Christmas Meme #8
Dec. 12th, 2019 04:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keilissPlaces to which you are drawn (from Lilith)
I love moving water, so streams (we don't have much in the way of real rivers) or the sea. The sea is where I go when I'm stressed or frightened or just need to breathe and my special love is walking along the water's edge around sunset when people are leaving and the world feels big again.
Also I love light, that big sky sensation. We have a semi-desert area, the Karoo, which is all flat ground and scrub and mountains in the distance. People have died driving on that road because it is so straight and monotonous they've fallen asleep behind the wheel, but I love it --- black ribbon of road, distant purple-blue mountains, more sky than land. (Also sheep and goats, nothing much else thrives there). It's the land where you'll find tiny country towns - a hotel, two churches, a general store, all from the days when the trains stopped there and the old road passed through the towns instead of that national road bypassing them.
Oh, and Salisbury Cathedral. Not cathedrals generally, that one. I've never had a building resonate with me the way that does. I love really old buildings generally because we don't have anything seriously impressive here - would have to go up north to Zimbabwe for age and mystery, or the little hints of past settlements in Gauteng - but Salisbury talks to me. Maybe it's the fact that it's been a site of worship continuously for so long - from even before the Christians came and took over the space - but it feels like a well of clear water.
Looking at this and feeling slightly bemused. City girl, born and bred, but these are the kinds of places that draw me in and ground me.
I love moving water, so streams (we don't have much in the way of real rivers) or the sea. The sea is where I go when I'm stressed or frightened or just need to breathe and my special love is walking along the water's edge around sunset when people are leaving and the world feels big again.
Also I love light, that big sky sensation. We have a semi-desert area, the Karoo, which is all flat ground and scrub and mountains in the distance. People have died driving on that road because it is so straight and monotonous they've fallen asleep behind the wheel, but I love it --- black ribbon of road, distant purple-blue mountains, more sky than land. (Also sheep and goats, nothing much else thrives there). It's the land where you'll find tiny country towns - a hotel, two churches, a general store, all from the days when the trains stopped there and the old road passed through the towns instead of that national road bypassing them.
Oh, and Salisbury Cathedral. Not cathedrals generally, that one. I've never had a building resonate with me the way that does. I love really old buildings generally because we don't have anything seriously impressive here - would have to go up north to Zimbabwe for age and mystery, or the little hints of past settlements in Gauteng - but Salisbury talks to me. Maybe it's the fact that it's been a site of worship continuously for so long - from even before the Christians came and took over the space - but it feels like a well of clear water.
Looking at this and feeling slightly bemused. City girl, born and bred, but these are the kinds of places that draw me in and ground me.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 13:01 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-12 19:56 (UTC)I’m drawn to water; I’ve said for years that I could not live far from the water, and I think, in a very peculiar way, one of the places that is closest to my heart is the Atchafalaya Swamp in southern Louisiana. It’s an enormous wetlands area near to the coast and the Mississippi Delta. One can drive for miles on a bridge hovering over the water and sea very little but swamp, submerged trees and birds and the very occasional boat. Sometimes one will see a house perched on a spit of land out in the middle of water. One of my closest friends says it is a place that proves life begins in the water and it smells of growth and decay, beginnings and endings and every part of the cycle of life between. Primordial.
On the other side of things, a good part of my family lives on the Navajo Reservation in the Northeastern corner of Arizona. Monument Valley is as stark and splendid as the Atchafalaya is strange and rich. There is sky and there is rock and there is open air and stillness. Both places connect with something very much larger than we are but in very, very different ways.
I have a peculiar take on old and new buildings being from the parts of America I am; we haven’t been careful with our older places in so many ways and look forward frequently to the expense of the past. I like your description of Salisbury and its syncretic heritage.
Thank you for sharing with me.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-06 03:02 (UTC)