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    • The Old Indian Meeting House

      The Nauset of Cape Cod are part of the Mashpee Wampanoag and were known as the “Praying Indians” because they became converts to Christianity.  They were an important ally for the colonists against tribes that rose up against the encroachment of the English settlements.  Most famously they worked with Benjamin Church as guides in his hunt for Metacom, or “King Philip”.  It was one of the Praying Indians who killed Metacom, effectively ending King Philip’s War in 1678.

      The Nauset were clearly converts to Christianity in the 1670’s, and they met somewhere in Mashpee to pray, but the original building is long gone.  A second building was purportedly built in 1684 at the original site near Santuit Pond.  That building is generally agreed upon as the current Old Indian Meeting House, relocated in 1717 to its current location on Meetinghouse Road (naturally) just across from the Mashpee River. This would make it the oldest church on Cape Cod and the oldest Indian church in the United States.  I’ve read at least one article that disputes the original date of construction for the meeting house, with a local historian claiming the building was actually built in 1757 or 1758 by Deacon John Hinckley.  I believe that Deacon Hinckley is agreed upon as the builder of the church, so determining the actual date should be relatively easy from there.  But I’m not diving deep into this controversy.  There’s no doubt that the Meeting House is historically highly relevant and important.  It was used by the Nauset as a church, and also no doubt that it was here that the Nauset staged a nonviolent protest known as the Mashpee Revolt against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1833 over control of the tribe’s land.  Of course, that was exactly what Metacom was doing from 1675 to 1678, but he chose violence (spurred on by violence against the Pokanoket).

      I visited the Old Indian Meeting House on a quiet, hot August day.  Not a lot of Cape tourists hanging out at an old build next to a cemetery on a perfect beach day. I find that I’m often the only visitor to such places in the moment I’m there. But I prefer quiet time with places of relevance. It’s set on a small hill on the edge of the cemetery, roughly three miles from Santuit Pond, which would make moving it on logs on old colonial roads quite an undertaking.  The Mashpee Wampanoag hold this place as sacred, and I respectfully walked around the site for a few minutes, read a few of the nearby gravestones and generally tried to get a feel for the place before moving on.  A visit to their web site prompts a popup requesting that you sign a petition to help the tribe protect their lands from changes at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.  It seems that the contributions of the Praying Indians are once again being forgotten by some in the endless land grab of the native lands.  That would be par for the course.

    • A Sand and Scrub Pine Kid Visits the Past

      It might say a lot about me that on a hot Monday morning on Cape Cod when I found myself with time alone I didn’t opt for the beaches, but instead made a pilgrimage to an old graveyard in the woods of Forestdale.  This was a trip back for me, for I would walk in this graveyard as a kid reading the names and the stories behind the people who once lived and died in this place.  The graveyard was a short walk from the shores of Peters Pond, a place that I’d spend many summers in my formative years.  For I was a sand and scrub pine kid.

      30 years ago you could read the names clearly on most of the gravestones, and the cemetery was well-maintained by the caretaker for the Hewlett Packard Sandwich Resort (back when HP was a different kind of place).  That place on Peters Pond was a great perk for employees – a place to bring your kids for a week or two every summer at no charge.  When you went on the same week every year, you’d build friendships with other HP families, and that would build momentum year-after-year until it became a defining part of growing up for many of us.  The summer would end and they would have one last company party with employees grilling steaks and burgers and having games with prizes on a large field up the hill from the grounds of the resort.  That field is now home to The Sandwich Bazaar Flea Market, which effectively preserved the field in just as it was three decades ago.  I was grateful it hadn’t become a landing spot for condos.

      Sandwich Bazaar Field, once a part of HP’s Peters Pond Resort

      The entrance to the field is chained off to prohibit cars, but I parked across the street and walked over.  Warning signs about deer ticks and Lyme Disease greeted me.  We didn’t think about such things when I was a kid, we’d just pull ticks off of our skin before they became engorged.  Now I guess you need to remind people.  And so I walked down to where I remembered the small graveyard being, walking in a time warp back to the late 1970’s and early 1980’s when this was my escape and the rest of the family didn’t think anything of you disappearing for the entire day as long as you showed up for dinner (I never missed dinner).  I saw the fence for the graveyard well past where the tire tracks for the flea market stopped.  Just where I remembered it being.  But sadly the old graveyard isn’t maintained anymore.  Where once the grass was neatly mowed, now it was as tall as the gravestones.  More troubling was the poison ivy that spread all over the grounds.  Apparently the Town of Sandwich has decided to let this cemetery return to nature.  At least the gravestones that were still standing.  Many were crumbled piles of broken stone.  Perhaps vandalized?  But even the gravestones still standing showed they haven’t aged well.  Most were illegible as the sandstone faces curled and peeled downward.  The last three decades haven’t treated the old graveyard well.

      The Sandwich Historical Commission does a great job of posting old maps of the area.  I compared two maps from around the time that the people taking up permanent residence here would have been alive.  The first was a map from 1794 that offers a larger view of Sandwich, with delightful details on the map.  Peters Pond is clearly named, making it an easy point of reference.  The land is marked as “wast land” on one side of the pond and “good land” on the other.  But the graveyard isn’t noted.  It does show up on a map from 1857, which also notes family names on houses in the community.  Interestingly, none of the names correspond with the people who are buried in the graveyard.  Its as if all references to them disappeared.  And so now is the graveyard, quietly being swallowed up by forest and poison ivy.  I thought of that 1794 map, describing this land as “wast land”.  Its impossibly hard to make a living farming on sand, but the land isn’t a waste.  It raised countless generations.  And for a dozen or so summers, it raised me.

      Segment of 1857 map of Sandwich

      I walked the serpentine path through the graveyard where the tall grass had been trampled down.  The path followed a route to the gravestones that were still intact.  I’m not the only one to visit Tobey Cemetery this year.  Which made me wonder, was it other sand and scrub pine kids returning to their childhoods as I was?  Or curious flea market people wondering what this remote graveyard was all about?  I’d like to think the former.  There were so many of us once.

       

      Tobey Cemetery

      One of the few intact and legible gravestones left

    • Skipping Across The Water: 20 Places To See By Boat

      Perhaps its my proximity to water at the moment, or perhaps the heavy influence of the crew of Fayaway on my thinking the last few days, but I’ve been thinking about places best seen by boat lately.  For when you combine water and beautiful scenery you can quickly build a list of must-see places that are perfectly situated to or only possible to see by boat.  I’ve managed a few of these in my lifetime, the rest are bucket list items for the right moment, should it come along.  But we all have to have hope for a future where we can once again explore the world, don’t we?

      Interesting if only to me, many of the places I want to go to most are in cold climates.  The tropical destinations are nice, but I’m a Northern bird and appreciate a bit of snow and ice in my life too.  And then there are the places I’ve been to before that I secretly plot to return to again as soon as possible.  You know you’ve fallen in love when a place haunts you for decades after visiting, and a few on this list qualify.

      Without further ado, here are twenty places best seen from the water for your consideration:

      The Outer Hebrides  Begin with Scotland?  I should think so.

      The Faroe Islands Stunning and remote?  Sign me up!

      Westfjords, Iceland – but why stop there?  The rest of the country whispers to me too.

      Iceberg watching between Newfoundland and Labrador (any excuse to return to Newfoundland works for me, and Labrador offers a world of remote exploration all its own.

      Easter Island, Chile to visit those Moai characters at sunrise and contemplate the extraordinary.

      Isla del Cocos National Park, Costa Rica – diving with hammerhead sharks?  Maybe.

      Nahuel Huapi Lake & Nahuel Huapi National Park, Argentina for the glory of the Patagonian Andes from the water.

      Whales and icebergs in Disko Bugt (Disko Bay), Greenland, and maybe a polar bear or two from afar.

      St Helena – maybe because its so remote, or maybe because of Napoleon, or the useless airport?  Whatever the reason, I’m interested in getting to St Helena someday.

      Carribean island hopping: Dominica, Martinique, Grenada, Saba, Barbados, etc. for all the reasons you’d expect.

      White water rafting through the Grand Canyon.  Because once was not enough.

      Inside Passage Alaska, and also because once was not enough.

      Revisiting the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor again someday when the world is normal, or at least a little more normal.

      A cultural immersion in Okinawa, Japan for all that this place offers, from the historical perspective of Shurijo Castle and the WWII sites to slowing down in Sefa-utaki.  I have riding a bicycle across the Irabu Ohashi bridge on my short list of activities for someday, maybe.

      Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound in Fiordland, New Zealand remains on that evasive list of places to get to as soon as reasonably possible.  I fear that I might just want to stay in New Zealand should I ever visit, but its a chance I’ll have to take.

      Visiting Sydney Harbor and climbing that bridge are high on my list of things to do.

      Mo’orea, French Polynesia – and while you’re in the neighborhood, who doesn’t dream of visiting Tahiti, Bora Bora, Marquesas?  A visit to Mo’orea necessitates lingering to see more.

      Li River cruise China – China is a mystery to me, but a place I’d love to explore someday.  And I can think of no better place to start than on the water cruising the Li River.

      Cruising down the St. Lawrence Seaway and through the Great Lakes has been on my mind for some time.  If there were a reason to get another sailboat, it would be to do this trip.

      Last but not least and closer to home, sailing Lake Champlain is something I’ve contemplated since I was a teenager seeing sailboats moored along the shore with the Adirondacks rising in the distance.  And my fascination with the early history of this region makes it a must-do for me.  Early October would be sublime with the foliage.

      So there you go: twenty bucket list places to see from the water.  All we need is time and a way to get there.  A chance to skip across the water like a stone and see parts of the world you can’t always get to from land.  A mix of salt water and fresh water destinations just ready to explore.  Are you ready?  This list could take some time.

       

    • Be Less Comfortable

      “It takes many hours to make what you want to make.  The hours don’t suddenly appear.  You have to steal them from comfort.  Whatever you were doing before was comfortable.  This is not.  This will be really uncomfortable.” – Derek Sivers, Where To Find The Hours To Make It Happen

      This phrase, stealing hours from comfort, was  plucked from a blog post Sivers wrote last October and highlighted yesterday by Seth Godin, borrowing for one of his own blog posts.  And so I pay it forward here.  For there’s genius in the phrasing, isn’t there?  We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and those who do exceptional things with their lives do so by stealing hours otherwise spent on comfortable things like binge-watching Ozark or SV Delos YouTube videos (guilty x 2).  In the meantime the great novel in your head slides sideways into the abyss.  The language you might have learned remains a mystery to you.  The belly gets soft.  The community volunteers carry on without you.  The work is accomplished by others, and we look on in awe at what they achieved.

      And the answer, of course, is to be less comfortable.  To challenge yourself more.  To do the work that must be done to get from this place of relative comfort to a better place of greater meaning and contribution.  To stop scraping by at the bare minimum and double down on your effort.  For all that is worthwhile in this world requires an investment in time and a healthy dose of discomfort to earn it.  But we have to remind ourselves of this daily, because comfort is a dangerous temptress.  And before we know it the days, weeks and years fly by and the dreams remain only dreams.  So toughen up, buttercup!  A bit less comfort is the answer to the question of where will you find the time?

      As Jackson Browne sings, I’ve been aware of the time going by…  and so I’m trying to invest my time in less comfortable things.  Hiking with intent, writing more, working more focused hours in my career, and slowly chipping away at expanding the possible of today.  But I’m still too comfortable.  When there’s so much more to do in the time we have left, isn’t it essential we get to it already?  And in some ways the pandemic offers us a reason to make profound shifts towards the uncomfortable.  To break from the routine and tackle the meaningful.  A catalyst for change just in the nick of time – in this, our critical moment.  For if not now, when?

    • Expanding Our “Life Force”

      “When we breathe, we expand our life force.” – James Nestor, Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art

      I finished James Nestor’s book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art in quick order. Its unnerving when someone highlights something you’ve largely done unconsciously but inefficiently for most of your life and tells you why it’s essential that you change. This is one if those books that will be transformative to the open reader. I found it an informative, quick read. But for those looking for the Cliff notes version, here you go: Get in the habit of inhaling much more through your nose and exhale through your mouth, and then focus on optimizing the timing of your breathing:

      “The perfect breath is this: Breathe in for about 5.5 seconds, then exhale for 5.5 seconds. That’s 5.5 breaths a minute for a total of about 5.5 liters of air.”

      Of course, there’s so much more to the book, starting with the science behind breathing, the impact of soft foods on the modern human’s ability to breath properly, the importance of carbon dioxide in the body, and the incredible possibility in what the human body is capable of through controlled breathing. A worthy investment in time that will make you think about how you do something that’s largely an unconscious and automatic function.

      Regarding carbon dioxide, I’ve always thought of it as a waste product and that less of it would be better for the overall health of our bodies. Nestor turns that belief on its head:

      “When we breathe too much, we expel too much carbon dioxide, and our blood pH rises to become more alkaline; when we breathe slower and hold in more carbon dioxide, pH lowers and blood becomes more acidic. Almost all cellular functions in the body take place at a blood pH of 7.4, our sweet spot between alkaline and acid.”

      And consider the compounding impact of softer foods on the overall health of generations of humans:

      “The more we gnaw, the more stem cells release, the more bone density and growth we’ll trigger, the younger we’ll look and the better we’ll breathe.”

      Chapter 10, Fast, Slow And Not At All is the one that resonated most for me. For if everything in the universe is made up of matter, what does it mean for something to be “alive”? Nestor offers insight here as well:

      “Everything around us is composed of molecules, which are composed of atoms, which are composed of subatomic bits called protons (which have a positive charge), neutrons (no charge), and electrons (negative charge). All matter is, at its most basic level, energy.”

      “What distinguishes inanimate objects like rocks from birds and bees and leaves is the level of energy, or the “excitability” of electrons within those atoms that make up the molecules in matter. The more easily and often electrons can be transferred between molecules, the more “desaturated” matter becomes, the more alive it is.”

      “The best way to keep tissues in the body healthy was to mimic the reactions that evolved in early aerobic life on Earth—specifically, to flood our bodies with a constant presence of that “strong electron acceptor”: oxygen. Breathing slow, less, and through the nose balances the levels of respiratory gases in the body and sends the maximum amount of oxygen to the maximum amount of tissues so that our cells have the maximum amount of electron reactivity.”

      Optimizing our overall health and vibrancy through measured, considered breathwork isn’t new, but we seem to have forgotten many of the lessons. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art was an eye-opener, prompting me to think about how I’m breathing and what I’m chewing on, to be more concerned about waking up with a dry mouth, to consider a pallet expander for the first time since I was a teenager and counting to 5 1/2 as I inhale through my nose and again as I exhale through my mouth. Perhaps a small step towards a greater life force? One can hope.

    • A Cape Cod Time Warp

      We slipped back into old Cape Cod for a quiet walk on the trails of Little Bay and Monks Park in Bourne, Massachusetts yesterday.  From a perspective of scale this park is of modest size, and the loop is quick, but from the perspective of getting you out of modern Cape Cod and back into a time before the place was built up it served us well.  A time capsule of sorts, onto shady paths of sand and scrub pine needles with surprising variations in elevation from sea level to 70 feet.  Not exactly the White Mountains, but a pleasant departure from the usual flat walks.

      The variation in flora matched the elevation changes, with sassafras, scrub pine, oak, highbush blueberries and a fair amount of poison ivy dominated the landscape, with salt marsh and views of the bay sprinkled in.  In some ways this feels like its always been this way.  But there are hints to other uses in the flora as well.  A pair of large beech trees guard the entrance to the park on Valley Bars Road, planted at some point maybe a hundred years ago.  A holly on the Loop Trail looks to be out of place in the landscape as well, perhaps planted by someone before this became conservation land in 1980, perhaps by someone taking a walk in the woods who wanted a home for a shrub.  The holly keeps her secret from me.

      All of this land is preserved because of the work of the Bourne Conservation Trust, which saw the explosion of development on the Cape in 1980 and decided to do something about it.  This land was once part of the estate of George Augustus Gardner, brother of Isabella Stuart Gardner, giving it a hint of Boston Brahmin.  This area was pretty exclusive back in the day, with President Grover Cleveland summering just up the road.  He bequeathed it to his daughter Olga Eliza, who married a man named George Howard Monks, which is where the name Monks Park comes from.  The family sold the land when Olga passed away, and thankfully it was purchased by the Bourne Conservation Trust.

      The Loop Trail is roughly 1.5 miles, with a few trails that cut straight across the land providing a shortcut of sorts.  If you were to walk this trail in late fall or winter the water views would be spectacular.  In summer the oak leaves obscure much of the view, making you earn it with a walk down steep grade to the beach from the trail, or simply walk under the railroad bridge from the parking lots.  Not the longest trail, but you could walk the loop a few times and try the side trails for variation if you wanted a longer walk.  This place is a gem hidden in plain site on busy Shore Road, and worth a visit.  A quiet connection to old Cape Cod, to the wealthy who acquired the land, and to those progressive people who saved it from ever being developed. Consider a donation to their future efforts, as Little Bay and Monks Park demonstrates just how much good a few people can do.

    • Move Out on Faith

      “Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions. Unfortunately, this is most of the world. But they hold on to the past, and you want to live in the future.” – Sam Altman, Idea Generation

      Sam Altman is an entrepreneur and 35 years old at the time I write this, so I understand his spin on living in the future. A creative mind must indeed live with an eye on the future, for that is where hope and possibility lie just out of reach. To get anything done in this world we must bridge that gap with work today.

      Avoiding the world-weary seems like a great idea. but there’s just so many of them. Some of my favorite people have a world-weariness about them. Its hard not to get a little worn down by 2020 and some of the maddening missteps of humanity over the last few decades, but even in these strange times there’s always something positive out there if you look for it.

      The larger point, of course, is to avoid those who would undermine your dreams in active or subtle ways because they’ve given up on their own. A voice of reason is often a disguise for a “poisonous playmate” who would kill your dream that you might not rise beyond their own lowly ambitions. Quotations are for a term borrowed from Julia Cameron, who has a few things to say about the creative spirit inside us.

      “It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

      When I started writing this blog I did it quietly, just writing in Blogger most days, but with breaks in between. I wasn’t fully invested in myself as a writer yet, but there was a tangible shift when I switched to WordPress. Now I write every day and link to it in Twitter for anyone invested in finding my thoughts. Some people find my blog and support it, while others ignore it completely. I try not to let either dictate my writing or the directions the Muse takes me. Keeping eyes on the task at hand and casting votes in the form of daily blog posts.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits

      Last night a thick fog swallowed up Buzzards Bay whole. “There will be no sunset tonight, I believe“, I announced to my daughter. And upped the ante by saying I’d give her a dollar if there was. Sure enough, the clouds parted, the fog thinned and we had an epic sunset with dancing fog glimmering in bright orange hues. I gave her a five: a dollar for being right and four for her optimism. Maybe that entire scene foreshadows a brighter future. Wouldn’t that be welcomed?

    • A Perfect Cup of Coffee

      I’m deep into a phase of life where I invest time in the ritual of making excellent coffee. That doesn’t mean investing in expensive coffee making equipment. No, that would be absurd and counter to what a ritual should be. You should be able to make a great coffee anywhere you can boil water – camping, on a boat, in a hotel room, in your office (remember those?), on the side if the road or maybe even at home. And I’ve found the trio of products that make the ritual of making java easy, and dare I say, a meditative experience.

      Readers of this blog know of my affinity for AeroPress. The AeroPress has raised the standard of what great coffee can be. After years of dealing with frustrating French presses, drip coffee makers and slow-as-molasses single serving drip rigs, the AeroPress took the best features of each and rolled them into a highly functional, highly efficient coffee press. Fun fact: the inventor of the AeroPress also invented the Aerobie frisbee. You can see it referenced in the design of the AeroPress.

      I’ve raved about the AeroPress since I started using it.. What makes the experience a ritual is the grinding of the beans while you wait for the water to boil. I use a compact ceramic burr hand grinder made by Hario to do the job. I’ve had this device for a few years, but it was only when I started using the AeroPress that I found it made sense. Since the hand grinder takes one or two scoops of coffee at a time, it pairs well with the AeroPress. Combined with an electric kettle to boil water and you’ve got all the ingredients for a perfect cup of coffee. The water boils in roughly the time it takes to scoop your favorite coffee beans into the grinder, hand grind the beans and set up the AeroPress. There’s no rushing, no loud electric grinder waking up the neighborhood, and simple cleanup afterwards. It’s perfect.

      If it seems I’ve carried on a bit too long about making a cup of coffee in a world of chaos and pandemics and injustice, well, it’s because I have. All that stuff will still be there in your face when you walk out the door or turn on the news (please: don’t), but this perfect ritual of coffee-making zen quiets the mind for a few minutes. And that’s a lovely way to start or re-set your day.

      Okay, who’s ready for another cup?

    • Getting There In Spirit

      “I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      Rising up before the dawn has its advantages.  Mostly in solitude, but also in that dance with light that happens whether you join in or not.  I prefer to join in.

      I walked down to the water to watch the crescendo before the light washed out with the sunrise.  I was struck by the number of boats moored in the bay.  More than I recall in other summers, but there are more people holing up near the water this year for all the reasons you’re familiar with.

      I come to Buzzards Bay to watch the dance between water and light.  Sometimes the water rises up to meet the light, and sometimes it quietly pulls back and waits for the light to come to it, but the dance is beautiful just the same.  The reunion of the two offers a performance that can take your breath away.  Like a lingering kiss of fire to water, you expect a hiss when they touch.  The moments when the sun is just below the water is the most beautiful time of all, either rising up from its depths or rejoining at the end of the day.

      “As trees evoke sound from the wind, your eyes evoke light from fire.” – Alan Watts, Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown

      I haven’t quite immersed myself in the bay yet, but I’m trying to walk that mile.  The restlessness that I’ve felt for days hasn’t subsided, despite time on mountaintops and deep in the woods and now awash in salt water and early morning light.  Perhaps more time swirling about in that salt water would do the trick.  Like the lime in my rum drink at the end of the day.  But I think it comes down to the year we’re living through, where casual escape isn’t as easy as it might have been before.

      I’ve written and deleted more words than I’m keeping in today’s post.  Perhaps letting the picture stand alone as the post would have said more than me jumbling together words.  Surely worth a thousand words?  Its hard to capture light in words when you’re looking inward too much.  The root of restlessness is derived from too much time in one’s own head.  If you look back on this post the last four paragraphs begin with I.  And that “I” needs to be diluted with salt water and sweat and others of consequence.

    • Really Only Words

      “All things are really only words
      in a tongue of endless gobbledygook
      that someone or something is writing in a book
      that is the history of the world. In herds,

      you, I, everyone, Carthage, Rome travel,
      and my unfathomable life too, and this stigma
      of having been an accident, a cipher, an enigma,
      of being all the unmelodious dialects of Babel.

      But behind every name is what has no name.
      Today, I felt its shadow flicker and take aim
      in the blue compass needle, lucid and light,

      that points far away across seas that gleam,
      something like a timepiece glimpsed in a dream,
      or the stirring of a bird in the middle of the night.”
      – Jorge Luis Borges, The Compass

      This poem was originally written in Spanish, and I’ve read two versions of it that are completely different from each other, depending on the translation to English.  And such is the challenge of interpreting both language and poetry.  Words mean different things to different people, and I wonder sometimes at the words I’ve read that were interpreted by another and how close to the truth those words truly are.  The better path would be to invest the time to learn to speak Spanish fluently and read the poem as Borges intended.  Instead I rely on the interpretation of others.

      Isn’t that the way it is with the news?  We rely on the interpretation of facts by writers who put their own spin on it, often to feed people what they want to hear.  I’ve stopped watching the news so that I can hear my own voice instead.  And what of hearsay?  You hear a story about someone else from the viewpoint of the speaker and make up your mind about them based on what someone else said about them.  The question is how much do you trust the source of your information?

      The gist of this poem is the mystery of who we are, and our path to figuring that out.  Finding our true north in a jumble of lives and words and interpretation.  And that makes the different versions of this poem somehow appropriate, I suppose.  Brian Doyle called Borges one of the greatest writers in history, but with a limited grasp of Spanish, Borges’ brilliance is largely lost to me as I rely on others to provide meaning to his work.  If ever there was a reason to learn languages its to truly understand and to be understood by others.  I’m just scratching the surface with a writer like Borges in reading an English translation, and you could say the same thing about Homer or Nietzsche or Marcus Aurelius for that matter.  They’re really only words, but the way you put those words together matters.

      Doyle pointed me to Borges, who’s work is frustratingly just out of reach for me in its original form.  I have the same frustration with bird calls and plants in the forest and other such things I can’t figure out given the scope of my current knowledge.  But its all part of the journey, isn’t it?  The unknown is either a roadblock or a welcome sign, depending on your own interpretation.  And there’s that word again.  All forks in the road that lead us down the next path towards a greater understanding of the world and our place in it, should we be so bold as to keep moving forward.