You Are What You Eat

Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when a family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the woods—they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air and later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardized international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, and Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.

(C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, 22 Jun 1930)

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I hasten to add two points.

First, this works both ways. What if one's goal is not to be tied to the earth or a spirit of a place, but to go Beyond? (Not "the strength of the hills," rather "the light of the heavens?") In such a circumstance, I imagine being untethered is an asset. (And this is perhaps why civilizations which begin in subsistence agriculture end in foreign trade—the souls that compose that civilization are getting ready to move beyond it.)

Second, if this is the case for the body, how much more the case is it for the spirit? Is it really worth watching that Hollywood movie—not merely international fare, but international fare of the lowest sort, "junk food"—or should you feed your spirit something healthier, from the place you wish to attune to?