The world is full of different places. Some may seem very big, like some stretches of desert in Nevada. Others may seem very small, like a fort that children might build in their backyard. Most places, if not all, hold a whole lot of meaning to at least someone. Often those places we grow up in hold the most meaning to us because they, in part, tell the story of our lives. As we interact with the environment, the stories of our lives are made, and thus places become connected with our memories of those interactions.

    When we move from those places we grew up in and from place to place throughout life, in our journeys we label meanings on most everything we come in contact with. Our past experiences in the places we are currently in, and from other places of our past, constantly changes our current perceptions and the meanings we attach to the places we are in at. We judge current surroundings by past circumstances. As we settle in places, particularly the most intimate places (such as a house or bedroom), we frequently have the greatest control of environmental change there and we alter our surroundings in connection with past places we've been, as well as often bring with us many physical elements from the past places we've dwelt. For myself, the way in which I perceive and interact with my dorm room is immensely influenced by my past circumstances in diverse places.

    First of all, when people move they bring a lot of physical things with them. A dorm room or any lived in space is a bit of an odd place because of this, for they consist of portable place elements. They literally can be packed up and moved to another room or dwelling. As two or three students move into the same room, it is unforgettable and very unique the way these portable places are sometimes squished together. And each of these portable places is full of stories and connections with other places and circumstances, and especially with the story of our lives.

    Almost everything in my dorm room is intimately connected with the story of my life. I think when I look at my room on daily basis, all the connected stories do not fully come to mind, yet they subtly remind me of who I am, of past circumstances, and hint of many possible futures. Most of the things in the room are out in the open for all to see. Certainly from the books I have on my shelves, much could be concluded about myself, yet there are still many stories connected with this intimate place that for a stranger to understand room's landscape in a way similar to myself, he or she would have to have either a background similar to mine, or I would have to do a lot of verbal story telling. These stories are mostly connected with people and places far away, in both time and space, from Cal Poly Pomona.

    Most recently during my final two and a half years at the university I attended previously (Brigham Young), I became very close friends with three young women. We all hung out together constantly. I really no had no romantic interest in any of them and over that time and I got into the habit of calling them my "sisters," and I became their "brother." We all lived in three different apartments, but hung out constantly in the evenings and on weekends at one of our apartments in particular. We would stay up late into the nights, playing cards and turning a brown closet door into a tree trunk by cutting out leaves from Christmas wrapping paper and taping them to the wall above the trunk, eventually taping even more leaves out across the ceiling to shelter their living room. We also drew lots of undersea things on construction paper, taped them together, and then taped them to the walls to decorate the rest of the room. We did a lot with Christmas lights too. My dorm room subtly tells this above story in the way I decorated it. Christmas lights taped as high as I could reach dangle from the walls, illuminating the room. I also recently bought a little lamp without a shade, for my desk. Inspired by my adventures in decorating my sisters' living room I took construction paper and tape and made myself a lovely green lampshade with scalloped edges. If I didn't tell you the story about my sisters, you would never known the stories and influences that are hidden in the lights.

    A couple of years before I met my sisters I met, fell in love, dated for about a year, and married a young woman from my hometown of Walnut Creek, CA. After about three months of marriage, she was getting suicidal, and wanted a divorce. We did marriage counciling for a few months after that and then divorced. We had a little contact over the following year, and I haven't seen or heard from her in several years now. Devastated emotionally at that time, and now feeling much recovered from the ordeal I still have a lot around me that hints of those past times with her.

    While we were married, the first place we lived was a little basement apartment in a subdivided slightly rundown old bungalow a few blocks from the university I spoke of earlier. When it would rain a lot, the bedroom would get a sizable puddle in the middle of the floor. When the upstairs neighbors would use the water a lot, the pipes above the bathtub would drip with cold drops of condensation as you bathed or showered. And the oven in the kitchen was so old that you actually had to light it to make it work. Talk about patina -- this place was full of it. While we lived there, attending the university, I was trying to get into the fine arts program there. One day as she was studying in the kitchen, it stuck me to draw her -- to add something more to my portfolio. She was sitting on a bar stool, an adjustable lamp was lighting the space as it clamped to one of the shelves above. She was ethnically half Chinese and half Jewish, and her rice cooker sat on one of the shelves above -- she would make rice all time. A few boxes of cereal also set on the shelves there. At the table she worked at was a toaster with it's cord curling its way up around the clamped lamp and down the other side of the shelves to a plug. The nearby window was old and coughed when forced to open. The picture I drew now sits up high and a bit hid in the shadow of a large dresser in my dorm room. Though it's not in any greatly noticable position, it tells a story -- a story of the places and circumstance that is my life's story.

    Other things reflect the story of my marriage too. The scarf that hangs on one of the square end-posts of my bed was a gift she once gave me. A small crystal framed picture of us on our wedding day is now a hidden part of the room landscape, buried deep in a clothes drawer. My wedding ring rests in the frisbee full of spare change on my desk. And the colorful orange and yellow banket on my bed, we sat on and kept warm with as we waited in line the first night Return of the Jedi was re-released in theaters.

    As you can see, some of these objects -- as ordinary as they may be (a lamp, quilt, or scarf) -- actually have deep connections with places and circumstances of my past. Some of the objects are quite old. The quilt I think was my dead aunts' and I'm sure has many untold stories hidden within it beyond my own story. The lamp and homemade shade on the other hand are quite new, but still reflect large stories. Even the frizbee and the style of lamp I chose have stories connected with places and circumstances. More significant, I feel, than those two stories is the significance of certain books on my shelves. Two hold many deep links to both many of my personal convictions and to diverse places.

    During my last two years of high school I lived in Danville, CA. The old, very small downtown there had a quaint appearance that some find highly appealing. Nevertheless, during those years I was a record enthusiast and the only place to shop for records that was nearby was the thrift/second-hand shop in the downtown. I would often go there to discover and buy old titles that captivated me, but that other people no longer found appealing. On one visit I spied an old book on a shelf. It was the Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. I remember reading his Self-Reliance essay in school a year or so before. As I read a bit of it in the shop I decided to buy it and the book has since immensely influenced by thoughts in the realms of religion and philosophy. As I've taken costume design courses in school and felt to break from the religion of my family, this book instrumentally has lead me to deny not the thoughts, logic, and creativity of my own mind. And certainly this book has influenced other aspects in the landscape of my dorm room: Many books published by diverse religious groups grace my shelves, the wallpaper on my computer is from a hilarious and playful Japanese animation series (reminding me to not always trust my serious side, and as well to reflect on many youthful times, places, and people I've known), and the crazy robe-like flowing costumes I've designed and created that grace my closet (and me usually a couple of times a week). As I have denied not the goodness of my own thoughts, as Emerson often speaks of, the intimate surroundings of my room have evolved.

    Another book on my shelves has also most notably influenced the landscape of my dorm room. Before I married I attend a small community college in Pleasant Hill, CA. Across the street from the college was a small student center which I would often hang out at, meet people, play pool, and study. One day as I sat stood in the main hallway there, I noticed a large book on a table within the niche of a wall. I picked it up and was fascinated by it. It was called A Pattern Language, and it seemed to be about how to create "ideal" places for people. "What an intriguing thought!" I thought, but really couldn't imagine a field (at the time) in which one would do such things. Several years later I discovered the field of urban planning, realized it's connections with the book, and determined that that is what I wanted to learn about in my life. I do not to agree with everything in the book, but it has immensely influenced the books I've acquired, read, and now litter my bookshelves.

    It is doubtless that other things in the landscape of this room have influenced the outcome of each other through their interaction with myself. A small camera bag full of bike tools speaks of my long relationship with bicycle riding, all the places I've cycled, all the flat tires, and it led me to add a bicycle fix-it book on my shelf that I make reference to. As well, several odd looking shoes, which I got to go with certain costumes of mine, sit on a shelf above my desk. The shoes speak too of a job I had last summer selling shoes at a department store. So much is connected to everything else. Everything here is restless. They silently quake with stories.

    Still they are my stories -- my personal interpretation of the memories and stories of places that the things in my room evoke for me. If a someone who never knew me entered my room, they might interpret everything very differently. Dell Upton in an article titled Seen, Unseen, and Scene within the book Understanding Ordinary Landscapes, claims that our landscape, all the places around us, and our interpretation of them are a result of culture. A popular definition of culture is shared, learned behavior. If I am part of the greater American culture, then it stands to reason, that if someone entered my room, they might value in the same way the same things I do in that landscape. In context of intimate spaces such as bedrooms or dwellings, I think this rule only partially applies because these are places of such deep personal expression. In this light, how could someone interpret the landscape of my dorm room the same way I do and how does self-expression of past events take place?

    Perhaps a stranger entered my room. They may be familiar enough with the general popular culture of the world to know that most artists sign their name at the bottom of pictures. This is definitely a shared and learned understanding. When the stranger sees my name at the bottom of all the pictures and then spies my nametag on the bedpost (a remnant of new student orientation from this summer that I never quite got to throwing out), they might put the pieces together and realize that the resident there (me) is also an artist. Nevertheless, the deeper stories behind the pictures, the stranger may never know. He might find them out by pulling one of my journals off the shelf, but even still his or her experience in that dorm room landscape will not be precisely the same as mine.

    If the stranger has had cultural experiences similar to my own, then the power of the elements of the landscape will touch us both in a similar way. For example, say the stranger read some of my diaries on the shelf and discovered that I am divorced, that the picture in the shadows is my former spouse, that I love reading Emerson, and designing strange costumes. Let us say that the stranger is divorced from a spouse also but never read a word of Emerson. Although my own divorce was nearly four years ago, I have never experience emotional suffering as great in all of my life as then. They perhaps went through that pain too and suddenly upon learning of our similarities (being in a similar cultural group -- "divorcees"), experiences the place of my dorm room, and the picture on the wall in a new light they never had -- and similar to my own landscape interpretation there. But having not read Emerson, they will not understand, as many seem to not, my love for designing costumes very different than than most anything people wear on the streets. In the realms we have culturally similar experiences, it is more likely we will have interpretational unity.

    Besides having shared learned experiences, people can gain interpretational unity through deduction. If when the stranger first enters the room, they detect the flowing colorful robes in the closet, and an open notebook full of sketches on the desk, through their own logic they may detect, as Upton stated, "the unseen forces the scene… confess[es]." They might ask themselves, "Who have they met? What books have they read? Where were they raised and schooled? [culminating in…] What kind of influence could have brought about such a divergence from cultural dress codes?" They might conclude that I am simply a consumed artist, am part of a theater group, belong to some strange religious group, or perhaps discovered and adopted certain cultural philosophies -- in my own mind it is the fourth, and a little of the first. Many times the reasons for things in the landscape can be inferred from the landscape itself -- that is, again, if one's cultural background is similar enough to the creator of the landscape. What determines "similar enough" is difficult to say, but for instance, if you were from another culture and had little idea what the unspoken cultural dress code was, then you couldn't even start question the situation. Furthermore, if you knew little of the religious context of popular western culture, then such knowledge would aid you in rightly deducing whether the costumes were something religiously odd or not. If backgrounds are not similar enough, the unseen forces will continue unseen.

    Also in the room are many other unseen forces which one could use for deducing cause and effect -- leading to possibly feeling similar values toward landscape features. The cartoon wallpaper on my computer, my computer itself, the shipping box in the trash for a computer part I needed and recently purchased from an online retailer, the telephone and answering machine sitting atop the microwave, the microwave, even the factory manufactured ceiling lamp and bunk beds -- these symbolize other, greater powers at work in the room. Upton speaks of a many corporate symbols (such as "Mr. Goodwrench, Ronald MacDonald, Joe Camel", etc. that symbolically hide influence and power behind them and from their audience. I argue here that this idea of symbology unarguably can be carried to include even the most prosaic objects -- such a telephone. These great powers behind ordinary things have immense influence in our lives. If I didn't pay my phone bill, I would have my phone disconnected. I don't rely on my phone very much since most of my social and school connections are made through face to face contact, but for some people, their phone is literally half their life. One of my roommates is on his cellphone half the night with his girlfriend is San Luis Obispo. If he had his phone service shut off, that would be a very bad thing to him. The phone company is a powerful influence in his life. Thus the phone, as simple as it is, represents an enormous unseen force in the dorm room landscape. The same can be said of all the other things I mentioned above.

    Upton also speaks of memorials and how people have different interpretations of them. Culture (shared, learned behavior), can lead people to similarly value memorials in the landscape. The word memorial (derived from the word memory) is used to help us remember something, or things -- or perhaps as we create and erect them they kind of symbolize things we can't seem to forget. We keep dialogues going in our mind concerning the places and circumstances of the past. Creating personal memorials is a way for us to carry on those dialogues -- not within our heads, or with other people, but in other ways -- visually and in other physical manners. From the standpoint of an intimate place, like a dorm room, personally made and/or positioned memorials can be so personal that few if anyone else will really understand it -- besides the person to whom it belongs. I think for me, memorials help me find greater peace and resolve in my life. The drawing on the wall of my former wife, the lamp shade, and even the cartoon computer wallpaper are all sort of memorials to women I've been close to in my life. I also have a civil rights movement calendar on my desk with daily quotes from leaders of the movement to remind me that there are people without the same rights socially as I because of the color of their skin or their sex. This also seems to me as a personal memorial. As an undergrad I took a lot of classes about the civil rights movement in America and don't want to forget that there are still great inequalities in our nation and in the world that need overcoming. Another kind of memorial I really take pride in. During the new student orientation, just before the quarter began, my dorm won an all-day dorm competition -- and we got to be so cocky about it too. Anyone walking around our dorm will see these little metals hanging from bedroom smoke alarms and from bed posts. They gave us all these fake Olympic-type metals (and a huge trophy now on display in the first floor lobby). Anyway, the metals are now a memorial that is part of the landscape of the dorm. And now, with these mental dialogues continuing in a physical form, helps me make flesh and better understand (in my own mind) the past. As time goes on too, memories fade, but these physical memories will not -- even after everyone graduates and moves out of the dorm, perhaps someone will write in their diary or press the metal between its pages -- that the dialogue will go on.

    As I have shown in eariler examples, everyone interprets past places and times a bit differently. An African American who had come a long ways to march on Washington, D.C. and hear Martin Luther King, Jr. speak will most definitely find a much different meaning from the calender than an young Caucasian such as myself. On the other hand, people that do not know me personally would not understand the meanings, people, places, and stories behind the other sort-of-memorials I have related to people. And only if you were from Montecito, my dorm, could you really feel the pride of the metal (people from my dorm even this far into the quarter are still so prideful about living in Montecito). Lacking knowledge of the sub-cultures I've been apart of and peoples I've been close to would certainly limit an outsider's understanding of the personal memorials in my dorm room.

    Generally most people in western culture do have much in common with each other to find shared meanings in things and places, but as can be seen above, when the landscapes of intimate places are examined, objects tend to have much more personal meanings and thus it becomes more difficult to find shared interpretation.
 Nevertheless, these portable living places called dorms, hold enormous meaning to their occupants who created and inhabit them. For myself, it a place of dialogues, of stories, that as they are told, perhaps not all may understand, but the one creating the dialogues and memorials through silent verbalization does. The stories of places and circumstance in past times echo through it all. Most everything has some story within it and in part, the place tells the story of someone's life.
 
 

References:

Alexander, Christopher, et al. 1977. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.

Groth, Paul and Bressi, Todd W. 1997 Understanding ordinary landscapes. New Haven: Yale University Press