One Curiosity Of Being A Foreigner Everywhere

When I Was Two Years Old, I Heard About His [dalai Lama] Flight From Tibet. Being Very Little, I Said, "oh, Good Tibetans, Bad Chinese." Those Were The Black-and-white Ways That I Thought.

For If Every True Love Affair Can Feel Like A Journey To A Foreign Country, Where You Can’t Quite Speak The Language, And You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, And You’re Pulled Ever Deeper Into The Inviting Darkness, Every Trip To A Foreign Country Can Be A Love Affair, Where You’re Left Puzzling Over Who You Are And Whom You’ve Fallen In Love With.

For More And More Of Us, Home Has Really Less To Do With A Piece Of Soil Than, You Could Say, With A Piece Of Soul. If Somebody Suddenly Asks Me, "where's Your Home?" I Think About My Sweetheart Or My Closest Friends Or The Songs That Travel With Me Wherever I Happen To Be.

Traveling Is A Way To Reverse Time, To A Small Extent, And Make A Day Last A Year - Or At Least Forty-five Hours - And Traveling Is An Easy Way Of Surrounding Ourselves, As In Childhood, With What We Cannot Understand.

I Loved The Quiet Places In Kyoto, The Places That Held The World Within A Windless Moment. Inside The Temples, Nature Held Her Breath. All Longing Was Put To Sleep In The Stillness, And All Was Distilled Into A Clean Simplicity. The Smell Of Woodsmoke, The Drift Of Incense; A Procession Of Monks In Black-and-gold Robes, One Of Them Giggling In A Voice Yet Unbroken; A Touch Of Autumn In The Air, A Sense Of Gathering Rain.