TUES DEC 17 2024
Notes on: Carter, Paul. The Lie of the Land. Routledge, 1996.
Playlist: Casual, Chappell Roan.
I’ve started researching for fun I suppose. I felt like writing, just not poetry or music. So, I resolved to read, I guess? Googled some things and found this old book I have never heard of. Like it so far. Hope you aren’t here for an actual review of it. But here are the highlights from the five pages I had time to read:
“We may say, ʻBut we walk on the ground,’ yet we should beware of an ambiguity. For we walk on the ground as we drive on the road; that is, we move over and above the ground. Many layers come between us and the granular earth- an earth which in any case has already been displaced.” (Carter, 2)
“Let the ground rise up to resist us, let it prove porous, spongy, rough, irregular—let it assert its native title, its right to maintain its traditional surfaces—and instantly our engineering instinct is to wipe it out; lay our foundations on rationally-apprehensible level ground.” (Carter, 2)
“To avoid compacting the ground, rendering it another stable point of departure, we need to tread it lightly, circumspectly. The approach must be poetic rather than philosophical. For the restoration of the ground does not mean treading it down more firmly or replacing it; it means releasing it for movement—the same way that metre or speech pattern releases language for movement.” (Carter, 5)
“It is the irriguous uncertainties of the ground that introduce us to the adventure of taking calculating steps, of engaging with in-between spaces; and this adventure translates itself into stress and breath patterns. So that—to walk in the other direction, to turn this argument almost on its head—the achievement of a world society capable of living on and with the earth depends not simply on the evolution of democratic polities but on the achievement of an environmentally-grounded poetics.” (Carter, 5)
So far, I am interested in the connections between the body and the land; and there is a suggestion that work is also a recurring theme in here too [not quoted]. Obviously interested here. So scholarly to read about work instead of getting out and doing it, yeah? The tough thing is this book isn’t in print anymore so I gotta read it on the Internet Archive. Whatevs, could be worse. I could actually have to leave my house to do something.
