The Art of Capturing Light 

Hello world! Please check out my new photography blog:

The Art of Capturing Light. 

I actually update this one and check it frequently, so please share any helpful criticisms or comments that you may have!

As it says in my little 'About Me' blurb, I'm an aspiring photojournalist. My dreams are summarized with this: travelling and telling stories through my photographs. In truth, working for National Geographic - getting to travel, take photographs, and helping to make the world a better place - is an ultimate life + career goal!

(Yes, I'm aware I'm young and have changed my mind about my career/future about a hundred times since middle school.  So I know it's more than likely to happen again. But, I don't know - I think this time is different! [Maybe?]) =P

In the meantime, I'm completely snap-happy. I'm taking photographs every chance I get. While balancing university and studying, friends and social life, (and hopefully a new job soon!) I've also been trying to save up for my own DSLR camera (for the past three weeks I've been using my dad's beautiful Canon EOS 5D Mark II). I know they're incredibly expensive but I am so confident that I have found a beautiful passion, and I'm going to invest as much time and money as I should.

I've been obsessed with other people's photography too; their blogs, websites, and even Facebook pages/posts have kept me on a constant image-absorption loop. Admittedly, I'm trying to muster enough courage to put my own self out there and do my best to be a real certified photographer, hired to shoot memorable events or capture live news for a well-established newspaper/magazine. But before I reach this dream, I have to take baby steps. And I'll start with [dauntingly] putting up my albums and portfolio online for all the world to see.

Because, hey - we all start somewhere.

And I'm really, really excited about this.

Best wishes for you and me!

Early Mornings and Muddled Thoughts

I think I'm in trouble.

(But not in the alarmingly life-threatening sense.)

I'm in trouble because I'm falling in love with words again. Reading, writing, and Scrabble-ing them. I know I've been absent from this blog for a while, despite receiving an e-mail every week about the visits I get for this blog and how long each one lasts. Oh how guilty I get when I read that I actually had people skim my blog for more than 30 seconds... they sure read some outdated and hormone-fueled posts. But still, thank you to those who check my blog out!

Even though I know that a majority if not all of them are those poor souls who accidentally stumbled onto my blog, probably by clicking the 'Next Blog' button at the top of the page...

But I digress.

After nearly a year-long absence (I only wrote one post last year... is that neglect or what!) I thought I would perhaps open up my world of blogging again by posting up an early-morning hazed muddle of my thoughts. (It is 3:46AM at present.) And I choose to write about words.

So lately I've been trying to read a lot and also get my nerd on by playing lots of scrabble and anagram word games. (They're so fun, try Anagram Magic for all you word geeks out there!) I can't get over how amazing a book feels in your hand, on a hot summer day. How amazing it feels to smell the pages and just skim your hand over all the fancy words and beautifully versed sentences that spill out stories wilder than your imagination. There's just something about a set of well-selected words coupled with others to form a story that really get to me. Even doing the physical act of writing is a little miracle of its own. The pen in your hand, the generous instrument allowing you to spill the words out from your mind and appear like magic on that smooth, paper canvas, it can really have a calming effect on you. I think that's why diary-keepers and illustrators get so hooked onto writing. It's just one of the many facets that you can

And I consider myself so lucky to have access to so many books and inspiring quotes.

Have you ever read something so beautiful that it made you want to cry? Or perhaps gave you a pang of jealousy, making you wish that you could articulate your thoughts that well?
I have, actually. A lot of them are the quotes and excerpts from previous posts.


So, to recap, I'm in trouble here (or rather, you guys are in trouble) because along with my renewed love of words and reading, come the desire to practice my writing... And this blog is one of the perfect places to do just that.

A Lover's Discourse, Again.

The Absent One
absence / absence

Any episode of language which stages the absence of the loved object - whatever its cause and its duration - and which tends to transform this absence into an ordeal of abandonment.

"Now, absence can exist only as a consequence of the other: it is the other who leaves, it is I who remain. The other is in a condition of perpetual departure, of journeying; ... I - I who love, by converse vocation, am sedentary, motionless, at hand, in expectation, nailed to the spot, in suspense - like a package in some forgotten corner of a railway station. Amorous absence functions in a single direction, expressed by the one who stays, never by the one who leaves: an always present I is constituted only by confrontation with an always absent you...

In great haste, I reconstitute a memory, a confusion. A (classic) word comes from the body, which expresses the emotion of absence: to sigh: "to sigh for the bodily presence": the two halves of the androgyne sighs for each other, as if each breath, being incomplete, sought to mingle with the other: the image of the embrace, in that it melts the two images into a single one: in amorous absence, I am, sadly, an unglued image that dries, yellows, shrivels."

- Roland Barthes

A Lover's Discourse

Dark Glasses

cacher / to hide

A deliberative figure: the amorous subject wonders, not whether he should declare his love to the loved being (this is not a figure of avowal), but to what degree he should conceal the turbulences of his passion: his desires, his distresses; in short, his excesses (in Racinian language: his fureur).

"I am caught up in a double discourse, from which I cannot escape. On the one hand, I tell myself: suppose the other, by some arrangement of his own structure, needed my questioning? Then wouldn't I be justified in abandoning myself to the literal expression, the lyrical utterance of my “passion”? Are not excess and madness my truth, my strength? And if this is true, this strength ultimately prevailed? But on the other hand, I tell myself: the signs of this passion run the risk of smothering the other. Then should I not, precisely because of my love, hide from the other how much I love him? I see the other with a double vision: sometimes as object, sometimes as subject; I hesitate between tyranny and oblation. Thus I doom myself to blackmail: if I love the other, I am forced to seek his happiness; but then I can only do myself harm: a trap: I am condemned to be a saint or a monster: unable to be the one, unwilling to be the other: hence I tergiversate: I show my passion a little...

...yet to hide a passion totally (or even to hide, more simply, its excess) is inconceivable: not because the human subject is too weak, but because passion is in essence made to be seen: the hiding must be seen: I want you to know that I am hiding something from you, that is the active paradox I must resolve: at one and the same time it must be known and not known: I want you to know that I don’t want to show my feelings: that is the message I address to the other."

- Roland Barthes

The Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager - Pt. 2

So it's been approximately 3-4 months since I've last written on here. Oops! For the small amount of readers I did have, sorry. (:

But anyway a lot has happened since Mother's Day!

Let me put it in an organized list.

- Graduated High School.

(with a full IB Diploma - I survived!)

- Applied to one uni. (And for security reasons, will NOT be displaying it heh heh)

- Got accepted!

- Mad rush for necessary documents/visa.

- Got on a plane, said goodbye to friends and family. :(

- Rented an apartment with my sis.

- Started uni life.

And now i'm here, procrastinating from my essays and lab reports!

Quite a lot for three months! But that's how it goes I suppose. Life is just a big ticking clock and we're caught up in a whirlwind of events. But either way I've made it and I wouldn't change a thing. Well, perhaps that I'd take all my loved ones with me here...

Overall I've decided to try blogging again since writing is a + ('big plus' if you didn't understand haha) to my career objective of photojournalist? Or perhaps just anything relating art and writing/journalism - or even the media?! Ah that's the thing with my degree - Communication Studies - so many opportunities await you. At least I've still got three years to figure it out. (:

Thus it all comes down to this - practicing writing regularly with [attempted] ease whilst still trying to keep things interesting...

And seeing where it goes from here.

*Oh and in the case of copyright infringement, the title of this blog post is from the title of a song by Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly. (:

HAPPY MAMA'S DAY!

I know it's a day late but I know that I simply must have a blog post dedicated to my Momma (;

I'll keep it short and sweet for the internet however, as all my lovey-dovey stuff goes to the card I'm making her (:

Happy Mother's Day Mama! <3

Thank you for everything you have done, I am so blessed to have a mother like you who is so full of beauty and love. I truly appreciate every sacrifice you have made and all the strength you have always given me.

I love you.

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~Honoré de Balzac

LaneBryant Commercial

I just came across this really awesome commercial that featured not only new products from Lane Bryant but also this extremely gorgeous female model. Check it out!

And according to YouTube, this is a BANNED COMMERCIAL.

What the heck right?!

So of course the ravenous YouTube comment-ers immediately lash out on America/corporate America and the stupid preference for skinny models and women who are essentially not 'real' women due to their small size and stature. Then they go on to talking about not blaming the media, and then to targeting a bit of Victoria Secret, and then it goes on to a whole other load of stuff that is just BLEUGH.

It's so simple. It's a commercial for a line of product that is for women with larger assets. And I think it's brilliant! I didn't think it should have been banned. It's not even showing that much nudity anyway. Maybe it's just the raw sexiness of it? Perhaps it's the provocative lure of her movement..? For whichever the reason, I feel that it's just another ordinary commercial promoting a product. Only this time, it's a more realistic woman. And there's nothing wrong with that.

Personally, this whole topic of beauty and weight issues is just riff-raff and totally unnecessary. It's true what this video is saying: beauty is skin deep. Or, another famous saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Essentially, it's a fact that everyone has a different idea of what is beautiful.

And in my case, I find this model extremely beautiful! [She looks a little like Eva Mendez too!]

And I love the idea of having a great brand/product for all. types. of. women!

a dash of poetry, a pinch of quotes

Just thought I'd do a quick post on 'love' by sharing a few of my favourite poems and quotes.

Love at First Sight

They're both convinced

that a sudden passion joined them.

Such certainty is more beautiful,

but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they'd never met before, they're sure

that there'd been nothing between them.

But what's the word from the streets, staircases, hallways--

perhaps they've passed by each other a million times?

I want to ask them

if they don't remember--

a moment face to face

in some revolving door?

perhaps a "sorry" muttered in a crowd?

a curt "wrong number"caught in the receiver?--

but I know the answer.

No, they don't remember.

They'd be amazed to hear

that Chance has been toying with them

now for years.

Not quite ready yet

to become their Destiny,

it pushed them close, drove them apart,

it barred their path,

stifling a laugh,

and then leaped aside.

There were signs and signals,

even if they couldn't read them yet.

Perhaps three years ago

or just last Tuesday

a certain leaf fluttered

from one shoulder to another?

Something was dropped and then picked up.

Who knows, maybe the ball that vanished

into childhood's thicket?

There were doorknobs and doorbells

where one touch had covered another

beforehand.

Suitcases checked and standing side by side.

One night. perhaps, the same dream,

grown hazy by morning.

Every beginning

is only a sequel, after all,

and the book of events

is always open halfway through

by Wislawa Szymborska

"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning or frost from fire." - Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight, I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one, I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too. How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines. To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her. And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her. The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance. My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Pablo Neruda (1904-73), "The Saddest Lines", translated from the Spanish by W.S. Merwin

"Love is a portion of the soul itself, and it is of the same nature as the celestial breathing of the atmosphere of paradise." - Victor Hugo (1802-1885) French Author, Lyric Poet, Dramatist

this is how it works

you're young until you're not

you love until you don't

you try until you can't

you laugh until you cry

you cry until you laugh

and everyone must breathe

until their dying breath

this is how it works

you peer inside yourself

you take the things you like

and try to love the things you took

and then you take that love you made

and stick it into some -

someone else's heart

pumping someone else's blood

and walking arm in arm

you hope it don't get harmed

but even if it does

you'll just do it all again

- Regina Spektor's 'On the Radio'

"I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." - Mother Teresa

April Fools!

A pinch and a punch for the first of the month!

As the saying goes, one is supposed to pinch someone, followed by a punch, whenever it's the first day of the month. But I don't even really understand it - I mean, is there a purpose? Is it for good luck? And it doesn't even rhyme in the first place!

But anyway - this first day of the month is 'special' because:

1) APRIL FOOLS DAY!

2) Officially April - the month before our final IB exams.

But let's not delve into school and IB just yet - my spring break isn't over! Hence, moving on, I had a thought today about the stuff that legends are made of. Personally I think they're downright awesome. I'm not much of a history buff but learning about legends and myths and its origins - it's a whirlwind of creativity, spookiness, and education! Or just entertaining, whichever.

So without further ado, the history of April Fool's Day in a nutshell:

(And loyal to my not-wanting-to-rewrite it nature, it is presented in the usual copy-and-paste format.)

"It has become tradition on the first of April to pull jokes of the harmless variety on those near and dear to us. We plot and we scheme, and often the yuks are funnier in our imaginings than how they play out in reality, but that doesn't stop us from sending the little kid in us out on a rampage. Even the most staid among us have been known to indulge in a practical joke or two, so beware of trusting anyone on that day.

How the custom of pranking on April 1 came about remains shrouded in mystery.

When the western world employed the Julian calendar, years began on March 25. Festivals marking the start of the New Year were celebrated on the first day of April because March 25 fell during the Holy Week. The adoption of the Gregorian calendar during the 1500s moved the New Year to January 1. According to the most widely-believed origin postulated for April Fool's Day, those who could be tricked into believing April 1 was still the proper day to celebrate the New Year earned the sobriquet of April fools. To this end, French peasants would unexpectedly drop in on neighbors on that day in an effort to confuse them into thinking they were receiving a New Year's call. Out of that one jape supposedly grew the tradition of testing the patience of family and friends.

But that's only one theory. Others are:

- The timing of this day of pranks seems to be related to the arrival of spring, when nature "fools" mankind with fickle weather, according to the Encyclopedia of Religion and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

- The Country Diary of Garden Lore, which chronicles the goings-on in an English garden, says that April Fool's Day "is thought to commemorate the fruitless mission of the rook (the European crow), who was sent out in search of land from Noah's flood-encircled ark."

- Others theorize it may have something to do with the Vernal Equinox.

- Some think to tie in with the Romans' end-of-winter celebration, Hilaria, and the end of the Celtic new year festival.

Wherever and whenever the custom began, it has since evolved its own lore and set of unofficial rules. Superstition has it that the pranking period expires at noon on the 1st of April and any jokes attempted after that time will call bad luck down onto the head of the perpetrator. Additionally, those who fail to respond with good humor to tricks played upon them are said to attract bad luck to themselves.

Not all superstitions about the day are negative, though - fellas fooled by a pretty girl are said to be fated to end up married to her, or at least enjoy a healthy friendship with the lass."

Taken from http://www.snopes.com/holidays/aprilfools/origins.asp

Oh and here's the top 100 april fool's jokes of all time, if you're interested!

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/

Happy Fooling! (:

Hold Your Horses - 70 Million

So, this doesn't really have much to do with eating, praying, or loving - but I think it's spunky, kickass-y, and it looks like it took a lot of work! I've never heard of the band before Hold Your Horses, but I find them pretty great and I sure love their paradoxical major-art-pieces-spoofs. How many famous art pieces can you recognize?!

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

I got it off Madame Lamb's blog: http://www.madamelamb.com/ and just had to share it as well - you might wanna check out some of her other stuff while you're at it.

The Comfort of Dessert

Sometimes, when you're not having a great day, all you need is a little cupcake (or two!) to make it better.

My parents arrived home from grocery shopping and bought me these two adorable cupcakes!

They're from 'bijoux'- just one of the chains of their food company. Other branches include 'bisou' and 'bijou'.

I'm guilty. I'm definitely one of those girls who find that dessert - whether it be a scoop of ice cream, a piece of chocolate, a cupcake or heck, even 'bubble tea' - it will make life just a little easier.

To me, dessert is one of the simplest pleasures in life. Just having 'something sweet' will immediately perk up my day and not just my taste-buds. Think about it. If you're a worry-wart about the nutritional facts about dessert, just screw that for a moment. Think about the last time you had a spoonful of ice cream or the soft texture of chocolate. Weren't you happy, even just for a moment? I live for that exact moment when the sweetness hits your tongue, making you forget about anything on your mind, forcing you to surrender to all that sugary goodness. Of course there are also the biological reasons for it, such as the release of endorphins that chocolate, for example, triggers. But to me having something sweet is just a simple pleasure in life. And if you don't like dessert well, I pity you. ):

"Eat, Pray, Love" - The Book

I started to read 'Eat, Pray, Love' again - and I don't know why I ever managed to put it down!

The author, Elizabeth Gilbert.

If you still haven't heard about this book or this, you've either been,

a) living under a rock.

b) too busy with work and I.B.

c) completely deserted from the literary world.

Either way, it's this new phenomenon that has been touching the lives of both women and men for years. [It's also the theme of my entire blog.] In short, it's the true story of a woman who searches for happiness.

The blurb at the back of the book says this:

It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion, and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds; to an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the middle of the night to scrub the temple floor and to Bali where a toothless medicine man or indeterminate age offers her a new path to peace: simply sit still and smile. And slowly happiness begins to creep up on her.

In other words, she travels to Italy (for pure pleasure of the language, the rich and exquisite taste of food, and to bask in the beauty of the culture), India (to pursue her spiritual well-being by spending her time in an ashram, and to find enlightenment and a closeness to God), and Indonesia (to balance the two - pleasure and devotion - and perhaps find love on the way.)

It's honestly a beautiful book and definitely one of my favourites.

Here are some quotes that need to be shared:

"In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place." Page 19.

This one's a funny one - she's describing the sad (yet sometimes true!) pathetic symptoms of what happens when we get too infatuated with our partners - and she does it by describing drug addiction!

"Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted - an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore - despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbours just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.

So that's it. You have now reach infatuation's final destination - the complete and merciless devaluation of self." pg. 21.

Here, she explains faith..

"Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding." There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity." pg. 184.

In this quote, Gilbert explains True Yoga.

"The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanations for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddhism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine." pg. 128

Here, Gilbert visits Ketut Liyer, an elder medicine man in Indonesia for the first time. She asks him the question, "I want to have a lasting experience of God. Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." And this is Ketut's response.

"Ketut said he could answer my question with a picture. He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart. 'To find the balance you want' Ketut spoke through his translator, 'this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.'" pg. 28.

"Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle... 'The love that moves the sun and the other stars.'" pg. 48.

In this quote, Gilbert is expressing the situation with her lover David, which happened right after her divorce with her husband. It was a complicated relationship, where they were truly in love with each other but yet made each other so unhappy - just thought it shed some good insight.. and it reminded me of a certain somebody. (:

"It is this happiness, I suppose (which is really a few months old by now), that gets me to thinking upon my return to Rome that I need to do something about David. That maybe it's time for us to end our story forever. We were already separated, that was official, but there was still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday (maybe after my travels, maybe after a year apart) we could give things another try. We loved each other. That was never the question. It's just that we couldn't figure out how to stop making each other desperately, shriekingly, soul-punishingly miserable." pg. 85.

And finally, in this part of the book, she and David end things (via email though) and I just thought that his final message was really sweet.

"He agrees that yes, it's time we really said good-bye forever. He's been thinking along the same lines himself, he says. He couldn't be more gracious in his response, and he shares his own feelings of loss and regret with that high tenderness he was sometimes so achingly capable of reaching. He hopes that I know how much he adores me, beyond even his ability to find words to express it. "But we are not what the other one needs," he says. Still, he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday. He's sure of it. After all, he says, "beauty attracts beauty."" pg. 89.

And this - this is just one of my absolute favourites. It perfectly describes what happens and how it feels like when anybody gets out of a relationship.

"It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever." pg. 99.

I'm sure that most people knew this already - but she describes it so well. And so I suppose that the only way to really get over someone, to get over that overwhelming emotion, is to learn that it is okay to be off that track and not have that same routine with that partner. I guess it really is just a matter of time and getting used to..

In this part of the book, Gilbert is explaining to Richard from Texas about David, her former love, who she can't seem to get over. This was Richard's great response. (But the problem is solved later on in another awesome quote.)

""Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don't you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean you got zapped, kiddo. But that love you felt, that's just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That's just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that. Heck, you have the capacity to someday love the whole world. It's your destiny. Don't laugh." "I'm not laughing." I was actually crying. "And please don't laugh at me now, but I think the reason it's so hard for me to get over this guy is because I seriously believed David was my soul mate." "He probably was. Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf-life."

And then he continues for a bit longer, until she says,

"But I love him." "So love him." "But I miss him." "So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it. You're just afraid to let go of the last bits of David because then you'll really be alone, and Liz Gilbert is scared to death of what will happen if she's really alone. But here's what you gotta understand. If you clear out all that space in your mind that you're using right now to obsess about this guy, you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot - a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in - God will rush in - and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed." pg. 157 - 158.

Truly one of my favourite chapters in the book...

And finally, a video that presents a good overview.