Thinking about “place” this morning, how it is something more than a strictly physical location, I was inspired by this Emergence Magazine article “Counter Mapping” which talks about indigenous Zuni or A:shiwi ways of relating to environment, to land, and place. It also features some beautiful art (two examples shown here) and videos.
“For thousands of years, the names of places were interwoven with experiences and stories of the landscape.”
It is hard to imagine how we used to think about our connection to life before we somehow got lost or split up; to imagine that time when time, place, the ‘external’ world, along with our ‘interior’ self, were naturally considered to be one thing – or at least, familiar or well versed in each other. Not like today, with a me in here and a nature out there. As of late, I’ve become occupied as an artist, person, and animal (not necessarily in that order 🙂 ) with mending this divided “I” … or perhaps put another way, I’m interested in picking up, again, that (poetic) language that speaks around the modern boundaries of self and world.