Radical: as in roots (plants, words, numbers). A free radical.
To be centred, to get to the centre, and resist change. But also: to look again at founding assumptions, key moments in your life, and look at them again in the light of experience, taking into account time.
Radical: to resist the established order. But when the established order is disorder then there's a conservative radicalism that means withdrawing into your own world, finding beauty and meaning in what you know, you know.
The flowerbeds are full of rainwater, flooded and glassed over, the soil so resistant to absorption, to letting things flow. At night few of the streetlights are working and so you drive in the dark waters and later wade through it or search out the high points, balancing precariously on the raised kerb.
A farewell dinner at the Afgahni place, a faint smell of hashish. A rooftop restaurant, probably built with drug money. Roast lamb, slow cooked on the bone for four hours in the traditional way.
A Ph.D.: six years of Sanskrit and taking a fine lens to inscrutable texts. Well, good luck to you. There goes your life! There goes your youth!
What does a university teach you except that you will never read freely again, that every thought will be full of doubts and qualifications; that a simple 'yes' to life will be an achievement, a walk out into the dark, open field...
To be centred, to get to the centre, and resist change. But also: to look again at founding assumptions, key moments in your life, and look at them again in the light of experience, taking into account time.
Radical: to resist the established order. But when the established order is disorder then there's a conservative radicalism that means withdrawing into your own world, finding beauty and meaning in what you know, you know.
The flowerbeds are full of rainwater, flooded and glassed over, the soil so resistant to absorption, to letting things flow. At night few of the streetlights are working and so you drive in the dark waters and later wade through it or search out the high points, balancing precariously on the raised kerb.
A farewell dinner at the Afgahni place, a faint smell of hashish. A rooftop restaurant, probably built with drug money. Roast lamb, slow cooked on the bone for four hours in the traditional way.
A Ph.D.: six years of Sanskrit and taking a fine lens to inscrutable texts. Well, good luck to you. There goes your life! There goes your youth!
What does a university teach you except that you will never read freely again, that every thought will be full of doubts and qualifications; that a simple 'yes' to life will be an achievement, a walk out into the dark, open field...
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