Friday, January 29, 2010

ADAM K ON SHARED SPACE – 1

THE BED’S TOO BIG WITHOUT YOU...

What happens to space when someone you love has departed from it forever?

In the beginning, the space you once shared shrinks and expands. Gravity is sucked dry. And a cold gray wind constantly drifts in and out.

In that space, familiar objects that used to project meaning are minimized. An old photograph above the desk, taken together years ago, is reduced to the size of a postage stamp. A tree that you happily planted together in the front yard, which had grown so strong and tall, appears to wither away.

Quietly, it sits naked, as it vanishes into space.

It’s different with other things; the bed you slept together in for so many years becomes inflated and overwhelms you with its presence. Off in the distance you hear an echoing refrain from a song you both loved, but never dreamed possible “The bed’s too big without you…”

Rooms that were once open and welcoming become closed and off-limits. Barren clothes racks hold up bare walls in the closet. Wastebaskets that would sit empty get filled and refilled, as you try to sort out the space left behind by the departed.

But slowly, over time, the shattered shared space starts to conform to a new set of coordinates. The familiar objects, some of which you’ve rearranged, and others that you’ve added on your own along the way, no longer waver. Their dimensions and proportions, density and volume return to a manageable state of patterns.

At times, the space now even cradles and comforts. That’s when you realize love lost can be found everywhere… and that you’re okay being in that space and sharing it with someone new.

MANJU ON PERSONAL SPACE – 2

“COSMIC LILA”

The middling years have arrived. Space has now brought a new friend along, called Time.

You have all the space that you ever wanted but you don’t have the time. Space is happy, but time is overworked.

Something’s gotta give!

From somewhere in the vast vistas of the mind, the promised Questions start to tumble pretty much like your kids’ old toys out of the cardboard box.

What is happiness? What is my real purpose? Then, there are memories, memories and a clutter of memories to deal with.

You walk around like a question mark that has come alive, with a furrowed brow to match. A well-wisher then suggests that you get into a good meditation class.

So you enroll into the nearest center, mat and mind in tow.

You close your eyes for a moment like the teacher told you to do; only to pop those wide open in an instant, fear clutching your heart in its cold clasp.

Did you lock the front door?

A few sessions more, you start forgetting about doors and dustpans.

Something new dawns on you ever so slowly, like the changing hues of the rising sun.

You surrender to the Space within. Time takes a breather.

The vacillating relationships and undulating emotions begin to still like a pendulum about to reach the centre.

'You’re making progress!' teacher says, one day. You want to jump for joy but you merely smile briefly. After all, life is to be viewed with equanimity as a good book says...

As you lie on your bed that night, another Truth dawns on you. That silent meddler Space has been constantly playing with your life, growing, shrinking, stifling, yawning.

Life’s just got to be a Cosmic Lila. Hmmm….such fine words, fine thoughts! You must be poised to get enlightened. You feel it in your bones. You close your eyes.

Waiting for the Moment…waiting for the stream of light… that will shine through...waiting...

BUZZ…BUZZ…BUZZ!!

Huh? Wazzat?

In one frenzied movement of your hand, you knock off the bedside alarm.

Sigh! It’s time to wake up.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

MANJU ON PERSONAL SPACE – 1

“TANGY TOMATOES & TAILOR-MADE TUNES”

When we were kids, a friend and I once walked the streets, with a guitar, wondering how life could ever be this good. We sang new tunes and enjoyed eating wholesome slices of spiced-up tomato on the balcony. If life blessed us with tangy tomatoes and tailor-made tunes, who needed space? Twenty-four hours wouldn't have been enough for us to be together! We were like two peas in a pod, with as little space in between.

As babies, we can't seem to get enough of our mothers. As we grow older into kids, we can't seem to get enough of our friends.

And then somewhere down the road, a more ‘mature’ relationship touches us like a delicate feather dropping onto the shoulder. Suddenly space emerges as a high-flying word in the dictionary. You need to hang out with your friends while he needs his football buddies.

If you ever get to work out the space index at this stage, you might walk the altar with this man. Now, space suddenly begins to shrink considerably. You want to do everything together like a happily married couple.

So you squint painfully at the TV, watching the baseball game with him. And soon space is hovering like a tiny bubble right above you.

Come Thanksgiving, you’re at your wits’ end, preparing a dinner for HIS family. Dinner over, you decide you are too tired to go upstairs to the bedroom and slump onto the couch.

The space bubble has grown even larger and is glistening in a multitude of colors.

If the kids eventually happen, there is NO space in the house! In a medley of school trips, piano classes, football games and SAT scores, you’re holding onto your sanity as the space bubble grows and shrinks undecidedly all the years.

When the kids have moved out, your husband has settled nicely in a routine of newspaper and the net.

Now the space has made a decisive invasion into your life.

‘Will someone please call? you wonder.

Monday, January 25, 2010

ADAM ON SPACE AND GEOGRAPHY – 1


SOMETHING GAINED. SOMETHING LOST.


Before the advent of MapQuest or Google Maps, I used to like to draw maps to help explain to others how to get to my home. These maps were oriented a bit like a Saul Steinberg drawing, where the representation of my home – typically drawn as a simple box with a triangle rooftop – was way out of proportion to anything else depicted. Streets, freeways, or an important surrounding landmark such as a nearby park or shopping center, all receded in stature. In effect, my home was the center of the world. (Or at least, the center of my world.) I probably should have added these words at the bottom of my directional maps – “Map drawn to emotional scale”.

If you were to search for my home on GoogleMaps, you’d find it’s presented entirely differently from my hand-drawn abstractions of the past. On the Google map, the streets and landmarks are shown with clean, uniform and orderly lines. Everything’s in proportion and to scale, and there’s a little red pin-like icon pointing out my home.

While the location has been called out, it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s the Steinberg-like center of the world as it did in my maps. In this homogenized depiction my “home” has become a “house”, just one of millions of others in the big city. There’s an emotional trade out going on here – more precision equals less personality or personal space. On some level, it feels like my little private space has been absorbed by the vast collective public space.

Which may help explain why, at times, I feel so lost in the modern world. And even though there’s a perfect Google map in front of me, I still “can’t find my way home….”