The Alchemy Of A Town

To speak about a town or a city is alchemy in action. A name for a town does not simply represent a point on a map or a certain set of buildings and roads. When someone refers to a city, something emerges that is very amorphous. It cannot be understood logically because it is a name for something that is not easily defined. It is, in fact, truly mystical.

The collective spirit of a certain place, spun in the head of the observer, actually becomes a mythology. It is born from the interaction between those who live in a certain place and the land itself. It is a product of nature, history, climate, terrain, and the plants and animals as well.

The image we encounter when thinking about a specific place is not created by population statistics or any other amount of dry information. Instead, it exists in the consciousness of human beings, not as a set of facts but as a shared entity.

There is no way to prove this. You can, however, experience it yourself. Say the name of your hometown. Watch what arises in your mind. It’s not a location that is there; it is a spiritual force evoked, or perhaps invoked, by simply calling it up.

No two towns have the same spirit behind them.

A river city is a different beast from a mountain town. The alchemy here is the interaction between human beings and the rocks, minerals, water, animals, and plants that are in a certain spot on the globe, all of which have mixed together in the ether to form a unique “creature.”

This interaction creates a thing that exists in the mind, as far as we yet know, yet is very real. It is a fantasy of sorts that is held in the imagination by every inhabitant and visitor, a Platonic vision of corporate beingness that comes to life inside everyone who has been in a particular town or city. In this way, we daily speak of and interact with the supernatural, only we rarely notice.