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E-book Down to Earth : A Memoir
The haunts of my youth have vanished, in two senses — they rest under layers of mental debris, accumulated along life’s way, and under the lava that flowed from the flanks of Mount Helgafell, “Holy Mountain,” in Iceland’s Westman Islands in 1973. These facts evoke in me both pure curiosity and a poignant sense of loss. Where is my home? As have so many others throughout history, I long for a world that is no more, for a place of be-longing that can never be regained. Can I have something in common with a lava field? Can I identify with a mountain, or connect with a contemporary event in the geological history of the Earth, the way other people identify with their generation, genetic fingerprint, or zodiac sign? In the terms of the Christian burial ceremony, what is this earth, these ashes and dust, from which we come and to which we return?For most people, the place where they live is significant; it defines and shapes them. Birth certificates, passports, and offi-cial reports require an address, a village, a country. But place, as a word, rings rather flat, referring to geographical coordinates, to two-dimensional space. Habitat implies something deeper: a three-dimensional home supplying roots and groundedness, an intrinsic bond between a person and the earth.
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