Man has a natural tendency to complicate simple things and simplify complex ones. This incessant activity, this cosmic breath which delights the wise and plagues the less wise, is achieved on the material and spiritual level by endlessly alternating action and speculation. One without the other, though, misses the target. Like wine, Life matures in silent cellars but until then it is full of frenzied activity in the casks. Without careful reflection, Life is just a chain of pub-style episodes. Unless it is lived in full, it stays on the other side of a pane of glass. The difference between thought and action lies in the fact that thought takes place on a horizontal plane and action along a straight line. On a mental level, we can move forward and backwards, to and fro. An opinion or a point of view can change many times. Much of our personal history lies in our instinctive resistance to wanting to confess every change to ourselves, in the various strategies with which we fight it while at the same time feeding it, and finally in the sense of liberation we feel when and if we abandon it for good. Instead, action takes place along a straight line - or at least it appears to - and goes in one direction, because an arrow that has left the bow cannot be called back. Its direction is that of time, so it is impossible to stop it. There is however something that goes back in time and to which we can entrust the task of sending that arrow off course: Memory. Outside the metaphor, the life we have lived is nothing but that personal version that we remember. Without fail - and fortunately - we recall the pleasant things and eliminate or re-elaborate the unpleasant things. Though this appears to contradict our will and teach us that action in itself means nothing, it is not actually so. An old Arab saying cautions us that the meaning of life is to be found in the heart of books or on the back of a horse - in other words in direct experience and in experience distilled and handed down to us. However a great deal of experience is needed to understand the value of the experience itself, whether one’s own or that of others. At the age when Taste and Reason reach maturity, we become aware that not all flowers can be gathered or grown in a single lifetime. Some we may enjoy first-hand, while others we will enjoy through literature or conversation. Where action stops, let imagination continue.
  The relation between Action and conceptual elaboration is of the utmost importance. The action of doing without thinking is like starting without finishing. We will not be enriched by seeing and travelling a great deal, coming into contact with many things and buying widely, unless if we have stopped to think about the differences and their origins, the small happenings and their great meanings. A trip to the East, when it comes to the crunch, may turn out to be less interesting and adventurous than the pilgrimage of a careful observer from Catania to Rome.
  But let us keep our feet on the ground. This Door celebrates the physical expression of Taste. So we will concentrate on facts, not words and in describing them we will attempt to bring them into the foreground, leaving in the background that speculation which elsewhere fascinates us.

Action

The smell of the rain on dry leaves or grass. A nocturnal bathe, a long swim. The flap of the sails when gybing. Bare feet on the teak of the deck. Action also has its objects: the satisfying weight of a shotgun; the bold curve of a saddle; the quiet magnificence of a vintage boat.

Motoring

Competitive sport

Here and elsewhere we are reluctant to use the word "sport" which has become a synonym for commercialisation and ostentation for its own sake. We Knights are interested in competition, which is the quest for victory and not supremacy. The frenetic tacking at the start of a regatta. That magic sound which tells you, even before your eyes do, that your drive will be long and accurate. Even that little wager on a game of snooker with the friend who does not want to lose and to whom you have no intention of losing.