I wasn’t really there, at most of those places; not as a visitor, nor an observer; not a voyeur – not . . . . involved . . . . but virtually time enough perhaps to empathize – to be guilty about objectifying and criticism – to make connections, feel part of . . . . glimpse vague and fantastic understandings . . . . glean critical misreadings . . . . and calculated nefarious monologues. I really speak, not about there, but here – about similarities becoming differences and differences reminding us of likeness . . . . and the mundane becoming attractive. Lying slightly beneath the communal surface, we are unaware of an insidious influence ’til we are struck by a reminiscent thought. A tedious correlation out of place reminds us about a strikingly intimate moment – something we saw there, not here – or perhaps it was here – perhaps. It lies somewhere, catalogued as unimportant, but it was something on which I relied . . . . like a dream. I remember that scene . . . . as if it were there . . . . no . . . . here.
There must be something acceptable about being inexact, suggesting that which may have been misunderstood, allowing the superficial commonalties between distant places: chambers of commerce, tourist agencies, statistics, data, descriptive . . . . language . . . . that is, the presentation of descriptions – intended for an international community . . . . characteristics which do not offer the immediate experience of difference.
I sought difference amid the global society. Looking deeper . . . . behind local craft, underneath flora . . . . where it ‘really’ occurs. The process of discovery was similar to entering the inferno, all hell but each level distinct. The parameters about difference must be defined in every instance. The differences in personality I have with my also native Angeleno neighbor are of a lesser order than those I have with a resident of Italy or Riyadh or Bin tang. If I enter without attention to the place of difference, I am not there. If I did not discover difference, if I did not experience or understand, was I negligent for having assumed or diagnosed or interpreted? There are times or conditions when the significant may be unheeded or even unnoticed, but the similarities . . . . cataloging the similarities . . . . is what allows space for difference to become visible. Certainly it, difference that is, is not located at a line drawn on paper, nor pastel on a map, in a sign alongside a highway, nor a guard’s rifle.
Dialog . . . . curiosity/dialog . . . . moderates difference. But perhaps the desire toward power, ergo the necessity to maintain difference, is primal. Perhaps conflict is an intrinsic, necessary and strategic component of the universal dialectic, and pain and loss, in terms of a global philosophy, are an inevitable and continuing part of relating. And palatability, how much difference can we, individually and societally, ingest and at what rate? If I step onto a virtual landscape, say hello to a megabyte, recognize an intinerant alien decision, poke at the nebulous but frank surmise of a wandering countryman – if I am astute about my authority and insightful regarding separation, can I not at one breath and simultaneously; greet similarity . . . . and difference?
Given that the necessity for difference: conflict, pain, and loss: is understood within the dialog of a continuing society; then similarity as a means of communication becomes all the more significant. That which can be appraised at a glance, a perception of familiarity, the tedium of the undistinguished – a struggle for economic reliability, a need for personal space, simply dining, a walk down a populated street – may be universal but accomplished in quite dissimilar ways. It is less important to the superficial just how a familiar task is carried out: but more so that a highway is a highway, a beach is a beach, a stadium a stadium, and a recreation park is just that . . . . almost anywhere. Attention to difference has led through similarity to superficiality . . . . Does the new globalism begin to be defined?
Then there is the attempt to acquire a place. A sense of having been there – that is, sense as a conception – an intuitive reading – not so much a feeling or a primal understanding – but more of a surficial acquisition; the capturing of a lifeless format, that which a place states about itself without exposing its belly. This is all they want us to know about them. In Sevilla we go to Santa Cruz, in China to the wall, in London to castles or cathedrals . . . . or a millennial dome.
The aesthetics of place include, in the expansive sense, context; and in a lesser sense, center. Place is not that through which we are named but how we are identified and identify ourselves – how we present. When we go outside we carry our place with us, wrap it around us like a favorite overcoat, or a warm jacket, or battle gear. Aesthetically, then we are each a map and the map may expand and change corresponding to our acquisition of additional places. Our place is ‘what’ we come from. We descend from that, as in descendant. I descend from them; never ascend. I grow, but do not admit to ascending. We are a perceptual and visual representation of our place – our, as in ownership, acquisition – the place to which we lay claim, not sole claim; it is shared ownership. We are in fact eager to share this proprietorship since the other is there to be part of our context, our wrap. We aesthetically present ourselves dressed in the wrap of place. This wrap has the same thinness as a leaf covering the immeasurable variety of flora beneath. I present this place to you; it is my empty gift box for I do not really want you to possess it; simply to identify in it.
As I make virtual contact with places, I am presented with a wrap – an overcoat, gift paper – paper that is crafted and designed in very specific ways. I make contact – no it, the place which surreptitiously subsumes itself within a wrap, contacts me – it contacts me with its wrapped version of self and describes to me how it – the it of place – is similar to me. It beguiles me with a picture of myself and claims me using that part of me that is familiar . . . . claims me momentarily, as in the lifespan of an inconsequential memento. When I go there I recognize the wrap as me, the similarities are a recalling . . . . I am not there, but still here. Context and center converged.
I accept their wrap – I’m sorry, its wrap – as a portrayal of its place for that is how they (who became an it) want to see themselves and believe that is who they are. The rest, of course, all that substance beneath the surface, that matter in terra, is somehow disregarded or forgotten, a utilitarian misnomer that is not for my identification . . . . as if the day-to-day, humdrum, mundane necessities bring shame and dishonor, as if they were dirty laundry to be place in the hamper of ill taste. I accept their decision to dishonor their (its) difference. I accept its desire to create similarity, to accept me as a superficial member of its affectation. Or perhaps, as an afterthought, the reality is that there are more similarities than differences; that shared desire is unspoken because it is too apparent . . . . that we both yearn for the mundane.
This is not to say there is not difference, only that the difference we are presented with may be a disguise or a veiled cover for that which may be not so delectable. If we are directed to and beguiled by a centuries old castle outside of London or in Wales, what does that necessarily tell us about contemporary English culture or temperament? If I am grouped into a trek, put up in a five star lodging and behold the perhaps, for I have not, stunning vistas of the Zimbabwean terrain, what have I learned about the social and political landscape of South Africa?
In that context, and also in order to not unsettle you, I present you, the reader, the viewer, the perceptual observer, the conceptual audience that with which you are familiar. I give you your place, which you of course have already claimed and own. I give you this place as if it were elsewhere . . . . no . . . . as if that somewhere else were here, so you may grasp it without rising, digest it without eating. That is not difficult for we have all virtually tasted it, whether there or here. We have acknowledged the excitement of its sameness, that with which we are familiar. In this sense, and with felicitations, it will not be surprising when I bid you from my desk, “See you when we get home.”