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For many years, starting in 1991 after his Santa Barbara home burned to the bottom, the travel writer and essayist Pico Iyer had undertaken common silent retreats at a Benedictine monastery in Northern California as a strategy to recharge via solitude. He writes about these retreats and the teachings they imparted in his new ebook, Flame: Studying From Silence.
Ayer joins us on the podcast this week to speak about his new memoir and his life journeys.
“I am a author, so I spend most of my day alone,” he tells host Gilbert Cruz. “And it’s true that even from a small age, I had solely to enter the silence of any monastery and switch, and I felt a type of longing, as different folks do after they see a pleasant dish, or pistachio ice cream, or some such. However I’ve at all times had this longing.
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