‘When we stand in a flat landscape, we find ourselves in a kind of contradiction. Everything there is to see lies freely open to us. And yet there seems to be nothing to see. We don’t know how to organise this space in our minds.’ (p13)
‘A flat landscape stretches out blandly. It says nothing and it hides nothing. It takes everything that’s happened on it and to it and smooths it all out till there’s nothing to see. Nothing to love, either, none of the rises and falls which signify feeling and life.’ (p.201)
‘The fens are marked, and made distinctive, by their damage. Drainage brought flat, arable, farmland. It also stripped locals of a way of life, and massacred biodiversity. The landscape demands a strange double vision: rich with fertility and a symbol of death; smooth and perfect, and yet a place where something went very wrong.’ (p.209)
A Flat Place, Noreen Masud 2023