It occurred to me this week that in the old days, when things did not change so fast and there weren't so many people, and so there was not the same need for endless development, you could stand on a piece of land in mid-life, on which you had stood as a kid, and on which you have stood every day since then, and look out, and it would be the same.
And that permanence in the LAND would have given you a different view of life. A view of life in which cycles of seasonal change went on, but basically the world endured. And I think this permanence would have been a comfort.
Now I go to the places that I loved and took solace and strength from when I was younger, and they have been touristified and pathed over, with explanatory plaques and souvenir vendors, or they have been razed and built on.
The LAND is disappearing. The world population has DOUBLED since I was born, and I feel this nostalgia for the passing of calm and silence and small-scale life, and for a time when things did not require continual adjustment at such a pace.
Some things are good as they are, they function well and do not need to be replaced or improved. It's a relief to find things as they were, unchanged, old friends softened by time and use.
I long for respite from the continual murder of the simple and quiet. I scour around in my mind for where peace and permanence might be found, but there are people and buildings and roads everywhere that I know now, and I feel a panic at the thought of the 3B more who will arrive by the time I am 80, tripling the population since the 3B it was when I was born.
Already all the bustle overwhelms me. Moving somewhere unspoiled simply invites a repitition of that experience of seeing the houses begin to sprawl over it. There is no solution, no grace to be found.
