The Child of the Book

It may not, but may be known, that I work - apparently - as a bookseller. When I'm not pretending to be some sort of gardener...with little aptitude for reality, such as it is known, I live my life, usually, in books. Their spaces, like those of music, or painting or sculpture, give me the chance to wrestle with a world I am too astonished by to compete with..
Today I bought this book, 'Stones of a Century', by Michael Sharland, published in Hobart by Oldham, Beddome and Meredith Pty Ltd, 1952. An account of Tasmanian architecture and the landscape that engendered it. I am already living there... 

I've run away from the walls of the world, so determined they are. These walls around us, we who are supposed to be advanced, who do not even know our fingertips. We who supposedly control the world, know nothing. We are dumber than savages. We are savagery itself, insisting on our sovereignty, yet blind to all the world around us...

Could it be that the world will go backwards, and find there in its going backwards, its way forwards, or will it insist on its going forwards, and there find its true backwardness?

Such heroes, we, the human race are. Yet we destroy everything in our way. The past is nothing to us, being as it is, another commodity, ready to be spurned. We spurn ourselves, and belittle all that is not commodifiable. If monetary value is the standard by which we judge true value, we have lost our humanity.