Saturday Quote, 6/28/08

What we are is where we have been. That is all there is, at least from where we can see. They keep trying to convince you that there is some objective reality out there, but you know in your heart how much nonsense that is. It's their way of trying to sell you on the idea that change, being an "inevitable" part of "progress"--being dropped on top of your head by some deus ex machina with a bad sense of timing--can't be fought. You can be choking on it, turning red and beginning to perspire, seeing little things float before your eyes, and they'll dismiss you. In fact, they never even bothered to ask. Look in vain for many studies on the only thing that matters, what it feels like to live in the world you live in. That's so they can take your home, the thing that made you, and shatter it piece by piece.

--Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Place You Love is Gone


I just started reading Pierson's elegant reflection on the experience of losing familiar landscapes, both wild and urban, to the varied movements of economic and historical flux--a near universal cause for mourning and disorientation in today's America. It's a remarkably unsentimental and analytical take on the process (the above quote is atypically sanguine), leavened by personal reminiscence. A review may be in order once I finish it. Figure August, at the rate I'm going.