Before the Seas were Bent

I do want to understand things. And I feel like I have really made progress that way. I have cleared away a lot of misunderstanding. But having cleared the space, I would like to build something: I don’t want to just go on clearing space, although that obviously is something that goes on for as long as I live.

I don’t want to be a guru. I do want to walk in woods where the birds are like jewels and the air is cool and sweet. I want to be beautiful and make beautiful things, and to adore beauty where and as I find it: I guess my role model really is Tom Bombadil: nobody’s owner: nobody’s servant: minding his own house. The vita activa has never appealed to me, and I have never shown the slightest aptitude for it. But I do have an enormous capacity and appetite for perceiving beauty. That I think is the thread that runs through my life, the thread I will have to follow now.