This is a blog about men and love. It has filled a function of online therapy where we could put our energy, fascination and adoration of boys in a space where they were spared of dealing with it directly.

Three years later, we are no longer in the business of miserable infatuations and thus less inclined to keep the content fresh. The time has come to leave some things behind and move further into the constant now.

We're not saying that the world is running out of beautiful men, but our next venture is more likely to be called You wanna do me all the time, and will probably stay out of the blogosphere due to it's NSFW-ness.

Beauty is in the soul and measured in aliveness.
Once you realize that, loving is easy.

Follow your heart and work relentlessly. (Not.)

We met at the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce’s crayfish party. It was the month of August and a cold, damp night typical of San Francisco summers. I could sense his presence as he entered the downstairs bar and our eyes met over the first glass of champagne. Once seated, wearing cone-shaped, shellfish-patterned paper hats, I asked what brought him there. “Looking for single women, any nationality”. I flashed a smile, raised a hand and said, “That would be me”. He passed a business card that read Director, Personal Mobile Devices. I gave him mine, with the simple inscription You Look Great. Although, great was an understatement for this dark beauty. He was an irresistible combination of handsome stature and boyish charm.

Crayfish, vodka, meatballs and music ensued. Possibly due to the fact that he was a terrible dancer, but the evening was still young when we decided to leave the party and get to know each other better. Outside the fog was thick, occasional pierced through by passing headlights and in the cab he put his hand on my bare knee, pointing out that his $6.75 Caltrain return ticket to Palo Alto would go unused. I assured him that that was a bargain for the golden ticket he had just picked up.

Back in my apartment, blond and black curls were tousled together in the glow of the Transamerica Pyramid. Without any scientific proof, I knew that two old souls had been reunited. It was not rare that I would bring home a man on the first night. What was unusual was that this man looked deep into my eyes and said “We should stay like this forever”, with my full approval.

The following morning, he was leaving for Paris on business. As we awoke, I recapped my impressions so far: he enjoyed cricket in his youth in northern India but didn’t see any point in sports, would like to learn how to paint and preferred older women since they had more stories to tell. He went to San Francisco mainly for the Opera, had a beard in college, lived two blocks from Starbucks and ordered grande drip coffee. He asked how old I was. I said that I was eight years younger than he. “So, you’re twenty-eight, and already know me better than people I have known for years”. I added that, after Paris, there were trips scheduled to Los Angeles, New York and Kansas City. “They would love you in Kansas City”, he said while offering that I stay in his apartment when he was away. Instead, I suggested we go to Mel’s Diner for a real American date with milkshakes when he got back.

“Do you have a blog?”, he continued. “Sort of, it’s called I wanna make out with you all the time”. “That we can make happen” was his reply. He smiled and gave me the name of his blog, suggesting I read it. In the blue light of dawn I found it rather silly. I looked forward to getting to know him in real time, not in the blogosphere.

As we parted, he left me with a “This was fun”. Three words, and the slow realization, that out of the one hundred and fifty seven previous infatuations, I had never been in love before. When I went to pick up the bike I rode to the party, it wasn’t there. Like my heart, it had changed owners in the course of the night. Although, a firm believer that the best things in life are free, I did not mind trading a second-hand mountain bike for the love of my life.

The next couple of days were characterized by a sense of calm and fascination. The clarity and ease of knowing that whatever this was, it was real. There was no need to rush, none at all. I was in San Francisco on a scholarship for Swedish graduate students with the goal to immerse ourselves in the Bay Area start-up scene and the remaining month seemed like eons of time. The sea lions, basking in the sun, told me to just relax.

A week had passed when I sent him an e-mail asking if I could take him out on a date with either margaritas and tacos or promised milkshake and burgers. I also included that he made my heart beat faster. In truth, he made my heart beat delightfully slower, but that would not have conveyed the same message.

Five days later, I wrote a second time. Now, a “translation from Swedish” in case enthusiasm had overshadowed my honorable intentions. “When would he be back in Palo Alto? Would he then like to meet for a drink?”. I counted another hundreds of hours. No response. If he had hurt his fingers which hindered him from dialing phone numbers or typing on key boards, I wished him a swift recovery. If he was suffering from memory loss, I’d be happy to share an account of the evening.

Yes, I was old enough to have learnt and accepted that sometimes guys just aren’t that into you. But this was different. Surely, the mind registered that not responding is a universal, albeit rude, way of rejection. Yet, the body and soul knew with every fibre that this was it. And it was not something I would shrug off without a proper fight.

I remembered the past New Year’s Eve, walking around in a Stockholm that sparkled from the snow. I was laughing, knowing that somewhere there was a guy completely unaware of what was about to hit him. And, having switched to pen and paper in the continuing correspondence, I wrote him “I did not know who that guy was, until I met you”. I saw what I believed to be destiny’s chosen narrative and what I wanted from him was nothing less than a lifetime. However, I would be happy to start with a cup of coffee.

Without any replies, I started reading his blog and found what I had suspected all along: a brilliant, thoughtful mind, a curious approach to life and a subtle, slightly ironic sense of humor. His heroes ranged from Leonardo da Vinci and Gandhi to Charlie Munger, his favourite piece of music was Beethoven’s #9. Slightly pretentious, yes. On Vimeo, I found a talk he gave on innovations at MIT. I preferred to watch it in mute since bandwidth and gigabits were not nearly as endearing as his awkward body language. Innately optimistic, the blues did strike at points and I found myself crying to several of his thirty-nine recommendations on LinkedIn.

Knowing that drawing was one quality where I really outdid him, a pencil collection of tigers and city halls followed in his mail box. I drew the anatomy of a heart, pointing out the parts where trust, kindness and passion resides. The pulmonary arteries that want to sit next to him at dinner parties, with his arm resting on the back of my chair. The aorta that fears being misunderstood. I wrote poems, acknowledging that love cannot be forced, persuaded or begged to appear, but the blind can still feel the warmth of sunlight, and the deaf senses a rhythm of music it cannot hear.
  
I wrote Charlie Munger. Calling on the higher forces of Warren Buffett’s vice-chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, the letter started with “I met the man of my dreams and I need you to ensure the future happiness of two young souls”. I doubt that he took any action, and do not hold that against him. It was too long, with a distinct bouquet of desperation.
 
The eyes of friends suggested that my behaviour was out of proportion. But in relation to what? A one-night encounter? Maybe. The workings of a cosmos sprinkled with stardust? Certainly not. What appears to be crazy is sometimes the most sane thing to do when it comes to matters of the heart. And I could see no apparent reason why he would not want to see me again. It seemed illogical that I could feel this way unless there had been a similar chemical reaction in him. Unfortunately, charm and wit have a tendency to be overshadowed be stalking-like behaviour. But the impossibility to change direction, that Titanic of allurement came later. At first, we had been drowning in each others eyes.

Another mystery to me was that the recipe to all my other achievements: dream big, follow your intuition and work persistently, was now a cause for misery and completely undermining my success with relationships.

It was at this point a very small, but indisputable sign of recognition appeared. A blog post titled Love, the first new entry since we met. It consisted of merely three questions: How do you learn to love? Is it possible to love truly if you have never been loved? Can you sustain love if it is not reciprocated?

As a testament to my ignorance regarding the concept, I had to look up the word “reciprocated”. the dictionary told me: to be equivalent, correspond, feel in return. That spoke quite clearly. But I was unsure as what to make of the first part. Perhaps referring to his own ability to love or suggesting that I sober up from cocktails of unrealistic visions.

To him, this was a casual affair followed by a flattering, hopefully entertaining, undeniably pathetic, monologue via various media. To me, a great love story. Not often do you meet people who inspire the core of your being. Someone who tip you over, into a realm of higher wisdom, greater love and beauty in abundance. Even if he did not think as highly of me, a new standard had been set for myself and the world as I would come to see it. What I felt was not dependent on being returned. Unconditional love may sound grand, but what he left in my heart was an unknown joy and bliss of what life is truly like, once you realize that love is infinite and eternal.

The subsequent blog entry was one-sentence long, stating that people usually become more pragmatic with age. Pragmatic. Rational, to me the word sounds like a deserted town in the former Soviet Union.

Finding one over-all slightly magical man, ought to suggest several to come. That there are innumerable soft hands, splendid souls and curly heads that encompass thoughts of similar character. You know that the world is full of beautiful men. Besides, bikes get stolen all the time in San Francisco.

***

Because it looks like you have French accent and because Marcel Proust said something in the likes of happiness being good for the body, but it is misery that develops the soul. He also said, having spent most of his ife in bed, unaccompanied, that those who love and those who are happy are not the same. We could not agree less.

Because you are one of few Swedes who really turns us on. And because Walt Disney put it very well when he said: "We do not make movies to make money, we make money to make movies."

Something borrowed from Jess and Russ.

Because this is what it looks like when the best of worlds meet, Scando boys in West Coast sunshine. And because Jonathan Franzen's Freedom has been one of our summer readings during flights and pool sides. These are a few noteworthy lines we would like to share.

He nodded and ate, and it occurred to her that she was a person who dwelt in fantasies with essentially no relation to reality.
/.../

"It's not you. You're a good-looking chick. You just may be too nice for New York. It's a pretty naked economy there."
"But how come there are so many girls like me? And no guys? Did the good guys all decide to go somewhere else?"
Katz cast his mind over the young males of his acquaintance in greater New York, including his former bandmates, and could think of not one whom he would trust on a date with Jessica. "Girls all come for publishing and art and nonprofits," he said. "The guys come for money and music. There is a selection bias there. The girls are good and interesting, the guys are all assholes like me. You shouldn't take it personally."
/.../

"So let's go. I want to see it. I want to sleep with you."
"That sounds great," he said, "but I think my mom might be uncomfortable with it."
"I want to sleep near you. And then I want to have breakfast with you."
"That we can arrange."

 

Well, because this is what irresistibility looks like. And because after spending the weekend listening to Yale open lectures on Human Nature, Socrates provides the philosophical answer as to why Stockholm and New York complement each other so well. According to him a good city posses four virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation and justice. The Swedish society is juste, excel in moderation, and is fairly wise. New York has plenty of courage and wisdom, but is extremely unjust and the word moderation is not a part of its vocabulary. And as much as we want to play with your dark curls, we're hoping a rare breed of the courageous heart beats underneath that chest.

Because we have a new best friend.

Vackra Kvinna
En liten fråga och utmaning om du vill;) Hur skulle en enkel matematisk formel se ut som bevisar att mängden hjärta påverkar direkt till all typ av resultat! För att både inspirera sig  själv i vardagen, jobb, relationer, mat och allt där till som man själv känner betyder något. Till det skulle man enkelt kunna mäta med tid för att förtydliga att ju bättre man blir på det desto enklare blir det för en själv och ens omgivning! En annan formel som skulle kunna inneha chansen att nå önskad lyckad resultat beroende på de faktorer som man icke kan påverka.Vad händer när man umgås och arbetar i lag ur dessa grunder? Hur skulle utvecklingskurvan se ut för oss? Hur mycket hopp skulle den kunna ge? Skulle det kunna vara ett verktyg som blottar essensen i det som finns i ens liv? Puss

Hahaha. Jag hänvisar till Einstein som redan räknat ut detta, typ. Han förklarade sig bli lycklig när han såg lyckan i en annan människas leende ansikte. Detta påstående följdes av den klassiska formeln E=mc2 alltså Energi=massan x ljusets hastighet i kvadrat. Jag tror att Albert menar följande: Ponera att energin symboliserar lyckan. Massan skulle då kunna vara storleken/värme/det genuina i leendet och ljuset hastighet den tid det tar för vår syn att fånga upp det. Applicerat på din fråga kan man mycket fritt översätta detta till Resultat (energi)= hjärta (massan) x hur många det når ut till/tid det tar för detta att spridas (hastighet). Låter det rimligt? Puss & kram

Because you make us dance for hours and hours, making us happier. Because we love bright smiles and handsome, older Brits who reside in Venice beach. And because we forgot to ask if you meditate, but of course you do.

Because of your relaxed yet focused and productive demeanour, your broad shoulders, thick hair, the timeless beauty of a light blue shirt, sleeves rolled up and the arms and hands of men. And because we know that you have a French accent and that it smells like start-up in there.

Because we like proper battery usage.

Because you have the dubious fashion sense of an Italian with that generously unbuttoned, multi-shade-denim shirt, a back pack and ruby sunglasses. And because that is not a problem whatsoever given your soft lips, dark beard and fine features.

Because the warm sunshine feels sweeter with you. And because one of our latest insights is this that things very seldom work at the first try. Once you realize that, you are less disturbed when things don’t go your way at once. They so rarely do. We have also experience a ridiculous amounts of failures, declines and the like this spring, which we like to see more as a sign of multifold activity from our side, than that we should be inadequate as human beings. Of course, the universe is guiding us in the right way, and these things were simply not meant to be, regardless of how hard we tried. There are other missions in our destiny that would be distorted by becoming a California start-up community manager, attending Singularity university, winning the green card lottery, etc. In a way, we might be this sunny sided simply because we are such good friends with failure and always see it as an opportunity for learning something new or taking another direction. Like our poetic interpretation of keeping to the right in the escalator: Active or still, but always forward.

Thinking about where we want to go in life, we landed in a vision of a fun, dynamic team, a global quest, improving peoples lives and seeing something grow and create impact. That, or a biodynamic farm family life somewhere between the mountains and the sea. During this we pondered over why men are overrepresented in the entrepreneurial community and maybe it is because they cannot have babies the same way women do. There are several similarities between nuturing a toddler and a start-up, and issues of both risk taking and return on investments, although in different forms, are clearly a part of the deal. As for our own board of directors, we were amused to see an overrepresentation of beards on the male members, and regardless of sex, courage goes well with all fashion.

Because one of our many good ideas is Google Sex, a search engine function that filters out all the porn and instead focus on the educative, healthy and pleasurable sides of love making. Although we do like the versatile spelling of e-mails saying: "Find sexual partners o-nline! Ho-o-kup fo-r sex no-w!". We sent this suggestion to the Googleplex a few months ago, and seeing no signs of a Thank you-note or the actual service we doubt they saw the value in it. Another idea is something we like to called Monki fiction, where we suggested that the fashion brand make their customer magazine somewhat more worthy of a read by including shorter stories on e.g. romantic topics. We attached a story with the title “Listen to the sea lions” but have had no sign of interests from these editors either. We do love the whole concept of feedback, like if we feel that you are one of the kindest, most decent, softest and sexy moustached man we’ve come across, with a great attitude and an excellent lover, we would want you to know it.

Because we also like one arm around our shoulders and the other one filling up our glass. And because Beyonce and Jay-Z are two glam damn lovers.

Because we were recently invited to host a workshop at an architect firm and presented as “systems thinking and storytelling experts”. Not only were we delighted to get paid for love bombing architects, reading short stories and doing meatball experiments, one of the handsome participants was also a previous blog posts. He was very intelligent and in the end he wrote a tale of two lovers who had not yet met . And stuff like that makes our day.

Because instead of saying "Great job", you ask people to explain how they went about doing what they did and thus reaffirm to themselves what a great job they've done. And because you suggest finishing internal conversations on the same tone as external once, hence, if you feel like you are stuck in a mental back alley you just tell yourself to leave it for now and don't worry about it. We will solve this at some other point. And because you too are a member of the secret society of happy people.

Because last night we spoke to a womanizer who gave us the insightful advice that this is the time in your life to gaze into the eyes of people, until you start to blush, and take it from there.

This is your opportunity to explore emotions and relations, before you have your three kids and baking cookies in a house somewhere. (Loving it, of course.) Seeing that he is a networker deluxe, he jokingly suggested that he would start scouting interesting characters for us to get to know. Although slightly, utterly, resistant to look at love as a mission and a business, it got us thinking about what list of criteria we might present. Our only belief is that the universe knows better than we do regarding who we should be with, but naturally, we are aware of certain characteristics we value above others. By really narrowing it down, there are two main ones:

- Confident and utterly comfortable in yourself
- Intelligent humor (Filip & Fredrik, Ricky Gervais, Mitch Hedberg)

From there we could add a set of bonus traits:

- Handsome, beautiful, tall, dark
- Driven, entrepreneurial, a doer
- Passionate, about anything
- Kind, golden hearted
- Love making out
- Great dancer
- Swimmer, tennis or basketball player
- Curious
- Likes Billie Holiday, Al Green, Håkan Hellström
- Possibly diagnosed with adhd, or very talkative

If you feel that this applies to you, or if you know of fantastic men with these qualities, please let us know. We might have a completely inaccurate view of what we want, but we also know that trying and failing is a great way to learn.

Because a really good read is a commencement speech delivered by Adrian Tan. One of his advices: Fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

And that is just the end part of a text filled with some great quotes:
"I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them."

"Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live."

"Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence."

"It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong."

Oh, man.
We got another truth of the day delivered this morning by Jimmy Twin. "I would chose you anytime, but you must be aware that the world has apparent problems with appreciation."

Because we've come to realize that the expression "live your future" is about taking care of tomorrow today. Meaning, doing all the things you equally well could do today instead of post poning it to the next day. And doing this with joy by seeing your future self as a friend whom you want to make life as easy as possible for. If you act thoughtful towards yourself, the slacker you can have a nice day once in a while, instead of just waiting for the day goody-two-shoes-you will appear and take care of last weeks messes. And, because Gregory Peck is most likely the world's most handsome man both present and future.

Because childhood guy friends are possibly one of the most valueable constellation of atoms in this universe. And because we love our friends in the Break-up Club, accepting the fact that life sometimes simply sucks and that "what doesn't kill you, fucks you up mentally". Regardless, there is always champagne to cure both real and imaginary relationships. And as dear F. Scott put it: “Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over”. Or like Markus Krunergård sings:

Det är först när man ger upp som det blir något nytt.
När man släpper taget tar man steget.
Jag vet hur ont det gör när hoppet dör,
men askan är den bästa jorden.
Och även fast du inte tror det,
du kommer födas och dö, födas igen,
så länge du hör musiken.

Although this image looks insanely and meticulously styled, and American men have the broadest necks in the world, we see a sweetness shining through and that's about all we care for.

Because you order a no-room grand drip coffee (medium black coffee) every morning and more than 60% of the times, they get the order wrong. And you can not think how someone could get a simple coffee order wrong. So, you tried various tactics to place the order by changing sequence of words and pauses. They were:

1. Grande drip, (pause) no room
2. Drip coffee (pause) no room, grande size
3. Grande, no room (pause) drip
4. Grande drip no room-no pause
5. Grande no room drop-no pause
6. No room, grande drip-no pause
7. No room (long pause-count 123 in your head) grande (short pause-count 1 in your head) drip

Number 7 is the winner! If you follow 7, you have the highest likelihood of getting the medium black coffee you want.

And because you've attended our second favourite institution of learning (not counting life itself) Singularity University, who challenges all their students to have a positive impact on 1 billion people withing 10 years of launching their projects. And because at some point it will be a good idea to fall in love.

Because confindence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing to be wrong. And it is the mix of stellar coolness and utter vulnerability that makes this dude so desirable. Although, if we would run into James, over a cup of grande drip coffee, we would suggest he loose that piece of man jewellery. And because we read some very good stories over at Random House. One, by Maria A. from New Jersey, with a few phenomena lines like;

1/02. Watch grandmother's funeral; realize you can only cry for boys who do not like you.

9/02. Start essays like this a;lkfdh;alsjdf;laksdahiosdf; then sigh, then backspace, then start again. Read cliffnotes for Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Because Johnny apparently orders the most expensive whiskey and just smells its smokey aroma, since he stopped drinking. And being firm belivers in hugs over drugs, further proof is provided by a Harvard study that found that when you hug a woman longer than thirty seconds, it increases her oxytocin levels and anticipation of sex.

Because we adore that you are the prefect mix of a rock star and academic, and comment on our new potential job with economic-philosophical arguments. Although, the three questions anyone needs to know is; Can you do the job?, Will you love the job? and Can we stand having you around? And because we are amused by the description of a person "as someone who wears normal-sized clothes" and that a jar can contain "honey from within the European Union and honey from outside the European Union". And that the husband of Zadie Smith say that "time is how you spend your love".

Because with that timeless beauty and sophistication, you look like a character out of the world of Scott F. Fitzgerald. And since we are fantastically successful in mastering our New Year's resolution of FOCUS, Tender is the night will provide the romance until we reap equal victories in the area of LOVE.

He seemed kind and charming - his voice promised that he would take care of her, and that a little later he would open up whole new worlds for her, unroll an endless succession of magnificent possibilities. /.../

"I was watching you," he said, and she knew he meant it. "we've grown very fond of you."
"I fell in love with you the first time I saw you," she said quietly. He pretended not to have heard, as if the compliment were purely formal. /.../

She did not know yet that splendor is something in the heart; at the moment when she realized that and melted into the passion of the universe he could take her without question or regret. /.../

When she saw him face to face their eyes met and brushed like birds' wings. After that everything was all right, everything was wonderful, she knew that he was beginning to fall in love with her. She felt wildly happy, felt the warm sap of emotion being pumped through her body. /.../

Yet think she must; she knew at last the number on the dreadful door of fantasy, the threshold to the escape that was no escape; she knew that for her the greatest sin now and in the future was to delude herself. It had been a long lesson but she had learned it. Either you think - or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipine your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you. /.../

Tangled with love in the moonlight she welcomed the anarchy of her lover.

Because it looks like you have a Holy Bible-shaped lighter, hanging out at Sundance and behind your hazel eyes is a mind that think thoughts rarely thought. And because your aura is all-over bad-ass.

Because our new favourite expression is blue-sky thinking.

The conclusion at last appears. I guess that, I over-reacted.
But, no. In our world, the term is: lover-reacted.

It is fascinating how an inadequate language still manages to explain a lot of things with a single tap on the key board.

Ah, because between boyfriends is the new single. And because dark, medium-length hair and nice guys are the best.

Because you look like a modern day, drummer hippie who gives us good vibrations. And because a Chinese girl who sat next to our brother on the plane and ended up celebrating Christmas with us gave mother a book: A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. Our mom disregarded it as mumbo jumbo and the paperback ended up in our loving hands. We are unsure of what to make of Tolle himself, but he does bring forward some worthy ideas:

Whatever you do, to ensure a positive "vibrational frequency of consciousness" you should make sure that you are in one of the following states: acceptance, enjoyment or enthusiasm. "If you can neither enjoy or bring acceptance to what you do - stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for, which also happens to be the one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness."

"Unlike stress, enthusiasm has a high frequency and so resonates with the creative power of the universe. This is why Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, "Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm." The word enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek - en and theos, meaning God. And the related word enthousiazein means "to be possessed by a god."

The book is really about not minding what happens, acknowledging that the good that already is in your life is the foundation for all abundance, that you cannot lose something that you are and that our main purpose in life is to be and do whatever we are right now. There is no such thing as becoming successful. You can only be successful, by being one with life and being one with now. "You then realize that you don't live life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance." Amen.

Let's dance.

Because we do have a thing for Russians. And it is fascinating to walk around the Met and find pretty boys from the late eighteen hundreds. This man is called Vsevolod Mikhailovich Garshin and apparently liked double figures, born in 1955 and died 33-years-old in 1888, by throwing himself down a stairwell. Before that this handsome author ("published approximately twenty stories, many of which powerfully express his pacifist beliefs, his love of beauty, and his aversion to evil") was turned into oil on canvas by Ilia Efimovich Repin.

And because this makes us think of fellow country man of his, a charming character from Philip Roth's My Life As A Man, who we most ceratainly would like to get to know better. "Agniashvily, an elderly Russian émigré who wrote original "Ribald Classics" (in Georgian, and translated into English for the class by his stepson, a restauranteur by trade) aimed at the Playboy "market"..."

The same book also includes a wonderful piece of advice:
"I wanted to hang a sign over my desk saying ANYONE IN THIS CLASS CAUGHT USING HIS IMAGINATION WILL BE SHOT. I would put it more gently when, in the parental sense, I lectured them. "You just cannot deliver up fantasies and call that 'fiction.' Ground your stories in what you know. Stick to that. Otherwise you tend, some of you, toward the pipe dream and the nightmare, toward the grandiose and the romantic - and that's no good."

Rosy cheeks, lovely locks and we've never seen John Lennon look so irresistible. Besides being a musical genius and an old soul, he said something very true about partner selection; "I'd never met a woman I considered as intelligent as me. That sounds bigheaded, but every woman I met was either a dolly-chick, or a sort of screwed-up intellectual chick. And of course, in the field I was in, I didn't meet many intellectual people anyway. I always had this dream of meeting an artist, an artist girl who would be like me. And I thought it was a myth, but then I met Yoko and that was it."

"He has curly black hair, pale-green eyes, and the relaxed demanor of someone who lives five minutes away from his favorite beach."

Sometimes, thanks to the talented writers at The New Yorker, we don't even need images.

First and foremost, guys with golden blazers will always get our vote. Secondly, wavy hair is gaining a substantial lead, bringing the men of manes way ahead of beards. And thirdly, we were recently advised to look at things in processes, not one time action points, and that life is all about creating good habits.

We are embracing a New Year that shall be characterized by Focus and Love. We've heard people wonder if they are ready for 2012. Our main concern is whether twelthie is ready for us.

In honor of our dear friend who left "Let's make better mistakes next year" notes in unknown offices, we would like to quote the slightly more famous Samuel Beckett: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."