Place as Self

Abstract

The places in our lives are rarely fixed, even relatively to us, like the polestar. Places are more often like comets, or rivers. They have elliptical orbits. They move, and their channels move over time as well. Sometimes they flood, and sometimes they dry up altogether. The change may happen quickly—an earthquake—or it may happen gradually, as with mountains, whose aging is best appreciated by studying series, erathem, and eonothem—the geologic strata of epochs, eras, and eons. Ordinarily, however, we think that we can point to any particular place, as if locating it in space roots it in reality. There it is, we say. That mountain. Or that city, factory, graveyard. But time passes, and the next time we look, we see that a wildfire roared over the mountain one fine spring day when the wind was stretching its limbs uphill, and now the mountain is an unrecognizable old man. A six-lane superhighway runs through a neighborhood we once knew and loved. The house band at the local tavern packed up and left, even the double bass player, the tall, big-boned cat with the gray stubbled beard who used to bring his bass fiddle in a bag with him on the bus, standing near the door with his arm around his instrument like a lover. The factory closed. The cemetery is choked with weeds.