Jamie Zeppa > Quotes

“I wanted to throw myself into an experience that was too big for me and learn in a way that cost me something”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“Anyone can live anywhere. You think you can't in the beginning, but then you do.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“There is a difference between arrival and entrance. Arrival is physical and happens all at once. The train pulls in, the plan touches down, you get out of the taxi with all your luggage. You can arrive a place and never really enter it; you get there, look around, take a few pictures, make a few notes, send postcards home. When you travel like this, you think you know where you are, but, in fact, you have never left home. Entering takes longer. You cross over, slowly, in bits and pieces. […] It is like awakening slowly, over a period of weeks. And then one morning, you open your eyes and you are finally here, really and truly here. You are just beginning to know where you are.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“Everything is more meaningful because it is connected to the earth. There are no signs to read, no billboards or neon messages; instead I read the hills and the fields and the farmhouses and the sky. The houses, made of mud and stone and wood, are not hermetically sealed. The wind blows in through the cracks, the night seeps in through the rough wooden window slats.The line between inside and outside is not so clear.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“I love how the landscape gives the impression of vast space and intimacy at the same time: the thin brown line of a path wandering up an immense green mountainside, a plush hanging valley tucked between two steep hillsides, a village of three houses surrounded by dark forest, paddy fields flowing around an outcrop of rock, a white temple gleaming on a shadowy ridge. The human habitations nestle into the landscape; nothing is cut or cleared beyond what is requires. Nothing is bigger than necessary. Every sign of human settlement repeat the mantra of contentment: “This is just enough.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“Time has become a melding of minutes and months and the feeling of seasons. […] Leon says it is the Bhutan Time Warp and I know what he means. Time does not hurl itself forward at breakneck speed here. Change happens very slowly. A grandmother and her granddaughter wear the same kind of clothes, they do the same work, they know the same songs. The granddaughter does not find her grandmother an embarrassing, boring relic.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“I feel slow. I think slowly, I talk slowly, I react slowly. In the blur and rush of everything around me, I am more mindful. The mindfulness has grown quietly and surely, perhaps more a result of my slow, sparse environment in Kanglung than my own efforts. I can see how it would evaporate here without a consistent daily practice. I”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“I wonder where in the world it would be possible to have the ideal, a middle way, a balance between individuality and responsibility to the larger community. Easily named, of course, but I cannot begin to imagine where to achieve it.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“A person can be completely right about something but still not have the right to say it.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“It was not necessary to leave to learn that. But there were other reasons to go. If a person had a child but no husband, a room but no house, a place but no home, a will but no way, and if a person was losing her son and herself, little by little, day by day, because she knew what she knew in her skin and bones but not what her sister-in-law knew in her books and pamphlets, then yes, it was necessary.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Every Time We Say Goodbye

“I knew I seemed a fairly unlikely candidate for an adventure into the unknown. And secretly I doubted that I had what it took, whatever it took, to head off alone to a country most people had never heard of. In light of this, my determination to go puzzled me.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“What I love is how seamless everything is. You walk throw a forest and come out in a village; and there’s no difference, no division. You aren’t in nature one minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars.”
― Jamie Zeppa

“I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling, listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. I want simply to come home, close the door, and sit in silence, gathering up the bits of myself that have come loose. I want to think, or not think. I want to rest.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“This is my favorite part of the day. “Good morning, Class Two C,” I say. The entire class leaps up and sings out, “Good morning, miss!” Twenty-three faces are smiling at me. Sometimes they shout it with so much conviction that I laugh.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“Buddhism, we say that life is like housekeeping in a dream. We may get a lot done, but in the end we wake up and what does it come to, all that effort?”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“I’ve just been transferred to Kanglung,” I say. They look at me to see if I am joking, and then they look at each other. There is a long, terrible silence and we all look at the floor. Karma Dorji wipes his runny nose on his sleeve and looks up. “Oh, miss,” he says sadly. “Please don’t go.”
“Just a minute,” I say, and go into the bathroom. I latch the door and turn on the tap full force. When the water is running noisily, I lean my hot forehead against the damp, flaking concrete, and cry.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“The two- or three-story houses have ground-floor walls made out of whitewashed stone or mud, and upper levels of mud and wood. The narrow windows with their scalloped tops have sliding wooden slats to let in light and shut out the rain or the cold. The exterior walls are decorated with elaborate paintings, in faded blues and reds, of lotus flowers, deer, birds, and giant stylized phalluses (“to ward off evil spirits,” Rita says). Ladder steps lead to heavy wooden doors with irregular latches and locks. The roofs are covered with stone slates, or wooden shingles held down by large stones.”
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“We stop when we reach the top, climb out, shivering in the cold and ghostly mist under wind-blasted trees, to read the sign erected by the Public Works Department: “You have reached Trumseng La, Bhutan’s highest road pass. Check Your Brakes. Bash On Regardless. Thank you.””
― Jamie Zeppa, Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan

“English has so many words that do not exist in Sharchhop, but they are mostly nouns, mostly things: machine, airplane, wristwatch. Sharchhop, on the other hand, reveals a culture of material economy but abundant, intricate familial ties and social relations. People cannot afford to make a distinction between need and desire, but they have separate words for older brother, younger sister, father’s brother’s sons, mother’s sister’s daughters. And there are 2 sets of words: a common set for everyday use and an honorific one to show respect. There are three words for gift: a gift given to a person higher in rank, a gift to someone lower, and a gift between equals.”
― Jamie Zeppa