“Regular
maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and
are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make
ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our
private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat
behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was
heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across
the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private
tapestry of our lives.”
-
Alexander
McCall Smith, Love Over Scotland
“A place
belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively,
wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he
remakes it in his own image.”
-
Joan
Didion
And so this comes to an end. This all started with
a little house across the street. A house that, in the course of one decision,
became empty-eyed and lonely, became derelict and of the past. This bantam
house that I had thought would always be there, because it always had. It was a
part of the tapestry, the fabric, of my place.
When it became evident that the house was to be
torn down, that the weave of the tapestry was to be utterly altered, it made me
stop to ponder what ‘place’ is. How place can be ephemeral or enduring. How
place can be eternal or impermanent, perpetual or flitting. So, I opened my
eyes, became present in my ‘place’. I found things I loved, things I didn’t.
I
spoke of trains, and rain, and trails, and rivers, cobwebs, clotheslines, and
dogs. I spoke of bad decisions, bad vibes, and ghosts of the past. Of leaves,
and storms, local heroes, and fog. I
mulled the sadness of lost streams, and the high meditative quality of cups of
clouds. These are all of my ‘place’, of my ‘sense of place’.
I have come to an end of writing about this place, of
this moment, at this time, which of course had to happen at some point. I will,
I suppose, write of other things, other places, other sorts of places, in
other places. Place actually never really ends – the stories of place never
really end. Because, as the writer Amy Tan has said: “That
is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces
of your life are found, put together with glue of memory and reason, there are
more pieces to be found.”
More
pieces, and more places, more bits of my life and shards of my experiences.
Someday, someplace.
