I wish I had a boyfriend...

so I could buy him this sweater and then steal it.

All men fear death. It's a natural fear that consumes us all. We fear death because we feel that we haven't loved well enough or loved at all, which ultimately are one and the same. However, when you make love with a truly great woman, one that deserves the utmost respect in this world and one that makes you feel truly powerful, that fear of death completely disappears. Because when you are sharing your body and heart with a great woman the world fades away. You two are the only ones in the entire universe. You conquer what most lesser men have never conquered before, you have conquered a great woman's heart, the most vulnerable thing she can offer to another. Death no longer lingers in the mind. Fear no longer clouds your heart. Only passion for living, and for loving, become your sole reality. This is no easy task for it takes insurmountable courage. But remember this, for that moment when you are making love with a woman of true greatness you will feel immortal.
                                                                                    ~Hemingway

1984.

"Winston had disliked her from the very first moment of seeing her. He knew the reason. It was because of the atmosphere of hockey-fields and cold baths and community hikes and general clean-mindedness which she managed to carry about her. He disliked nearly all woman, and especially the young and pretty ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.”

“Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

"Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom."

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."

“Beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“ “She’s beautiful,” he murmured.

“She’s a metre across the hips, easily,” said Julia.

“That is her style of beauty,” said Winston. “

“Power is tearing human minds apart and putting them back together in new shapes of your own choosing.”

“There is truth, and there is untruth. To be in a minority of one doesn't make you mad.”

"Did not the statement, 'You do not exist', contain a logical absurdity?"

Resto Misto.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending an entire day with a good friend of mine. We started with coffee, and decided to find some place to eat dinner. Assuming the plethora of good places to dine in Montreal, we decided to casually walk toward St Laurent from Atwater and find an outdoor patio with some good, cheap salad options. Seems like an easy task, doesn't it? We meandered from Atwater, up St Laurent, with detours down Prince Arthur and Duluth, ended up walking up St Denis, and finally down Mont Royal. It was an amazing walk and a beautiful day, but somehow we were never satisfied with any of the options thus far! Then we stumbled upon this beautiful patio with amazing salads, though a little more expensive than we would have liked. Enter: Restaurant Misto.

Thank God for patios, otherwise I would have felt incredibly underdressed in my jean shorts and striped T-shirt. Although mainly a French area, our server was quick to accomodate us with English menus and perfect English (with a cute French accent of course ;) ). He brought us bread and filled a plate with olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, which was perfect to curb our then incredible appetites. I ordered a refreshing glass of Pinot Grigio and we chose our meals. There were tons of salads to choose from, ranging in price from $12 to $16. Alli chose the Calamari salad, after assurance that it was grilled and not fried, and I chose the Duck Confit salad. We received our meal shortly after ordering, and the presentation was phenomenal. My Duck was cooked to perfection; crispy flavourful skin on top, succulent meat, and melt-in-your-mouth pieces of fat. It was accompanied by fingerling potatos, which, though by definition are cooked in duck fat, were full of flavour and not dripping with excess grease- cooked to perfection! It was served on a bed of arugula and topped with a creamy honey and tarragon sauce. Soo good!  Alli's Calamari salad looked delicious, although a bit small. There were tons of pieces of grilled calamari, and by the end of the salad she was surprised at how filling it was. We left feeling too stuffed to walk anymore, and took the metro to Brulerie Saint Denis for an after-meal coffee. I walked home feeling sleepy and satisfied, and no doubt in my mind that I will need to go back to Resto Misto for another incredible dining experience! 

Food.

Sooo I spent this rainy afternoon perusing food blogs, and decided to give myself some incentive to quit smoking (or at least cut down to the occasional morning or patio-with-a-beer cigarette). Cooking well is somewhat of an indulgence, as is smoking. I decided that I will spend the money that I have been spending on cigarettes on making one gourmet meal a week. Future recipes include salmon tartare, kimchi fried rice, and homemade pesto and mayo. I need to actually become the foodie I've been striving to be!

 

 

 

Boredom.

"Is there anything so insulting to your life as boredom? Time, like matter, possess a duality. Like matter, at once a particle and a wave, time is simultaneously a point and a line.

Boredom is a state which confuses the two. It's not like living through time as a moving point, when we remain unconcerned with the past and the future. It's not like time has a line, where you plan the future with the experiences of the past. Boredom is a point wondering where it's line is. Living in a standstill while the past closes in on you and the future looms over you, threatening you with its presence but holding back, filling you with both exasperation and desire.

On both sides of the spectrum, that of time as a line and time as a point, is where passion rules. At one end, the satisfying passion of tackling your immediate problems or sating your impulsive cravings. At the other end, craving the future and the excitement it brings. It could also be a baleful passion, the despair and hopefulessness of losing something you can't fathom living without, or being haunted by the decisions you've made. Boredom is in the middle of the spectrum of time at the opposite of passion, where your senses are deadened, and time can't be distinguished.

Is it any wonder that boredom is a bitter beast? At best, it's a sleepy reminder that life, at times, must stop and take a breath. At worst, it's an insult to all that makes your life coherent and bearable."

                                                                          ~ Colin Saraka

     

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

-Ernest Hemingway

Nietzsche

Soo I was reading over old journals today, and stumbled upon some quotes that I jotted down while reading 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'. I love finding old quotes, and thinking about why they meant so much to me at the time of reading the novel.. So I thought I'd share!

"Happiness should justify existence itself."

"..man is a polluted river... One must be a sea, to recieve a polluted river and not be defiled."

"I have at all times written my writings with my whole heart and soul: I do not know what purely intellectual problems are."

"As soon as you feel yourself against me you have ceased to understand my position... You have to be the victim of the same passion!"

...

"One must want to experience the great problems with one's body and one's soul." (beside this I wrote - "understand the desire to question")

Then I wrote - "A True Philosopher - He can feel his thoughts. He can fall in love with an idea. An idea can make him ill."

"I love him who lives for knowledge and who wants knowledge that one day the Superman may live. And thus he wills his own downfall."

"I love him who is ashamed when the dice falls in his favour and who then asks: Am I then a cheat? - for he wants to perish."

"I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you."

"You must discover ten truths a day: otherwise you will seek truth in the night too, with your soul still hungry."

My love!

Beautiful Montreal at night   :)

Thou art to me a delicious torment. 

                                               –Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be. 

                                                       –Norman Maile

Bokeh Photography

Absurdism.

**Warning - spoiler alert. If you have not read Albert Camus' 'The Stranger' - and I highly recommend that you do - these passages are from the last chapter and give away the end and purpose of the book.**


"I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who'd come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of the death I had waiting for me. Yes, that was all I had. But at least I had as much of a hold on it as it had on me. I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?

It was as if I had waited all this time for this moment and for the first light of this dawn to be vindicated. Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives other people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? ... The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too."

"As if that blind rage has washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."

                                                                           ~Camus, 'The Stranger'

Absurdism, therefore, is a philosophical school of thought stating that the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail (and hence are absurd), because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to the individual. As a philosophy, absurdism also explores the fundamental nature of the Absurd and how individuals, once becoming conscious of the Absurd, should react to it.   (Wikipedia)

"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."


                                                                              ~John Green

Where I want to be right now..

Ginger, Montreal.

My friend, who is my go-to for trying new restaurants and dining out, and I recently ventured down the street to Ginger, an asian-infused restaurant on Avenue des Pins, literally minutes away from my house. I don't know how I have never heard of it before! It is phenomenal. We went late, and so there were only a few other tables of people in the restaurant. It was quiet, dark, and intimate, but also felt very trendy and popular though there was little clientele there. 

Our server was great; we loved that she recommended appropriate drinks after having started with wine  before going out (which was a large bottle of sake to share :) ). However, when it came to suggesting menu items, it didn't take long to realize she was looking to raise the guest cheque average rather than meet our dining needs. For appetizers, we ordered the shrimp and veggie tempura and the beef tataki (as per her suggestion). The tempura was crispy and cooked to perfection, showing up at the table at a perfect temperature. And I must admit, although it was one of the most expensive appetizers, the beef tataki was well worth the money spent! It was a nice cut of meat, tender and medium-rare throughout. It.melted.in.the.mouth. It was heaped on top of a vegetable salad, including celery, carrots, and rocket accompanied by a sweet and sour tataki vinaigrette. Too much food for one person - and actually too much for the two of us! But we took it home and finished it with the rest of the bottle of wine afterwards :)

Main course - two huge rolls of fresh, delicious sushi! I'm not usually one for large rolls because I have a hard time eating them, but they were so good and worth the price. We got the traditional spicy tuna roll, which is a favorite of both of ours, and were surprised at how big the slices of tuna in the roll were. Not quite as spicy as we liked and lacking the tempura that is common with spicy tuna rolls, but good none-the-less. Although it didn't satisfy my craving for my favorite roll, it was good and, as the waitress told us, they definitely are not stingy with meat! The other roll we tried was the royal, which was one of their expensive rolls and another recommendation. Huge, delicious, and fresh, just like the other! 

I will definitely be going back to Ginger - the food was amazing, and the server was really great with all of our questions about the menu. I would recommend it to everyone, although it is slightly on the pricey side!

Broken English.

I don't think I have ever connected so much with a movie before.. although the order is a little off. The protagonist is a borderline alcoholic, desperate for a good guy, works in a hotel as a concierge, and goes to France because she falls in love with a beautiful French man. The movie felt like it was catered exactly to me. And then I read a review that talked about how incredibly desperate the main character is, and basically stated that the entire movie was a giant pity party. I don't care! I still think it's genius. Although maybe it's time to stop with the poor-me mentality as of late. :)

What.a.babe.

And her music is amazing toooooo! ~Lykke Li~

Holy Street Art!!

Check out more here:  

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/ATpD9I/www.streetartutopia.com/%253Fp%253D2014

Wow, really interesting link:


http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1JzAb9/www.visualnews.com/2011/03/04/where-children-sleep-a-diverse-world-of-homes

Job Search time!

Which means time to crack down on learning french and dropping off resumes EVERYWHERE! I need to stay in Montreal this summer! And make tips :)

This picture reminds me of a night about a week ago when my friend and I went out for tapas. We had such a good night! It was her first time trying oysters, which was so fun!! I love my oysters :)  We spent a lot of money and had such a good time. On our way home, we stopped to buy cigarettes, and outside of the Dep was this homeless man and his dog. We talked to him a little bit, and then went inside. My friend, with her heart of gold, suggested we buy them food, which I was all for! It seemed only fair when we had spent so much on excess.. So we bought dog food and a sandwich for him, and went outside to share the food. I opened the can for the dog - I'm a HUGE fan of dogs :) - and he devoured the food within two minutes. I know in the long run we didn't help them out enough, but I'd love to start doing that more. Once I get a job!

"If you resolve to give up drinking, smoking, and loving, you don't actually live longer: it just seems longer."                                                           -Clement Freud

:)