Things may not be too far away but things are very, very remote. Two really good books about France say, first, it
wasn't completely mapped until the 20th c, an amazing fact with wide reverb, and that there were little towns and hamlets to which there was not even a path until the middle of the 20th c.
Don't know if this is true of other parts of Europe.
Robb ledes
this book with the most amazing anecdote about what one tiny remote hamlet on top of a mountain somewhere in darket France did when Napoleon's surveyer showed up.
This most amazing book recovers a
woman's life from letters found by the author in her French vacation cottage.
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My narc was like that. As is the presidential candidate who is a card-carrying narc. It's not real unless it's on video. All the rest of reality is ghosts flapping their lips in silence. Lack of empathy, symptom numero uno.