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| Letters of the Institute for domestic Tranquility |
Washington • February 1992 |
Volume 7 • Number 2 |
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this must be the place
...These are only hints and guesses
Hints followed by guesses...
the hint half guessed, the gift half understood...
T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, p. 44
What is place?
Is it...
the market place...
a placebo...
place names...
placemats...
a placekick...
perfect placement...
a placer miner...
Placentia Bay...
Or is it...
in the first place...
1 Xerox Place...
Christaller's central place concept...
I placed 112th...
save a place for me...
a place to live...
the old Adam's place (just west of town)...
forgotten places...
Or...
replaced...
like Scollay Square...
Boston, Massachusetts...
(Selective Urbicide)
tawdry bars...
drunks in stair cases...
life softening chemicals...
tattoo artists...
strip joints...
a place I had never been before...
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store fronts that held the imagination...
shrieking city air...
out on the streets...
afternoons and midnights...
sellers of love and warmth for
what the market will bear...
the Old Howard Theatre...
street dwellers...
roaches in the bathroom...
me, confronting the human condition...
I'm me and no other...
uncertain...
unclear...
nothing lasts, everything that lives, dies...
alone......
a place—doomed...
But it had a name...
character...
belongingness...
meaning...
(and more) in short...
a
sense
of
place.
Now you try it.
...Edward Hessler...
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© Copyright 1992
Institute for domestic Tranquility
Teach Ecology • Foster Citizenship • Promote Ecological Equity
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