TE Watts

Joined Atlas Obscura in 2019

Hello everyone:
Who I am is what I do! I love travel, study, music, art, language, and great literature.

------ABOUT ME AND WHY I'M HERE:------
I graduated with a Ph.D. in History, with an emphasis in Ancient Mediterranean Studies, in 2016. I lived in Rome from 2013-2014. I'm also enthralled with authors who, like me, have spent time in the Eternal City and have written accounts of their tenure there. Fortunately, there's no shortage of them, so I'll probably be occupied for some time to come, as people have been making pilgrimages to that magical city and writing about their experiences for centuries.

I love to read, write, listen to music, research genealogy, and undertake a variety of creative projects when I have the time, including photography, although I don't get as much practice as I would like these days. I still love to travel, but I admittedly have less opportunity than in years past. I'm satisfied that I made best use of time, however; I've always tried to collect memories, photographs and experiences rather than material things. I'm still always looking forward to my next adventure.

-------------THINGS I LOVE:--------------
A few of my Favorite Things, in no particular order: travel, literature, learning, research, writing, photography, ancient history, especially ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome, genealogy, historic houses, ceramic art, pecan pie, dragonfruit, a good ghost story, thunderstorms, natural history museums, music, farming, October, pumpkin spice everything, beautiful corn, the sound and smell of the sea, Indian Food, Chopin, cats, horses, Impressionism, tea of all sorts, art museums, the color and smell of copper, black star sapphires, Leonardo da Vinci, gardening, cinnamon hot cocoa, road trips, the desert at sunset, London, amaryllis, Kurt Vonnegut novels, cashmere sweaters, fountain pens, lavender, The Tiffin Room at the Raffles Hotel, Thai silk, Oscar Wilde ("You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit."), the colors oxblood red and chocolate brown, the California coast, in all its glory, chai, orchids, Thai food, New York City... and life.

-------------FAVORITE QUOTES:------------
"When you stop growing you start dying."
-William S. Burroughs, "Junky"

"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart."
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"The wound is the place where the Light enters you."
-Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic Sufi scholar and theologian

“My heart is a thousand years old. I am not like other people.”
-Charles Bukowski

"Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
-John Milton

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.'”
-Kurt Vonnegut

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."
-Tom Waits

"Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel."
-G.B. Shaw

“The lamps are different, but the light is the same.”
-Rumi

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”
—Ernest Hemingway

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself.
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
-Walt Whitman

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
–Jack Kerouac, "On The Road"

"I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."
-Kurt Vonnegut

"What's madness but nobility of the soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!"
-Theodore Roethke

"In order to achieve the impossible, one must attempt the absurd."
-Miguel de Cervantes

"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory, nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."
-Voltaire, "Questions sur les Miracles"

“You must learn from other people’s mistakes. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”
-Sam Levenson

"History never repeats itself but it often rhymes."
-Mark Twain

“Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.”
-John Dewey

“It’s your road, and yours alone: others may walk it with you, but no one can walk it for you.”
-Rumi

"If I bring forth what is inside me, what is inside me will save me."

----WHO I WOULD LIKE TO MEET:----
Other persons with insatiable curiosity and fascination with the world around them - those who have the same interests I do: world travel, music, literature, photography, animals, farming, history and museums, art exhibits and academic life.

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Places TE Watts Wants to Go

Places I want to go

Places on this traveler's wishlist.

Page, Arizona

Antelope Canyon

Most-visited and most-photographed slot canyon in the American Southwest.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Mütter Museum

America's most famous museum of medical oddities is home to the remains of Albert Einstein's brain.

Winchester Mystery House, with some of its many doors and windows.

San Jose, California

The Winchester Mystery House

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

Los Angeles, California

The Echo Park Time Travel Mart

Non-profit time travel mart sells goods you would need for a trip through the fourth dimension.

Los Angeles, California

The Last Bookstore

This iconic L.A. bookshop is housed in an abandoned bank—both symbolic and chic.

Los Angeles, California

The Museum of Death

World's largest collection of serial killer artwork and other macabre exhibits.

San Francisco, California

Secret Tiled Staircase

An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.

Saariselkä, Finland

Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort

Rent out a glass igloo to watch the Northern Lights like you live in the future.

Warrenton, Virginia

Cold War Museum

This museum sits on the site of a decommissioned military communications base.

Venice, Italy

The Mad Colored Houses of Burano

This community on a small Venetian island has taken to painting their houses in bright neon hues.

Permanently Closed

Venice, Italy

Poveglia Plague Island

A small island less than half a mile from Venice is a forbidden island with a dark and twisted past.

Rome, Italy

Keats-Shelley Memorial House

Museum dedicated to literary greats of the Romantic Period is also the home in which Keats met his untimely end.

Permanently Closed

Rome, Italy

Museo Nazionale delle Paste Alimentari

This delightful little museum is dedicated to only one thing: pasta.

Vonnegut's artwork on display in the small museum

Indianapolis, Indiana

Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library and Museum

This library and museum is dedicated to the life and literature of the Indianapolis native author.

Permanently Closed

Altadena, California

The Bunny Museum

"The Hoppiest Place in the World" holds the world’s largest collection of bunny memorabilia and is a singular testament of a couple's devotion to all things Leporidae.