Quotables

I'm posting a few quotes here because a new friend in Dhaka has turned me on to travel writer Pico Iyer.  He's quite amazing (his writing anyway!) from the few brief articles I've read, and I can't wait to read more.  


Note: You can read the full articles if you click the links, they were certainly worth the 15 minutes of my time this morning over coffee, but I leave that up to you in your own wisdom, connections, and interest.  These are the parts I loved most so far:

• On Why we travel... this speaks so eloquently to the real reasons I lose myself so easily and wholeheartedly in travel... this article of all of them is my favourite so far...

"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again -- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more." 

• On Noise and Silence, as it is something I seek in this private journey of mine, and it is a contrast felt fully between the streets of Dhaka and the quiet of the villages...

"There is, of course, a place for noise, as there is for daily lives. There is a place for roaring, for the shouting exultation of a baseball game, for hymns and spoken prayers, for orchestras and cries of pleasure. Silence, like all the best things, is best appreciated in its absence: if noise is the signature tune of the world, silence is the music of the other world, the closest thing we know to the harmony of the spheres. But the greatest charm of noise is when it ceases. In silence, suddenly, it seems as if all the windows of the world are thrown open and everything is as clear as on a morning after rain. Silence, ideally, hums. It charges the air." 

• On the experience of Living abroad as a foreigner...

"Japan is therefore an ideal place because I will never be a true citizen here, and will always be an outsider, however long I live here and however well I speak the language. And the society around me is as comfortable with that as I am — all it wants is clear roles and someone who will stay in his place, as it were, live out his part (in my case as foreigner) perfectly, walking on the right side of the street, and not making trouble. Which to me is a fair exchange for the kindness and courtesy and efficiency it is ready to offer in return.

I am not rooted in a place, I think, so much as in certain values and affiliations and friendships that I carry everywhere I go; my home is both invisible and portable. But I would gladly stay in this physical location for the rest of my life, and there is nothing that I want in life that it doesn’t have. 

To me rootedness is mostly just a matter of deciding what you need, preferably as limited as possible, and finding a situation that answers that — I call that man rich, as Henry James has it, who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination."

• On Happiness and our true nature...

"...happiness is within the reach of almost anyone. We can work on it as we work on our backhands, our soufflés or our muscles in the gym. True happiness, in that sense, doesn’t mean trying to acquire things, so much as letting go of things (our illusions and attachments). It’s only the clouds of short-sightedness or ignorance, the teachers from the Dalai Lama’s tradition suggest, that prevent us from seeing that our essential nature, whether we’re Buddhist or not, is blue sky."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosbyshauna/3930165297/ 

If nothing else I hope you found a spark of connection somewhere in his writings as I did, or the feeling of a moment in time well spent.  

I wish you a wonderful day (or night!) filled with beauty and love...  I'm off with my camera to (finally!) explore Old Dhaka for the day!