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In botanical terms, tumbleweeds are not dead, exactly, nor are they useless detritus: A tumbleweed is a plant's way of propagating, a satellite full of seeds that pops off from the root and tumbles on to a bright future (think of blowing wishes on a white-headed dandelion, the seeds parachuting in the wind). When I first learned this, I was disappointed in the metaphorical significance of tumbleweeds not having any roots. I wanted them to have portable roots, and be able to plant themselves anywhere, because I wanted the be reassured I could take root wherever I end up.From Broadly: Playing Princess with Boys at Stockholm's First Gender-Neutral Pre-School
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I take tea breaks in the front room, shared by staff and Tumbleweeds, and if I feel like talking, there's an endless supply of interesting people to talk to. If I don't, though, then I sit at the table with a book and read alongside whoever's there. There's the girl who uses her iPhone as a paperweight to hold down the thinner side of Infinite Jest; the tall Scot who eats cheese that's as orange as his classic Penguin paperback; the Buddhist who looks like Jesus and tells me about the Zen book that changed his life; the bespectacled antiquarian bookseller whom I first met through the cat-flap in my bedroom door when he came to feed Agatha.One evening last week, some Tumbleweeds and I were reading through the archive of autobiographies—it was another of George's mandates that everyone who sleeps here write a one-page life story. Almost all of the attempts acknowledge the limitations of such an endeavor: How do you set about writing your life story when you're 19 years old and drunk on Paris? How can you contribute to a living archive? Around half of them try to start from the beginning (birthplace, earliest memories); the other half just dive right in, knowing they'll never be able to capture the whole mess of past and future. My favorites are these bold prose poems of the present.The whole world comes here, it seems, and then the whole world leaves.
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For someone who was so careful to keep everything, and whose life's philosophy was so intertwined with words and physical documents, I find it strange that George would have made it so difficult for people to archive his papers. Didn't he realize their value in simply having kept them?Krista believes that George did understand the value of his documents, as well as the legacy they'd leave behind, but that he was more concerned with living in the present and moving forward with his life's work. "He was too busy to look to the past. It's probably why he lived such a long life."Here, foreground blends with background into a head-in-the-sand sort of carpe diem: You know people will leave, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying them while they're here.
I wanted to write an essay about living in a legendary Parisian bookshop that also talked about losing myself, finding myself, and then letting it all go again. I wanted to try to show you how home is something that doesn't have to be permanent—how maybe it never can be.It is at Shakespeare & Co, with the constant turnover of tourists and Tumbleweeds, that I've learned to embrace the present even when I know it won't last. Here, foreground blends with background into a head-in-the-sand sort of carpe diem: You know people will leave, but that doesn't stop you from enjoying them while they're here. In other cities where I've lived, and even among less transient circles in Paris, I find people are less willing to open up their lives to the random scatterings of chance. Maybe they're focusing more on roots than on seeds.It's hard, often impossible, to deal with departures and endings, whether you're the one who leaves or the one who stays. But for now, I'm grateful to have the dog at my feet, the cat on my lap, and to be surrounded by people for whom forever is just right now.Follow Harriet on Twitter.