Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Writing about Your Own Personal Geography
Choose a spot that brings back a rush of sensory details—sights, sounds, smells, textures, and tastes. It doesn’t need to be an enormous natural wonder like the Grand Canyon. Try describing a private spot—a certain tree in your backyard, a basketball court, a relative’s dining room, the corner of a city lot, the interior of a closet, or a window seat that catches sunlight. As you think about the specifics of this place—its details and sensations—you’ll probably remember a dominant impression, a cluster of images, or a person connected to the place. These are all part of your internal landscape. Write a few short descriptive paragraphs with as many details as you can.
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Right across the street from the federal court house in Boston is a small restaurant called The Barking Crab. Set right on the water on the edge of the city, it has an incredible view on the city on one side and a view of the World Trade Center and hotels on the other, but what most people miss is a rusty old bridge that is now used only for pedestrians. The bridge makes an appearance in The Boondock Saints, but people driving will hardly notice it anymore. Just across the bridge is where the famous James Hook Lobster Co. used to stand before a fire, now it is just a trailer. In the Shadows of the Boston Harbor hotel, and the skyscrapers, these locations are overlooked because of their surroundings. Set on the water, they have a sea breeze smell, and with a seafood restaurant and market, they smell and taste like the ocean.
ReplyDeleteWalking into The Barking Crab, you see everything from businessmen and women, to construction workers and police, to families or the lucky tourists who found out about this gem. The atmosphere is cozy, decked out with ocean paraphernalia, but also on the covered patio, picnic benches where you’re sat across from your friend and net to a complete stranger. Set you share ketchup, vinegar, plastic buckets of plastic wear, and such. What you get is comfort, and some of the freshest seafood in New England. The bridge next to James Hook and The Barking Crab used to be the soul route over the water into the city from this section of Boston, now it has past, people miss out on two great locations.
Our family farm. This was my childhood home that I vistited every weeked from the age of 2 until I was 12 years old and my family decided to move miles away from it. I close my eyes and I see it in my mind and its aura is appealing to my emotions evoking nostalgic sentiments. It's like any farm except it is special to me more than anything else. It has two main houses on its property, one belonging to my parents serving as their "summer" house that they never used and I didn't care much for either. I stayed with my aunt and uncle and my cousins in their quaint little cottage-like house that was more comfortable to me than my real home. Every morning would be marked by the rooster call announcing to everyone it is time to work. Even though I was more annoyed by the dreaded animal, and continued sleeping, it was still a signal reminding me I am still home and I am still safe. I would gradually be awakened by the aroma of breakfast sneaking through the cracks letting me know that it was time to eat. My grandmother's homecooking could not compare to anything I have ever eaten. It was always fresh and hot. Sometimes too hot! But that was just another quirky thing I liked there. After breakfast, I would run outside bugging everyone possible. They complained that they minded but I think they were entertained by me. The freedom of being able to run wild in the green grass that was taller than me was more appealing than anything else. I hated the busyness of the city and the cold concrete which is why enjoyed the farm so much. I picked flowers, barries, napped all while sun was shining on me with its radiant rays.
ReplyDeleteThe farm is the only, consitant memory from my childhood. I still to this day remember the sweet scent of the grass and the fresh air wrapped around my tiny, fragile body. These are some of the best memories of my life and it makes me miss it just writing about it. I am, however, satisfied with the mental picture I have of it because it brings nothing but happy and warm feeelings.
Oddly enough, one of the places I'm most intimate with is a house in montana that I've only spent 7 weeks of my entire life in. It was the house my Grandparents rented for our family reunion/ski trip every year in Big Sky, Montana. When you enter, you're greeted by a stone floor, perfect for stomping the snow off your ski boots. Going in, there's a little coffee table with a chessboard carved into it and two chairs on opposing sides. I remember never being able to bear my uncle or my grandfather at chess.
ReplyDeleteI have a perfect mental map of every part of that house, except for the rooms where the adults slept. As kids, we had no reason to go there, so we didn't. Downstairs was a room with a pool table (whose deterioration from worse renters than us was quite noticeable over the years), and from that was access to a pool. The pool never saw much use, but the hot tub on the deck outside did. I'm getting flashes of when me and my cousins would sit in the hot tub and dare eachother into progressively more ludicrous stunts involving running out into the snow when the temperature was often hovering around 0.
For some reason though, I can't remember the smell of the place. Usually I have very strong smell flashbacks, but for some reason the only smell that comes to mind is the one that hangs in the air right before it snows.
Oh, and there was a bear skin hanging on the wall, claws and all. Overall the place had a strong wild west theme.
The spot that stirs up the most emotions and memories for me is a table. In my old house, this table was in the center of our kitchen. Round and wooden, always freshly polished, it is the place my family grew up. Ever since my first house burned down at the age of five, this table has been involved in my family. Every holiday, every birthday, and every night for family dinner we would meet here. It was a closing to each year and to each day and the entire family would filter in and out on various nights. Around the same time every night I would return home from school and dance and my brothers would be finishing their various sports practices and the second I walked in the door I knew exactly where I belonged. The smells were always intoxicating, my mom being an amazing cook and always knowing when to expect us. My dad would walk in from work and for a brief moment each day our busy lives would stop and we would be together, saying grace, appreciating how fortunate we were to have one another. The significance of the table only grew as time passed. Last year my family suffered the deaths of both my Grandmother who suffered from cancer and my uncle who had a long history of substance abuse. In the years before their deaths we would see them, grandma on Sunday and Uncle Mike on Tuesday. We would forget the burdens they were baring and we would go around the table and reflect on one another’s days pretending a less than perfect test score was the worst thing any of us needed to worry about. That table was an escape. Now it sits in the guesthouse of my family’s new home, unoccupied by my sister and I because were both away for school. When we return home we see the scratches and the dents and the holes in the wood, made from four children poking and prodding lovingly over the last fifteen years and we are reminded of the way that table has brought our family together and both celebrations and suffering we have faced there together.
ReplyDeleteImmediately when we began discussing this topic, I thought about my cottage, which is one of my favorite places in the world. Its on a beautiful, but tiny lake. I love to water ski, tube, jet ski, really anything involved with the water I enjoy so when I’m at my cottage I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been going there with my immediate and extended family my entire life so I have memories from my child hood as well as recent years. These are some of the best memories I have. Its always mayhem when the entire family is staying. Someone is crying, someone is screaming, something is being broken, and something else is attempting to be fixed. I swear a different boat or jet ski breaks down every time we go. Since the lake is so small I can hear all the laughter and conversations from everyone around the lake. The smell of boat exhaust and pine perfume the air and even though its never quite warm enough the sunny is usually shining. Someone is always doing an impressive wake boarding jump or water ski pyramid that I watch while tanning on my raft. My best guy friends from high school, who have a cottage on the same lake are always knee boarding and falling off in front of my dock or attacking me with water balloons. On the Forth of July everyone parks their boats in the middle of the lake to watch the fire works that are ignited off the island. At the end of the day I walk into the house and smell my grandpas homemade spaghetti sauce cooking on a stove. We pack up snack and cocktails and take the pontoon boat out and ride around the lake as the air starts to cool and the sun goes down. My grandpa tells the same crazy stories about all the summers the spent there while my mom and her brothers were growing up. If anyone new ever comes to visit he gives them the full tour of who lives where and what cottages he had owned in the past. When the loop around the lake is finally complete and all the snacks are gone we all go in the house to eat an overwhelmingly huge, but delicious meal. Overall just thinking about Bass lake puts me in a good mood and I look forward to the time I can spend there this coming summer!
ReplyDeleteA specific area that is important to me can be found in my hometown of Aspen Colorado. Aspen’s landscape incorporates unparalleled beauty and a variety of geographical phenomena’s. The town is nestled at the base of Ajax, an immense figure that looms over the town. My spot of interest is located directly adjacent to this mountain on a hill called smuggler. Up nearly 2 miles on this mountain is a lone bench that is serenely situated amidst a thick cluster of aspen trees. The view from this bench is breathtaking as it overlooks the entire city of aspen and Ajax in all its massive glory. Friends and family cherish the privacy of the bench’s location and preserve its location amongst permanent residents of the town. The spot to me represents a serene entity that comforts the frantic and offers insight when no obvious conclusion can be found. It is a place of solace and meditation where all worries, anxieties and fears are instantly put into perspective. This spot has an innate ability to cleanse the soul of agitation and leave its visitors with a refreshed outlook on their unique situations.
ReplyDeleteEvery weekend, my family and I would visit my grandma’s house just a few minutes away from our house in the foothills of LA. This was no ordinary house of a grandma. My mom’s side of the family is from Armenia, and many people don’t know about it, but it is culturally very similar to the Greek culture. My grandma’s house, every weekend would be the house where the neighbors, family, and friends would get together. I always describe the setting as the scene from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” where they have a party at her house. Most of the men are outside, drinking and barbecuing lamb and beef kabob, while most of the woman are inside cooking the side dishes while chit-chatting about the latest gossip. The air is filled with the smell of basmati rice, kabob, and spices.
ReplyDeleteEvery weekend, I would help my mom cook the rice and make the salads, while all the other ladies asked noisy question, and why I spent all my time reading books. Even though my family is loud and in-your-face about everything, these times at my grandma’s house were probably the most important times in my childhood. Every time I think about her house, I think of that warm comfortable place where I can enjoy spending time with my loud, sometimes annoying,culture-rich family.
The place that brings back the most emotional response for me is the wrestling room at my high school. Strange, right? I obviously don't look like a wrestler and in fact my connection to this room has nothing to do with the sport for which it is named. This is because from the months of March to November, this room was the practice space for another team at my high school: the cheerleading team, which I was a part of for all four years.
ReplyDeleteThis room is rather hard to find for someone who has never been there before. In fact, I remember the first time I tried to find it. It was spring of my 8th grade year and I was on my way to the tryouts that would help put together the Cheerleading team for the following year. I had been to the high school many times, but never to the wrestling room. I got extremely confused and had to ask for directions from the front office. But I finally did make it to this tiny little room covered in red wrestling mats with 9, evenly spaced circles printed on them. There is a small set of bleachers at the far end of the room and the walls are all white except for one red stripe the frames the room. The names of all of our school's State Champion wrestlers are painted on the brick walls as well. Two doors lead from the larger hallway that most people come through, and then there is one smaller door on the opposite side. This door, I soon learned, leads to a much smaller hallway where the Cheerleading storage room is. During the time that the cheer team is practicing in there, you can find five blue cheer mats rolled up and standing on end near the bleachers. In my experience, we spend more time hiding behind these thing in order to either make our coach mad or jump out and scare a friend than we did jumping, tumbling, and stunting on them.
This room is not elegant or complex by any means, but the way I connect with it is has played a great roll in my life. During my four years in high school I spent at least 10 hours in this room each week (much longer during competition season) with the twenty girls who, other than my immediate family, mean the most to me out of anything else in my life. Even when there was a girl or two on my team who I did not necessarily get along with, I was just as protective and supportive of them as my younger sister, sometimes more if I thought they needed it (which they did a great deal of the time!).
My senior year I became one of six captains for our team. Three of the other girls who were el capitanos, as my coach liked to call us, had been my best friends since our freshman year on the JV team, and we are still best friends to this day. One of them is getting married this summer and the other three of us will serve as her bridesmaids. The wrestling room is where we spent countless hours laughing, sweating, crying, and yelling (either at each other or during a cheer). It brought me some of the best friends I have ever had and taught me how to be a leader. This room, which many people only associate with the sweaty guys in their spandex uniforms, to me signifies friendship, emotion, and overall, my four years in high school.
Coloradan. Coloradoan. Whichever you believe is correct, that’s what I am. I was born in Denver at St. Joe’s right off of Park and 17th, the very same hospital where my Mom and Grandma were born. Since then I’ve moved out of the city, but Colorado is still very much my home. I’ve lived in several different cities along the Front Range, but wherever I am, I always love looking at Longs Peak – or for those of you from Longmont, Twin Peaks. I spend the majority of my childhood growing up just outside of Longmont. Every day headed to school, I was lucky enough to see the most beautiful view of the mountains imaginable. Directly east of Twin Peaks, Hwy 119 shoots right into the center of the mountain, perfectly parallel to the glacier that separates Longs Peak from Mt. Meeker. Glorious is the only way to describe the view, especially on fall or spring mornings. Driving into school just as the sun’s rays crept down the mountain, slowly melting away the frost of night, just as Longmont awakes is truly a divine and magical experience. Moving to Brighton and now to Denver, I still can my Longs Peak, though Mt. Meeker plays hide-and-seek behind it. Every once in a while, I catch a glimpse through a clearing of trees or climbing up to the fourth floor of Sturm. It’s a different perspective, but it is still my mountain, stoic and majestic as always. There it is, my Longs Peak.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived in California a favorite place of mine to go was along the ridgeline to where I could see the most of the San Francisco Bay. There was an open space where there were no almost no trees and no development. I would go up there on my own or with friends or with family and we would walk in the open plain and head towards a massive eucalyptus tree which had sprung up along the very Western edge of the ridge before the golden hills dropped down into housing developments. There was a rope swing hanging from one of the "lower" branches (how someone was able to get it up there I have no idea) and you could sit there or on the pile of rocks on the other side of the tree and watch the sun set over Sausalito or the fog role in and out over the hills and the Golden Gate. The rocks were sharp and the shards of hundreds of beer bottles were littered across them, making them foreboding and slightly dangerous. They were also sprayed in some places with graffiti, the marks of some amature artists who had left their ugly marks on the landscape.
ReplyDeleteThere was always a strong wind that blew through the curved leaves of the tree and brought in the scent of the bay or of the fog or of the rain. But when there was a pause in the breeze you could smell the distinct smell of the tree and the eucalyptus leaves.
This past summer I went back to California with the intention of making a stop, however brief there only to find that the residents who lived on the edge of the open space had closed the area to all foot traffic as it was an annoyance to them. Of this I am still disappointed as it this place was not only special to me, but to others who walked up there to get away from civilization or to simply get a better view.
There is a place in the world that I feel defines me as a person. It is a relatively unknown island off the coast of Vancouver, CA called Galiano. This island is very significant to me in that it holds much of my history. As I look back at this place, I can still vividly feel and see many events that occurred. Some of these events took place more than a decade ago, yet I can see them as though they just happened. As I think about Galiano, I can feel the smooth ocean breeze along my skin. This breeze lightly moves the wind chimes which produce a soothing noise that calms me. The smell of the ocean and thriving life is all around me as I stare over the horizon. The sunlight is shining bright and allows for a perfect view of everything around me. As I think about this island, my brother is one of the first things that pops into my head. He is playing in the large puddles in the rock, looking for baby fish to catch while laughing away. I remember the sheer joy when we used to spend time together. He would always tell me what to do and, being the younger brother, I would obey. Even though we fought with each other back then, we made up with each other and eventually had even more fun together. This is all after thinking about one quick glance of Galiano. To me, this island is my favorite place to be. I have a history there and I am tied to the island emotionally. I remember not only the good things, but the bad things as well. One time we went for an entire week and every single day it rained. This changed the mood of everyone else on the entire trip except my brother and I. We were just happy to be there. One time I stepped on a dead wasp that made its way into the house. That was the first time I had ever been stung and was crying my eyes out. As I walked outside to put my foot in my grandmother's homemade remedy, I was stung by another wasp on the same foot. Its things like these that make Galiano personal to me. There are both good and bad things that have happened there, but this is a very special place. These memories tell me how I feel and perceive Galiano for what it is to me.
ReplyDeleteThere one specific place in my hometown in Puebla, Mexico that I still feel great melancholy towards. I lived in a suburb near downtown Puebla. As my community began emerging into a more urbanized territory, a long and sandy road remained. From this road, an evergreen and majestic landmass stood, unviolated by human action. Columns of giant trees, beautiful flowers and smooth grass whose odor instilled a sense of internal peace whenever I came home from school. Almost every evening I would roam around this tremendous terrain and the same sensation from grasping dandelions, fragant violets and other natural wonders would make each and every single day a beautiful one. The wind breeze hitting me felt like the beautiful and calm embrace of nature itself. These images astonished me nearly 10 years ago. This place defined me as a lover of nature and our planet. I still feel this fervent love for that one landscape in my mind. Even though so much time has passed, and that sandy road is now a paved and modernized road. That terrain has retained its purity and maybe one day, I'll be back and those sensations will remain the same even though so much time has passed.
ReplyDeleteMy old house. I lived there for 10 years. The first thing I think of when I think about it is the open space by the doorway. I choose that place because from that doorway, you can see inside of the house, and as soon as you turn around you can also see the street that it faces. I also choose that place because that is where friends and strangers come in and leave. That is where we would say goodbye and then 45 minutes later end up sitting on the couch trying to finish telling a story. That is the place associated with comedy because you couldn’t stand there with more than three people and not feel awkwardly close. That little space by the door of my old house is unremarkable yet simultaneously significant.
ReplyDeleteThis little open space is made of white linoleum and is about 8 ft by 6 ft. We put a green rug there to cover it. When you come into the house, there is a closet on the right side that stores everything but coats. You wouldn’t be able to have the front door and the closet door fully open at the same time. On the left is the great room. The living room and the dining room are connected. In front of you, you would see the stairs that led to the basement, and the walkway that leads to the kitchen and living room. On the right there would be the narrow hallway that hosts the doorways to the laundry room, bathroom, and two bedrooms. It is smaller than it sounds. Behind you, you would hear the roaring of cars sense we lived on a main street and hear children playing in the park that the people at the Home Owners Association took 8 years to build. You would see how the front lawn is oddly steep, and that is part of the reason it was so dangerous to play with a soccer ball. That and the fact that we lived on the corner didn’t help. From that small doorway, you would be able to smell the toast that I burned, and the soap from the laundry room. You would be able to hear the cars pull up and see people you know or have yet to met walk from around the corner. You would be able to get the essence of my old house from that one space in the doorway.
When I envision the doorway of my old house, I envision looking into my house and smelling food in the kitchen and hearing the TV. I take off my shoes and leave them at the door, only to get yelled at by both of my parents. I associate my family with this place, and that is why it so significant to me.
There’s one place that brings back a rush of memories, and it’s Multnomah Falls in Oregon. There’s always dew in the air and I would always go up there on a family trip. I remember the general calmness yet torrent of water that surrounded the place. It was always very tranquil. The trees grew around the falls in a way that they would block out various rays of sunshine and create a wonderful picture of shadow and light around the place. The most prominent sent however was that of clean air, since the falls were located outside of any major city the air was the freshest, cleanest air you could find. Growing up my most favorite part of the location was the bridge that would traverse the falls since it was a two tiered waterfall with one fall dropping into a small lake/pond which would feed into another waterfall. I have a very good personal connection with the place as my grandfather would take the grand kids up there every year for a daylong vacation. It’s a wonderful location that brings back many memories of my childhood (for better or for worse).
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