Oriented

Which way is east? Some thoughts on the orient:

“Not long after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the victors often reiterated the assertion that Africa begins at the Pyrennes. Others have said the Orient begins at Paris.”

–Carter G. Woodson, from “Attitudes of the Iberian Penninsula”

“…For had it not been for peppercorns, then what is ending now in East and West might never have begun. Pepper it was that brought Vasco de Gama’s tall ships across the ocean, from Lisbon’s Tower of Belem to the Malabar Coast…so that in the period called Discovery-of-India–but how could we be discovered when we were not covered before–we were ‘not so much sub-continent as sub-condiment,’ as my distinguished mother had it.”

–Salman Rushdie, from The Moor’s Last Sigh

“The west shall shake the east awake, while ye have night for morn.”

–James Joyce, from Finnegan’s Wake

Not much else to report. I am ardent in the attempt to say things the right way, the best way. Sometimes that means you wait a long while for the words,  humbled by all that lies out of their reach.

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