I have been reading through the last couple of issues of dwell magazine -- a modern design magazine focusing on homes and furniture -- and the notion of a space creating a narrative has come up in both issues by two different authors. First a designer talking about filling a space with furniture that creates a narrative of a room, second a writer exploring the narrative of design. But I have to wonder if that is the right use of the word? If space does create a narrative or if the narrative is assigned by the inhabitants.
Narrative is "A spoken or written account of connected events; a story," but as a culture we have assigned narrative to most scenarios under which we live. Our designed space becomes a narrative. Our activities of choice -- biking, hiking, sports, reading, writing -- becomes a narrative. Our relationships become a narrative. The conflict between how a person makes a living (occupation) and what that person is meant to do/be (vocation) becomes a narrative. A few years ago there was this notion of meta narrative, a collected experience that is the over arching story of human experience.
I believe that our lives create a narrative. We leave behind a human experience, recorded or not, that tells the story of who we are. And, as a Christian, I believe my life fits into the greater narrative of the story begun by the living God. But I have a hard time with assigning narrative to a room. A painting. A song. A bike ride. A hunting trip. A baseball game. These events may be an experience and have story of their own but they fit into the individual stories of the participants and creators. A room, in itself, is a reflection of the narrative of the designer and if it is designed by a person besides the inhabitant, it would seem that the inhabitant is living in the story of someone else, by guidelines set outside their experience.
Our individual experience is important. We are born, we grow, we live and learn and step out into the world to make our own ways to choose to marry or not, to start a family or not. To work, to play, to spend, to save. But our narrative is our own and how we define events in our life is contingent on our experience, our history, our narrative.
We can set about trying to make it something its not, I think we begin to assign narrative to things like rooms and sports and arts (though with art the lines do become blurry because art typically sets out to tell a story) in an effort to fill the empty feeling that our own narrative is not enough.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Reflections on the Move: Week 1
It is a different view than I am used to. The thick forests of fir and cedar trees sweeping down to sandstone cliffs and the gnarled madronna trees perched on the ledges, taking on the wind and the rain and the surf spray and watching over the ragged coast of Bellingham Bay has given way to rolling hills of grain.
The thick wheat fields are scattered with old farmhouses and grain elevator stand like lighthouses standing sentry. Tractors are parked in seemingly random fashion, left where the days work ends so tomorrow can pick up where it left off. Some are new, some are old, some are parked in machine boneyards and left to rust under the heavy sun and long summer days that will, in time, become the long season of short winter days and they will alternately be covered with rain and ice and sometimes snow but never snow for very long.
The cackling of eagles and the cry of seagulls has been replaced by the harsh caw of unseen pheasants from the weeds and the edges of the wheat fields and the delicate coo of mourning doves is a near constant sound, wether I am near the fields of sitting in the shade of the ancient maple tree in the back yard.
Right now the wheat fields are highlighted with green giving way, day by day, to the harvest ready gold color. In a matter of weeks the combines will cut across the fields and mow down the wheat, chaffing the grain from the heavy heads as they go, filling their hoppers with grain and dumping it into trucks or trailers pulled by tractors and they will run in a constant pattern of cutting and emptying without stopping. But for now, it is peaceful with only the birds and the wind to keep me company in the quiet moments of the morning before I fire up the air compressor and enter into work.
As my thoughts look back to Bellingham, it is with a sorrowful heart at the community -- friends, places, memories -- we left behind but Bellingham no longer has "home" attached to my memory tag, but I can't say that Pendleton does either. Home, I am learning, has as much to do with where my wife and children are as much as it does with a physical place.
I have the sense of returning but not of having arrived. Pendleton, I do not think (but I have been wrong before), is not our final destination, I feel that through and through. But we are in the right place at the right time and I am quite certain we are on the right track.
The thick wheat fields are scattered with old farmhouses and grain elevator stand like lighthouses standing sentry. Tractors are parked in seemingly random fashion, left where the days work ends so tomorrow can pick up where it left off. Some are new, some are old, some are parked in machine boneyards and left to rust under the heavy sun and long summer days that will, in time, become the long season of short winter days and they will alternately be covered with rain and ice and sometimes snow but never snow for very long.
The cackling of eagles and the cry of seagulls has been replaced by the harsh caw of unseen pheasants from the weeds and the edges of the wheat fields and the delicate coo of mourning doves is a near constant sound, wether I am near the fields of sitting in the shade of the ancient maple tree in the back yard.
Right now the wheat fields are highlighted with green giving way, day by day, to the harvest ready gold color. In a matter of weeks the combines will cut across the fields and mow down the wheat, chaffing the grain from the heavy heads as they go, filling their hoppers with grain and dumping it into trucks or trailers pulled by tractors and they will run in a constant pattern of cutting and emptying without stopping. But for now, it is peaceful with only the birds and the wind to keep me company in the quiet moments of the morning before I fire up the air compressor and enter into work.
As my thoughts look back to Bellingham, it is with a sorrowful heart at the community -- friends, places, memories -- we left behind but Bellingham no longer has "home" attached to my memory tag, but I can't say that Pendleton does either. Home, I am learning, has as much to do with where my wife and children are as much as it does with a physical place.
I have the sense of returning but not of having arrived. Pendleton, I do not think (but I have been wrong before), is not our final destination, I feel that through and through. But we are in the right place at the right time and I am quite certain we are on the right track.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Reflections on Bellingham: The Move
It was raining the morning we left Bellingham, WA, it was raining the afternoon we arrived in Pendleton, OR. If there is a way for me to highlight this parallel it is to say that rain in both places, separated by a distance of 370 plus miles, is a stark lesson in irony. I expect rain in Bellingham, had become accustomed to the areas insistent dampness and humidity and had battled my way through long bouts of seasonal depression -- a condition that should not be understated -- but crossing the cascades and dropping out of the mountains into the long stretch of sand and sage brush and sliding smoothly into sees of rolling wheat fields, in June no less, should have been a long journey into sunshine not more rain. But we made the eight hour trek (made longer by my truck overheating) into rain.
Raining it was, but we followed a rainbow, the final stretch, to the end, our destination, Pendleton, OR. This little town made famous by its whiskey, indian blankets, and faltering rodeo is the town in which I grew up and to where we have made numerous trips over the years, each trip a little, dry, oasis out of Bellingham but never with the thought of settling here, for a time.
It is funny how life deals the cards but try as we might we have to play the hand we are dealt to the best of our talent and skill. For us, our hand brought us out of the city and community and setting we loved into a unknown future, a changing environment, and a period of wandering in the wilderness. All I can think of, sitting here slapping away at the keyboard, is that I wish I knew what was coming!
I have a dream of a quiet life in pursuit of literature and writing and raising my boys in a place where they are free to roam and explore and in a way that is comfortable for my wife and I to live in work and leisure in a way that is challenging and fulfilling and in line with our hopes and dreams. But experience has shown me that this dream is a dream of the far future and that life is, predictably, toilsome. In the novel Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtrey, a character on his death bed sums it up thus: "This is a fine world though rich in hardship at times." I find this quote to be insightful and honest and as I live and work I often feel similarly.
My family and I, as I have been writing for the past couple of weeks, are in a period of transition and searching. We are wandering in the wilderness as tentatively as the nation of Israel searching for the promised land, and we are doing so, literally, in the desert. I have faith that God has an intention for us here, in Pendleton, and that his intention is to lead us somewhere different soon. But how soon and where is uncertain.
Tomorrow, as has happened so often in the past three years, I will start work with a new contractor on a new project in a new place. Carpentry is carpentry and slotting in with this crew or that on come-what-may is all the same to me. Just another day at the office. The difference is, that starting a new job with a new company in a new place will also be the beginning of seeking out community and belonging, rebuilding all that we left in Bellingham.
We made a choice to wander, we feel called to something new. But change is hard, ir-regardless of calling, and we are in the throws of suffering under the pressure of change and wilderness. But this is a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.
Raining it was, but we followed a rainbow, the final stretch, to the end, our destination, Pendleton, OR. This little town made famous by its whiskey, indian blankets, and faltering rodeo is the town in which I grew up and to where we have made numerous trips over the years, each trip a little, dry, oasis out of Bellingham but never with the thought of settling here, for a time.
It is funny how life deals the cards but try as we might we have to play the hand we are dealt to the best of our talent and skill. For us, our hand brought us out of the city and community and setting we loved into a unknown future, a changing environment, and a period of wandering in the wilderness. All I can think of, sitting here slapping away at the keyboard, is that I wish I knew what was coming!
I have a dream of a quiet life in pursuit of literature and writing and raising my boys in a place where they are free to roam and explore and in a way that is comfortable for my wife and I to live in work and leisure in a way that is challenging and fulfilling and in line with our hopes and dreams. But experience has shown me that this dream is a dream of the far future and that life is, predictably, toilsome. In the novel Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtrey, a character on his death bed sums it up thus: "This is a fine world though rich in hardship at times." I find this quote to be insightful and honest and as I live and work I often feel similarly.
My family and I, as I have been writing for the past couple of weeks, are in a period of transition and searching. We are wandering in the wilderness as tentatively as the nation of Israel searching for the promised land, and we are doing so, literally, in the desert. I have faith that God has an intention for us here, in Pendleton, and that his intention is to lead us somewhere different soon. But how soon and where is uncertain.
Tomorrow, as has happened so often in the past three years, I will start work with a new contractor on a new project in a new place. Carpentry is carpentry and slotting in with this crew or that on come-what-may is all the same to me. Just another day at the office. The difference is, that starting a new job with a new company in a new place will also be the beginning of seeking out community and belonging, rebuilding all that we left in Bellingham.
We made a choice to wander, we feel called to something new. But change is hard, ir-regardless of calling, and we are in the throws of suffering under the pressure of change and wilderness. But this is a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.
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