https://www.eth.uni-heidelberg.de/md/eth/institut/vortrag_ingold.pdf
The monks of Medieval Europe would often compare the meditative practice of reading with the process of wayfaring through the landscape. The lines inscribed by hand on the parchment were likened to paths traced by foot on the ground. Both the page and ground are textured surfaces. In this paper I begin by exploring the surface properties of the ground, showing how it does not so much separate what is above (the sky) from what is below (the earth) as set up a zone in which sky and earth commingle. Thus the ground covers the earth but does not cover it up. Following the Victorian writer and art critic John Ruskin, I compare the ground to an earth-veil. I then show that the page of writing has equivalent properties: its texture is the text; its surface a veil. Taking the comparison one stage further, I suggest that the page, like the ground, is subject to the atmospheric influence of weather. This allows us to view writing itself as a process of weathering, and the hand of the writer as an agent of the atmosphere.
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