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What will happen will happen, and sometimes just being open to that means a new path might unfurl before you.
And couldn’t the question be what have you gained? Because to live in a city is also to live without so much . . . Silence, and darkness, and slowness. All these things that allow you to be with yourself . .
“To strive, to seek, to find, dear Evie,” her grandma would sing, “and never to yield.” “Never to yield to what?” she would ask. A smile, an arched brow. “A life bereft of wonder.”
“Nature is ever shaping new forms,” added Ollie, “that’s what Goethe said. What is has never yet been; what has been comes not again. Everything is new and yet nothing but the old.” Evie wasn’t sure what to make of it—what exactly did they mean?—but she knew she was drawn to this, the idea of nature as infinitely changing, infinitely alive.
“The world is full of fools,” continues Goethe. “One must be either this or that . . . poet or scientist . . . not both, and not anything more. We must spend our lives inculcating one interest, specializing in one art . . .” Tischbein hesitates. “Some would say that is the way to true knowledge.” Goethe snorts. “True knowledge! This division lies only in our minds, Tischbein. Not in the world. The world continues to be exactly as it is.”
and I think my journey truly began when I started asking why. Why this particular way, and not any other?
For now, he’s happier in the company of green, growing things. Even in their quietness they speak to him, as they stand there doing what they must, in their gloriously complex, gloriously simple way.
“It’s a continuous process,” urges Goethe. It develops for as long as it lives. And although it’s a poppy plant as a whole, it is never whole at any moment. Everything is sequence after sequence. “It is always becoming . . .” says Moritz. “Precisely. Throughout its form, it is always incomplete and changing. When something new develops, something that seemed essential before drops away. In growing,” adds Goethe, “it is always dying.”
“This is a fine example, don’t you think, of how we tend to overlook what is there to be seen, and how, when we do look carefully, wakefully, we see what reveals itself is rich diversity.”
The starting point must be to marvel at all things, even the most commonplace.
Isn’t that why we embark on journeys? Not only to see new things but to see things in new ways.”
What is it about Italy that calls forth this uninterrupted creative flow? Perhaps because not a day goes by that doesn’t add to his knowledge— of art and improving his skill—here, if one is willing and receptive, one can easily fill oneself to the brim like an open bottle plunged underwater. That must be it. To learn is to create; to create, learn. Always to walk both paths, and not just one.
In this way, he lectures them gently: learn to look, with patience, with rigour, withhold judgement, and go back always to context: this is where life—of plants and people, he adds with a smile—is differentiated.
“Not everything that can be read is written on paper, memsahib.”
she is reminded of Goethe and his words. Each of Nature’s works has an essence of its own, he had written, each of her phenomena a special characterization: and yet their diversity is in unity.
“It’s simple. When you take,” he adds, “you must give back.” Banri is incredulous. “A bit of kwai for a whole tree? Papa, it hardly seems enough.” “I’ve wondered about this,” he admits, “but I think it’s not about what you leave . . . which may be a small thing . . . but to acknowledge that you are taking.” “You’ve always said so . . . but why?” his daughter presses. He looks up at us before saying, “It makes you take less. It makes you grateful.”
The world is never at rest. Even now, looking around me, when it seems so still, with not the slightest breath of wind or life, the world is dancing. Everything is moving, adjusting. Making space for living and dying.
At the heart of the book lies a tussle between different ways of seeing—those that fix and categorize, and those that free and unify.
