46>Virtuality

'We have ceased to recognise Space as a sacred Part of the Earth. Places emanate Space, which has a flavour and viscosity that is particular. A local air.
The remnant of this knowledge is seen in that old currency of shrines, places of power, extremities. These were only approached appropriately by walking through true space to them, through the ordeal of walking through earth-space.
We have cut this Space and our sense of it to ribbons with our effortless transports; so we never arrive. We take images of our non-arrival away, as totems. As if the currency of collected totems and the splendour of our transports recompense for the fact that we never arrived'. 
 
I wrote that on a fruitless quest I made to Spain in 2001, looking for peasants, as people maybe still living in working harmony with the Earth. I found two bachelors both lonely in their coastal paradises.
 Since then, land care has got more and more chemical and mechanised, and so erases the particularities of location. Tractors are bigger,and farmwork is increasingly done by teams of contractors. Land management agencies devise future operations on computer maps, rather than as interractions with actual places.
 80% of us are reared in the strange whimsical netherland of the suburbs, and live unconsciously thereafter to its values. Gardens reflect fashions portrayed on television and supplied by global suppliers. Our houses are virtual bunkers, heated, lit, and informed by a central grid. A few dry steps from the front door is the car, and effortless access to a vast social network of retail, civic and workplaces.

 We need have no necessary knowledge of, or relationship to ANY scrap of native soil, ever, in our lives.

 I find this deeply sad. 
      Devastating.

 For us, and for the Earth.