This was a revisit of the nature themes. A previous essay (I haven’t posted it) badly needed to be split into three pieces, and re-written. This was the suggestion from my writing group, and then they were all surprised when I actually did it for my writing journal. Showed them. ;)

Landscape is what surrounds you. Take a map of your home and your town and your city, lay it flat, and let it grow into three dimensions. Let the trees of the forest surround and swallow you, so they become your landscape. Let the two-dimensional grid spring into the three dimensions that you see each and every day.

When I think of a landscape that is home, what immediately springs to mind is a subway tunnel or a complicated overpass in downtown Detroit. I think of computer labs and server rooms. I think of basements of skyscrapers. I think of mega-highways and bundles of fiber-optic cable running beneath the ground. When I think of the wild, I think of neon- and blacklite-filled dance clubs with bass so loud that your sternum vibrates. When I think of risk, I think of public speaking in boardrooms or convention halls. When I think of being natural, I think of my home and my wife.

None of my instinctive landscapes involve the outdoors or nature.