旅

I'm back in Hong Kong after two weeks in Europe for a study-abroad at the London office and to spend some time with Naomi and Sonya. Most of my hours in Europe were spent at the office discussing magazine logistics. But just four days in Brussels, in the chilly air, and exploring the museums and parks, felt like a week away from the office. Everyone knows the disconnect of stepping off a plane and being in a new world, and how the place you left just 11 hours ago feels like a past life. I wonder if travel addicts like Pico Iyer love hopping on planes because travel allows you to live so many lives, and to imagine so many other lives. Walking through a new city, or a city rarely visited, can feel like reading a great novel.

P.S. I also wanted to say that I think London and Brussels have some of the best salads in the world. And I love that Marks and Spencer sells plastic cups of pomegranate seeds. And that kids can spend the night at museums in London. Madeline L'Engle would be proud.

Some cool sites:
Tate online courses, today is the last day they are available, but the first course this year was free, I'm hoping some of the 2008 courses are too. I downloaded all the PDFs anyway.

A tour of Anthony Gromley's studio.

I finally read an American Life in Poetry poem that I wanted to post. I loved the word "dome", here it is in its entirety (see earlier post for why):

American Life in Poetry: Column 131
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006

Sometimes beginning writers tell me they get discouraged because it seems that everything has already been written about. But every experience, however commonplace, is unique to he or she who seizes it. There have undoubtedly been many poems about how dandelions pass from yellow to wind-borne gossamer, but this one by the Maryland poet, Jean Nordhaus, offers an experience that was unique to her and is a gift to us.


A Dandelion for My Mother

How I loved those spiky suns,
rooted stubborn as childhood
in the grass, tough as the farmer's
big-headed children--the mats
of yellow hair, the bowl-cut fringe.
How sturdy they were and how
slowly they turned themselves
into galaxies, domes of ghost stars
barely visible by day, pale
cerebrums clinging to life
on tough green stems. Like you.
Like you, in the end. If you were here,
I'd pluck this trembling globe to show
how beautiful a thing can be
a breath will tear away.


American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Jean Nordhaus. Reprinted from "Innocence," by Jean Nordhaus, published by Ohio State University Press, 2006, with permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright (c) 2007 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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The photo above is from the Museum of Central Africa outside of Brussels.