“I can be by myself because I’m never lonely, I’m simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.” — Bohumil Hrabal There is a moment in solo business travel where you’re inevitably going to feel…
“In the soul of man,” Herman Melville wrote, in one of his terrifying flights of prophecy in Moby-Dick, “there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half known life.” Cast off from that protected world, he’d gone on, and “thou canst never return!” But the…
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” — Joan Didion “You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities…
“You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.” — Joan Didion Life is change. Those of us afflicted with wanderlust amplify our lives with travel and exploration. But eventually, perhaps even relentlessly, we come home again. Whatever that means to us. In a few weeks I’ll have been anchored to the same…
“We, I would venture to guess, are the books we have read, the paintings we have seen, the music we have heard and forgotten, the streets we have walked. We are our childhood, our family, some friends, a few loves, more than a few disappointments. A sum reduced by infinite subtractions. We are shaped by…
When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,pray that the road is long,full of adventure, full of knowledge.The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,the angry Poseidon – do not fear them:You will never find such as these on your path,if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fineemotion touches your spirit and your body.The Lestrygonians and the…
“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.” ― Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart “Imagine that you’re unwell and in a foul mood, and they’re taking…
“When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has been stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single…
Sunsets must be earned in winter. There are no casual seaside deck conversations with a few pictures between sips of rum. No, you must seek out December sunsets by going to where it falls into the bay while bracing against biting cold winds galloping towards you in a stampede of frothy fury. Still, it makes…
The Edge is the highest observation deck in the Western Hemisphere, and the fifth highest in the world. It juts out of a modern and elegant 30 Hudson Yards building that glitters day and night. If you are afraid of heights, it’s unlikely you’ll ever travel up the speedy elevators that bring you 100 stories…