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slateberry

A good explanation of why I love my old house--how bout you?

slateberry
12 years ago

I was reading an article in Wired about the surprisingly high incidence of visitors becoming overtaken with the certitude that they are the messiah (The God Complex, Wired March 2012), and came on this passage. As you read it, substitute a few words, and you could be talking about your beloved old house:

"Like every city, it's the combination of architecture and storytelling that makes Jerusalem more than just a crossroads. Great cities, the places that feel significant and important when you walk their streets, always rely on stagecraft--a deftly curving road, finely wrought facades, or a high concentration of light-up signage can all impart a sense of place, of significance. This architectural trickery can even instill a feeling of the sacred. The colonnades around St. Peter's square at the Vatican, the rock garden at Ryoanji temple in Kyoto, and the pillars at the Jamarat bridge near Mecca all shoot laser beams of transcendence into the brain of the properly primed visitor. "Part of the experience of going to these places is the interweaving of past and present," says Karla Britton, an architectural historian at the Yale School of Architecture. "There's a collapse of time. And for some people who visit these sacred sites and spaces, this collapse can be psychologically disorienting."

(--end quote--)

Substitute healing, inspiring, or calming for the last word of the quote, and you've got my house.