The Sense of Place

Do different places express different archetypes? The question has interested me for several years, and I actually considered working on it for my dissertation. I think the answer is yes, but it's easy to fall into oversimplification when you try to identify what those archetypes are.

I'm especially intrigued by comparisons of urban environments. Is it possible to identify predominant archetypes in a city as expressed in its image, economy, physical environment, and the people it attracts? Can you characterize Seattle as being more like Hermes and San Francisco as being more like Aphrodite? Is Washington D.C. a city of Athena? Does Boston, with all its colleges, have more of a heady Apollo energy? Any city obviously has multiple faces, subcultures, nuances, and shadows, but predominant themes often seem present.

I've read books by people who have addressed these issues either as depth psychologists or from other perspectives, and they seem to agree that different places represent noticeably different aspirations and "personalities." I spent a lot of time a few years ago trying to identify the main archetypes of the place I live in, wanting to understand what it excelled in and what it lacked, especially in comparison to other places. When I first started thinking about it, I found this hard to do, probably because I'd been here so long and couldn't see things from the outside. Having been around a bit more since then (I traveled a lot in 2011), I have more of a basis for comparison now and can articulate what I know.

There's a calmness about Lexington, an orderliness that's in noticeable contrast to, say, Los Angeles, which is much more venturesome -- even chaotic. Part of it's a size difference, of course, but I think there's also a difference in underlying dynamics. Lexington is in many ways a settled place, centered on families, it seems to me, so that it has a feeling of Hestia, hearth, and home. L.A. and San Francisco (and many other places) are also much more hedonistic than Lexington. Hedonism, unless it's of a sedate variety, just doesn't seem to play well here.

I've found Lexington to be both comfortable and confining. I've always thought it was a probably a better place to raise a family than to live in as a single woman, and it all has to do with that homely quality. I've often felt out of my element here, as if standing out too much in any way was always going to be a problem. I felt that I might thrive in a more adventurous environment, a place with more variety not only in cultural and occupational opportunities but also in the people I would meet. I finally addressed this frustration when I commuted to graduate school out of state, an arrangement that let me stay in place but experience the stimulus of an entirely different environment.

My home and even my job were rife with Hestian qualities of order and caretaking; I needed an infusion of a different kind of energy, more Aphrodite, more Apollo, and more Hermes (for a feeling of movement and lightness).

I told a friend before I started at Pacifica that I hoped it would help me figure out either how to leave here or how to stay. During the three years I was commuting to Southern California, I was pretty much in the "leave" mode; the question was where, when, and how. But a funny thing happened somewhere along the way, because once released from three years of what was definitely a labor of love but gave me no free time, I was at leisure to rediscover my own town. Somehow, despite its drawbacks, Lexington suddenly seemed to offer more than I remembered.

I re-discovered the Gallery Hop; there seemed to be more places to have brunch on Saturdays; I had time to attend Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour at the Kentucky Theatre (on the night I attended, I was having dinner in a nearby restaurant when it was announced that a European opera singer was in the house and would give a brief performance); a couple of weeks later, I saw a play by Samuel Beckett in the theatre of the same small restaurant. Lexington had perhaps changed and expanded a little, but what seemed really different was me. My graduate program, and what it took to see it through, had enlarged me, so that I felt more confident in my own skin, wherever I happened to be. Perhaps my vision had also become more acute so that I was now able to seek out those touches of Aphrodite and Apollo and Hermes wherever they happened to be.

Kentucky is, of course, very land-locked, so that the spirit of Uranus, the ocean, is not much felt here. I like the feeling of having land all around me; it's nice to able to move in any direction. But when I was in California, spending so much time between the mountains and the sea, I think I developed an expansiveness partly in response to the intellectual and social climate and partly in response to the physical environment. Looking up at the mountains and out over the ocean must have trained my eye, without my knowing it, to seek further and to see more. I think it's difficult to stay settled in your ways when you spend a lot of time next to the ocean, which presents such a challenge to ideas of solidity. I must have needed a little of that moisture, that fluidity, and that sense of things loosening up. And maybe the mountains raised my sights a little higher.

I miss the beauty of those California interludes, but I think in the end they did their job and became a part of me. Some sort of rebalancing took place that was partly to do with my studies and partly to do with the different energy I experienced on the West Coast. Never underestimate the power of place.