I loved The Faraway Nearby, so as soon as I got my hands on another Solnit book, I sunk my teeth into it. And I was not disappointed in this meditation on being lost, being found, and being willing to surrender to what you may not be able to articulate. Again, her narrative manages to be both incredibly focused on the topic at hand---one's sense of location---while also broadly surveying a diverse landscape of subjects, from Meno to mapping America to the color blue and Yves Klein.
I found myself scrawling down notes about many, many different passages, but perhaps what resonates most is this call to welcome ambiguity into your life, and the ensuing question about how that translates into the day to day:
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. ...
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?
I guess now I need to find Wanderlust, As Eve Said to the Serpent, Hope in the Dark, or one of her many other books.