“I want to return to the theme of pleasure and the epicurean life. For centuries, Epicurus's philosophy of pleasure has been repudiated by moralists, but occasionally his central themes break through and are given at least momentary consideration—sensuality, pleasure, friendship, moderation—I think he has been neglected, because there is so much soul in his philosophy, and it is not insignificant that his classes were held in an Athenian garden, a place where the soul is most at home. The garden of Epicurus invites us to reflect on the epicurean aspects of gardens, especially the sensual pleasures they provide. In a disenchanted world, it's important to get somewhere and accomplish something, but the time spent in a garden gets us nowhere....The garden reconciles human art and wild nature, hard work and deep pleasure, spiritual practice and the material world. It is a magical place because it is not divided. The many divisions and polarizations that terrorize a disenchanted world find peaceful accord among mossy rock walls, rough stone paths, and trimmed bushes. Maybe a garden sometimes seems fragile, for all its earth and labor, because it achieves such an extraordinary balance of nature and human life, naturalness and artificiality. It has its own liminality, its point of balance between great extremes.”