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what is it about places?

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I'm in Budapest, about to go home after a week long meeting here. My dad and his family left Hungary in 1956, and I took a detour to see the small city where he was born and lived as a child, see his house, the places where he played, the synagogue where my grandparents were married, etc. My dad hasn't been back there since he left.

Strange how moving it is to stand in a place like that, where my family's roots disappeared 53 years ago to make a whole new life in a new land.

Even though we're better at 'celebrating' differences in Western society now, there is still something very homogenizing about being an American. It helped me understand myself better to be in a place like that, and it's certainly been fun to reminisce with my dad about his memories (still very much a child's memories).

@Aedes,

@VideCorSpoon,

A recent trend in Anthropology is place. Not only trying to recover lost place names but documenting the power of place as it relates to heritage and identity personal/and cummunal. For an interesting ethnogrpahic study of place and people maybe read Wisdom Sit in Places by Keith Basso.

Cheers,
Russ

@Aedes,

I suppose that, just like colors, places have an extreme influence in the way we fell. I have noticed that sometimes dark or poorly ilumined places have a negative effect in my humor, wich is quickly dispelled then I turn on the lights or move elsewhere. Paradoxially, sometimes I fell confortable in dark places instead. I suppose its me shifting from "active and wanting to do things" to "wanting to sleep" Smile

@Aedes,

My ancestors left Britain for Africa well over a century ago. I visited Britain for the first time at about age 31. The castle I stayed in was older than the country I was born in, and it just struck me: I couldn't take a shower without banging my elbows and my head. I had to duck to walk through the doors. I saw the spot where my great^ grand-uncle allegedy chopped off his wife's head.

what is it about places?
BLOODY GHOSTS!

@Aedes,

I think it's more likely the ghosts than the lighting. Think about all the pilgrimages people make to the 'ground zeros' of the world, be it Hiroshima or Manhattan, however 'unsuperlative' they look now.

@Aedes,

manored;65840 wrote:

I suppose that, just like colors, places have an extreme influence in the way we fell. I have noticed that sometimes dark or poorly ilumined places have a negative effect in my humor, wich is quickly dispelled then I turn on the lights or move elsewhere. Paradoxially, sometimes I fell confortable in dark places instead. I suppose its me shifting from "active and wanting to do things" to "wanting to sleep"

Aesthetics, I think, has a great influence on our emotional reactions to a setting, and to people as well. Cinema is a great example of manipulating these human responses - using lighting, color, and music to convey meaning.

Aedes;66080 wrote:

I think it's more likely the ghosts than the lighting. Think about all the pilgrimages people make to the 'ground zeros' of the world, be it Hiroshima or Manhattan, however 'unsuperlative' they look now.

I'm not Jewish and I do not know of any relations who were persecuted at a concentration camp, but visiting Dachau was difficult to absorb. White rocks under your feet and you walk between empty bunk houses. You see your peers walk around the site in groups laughing and joking and you can't imagine how. You watch your Jewish friend as she shakes visibly and ultimately decides not to step into the crematorium.

If you had never read the figures and seen the ghastly black and whites you would never believe that little plot of land could have been the site of so much horror. Trees are in bloom. Tourists take snapshots.

Ghosts live in the memory, and if we recognize them they have a great deal to teach us. I just hate recognizing them sometimes.

I was going to write something light hearted about places and such, but you went and mentioned ghosts and ground zeros. Those two hours at Dachau are not two hours I look forward to reliving, but I would go again, and every chance I have. And any such place. To know even just a little of a location's history helps you to have some kind of visceral connection with the people who suffered there should you decide to go. It's not easy, but it's healthy. Listen to the dead.

@Aedes,

Aedes;66080 wrote:

I think it's more likely the ghosts than the lighting. Think about all the pilgrimages people make to the 'ground zeros' of the world, be it Hiroshima or Manhattan, however 'unsuperlative' they look now.

Places contain the history of their people, or rather places contain cultural narratives, narratives that provide a sense of home, or nostalgia by proxy. People have a tendency towards romance; the grass was greener on the other side of the present's hill. Those places hold the story of what happened to my people that caused my life to be the way it is and since we cannot physically experience those people we make due with place. Many cultures and traditional peoples see place as containing the spiritual power of their people, and land is not just property but an integral feature of what it is to be (that people).

@GoshisDead,

I've experienced this as well.

Although I can't say for sure, my resolution was that such experiences were a result of my conscious mind's awareness of the connection to the past, my lineage or other significance. It's a good feeling indeed... no matter how self-constructed it might be.

Good topic

@Aedes,

There is a place I know of. Its about a hundred or so miles west of Phoenix. Gila Bend Arizona. Its a fine place. there is a little motel there that has a swimming pool with just a little stagnant water at the bottom of it. I think there is a jack in the box restaurant there too. That is where my cousin took his wife on their honeymoon. Nice place.

@Aedes,

Elmud, it's a good point -- these places don't need to be of enormous significance, they can be obscure little places that speak to us. The house I lived in from the age of 3 through adulthood, and where my parents moved from finally when I was around 27, is just a few miles from where they live now. I drove there a couple years ago, and the new occupants cut down a huge apple tree in the front yard and put some cheap-ass shed there. It somehow wounded me. That tree was part of the family. It made little crab apples and my brother and I would play baseball with them -- it was a home run if we either hit the apple over the hedges in the back yard, or if the apple exploded. There is this flat-topped rock in the front yard. When I was a little kid I went there with a toy camera and pretended it was a camera store. My pet gerbils are buried in front of it in old cigar boxes. There is emotion in this stuff -- it's like an extension of me.

@Aedes,

Aedes;69707 wrote:

Elmud, it's a good point -- these places don't need to be of enormous significance, they can be obscure little places that speak to us. The house I lived in from the age of 3 through adulthood, and where my parents moved from finally when I was around 27, is just a few miles from where they live now. I drove there a couple years ago, and the new occupants cut down a huge apple tree in the front yard and put some cheap-ass shed there. It somehow wounded me. That tree was part of the family. It made little crab apples and my brother and I would play baseball with them -- it was a home run if we either hit the apple over the hedges in the back yard, or if the apple exploded. There is this flat-topped rock in the front yard. When I was a little kid I went there with a toy camera and pretended it was a camera store. My pet gerbils are buried in front of it in old cigar boxes. There is emotion in this stuff -- it's like an extension of me.

Sometimes, its hard to go back to where you have been. Things change so much. Seems so much smaller to me. Deserted. Sterile. So many things in your memory about those places. When you return many years later, you face a stark reality that those times are gone forever.

@Aedes,

Whoa, not liking the depression air around here. Cheer up Smile

But yeah, nostalgia can lead to a lot of deception, especially then you cant find the things as they were then you left then. If you can, then you realize they werent as great as its impressed in your memory and realize you are a viction of nostalgia. If you cant, nostalgia just keeps getting worse and more consuming.

By the way, what about virtual places? I often fell that same way about games I havent played for a long time, especially those I havent played since child-hood. And beating those child-hood ones (I hardly ever beat a game at child-hood) fells like achieving a long-waited victory Smile

@manored,

manored;69937 wrote:

Whoa, not liking the depression air around here. Cheer up

But yeah, nostalgia can lead to a lot of deception, especially then you cant find the things as they were then you left then. If you can, then you realize they werent as great as its impressed in your memory and realize you are a viction of nostalgia. If you cant, nostalgia just keeps getting worse and more consuming.

By the way, what about virtual places? I often fell that same way about games I havent played for a long time, especially those I havent played since child-hood. And beating those child-hood ones (I hardly ever beat a game at child-hood) fells like achieving a long-waited victory

<remembers playing with clothes pins and bricks. Clothes pins were people and the bricks were cars.

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