Tim Robinson

“These endless ankle-twisting contradictions underfoot, amorphous, resistant, cutting, dull, become the uncountable futilities heaped upon one’s own shores by the surrounding ocean of indifference. If then one could elevate gloom into metaphysical despair, see the human race as no taller than that most depressing of life-forms, the lichen that stains so many of these bare stones black, one might, paradoxically, march on with a weightier stride that would soon outwalk the linear desert. Instead, the interminable dump of broken bits and pieces one is toiling along stubbornly remains the merely personal accumulation of petty worries, selfish anxieties, broken promises, discarded aspirations and other chips off a life-worn ego, that constitutes the path to one’s own particular version of nowhere.”
― Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimmage

“Theories of flow must consider sinks as well as sources. There are locations - by definition they are not places, though we know too well where they are - that swallow up difference, leaving a desert of toxic sameness, an atmosphere of depleted possibilities of meaning, a dull residue of differences that make no difference. Our civilization produces them; it even needs them. We need them in Connemara - I am no purist in this - but must not allow them to drain away its essences. That should be the principle at the core of arguments around particular cases. And if the web of associations I have spun around these quaint landmarks in Garomna should lap out beyond the vague confines of Connemara to envelop more and more of the world, it might bring with it the suggestion of a way of looking at places as sources of difference; and surely taking note of the particularities of a place is the first step in taking care of it.”
― Tim Robinson, Connemara: A Little Gaelic Kingdom