- Published on
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caput mortuum I / black grounds / foulness
Everywhere I looked were pivot-points and fulcrums, symmetries and proliferations: the thorax points of a winged world. Sand mimicked water, water mimicked sand, and the air duplicated the textures of both. Hinged cuckoo-calls; razor shells and cockle shells; our own reflections; a profusion of suns; the glide of transparent over solid. When I think back to the outer miles of that walk, I now recall a strong disorder of perception that caused illusions of the spirit as well as of the eye. I recall thought becoming sensational; the substance of landscape so influencing the mind that mind’s own substance was altered.
Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways (Silt), 2012
There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Notebooks, 1869-70
