All solid things are made less solid by motion – Mary Webb

By Alan Briskin

The words of English writer Mary Webb (1881–1927) reveal her remarkable attentiveness to landscape, depth, and emotional interiority. Diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 20, Webb discovered that immersion in nature played a powerful role in her recovery.

“The waves wash and break upon the flowery hedges

and the remote horizon, and seem ready to submerge everything

in their foamless flood.

All solid things are made less solid by motion –

so grass looks liquid, trees have an aerial magic

when the wind is in them.

Long before the language of fields, systems, or quantum physics was available, she offers a poetic glimpse into a field’s fluidity.

When she writes that “all solid things are made less solid by motion,” she points to a core insight of field perspectives: nothing exists in isolation or stasis.

What appears solid—grass, trees, hedges, even horizons—is continuously shaped by movement, relationship, and influence.

Motion is not something added to matter; it is what reveals matter as relational, responsive, and alive.

This is the deeper invitation of Space Is Not Empty: to live with less fear and more courage—contributing to social fields that are less toxic and more life-giving.

Follow our work at www.spaceisnotempty.net, and on LinkedIn, Facebook, BlueSky, and Instagram.

What softens when you sense yourself inside a field - moving with it rather than standing apart?

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