I came to a clearing in a forest by a riverbank in Dartmoor national park, far enough from any trail that it seemed unlikely I would encounter anyone while I was there. I gathered some loose branches and stones and arranged them in a circle of about 10 metres in diameter, and then I walked into the circle and did not leave it until the same time the following day.
Great read on our relationship with time. I now have a wilderness solo on my bucket list although I doubt there are many places in over-populated Belgium where you can be really alone for 24 hours.
I see so many people intent on cramming something into every hour of their weekend as if doing nothing was an admission of slothfulness. And if they have kids, they push that culture onto them too. You need margins, kids need them even more. Minds need to wander a little.
We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.
A flourishing economy mostly depends on an unsatisfied population and a declining environment.
a Gibsonian apocalypse: the end of the world is already here; it’s just not very evenly distributed.
Brilliant interview with William Gibson.
It’s like being inside the gigantic worm in The Empire Strikes Back. For a while, you can kid yourself that you’re not inside a gigantic worm, until it starts digesting you. Because the worm is “everywhere” in your field of vision, you can’t really tell the difference between it and the surface of the asteroid you think you landed on.
I really like this term "hyperobject" used to describe things you can mentally picture or think about but can't see as such. Like, for example, climate change.
Roughly 45 minutes into an online search for a vegetable peeler, I looked away from my screen to realize the kitchen had grown dark and the day turned to night. I thought to myself, this is a problem.
This feels exceedingly familiar.
