It’s surprising
how much space you need. It would surprise you how even the most absurd things would need some space. The easiest
example of this is in your own head. Everyone thinks, no matter how
unintelligent or how intelligent even, you think. These thoughts need space to
occur. Incomprehensible right? No matter who you are, you need room for your thoughts,
your ideas and your opinions. All this takes place in your brain; your brain is
the place. However, you can only find all this in your mind. Your mind is different form your brain
just like how space and place are not the same, but still relate and sometimes
are even within each other. As Michel de Certeau says in his writing, “Spatial
Stories”, “Space is a practice of place.” But is it really?
“To
go to work or come home, one takes a “metaphor”- a bus or train. Stories could
also take this noble name: every day, they traverse and organize places; they
select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them.
They are spatial trajectories.” As Michel de Certeau described in the text,
transportation was the way of linking one place to another like work or home.
Your everyday life turned into a story, and “every story is a travel story- a
spatial practice. Such metaphor gave daily events structure, a step by step or
1-2-3 of your events because you took into consideration of space.
Now
this all makes sense, but is space really a practice of place? A place could be
within a space, or rather it is. I believe in a different definition of these
terms, space and place. Space is more of a general term for every volume out
there. On the other hand, place is more unique more special. Place is a space
given an identity, given form. Places are special.
Places
are more, well thought out and given the privilege of occupying a certain
space. In the long title of “Tintern Abbey”, the Hermit sits alone. The poem
opens up with the lines “FIVE years have past; five summers, with the length of
five long winters!” A time frame was given from just the words five years. Time
is intangible and can only be seen through its power on its surroundings,
exactly like space. As we progress further down the stanza, we find out how
much the hermit loves this place he has not been to in FIVE long years. This
place, the bank of the Wye is of the physical world. He finds love and comfort
in this place. But these feelings take place in the space of these banks. The feelings and love for this place
are the intangible sensations created by his mind. The mind is the space that
translates all these “things” into place. From this, how can space be a
practice of place when place is transformed space? In conclusion, place is the
physical the limited; it’s space being forced into reality. And space, it’s the intangible and
unrestricted.
The
author of “Spatial Stories”, believes space only exists when one takes into
consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. But is this
not a better definition of place; something that has been grounded by these guidelines.
that’s not what space is. Space is
indefinite. But even so, does anything really exist? Or does it all just take
space in your mind?
