will, otherwise everything was either spontaneous or planned beforehand). Leaf falls, sun shines, rain droplet falls on the window and wind blows the curtain... And it has the momentum of eternity ,....and the same momentum goes on and on. Our each moment contains eternity in a way , just like how our bodies contain part of cosmic. (cosmic dust)
Metaphysical milkshakes and Starry nights. Maybe the eternity isn't that long after all.
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And here is a video of making coffee in mid-air by colliding it with water droplets that are levitated with acoustophoresis.