I live, Eustace said, in nature, where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is its passage around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular, coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and I build my fire in a circle, and when my loved ones visit me, we sit in a circle and talk. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this. The ancient people understood this. People say that I do not live in the real world, but it is modern Americans who live in a fake world, because they have stepped outside the natural circle of life.
Do people live in circles today? No. They live in boxes. They wake up every morning in the box of their bedroom because a box next to them started making noises to tell them it was time to get up. They eat their breakfast out of a box and then they throw that box away into another box. Then they leave the box where they live and get into a box with wheels and drive to work, which is just another big box broken up into lots of little cubicle boxes where a bunch of people spend their days sitting and staring at the computer boxes in front of them. When the day is over, everyone gets into the box with wheels again goes home to their house boxes and spends the evening staring at the television boxes for entertainment. They get their music from a box; they live their lives in a box! Does this sound like anybody you know?
Read more about Eustace Conway at his nature preserve Turtle Island.
- Taken from the book The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert, ppgs. 18-19.
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