“Place is an organized world of meaning.”
-Space
and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Yi-Fu Tuan, Geographer
“I invoke you, poets and devas,
ecstatic spirits and desolate, help me to find the memory place. Give me the coordinates on the map. Help me trace this story”: At the top of the piece this girl is seeking
what Yi-FU Tuan describes as place, defined in large part as “an organized
world of meaning.” Bombarded by
competing memories, she seeks a structure for them, a frame. She summons her poetic and spiritual ancestors
to transform the campsite into a sacred space so that she may locate “the
memory place.” The idea of externalizing
our memories, locating them someplace outside of us in the physical world may
appear fanciful. But I believe it’s safe
to say images – a beautiful sunset, for example, or even a mundane object, like
a coffee mug or set of curtains we shared with our ex, are physical symbols—memory
objects representing and giving voice to our
inner life—that we may choose to keep or dispose of.
“The built environment, like language,
has the power to define and refine sensibility.
It can sharpen and enlarge consciousness.”
-Space
and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Yi-Fu Tuan, Geographer
She builds a tent that is open to the
sky. She exposes herself to the
elements, and she provides herself with a vista to gaze at above.
“In open space one can become
intensely aware of place; and in the solitude of sheltered place the vastness
of space beyond acquires a haunting presence.”
-Space
and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Yi-Fu Tuan, Geographer
In the center of the vast woods she
assembles camp: chair, firewood, blanket, pillows, backpack. This serves as her “home base.” From here she can gaze out at the space
around her, allowing nature and emptiness to act upon her, and possibly transcend her fears.
“A healthy being welcomes constraint
and freedom, the bounded-ness of place and the exposure of space.”
-Space
and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Yi-Fu Tuan, Geographer
She engages in an inner dialogue
between feelings of safety and vulnerability, courage and fearfulness, seeking calm
in an organized narrative yet finding agitation in conflicting memories.
“When space
feels thoroughly familiar to us it has become place.”
-Space
and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Yi-Fu Tuan, Geographer
Something shifts in her and she
relaxes in her forest camp. She makes a
bed for herself and chooses to settle down to sleep, to dream her way into a
new outcome to her story.