I have passed past 43 days alone, reading, writing, and sometimes getting lost in the wonderland of imagination. It is where if it were to end, it would be the ideal backdrop for end credits. So, I won’t go anywhere, but there first. I miss nothing, but a little place where I go to lose myself, and then find myself, I miss the sands, which, like time, are always changing. I miss the gentle warmth of the morning sun caressing my neck. I miss the rays of setting sun blinding my eyes. The fisherman trying to capture a fish, which is nothing more than a wish. The distant clouds, the rambunctious dog running ahead of its mistress. The ripples caused by a falling surfer, not seen to the naked eye, make me feel the Pacific on my skin. The slight whistle of wind that comes from afar.
Not moving, but feeling the sound of the ocean.
It is where when I stand, and I am still. I can imagine the infinite, the endless, and the horizons unknown. I miss my proverbial back yard - it is where I find that sense of belonging. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it, to begin with.”Īnd then I wonder - it would be good to walk on the Ocean Beach, from one end to the other, and back. New Zealand? North-Eastern India? Or back to Ladakh?Īnd then I am reminded of Dorothy’s words from The Wizard of Oz: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. I think about all those places I have never been to and had on my bucket list. What will that be? Where will I go first, if and when the world returns to normal? What will I photograph? With whom shall I dine the first? Where will I get my first espresso? And who shall I hug first? I also wonder when I will embark on my next adventure. The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many have found richness in stillness and what-from Marcel Proust to Blaise Pascal to Phillipe Starck-they’ve gained there.Like many of you, I too sit in my little cocoon, sometimes worried and anxious about an invisible enemy. In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. There is even a growing trend toward observing an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning and reviving those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation.
These aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people-even those with no religious commitment-seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. In The Art of Stillness, Iyer draws on the lives of well-known wanderer-monks like Cohen-as well as from his own experiences as a travel writer who chooses to spend most of his time in rural Japan-to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything-like the international heartthrob and Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen-choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere offer that no Anywhere can match? And why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room and getting to know the seasons and landscapes of Nowhere might be the ultimate adventure? A follow up to Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet,” The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counter-intuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.
0 kommentar(er)
