A Wakefulness as Quiet as a Sleep

Toward a Humane Philosophy of Place

I’ve been thinking a lot about the philosophy of place recently and have been trying to reconcile those thoughts with concomitant thoughts about vocational purpose, the spatial layout of a building project, and a little dash of ennui I’ve experienced in recent days. Thus, be warned this essay is as personal as it is fragmented, disjointed, and discursive. It’s not a tabloid, “tell-all memoir” kind of personal essay. Rather, it’s more like one of Montaigne’s personal reflections. 

In any case, I have struggled to organize my thoughts on the matter into something that resembles cogency. Therefore, what follows will be something akin to an archive box discovered in an attic, one that a journalist might rummage through if he were writing a biography about someone he only knew vaguely by piecing together a smattering of love letters, legal documents, and old receipts.

Nevertheless, I present these thoughts to you with the best possible organization I can manage at the present. And, I’ll start by contrasting the philosophy of place in Wendell Berry’s rather satisfying novel, A Place on Earth with Cormac McCarthy’s alternatively compelling novel, No Country for Old Men.

Painting by Harlan Hubbard

Berry concludes his novel with a scene in which the protagonist, Mat Feltner, rests by the river reflecting on the land and his place in the long history of people who have occupied and farmed that space. The narrator explains that Mat “feels the great restfulness of that place, its casual perfect order.” The closing line of the novel reveals the heart of Berry’s project when the narrator assures the reader that Mat “has come into a wakefulness as quiet as a sleep.”