Josef Koudelka: Your home is the place where you leave from and in a period of crisis you must formulate a way to escape.
Gary Snyder: I shouldn't have had anybody teach me that. It seems obvious.
Koudelka: I think that’s the conflict. It goes even to the language.
Snyder: Absolutely. You find vernacular. You find great vivid vernacular and colloquia maybe, but you don't find anything sloppy.
Koudelka: At the same time, I like to be open enough to forget it.
Snyder: What I practice is availability. I always think, gee, maybe I should live longer.
Koudelka: I might be dead myself by now.
***
Snyder: Do you have a tool kit that has several types of pliers, Phillips screwdrivers, and slotted screwdrivers?
Koudelka: That’s for other people to say. (Laughs) I don’t believe what people say.
***
Snyder: Apparently, jotting a few notes down, but not much. It’s very different now. It segues too swiftly. I have to say that all the time.
Koudelka: With landscapes you are waiting all the time. It’s much more relaxing.
Snyder: I notice that with squirrels and with my dog.
***
Koudelka: Beauty is very relative and it depends on each person and the beauty is everywhere and the beauty is even in the tragedy. I like airplanes and I am very emotional, but some of these war planes are pretty, beautiful, yet they are so terrible.
Snyder: How to pack a backpack, how to lay down on the ground and sleep under a tree. How to climb. How to get along in certain situations. I mean, you would become exhausted. It’s not journalism. But that is still not an answer.
Koudelka: Are you an anarchist?
Snyder: Everybody lives in a house, okay?