Places and Stories

An assigned reading for another class--Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache--brings up the notion of Place and how individuals can become fused with the landscapes they occupy. Specifically, at the end of the book, there is a reflection on a recently deceased Apache man who told stories that involved the land around him. What I found interesting, and relevant to 380, is that when this old man told these stories, he also imbued himself into the land around him. Basically, when we tell stories about places, the story AND the individual who told it both begin to live on in that specific place. I think this comes back to the idea of Hauntology.

Now that we have read a decent amount of literature about Edmonton, I find that the stories/memoirs are beginning to settle into the places that they deal with. But even more so, I feel that the authors behind these stores--at least my conception of them--are paired with their stories, existing in tandem.

But what happens when more than one author writes about a single place? It seems to me that these multiple stories become intertwined, jostling for position to be the first conception. In this manner, I think places can have a dominant story, or a dominant haunting. For example, the WCB building's dominant story has been completely changed due to the hostage situation that happened two years ago.

A question then...What is the dominant story/haunting where you live?