Greetings:
Do places speak? Were all the indigenous cultures right in believing that they could? Can the locales where we live show up in our dreams, our nightmares, even our psychological symptoms? My doctoral work at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California sought to answer, or at least listen into, such radical questions.
My web site (http://www.tearsofllorona.com) discusses them more fully, but to get things rolling here, I'll mention my thesis: that places do indeed possess an "imaginal" (as opposed to "imaginary") sense of presence, and that it turns toward us the face that we turn toward it. Love and respect a place and we can feel welcome there. Conquer, ravage, and pave it over, and it will infiltrate our moods, dreams, and even relationships, infecting them with echoes of the damage we do.
As this weblog develops I will post specific examples of how this dynamic works, particularly (but not only) in the Mission cities and counties of the coastal California area. I hope this will encourage readers to explore the connections between where they live and who they are and to leave any relevant comments for others to see.
My own way of listening involved developing a "locianalytic method" (from the Roman term "genius loci," or "spirit of place") capable of tracking how historical events in a given locale show up over and over in folklore, symptom, architecture, art, and other expressions of human psychological life. To see an excerpt from my dissertation, visit http://www.tearsofllorona.com/dissintro.html.
May everyone who feels addressed by place find something useful here.
-- Dr. C
