The Spirit of Place

from Jacqueline

I bet you think I've been missing in action this past few weeks. But here I am, the old book tour campaigner, back at base and trying to get back to normal - though seeing as "situation normal" has eluded me for most of my life, there's probably no good reason to find it now! So, sorry for last week's non appearance. I arrived back from the UK on Thursday night and was in the help-me-out-of-the-fog stage of jet-lag for a good 48 hours, listing to starboard around the house with one cup of tea or another, the trouble being that I kept putting that cup of tea down and forgetting where I left it, so had to make "another."

Travel brings me to thoughts of place, and one thing that has always fascinated me is the way in which the people who have been in that place - who have loved or hated that place - leave something of themselves behind. I think that's something we try to communicate as writers, not only the look and feel of a place, but the essence. Because my books are set in an historic time period, when I am in London, I try to shut out the teeming city it is today, and try to imagine the teeming city it was years ago. But I do the same thing in New York or New Orleans. In fact, I've done it all my life, looked for the spirit, tried to hear the ghosts who linger, as if asking them to tell me their story so that I can hear their voices rattling down the corridor that leads up from past.



Two well-known places come to mind as examples of the past being a place to which we can pilgrimage with our imaginations. I first visited Ellis Island about eight years ago. My friend, Corinne, and I made it down to the ferry as early as we could and were the first people stepping onto the island on that cool April morning. Most of the passengers were going to the Statue of Liberty first, so there was hardly a soul around - except the ghosts, of course. The interesting thing was the impact that the place had on me, I think because I am an immigrant to this country, and Ellis Island is a metaphor for all the hopes and dreams that we, the immigrants, hope for when we come to America, whether that journey is via Air New Zealand or with a coyote crossing the border. Today the average immigration building is like a cross between a DMV and Stassi Headquarters, and you don't get a bowl of porridge to keep you going.



As we walked around the building, almost alone, stepping in and out of interview rooms, the rooms where medical inspections took place, you could touch those walls where immigrants past etched their names while they waited with a sickness of fear in the gut, and you can feel the emotion just seeping out, as if there was so much hope, so much exhaustion, so much worry inside them that their human frame was too small a container, so it just leeched into the plaster, the tiles and the concrete. I remember touching a wall and feeling that ache of hope brush against my fingertips.



The Imperial War Museum, where I spend a lot of time when I am in London, is housed in a building that was once the Bethlem Lunatic Asylum, the oldest psychiatric hospital in the world, though it wasn't always on the Lambeth site. You've heard of "Bedlam" haven't you? That's where the word comes from, because Bethlem was spoken as Bedlam in the local dialect. As I often say, a former lunatic asylum is a perfect place for a museum of war. For the most part, the museum holds no great sense of the madness that was once incarcerated within the walls, except when you go up to the reading room, which is only available by appointment. I have been there many times, sitting at my wooden desk in silence while reading through letters sent from the western front during the war to end all wars - reading about a kind of madness, if you like. But the reading room is situated in a dome that once housed the chapel, and still has the ten commandments on wooden plaques high on the walls. I have closed my eyes in that room and almost heard the prayers echoing down the years, and felt, again, some sort of hope that came forth from those who knelt in that place, their hands pressed together as they petitioned God to deliver them from their plight.



As writers we endeavor to touch that spirit of place. Whether we are walking the streets of Miami, of Los Angeles, of New York, London, or a deserted old oil town somewhere in the desert, we are reaching out with our senses and, ultimately, our words so that ghosts can echo down the years. Even if our story is set in the here and now, and not the deep or more recent past, our understanding comes through between the lines, enabling the reader to see more than simply words on a page.




Have a lovely weekend, all.