A Book of Migrations

This is a very nice book I am reading full of reflections on landscape, identity, migration, belonging and exile. It intertwines these musings in amongst accounts of Solnit's journey along the west coast of Ireland, in a narrative that is almost as winding and unhurried as the country tracks that this landscape itself contains. Strangely, although I was aware that Solnit is a good writer, this is one of those books that has been sat on a shelf for ages, ever since I picked it up cheap at a festival a two or three years ago. I'm glad I finally delved in. What follows, for example, is one intriguing reflection on home and attachment that she offers whilst discussing the rather ordinary and faceless suburb in which she grew up and the wild and beautiful Californian landscape that surrounded it:

Thinking about 'things'

Photo by Flickr user neil-san and made available under Creative Commons

Christmas day is almost upon us and the more sceptical part of me is brooding upon the vast mountains of plastic and electronics that will be awaiting many children throughout the land on Friday morning. I confess, I was one of those children who awoke to a rather large sack stuffed full of toys, most of which spent the remainder of their lives in the drawer under the bed, emerging into the light perhaps once a year. Now, it is not the purpose or aim of this blog to rant about and bemoan the age of rampant consumerism but rather to contribute, in some small way, to the wider debate that is taking place about ways we can re-envision and re-articulate our relationship to the Earth, and in particular to the places upon that Earth.

Why I am blogging

Photo by Flickr user Pengster

There is a an outstanding moment in Proust's In Search of Lost Time where Marcel describes in detail the morning on which he opens the daily newspaper (I think it is Le Figaro) to find that his first article has, at long last, been published. I do not have the book to hand, so I cannot quote it directly. There subsequently follows one of Marcel's characteristically lengthy ruminations, in which he compares the arrival of this morning newspaper to the arrival of fresh bread, still warm from the press. He also describes the way in which, somewhat anxiously, he reads and re-reads the article numerous times, each time through the eyes of a different imagined observer. How favourably, or not, would he be judged by each of these scrutinising eyes? Hasn't every writer felt those piercing eyes?