I identify the difference between space and place to be 'memories', place feels entangled with the subjectivity of 'my passing time'.
And space is just an absolute idea of possibilities.
The urge to understand this difference in definition occurred to me when I decided to leave, depart from a land that I was born into, and never return; a place that contained all my memories and entanglements, physically, emotionally and spiritually, all my experiences and relations. My decision, of leaving my ‘home’ to continue my life in the States during the pandemic, this direction I decided to act upon, put me on a journey; I defected, leaving many things behind, things that mattered to me at the time, things made up of matter, matters with big masses that had the power to still hold me in their orbits even though I was far far away. With a simple 16 hours of travel, I left. I was alone. All by myself, for myself, in a space that was not a place yet, a new space in which I still orbited in relation to the ‘previous’ place, proximal in space yet far in time. It felt like whirling with no center. No memories within this new space, and possibilities of many. Every space is a place in this world for some self.
Home, as the first ‘space’ you contain, and settle, root from. The initial quality of home creates an ideal that we dream of and try to move towards mostly in our lives. Where the body is originally ‘here’ - can be identified as home; the body as home, the homing body. Because we also use the word ‘here’ about the place that we relate to security. Body is a concept that may never be ‘there’ (excluding transcendental experiences of soul leaving the body) but home is also the place we identify that we want to be ‘here’, we want to keep near. A ‘place’ we come back to. Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that by drawing the limitations of a specific space to identify a place, this territorial space-to-place offers security, whereas space without these territories offer freedom. Place is where needs are satisfied, from food and water to desire for security and peace.
A place as home or an idea of home which we also try to find in people, in other bodies and/or our relation with bodies, is a definite imago mundi. A holy representation of the universe right in our core, in our bodies as space, in other bodies that we entangle with, and a location where we want to entangle and entangle and get twisted and knotted, creating a heavy mass of entanglement, we bend spacetime just because we want to fixate and not let go.
Do we really feel home at being felt?
There is no-place like home.
