Nod to the French

This story begins with a lot.

In truth, it will also contain a lot of bullshit and memories, sadness and joy, gain and loss, courage and cowardice, learning and growth, opportunity and crime, deconstruction and reconstruction, history and renaissance. And, yes, this tale is definitely about a lot of beginnings and ends, tears and laughter, heartache and love, greens and blues. There will be a lot of characters to meet, both heroes and villains, human and animal and plant. And throw in a lot of discovery about new things and the self and community, plus a little soul and spirit. There will even be a lot of music and food, DIY and secret gardens.

But, to be specific, this plot starts with just a lot, a vacant lot to be exact. 

The French , never one to shy away from a beautiful expression for even the messiness of life, coined the term Terrain Vague to describe the hidden edges of the urban landscape, undefined areas like trash-filled alleys, the weedy space along a railroad track and or the forlorn vacant lots. Roughly translated into our too concise English it becomes "wasteland" or "vacant lot" without the mention of earth or ambiguity.  The Spanish Architect Ignasi de Solà-Morales expanded upon the French expression and used it to describe how these spaces are a sort of contradiction to the lucrativeness of urban capitalism. He proposed that these transitory spaces were unquantifiable and escaped the logic of traditional urbanism and that this very absence of contemporary metropolitan value gave a Terrain Vague it's own freedom to be whatever it wanted to be. Later this concept would be borrowed by artists to describe the feeling of a blank canvas before it becomes a work of art.

And here we shall begin the tale of such a lot., another blank canvas. It was purchased for a miserly sum from the city because it's purpose no longer had value in a contemporary metropolis. I saw the freedom in this space, daydreamed about what it could be. It stretches lazily north to south, a yawning gap left after a decrepit house was demolished by the claw of a bulldozer. It is two doors down from the formerly abandoned house I call home, also a Terrain Vague in its own right. Jurisdictionally, it belongs to a neighborhood that has also lost some of its former definition and value, a place of deep historical roots and the trauma of time and politics. And now it now belongs to this woman; I have also known the trauma of time and politics.

So, let's begin this tale about a pretty little lot named, with a knowing little nod to the French, Terrain Vague No. 1.

December 2018