About "Place"

   Our experience with "place" is an inherently emotional one.  The places we remember most or that affect us most are the places that gave us an emotional reaction.  I've been in various gas stations, but I don't remember any of them because there was no emotional connection.  I was there, gassed up my car, and left.  One gas station though, I do remember vividly.  I remember that one because I got into a car accident there when I was a teenager and there was a definite emotional response.  Maybe this could be one of the differences between a "place" and a "non-place".  Places give us more of an emotional response, while non-places don't.

    Because of this emotional connection between the person and the place, it is important when viewing and describing a certain place to do so, as Marc Auge said "[in] his 'here' of the moment".  How we feel when we are in a place can change drastically depending on when we are there.  If a person were to visit a place like Disneyland as a child, and then return when grown, the emotional experience would be very different because of the difference in time.  That difference affects not only the person, but the place itself, making the experience different for each person as time goes on.  Thus we cannot visit and analyze a place based on memories of the past because both the observer and the place have changed since then, changing the experience.

   In the same way we cannot experience a place based upon the experience of others.  I can't expect to have the exact same experience visiting a place as someone else, because even though we could be both in the same place at the same time, the emotional response we have from that place could be very different.  For example if two people go to a popular sports game perhaps one person is thrilled by the energy of the crowd and the exciting pace of the event, while the other person only thinks of how cold and cramped they are in the stadium.  So for the observer it isn't just the "'here' of the moment"  but "his 'here' of the moment".  Observing and experiencing a place is very personal.  Each person that visits a place has a connection to it, that connection is formed by emotions. And the emotions that each person has in a given place are unique, not only to the person, but to the moment in which that person is there.