Favorites Travel Quotes

I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.

In our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil.

I'm Losing Faith in My Favorite Country Throughout my life, the United States has been my favorite country, save and except for Canada, where I was born, raised, educated, and still live for six months each year. As a child growing up in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, I aggressively bought and saved baseball cards of American and National League players, spent hours watching snowy images of American baseball and football games on black and white television and longed for the day when I could travel to that great country. Every Saturday afternoon, me and the boys would pay twelve cents to go the show and watch U.S. made movies, and particularly, the Superman serial. Then I got my chance. My father, who worked for B.F. Goodrich, took my brother and me to watch the Cleveland Indians play baseball in the Mistake on the Lake in Cleveland. At last I had made it to the big time. I thought it was an amazing stadium and it was certainly not a mistake. Amazingly, the Americans thought we were Americans. I loved the United States, and everything about the country: its people, its movies, its comic books, its sports, and a great deal more. The country was alive and growing. No, exploding. It was the golden age of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American dream was alive and well, but demanded hard work, honesty, and frugality. Everyone understood that. Even the politicians. Then everything changed.

Insist on going to the cremation, insist on going to the burial. Insist on being involved, even if it is just brushing your mother’s hair as she lies in her casket. Insist on applying her favorite shade of lipstick, the one she wouldn’t dream of going to the grave without. Insist on cutting a small lock of her hair to place in a locket or a ring. Do not be afraid. These are human acts, acts of bravery and love in the face of death and loss.

Да се чувстваш нужен. Въпреки всичко. Да бързаш занякъде, да носиш нещо, да вярваш, че те чакат, че без тебе не могат, че се взират в далечината идеш ли. Да изненадаш света с някакво откритие. Но аз нищо не носех освен едно опетнено име. Никой не ме чакаше, никой не гледаше жадно към пътя, да се задам, не броеше минутите. Скоростта, с която летях, се превърна в сух, безплоден вятър. Скорост, скорост към нищото,опустошителна като суховей. Целият ти досегашен живот пробягва мълнийно пред очите ти. Искаш да се вкопчиш в нещо, да се задържиш на ръба на пропастта. Не е възможно да бъдеш излишен на тоя свят. И последният човек е нужен някъде, някому, за нещо.

Books. Rain. Libraries. Driving alone at night with my favorite playlist in the background. Traveling—mainly for the food. But the historic stuff is decent, too.

I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?

There is an answer to this question, and for anyone who is well and truly afflicted with wanderlust, it is obvious. My favorite place is always the NEXT place--the place I haven't been yet.

Your favorite occupation? Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner.

Saying good-bye, perhaps to her father -- her favorite person in this world. this is how she would remember him. Not by the sad unknowing in his eyes, or the grim set of his jaw as he led her to church, but by the things he loved. By the way he showed her how to hold a stick of charcoal, coaxing shapes and shades with the weight of her hand. The songs and stories, the sights from the five summers she went with him to market, when Adeline was old enough to travel, not old enough to cause a stir. By the careful gift of a wooden ring, made for his first and only daughter when she was born -- the one she then offered to the dark.

The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.

It looked very similar to the screwdriver used by the time-traveling hero of the dragons’ favorite television program.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning, — solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination, as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance with those divine strengths which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press this point of securing to the young soul in the disposition of time and the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.

Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd.

Roy is my favorite security guy. He's a huge African-American gentleman who always has a beautiful smile on his face. He's the King of the Main Desk, and I'm always glad to arrive at work and bask in his magnificent good cheer.

I knew to put on my favorite earrings. Sometimes you start with the outside and you get it right. You tend to your spirit through the body.

Breakfast! My favorite meal- and you can be so creative. I think of bowls of sparkling berries and fresh cream, baskets of Popovers and freshly squeezed orange juice, thick country bacon, hot maple syrup, panckes and French toast - even the nutty flavor of Irish oatmeal with brown sugar and cream. Breaksfast is the place I splurge with calories, then I spend the rest of the day getting them off! I love to use my prettiest table settings - crocheted placemats with lace-edged napkins and old hammered silver. And whether you are inside in front of a fire, candles burning brightly on a wintery day - or outside on a patio enjoying the morning sun - whether you are having a group of friends and family, a quiet little brunch for two, or an even quieter little brunch just for yourself, breakfast can set the mood and pace of the whole day. And Sunday is my day. Sometimes I think we get caught up in the hectic happenings of the weeks and months and we forget to take time out to relax. So one Sunday morning I decided to do things differently - now it's gotten to be a sort of ritual! This is what I do: at around 8:30 am I pull myself from my warm cocoon, fluff up the pillows and blankets and put some classical music on the stereo. Then I'm off to the kitchen, where I very calmly (so as not to wake myself up too much!) prepare my breakfast, seomthing extra nice - last week I had fresh pineapple slices wrapped in bacon and broiled, a warm croissant, hot chocolate with marshmallows and orange juice. I put it all on a tray with a cloth napkin, my book-of-the-moment and the "Travel" section of the Boston Globe and take it back to bed with me. There I spend the next two hours reading, eating and dreaming while the snowflakes swirl through the treetops outside my bedroom window. The inspiring music of Back or Vivaldi adds an exquisite elegance to the otherwise unruly scene, and I am in heaven. I found time to get in touch with myself and my life and i think this just might be a necessity! Please try it for yourself, and someone you love.

When aspiring chefs ask me for career advice, I offer a few tips: Cook every single day. Taste everything thoughtfully. Go to the farmers’ market and familiarize yourself with each season’s produce. Read everything Paula Wolfert, James Beard, Marcella Hazan, and Jane Grigson have written about food. Write a letter to your favorite restaurant professing your love and beg for an apprenticeship. Skip culinary school; spend a fraction of the cost of tuition traveling the world instead.

I grew up back and forth between the British Isles: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales. I spent short periods of time in France, Italy, and South Africa. This is my first time in the States. I was disappointed by Atlanta at first — I'd wanted to live in New York-but it's grown on me.” Everything about Kaidan was exciting and exotic. This was my first time traveling away from home, and he'd already seen so much. I ate my apple, glad it was crisp and not soft. “Which was your favorite place?” I asked. “I've never been terribly attached to any place. I guess it would have to be...here.” I stopped midchew and examined his face. He wouldn't look at me. He was clenching his jaw, tense. Was he serious or was he teasing me? I swallowed my bite. “The Texas panhandle?” I asked. “No.” He seemed to choose each word with deliberate care. “I mean here in this car. With you.” Covered in goose bumps, I looked away from him and stared straight ahead at the road, letting my hand with the apple fall to my lap. He cleared his throat and tried to explain. “I've not talked like this with anyone, not since I started working, not even to the only four people in the world who I call friends. You have Patti, and even that boyfriend of yours. So this has been a relief of sort. Kind of...nice.” He cleared his throat again. Oh, my gosh. Did we just have a moment? I proceeded with caution, hoping not to ruin it. “It's been nice for me, too,” I said. “I've never told Jay anything. He has no idea. You're the only one I've talked to about it all, except Patti, but it's not the same. She learned the basics from the nun at the convent where I was born.” “You were born in a convent,” he stated. “Yes.” “Naturally.

What may I do to get back into your good graces?” “You’ve done nothing to offend me.” “Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?” What? “You addressed him before you addressed me.” I cleared my throat. “Just to be clear, you’re upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?” “I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges,” Arland said. “An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things.” It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt.

Today Means Amen Dear you, whoever you are, however you got here, this is exactly where you are supposed to be. This moment has waited its whole life for you. This moment is your lover and you are a soldier. Come home, baby, it's over. You don't need to suffer anymore. Dear you, this moment is your surprise party. You are both hiding in the dark and walking through the door. This moment is a hallelujah. This moment is your permission slip to finally open that love letter you've been hiding from yourself, the one you wrote when you were little when you still danced like a sparkler at dusk. Do you remember the moment you realized they were watching? When you became ashamed of how much light you were holding? When you first learned how to unlove yourself? Dear you, the word today means amen in every language. Today, we made it. Today, I'm going to love you. Today, I'm going to love myself. Today, the boxcutter will rust in the garbage. The noose will forget how to hold you, today, today-- Dear you, and I have always meant you, nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, whose voice is someone's favorite voice, someone's favorite face to wake up to. Nothing would be the same if you did not exist. You, the teacher, the starter's gun, the lantern in the night who offers not a way home, but the courage to travel farther into the dark. You, the lover, who worships the taste of her body, who is the largest tree ring in his heart, who does not let fear ration your love. You, the friend, the sacred chorus of how can I help. You, who have felt more numb than holy, more cracked than mosaic. Who have known the tiles of a bathroom by heart, who have forgotten what makes you worth it. You, the forgiven, the forgiver, who belongs right here in this moment. You, this clump of cells, this happy explosion that happened to start breathing, and by the grace of whatever is up there, you got here. You made it this whole way: through the nights that swallowed you whole, the mornings that arrived in pieces. The scabs, the gravel, the doubt, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt is over. Today, you made it. You made it. You made it here.

Among all the machines, motorcar is my favorite machine.

Perhaps one of my favorite things about travelling is getting to mark and observe other readers.

Would this day never end? His eye traveled to the clock at the front of the room and he fell into the pool of his favorite question.

My favorite color: "A pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam...

Do you remember your favorite dish your mom always prepared for you?

I used to take walks only in good weather. No I do so in any weather. When I travel, my favorite way to acquaint myself with a city is to walk it. Why not do the same in my hometown?

His vulnerability allowed me to let my guard down, and gently and methodically, he tore apart my well-constructed dam. Waves of tender feelings were lapping over the top and slipping through the cracks. The feelings flooded through and spilled into me. It was frightening opening myself up to feel love for someone again. My heart pounded hard and thudded audibly in my chest. I was sure he could hear it. Ren’s expression changed as he watched my face. His look of sadness was replaced by one of concern for me. What was the next step? What should I do? What do I say? How do I share what I’m feeling? I remembered watching romance movies with my mom, and our favorite saying was “shut up and kiss her already!” We’d both get frustrated when the hero or heroine wouldn’t do what was so obvious to the two of us, and as soon as a tense, romantic moment occurred, we’d both repeat our mantra. I could hear my mom’s humor-filled voice in my mind giving me the same advice: “Kells, shut up and kiss him already!” So, I got a grip on myself, and before I changed my mind, I leaned over and kissed him. He froze. He didn’t kiss me back. He didn’t push me away. He just stopped…moving. I pulled back, saw the shock on his face, and instantly regretted my boldness. I stood up and walked away, embarrassed. I wanted to put some distance between us as I frantically tried to rebuild the walls around my heart. I heard him move. He slid his hand under my elbow and turned me around. I couldn’t look at him. I just stared at his bare feet. He put a finger under my chin and tried to nudge my head up, but I still refused to meet his gaze. “Kelsey. Look at me.” Lifting my eyes, they traveled from his feet to a white button in the middle of his shirt. “Look at me.” My eyes continued their journey. They drifted past the golden-bronze skin of his chest, his throat, and then settled on his beautiful face. His cobalt blue eyes searched mine, questioning. He took a step closer. My breath hitched in my throat. Reaching out a hand, he slid it around my waist slowly. His other hand cupped my chin. Still watching my face, he placed his palm lightly on my cheek and traced the arch of my cheekbone with his thumb. The touch was sweet, hesitant, and careful, the way you might try to touch a frightened doe. His face was full of wonder and awareness. I quivered. He paused just a moment more, then smiled tenderly, dipped is head, and brushed his lips lightly against mine. He kissed me softly, tentatively, just a mere whisper of a kiss. His other hand slid down to my waist too. I timidly touched his arms with my fingertips. He was warm, and his skin was smooth. He gently pulled me closer and pressed me lightly against his chest. I gripped his arms. He sighed with pleasure, and deepened the kiss. I melted into him. How was I breathing? His summery sandalwood scent surrounded me. Everywhere he touched me, I felt tingly and alive. I clutched his arms fervently. His lips never leaving mine, Ren took both of my arms and wrapped them, one by one, around his neck. Then he trailed one of his hands down my bare arm to my waist while the other slid into my hair. Before I realized what he was planning to do, he picked me up with one arm and crushed me to his chest. I have no idea how long we kissed. It felt like a mere second, and it also felt like forever. My bare feet were dangling several inches from the floor. He was holding all my body weight easily with one arm. I buried my fingers into his hair and felt a rumble in his chest. It was similar to the purring sound he made as a tiger. After that, all coherent thought fled and time stopped.

Most teachers of the humanities lived itinerant lives, traveling from city to city, giving lectures on a few favorite authors, and then restlessly moving on, in the hope of finding new patrons.

Control thought of the theories as “slow death by,” given the context: Slow death by aliens. Slow death by parallel universe. Slow death by malign unknown time-traveling force. Slow death by invasion from an alternate earth. Slow death by wildly divergent technology or the shadow biosphere or symbiosis or iconography or etymology. Death by this and by that. Death by indifference and inference. His favorite: “Surface-dwelling terrestrial organism, previously unknown.” Hiding where all of these years? In a lake?

We won’t get our rituals back if we don’t show up. Show up first, and the ritual will come. Insist on going to the cremation, insist on going to the burial. Insist on being involved, even if it is just brushing your mother’s hair as she lies in her casket. Insist on applying her favorite shade of lipstick, the one she wouldn’t dream of going to the grave without. Insist on cutting a small lock of her hair to place in a locket or in a ring. Don’t be afraid. These are human acts, acts of bravery and love in the face of death and loss.

Beauty is in the streets,” they say in Paris. We travelers know our favorites, Parisians know theirs. Jean Genet liked to stand with his friend Giacometti at the foot of rue Oberkampf, taking in its long uphill from the Marais to Belleville. Simone Weil loved walking the quays of Île Saint-Louis in her native river city. The scruffy streets of the ninth were François Truffaut’s muse and mother. As cities evolve and erupt, streets change; Parisians come and go. But the beauty remains.

Maybe you had friends, a girlfriend, a favorite takeout place. Maybe you used to sleep in in the morning, or take long weekend trips to travel around Europe and check out... buildings, or something. Maybe you had dreams. Did you go back to retrieve those?

Regardless of who leads it, the professional-class liberalism I have been describing in these pages seems to be forever traveling on a quest for some place of greater righteousness. It is always engaged in a search for some subject of overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness with which it can identify itself and under whose umbrella of virtue it can put across its self-interested class program. There have been many other virtue-objects over the years: people and ideas whose surplus goodness could be extracted for deployment elsewhere. The great virtue-rush of the 1990s, for example, was focused on children, then thought to be the last word in overwhelming, noncontroversial goodness. Who could be against kids? No one, of course, and so the race was on to justify whatever your program happened to be in their name. In the course of Hillary Clinton’s 1996 book, It Takes a Village, the favorite rationale of the day—think of the children!—was deployed to explain her husband’s crime bill as well as more directly child-related causes like charter schools. You can find dozens of examples of this kind of liberal-class virtue-quest if you try, but instead of listing them, let me go straight to the point: This is not politics. It’s an imitation of politics. It feels political, yes: it’s highly moralistic, it sets up an easy melodrama of good versus bad, it allows you to make all kinds of judgments about people you disagree with, but ultimately it’s a diversion, a way of putting across a policy program while avoiding any sincere discussion of the policies in question. The virtue-quest is an exciting moral crusade that seems to be extremely important but at the conclusion of which you discover you’ve got little to show for it besides NAFTA, bank deregulation, and a prison spree.

Mexican poet Octavio Paz famously said that while citizens of Western cities like New York, Paris, and London would "burn their lips" if they so much as uttered the word "death," "the Mexican, on the other hand, frequents it, mocks it, caresses it, sleeps with it, entertains it; it is one of his favorite playthings and his most enduring love.

The magic of scavenging is in the serendipity of the find; to actually hunt for objects - though sometimes necessary - diminishes the pleasure of finding them.

When I visit someplace new my favorite thing to do is eat...and walk, preferable to a place where I can eat some more.

We would spend hours playing pretend games about missions to deep space, or landing on Pluto. That became our favorite planet to travel to. Pluto was our Tatooine.

I'm in love. Again. How on earth do people pick a favorite travel spot?

I now think that buoyant is one of my favorite words. It sounds like bubbles of air traveling from the depths of the sea to the surface.

Knowing that he was dying liberated him in a way. He traveled where he wanted, ate his favorite foods, and had long conversations with loved ones.

Cooper comes out of the house with two travel mugs full of coffee. Because he’s practically my husband, I bet he has even added the perfect amount of my favorite creamer.

For each of you who dream of a favorite experience anywhere in the world: go out and do it, live it, love it, immerse yourself in it, right now.

INTRODUCTION A NOTE TO ALL STORYTELLERS  Imagine a world with magic. Now imagine this place is home to everything and everyone you were told wasn’t “real.” Imagine it has fairies and witches, mermaids and unicorns, giants and dragons, and trolls and goblins. Imagine they live in places like enchanted forests, gingerbread houses, underwater kingdoms, or castles in the sky. Personally, I know such a place exists because it’s where I’m from. This magical world is not as distant as you think. In fact, you’ve been there many times before. You travel there whenever you hear the words “Once upon a time.” It’s another realm, where all your favorite fairy-tale and nursery-rhyme characters live. In your world, we call it the Land of Stories.

Pro and con lists—one of my previous favorites—are just as bad. If it’s important to you, and you want to do it eventually, just do it, and correct course along the way. Fortune favors the bold.

It's now nearly impossible for me to name a favorite thing. I have nether a favorite country, nor a favorite food. Life is too full of amazingly beautiful things, people, and places to pick just one.

Henry: How does it feel? How does it feel? Sometimes it feels as though your attention has wandered for just an instant. Then, with a start, you realize that the book you were holding, the red plaid cotton shirt with white buttons, the favorite black jeans and the maroon socks with an almost-hole in one heel, the living room, the about-to-whistle tea kettle in the kitchen: all of these have vanished. You are standing, naked as a jaybird, up to your ankles in ice water in a ditch along an unidentified rural route. You wait a minute to see if maybe you will just snap right back to your book, your apartment, et cetera. After about five minutes of swearing and shivering and hoping to hell you can just disappear, you start walking in any direction, which will eventually yield a farmhouse, where you have the option of stealing or explaining. Stealing will sometimes land you in jail, but explaining is more tedious and time consuming and involves lying anyway, and also sometimes results in being hauled off to jail, so what the hell.

He traveled back again, to when she was that adorable teenager dominating center court, and his favorite Yiddish expression came back to him in a rush: Man plans, God laughs. This was not a kind laugh. “Kitty?

I looked up at the wall. My bachelor's degree had been in History. Films like Back to the Future and Quantum Leap had been some of my favorite programs. Could time travel really be possible? This seemed too unreal.

Hitler’s doctors told U.S. intelligence officers that their patient had devoted surprising energy to examining his own feces; and there was pretty strong evidence that one of his favorite things to do with women was to have them poop on him.

You want me to teach you all the dirty words?” I looked up at him and wiggled my eyebrows. Aaron gave me a lopsided smile that would have made my panties drop to the floor had they been resting on my hips. “Well, you are in luck; I’m a wonderful teacher.” “And I’m a highly dedicated student.” He winked. And that goddamn wink disrupted the beating of my heart. “Although I might get a little distracted every now and then.” “I see.” I placed my index finger against his chest, watching Aaron’s eyes dive down quickly before returning to my face. “Maybe you need the right kind of motivation to keep your attention on the subject.” I trailed that finger up, traveling across his pec and then up his neck, following the line of his jaw until reaching his lips. They parted with a shallow breath. “This …” I pushed myself up and kissed his lips gently. “This is a six-letter word in Spanish. Labios. Tus labios. Your lips.” The only answer he gave me was taking my mouth in his again. As if the only way he’d learn the word was tasting it. “And this,” I said before parting his lips and making the kiss deeper, our tongues dancing together, “is another six-letter word. Lengua—tongue.” “I think I really like that one.” Aaron’s head dipped low, his new favorite word reaching my breast. “And this? What do you call this?” he said, grazing his mouth over the peak. A giggle that soon turned into a moan left my mouth before I was able to answer. “That’s a five-letter word. Pezón. Nipple.

Remember this study when you are in a negotiation—make your initial request far too high. You have to start somewhere, and your initial decision or calculation greatly influences all the choices that follow, cascading out, each tethered to the anchors set before. Many of the choices you make every day are reruns of past decisions; as if traveling channels dug into a dirt road by a wagon train of selections, you follow the path created by your former self. External anchors, like prices before a sale or ridiculous requests, are obvious and can be avoided. Internal, self-generated anchors, are not so easy to bypass. You visit the same circuit of Web sites every day, eat basically the same few breakfasts. When it comes time to buy new cat food or take your car in for repairs, you have old favorites. Come election time, you pretty much already know who will and will not get your vote. These choices, so predictable—ask yourself what drives them. Are old anchors controlling your current decisions?

This is a painting that is at best one-third “I love religion so I’m gonna paint my favorite religious figures enjoying a meal” and at least two-thirds “Bro, my vanishing point is off the hook, seriously, check out my wall rectangles, you don’t even know.

. . . I've learned over the years that if more people knew more about history, our world would be a better place. History is constantly speaking to us. Travelers enjoy a privileged way to hear it—and sometimes an up-close chance to witness history in the making.

When live entertainment was not available, women delivered the film and ran the projectors for the hundreds of movies that were shown to the soldiers. Frances witnessed the popularity of movies time after time; they were shown in warehouses, airplane hangars, on battered portable screens, or projected against the wall of a building in the village square where townsfolk crammed in around the soldiers. “Charlie and Doug” were the two favorites, but anything showing familiar sights from home—the Statue of Liberty, a Chicago department store, or San Francisco’s Golden Gate—created a sensation and bolstered morale. Toward the end of the war German propaganda films left behind by the retreating army became a prime attraction.30 Frances traveled to and from Paris for a few days at a time, usually arriving on or near the front after a battle to witness doctors and nurses doing what they could for the injured in the shattered villages and burying the dead. She was struck by how thoroughly exhausted the Europeans were after four devastating years of war.

I have my superstitions, though. They could be termed quirks. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won’t accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the favorite flower. I can’t allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won’t travel on a place with two nuns. Won’t begin or end anything on a Friday. It’s endless, the things I can’t and won’t. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying theses primitive concepts.

When we travel, we have the opportunity to see history as it's unfolding. With knowledge of the past, we can better appreciate the significance of what's happening today. That's something a lot of travelers don't take advantage of . . . and it's never been more important.

That life can be a rich place, comprised of the highbrow and the lowdown, the casual and the ambitious, private reading and public sharing. As a parent in that landscape, you'll need to be sometimes traveling companion, sometimes guides, sometimes off in your own part of the forest. A relationship between readers is complicated and cannot be reduced to such "strategies" as mandatory reading aloud, a commendable family activity whose pleasure has been codified into virtue, transforming the nightly bedtime story into a harbinger of everybody's favorite thing: homework.

Travel can broaden our perspective, enabling us to rise above the advertiser-driven infotainment we call the news to see things as citizens of the world. By plugging directly into the present and getting the world's take on things firsthand, a traveler goes beyond traditional sightseeing.

My brain is made up of different rooms. Each room is for doing a different thing. For example, I have an Eyes Room for seeing things and an Ears Room for hearing things. I have a Hands Room, a Memory Room (it’s like my father’s office, full of drawers and folders and boxes with papers), a New Things Room, a Numbers Room (my favorite), and a Horror Room (I wish this room would be broken, but it works just fine). The rooms don’t touch each other. There are long, looping hallways in between each room. If I’m thinking about something that happened yesterday (like when I knocked over the white coffee mug), I’m in my Memory Room. But if I want to watch a Barney video on the TV, I have to leave the Memory Room and go into Eyes and sometimes Ears. Sometimes when I’m in the hallways traveling to a different room, I get lost and confused and caught In Between and feel like I’m nowhere. This is when my brain feels like maybe it’s a little bit broken, but I know I just have to find my way into one of the rooms and shut the door. But if too much is happening at once, I can get into trouble. If I’m counting the square tiles on the kitchen floor (180), I’m in my Numbers Room, but if my mother starts talking to me, I have to go into my Ears Room to hear her. But I want to stay in Numbers because I’m counting, and I like to count, but my mother keeps talking, and her sound is getting louder, and I feel pressure to leave Numbers and go inside my Ears Room. So I go into the hallway, but then she grabs my hand, and this surprises me and forces me into Hands, which isn’t where I wanted to go, and she’s talking to me but I can’t hear what she’s saying because I’m in my Hands Room and not in Ears. If she lets go of my hand, I can go into Ears. She’s saying, Look at me. But if I look at her, I have to leave Ears and go into Eyes, and then I won’t be able to hear what she’s saying. So I don’t know what to do, and I’m wandering the halls, and I can’t make a decision on where to go, and I’m In Between, and that’s when I get into trouble.

Eliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted and indulged favorite. The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air of refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many cases to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women.

This scroll, five hundred years old and more, had been inspired by her favorite, the great Wang Wei, master of landscape art, who had painted the scenes from his own home, where he lived for thirty years before he died. Now behind the palace walls on this winter’s day, where she could see only sky and falling snow, Tzu His gazed upon the green landscapes of continuing spring. One landscape melted into another as slowly she unrolled the scroll, so that she might dwell upon every detail of tree and brook and distant hillside. So did she, in imagination, pass beyond the high walls which enclosed her, and she traveled through a delectable country, beside flowing brooks and spreading lakes, and following the ever-flowing river she crossed over wooden bridges and climbed the stony pathways upon a high mountainside and thence looked down a gorge to see a torrent fed by still higher springs, and breaking into waterfalls as it traveled toward the plains. Down from the mountain again she came, past small villages nestling in pine forests and into the warmer valleys among bamboo groves, and she paused in a poet’s pavilion, and so reached at last the shore where the river lost itself in a bay. There among the reeds a fisherman’s boat rose and fell upon the rising tide. Here the river ended, its horizon the open sea and the misted mountains of infinity. This scroll, Lady Miao had once told her, was the artist’s picture of the human soul, passing through the pleasantest scenes of earth to the last view of the unknown future, far beyond.

When I was in the advertising business, I used to offer free seminars to advertisers about how to create better ads (the material in this chapter being the content). That was not so long ago, but since then the Internet has ballooned to major significance. If I were selling advertising today, I’d have that seminar online. Think of how this cuts down on your travel expenses. I used to fly all over creation to deliver those seminars. And appointments were harder to get. The education-based marketing concept that you learned in Chapter Four works hand in glove with the ability to do things over the Internet. Here’s the pitch I’d do today: “How would you like to learn to make your advertising literally 10 times more effective? And you can do it right from the comfort of your favorite office chair.” It’s hard to resist such an offer. There are many examples I could give you to flesh out the model of turning your Web site into a community. The examples below are simple and some are even silly, but each shows how far this concept can go and how it helps you capture more leads and build a better brand.

Of all the gifts that Barty opened on Christmas morning, the hardback copy of Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast was his favorite. Instantly enchanted by the promise of an amusing alien creature, space travel, an exotic future, and lots of adventure, he seized every opportunity throughout the busy day to crack open those pages and to step out of Bright Beach into stranger places.

A favorite concept of mine comes from Henri Nouwen’s book The Wounded Healer. The premise of the book is that as we travel life’s journey from childhood to adulthood we acquire wounds along the way. A wound can be any unresolved social, emotional, relational issue that still impacts our lives. These wounds can be inflicted by negative cultural messages or experiences with parents, peers, or adults with power and authority over us. Unresolved, these wounds can leave us with a sense of deficiency or inferiority. We can let unhealed wounds drive us and risk hurting our players through endless self-serving transactions, or we can heal ourselves and then help heal our players. Nouwen says we have two choices: Either we deny, repress, or dissociate from the wounding and therefore wound others with our unhealed injuries, or we bring healing to our wounds and offer our healed wounds to others to heal and transform their lives. I am a wounded healer and this is the story of my wounds, their healing, and the transformation in coaching that ensued because I chose to process and grieve over my pain instead of hiding it and acting it out.

She writes her favorite lines in the inside covers of her field notebooks and peeks at them when department politics and the cruelty of frightened humans get her down. The words withstand the full brutality of day. We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men. . . . In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.

Thirty years ago, travel agents made our airline and rail reservations, salesclerks helped us find what we were looking for in stores, and professional typists or secretaries helped busy people with their correspondence. Now we do most of those things ourselves. The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It’s no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote.

Even at five I was thinking about the mystic connection one could discover in another. The idea that you could travel through life with someone seemed to me like the zenith of happiness. Life, like a double-sticked Popsicle, was meant to be cracked down the middle. Here, I’d say. One half for you, one half for me. Red’s my favorite flavor, too. When you finish, keep the stick. There’s a joke written on it.

One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.

Luke always liked horror movies. His favorite was The Shining. A wannabe writer travels to the Overlook Hotel for a winter with his wife and kid and goes mad. "Is he possessed by a spirit or is that just what he's like?" I asked as Jack Nicholson's face contorted into a scary grin, his eyebrows arched into right angles. "I don't know. That's what makes it scary." Luke said. "I wish there was a real monster." I said after the movie ended, "Monsters are comforting compared to humans.

God, she was gorgeous. Pure and cleanly beautiful. From the rounded crests of her cheeks to the delicate sweep of her jaw, she had the kind of face sculptors memorialized in marble and the rest of us gazed upon for centuries to come. Of course she was beautiful. She was an actress. Meant to be idolized on the screen. Emma Maron, a.k.a Princess Anya, future queen and conqueror on Dark Castle. The guys and I used to watch the show while traveling between games. Anya was a favorite. Particularly since... I'd seen her breasts. It hit me like a puck to the helmet, and my ears began to ring. I'd seen those perfect creamy handfuls with sweet pink tips that pointed upward, defying gravity and begging to be sucked. I had watched her on hands on knees, perky tits bouncing as Arasmus slammed into her from behind. I actually blushed. Me. The guy who'd had dozens of women throw themselves at him every night since high school. I'd had sex so many times and in so many ways it had become a blur. Nothing shamed me or made me uncomfortable. Yet I started to get hot under the collar, my cheeks burning. After nearly a year of being disinterested in all things sexual, my dick decided to make its presence known and start rising. Now, of all times. Now, when I was stuck in a damn truck less than three feet from a woman, I finally got a hard-on. Lovely. I felt like a damn lecher. "At least it's a beautiful drive," she said, breaking through heated thoughts of creamy breasts with cotton candy nipples.

My all-time favorite mantra: “My body is for living, not looking.” It’s for cuddling my cat, flooding me with pleasure, enjoying a favorite book, traveling to places that fill me with awe, laughing with my friends until my stomach hurts. My body is the vessel through which I experience life, not the lens through which people experience me. It was not made to serve as eye candy for other people, particularly when that comes at the detriment of my own experience. It was made to allow me to live. WANT TO DIVE DEEPER?

Music fills the space between them. Mark wants to take the pill that keeps him awake, but not in front of his daughter. Instead, he flirts. "There's a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man. In your travels have you found this to be true?" This is Madeleine's favorite game. His role is to ask silly questions and hers is to answer as if he is serious, neither one acknowledging the other conversation that goes on wordlessly around them, in which some other, better version of themselves say: Isn't it nice to be father and daughter?

One of my favorite stories is about a newly hired traveling salesman who sent his first sales report to the home office. It stunned the brass in the sales department because it was obvious that the new salesman was ignorant! This is what he wrote: “I seen this outfit which they ain’t never bot a dim’s worth of nothin from us and I sole them some goods. I’m now goin to Chicawgo.” Before the man could be given the heave-ho by the sales manager, along came this letter from Chicago: “I cum hear and sole them haff a millyon.” Fearful if he did, and afraid if he didn’t fire the ignorant salesman, the sales manager dumped the problem in the lap of the president. The following morning, the ivory-towered sales department members were amazed to see posted on the bulletin board above the two letters written by the ignorant salesman this memo from the president: “We ben spendin two much time trying to spel instead of trying to sel. Let’s watch those sails. I want everybody should read these letters from Gooch who is on the rode doin a grate job for us and you should go out and do like he done.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert talks about this phenomenon in his 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness. “The greatest achievement of the human brain is its ability to imagine objects and episodes that do not exist in the realm of the real,” he writes. “The frontal lobe—the last part of the human brain to evolve, the slowest to mature, and the first to deteriorate in old age—is a time machine that allows each of us to vacate the present and experience the future before it happens.” This time travel into the future—otherwise known as anticipation—accounts for a big chunk of the happiness gleaned from any event. As you look forward to something good that is about to happen, you experience some of the same joy you would in the moment. The major difference is that the joy can last much longer. Consider that ritual of opening presents on Christmas morning. The reality of it seldom takes more than an hour, but the anticipation of seeing the presents under the tree can stretch out the joy for weeks. One study by several Dutch researchers, published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life in 2010, found that vacationers were happier than people who didn’t take holiday trips. That finding is hardly surprising. What is surprising is the timing of the happiness boost. It didn’t come after the vacations, with tourists bathing in their post-trip glow. It didn’t even come through that strongly during the trips, as the joy of travel mingled with the stress of travel: jet lag, stomach woes, and train conductors giving garbled instructions over the loudspeaker. The happiness boost came before the trips, stretching out for as much as two months beforehand as the holiday goers imagined their excursions. A vision of little umbrella-sporting drinks can create the happiness rush of a mini vacation even in the midst of a rainy commute. On some level, people instinctively know this. In one study that Gilbert writes about, people were told they’d won a free dinner at a fancy French restaurant. When asked when they’d like to schedule the dinner, most people didn’t want to head over right then. They wanted to wait, on average, over a week—to savor the anticipation of their fine fare and to optimize their pleasure. The experiencing self seldom encounters pure bliss, but the anticipating self never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a favorite band’s concert and is never cold from too much air conditioning in that theater showing the sequel to a favorite flick. Planning a few anchor events for a weekend guarantees you pleasure because—even if all goes wrong in the moment—you still will have derived some pleasure from the anticipation. I love spontaneity and embrace it when it happens, but I cannot bank my pleasure solely on it. If you wait until Saturday morning to make your plans for the weekend, you will spend a chunk of your Saturday working on such plans, rather than anticipating your fun. Hitting the weekend without a plan means you may not get to do what you want. You’ll use up energy in negotiations with other family members. You’ll start late and the museum will close when you’ve only been there an hour. Your favorite restaurant will be booked up—and even if, miraculously, you score a table, think of how much more you would have enjoyed the last few days knowing that you’d be eating those seared scallops on Saturday night!

In our favorite version of an ancient Buddhist parable, several monks are returning to their monastery after a long pilgrimage. Over high mountains and across low valleys they trek, honoring their vow of silence outside the monastery. One day they come to a raging river where a beautiful young woman stands. She approaches the eldest monk and says, “Forgive me, Roshi, but would you be so kind as to carry me across the river? I cannot swim, and if I remain here or attempt to cross on my own, I shall surely perish.” The old monk smiles at her warmly and says, “Of course I will help you.” With that, he picks her up and carries her across the river. On the other side, he gently sets her down. She thanks him, departs, and the monks continue their wordless journey. After five more days of arduous travel, the monks arrive at their monastery, and the moment they do, they turn on the elder in a fury. “How could you do that?” they admonish him. “You broke your vows! You not only spoke to that woman, you touched her! You not only touched her, you picked her up!” The elder replies, “I only carried her across the river. You have been carrying her for five days.

Not town can live peacefully, whatever its laws," Plato wrote, "when its citizens ... do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love." But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?

In the middle of my depression, somebody told me about a self-help group for people who wanted to persue personal visions, and I thought that might be just the thing for me, since I no longer had any. So I went to this Goals Meeting. It was in an Episcopal church in the leafy suburbs, and when I walked inside, a nice lady was explaing that her Goal was to get out of debt and buy a pony for her little daughter. Then this other fellow got up to share. He was a white boy in a dashiki. He said, "My name is Ira and I have a Goal. Right now I'm unemployed and in debt and I'm living with my parents, who don't understand me at all. But my faith in this program is so huge that I know that one year from today I'm going to be traveling across the United States with my Spirit Guide. My Spirit Guide is going to be a while malamute dog named Isis. I mean, I know this as clearly as I've known anything in my life. My Goal is for Isis to guide me to the homes of my favorite self-help authoers. Isis is going to take me to meet John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. Scott Peck, and I'm going to get them to mentor me!" He kind of bellowed this. And I wasn't sure whether Ira was exactly what John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. Scott Peck deserved or whether I hoped they kept shotguns in their homes. I was honestly torn.

Do you want some help?" said Anouk, watching me bring out the big glass jars of raisins and cherries and sprinkles and nuts to decorate the mendiants. I smiled. "Of course. My favorites." It has been a long time since Anouk wanted to help me make chocolates. Now she does, as a child might play with her favorite toys for one last time before putting them aside for ever. Almonds, candied lemon peel, fat black cherries, green cardamom, and a sprinkle of edible gold to highlight the rich dark chocolate. Once sold by travelers door-to-door, these are kings and queens of the road, gilded, glossy and glorious. "I made mine into faces," she said. I smiled at her. "You always did.

A couple of days after the letter arrived, I was discharged from the hospital, in the custody, so to speak, of about three yards of adhesive tape around my ribs. Then began a very strenuous week's campaign to get permission to attend the wedding. I was finally able to do it by laboriously ingratiating myself with my company commander, a bookish man by his own confession, whose favorite author, as luck had it, happened to be my favorite author-L. Manning Vines. Or Hinds. Despite this spiritual bond between us, the most I could wangle out of him was a three-day pass, which would, at best, give me just enough time to travel by train to New York, see the wedding, bolt a dinner somewhere, and then return damply to Georgia.

And sometimes it is possible to rouse them from a seemingly meaningless life with a really good story,' Jane said, 'one that will reach their hearts and wake them up.' 'Can you give me an example?' 'One of my very favorites is fictitious but seems so appropriate now. It is Lord of the Rings.' 'What makes it such an appropriate story for the hopeless?' I asked. 'Because the might the heroes were up against seemed utterly invincible-the might of Mordor, the orcs, and the Black Riders on horses and then on those huge flying beasts. And Samwise and Frodo, two little hobbits, traveling into the heart of danger on their own..... I think it provides us with a blueprint of how we survive and turn around climate change and loos of biodiversity, poverty, racism, discrimination, greed, and corruption. The Dark Lord of Mordor and the Black Riders symbolize all the wickedness we have to fight. The fellowship of the Ring includes all those who are fighting the good fight-we have to work so hard to grow the fellowship around the world.' Jane pointed out that the land of Middle-earth was polluted by the destructive industry of that world in the same way that our environment is devastated today. And she reminded me that Lady Galadriel had given Sam a little box of earth from her orchard. 'Do you remember how he used that gift when he surveyed the devastated landscape after the Dark Lord was finally defeated? He started sprinkling little pinches of the earth all around the country-and everywhere nature sprang back to life. Well, that earth represents all the projects people are doing to restore habitats on planet Earth.

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own. I learned who I was and who I wanted to be, what I might aspire to, and what I might dare to dream about my world and myself. More powerfully and persuasively than from the ‘shalt nots’ of the Ten Commandments. I learned the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of my favorite childhood books, A Wrinkle in Time, described that evil, that wrong, existing in a different dimension from our own. But I felt that I, too, existed much of the time in a different dimension from everyone else I knew. There was waking, and there was sleeping. And then there were books, a kind of parallel universe in which anything might happen and frequently did, a universe in which I might be a newcomer but was never really a stranger. My real, true world. My perfect island.

Libraries were her favorite places, and when she traveled, she would start out at the local library, thus immediately identifying herself as a total nerd. They say you always remember your first time, and Nina definitely did. Walking into the Los Angeles Central Library to get her first library card, when she was eight or so, was still a memory she treasured. The entry hall of the library was as beautiful as any cathedral, and Nina had looked around and realized she would never run out of things to read, and that certainty filled her with peace and satisfaction. It didn't matter what hit the fan; as long as there were unread books in the world, she would be fine. Being surrounded by books the the closest she'd ever gotten to feeling like the member of a gang. The books had her back, and the nonfiction, at least, was ready to fight if necessary.

In the pub in Clerkenwell, it tickled Englishmen to ask, “Do you know the difference between Australia and yoghurt?” Or rather: Orstraylia and yogurt. They were hilarious, spluttering into their warm beer. There was another kind of man, whose methods were more refined. At parties, he would stand between Laura and the door asking, Which is your favorite Tarkovsky? Have you read Discipline and Punish? Whom do you rate more highly, Borges or Kundera? At confessional moments, angry names broke from him: Bellow, Roth. His brow might as well have been stamped “Frightened Early & Often.” Laura dressed him in a clean shirt rolled up at the elbows and placed him behind a desk in a room with no shadows. The luckless, passing one by one before him, wept hot, useless tears over their cancelled lives: they had mispronounced Coetzee or chosen Warhol over Duchamp.

They sat together at a table in the corner of a basement speakeasy, and they drank beer, and Mike related his favorite tale of how he had fallen five stories when a scaffolding gave way under him, how he had broken three ribs but lived to tell it, and Roark spoke of his days in the building trades. Mike did have a real name, which was Sean Xavier Donnigan, but everyone had forgotten it long ago; he owned a set of tools and an ancient Ford, and existed for the sole purpose of traveling around the country from one big construction job to another. People meant very little to Mike, but their performance a great deal. He worshipped expertness of any kind. He loved his work passionately and had no tolerance for anything save for other single-track devotions. He was a master in his own field and he felt no sympathy except for mastery. His view of the world was simple: there were the able and there were the incompetent; he was not concerned with the latter. He loved buildings. He despised, however, all architects.

Finding the right mentor is not always easy. But we can locate role models in a more accessible place: the stories of great originals throughout history. Human rights advocate Malala Yousafzai was moved by reading biographies of Meena, an activist for equality in Afghanistan, and of Martin Luther King, Jr. King was inspired by Gandhi as was Nelson Mandela. In some cases, fictional characters can be even better role models. Growing up, many originals find their first heroes in their most beloved novels where protagonists exercise their creativity in pursuit of unique accomplishments. When asked to name their favorite books, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel each chose “Lord of the Rings“, the epic tale of a hobbit’s adventures to destroy a dangerous ring of power. Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Bezos both pointed to “A Wrinkle in Time“ in which a young girl learns to bend the laws of physics and travels through time. Mark Zuckerberg was partial to “Enders Game“ where it’s up to a group of kids to save the planet from an alien attack. Jack Ma named his favorite childhood book as “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves“, about a woodcutter who takes the initiative to change his own fate. … There are studies showing that when children’s stories emphasize original achievements, the next generation innovates more.… Unlike biographies, in fictional stories characters can perform actions that have never been accomplished before, making the impossible seem possible. The inventors of the modern submarine and helicopters were transfixed by Jules Vern’s visions in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” and “The Clippership of the Clouds”. One of the earliest rockets was built by a scientist who drew his motivation from an H.G. Wells novel. Some of the earliest mobile phones, tablets, GPS navigators, portable digital storage desks, and multimedia players were designed by people who watched “Star Trek” characters using similar devices. As we encounter these images of originality in history and fiction, the logic of consequence fades away we no longer worry as much about what will happen if we fail… Instead of causing us to rebel because traditional avenues are closed, the protagonist in our favorite stories may inspire originality by opening our minds to unconventional paths.

Starting with a Statement •What a beautiful day.What’s your favorite season of the year? •I was truly touched by that movie.How did you like it? Why? •This is a wonderful restaurant.What is your favorite restaurant? Why? •What a great conference! Tell me about the sessions you attended. •I was absent last week.What did I miss? •That was an interesting program after lunch.What did you think? •Presidential campaigns seem to start immediately after the inauguration.What do you think of the campaign process? •I am so frustrated with getting this business off the ground.Do you have any ideas? •I am excited about our new mayor.How do you think her administration will be different from her predecessor’s? •Your lawn always looks so green.What is your secret? •We’ve been working together for months now.I’d like to get to know you better.Tell me about some of your outside interests. •You worked pretty hard on that stair stepper.What other equipment do you use? •You always wear such attractive clothes.What are your favorite stores? •What a beautiful home.How do you manage to run a house with four children? •I read in the newspaper that our governor has taken another trip overseas.What do you think of all his travel?

Therefore the winds, piping to us in vain, as in revenge, have sucked up from the sea contagious fogs.…” Pestilential, a note in the text explains, next to the word contagious, in Kirsten’s favorite of the three versions of the text that the Symphony carries. Shakespeare was the third born to his parents, but the first to survive infancy. Four of his siblings died young. His son, Hamnet, died at eleven and left behind a twin. Plague closed the theaters again and again, death flickering over the landscape. And now in a twilight once more lit by candles, the age of electricity having come and gone, Titania turns to face her fairy king. “Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, pale in her anger, washes all the air, that rheumatic diseases do abound.” Oberon watches her with his entourage of fairies. Titania speaks as if to herself now, Oberon forgotten. Her voice carries high and clear over the silent audience, over the string section waiting for their cue on stage left. “And through this distemperature, we see the seasons alter.” All three caravans of the Traveling Symphony are labeled as such, THE TRAVELING SYMPHONY lettered in white on both sides, but the lead caravan carries an additional line of text: Because survival is insufficient.

Dewey was wrong when he said that being noble enough is all we can ask for in this world, because we can ask for much more than that. We can ask for a second helping of pound cake even though someone has made it quite clear that we will not get any. We can ask for a new watercolor set, even though it will be pointed out that we never used the old one, and that all of the paints dried into a crumbly mess. We can ask for Japanese fighting fish, to keep us company in our bedroom, and we can ask for a special camera that will allow us to take photographs even in the dark, for obvious reasons, and we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning and an extra pillow in our beds at night. We can ask for justice, and we can ask for a handkerchief and we can ask for cupcakes, and we can ask for all the soldiers in the world to lay down their weapons and join us in a rousing chorus of ‘Cry Me a River,’ if that happens to be our favorite song. But we can also ask for something we are much more likely to get, and that is to find a person or two, somewhere in our travels, who will tell us that we are noble enough, whether it is true or not. We can ask for someone who will say, ‘You are noble enough,’ and remind us of our good qualities when we have forgotten them, or cast them into doubt.

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that "productivity" and "earnings" keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity—most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which must sooner or later crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life. Living inside the System is like riding across the country in a bus driven by a maniac bent on suicide . . . though he's amiable enough, keeps cracking jokes back through the loudspeaker . . . on you roll, across a countryside whose light is forever changing--castles, heaps of rock, moons of different shapes and colors come and go. There are stops at odd hours of teh mornings, for reasons that are not announced: you get out to stretch in lime-lit courtyards where the old men sit around the table under enormous eucalyptus trees you can smell in the night, shuffling the ancient decks oily and worn, throwing down swords and cups and trumps major in the tremor of light while behind them the bus is idling, waiting--"passengers will now reclaim their seats" and much as you'd like to stay, right here, learn the game, find your old age around this quiet table, it's no use: he is waiting beside the door of the bus in his pressed uniform, Lord of the Night he is checking your tickets, your ID and travel papers, and it's the wands of enterprise that dominate tonight...as he nods you by, you catch a glimpse of his face, his insane, committed eyes, and you remember then, for a terrible few heartbeats, that of course it will end for you all in blood, in shock, without dignity--but there is meanwhile this trip to be on ... over your own seat, where there ought to be an advertising plaque, is instead a quote from Rilke: "Once, only once..." One of Their favorite slogans. No return, no salvation, no Cycle--that's not what They, nor Their brilliant employee Kekule, have taken the Serpent to mean.

You look a bit fatigued, Sophie.” St. Just studied her with a brooding frown, all hint of teasing gone. His brows knit further as his gaze went to the hearth. “Is that a pair of my favorite socks set out to dry? They’re a bit large for you, aren’t they?” Westhaven emerged from the back hallway, a small box in his hand. “Somebody has decimated my stash of marzipan. If His Grace has given up crème cakes for German chocolate, I’ll be naming my seconds.” Valentine returned from the corridor. “Somebody left my favorite mug in the linen closet. I thought you favored more delicate crockery, Sophie.” In the ensuing moment of silence, Sophie was casting around desperately for plausible reasons why all this evidence of Vim’s presence in the house was yet on hand, when the back door opened and slammed shut. “Sophie, love! I’m back. Come here and let me kiss you senseless, and then, by God, we’re going to talk.” Oh dear. Oh, good heavens. Vim emerged from the darkness looking weary, handsome, and very pleased—until his gaze traveled to each of the three men glowering at him. “Who the hell are you?” Westhaven’s voice was soft, but he did not sound sensible in the least. “And what makes you think you’re going to be kissing my sister?” St. Just added, hands on his hips. “And what on earth could you have to speak with Lady Sophia about?” Valentine asked, crossing his arms.

Belle is planning to host a series of salons," said Lio, appearing out of nowhere to fill her silence. It had been his first promise to her, in those wild days right after they broke the curse, when they talked feverishly about their most cherished dreams and whispered their deepest fears to each other. Back then, Belle's only fear had been her own ignorance. She had told him of her wish to travel to Paris and attend a salon herself, perhaps one that counted some of her favorite philosophes and encyclopédistes among its members. He had said her dream was toon small and that she herself should host one. The Mademoiselle de Vignerot smiled politely. "What will the subject be?" "Oh, everything," said Belle. Her enthusiasm elicited laughter, but she was entirely serious. The comte de Chamfort cleared his throat, his lips curling into a sneer. "That is very broad, madame. Surely you have a more specific interest? My parents used to attend the famous Bout-du-Banc literary salon in Paris, but that was a very long time ago." Belle gave him her best patient smile. "I don't wish to be limited, monsieur. My salons will invite scientists, philosophers, inventors, novelists, really anyone in possession of a good idea." The comte guffawed. "Why on earth would you do such a thing?" "To learn from them, monsieur. I would have thought the reason obvious." Marguerite snorted into her glass. Belle sipped her drink as Lio placed his hand on the small of her back. She didn't know if it was meant to calm her down or encourage her. "Whatever for?" the comte asked with the menacing air of a man discovering he was the butt of a joke. "Everything that is worth learning is already taught." "To whom?" Belle felt the heat rising in her cheeks. "Strictly the wealthy sons of wealthier fathers?" Some of Bastien's guests gasped, they themselves being the children of France's aristocracy, but Belle was heartened when she saw Marguerite smile encouragingly. "I believe that education is a right, monsieur, and one that has long been reserved exclusively for the most privileged among us. My salons will reflect the true reality." "Which is what, madame?" Marguerite prompted eagerly. Belle's heart rattled in her chest. "That scholarship is the province of any who would pursue it.

The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since. Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total. As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone. I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more. Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom. I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen. Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred. It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before. I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.

Photographs from Distant Places (1) In distant villages, You always see the same scenes: Farms Cattle Worship spaces Small local shops. Just basic the things humans need To endure life. (2) ‘Can you stay with me forever?’ She asked him in the airport, While hugging him tightly in her arms. ‘Sorry, I can’t. My flight leaves in two hours and a half.’ He responded with an artificially caring voice, As he kissed her on her right cheek. (3) I was walking in one of Bucharest’s old streets, In a neighborhood that looked harshly beaten by Time, And severely damaged by development and globalization. I saw a poor homeless man Combing his dirty hair In a side mirror of a modern and expensive car! (4) The shape and the color of the eyes don’t matter. What matters is that, As soon as you gaze into them, You know that they have seen a lot. All eyes that dare to bear witness To what they have seen are beautiful. (5) A stranger asked me how I chose my path in life. I told him: ‘I never chose anything, my friend.’ My path has always been like someone forced to sit In an airplane on a long flight. Forced to sit with the condition Of keeping the seatbelt on at all times, Until the end of the flight. Here I am still sitting with the seatbelt on. I can neither move Nor walk. I can’t even throw myself out of the plane’s emergency exit To end this forced flight! (6) After years of searching and observing, I discovered that despair’s favorite hiding place Is under business suits and tuxedos. Under jewelry and expensive night gowns. Despair dances at the tables where Expensive wines of corruption And delicious dinners of betrayal are served. (7) Oh, my poet friend, Did you know that The bouquet of fresh flowers in that vase On your table is not a source of inspiration or creativity? The vase is just a reminder Of a flower massacre that took place recently In a field Where these poor flowers happened to be. It was their fate to have their already short lives cut shorter, To wither and wilt in your vase, While breathing the not-so-fresh air In your room, As you sit down at your table And write your vain words. (8) Under authoritarian regimes, 99.9% of the population vote for the dictator. Under capitalist ‘democratic’ regimes, 99.9% of people love buying and consuming products Made and sold by the same few corporations. Awe to those societies where both regimes meet to create a united vicious alliance against the people! To create a ‘nation’ Of customers, not citizens! (9) The post-revolution leaders are scavengers not hunters. They master the art of eating up The dead bodies and achievements Of the fools who sacrificed themselves For the ‘revolution’ and its ideals. Is this the paradox and the irony of all revolutions? (10) Every person is ugly if you take a close look at them, And beautiful, if you take a closer look. (11) Just as wheat fields can’t thrive Under the shadow of other trees, Intellectuals, too, can’t thrive under the shadow Of any power or authority. (12) We waste so much time trying to change others. Others waste so much time thinking they are changing. What a waste! October 20, 2015

In the last book of J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnificent epic The Lord of the Rings, the heroes of the story come to the darkest part of their journey. They’ve traveled a thousand miles and come finally to the evil land that has been their goal, but for several different reasons, everything seems lost now. Yet in that darkest moment, one of the heroes, Sam, looks into the black sky. Here’s what Tolkien writes: Far above the mountains in the west, the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. That is one of my favorite moments in the story, because it is right there that Tolkien, who himself professed faith in Christ, points us to where we find the courage to press on through darkness. It comes from hope. It comes from knowing that our present sufferings are indeed a small and passing thing, and that, as Paul said, they truly are not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed in us when our King returns.

What’s your favorite part of the trip?” “I don’t have one.” “C’mon, there must’ve been something.” “I took a weekend trip to Caño Cristales. I liked seeing the different colors of the river. It was like a liquid rainbow.” Many of the students had spent their time traveling around Colombia on the weekends. No one had a car, but we could hop on a plane for fairly cheap and fly into different areas such as Bogotá, the country’s official capital city, or Cali, the salsa-dancing capital of the world. Amanda had even convinced me to fly with her to the seductive, sizzling city of Cartagena. We climbed the fortified walls that had once protected the city from pirate attacks and watched the sunset. The entire city had a Miami-style skyline and, after the sun went down, infatuation seemed to bloom into fever and take hold of the city. At night we could hear the clink of rum bottles and mojito glasses in cafés on almost every street as moonlight picked out the silhouettes of softly swaying couples. We walked for hours along the coastal city streets. Candle flames beckoned from the dimness of nearby baroque churches.

The colonel blew out a long breath. “I was here for about an hour before you awoke. And as I was studying your file and gazing upon a beaten, wayward soul with staggering potential, I was struck by the uncanny similarities between you and the young James T. Kirk. From the reboot movie.” Eric made a face. “The psych ward is on another floor, Colonel.” Thomison laughed. “Very good. I deserved that. But let me elaborate. The movie hit theaters in 2009, when you were only five. I take it you’ve never streamed it.” “Good guess.” “Then you missed out. Not only did you remind me of that Kirk when I got here, but I realized I was about to recreate my favorite scene from the movie. So I’ll make you a deal. I’m convinced you can make a mark. One more profound than you can imagine right now. Be a bigger hero even than your father. You were destined for greatness, and that got derailed. But you can still arrive there by a different route. So watch about ten minutes of the movie. The opening scene and then a scene a little later. If you do that, and still want me gone, you’ll never see me again.” “You’re kidding, right? What, will I be hypnotized?” “No. But I think you’ll be moved. It’s a reboot, so the timeline differs from the original, while keeping key elements. In this version, James T. Kirk is about to be born on the starship Kelvin while his father is the first officer. That’s when an unstoppable Romulan ship from the future travels back through time and alters the timeline forever.” The colonel paused. “Watch ten minutes. That’s all I ask.” Eric thought about this for a moment and sighed. “It won’t

Bossy Anastasia is my favorite; she’s determined and sassy, fucking hilarious when I don’t listen, and she starts scowling. In bed when she takes control, Jesus, I’m a lucky man. I would happily deal with Bossy Anastasia every day. Travel Anastasia is the worst. Lists. So many fucking lists. Nothing I do is trusted; all the bags had to be rechecked by her because my checks aren’t as good as her checks.

Europe's walls were built for a reason. But, as travelers learn, the true success of a society lies in finding a way beyond the walls. If you look at European currency, you notice that bills feature bridges, not walls. And so do the dreams of great leaders

Travel can—and should—change our perspectives and broaden our worldviews.