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9 May 2019 16:53It occurs to me that I might be a touch agoraphobic.
I've never actually spent much time in wide open spaces, having grown up on an island. I've had a longstanding sense of panic about the immensity of the sea, which I've characterised as Stellar energy - the awe/terror of the indifferent universe.
Mountains are also Stellar. They're nature at its most un-man, and they're huge, and people regularly choose to voluntarily die on them. When I was first around mountains, I dreamed about them for months afterwards. They were uncanny. Sublime.
But today I was on a country walk - the first of many, I hope - and the big flat fields rolling away around me, and the hugeness of the sky gave me the shakes and I immediately tranced out.
Which I guess is a handy skill to have if this kind of stellar induced ecstasy state is central to what you do, and another indicator of - this might be a tradition which cant be effectively shared, if it relies so heavily on a particular thing which comes naturally to me.
(Presumably the things I don't really "get" about other paths and faiths are also things which work for their originators, and adherents since)
But also I think I might just be agoraphobic. I always assumed it was the sea specifically, and the sea is pretty scary, but walking amidst the vast empty fields I got this very familiar "oh god I can't see the land" sensation, which is silly because the land was e v e r y w h e r e, ready to swallow me whole.
I've never actually spent much time in wide open spaces, having grown up on an island. I've had a longstanding sense of panic about the immensity of the sea, which I've characterised as Stellar energy - the awe/terror of the indifferent universe.
Mountains are also Stellar. They're nature at its most un-man, and they're huge, and people regularly choose to voluntarily die on them. When I was first around mountains, I dreamed about them for months afterwards. They were uncanny. Sublime.
But today I was on a country walk - the first of many, I hope - and the big flat fields rolling away around me, and the hugeness of the sky gave me the shakes and I immediately tranced out.
Which I guess is a handy skill to have if this kind of stellar induced ecstasy state is central to what you do, and another indicator of - this might be a tradition which cant be effectively shared, if it relies so heavily on a particular thing which comes naturally to me.
(Presumably the things I don't really "get" about other paths and faiths are also things which work for their originators, and adherents since)
But also I think I might just be agoraphobic. I always assumed it was the sea specifically, and the sea is pretty scary, but walking amidst the vast empty fields I got this very familiar "oh god I can't see the land" sensation, which is silly because the land was e v e r y w h e r e, ready to swallow me whole.
