Austin Mesick, landscapes of the sacred

Participation in deliberate ritual activity is what invariably occasions the transition from experiencing a place as topos to encountering that same place as chora. For most people in the United States, for instance, a McDonald’s restaurant offers a classic example of topos, a place without any distinctive sense of presence. “If you’ve seen one of them, you’ve seen them all.” But if you have proposed to someone you love in particular McDonald’s restaurant or experienced a life-changing conversion in another, that topos suddenly becomes a chora, intimately a part of your life” (Page 39). Well I would hope that not that many people get proposed to in McDonalds. When topos suddenly becomes a chora, this is a major changing point in ones view of a place. The first thing that came to my mind after I read this paragraph was when I made my first hole-in-one playing golf. I will never forget that feeling; it was such a feeling of accomplishment. Now whenever I am playing that hole, I always remember that one shot.