I am a
member of two book clubs, and I often find myself sinking into the quiet of
Almost Pi for one of my two monthly obligate reads. This weekend I have been immersed in
Elizabeth Gilbert’s “The Signature of All Things”. As much as I didn’t like her earlier book, “Eat
Pray Love”, and as resistant as I was to reading this new one, I was quickly
sucked into the story of adventurers, circa 1800, who traveled the world to
unearth new botanicals for passion and profit.
Alma Whitaker, the scholarly daughter of one such remarkable man and now
the world’s expert in mosses, meets Ambrose Pike, who has just returned from
two decades in Mexico and Guatemala where he studied orchids and produced exquisite
lithographs of them.
Alma asks
him, “What would you like to do [now]?”
To which Pike responds, “I would like never to travel again. I would like to spend the rest of my days in
a place so silent – and working at a pace so slow – that I would be able to
hear myself living.”
I know the feeling. Pi is the place where I can hear myself living.
I know the feeling. Pi is the place where I can hear myself living.
