Pie is filling

From Gretel Ehrlich’s masterful Solace of Open Spaces

From the clayey soil of northern Wyoming is mined bentonite, which is used as a filler in candy, gum, and lipstick. We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough. We have a cultural tendency toward denial, but, beging affluent, we strangle ourselves with what we can buy. We have only to look at the houses we build to see how we build against space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill ups space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there.