I’ve been thinking about the Shenandoah Valley. The first time I drove through it I was struck by such a sense of coming home. The Bralley’s are multigenerations there, but I had never been. And even as a budding scientists, I knew that memory cannot be inherited. Still, I was amazed by how I felt. My eyes loved the lines and soft contours. Such a softness. It invited me to stop even as the song, “Country Roads” started in my head and wouldn’t stop.
This is not the “Colorado Rocky Mountain High” of which John Denver also sang. It is the antipode. One is crystal electricity, the other a warm cellular salinity.
Geography gets into our bodies and from there into our souls, and from there onto our tongues. Maharishi first pointed this out to me. He said that geographical conditions affect consciousness to the extent that people have to speak a bit differently in different regions so that the message can get through.
New Orleans, will lull you right to sleep as it sucks the tension out of every tendon. And they have this draw and roll there and they can spin a story out slowly, easily so that you almost don’t have to really pay attention. It’s more like lying there as Eudora Welty takes a finger and slowly twists the hair upon your head into long, loose, draping curls.
But in the Birtish Isles, it’s all, “I say!” “Bravo!” “Hip, Hip!” I suppose it's all that air sweeping down from the North Sea. Things have a crispness and an edge.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment