"There is a duality to place. There is the place which existed before you and will continue after you have gone...Both of them prove to me there is the place that happened and the place that happens to you. That there are moments in work, in perception, in experience when it's hard to distangle them from each other. And that, at such times, the inward adventure can become so emeshed with the outward continuum that we live, not in one of the other, but at the intersection"
(Boland 154-155).
Boland writes of a duality between places that expresses the difference between the actual, external place or environment, and the place as a means of transformation, or the way a place can have an effect on you. This, of course, reminds me of my Pathway class "Betwixt and Between." Boland believes that a person actually exists at the point of intersection between the outward and inward forms of place. Obviously, this is a liminal passage in her autobiography and a particularly deep and multi-faceted point. This point also relates to the title of her text Object Lessons, which tells the reader that the writer has learned something abstract from something tangible and concrete. The "objects" can literally be external environments that are observed and taken in with the senses, and the "lessons" refer to the inward adventures, or the effects a place can have on an individual.
Kazin expresses a different type of duality in terms of place in his autobiograhy A Walker in the City.
"The old drugstore on our corner has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store; the old candy store has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store...It looks as if our old life has been turned out into the street, suddenly reminds me of the nude shamed look furniture on the street always had those terrible first winters of the depression..."
(Kazin 78).
Here, there is a place that Kazin remembers living in and the place that exists now as he observes it many years later. His memory passes judgment on the place, which still has the ability to bring him back to how he felt during the days of the depression. This type of duality exists for any person who has moved away from a place and chosen to return to that place for a visit one day. It's always intriguing to see how much a place can change over the course of the years population-wise, technologically, visually, etc., etc. I remember Meridian as a farm town with a population of about 5,000 people. There were literally no chain restaurants in the town, one elementary school, and a lot of open space with multitudes of trees. Now, Meridian is a prosperous industrial center in Idaho and thriving suburb of Boise. It's nothing like how I remember. Yet, there is still an old gas station near my house that has not changed in the least. Its branding is still identical to how it was ten years ago and it still sells the same delicious frozen yogurt. That is the string that I hold on to to relive the past when I visit Meridian, similar to how the furniture on the streets reminds Kazin of his childhood and adolescence during the Depression.
(Boland 154-155).
Boland writes of a duality between places that expresses the difference between the actual, external place or environment, and the place as a means of transformation, or the way a place can have an effect on you. This, of course, reminds me of my Pathway class "Betwixt and Between." Boland believes that a person actually exists at the point of intersection between the outward and inward forms of place. Obviously, this is a liminal passage in her autobiography and a particularly deep and multi-faceted point. This point also relates to the title of her text Object Lessons, which tells the reader that the writer has learned something abstract from something tangible and concrete. The "objects" can literally be external environments that are observed and taken in with the senses, and the "lessons" refer to the inward adventures, or the effects a place can have on an individual.
Kazin expresses a different type of duality in terms of place in his autobiograhy A Walker in the City.
"The old drugstore on our corner has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store; the old candy store has been replaced by a second-hand furniture store...It looks as if our old life has been turned out into the street, suddenly reminds me of the nude shamed look furniture on the street always had those terrible first winters of the depression..."
(Kazin 78).
Here, there is a place that Kazin remembers living in and the place that exists now as he observes it many years later. His memory passes judgment on the place, which still has the ability to bring him back to how he felt during the days of the depression. This type of duality exists for any person who has moved away from a place and chosen to return to that place for a visit one day. It's always intriguing to see how much a place can change over the course of the years population-wise, technologically, visually, etc., etc. I remember Meridian as a farm town with a population of about 5,000 people. There were literally no chain restaurants in the town, one elementary school, and a lot of open space with multitudes of trees. Now, Meridian is a prosperous industrial center in Idaho and thriving suburb of Boise. It's nothing like how I remember. Yet, there is still an old gas station near my house that has not changed in the least. Its branding is still identical to how it was ten years ago and it still sells the same delicious frozen yogurt. That is the string that I hold on to to relive the past when I visit Meridian, similar to how the furniture on the streets reminds Kazin of his childhood and adolescence during the Depression.
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