Mmmm. Or it could be simply that some locations are imbued with a particular atmosphere that gets under our skin. Initially, that atmosphere may not resonate with our inherent 'inner beat' and we may feel a repulsion similar to that demonstrated with 'like poles'. Over time however, we may accept that --- unwilling though we were to admit it at the time --- something about that location's atmosphere *did* satisfy something within us; a missing note within our internal melody, so to speak.
For instance, it was only years later that it dawned on me that what most personified the town I'd been so glad to leave, was a sense of stillness. The air seemed to hang motionless above and around that town. It excluded the rest of the world, or seemed to. The concerns of the wider world were filtered out. World news, tragedies, scandal, the general hurry-scurry of life .... all seemed to hit that invisible veil and dissipate. The town baked in the sun and stillness. Dogs sat for hours and stared into space. The place had the appearance and atmosphere of a timeless zone.
Although as children relocated there by our parents, we hated it. We'd been taken from a glorious beach-side lifestyle and dropped in what felt like a remote outpost on Mars. As 'outsiders' we had a hard time gaining acceptance from the town's children. We insisted there was 'nothing to do'. We initially had nothing in common with the hard-working farmer's children who all seemed to live several miles out of town. The drought was so severe the entire time we lived there that there were constant church services devoted to prayers for rain. Instead of the abundant tap-water we were used to, we had to become accustomed to surviving on the little water in our house's outdoor tanks, which were home for frogs, tadpoles and dead birds and possums ... until my father investigated the reasons for the weird black things coming out of the tap and discovered the crude mesh filters on the tanks were torn. Most hours of the day a gun could have been fired down the main street without fear of hitting anyone. Every family seemed to contain at least one mentally retarded member. These unfortunates were accepted by the townsfolk, but their behaviours were more than a bit disconcerting for we 'outsiders', until we learned to adjust to things.
The farmers were poor and scraping by, as was the land. Far from being content with their lot as is generally believed of country folk, the townsfolk and farmers were often bitter, nasty and petty. Even the weather was bizarre and couldn't be relied upon. One day sheets of corrugated iron fell from the sky and onto our school-ground, up on the hill. When we went home that afternoon, we learned something the farmers called a 'whirly-wind' had struck our detached garage, overturned my mother's car and uprooted a large, gnarly old tree in our yard. The sheets of iron which had plummeted out of the sky and onto our school yard half a mile away, had been our garage's roof. Saving grace was the fact the whirly-wind had spared our goat, which had been tethered nearby the garage.
The people seemed to us to be brutal beyond belief, and odd. In that small town lived a tiny David Niven type old man who was a Boer War veteran he said, far from his native England and fated never to return. There was a bona fide, old American Indian who'd somehow landed there and who worked as a slaughter-man. He told my father he'd come to Australia originally as part of a Wild West show. He was tiny and the most callous invidivual I've ever met, though quite polite to speak to. The village idiot and one of the town's citizens dressed identically, in dark, shabby suits and black hats with pointy crown and straight black brim all around. Though not related (we were assured), they both enjoyed creeping up behind you silently, in the dark if they could arrange it. They both had long, thin faces with pallid, melted-wax type features. The boys in the town were like little men at 13 and the girls had the worn, cowed expressions of old women. One, quite beautiful, aged eleven when I first met her, was apparently subject to habitual rape by her half-idiot father. She used to wet herself in class, poor thing, and was ridiculed. Another girl, who was only nine yet looked 60, was raped whilst walking home along a bush track after school. Nothing was done by anyone for either child. While we lived there, two small children from outlying farms were crushed to death beneath tractors. It was regarded as ' God's Will' rather than poor parenting. One girl, who looked very like the young Elizabeth Taylor, attempted to give herself an abortion apparently and nearly died from septicemia ... then suffered blindness, psychomatic possibly, and dropped out of school. Most farms contained tiny graves in the back paddock.
So, my dislike of the town was valid. But what of the haunting longing I later experienced?
Well, 25-plus years later, I drove back to that town when my own children were teenagers. I saw the surrounding countryside in new light, during the drive there. There were hillsides and fields completely covered with huge, commercially-grown yellow sunflowers, swaying in the wind. Bluffs and road-cuts of brilliant red soil, legacy of ancient volcanic activity. Tunnels of shadowy coolness, created by tree branches arching over the road. Then suddenly, the road would swing around a hillside to reveal a panoramic vista of rivers and rolling hills, far below. Off in the distance could be seen isolated farms, surrounded by fields of glorious-looking contour ploughing, often with small clumps of trees appearing like islands amidst the curving patterns of soil. We passed through half a dozen sleepy townships; seemingly self-contained and each with its own railway station, dairy, schools, business district. Finally we approached the tiny town where I'd once lived, and as we drove along the ridge I saw again the town's outlying farms and familiar rock formations. And it looked beautiful. Sure enough, as I drove through the 'spot', I sensed again the 'invisible veil' effect just before the descent into the town.
What I sometimes find myself longing for -- and which posting to this thread has helped clarify -- is the sense of peace that exists in the land surrounding the town and within the wider region. The region itself *is sparsely settled and *does possess a sense of remoteness and insulation against the concerns of the wider world. That sense of peace seems to float or hover above the ground; seems to imbue the air with a tangible stillness.
I remember walking through the bush with other kids, on the outskirts of town. Occasionally we'd stop to investigate an animal skeleton or some other thing, and I remember the total silence of it all. No cars or machinery or human sounds; just birds, insects and ... the sound of silence. During those exploratory walks, we'd sometimes climb a rock- strewn hill to discover perhaps the remnants of a homestead long gone. I remember one in particular, which I've dreamt of briefly as an adult. And what lingers is the sound of the wind through the trees, combined with the 'feeling' emerging from the forgotten homestead. Very peaceful. At rest. Very soothing to the mind. And to the spirit.
So I think now that I've worked out why that town has a haunting attraction which vies in memory with it's less appealling aspects; it's the peacefulness, the stillness, which hover in the air, in my memory. I've been to many beautiful, peaceful places, but it would seem none have possessed, or have managed to impress on my memory, the same sense of 'floating stillness' as surrounded that little, loathed town.
not sure this makes any sense!
