Required Reading 5: Ephemeral Character of Place

Nathan Bloom: 8 December 2009
Landscapes of the Sacred

Lane discusses the fact that Americans have always sought Space but in different ways. First to move to wide open areas, but then to build them up into large cities(pg. 217) and then again to seek space. Finally, we looked farther outward to outer space while still trying to take away space by building bigger taller cities. Sacred place is "hard to define" because it can so rapidly change although the place geographical place will remain the same. I find the quote by Gertrude Stein on page 219 very correct in defining America. "In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is." People are constantly traveling to find more space and in doing so leave the space they had open for others. Wayne Fields says that for Americans it has become the journey that is important not the destination. So it is to say that Americans are on constant pilgrimages. As I previously wrote: this makes them limenal. Is this possibly an explanation of the stress and busy environment of our country? Is it because everyone is in the threshold and does not in fact belong anywhere?