i ask myself... What makes a place?
A connection to the natural, a balanced environment of human culture and environmental infrastructure; a space somewhere among the fringes of purely functional industrialism, this transitional region between the natural and the developed landscape; where moments of randomness and the recognizable patterns of urban infrastructure support each other to develop tangible moments of humanism.
Accessibility to the individual moment; where memory and imagination are brought into vivid living experience, stimulated by the surrounding environment, by the play of a sunset as it descends among the shutters of quiet residence just above. A space where the mind can gently contemplate and find happiness in the though of a new form, a spontaneous poetic line or an elegant note that completes the melody heard within.
Perhaps it is the thought, the anticipation that at just the right moment, someone will pass and pause in quiet repose and in a silent and respectful response, nod in validation of a shared emotion, a shared experience, a reverence for living and for the places that bring us closer together. And maybe just as timely one can glimpse at the conversation between the sun and the leaves of a old oak tree whose branches sway just overhead, between the moonlight and the rusty brick of a nearby garden wall, between myself and those who share in knowing this place.
i can only pause and acknowledge that there is a place in time for moments like these; that these moments are vital to my humanism, meaningful to me and in the passing conversations that i seem to frequently have, meaningful to many others.
So perhaps it is the lack of places that burdens me as i wander a somber street in search of the moment. Perhaps it is the choking of the relationship between these moments, human moments and the spaces that surround me, my culture and my community.
As an thinker, as a maker and as a man of imagination; i find places for me nearly everywhere i go. i listen to the story of a breeze as its turns up the dust on a forgotten street, i converse with the sun even when it is obscured by the implosion of city signage, bottom line development and the congesting urban infrastructure of industrial growth.
Place, is a relationship between the human moment, its space and environment. Place is a sharing of experience both individual and social, it is this vitality of connection between man, culture, and environment found in a space.
This is where i exist as i, this is place, this is what i wish to share and to cultivate as my moments are found.
i place i
