

But now that I was back home for the summer, I wanted more. I had held other odd jobs when I was growing up-hostessing and waitressing at a Japanese restaurant, organizing receipts for my mom’s friends who had their own businesses. During slow shifts I did my calculus homework, textbooks splayed across the counter often, my mother would come by with warm leftovers and we would talk over the to-go containers, condensation beaded on the lids. The shop was in the basement of a gas station and convenience store, just a five-minute walk from my mom’s house. It was a peculiar combination, slinging VHS tapes and DVDs between wiping down the tanning beds and setting their timers.
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Before leaving for New York, I had earned $6 an hour working at the Newmarket Movie Stop and Tanning in New Hampshire. The first time I modeled nude, I was 19 or 20, home from college for the summer and looking for work that paid more than minimum wage. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
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Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything - like the inter-national heartthrob and Rock'n Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can nowhere offer that no anywhere can match? And why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room and getting to know the seasons and landscapes of Nowhere might be the ultimate adventure? In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere (TED) Book Information:Ī follow up to Pico Iyer's essay "The Joy of Quiet", "The Art of Stillness" considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug.
