Our culture is steeped in positive thinking - from the self-help mega-industry to college courses in positive psychology to the enduring pull of the American dream. There is no dislike button on Facebook. Nobody wants to be a downer.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests.

But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn't have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It's more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.

I grew up in this town my poetry was born between the hill and the river it took its voice from the rain and like the timber it steeped itself in the forests.

Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world so that when you meet them on the screen they don't seem like the guy who was in two others movies that year.

Students who are interested in learning about the environment should not be dissuaded from doing so but only if they have proved their proficiency in other basic courses such as U.S. history. Until then we need to focus on producing well-educated citizens steeped in their country's history and mindful of their civic responsibilities.

Being steeped in the process of learning and exploring keeps me from becoming too nervous. Partly it's about not getting bored.