Ecotone: Writing About Place: HowAreWeDefinedAndShapedByThePlaceWeLive

The topic for July 1, 2003:

How are we defined and shaped by the place where we live?

The original posts on this topic are located at:

[The Cassandra Pages] "The first twenty-five years of my life were spent in the rural, dairy country of central New York State. For the second twenty-five I’ve lived in Vermont and New Hampshire... I’ve taken on some of the characteristics of my adopted home, but I think I remain, at my core, a product of the place I was born and an alien here – well-adapted and content, but alien all the same..."

[Feathers of Hope (Pica)] "Thinking about this question on the plane from Philadelphia to Sacramento over the weekend threw me into a panic. Why? Because I'm not, I don't think..."

[under the fire star] "The first thing about this place is that it is in the tropics. It is hot here, all year round... The second thing is water: we are always on the border between having just enough and not enough water... To these most elemental facts, add human beings. There are so many of them. Too many for the land or the sea to support, and yet, somehow, they scrape by. I'm like one of the fancy plants which are dying out of our garden. I am expensively watered, fed and temperature-controlled. I am always aware of this..."

[Bowen Island Journal] "Everything about this island invites us to go inward. One cannot help but follow the physical journey with a spiritual one. We retreat into our selves, examine what we see there and find ways to bring it forth into the world. Being an islander does not mean isolation; it means knowing where your edges are and constantly creating connections, following trails and exploring details. You grow aware that the limited landscape in fact draws you deeper in so that it becomes an infinite journey through fractals of detail. The island and the soul become holograms, every part reflecting the whole and encompassing the perfect fullness of its presence. It's impossible to live for long on the surfaces."

[Pax Nortona]:"Rude me thinks of stumping Socrates with the counter-question: 'Define definition.' I don't see the place I live as a definer but more of a limiter. Right now temperatures are in the seventies and it is a little after three in the morning. The climate contributes to my decision to be up at this hour: during the day the sun infiltrates the Spanish tile roof and bakes whatever is inside. The cats sprawl on the floor, barely conscious of where they are. I take benadryl, xanax, and do the siesta thing when our stucco broiler runs on high."

[Fragments from Floyd] "I am pleased we are asking this question of how place shapes us. And answers will come from a better understanding of our dual role as both object and subject in regard to place... learning how to better live in it, and let it live in us. Our ancestor of 200 years ago understood his physical, emotional, spiritual and re-creational needs and attachments to place that we poorly understand, but can reclaim."

[Field Notes] "a tendency to the solitary. It's palpable. In Ireland, they say that it's the job of elders to be weird, to stretch your being out into the furthest reaches of your most particular self, in order to show the young that it's okay to explore the eccentricities of the soul. Well, you see a lot of that here."

[London and the North] "At the weekend I went to a conference called 'Not Just a Change of Address'. It was for people whose parents had survived the holocaust. It was interesting to hear anecdotes of how others live their lives affected by the stories or lack of them about what happened. When I was at art college I made a painting, a self portrait, larger than life size and in black and white. It may have been my first self portrait. I drew myself staring directly into 'the camera' - without any clothes except my running shoes. Ready. Ready to run."

[Other Wind] "...These scenes mark my birth as a pretender, as a person lost in fantasies of her own making. They have settled into the sediment of my mind’s fertile ground. I am tied to the feeling of those woods—those hiding places of branches and slopes, where I could never see very far but had so much to see up close."

[Feathers of Hope (Numenius)] "I travel with the image of the place I grew up in. The house -- built on a slope, with five half-levels descending from the front entrance, stairs opening to a church-like living room resplendent in wood...a canyon but twenty minutes away on foot where I could walk in solitude and wildness for hours and miles. "

[The Coffee Sutras] "the place where I live is, most would say, a suburb. That has not stopped the combined city and county government, however, from classifying my neighborhood as part of the "urban services district." This means that we receive free garbage pickup and that we are on the city's primary water and sewage system. You could say that, from the vantage of local government, I have been defined by my capacity to produce waste."

[Laughing~Knees] "Back in elementary to high school, at St. Mary's International Boy's School, Tokyo, Japan, I was one of the "Others". This meant that those of us who belonged to this unofficial group basically didn't come from one of the significant countries, like America or Britain or Australia, or, to a lesser extent, even though we all lived here, Japan...."

We invite your thoughts on this topic at DiscussShapedByPlace.