We are not in a place the way a tree or a rock is in a location. We are in a place as the motion of the sustaining and the repetition (and so the re-making) of the grammar of the place.
That sense of spaciousness and process may feel like a condition of exile. It is true we will never have a firm and final home, but it is equally true that we are not floating disconnected from any historical identities and places.
All inhabitation involves a spaciousness that is part of what it means to exist in time. In order to be places for us, our places are porous to and penetrated by references and links. While no set of local meanings can close totally around us, there are many ways to make it appear that this is the case, and we can be enlisted in efforts to hold the horizon closed.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001