<-- 6:40 PM MT -->
Place implies people, things, memories -- history. Space implies absence, emptiness, and, these days, a very particular vision of the future. Now that space is ours, place eludes us. Tomorrow seems to come out of nowhere. The past is another world.
Television covers every corner of the earth. Our food and clothing, on the other hand, come from places most of us will never see, let alone visit or call home. We travel across the world in search of the exotic without noticing what is alien in our own culture. In the movies, we want desperately to speak to creatures from outer space. Yet in our political charters, we refuse to speak to human beings across our borders.
There is no way to turn back the clock.
At the moment, our destination is always an Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA). We are no longer concerned with where we are headed, but rather, when we will get there.
We have installed moving walkways in our airports. We are slowly converting every place into a terminal. Soon, we will always be in transit, our home an electronic suitcase. No wonder we are angered by delays when once we might have cherished them. There's nowhere left to stop.
If there is nowhere to sit down and never a static view to take in, if we have forgotten how to talk to strangers and how to embrace old friends, if being alone means being a failure and being in touch is better than being there, who can stand for a delay? Just "reach" out and "touch" someone.
For place is perspective. Perspective, and thus place, is always transient. We move and our line of sight changes. So too does our understanding of the world.
The world is not one. The village is not global. We are where we are.
The man with binoculars might visually inhabit two distinct sites, but he is still firmly situated in only one. Where he is standing will always determine what he sees. No matter how far our new technologies may cast our gaze, it always returns to its point of origin, our only place in this world.
To know this place is to know ourselves and to be known to others.
<-- 11:54 AM MT -->
I feel like I live my life in circles, living from day to day. I don't feel like I want to be and I don't make friends that are like myself. I always go where I want to go, and they are just more suckers sitting at coffee shops. I guess I made too many mistakes to to change just who I am. Picture yourself looking down on the place that you once told yourself "Things are going to change right now for me." I guess I made too many mistakes in my life to change just who I am. That doesn't bother me as long as I got my friends. I sleep with one eye open as I listen for the sounds of my enemies on the hardened ground. No matter how hard you try, I won't go away. Pictures of the past keep keep crawling back in. I really need someone to share a laugh with but time time has taken the best out of me. I don't really care too much for money, and I don't really want all the glory. I just want to hear you say you're sorry for me. I guess I made too many mistake to change just what I am with or without my friends.
Play the roles away.