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SOME THOUGHTS ON PLACE

I was a traveler for many years, started young (perhaps there's a traveler's gene that somehow got very turned on in me), have lived and worked in many places, and would no doubt be traveling still if time's road had not in the nature of things turned me toward having a family, which is travel on another scale altogether. Starting early in my travel time, though, I began to keep a journal (I think travelers come to need their own company perhaps more than stayers ever do), and one of the recurring questions that arose was: what is different, really different, about this place I am now, as compared to my home town, or to where just I came from? Why did I want to leave there and come here? With the variety travel exposes one to, one sees rather quickly that the external things, the cultural, the human adjustments, only comprise a small part of the big nature of a place. The real power of a place is time, and what it has done with the geography, the history, the culture of a place; its traces can be felt everywhere. I could see that dwellers in certain places were in love with places I did not find very appealing, whereas others disdained places I took to be paradise. I learned that much of our place relations are illusions that we bring to bear from whatever source we've gotten them. And when at last I learned to seek right away for the roots of a place, its deepest, truest roots, I found that each place required a change in me, a devotion in a way, an erasure of preconceptions, to be able to see the place as it truly was. That has become for me the value of places: we may change them, but they change us more. And to remain subject to change, and thus the possibility of growth, throughout life-- who could ask for more? Especially a traveler. So it was really quite organic for me to write about place, in this case Pure Land Mountain where I live, beside Lake Biwa in Japan, and to bring to that endeavor what I had learned. I hope it is of some use to others.

Posted on the collective Ecotone blog, where Place Bloggers gather to offer and share their thoughts on the spirit and mystery of place.