For Millions Of Years, This World Has

For Many Years, I Have Been Moved By The Blue At The Far Edge Of What Can Be Seen, That Color Of Horizons, Of Remote Mountain Ranges, Of Anything Far Away. The Color Of That Distance Is The Color Of An Emotion, The Color Of Solitude And Of Desire, The Color Of There Seen From Here, The Color Of Where You Are Not. And The Color Of Where You Can Never Go.

The Rhythm Of Walking Generates A Kind Of Rhythm Of Thinking, And The Passage Through A Landscape Echoes Or Stimulates The Passage Through A Series Of Thoughts. The Creates An Odd Consonance Between Internal And External Passage, One That Suggests That The Mind Is Also A Landscape Of Sorts And That Walking Is One Way To Traverse It. A New Thought Often Seems Like A Feature Of The Landscape That Was There All Along, As Though Thinking Were Traveling Rather Than Making.

In Her Novel Regeneration, Pat Barker Writes Of A Doctor Who 'knew Only Too Well How Often The Early Stages Of Change Or Cure May Mimic Deterioration. Cut A Chrysalis Open, And You Will Find A Rotting Caterpillar. What You Will Never Find Is That Mythical Creature, Half Caterpillar, Half Butterfly, A Fit Emblem Of The Human Soul, For Those Whose Cast Of Mind Leads Them To Seek Such Emblems. No, The Process Of Transformation Consists Almost Entirely Of Decay.

To Lose Yourself: A Voluptuous Surrender, Lost In Your Arms, Lost To The World, Utterly Immersed In What Is Present So That Its Surroundings Fade Away. In Benjamin’s Terms, To Be Lost Is To Be Fully Present, And To Be Fully Present Is To Be Capable Of Being In Uncertainty And Mystery.

How Do You Calculate Upon The Unforeseen? It Seems To Be An Art Of Recognizing The Role Of The Unforeseen, Of Keeping Your Balance Amid Surprises, Of Collaborating With Chance, Of Recognizing That There Are Some Essential Mysteries In The World And Thereby A Limit To Calculation, To Plan, To Control. To Calculate On The Unforeseen Is Perhaps Exactly The Paradoxical Operation That Life Most Requires Of Us.