My Wish

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms...
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

--Mary Oliver

The Dream Keeper

The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamers,

Bring me all of your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world.

--Langston Hughes

My Favorite Book about Reading

How Reading Changed My Life,
Anna Quindlen,
Ballantine Books

This is my favorite book about reading. It really is a gem of a book, with less than 100 pages. I've carried it in my purse (it's small enough), reading and re-reading it everywhere--on the MRT train, at the dentist's office, in between classes, waiting in line at the bank. . . whenever I get snippets of time to indulge in reading. And in a minute or less, I am transported to another time and place, and the tedium of waiting is transformed into delicious moments of stolen time.

Here is a favorite passage from the book:

"Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. 'Book love,' Trollope called it. 'It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.' Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort--God, sex, food, family, friends--reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung, at least publicly, although it was really all I thought of, or felt, when I was eating up book after book, running away from home while sitting in a chair, traveling around the world and yet never leaving the room. I did not read from a sense of superiority, or advancement, or even learning. I read because I loved it more than any other activity on earth."

Recently, I came across another quotation by Anna Quindlen:
"I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves."

I can't agree more.

everyday indulgences that make me happy

Crawling back into bed in the morning, when husband has left for work and children have left for school. As Raymond Chandler once said, "Woke up this morning with/a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read." What bliss!

My favorite magazines, brand new, just waiting to be read!


A morning session with Rodney Yee to get ready for the hustle and bustle of the day, and an evening session with Susanne Deeson to wind down and de-stress


A day to indulge in Korean drama and a piping hot bowl of super spicy ramen with an egg to fuel the marathon TV-watching


A glass of warm water with the juice of a lime in the morning

I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat

This photo was taken in Finland, summer of 2004

"I am a lake, my poem is an empty boat,
and my life is the breeze that blows
through the whole scene

stirring everything it touches--
the surface of the water, the limp sail,
even the heavy, leafy trees along the shore."

--from "My Life" by Billy Collins

Blue Flowers

"Nature does not ask permission. Blossom and birth whenever you feel like it."
--Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

Aging

"If we are truly happy inside, then age brings with it a maturity, a depth, and a power that only magnifies our radiance." --David Deida