place ... the absence of ghosts ... no other lives had been lived
there (Malouf, 1993:110).Here Malouf shows how we react to places in spatial terms by giving them
meaning, the aetiology of which is culturally conditioned and which, in turn,
condition individual responses. Thus, the many accounts of the early Australian
convict and colonial settler’s perception of the landscape as hostile and which
produced a constant emphasis on survival with such intensity that it obliterated the
possibility of experiencing this primordial-like place for joy or reflection.
(f) Place as Existential Phenomenon
Cognised or known landscapes should be understood not only as a result of
simple neurological processes but as existential knowing as well. Sailors and
travellers with their continual moving to and away from places that are both known
and unknown ultimately experience an intense sense both of belonging and of
anomie; such knowledge may well explain the archetypal status of seamen in
mythic literature. They exemplify the idea that human existence demands a familiar
place in which to exist, to set down roots and become a part of particular place, and
in existentialist terms this might be satisfied as well by imaginal as well as actual
place.
At this point it is worth considering Martin Buber’s concept of I and Thou, a
dialogical encounter in which our fundamental attitudes of moving, intensely and
deeply, towards or away from a person, nature [ place] or the world of the mental
[ imaginal or elsewhere-place] , demarcate the basic relations of I -I t and I -Thou, and
which constitute both self and other in radically different ways:
... objectively, in terms of uses, causes, effects; or
intersubjectively and personally, that is, morally, even
aesthetically. Authenticity, responsiveness, even genuine
presentness (and thus freedom) are attained only in the I -Thou
relationship (Honderich, 1995:106).
Buber averred that it was only when a person was “ ... concentrated into a unity”
that they could proceed with an I -Thou encounter “ ... with mystery and perfection”
(Buber, 1970:134).
I n terms of relationship with actual or imaginal place, this would suggest
that the most authentic and intense I -Thou experience occurs when this
‘concentrated unity’ [ de-centred self] , a coalition of psyche and somatic stimuli,