Bi-weekly Topic for Nov. 15, 2003
Personal/space
By P.
I'm as territorial as my cousins the chimpanzees, and while I have learned to control the impulse over the years, my first thought upon having my space invaded is to throw sticks and leaves and hoot at the interloper.
I have largely repressed a memory of the time some other kids in my Cub Scout pack threw me bodily out of my own house for being obnoxious at a meeting. I don't recall it clearly, but I have the impression my mother offered no sympathy.
So maybe it's my hermetic psychology or the low frequency of my visitors, but admitting a guest to *my* spaces transforms them.
Just the thought of a visitor brings my sense of my house's inadequacies to a quiver, but it doesn't help that the maintenance and cleaning jobs multiply a bit faster than I can keep up with them. The wallpaper, foolishly buried under off-white paint by the previous owner, now wants to peel. The white woodwork is worn where it was washed and grubby where it hasn't been, and a decade of bumptious laundry baskets has exposed little outcroppings of dark-brown trim everywhere.
I am not alone in this. This is from The Wind in the Willows, in the chapter where Mole and Rat return to Mole's burrow:
Mole's face beamed at the sight of all these objects so dear to him, and he hurried Rat through the door, lit a lamp in the hall, and took one glance round his old home. He saw the dust lying thick on everything, saw the cheerless, deserted look of the long-neglected house, and its narrow, meagre dimensions, its worn and shabby contents--and collapsed again on a hall-chair, his nose to his paws. `O Ratty!' he cried dismally, `why ever did I do it? Why did I bring you to this poor, cold little place, on a night like this, when you might have been at River Bank by this time, toasting your toes before a blazing fire, with all your own nice things about you!'
The strangest thing is to actually have someone visiting, though, and to feel how odd it is to have someone else filling the chair by the fireplace, making casual conversation and consuming coffee or beer. The whole place feels a bit alien, as if I am subconsciously trying to see my home through my visitor's eyes. My family and I are all relatively small, too, and when someone who isn't arrives, the dislocation is almost comical -- you feel you want to want to spread a sheet around their feet and water them, for the only thing over six feet tall that usually spends any time with us is the Christmas tree.
Having to admit an estimator to my home before I moved here a decade ago was painful. As he poked through my overfull closets and peered into the attic ("are you gonna take all that?"), I could think of nothing but colonoscopy, an experience I put off for years afterward. And contractors -- now, there's an odd thing ....
The guy who enclosed the back porch did the work in a sub-freezing spell of January. When he got too cold, he'd come in and warm up, which was fine, but at lunchtime he'd settle down in the dining room, adjacent to the job, rather than go away. On the basis of long acquaintance and general goodwill, the choice wasn't unreasonable on his part, but the urge to hoot and throw sticks grew strong in me. Having this large, shaggy and dusty person good-naturedly chewing his hamburger at my distressed-antique table was an intrusion, and as the work wore on, it got to be nearly intolerable.
The room had toys cluttering one corner in great profusion and a rampart of papers, unopened mail, undelivered gifts, and homeless objects in the opposite one. It's not that I was ashamed of the mess -- the contractor was making a bigger one -- but maybe that I had become attached to it, in the intimate the way you become attached to the pair of jeans you wore through the entire camping trip. I wasn't delighted with the project when it was done, but I didn't complain, I felt such relief when the workers went away.
I can thank him for the psychological insight, but I wish he had gotten the door right, instead
.
Source: http://my.core.com/%7Epzicari/text/Space.htm
Visitors and Eggheads
By Feathers of Hope
This entry is another collaborative post on the Ecotone Wiki: "How Visitors Affect Your View of Place." See other posts on this topic here.
Coming back from a trip to the coast this evening to see family we were discussing how visiting a foreign country is a great way to learn to see afresh, since everything is so different. It makes you look at where you live in a different way.
Davis, California is not a tourist destination. There are no Roman ruins, there is no spa, no beach; the the most ancient buildings are just over 100 years old; there isn't even any wine made here other than for the purposes of study. But there is a large, world-class university, and in fact it is this that accounts for the trips made by most visitors, either directly or indirectly. (The recent runaway success of the University Retirement Community, providing different levels of care for seniors, is almost certainly attributable to its proximity to the campus. These people didn't move here for the climate.)
Pica's window at work looks out onto one of the egghead sculptures by Robert Arneson. It is actually the most photographed one in the series; entitled "Eye on Mrak: Fatal Laff," it is a Janus-faced piece where the second face, pictured at left, is upside-down and laughing. At least three different people pose next to this head every day; sometimes the number is far higher. (Mrak Hall is the main administration building on campus.)
The egghead is not a sight we bother to show our visitors. Rather, we make sure our visitors see the significant landmarks in our daily round: the Davis Food Co-op, the Davis Farmers Market if they're here on the right day of the week, and of course the cows right next to the main road loop through campus. Architecturally inclined visitors get to see the 1970s era ecotopian Village Homes, the contemporary McMansion wasteland known as Mace Ranch, and the monolithic edifice the Mondavi Center. Those who stay a little longer with some interest in birds get to see the California Raptor Center.
If Numenius were a visitor, not a resident, there is one place not mentioned above that he'd be sure to head to -- Shields Library. If the university is at the heart of this town, the main campus library is surely the heart of any university. How better to get a sense of what the town has to offer?
Posted by Pica and Numenius at November 16, 2003 09:02 PM
Comments
Roman ruins, ancient buildings are great to see but when I visit a different country I like to experience the culture and the way of life of the people - put myself in their shoes and wonder what it would be like to live in the country I am visiting. I would love to see the Farmers Co-op, the Food Co-op, drive on the right hand side of the road, taste the food, hear the language and definitely visit the Raptor Center. I love libraries too.
Posted by: Jenny at November 16, 2003 11:50 PMWe have nothing like the egghead anywhere in Floyd County. Maybe we need one. I'll bring it up at the next council meeting. :-}
Posted by: fredf at November 17, 2003 02:54 PM Source: http://www.magpienest.org/feathersofhope/archives/2003/11/16/visitors_and_egg.html
How visitors affect your view of place
By Mulubinba Moments
This is an essay for the Ecotone Wiki
I love being at home - it is a child friendly, pet friendly, and tree friendly kind of place. I liked the feel of it as soon as I walked in to it for the first time with the agent. We bought our house fifteen years ago. I guess it was a mistake in some ways considering that it needed lots of work and money spent on it. We initially did spend money on it - we underpinned the foundations in order to try to stop cracks appearing in the walls, we altered the kitchen and changed the back area so that the toilet could be inside and not located in an outhouse. Then we ran out of money, time, and energy and child number three came along. Twelve years later we still have a living room that is decorated in the 1930's style - the carpet is threadbare and the wall paper is faded. The paint is peeling on the ornate ceilings. To any discerning visitor it must appear drab and unkempt. Our bookcases are filled to overflowing, our desk is always untidy and our children seem to spread their belongings into every room. It is little wonder that we very rarely receive visitors - I tired many years ago of apologising for the state of the house - visitors just have to accept us for who we are. Despite this however I have come to realise that no matter how we fight the concept, what people think is important. I do love our house, it is lived in and has a warmth of atmosphere about it - it is certainly not a Vogue masterpiece. Having visitors however does highlight its inadequacies and I guess, my inadequacies as a housekeeper and homemaker.
Similarly, our weblog is a special place - a place of self, in a way. It is an attempt to describe the place we live in, our lifestyle, our opinions, our wildlife, our scenery. I can look forward to having visitors to it as it makes no difference how I look or what state of disorganisation the house is in. I can escape for a while. I don't pretend to be a literary genius, I know my grammar and my expression is often unimaginative. I read other blogs with a feeling of inadequacy - I could never write like that. I know the bloggers who write wondefully and expressively, just like the people in their superbly renovated immaculate houses, would pay us a cursory visit and dismiss us quickly at first glance. We would not be worthy of their attention.
Now if visitors arriving in Newcastle don't mind an old house, sleeping in a fold down bed in the sunroom, sharing a bathroom with the family, a cat, a budgie, an axolotil, and meals cooked outside on the BBQ served on mismatched crockery I will show you in real life, the scenes you have visited on this blog. The beach, the birds, the animals are all here - things we often take for granted living in this place, but nevertheless things we see in a different light when we can show them off to visitors.
Comments
That's just the kind of home houseguests tend to like. I always feel very uneasy when I visit someone in a pristine home. I'm afraid I will mess something up or spill something or sit in the wrong place. It's impossible to feel at home in that kind of environment. As a houseguest, I know I am not responsible for maintenance or picking up after pets, so such things as peeling paint and vomiting cats probably cause me far less stress than the actual owner. The best rule of thumb for determining whether or not your house is suitable for houseguests is to ask yourself if you love it and feel at ease there. If so, most houseguests probably will as well.
If I could afford to visit then my hubbie and I would love to stay at yours. There are folks out there who value people more than what they have in their houses. God, you should see mine, but still we have visitors. Although my family in Scotland have bigger and better and more modern homes.
It isn't what you have, but who you are and the welcome that you give that matters.
Jan, Kent, England
Jenny and Geoff, I very much hope we will spend time in each other's homes someday! I agree with Jan, it isn't what you have but who you are that matters, and my guess is that your home reflects that in wonderful ways. We can trade stories of remodeling efforts - complete and incomplete - as well!
What do visitors think of our place?
Until about 40 years ago the international airport terminal in Sydney was like a gigantic shearing shed. This was perhaps appropriate as in the early 20th century Australia was said to ride on the sheep’s back because wool was the major export. Visitors to Australia were a rare thing. Most arrivals in Australia were immigrants - here to stay - and they mostly came by sea. Celebrity visitors such as actors and singers were revered, and it was very important to make a good impression.
Embarrassingly, it was common for these foreign celebrities to be swarmed by jounalists in the arrivals lounge at Sydney Airport. And wincingly predictable was the question “What do you think of Australia?”. Vivian Leigh in 1948 famously replied "I can't see it, you're standing in my way." (Frank Sinatra’s visit in 1974 was somewhat of an exception as he was subjected to more hostile questioning. In response he called the reporters bums and hookers.)
Australians have always cared what visitors think of our country. However, the world has changed, international tourism has boomed and the number of visitors to our country continues to grow every year. Australia no longer rides on the sheep’s back and tourism has become a major source of national income. Consequently an attitude is arising that visitors are now customers. This view presents our ‘place’ as a ‘resource’ to be exploited as if it were a seam of coal. Visitors/customers need to be treated well so they will spend their money here and then encourage others to follow. It is now the economists who care the most what foreign visitors think of our country, and they measure the answer in dollars.
Our 1981 edition Macquarie Dictionary gives this meaning for the word hospitality: “the reception and entertainment of guests or strangers with liberality and kindness”. But now we have the Hospitality Industry. Isn’t it good to know all those Hospitality Industry trainees are learning to treat visitors with liberality and kindness?
This essay for Ecotone Wiki's biweekly topic Ecotone: Writing About Place - HowVisitorsAffectYourViewOfPlace
CommentsI think Western Civilization is probably one of a very few cultures in the world where its members need special training to know how to be hospitable to visitors.
the way to the heart....
By alembic
This post is my response to ecotone's biweekly topic: How Visitors Affect Your View of Place.
Many people have mocked the place I call home. Some have done it with a good measure of talent and with sharp-edged wit chiseled with that deep love thats hidden in the spikes of irony. I am thinking of Cyra McFadden here and of her hot-tub-hopping, perpetually wide-eyed and hopelessly self-centered Marin County characters that made The Serial such a hit back in the 1970s. Others brought on the bile and the righteous tone of a musty old bible when they condemned Marin County as the alien land of sin and abomination that breeds the likes of co-conspirator of John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban captured in Afghanistan some two years ago.
Friends and family who come to stay with me and who lend me their eyes once they are here, often arrive with their own eyes shaded and focused by these literary and political lenses that distort the territory in which I live day in and day out. Rather than try to argue and get into a debate about why neither irony nor bile does this place the justice it deserves, I first try to appeal to my guests through their appetites -- that is, yes, food.
Sooner or later, all my guests will be treated to the ritual of shopping at Woodlands Market, Marins answer to the original SoHo allure of Dean & Deluca. Conveniently located at the entrance of the leafy Kent/Woodlands enclave of homes, Woodlands Market brings a taste of the whole wide world to the well-heeled crowd of shoppers, the gardening and construction crews that tend the houses of the well-heeled shoppers, and the college students who attend nearby College of Marin and provide a bit of color and variation in age distribution. The shelves of the perpetually growing store are crammed with exotic packages of delicacies commandeered from the outposts of a gastronomic hinterland just waiting to be conquered, packaged, and marketed for taste buds that are in serious training to live for that next new new bite (apologies to M. Lewis, who wrote the book called The Next New New Thing).
During the day, class lines blur quite well at Woodlands Market. Here, the breaking of bread means tearing pieces off a ciabatta with one lunch, spooning sauce with a chapatti with the other, or measuring tiny slices from low-carb loafs with yet another -- or splitting a box of crab sushi. When evening descends and the construction crews and the gardeners have gone home, way over on the other side of the San Quentin ridge, and the college students have dispersed in every which direction, the parking lot at Woodlands Market looks much like the parking lot of an exclusive country club, what with the rows of the latest model SUVs and cars that drive home the point of their owners financial worth.
But, this post is not supposed to be about how I see this place; its supposed to be about how visitors affect my view of place....
Not long ago, I saw a group of people milling by the vegetable stand at Woodlands Market, fingering the organic quinces and star fruits, only to discover that they were recent arrivals from Russia on a tour with the relative who made it good in America. It was well past six oclock, so the shoppers were the locals, the residents of this leafy corner of Marin. The touring relatives were babbling and oohing and aahing and calling out to each other as they started to wonder off among the aisles in search of more edible curios. The host and seemingly proud tour guide started scrambled every which way to try to herd his charge back together again, and, as I caught the look in his eyes, I saw something familiar in them.
Embarrassment.
I saw it clearly, almost as clearly as if I were staring in the mirror. Here was someone caught between the roots -- the poorly dressed gawking relatives form the old country -- and the showy fruit -- the well-clad and gawking locals whose garden this clearly was.
So yes, when visitors descend on us, especially if they have come from far, I find myself forced to look both ways, back and forth, thanking my lucky stars for the bounty to behold and cursing my judgment for its poverty of perspective, or vision. Temporarily displaced, my visitors remind me of my own displacement and of the perpetual tug of the myth of home ... that place where everybody knows not only your name, but that of your grandfather and grandmother too....
Marin may well be the place I now call home, but all it takes is one visitor to remind me that I have no roots here and that Woodlands Market, with its overwrought selection of international delicacies that had to have known the deep dark secrets of native soils, is how I can bear living on the surface....
Posted by maria at November 18, 2003 01:41 PM
Comments
Here we have "The Co-op"...another wonderfully evocative piece, Maria. Hope you'll join the running discussion about new topics and potential changes at the Ecotone. We need more and broader input, I think.
Posted by: beth at November 19, 2003 07:02 PM
Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20051218224832/http://www.ashladle.org/archives/000245.html
Tuesday, November 18, 2003
By CassandraPages
ECOTONE TOPIC for November 15
How Visitors Affect Your View of Place
My earliest memory of being “visited” was a parents’ day in grade school. My parents were in our classroom, sitting along one wall near my regular seat, when I opened my flip-top desk. My father gasped. Loudly. I, of course, immediately turned bright red, and wanted to sink through the floor. He was right – my desk was a total disaster. But it was, after all, my desk. And because it was mine, and not connected to my room at home, I’d thought of it as private, not subject to the “pick-up-your-room” comments that were commonplace back in our house.
Housekeeping never did become a major priority in my life, although I like having things neat, and wish they were neater than they usually are. I did learn to pick up after myself, and am glad my parents dinned this concept into me. But I’ve always made a preferential choice when it comes to prioritizing housework, and my intellectual or creative life. It wasn’t a far step, therefore, from my second-grade desk to my adult kitchen. Shortly after I had married, I once spotted my new mother-in-law’s car pulling up outside. I quickly shoveled all the dishes from the sink into the oven, and went to calmly greet her at the door.
I do often see my personal space through the imaginary eyes of impending visitors; the cobwebs and dust become suddenly visible as well as the clutter and neglected tasks: the tiles that never made it up on the kitchen walls, the unsanded floorboards, the peeling trim on the doorframes. But I made a decision long ago that if people didn’t like me for myself, they weren’t going to be swayed by an impeccable house, nor did I want them as friends if this was how they were going to judge me.
It’s different, though, seeing the larger place where you live through people who come to visit, especially when you live in a postcard like we do. Visitors come here wanting to see the autumn leaves, or New England villages with white church steeples and narrow-clapboarded buildings; they want ducks on a river, and Christmas trees and sleigh rides; they want to drive through covered bridges and stop beside slightly ramshackle red barns with a thin heifer or two in the pasture – or, better yet, a flock of sheep - fenced in by old stone walls. Like most people who live here, we have a little “tour” that includes such sights, and satisfies guests that they’ve seen the real thing.
What they don’t know, and don’t want to know, is that in a neighboring town there is just one working farm remaining, compared to dozens a couple of decades ago. Or that the farms, residences, cemetery and dairy that lined the road between here and the university town exist now only in memory. I’ve watched them disappear, one by one, eaten up by bulldozers and their spawn: condominiums, dental offices, mail-order warehouses, upscale nurseries and farmstands bursting with pumpkins and cornstalks, a centralized elementary school. This is the new “New England” reality for the suburban and city people who move here, wanting their own piece of the country and bringing urban values and expectations that contribute inexorably to the diminution of rural life. For them a myth has replaced history: “new” stone walls, “water features” that imitate waterfalls, fake barns, pseudo-post-and-beam office buildings with white vinyl siding. A little further out into the country, new “colonial” homes sprout on five-acre sub-development plots, and older, gracious homesteads are turned into “gentleman’s farms” with Jacuzzis in the master bedroom suites, and horse barns for thoroughbreds instead of plowhorses. They exist not to impress the locals -- that would be absurd – but to impress a new crop of visitors from the city or suburb, and to convince the owner that he or she has finally “arrived”.
The disappearance of authenticity and its replacement by shallow, Disney-land theme-park imitations, no matter how expensive or detailed, makes me exhausted and sad. These concepts of “place” are dependent on the judgments of others: the visitor. They are something we can pursue if we read the right magazines, or acquire if we have enough money. They’ve become part of a marketed reality.
Maybe that’s why I like my virtual place, my blog. Here I can be fat or skinny, pimply or beautiful, neat or slovenly, and you won’t know or care. You will know, I think, if I’m telling the truth, if I’m speaking with integrity, if I’m revealing my heart. There is no authority that determines what my blog should look like, no design avant-garde to set artificial standards of chic-ness. You come here, or don’t, based on the content and based on how coming here makes you feel. It’s free, and pretty real: no games. I like that.
9:09 PM
Source: http://cassandrapages.blogspot.com/2003_11_16_cassandrapages_archive.html#106920776620642154
How Visitors Affect One's View of Place
By London and the North
I have been thinking about how visitors affect my view of where I live as a result of this question having been posed by a member of the Ecotone wiki.
When walking around London with visitors, I tend to point out the less obvious things - a disused underground station, interesting old tiles, names of streets. Things that interest me. Stories nearly lost. Sights almost missed.
One of the better experiences of recent times was taking the kids into town and telling them about the old GLC and taking them to London's best kept secret of an art exhibit. Their incredulity was great to see.
Visitors to London are usually there to see London and seeing me is a smaller part of that. I'm quite happy to join in the viewing of the place. I have no patience for those in Yorkshire who speak of going to London with a disapproving shake of the head and grunt about the noise, movement and size and see it is the devil's territory. "Went there once.... Won't be going back." It's meant to be a joke and if you were truly a local person you would laugh with them agreeing. But as I go "there" every week, I am clearly from the other side.
Visitors to Yorkshire, on the other hand, are often here to see us or me and enjoy the surrounds as a secondary activity. Most now know to bring sensible footwear. Some leave a winter jacket here. Peri left a pair of fake leopard fur slippers here recently. But that seems to be an accident. I sometimes think that our visitors and us talk so much on walks that they don't see as much as they might. I find myself interupting the conversation pointing out things I am seeing and this subsides after a while and I feel in two places at once - in the conversation and amongst the leaves or whirling mist.
I think what is meaningful for me is how visitors see me and Paris in our relatively new environment. Their eyes offer a continuity which is important for my identity. Their familiarity with me tells me I am still the same person who lived for twenty two (22) years in London. When they come to stay it's like a re-membering, a continuing conversation bringing together both of my worlds. After they leave I feel less dependent of how I am seen in this northern world.
Posted by Coup de Vent at 10:42 PM | Comments (0)Source: http://web.archive.org/web/20031204014426/http://www.airenet.co.uk/alife/2003_11.html