Don't I Know You From the Cinematographer's Party?

Last night I coined a new aphorism: "If you can make a donut, you can make a cat."

This is not the point. The point, of course, is to talk here about the greatest and most famous of all aphorisms: "Know thyself."

Actually, no. Strike that. The point is to talk about the aphorism untold, but nevertheless present, in the previously mentioned ancient saying. What I'm trying to get at:

"Know thy place."

To ask: "Where am I?" seems to me to be more or less asking: "Who am I?" By which I mean to say that one of the ways we conceive ourselves, one of the ways that we create and then understand our identity is to know where we come from, or where we live--both the social and natural community which we are a part of.

But how? How do we know where we are? Know a place with the intimacy that will make us care about it? Or care about what it says about our own identity?

Perhaps it is an issue of seeing. Thich Nat Hahn writes: "When reality is experience in its nature of ultimate perfection, an almond tree that may be in your front yard reveals its nature in perfect wholeness. The almond tree is itself truth, reality, your own self. Of all the people who have passed by your yard, how many have really seen the almond tree? The heart of an artist may be more sensitive; hopefully he or she will be able to see the tree in a deeper way than many others. Because of a more open heart, a certain communion already exists between the artist and the tree. What counts is your own heart."

Annie Dillard after failing to draw a horse: "The point is that I just don't know what the lover knows; I just can't see the artificial obvious that those in the know construct."

So is knowing a place--seeing it--an issue of love? Must I become infatuated, falling head over heels for a place before really being able to recognize it, before being able to understand its inner qualities? And then will I know myself?

But love--true love--must of course come from true seeing. I can't fall in love with New York by watching all the movies that are set there (though probably actually filmed in a place like Winnipeg, Manitoba), can I? I've got to know what I know, not the artificial product of a secondary-source. (Though I will allow that these secondary sources can lead a person to a more authentic investigation.)

In the end, I think that to know a place you must occupy it--and only the devoted (the lover) will acheive occupancy. Only the lover will commit herself so entirely as to be able to see a place in its real self--and in turn to see herself more clearly in relation to that place.

By Andy, age 25