Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Place as a Living Reality

To tell what we remember, and to keep on telling it, is to keep the past alive in the present. Should we not do so, we could not know, in the deepest sense, how to inhabit a place. To inhabit a place means literally to have made it a habit, to have made it the custom and ordinary practice of our lives, to have learned how to wear a place like a familiar garment, like the garments of sanctity that nuns wore. The word habit, in its now dim original form, meant to own. We own places not because we possess the deeds to them, but because they have entered the continuum of our lives. What is strange to us -- unfamiliar [and uninhabited -- can never be home.

-- Paul Gruchow, Grass Roots: The Universe of Home, p. 6

1 comment:

Takk for Alt said...

"(and keep in mind that the concept of homosexuality is a modern one)." I find this notion to be neither convincing nor compelling given that this argument has only been around for less than a dozen years. Surely you can offer a warrant, data, backing and a claim that is more supportable than this specious prattle.