Travel Baby
Mexico City looks like Mexico City looks like Mexico City. Am I jaded? I feel like I skip across the surface of the world like a skimmed stone over a frozen lake, leaving little lines of scraped ice behind it. In the Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett, the prophet figure of the Monks of History is called Wen the Eternally Surprised. “Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.” I thought about this recently when meeting a good friend’s new baby. Every day he was learning a new thing. What a foot is. How to make a particular funny noise. What happens...
