Space

Thursday 11 April 2013

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.


3 comments

  1. I go for "drives" on Google maps, too. All the time. It's not so much space, but beauty, out there that I need at times.

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    Replies
    1. Imagine trying to explain to someone who time-travelled from 100 years ago what you were doing. They'd think you were bonkers :)

      So when you need "beauty", do you go on a random drive to see where you end up? Do you have a tree-to-person ratio you're searching for? (I find 10:1 works for me :)

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  2. My drives are usually random, but often involve palm trees and ocean. Sometimes, I'll be reading on the internet and hear of a place and think "I don't know much about that place", or "I have never heard of that place", and off to Google maps I go.

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