Garden of Dreams
February 20, 2007
February 20th, 2007
As I queued for my entrance ticket I caught glimpses of the Garden of Dreams. Finally! A place of silent respite in Kathmandu that was outside the confines of my hotel room. It barely seemed possible.
Once inside I found neo-classical pavilions, tidy lawns, shapely ponds and immaculate borders. Unfamiliar trees cast shadows onto the old red brick walls. The garden flowed downwards in cascading levels, and as I walked the thoughts of incessant Tiger Balm sellers and rickshaw drivers began to evaporate from my mind.
I found a ledge to sit on with a view of that spanned the length of the grounds. There I felt that slow methodical imprint that seems to develop in places without the presence of noise – vision unadulterated by sound. And in those environments it’s as if that utter submergence in just one of the senses provides some kind of lattice on which thoughts and inclinations can flourish.
The gardens were immaculate, a master class in symmetry; and yet now I was in another garden, back over the Himalayas, through the Middle East, Eastern Europe, The Mediterranean and across the English Channel. All had been traversed in an instant. I was at Great Dixter. At home. There imperfection was perfection. Man in harmony with nature, not its oppressor, and the English countryside with the elegant fragility that is does best.
Longing for a premature return or comparisons with my current surround never entered my mind. All I could think is that there is no place on earth that I would rather have spent my early life than there.
