You have played all the parts, rehearsed every line. You know the script like a memorised prayer. Yet now you are outside the play, sitting in the front row of the audience. Time has passed, and you have been in other productions since, with different dialogue, props, and sets. You realise that there are other, […]
“‘This is fine,’ replied Candide, ‘but we must cultivate our garden.’” -Voltaire, Candide “It’ll be like living on a boat,” a friend remarked upon hearing of our plans to move to a tiny cottage in rural England. Looking out my office window at the expanse of field and garden stretching beyond the horizon, it now
I spent fourteen months in England, working hard to make the odd feel normal. When what is foreign feels odd, it is understandable. But when what was formerly normal now feels odd, that is perhaps the oddest feeling of all. I now find myself, back in the US for a brief visit, ambling through coastal
“A stillness so complete, you hear / the whispering inside of you” -Jack Gilbert, “Betrothed“ During the most recent London riots, I was ambling through the Wye Valley with family, staying in a 12th-century monks’ cottage, and meditating on the nature of peace. A seed was then planted in my mind about how necessary the
“Not wrong, just different.” –Valerie‘s mantra for overcoming culture shock Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of my arrival in London. This afternoon I attended a reading at Keats House in Hampstead. Four volunteers read poems and excerpts from his letters dealing with the concept of Negative Capability. This ability to remain “in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
First Year in London: Lessons in Negative Capability Read More »
“A short poem need not be small.” -Marvin Bell I am tapping this out on my iPhone from Florence, having left the laptop in London. My first time in Italy finds me marveling at so much grand art, and wondering if there is still a place in the post-colonial, post-modern, post-financial-collapse world for the enduring
