“Who knows? Lightning could strike.”
And it did.
// the intent
What makes life meaningful? Why is this world so cruel? Why do I feel lonely even though I am loved? Am I living or just existing? Everyone’s asked the existential questions before.
You happened upon this page and decided to stay… maybe you’re searching for the answers. Well, I can’t promise you’ll find any here. But what you can find is a digital archive attempting to immortalize the temporal moments and feelings that made this nameless, thirty-something-year-old feel alive.
Feel free to roam— but if you need trail markers:
Capture is a gallery of places and memories held still.
Reflect is a shoebox of literary scrappings and musings that lingered.
Rediscover is a bulletin board of the misplaced and forgotten that found their way back.
Whichever path you choose, thanks for visiting. I hope you left with more than what you came with.
/// the inspo
I might be alone in feeling this way but some things stay with you long before we truly understand why. For me, whisper of a thrill, is one of those things.
The name, whisper of a thrill, is inspired by a scene from the 1998 film, Meet Joe Black. The first time I watched this film was in high school— and like most teenagers, I caught the words but, having limited life experience, I didn’t entirely grasp the weight behind them. It wasn’t until I revisited the film years later that I realized its depth. Since then, it’s become extremely meaning to me.
In this particular scene, Bill Parrish (Sir Anthony Hopkins) is having a conversation with his daughter, Susan (Claire Forlani), about her current partner. He asks her whether she loves him or if she’s with him out of practicality. Drawing on his own understanding of life and its impermanence, he challenges her to stay open to a love that is fervorous, consuming, and compassionate and to not settle for comfort or convenience.
It’s not what you say… it’s what you don’t say.. There’s not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill… I want you to get swept away… to levitate… to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish. Be deliriously happy— at least leave yourself open to be… Love is passion, obsession, someone you can’t live without… To make the journey and not fall deeply in love, well, you haven’t lived a life at all… But you have to try. Because if you haven’t tried, you haven’t lived.
Living takes a lot of strength. It can be difficult and exhausting. Routine and seemingly endless. And I think along the journey of “growing up,” a lot of us forget our ability to dream and love; or rather, we aren’t always afforded the space to do so as our responsibilities take up most of the room. So we settle for what’s comfortable, what’s acceptable because it’s easier, and we fall into the habit of wanting more, and are never encouraged to pause and appreciate what we’ve seen or what we’ve achieved.
We’re also sold this concept of love but not all of us are equipped to understand how to feel it or how to receive it. The excerpt I referenced, to me, encapsulates how grand love can be while also demonstrating how fleeting it can be. I believe that to love is easy, but loving is harder. And one of the hardest things in this life is loving and advocating for oneself. So I treasure and note these fragments of time that carry emotions ranging from joy to melancholy, however brief— because they were enough to feel passionately about and what better way to live.
So I invite anyone reading this to record that whisper of a thrill— the lightning strikes, the small and big things that inspire, and in general, move you. Life comes at us fast and wears us down, and we often need the reminder that loving is living. In part, I hope we can all be a little braver, choosing (and to keep choosing) to stay open and accept the love that finds us.
Stay open. Who knows? Lightning could strike.