You can walk out of your B & B at 24 Irving Street and into the minus 5 degrees Celsius morning and (having been born deep in the American South and having spent the last fifteen years in one of the most temperate locations in Japan) think that it’s bitterly cold . . . or you can walk out of that B & B and think that it doesn’t really feel that cold at all—you can just think that the sky is about as lovely a blue as you could ask for, the air is crisp and invigorating—and the day will surely prove to be one of the most pleasant ever.

You can stand in front of this dormitory and think that it’s irrelevant to the here and now that a young man did some thinking here a long, long time ago,and that that thinking eventually led him to write (still a long, long time ago), simply, “Simplify!” . . . or you can stand there thinking that it really wasn’t all that long ago that that single word—Simplify!—was jumping out from his pencil (and maybe he made the pencil himself!)—and that it might just have the greatest of relevance.

You can choose to think that sneaking up on this dude and giving his foot a good rub is likely to bring you spectacular luck—or you can just as easily choose to think that anyone who  entertained such a thought for even a fraction of a second will have proved himself the possessor of a huge duffle bag’s worth of loose marbles.

You can stand in front of this library and think . . . well, let’s say, you’ve been assigned to decipher the twisting, pirouetting, first-madly-roller–coastering-then-flatlining-for-four-or-five-letters handwritten correspondence (oh, those t’s being crossed four or five letters down the word! oh, those frilly capital T’s and F’s and S’s and G’s ALL looking the same! oh, those words with all those u’s all in a row, no, no, those are m’s . . . or maybe l’s . . . or r’s or WHO KNOWS!!!) of the almost forgotten 19th-century novelist John Townsend Trowbridge, an act that would require four days of intense, eye-wearing concentration, at an average of eight hours a day (no lunch break) . . . well, you can stand in front of this library and think that sifting through those letters is going to be one royal pain in the ass — or that it’s going to be one of the most intriguing adventures you’ll ever embark on — one of most pleasant adventures you’ll ever embark on.

If you decide to check out who this Trowbridge guy is,  you’ll probably google him, randomly hit on his 1854 Martin Merrivale, His X Mark, and then travel to a distant libary to find it (doubt your local one does). Then you’ll randomly open the book open to, probably, wait a minute . . . here, I’ve got it . . . page 460, where you’ll sneak up on one noble young man confiding to another something like . . .

“When I arrive at the perception of truth, with the joy it brings comes the desire to communicate it to others. I could not write books from ambition only; first and foremost would be the impulse to pour out generous waters for this thirsty age; to inspire the hearts of men with some little nobility of nature, with love and faith.”

. . . you might think that bit of dialogue the sappiest thing you’ve ever heard—or an important sentiment—and one that could have been written much worse than it is.

When you read letter after letter sent to Trowbridge expressing such refined and gracious (19th-century-ish???) gratitude, letter after letter gushing on and on about what a pleasant time was had at 152 Pleasant Street (the address Trowbridge lived at for a long, long time . . . no, no, I’m not making this up), you may roll your eyes—or you may just smile and wish you’d been there—yeah, just smile and wonder if there might not be a Pleasant Street in your town, or maybe your state or province, or your country (of course, pleasant in the local language will do) that you can move to.

Well, one thing’s for sure, you can only go one way on Pleasant Street—if you can ever get yourself there.