The universal house
Thinking about universal categories
and universal in general, I started meditating about the universality
of space and time.
This happened when I collected my
things in order to move house, once more. I got used to it. My
parents used to move house quite often and later, due to my studies I
was motivated to see the world and change my accommodation, my centre
of live and my home several times. Seventeen times until I was thirty
years old. Then, I stopped counting. Nevertheless, I never meditated
on it. It appeared almost natural to me. There was a time, when I was
little child, moving to a new house was like before Christmas. What
would the new place reveal, what would it be like to be there and
what could we get there. Later, I was about ten, it felt awful.
Loosing house meant loosing friends. Did it?
Moving house often is not the life a
Gipsy. A Gipsy, like a charcoal keeps her home, her family relations
and her culture throughout the journey. I had to change not only
geographically, but also to fit into a new cultural background,
language, religion and the way things are done. Certainly, family and
some friends remain. But the relationship with them changes. They do
not necessarily travel with me. So, the relation with them is
sometimes more from a distance and sometimes more on a daily communal
bases.
How does one adapt to this
phenomenon of changing space throughout time? What remains when space
changes.
One of the most hurtful experiences,
for me, was that you can never go back, not only in time but also in
space. Returning to a familiar space can ext range more than finding
home in a new place. Because, things change and spaces reshape their
structure. People evolve their habits and culture differently than
yourself in a distance place. Nature and architecture form a new
image, new limitations and new freedom.
And what this about, recollecting
your things, when you make your baggage to leave for a new home? Some
things you though away and some you keep. There are things you keep
all your life, others you wish you’d not thrown away earlier and
than, there are these funny objects, you’re never sure while you
still keep them. But they just don’t bother you enough to be thrown
away. There are useful objects and symbolic ones. Their value is
measured according to what can be substituted in a new place and how
much you need them to be you.
But you, change too. No one shows
that more than a familiar space. Moving not only makes you evolve in
a different manner. It makes you also keep your constitution where
others have evolved.
Your friends, your real friends and
your family are always there. Always, until they move to another
place. A place beyond our space. And the question returns. What
remains?
Moving house often makes you feel
sometimes that everything changes always. But if this was really
true, what makes sense at the end? If everything passes away, what
are we responsible for? Then, I walk a street in the city where one
of my ancestors is honoured and I understand. The way we walk the
space, the things that move with us and the people that co-evolve is
our act, too. We shape space.
