DISCLAIMER: This blog site is published by and reflects the personal views of Sangwon Yoon, in her individual capacity. The contents of this blog and all links appearing on this page, do not represent the positions, views, or intents of her employer in any way.
“When we fall in love, our heart doesn’t ask us if it is permitted or forbidden. I was not blessed with white skin… I was not born Jewish, and I don’t speak English to meet the expectations of Yonatan’s mother. And he is not Muslim and cannot speak Arabic to satisfy my mother. We met as strangers in the city. We were searching for a sense of belonging…sometimes it was just the two of us against the world. Even now, on this day, our families are not with us, and that is very sad. Yet I am embraced by good friends.”
Ibtisam Salh Mara’ana, director of the documentary “77 Steps” (via Midnight East)
The film follows the relationship between Ibtisam, a Muslim from a village in the north, and Jonathan, her Jewish-Canadian neighbor in Tel Aviv. Personal, political and artistic all converged as Mara’ana stepped up to the mic after the screening.
“The anxiety of loving Chloe was in part the anxiety of being in a position where the cause of my happiness might so easily vanish, where she might suddenly lose interest, die, or marry another. At the height of love, there appeared a temptation to end the relationship prematurely, so that either Chloe or I could play at being the executioner, rather than see the other partner, or habit, or familiarity end things. We were sometimes seized by an urge (manifested in our arguments about nothing) to kill our love affair before it had reached its natural end, a murder committed not out of hatred, but out of an excess of love - or rather, out of the fear that an excess of love may bring. Lovers may kill their own love story only because they are unable to tolerate the uncertainty, the sheer risk, that their experiment in happiness has delivered.”
“Essays in Love” by Alain de Botton
“Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are saying, in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.”
“Essays in Love,” by Alain de Botton
… I asked Chloe whether she might not after all be free to have dinner with me that night. She smiled at the suggestion, stared briefly out of the window at a bus heading past St Martin-in-the-Fields, looked back and said, ‘No, thanks, that would really be impossible.’
Then, just as I was ready to despair, she blushed.
“He was not happy with her, but he was unhappy away from her. He wanted to sit by her side and look at her, he wanted to touch her, he wanted… the thought came to him and he did not finish it, suddenly he grew wide awake… He wanted to kiss the thin pale mouth with its narrow lips. The truth came to him at last. He was in love with her. It was incredible… When she left him it was wretchedness, and when she came to him again, it was despair.”
“Of Human Bondage” by Somerset Maugham
“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
Anaïs Nin (via neuroerotique)
My mum gave Megan, Caitlin and I chocolate for Easter in the shape of something we love. Megan and Sam both got guitars, Caitlin’s was a cat and I got a chocolate skateboard. It was delicious, I gnawed on it for like three days.
That is fantastic. I wonder what I’ll get in chocolate form, if anyone did this for me.
