Status Updates From A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Sin darte cuenta, has recorrido una enorme distancia; lo extraño se ha vuelto familiar y lo familiar, si no extraño, al menos sí incómodo o inadecuado, una prenda de ropa que ya no te entra. Y hay personas que viajan mucho más que otras.

" Es difícil decir si lo que le estaban extirpando era el dolor o el pasado, o si ambos eran la misma cosa." Auch

Hay cosas que solo poseemos si están perdidas, hay cosas que no se pierden si de ellas nos separa la distancia.

"los wintus del centro-norte de California, que para referirse a las partes de su propio cuerpo no utilizan las palabras izquierdo y derecho sino los puntos cardinales. Me quedé cautivada por esa descripción de una lengua, y un imaginario cultural subyacente, en la que el yo solo existe en relación con el resto del mundo, en la que no existe un tú sin las montañas, sin el sol, sin el cielo."

A MAN DOOOO

من چرا نمی‌دونستم تو جنگ جهانی دوم هواپیمای آنتوان دو سنت اگزوپری ناپدید میشه و جسدش هیچ‌وقت پیدا نمیشه...
⁦ಥ⁠_⁠ಥ⁩

بزرگسالی ترکیبی‌ست از پیش‌بینی محتاطانه و حافظه‌ای فلسفه‌باف که باعث می‌شود آهسته‌تر و پیوسته‌تر قدم برداری. اما ترس از اشتباه ممکن است خودش اشتباه بزرگی باشد، اشتباهی که تو را از زندگی باز می‌دارد، چرا که زندگی مخاطره‌آمیز است و هر چیزی جز آن، خسرانی بیش نیست.

"lo que hizo para dejar de estar perdido no fue regresar, sino transformarse"

“I was never sure anyone would pick up the pieces if I fell apart [..]”

suburbanization is like a tranquilizer if an urban development could be a drug, abandon page 107

the blue of distance

“Worry is a way to pretend you have knowledge or control over what you don’t—and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.”

“Exceptional beauty and charm are among the gifts given by the sinister fairy at the christening. They give the bearer considerable sway over others, which can keep them so busy being a sort of siren on the rocks while others shipwreck that they forget themselves and need to figure out where they are going.”

This is very beautifully written and the first 2 or 3 essays are so good but I'm at the point now where I'm reading a full 20 page think-piece n struggling to describe what it was saying. Not for being convoluted or complex, just for a complete lack of aim or direction. I guess this book is about getting lost so that's sort of on theme but it's losing its charm

Second time reading this book still is one of my favorite

“…erotic love, in which the beloved becomes an invitation to become who you secretly, dormantly, like a locus underground waiting for tge seventeen year old call, already are in hiding, that love for the other that is also a desire to reside in your own mystery in the mystery of others”

“…to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography.”

“The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration— how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

ceasing to be exiles by ceasing to remember the country they were exiled from so that they could wholly embrace the country they were in. Only by losing that past would they lose the condition of exile, for the place they were exiled from no longer existed, and they were no longer the people who had left it.

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”

“How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you.”

"How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? ... The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?"

Felt

"Sometimes while walking I catch sight of what at a little distance looks like a jewel or a flower and turns out a few steps later to be trash. Yet before it is fully revealed, it looks beautiful."

"How will you go about finding the thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't - and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.

Heartbreak is a little like falling in love, in the way it charges everything with a kind of incandescence, as though the beloved has stepped away and your gaze now rests with all the same intensity on all the items of the view that close-up person blocked.

... he ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else.

...lost not in practical terms but in the more profound sense of apprehending where they truly were, of caring what the history of the place was and its nature.

Me está encantando. Es justo lo que quería (y necesitaba) leer 💙 Soy de destacar poco y no recuerdo el último libro que he marcado de esta forma, porque es una locura.

solnit seems to exist in the same world that i do: one in which your politics and your internal life are inseparable. my inability to compartmentalize has caused me many problems, and her awareness of social, economic, and political issues when writing about something as abstract as getting lost, while still remaining levelheaded is inspiring. acknowledging that barriers are made up.

I wanted to like this book, but honestly it made me want to get lost so that I wouldn't have to read this book anymore.

It reminded me of when I wrote papers in college and added a bunch of quotes to meet the page requirement.

Academic. Dull. One of the most boring books I've ever read.

it's funny, I coincidentally started listening to the audiobook of this thinking it looks interesting, not realizing I'd already added it to my TBR a year ago...