I know this is very late, but I still wanted to post about "Mythologies of Placemaking" because I now can.
Reading this essay made me realize that I may have been making "my place" a rather lame one. It's true that I haven't always enjoyed living out there. It is the middle of nowhere, and no one knows where nowhere is...but it's not the Australian Outback I've made it to be to myself. Sure the colors are all shades of tan in my immediate surroundings, but the mountains are right behind us and right in front of us, and in the clear air up there, you can see as far as Tehachepi most days.
When most people hear about where I live, they assume the "sense of place" must be really creepy because it's dangerous to be in a place where darkness is absolute at night and the nearest gas station is twenty minutes minimum away. But I would say the "sense of place" is less chainsaw masecure and more like a quiet field where you would sit just to get away from it all...without the grass. It's a place of true peace. Besides, nothing lights up the darkness like billions of perfectly seeable stars and the milky way and Orion right outside your window. I can't even describe the amazing sunsets that come out of the city smog and paint beautiful colors across the sky every night. It's better to see smog in a canvass than it is to smell it.
Plus, when you play your music loud, no one cares and the cops aren't called.
I guess my point is that I've made a mythology in my own place. I've called it desolate and boring, and so that's what it's become. But now, when I go home this weekend, I'm going to try to see it as a more beautiful place, and open my mind to the possibility that what it is to me now is all in my head.
-Rea
