In the Presence of Absence

To live in a place is to be keenly aware of the presence of absences. What makes a place a place, and not just a somewhere, are the particularities of the lives of that place and the stories those lives imply. To live in a place requires the development of a gentle love for that place. That the love must be gentle is required by the notion that love does not demand or consume its objects. This love is an entering into the presence of a place and its creatures - a sort of awareness that grows with time and attention. Over the time that is necessary to attune that attention to a place, there will inevitably be losses that, while real, do not make the place lesser, but rather fill that place with the memory of their presence. The gully that marks the beginning of the Snake Creek watershed that crosses our place is not made lesser by the absence of water from it in the late summer. Rather, it stands as a testament to the absence of water that came in the spring and will return again next spring.

There are absences that do not leave a physical mark on a place, nor do they promise the return of a presence with the changing of a season. Nevertheless, these absences can be as constitutive of being present in a place as the things that are immediately present. Around our farm, the land is named for the people who once lived their, even if they have been dead and gone for over fifty years. So, on our farm, there is the Jarvis place, Keith's place, Gaston's, the North Place, and the Old Farm. I never knew anyone in these parts by the name Jarvis, that family was long gone before my mother ever even moved to this part of the country. Keith died when I was a boy. The North Place is a half section across the road to the north of our home section that used to house the farm of my Grandfather when he was just newly married. The Old Farm is the original farmstead that is now so utterly destroyed that I myself am unsure exactly where it was. Yet in these places, the families and stories they imply are as present in our family economy as our flesh and blood neighbours who farm alongside us today.

To love a place is to come into the presence of that place and to feel deeply the knowledge that comes from seeing and being seen. In the seeing and being seen of living in a place, love grows in knowledge, and carries with it the presence of that place and the people and creatures therein. Even in the absence of those beloved things with which one is filled with the knowledge of, there is a certain presence of them, and so, absences become an experience of fullness. In our continued being present, we carry our dead, beloved, and missing ones with us; remaining in their presence despite their absence.