Tag: Vita Contemplativa

Are you alone, dear philosopher, there on that northern rock, bordered by ocean on one side and by sea on the other? Long ago, Philoctetes was–was alone, that is, was homeless, atopos, unmoored and unmanned…

Feel free to look around at the blank walls, at the one-woman fashion show, at the small piles of Yes’s and No’s and Maybe’s. See anything you want? You see that I am giving away more of my books to acquaintances and friends, to the public library–to you? That I am taking more clothes, tweedy threads, to Goodwill. What did Thoreau say? What will we need to take with us? What can we pick up along the way?

I am told the house is located at the top of a mountain in an unincorporated area. I am told we will need a car to get up and down the mountain, that a car share may be possible, but I am also sanguine about, dream often of mountain bikes with good shocks and of mountain runs with overstuffed backpacks…

We are doubtless being insensible, like those raised to be professionals and dwell within cities, conjuring up fantasies of cider making and canning and afghans while neglecting the harsh realities of backbreaking upkeep and cold appendages. Of course I will be writing by candlelight and of course she will be crafting and spinning thoughts by the eyes of the moon. Of course we won’t grow stir crazy because we will have each other, our confabulations, the internet: I will have my philosophical conversations and she her projects and prospects.