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Catriona's avatar

I have in the past worked and lived at mine camps. The accommodation and offices and facilities were always miserable, uncomfortable, ugly, temporary structures that seemed to be designed to impress upon the workers that they did not deserve to treated like humans who have the sort of sensual and aesthetic needs that are discussed in _A Pattern Language_. These workplaces are a world away from the bland, hygienic, styled interiors of inner city offices.

But then you have the sublimity of the underground. To be a kilometre underground in the steamy heat listening to the rocks cracking, seeing the ore minerals sparkling in the light of your head lamp, is something I miss profoundly. Seeing the crystals growing in cavities, the strange fungi, the lights in the distance from machines. The deep, still silence (when there aren't machines nearby!), the scent of the air, the way time moves differently, these are all akin to the experience of a cathedral. But for me there is also a sense of enclosure and security and I yearn to curl up and sleep in there forever. It is a comfortable place, for all its sublimity.

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Mary C. Tillotson's avatar

The comfort of home is "afflicting" in its own way. When we have an opportunity to step away from ugliness and constantly flashing screens into a place where money isn't exchanged and is an expression of a person and/or family, it's...different from our normal experience, and on some level we have to grapple with that, even if we don't realize we're doing so.

Also, part of why sublime beauty is sublime is because we are small/unworthy. Maybe in the next life we will have the capacity to experience sublimity and comfort simultaneously, whereas here we can only experience them separately (which is why we need both cathedrals and throw pillows, but not in the same place).

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