Horror immobolizes us because it is made of contradictory feelings: fear and seduction, repulsion and attraction. Horror is a fascination...Horror is immobility, the great yawn of empty space, the womb and the hole in the earth, the universal Mother and the great garbage heap...With horror we cannot have recourse to flight or combat, there remains only Adoration or Exorcism.
But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn__ have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It__ more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
A Philosophy of Walking
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But walking causes absorption. Walking interminably, taking in through your pores the height of the mountains when you are confronting them at length, breathing in the shape of the hills for hours at a time during a slow descent. The body becomes steeped in the earth it treads. And thus, gradually, it stops being in the landscape: it becomes the landscape. That doesn__ have to mean dissolution, as if the walker were fading away to become a mere inflection, a footnote. It__ more a flashing moment: sudden flame, time catching fire. And here, the feeling of eternity is all at once that vibration between presences. Eternity, here, in a spark.
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And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door- Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;- This it is, and nothing more.
The Earth was not dead. She had been sick, yes, weakened by an infestation. Now she was ridding herself of it. For those who remained alive the choice was a simple one, whether they realised it yet or not: Work with the land-- respect it and give back to it-- or die.
Love is an exorcism of angels.
If on thoughts of death we are fed,Thus, a coffin, became my bed.
They walked through the rainy dark like gaunt ghosts, and Garraty didn't like to look at them. They were the walking dead.