Friday Five - on Place
Jul. 14th, 2019 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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thefridayfive
1. What is your favorite place?
The Tate Modern. I feel all range of emotion in there. It's a place of solace and of confrontation and challenge. It was a revelation when I first went there, aged about 18, and it remains an incredibly special place to me.
2. What is your favorite place in your home?
I don't know how to answer this; my sofa is cosy and warm and allows views over the street and I've watched my crows come and go, and my great tits fledge. But my bed is comfort and safety. And my shower is restoration and transcendence of the body.
3. Would you most want to live in a city, a suburb or the country?
I love the place I live now for being a small city, bordered by raw nature with the sea on one side and the Downs on the other. It's not a real city - there's no real sprawl, there's no sense of being enclosed, you can see the sea from almost everywhere in the city. There is a microclimate and a strong relationship to nature which I don't think is true of many "cities" and few towns. I grew up in the country, whilst I love that environment it is socially and culturally too stiffling and small.
4. What is special about the town you live in?
As above, it's sandwiched between sea and rolling hills. It's gay as shit. It's messy and full of people who don't fit. It has the only Green MP in the country. It consistently votes Green in every form of election. It is made up of an odd collection of souls who gravitate here or were made here and it has an identity which does not exist in relation to anywhere else in the country (contrary to the continued insistence of "London on Sea" by some news publications)
5. How much time do you spend in nature?
When I first moved here I felt quite stiffled. I had never lived so firmly in a city and it took me years - nearly a decade - to get to grips with the fact parks exist in the city and that is a different way to experience nature in a city. The sea and beach are raw and free and for a long time that was where I thought you had to be to 'be in' nature.
But as the years have passed I've grown to appreciate the interweaving of nature with the built environment - the aubrieta which grows on the front wall, the health of the elms, the tragic loss of 'my' elm a couple years ago, the complex soap opera of the foxes who run the road, the squirrels, the jays, the starlings, the crows, the house sparrow colonies, the blackbird who sings on top of the telegraph pole, the robins who sing at night, the squirrels and rats who live in the park, the herring gulls; the true guardians of the city.
I spend every day in nature, I spend every moment of every day alert to the myriad of lives and species sharing this little patch of land. I take enormous pleasure in seeing what others walk by - how many others saw the wood pigeons engaged in a battle royale on Dyke Road today? Not many, I suspect.
thefridayfive 1. What is your favorite place?
The Tate Modern. I feel all range of emotion in there. It's a place of solace and of confrontation and challenge. It was a revelation when I first went there, aged about 18, and it remains an incredibly special place to me.
2. What is your favorite place in your home?
I don't know how to answer this; my sofa is cosy and warm and allows views over the street and I've watched my crows come and go, and my great tits fledge. But my bed is comfort and safety. And my shower is restoration and transcendence of the body.
3. Would you most want to live in a city, a suburb or the country?
I love the place I live now for being a small city, bordered by raw nature with the sea on one side and the Downs on the other. It's not a real city - there's no real sprawl, there's no sense of being enclosed, you can see the sea from almost everywhere in the city. There is a microclimate and a strong relationship to nature which I don't think is true of many "cities" and few towns. I grew up in the country, whilst I love that environment it is socially and culturally too stiffling and small.
4. What is special about the town you live in?
As above, it's sandwiched between sea and rolling hills. It's gay as shit. It's messy and full of people who don't fit. It has the only Green MP in the country. It consistently votes Green in every form of election. It is made up of an odd collection of souls who gravitate here or were made here and it has an identity which does not exist in relation to anywhere else in the country (contrary to the continued insistence of "London on Sea" by some news publications)
5. How much time do you spend in nature?
When I first moved here I felt quite stiffled. I had never lived so firmly in a city and it took me years - nearly a decade - to get to grips with the fact parks exist in the city and that is a different way to experience nature in a city. The sea and beach are raw and free and for a long time that was where I thought you had to be to 'be in' nature.
But as the years have passed I've grown to appreciate the interweaving of nature with the built environment - the aubrieta which grows on the front wall, the health of the elms, the tragic loss of 'my' elm a couple years ago, the complex soap opera of the foxes who run the road, the squirrels, the jays, the starlings, the crows, the house sparrow colonies, the blackbird who sings on top of the telegraph pole, the robins who sing at night, the squirrels and rats who live in the park, the herring gulls; the true guardians of the city.
I spend every day in nature, I spend every moment of every day alert to the myriad of lives and species sharing this little patch of land. I take enormous pleasure in seeing what others walk by - how many others saw the wood pigeons engaged in a battle royale on Dyke Road today? Not many, I suspect.