Space

I have been looking at country roads on Google Maps this evening.  It's something I do when I feel like going for a drive but can't be bothered getting off the chair :)

Here's a map of the deliciously-named Serpentine in country Victoria.  The church there is for sale, and I don't know about you but I've always felt it was in my future to live in a place that has its own belltower.  However, the space here feels a little crowded to me.  If I was living in the country, I'd prefer to live a few k's up the road a bit - here, say - in the middle of nowhere.  I wouldn't feel alone.

Of course, none of us are alone now we have the internet.  But even if there was a calamitous calamity and the internet broke, and I lived out here on this road with nothing around but trees and roos, I would not feel alone.

I would feel lonely sometimes, of course.  But lonely is in the middle of a crowded room just as much as it's felt in a paddock with nobody in screaming distance.  Lonely is a part of the human condition.  But I"m not so sure alone has to be.

And I wouldn't feel it here.  I would feel close.  To that whatever that makes sense of life for me, to that numinous connected-to-everyone thing.  To my Self.  And to the Land.  For me, being in the middle of seemingly nowhere makes everything feel Important and Big, like it Needs a Capital Letter, as if I have Suddenly Become German.

Space to rest my eyes.  Space and room to feel how inhabited the land is when there is not so much to distract it.