I can't give you anything but love

What is the feeling of being unable to unlove somebody for the sake of friendship? What is the feeling of accepting distance at the cost of closeness that has less meaning, less warmth? What is the feeling of surrender to abandonment at the cost of adoption unto platonicity? How far does man drive himself to suit his ego of having not his shoulder hugged but instead his hair gently stroked by the fingers of his lover?

This playful French melody is the answer to it. I cannot give you anything but love, it says -- it doesn't say, but sings -- or whistles. Unsure if it cannot, or it won't. Why won't it? One perception is ego. The other perception is paralysis. The giver is paralyzed in love enough to not be able to give anything else. Even love the giver cannot give; the lover lies bound in the ropes of paralysis. The flower of love has bloomed and hangs from his heart. His lover can pick it up if she wishes. (I'm sure this is not even close to the original lyrics of the song. But this is a gypsy tune, and it dictates a certain different mood for the song.)

Untranslatable words without English equivalents

Here are some words that get enshrined within you only when you become part of that culture. They refuse to be obfuscated by globalized approximations and moral common-grounds. They bear the weight of their origin, their speakers and their abiders.

Arabic

• ya'aburnee: "may you bury me"; a hope that you die before someone, because you can't live without them

Bantu

• bilita mpash: "the opposite of a nightmare"; an amazing, blissful dream
• ubuntu: "I am because we are"; the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity

Buli (Ghana)

• pelinti: to move hot food around in your mouth

Czech

• litost: torment caused by the sudden sight of one's misery

Danish

• hygge: pleasure derived from sitting around a fire in the winter with close friends

French

• l'esprit de l'escalier: "stairwell wit"; a witty retort discovered only after it's too late for a comeback. Also, treppenwitz (German).

Georgian

• shemomedjamo: "I accidentally ate the whole thing"
• zeg: day after tomorrow. Also torshu (Bengali), overmorrow (dated).

German

• backpfeifengesicht: a face badly in need of a punch/slap
• kummerspeck: "grief bacon"; refers to excess weight gained from emotional overeating
• schadenfreude: pleasure derived from someone else's misfortune
• waldeinsamkeit: the feeling of being alone in a forest

Indonesian

• jayus: a joke so bad that it's funny
• mencolek: to trick someone by tapping them on the opposite shoulder from behind

Inuktitut

• iktsuarpok: feeling of anticipation when waiting for someone to arrive, causing you to keep looking outside to see if they are coming

Italian

• cavoli riscaldati: "reheated cabbage"; the result of attempting to revive an unworkable relationship

Japanese

• boketto: gazing vacantly into the distance
• ikigai: a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense of purpose or a reason for living
• koi no yokan: "premonition of love", "love at second sight"; the foreknowledge of eventual love for someone upon first meeting them
• wabi-sabi: finding beauty in imperfection and impermanence

Persian

• mush bokhoradet: "may a mouse eat you"; an expression to mean someone is really cute
• zhaghzhagh: the clattering of teeth from cold or rage

Portugese

• cafune: tenderly running your fingers through your lover's hair
• saudade: a deep feeling of longing or nostalgia for an absent person or thing

Russian

• razbliuto: the sentiment for someone once loved but now no more
• toska: a deep, melancholic longing or spiritual anguish that often has no specific cause

Samoan

• faamiti: to squeak by sucking air past the lips to attract a dog or child

Sanskrit

• obhiman: a temporary displeasure towards a loved one that stems from feeling slighted, insulted, or hurt, but where the person also sees a valid point in the other's actions

Scottish

• tartle: the hesitation in introducing yourself to someone

Spanish

• sobremesa: time spent at the table after eating

Swedish

• uffda: an interjection of sympathy for somebody that hurt themselves. Also ahare! (Bengali)

Tagalog

• kilig: the feeling of butterflies in one's stomach

Ulwa (Nicaragua & Papua New Guinea)

• yuputka: the unsettling, phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin, especially when walking in the woods at night

Welsh

• hiraeth: a deep, nostalgic longing for a home, place, or time that is gone or may never have existed.

Yaghan (Tierra del Fuego archipelago, South America)

• mamihlapinatapai: a glance between two people, both of whom want the other person to initiate something they desire, both unwilling to start themselves (Most Succint Word, Guiness Book of World Records)

Yiddish

• luftmencsh: "air person"; an absent minded impractical person with his head in the clouds
• schlemiel/schlimazel: "coffee spiller/spillee"; prone to bad luck

They don't have proper English translations.

"When the Light Starts Winnin’" - (True Detective S1)

I used to believe in nothing.

That life was a cruel joke, the universe a silent void.

Meaningless days, faceless nights.

Just motion. Just survival.

But something changed.

Not all at once—more like a crack in the wall.

A quiet laugh. A hand held a little longer.

A moment that didn’t ask for meaning, yet gave it anyway.

And I remembered that line from Rust Cohle:

“Once there was only dark. If you ask me, the light’s winnin’.”

Maybe it’s not about blind faith.

Maybe it’s about choosing to see the flicker

and letting it grow.

From a nihilist’s bones,

hope began to hum.

Not loud.

Just enough.

Manoir de Mes Reves (Man of My Dreams) - Angelo Debarre [Concert]

This whole concert smells of an old, beloved but unrevivable perfume. It defines the ambiguity of remembrance, the duality of past emotions, the uncertainty of experiences, and, most superiorly, the immateriality of definiteness with regard to times that have washed away. It is a celebration of a fallacious and comic human life that stretches a microscopic cosmic and conscientious scale anyways. As of now, this smells of the windows of Katwaria Sarai apartments and the flowering tree in the campus jogging tree downstairs.

World's Strictest Parents ()

An exotic British duo of teenagers, when put in an Indian environment, realize so many different tenets to life that get lost in constant abundance. They regain it in almost an obstructed simplicity of the Indian culture.

Note how after so many days of constant patronage by the foster mother, the teen finally opens up about family issues. Talking about his demised nanny makes him tear up and puts in him a bead of striking ambition for the first time.

Perhaps it is only when we sincerely acknowledge our loss and the hurt that comes with it, and we accept that life and its instruments have the ununderminable capacity to put us down, we rise for the better and desire to send our ambition out into an awaiting world.

World's Strictest Family (Charolette, Josh)

I love how Charolette took her first photograph once they went to the family farm, and she enjoyed the moment despite her own issues with the situation. And she wasted a huge part of her stay due to her adamance and rigidity.

Rebellion takes away a lot from a journey that could've meant a lot for you. Makes us all reflect about our situations and our decisions. Why do we always resist the air of change around us? Why do we always give the upper hand to ego?

Parthasarathi (Pariksit Dasa)

Arguably the most archetypal image of Mahabharata. Describes the crux of Mahabharata. An unwilling warrior king charioteered by an unbiased, divine counsel and driven by machinistic animals of war -- white chariot horses -- towards destiny, through the blur of dark, irrelevant corpses of silent allegiance, fragmented armour, and destroyed machinery. Thematic of "Duty".

Many similar versions exist and the exact author was almost a headache to find. It seems to be Pariksit Dasa. Many of his other realist works have appeared on the covers of ISKCON books.

Epics in the Classical age (Greek, Indian, etc.) were somehow very transparent, moral-bearing and Herculean. There was a sense of direction and achievement very detached from shorthand material gains. Somehow the image of god that men longed to attain sight of was not one of fear and misanthropy but of obligation and aspiration. Religions came up, teaching different 'cheats' to attain forgiveness, and continuing this delusive trade all the way to the supposed human afterlife.

Also, strange things happened to the Indian race following that. A race of cultured, educated, moral, obligated men suddenly left all their ego and gave in to lust, allegiance and chaos. Probably all our famines made us like this. All our lack of resources and our mismanagement. It will take time to reach the zenith of abudance laden creation once again.