Finding a sense of place on solid ground in porous world
You’ve lost phone reception while hiking deep in the woods. No tracking devices. Now what?
Place. It’s one of those givens we take for granted, hidden from view. That is, until we are disoriented, without a compass. Getting lost, however, this crack in our mapped-out day can alert us to the essentials, in this case having a “sense of place,” beyond just space.
Yet, in squeezing together time and space through our digital stratosphere, we’ve rubbed out the meaning of place. We can access seemingly anywhere, anytime, so that what we think of as “place” is merely site-specific, jumping off spaces in a liquid world with no solid ground. As we move from site to site, we are addictively elsewhere. We surrender our moorings for the counterfeit freedom of mobility, increasingly nomadic in a world where all that lures us, crafted with planned obsolescence, is disposable. Unsurpassed in connectivity, we are lonelier than ever.
Isn’t this also the Machiavellian rule-of-thumb for exploitation? One way to dominate others is to displace them, to erase their “sense of place.”
Under the spell of the hegemony of ever-accelerating time — the faster the better, or what philosopher Edward Casey labels “dromocentrism” — the purging of place brings about a f lattening. It’s evident throughout our cityscapes and landscapes with their dull sameness, commercial carpeting, and homogenization of the “local” and all its particularity. What we call “progress” is a monotonous annulment of heritage and displacement of place.
What do I mean here by “place”? Place is directly lived firsthand so that no place is the
same. It’s where we find character. Its footprints hold a timeless quality, like our favorite café, bookstore, pub, or village. Atchison, Kan., changes for visitors once they know it is Amelia Earhart’s birthplace.
Place does not pre-exist. It unfolds in process, when we assign meaningfulness to space. An empty room — space — transforms into my office place, with desk, music, art and books that find me. Likewise, barren houses — spaces — become our homes where we live out our intimate topographies. Home, that most special place, is about dwelling, people, happenings, scents, and meals. It’s where we sleep, where we dream. Home is our rosary of untold stories, memories within memories.
Forests, fields, lakes and sea can also be home, where we hear and see the rhythm of their sublime seasons. In and through them, we’ve found our place.
Now imagine the plight of our elders
who’ve weathered their own seasons of Depression, hunger, ravaging wars and other calamities. They remind us of what having a “sense of place” means. Their photos are tangible, crusty and real. Their journey, glued to where they lived, loved and labored, links their history with their geography. They have earned their place in the world. Yet far too many endure a quiet trauma, feeling disoriented and displaced. Hear their pleas: “Everything is happening so fast.”
These elders, our parents, and other pioneers teach us one more important lesson. Finding place, solid ground in our porous and frenetic world, is not just about the What, but, as The New Atlantis’ executive director, Ari N. Schulman, reminds us in “GPS and the End of the Road,” the How. Why is it that the more we look, the less we see? Because we are so bottled up in reaching the What we overlook How we go about it. How we paint our canvas is our artwork.
Finding our place makes demands of us. We need to learn how to find our way, which often comes from getting lost.