HA. ♥
For my SiFi-Fantasy compatriots.
10th Century Japanese science-fiction? Yes, please!
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, also known as Princess Kaguya , is a 10th century Japanese folktale. It is considered the oldest extant Japanese narrative and an early example of proto-science fiction. Specifically, it it is among the first texts of any culture assuming the Moon to be an inhabited world and describing travel between it and the Earth.
image: Kaguya-hime goes back to the Moon, c. 1650
It primarily details the life of a mysterious girl called Kaguya-hime, who was discovered as a baby inside the stalk of a glowing bamboo plant. She is said to be from Tsuki-no-Miyako (“The Capital of the Moon”) and has unusual hair that shines like the moon.
"When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind."
— Michel de Montaigne (via quote-book)
"When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive."
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An excerpt from a letter that Richard Feynman wrote to his late wife, 16 months after she passed away at the age of 25. (via helplesslyamazed)
Sigh.
