I first looked up and out—literally, that’s how I recall it—in Scotland, which I visited from Berlin at the age of twenty-five. I stepped off an airplane shrouded in layer upon layer of black, pencil thin, out of place. Scotland shocked me to attention with its angular edges, cascading hues of green and heather, and extraordinary light. It stilled me. It softened my confusion and my perpetual restlessness by dwarfing them, putting them in their place.
