Every now and then I pause or have the outside world force a pause onto me.  These moments are quite exquisite in that they actually cause my brain to stop spinning and branching out in various directions; my thoughts feel unified and ordered – usually for only an instant, but the after-feeling lingers for a long time.  If I were to label these moments, I would refer to them as metaphysical experiences – not necessarily in the literary meaning of the word, but perhaps to indicate how intangible they are.

What makes this musing illuminatory is my own realization that what triggers the above pauses is utterly unpredictable.  The magnitude or the effect on life is absolutely irrelevant.  Last time I felt this way was when someone now remotely dear to me told me of an effect I had on that person’s personality, an effect the person refused to reveal earlier.  Since then, life itself has happened and the revelation could no longer have any bearing on the present moment.  Yet the moment felt imcomparable to any others – time stopped, vision blurred, blanks filled in, silenzio!  This was one of those grand moments that simply cannot be forgotten.  (…et je vous merci…)

Jade is not a word one hears tremendously often, at least not in most circles.  I recall a faint memory: it was a 1st year World Literature class and one of the modules was Chinese literature.  Some of the stories we looked at were repetitive and not all that different from their Western counterparts.  That is, not until special attention is given to the language.

One of those words was ‘jade’.  Mostly referring to its most direct meaning, that of a greenish mineral, it seemed to mean more than could be inferred from the context.  And yet after my initial classic dismay at how much gets lost in the translation, I had an illuminating thought.  Because of the connotative meaning of the word ‘jade’ in English, the meaning was actually becoming broader in a definitely unintended fashion.

I’ve been thinking about where to start.  I mean, the penultimate purpose of this nuisance is very different from where I stand right now and almost diametrically opposite from that which I am currently thinking.  Why then pen the undesirables? [...]

In terms of what should make it here – again, I find myself at another impasse.  I first wanted a small place to host a CV.  Then it seemed like a good idea to have a place that features photos from trips.  Subsequent ideas were no less unfitting the original concept – a place for musings, a replacement for an e-mail list, perhaps even a repository of all things that somehow are responsible for at least part of my odd self.