valentines for one.

a very cold, blustery day in shanghai. the sky is grey and it's already starting to get dark. i suppose i'm having one of those mondays where everything i want seems just a tiny bit out of reach.

the weekend was very nice, i had a housewarming party at my new apartment and i got to see nearly every single person i care about in shanghai. there is something so lovely about introducing your friends to each other and seeing them get along - sometimes living across the world from the life you used to know gets lonely, and then there are nights when everything comes together & it all just clicks. we stayed out until the morning and danced and talked and hugged and laughed and wouldn't you know it, last weekend was the first weekend since i've moved to this city that i finally realized that i like it here.

it was valentines day on saturday, the very first valentines day i've spent single in many many years. even though i had originally been planning on writing all sorts of wry anecdotes about how terrible it was, it was actually very sweet, and i spent it with friends doing fun silly things. someone said to me yesterday that making a connection to a very good friend is just as valid an emotion as falling in love, that those connections can be just as powerful. i think that's what my 2009 is going to be about.

ps. i've been re-reading a copy of kafka on the shore - my friend dan posted a really beautiful passage from one of her favourite books the other day and i thought i'd share one of my favourite passage murakami's ever written.

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing you eyes and plugging up your eyes so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverised bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine."