Thanks Andrea! That was refreshing to engage, and so many cross-my-country travels, with my children, with my friends, wandering alone flooded through me. What you describe is definitely how I experience or rejoice in this vast, curious, redolent, generous landscape(s). First book that popped to mind for me (aside from your terrific list!) was Prairyerth by William Least Heat-Moon... when I go home I'll check my shelves... always like Rick Bass, Jim Harrison (in light of your travels, especially the English Major or his travel essay collections), N Scott Momaday, Lewis & Clark, John Muir.... and poets without end :). Bless you
Thank you. Wonderful that you suggest this book Prairyerth, that is new to me. Now really looking forward to checking it out (when I am home) and reminding me of Rick Bass Why I Came West...Jim Harrison I always mean to read, Lewis & Clark yes! I meant to put, could go on and on with the rest of your list and this also reminds me of others I need to add later...and yes, so true about the poets, I hardly dared to start on that list ♡
and here it is LOVE once again being spoken and called in and realised and offered.. ahhhh its just divine is it not? as an Aussie.. i too have travelled across and over and through this country to the most magnificent spaces.. and what truly grasps me more than anything when i see this magnificence is simply - everyone would be held speechless and breathless looking at this - and everyone would be one in that moment - why not this everyday?
Thank you, Cari. It's a letter to Americans because I'm an American, but I've felt this all over the world honestly, so I'm so glad you made this point. There is something about the orientation of walks or road trips into new places which allows us to see how precious and extraordinary 'the everyday' really is...why is that hard when we are in our usual patterns? I'm finding we can also do this just by walking or moving through our neighborhoods and communities in new ways, or even just moving our bodies in new ways. Finding new paths to explore what is near and most familiar, wherever we are in the world, is such a powerful way into that magnificent space you mention here.
I think I can empathize with the cognitive dissonance between admirarion and disspaointment. Greece has been that way for me. I also experienced this gap between the country as a place on one side;, the landscape, the natural beauty, the ecological and subculutral richness, it's deep history and intellectual depth, and as a government from the other, with it's bluffs, it's violent impositions, it's mismanagement, it's corruption and avarition and how the lack of respect for the beauty and wonder of the place.
I guess the hope in your case is that America has always been the place for those that don't want to be governed and it I hope some realized that this can still be the case with the current powers that be.
Really appreciate you sharing the shared cognitive dissonance in the context of your own life and country. It seems many of us around the world can understand this, and how love holds both without dissolving them into one another. Would like to learn more about the Greek experience.
I was brought right into it with you. that feeling of love for something as big and complicated as a country like ours. I fell into a reverie of the landscapes that covered me in awe and poignant melancholy over the years, especially in the vast West. but everywhere in the lower 48 really. one book I would add as a window into western expansion was Stegner's Angle of Repose. I loved it cause it's also about love...and love unrequited.
Oh! That is a wonderful addition. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I'll add it to the list. Even the cover of that book has some of the feeling of what you express above and what I was expressing. Since writing this piece yesterday, and since having that dream, all sorts of memories have come back to me, from the lights of Marfa to seeing the old factories in Detroit to the ferris wheel in Galveston to so many childhood beach memories of Florida...but the real feeling under it all is the feeling of being both free and in community at once, even when I was alone...as you say it, this sort of poignant melancholy and awe
Thanks Andrea! That was refreshing to engage, and so many cross-my-country travels, with my children, with my friends, wandering alone flooded through me. What you describe is definitely how I experience or rejoice in this vast, curious, redolent, generous landscape(s). First book that popped to mind for me (aside from your terrific list!) was Prairyerth by William Least Heat-Moon... when I go home I'll check my shelves... always like Rick Bass, Jim Harrison (in light of your travels, especially the English Major or his travel essay collections), N Scott Momaday, Lewis & Clark, John Muir.... and poets without end :). Bless you
Thank you. Wonderful that you suggest this book Prairyerth, that is new to me. Now really looking forward to checking it out (when I am home) and reminding me of Rick Bass Why I Came West...Jim Harrison I always mean to read, Lewis & Clark yes! I meant to put, could go on and on with the rest of your list and this also reminds me of others I need to add later...and yes, so true about the poets, I hardly dared to start on that list ♡
and here it is LOVE once again being spoken and called in and realised and offered.. ahhhh its just divine is it not? as an Aussie.. i too have travelled across and over and through this country to the most magnificent spaces.. and what truly grasps me more than anything when i see this magnificence is simply - everyone would be held speechless and breathless looking at this - and everyone would be one in that moment - why not this everyday?
Thank you, Cari. It's a letter to Americans because I'm an American, but I've felt this all over the world honestly, so I'm so glad you made this point. There is something about the orientation of walks or road trips into new places which allows us to see how precious and extraordinary 'the everyday' really is...why is that hard when we are in our usual patterns? I'm finding we can also do this just by walking or moving through our neighborhoods and communities in new ways, or even just moving our bodies in new ways. Finding new paths to explore what is near and most familiar, wherever we are in the world, is such a powerful way into that magnificent space you mention here.
exactly
Wonderful! Heart opening x
❤️🙏
I think I can empathize with the cognitive dissonance between admirarion and disspaointment. Greece has been that way for me. I also experienced this gap between the country as a place on one side;, the landscape, the natural beauty, the ecological and subculutral richness, it's deep history and intellectual depth, and as a government from the other, with it's bluffs, it's violent impositions, it's mismanagement, it's corruption and avarition and how the lack of respect for the beauty and wonder of the place.
I guess the hope in your case is that America has always been the place for those that don't want to be governed and it I hope some realized that this can still be the case with the current powers that be.
Really appreciate you sharing the shared cognitive dissonance in the context of your own life and country. It seems many of us around the world can understand this, and how love holds both without dissolving them into one another. Would like to learn more about the Greek experience.
I was brought right into it with you. that feeling of love for something as big and complicated as a country like ours. I fell into a reverie of the landscapes that covered me in awe and poignant melancholy over the years, especially in the vast West. but everywhere in the lower 48 really. one book I would add as a window into western expansion was Stegner's Angle of Repose. I loved it cause it's also about love...and love unrequited.
Oh! That is a wonderful addition. Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. I'll add it to the list. Even the cover of that book has some of the feeling of what you express above and what I was expressing. Since writing this piece yesterday, and since having that dream, all sorts of memories have come back to me, from the lights of Marfa to seeing the old factories in Detroit to the ferris wheel in Galveston to so many childhood beach memories of Florida...but the real feeling under it all is the feeling of being both free and in community at once, even when I was alone...as you say it, this sort of poignant melancholy and awe
yes
https://open.substack.com/pub/clementpaulus/p/recursive-tension-as-method?r=5c1ys6&utm_medium=ios