SHRESHTA ON SPACE AND INDIVIDUALITY

YOUR SPACE OR MINE?

They're both talking at the same time. One's voice can be heard by way of speech; the other, while attempting to listen, is actually speaking very loudly inside her head and trying hard not to verbalise before it's her turn. This is no duel. It's an aching attempt to do justice to the flighty moments of individual ownership that we each come by, while in conversation. 'This is what I think or feel about that." Every time a turn to talk arrives, they each throw themselves into it and grab at the moment and hold it fast and with longing... before it passes again. And then they wait for the next spot, almost like waiting to return to their beginnings again - beginnings where there was only one I, one self and space.

SHRESHTA ON HEALING SPACES

SOFT, STILL AND SOOTHING.

It's the white curtains and the freshly painted off-white walls, they conclude, while thinking aloud and letting their eyes wander around the room. It doesn't feel like there is a bustling street just around the corner once you step in here, they confess with uncertainty, waiting to test their hypothesis, only to find that the calmness stays on, much to their relief. As the visits unfold, bringing in old allies, new companions and future friends, all the little touches and embellishments find quiet or curious admirers and settle acceptingly into their designated spots on the walls, side tables and wooden bookshelves. The place gives of itself, to each who enters. And how could it not? The process of its coming together involved healing, love, equality and giving between two souls. It is a space of refuge, resting and revival. A pit stop called home.

SHRESHTA ON SPACE ON THE NOSE

SMELL & SENSIBILITY

A thousand surge at us as we begin our walk. Sweat, sand, soap, dung, camphor, flowers, oil, oranges, fish, pigeons, disinfectant, wet earth, deodorant, varnish, burnt rubber - each blending with the distinct other, explosively at one instance, and gently at another, creating one choking gulp of life-odour at a time. We succumb to the methodical olfactory attack; the other senses take a reluctant back seat. And suddenly, as we navigate our way through the heart of Dadar, we look at each other for a moment and smile at the mutual realisation of having just smelt ' humanity'.

RO ON SPACE & WINE GLASSE5 – 1

DOES WINE REALLY "BREATHE"?

Does wine really inhale and exhale, sipping the air with long, deep, yogic breaths? If so, when it ages, will it puff and pant, as if challenged by climbing stairs? If wine possesses a “backbone”, and a “nose”, not to mention “legs”, surely it has “lungs”!

What’s with wine breathing – leave alone having to be decanted?

Imagine you’ve just met someone new. After the initial formalities, it would probably take you time to process the layers of multi-sensory information you’re absorbing, before you come to be your true self.

Like you, wine needs to inhale the air and mingle with it before it can let go of its “closed fist” and express its true aromas and attributes without inhibition. And those characteristics, in younger wines, take after their specific grape variety (bell peppers in Cabernet Sauvignon, for example). As the wine evolves with fermentation, exposure to oak, and age, other nuances start to come through, along with a marked complexity (think cigar, earth, leather).

A 1945 Mouton sitting on an old leather chair in an exclusive club, puffing away pompously at a Davidoff torpedo. What a picture!

How much air should you let a wine breathe? is the Question.

In full-bodied reds such as Cabernet, Shiraz, Merlot, Barolo, Barbaresco, and Amarone younger than four years, exposure to air “rounds off” the harsh tannins, making them silkier and softer. A tannic mouthfeel is hard to miss; it’s a coarse, drying, adhesive texture, followed by a bitter astringency that has you make a face. So pour that Cab into a decanter, slosh and wait an hour. Voila! Goodbye Sandpaper, hello Suede. (Or so they say.)

As reds age, the reason for decanting shifts. After years of being bottled up, wine develops a unique character – from forced rumination, no doubt. A gradual, gentle oxidation has already taken place within the bottle, softening the wine as chemical changes occur within, throwing off a residue. Which, dear Drinker, is precisely why you decant: to separate this sediment from the wine. So yes, wine does need to reorient itself to the new surroundings and the new timeline, but over-decanting would only “fade” the wine’s palate. (Oho, now it has a palate, too?)

Traditional wine tasters in France define a “first nose” as one where the wine is lightly breathed in as soon as it’s poured, without so much as a swirl. The “second nose” follows the ritualistic swish-and-swirl, when new aromas released are inhaled deeply, and flavor receptacles discern the distinctions. I’ll never forget the way Jean Baptiste at La Cave du Verger des Papes in Châteauneuf-du-Pape said, “Ah, ze wine, ’ee ’as opened!”.

A sommelier I once met in a beautiful Château in Provence would pour the wine with great delicacy into a decanter, and then (alarmingly) jostle it around with all the vigor he had in his elbow. Oh, Monsieur Phillipe, do be careful, you will bruise this old wine!

Bruise a wine? The next time you meet a wine with a black eye or a purple nose, you’ll know exactly what happened.

LORRAINE ON PERSONAL SPACE

THE UNIVERSE & I

Economics, global and local, led me to make exigency plans to preclude, alas alack, joining the forces of the homeless. With an arsenal of online resources this was soon accomplished… someone would live in my apartment, someone would take care of my cat, someone would host me in their home for three months. It was so easy to arrange; to me it was a sign the Universe endorsed my decision.

As the departure day drew close I was looking forward to simplifying, minimizing, becoming a hermit if need be (due to lack of cultural activities in my soon-to-be Southern State) and most exciting of all, free from my monthly rut, to write, write, write. My remaining concern was how to safely transport my iMac G5.

As it transpired, life intervenes. Without going into details, I found myself sans kitty, sans apartment, computer under arm, looking for a temporary abode… some call it couch-surfing.

I found myself a sofa across town with a view of some of San Francisco’s finest architectural icons, including Coit Tower and Alcatraz. Living with my very good friend required little adjusting; basically, I just had to minimize my footprint.

So here I am… eight weeks later….

Used to living my own independent, freelance life, I now share, share, share… bathroom, kitchen, groceries, laundry, cooking, even which movie to watch is a democratic decision. There’s a child who lives here part-time, and when she’s here, she is the center of our universe. We hit the sack by nine most nights; eleven on a wildly social night (meaning her dad and I watch a DVD on my “big screen” computer, jokingly called the jumbotron, and share a bottle of wine).

What I’ve lost in space, literally – bathroom cabinet reduced to one shelf, suitcase in lieu of closet, couch instead of bed – has been compensated tenfold by community.

What I thought I couldn’t live with, I live perfectly well without.

What I thought I needed is what I now can’t live without.

It sure is funny how the Universe chooses to teach us our life’s lessons.

RO ON SHARED SPACE – 1

THE GREAT SPACE ROBBERY

At the ACE Hotel New York on 29th between Fifth and Broadway, it’s a strange play between personal space and shared space. The role of public space, it seems, is to heighten the perception of private space and its relationship with itself.

You walk in, pick up your wifi code and dive into your laptop, amidst the hustle-bustle of wait staff, the clinking of cappuccino cups and inventive cocktails. Like those cocktails, it’s a blend of cool vibe and a Friday-happy-hour feel. No one needs to approve of your presence – you simply belong.

Unless of course you do something weird – as I did.

There are four marked areas in the hotel lobby. Two of them are filled with sprawling couches generous enough to accommodate these people, and all of their workday’s accouterments, which, in the winter, have a tendency to take up more than one’s fair share of individual space – bulky winter coats, backpacks, gloves, hats, earmuffs… you get the picture. A communal table for ten laptops stands at the center, at which people sit, each engrossed in an intense relationship with their laptop. The relationship is quite obvious – that of one with oneself.

Respect for personal space – particularly here – is an unspoken tenet. And so I decide to throw a little wrench into the snugness of this secure digital haven, if only to find the answer to the social experiment that ensues. I steal a furtive glance at my neighbor’s screen, which I ensure she catches from the periphery of her vision. And then, from the periphery of mine, I observe. She’s completely disconcerted, and she loses focus on what she’s doing. Her only thought is my “sneak peek”. So now, it’s her turn to looking surreptitiously towards me, by which time, my gaze has calmly returned to my own laptop, and to writing this piece. Clearly, I have turned into a bull, which has subtly but substantially butted into the fragility of the surrounding china-like psyche.

When personal space is ruptured with a sneaky, stealthy glance such as this (which you can’t prove for sure) it can become extremely potent just by its sheer questionability. Did it really happen? Did I imagine it? Am I being paranoid? Do I now angle my laptop a few degrees away? Or will that seem awfully rude? Should I then actually turn my laptop towards her, so what I’m thinking isn’t obvious? An avalanche of doubts cascades into the mind and from it, becoming a distraction of immense proportion.

When invisible boundaries in shared space are so ruptured, it’s more than just an invasion, it’s a theft – of privacy, comfort and security.

In that light, it is not likely that my “guinea pig” at the neighboring laptop will ever be the same again.

Tch, tch.

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.

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.

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….”

GUY ON SPACE AND GEOGRAPHY – 1

THE RELATIONSHIP

Geographies are many-dimensional. Each point in a given geography's framework is defined using many different measures. But while you might think that space is no more than just such a geographic dimension, you can also look at space much more completely. Space permeates, defines, and is defined by every one of a geography's dimensions. Space is meta-dimensional when it comes to geography.

The most accessible concept of geography is its original one, the description of the surface of the Earth. This description includes political, topographical, meteorological, and many other dimensions. Each, it seems almost absurd to say, is defined in spatial terms: nation X has such and such a shape, its capital city is so many kilometers from the western border, etc. We don't usually realize, though, that each dimension in turn defines space in some or in many ways. Nation Y's roads are such and such a standard width, so its buses must be so many meters wide, and therefore their seats tend to have this or that much room between them, or this or that shape.

This is how geography defines space, rather than just the other way round.

And as you can see, such considerations easily redound upon each other—one space causing another space causing another. The difference in rail gauge between Germany and Russia before World War I was a major consideration in German war planning – in the German Army's use of space; in the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front. And indeed, the Russians' use of space in war, or more technically speaking their use of geography, is legend in military history.

On a more intimate level, geographies have obvious and profound impacts on individual space. It takes only a moment of thinking about it to see that it's so. Ascending a high tor explodes your personal space exponentially (an overused word, but in this case quite literally correct). Enter a gorge or ravine and space becomes largely vertical, reaching to a perhaps distant sky above but hemmed in on either side. Or how about a little topography? A nice, average forest defines a restrictive space around you radically different from the heart-freeing air of a mere meadow.

So, if geography is defined by space, but space is also defined by geography, are they in a co-dependent relationship? Or are they just one?

LORRAINE ON SPACE & GEOGRAPHY

THE GEOGRAPHY OF BEACHES

A beach is a beach a beach of course… not!

As I lay me down to sleep… instead of praying to not wake up dead (as Christian tradition dictates) I prefer to cast my mind around the globe to beaches I have known and loved. Instead of a journey of places, it becomes a journey of spaces in my mind… perhaps too many, perhaps too few of a certain design, but, with focus, I will find an ideal shore to suit my restive mind.

I dither among the options I know with the intention of landing upon the one I know for sure will jet me into dreamland.

But first, comes the magic of floating in space high above the human race. Where to go? Where to land, this moment? On the sand? Scotland, India, Italy? Or close to where I call my home?

To zoom from such a lofty height down onto a universe of sand. From tiny coves along North Tahoe’s shores where the water laps gently, yet so cold… brrr! To Stinson Beach’s wide expanse… golden, inviting (even in fog) and the whispered thrill of shark attacks! … mmh!

Bali beckons laced with exotic sands and local hands, kneading away Western cares, exploring spaces within my body… aah…

My hometown, Aberdeen, Scotland, with its glorious beach that stretches like a golden band as far as the eye can see facing north – if only the North Sea were less frigid… ouch!

Inevitably I land on Santorini – reputed to be Atlantis, the lost city. Along with which comes perhaps my favorite beach of all… not sand, but a shore of black lava smoothed by oceans of time into tiny pebbles that shuffle as the tide ebbs and flows, in and out, in and out, like the breath…

Om.

RO ON SPACE & GEOGRAPHY – 3

“RED SLATE. BLUE SLATE.”

“Man's relations to his environment are infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or animal.” Said Ellen Churchill Semple (with a Kentucky accent, perhaps?). In less enlightened ages, environmental determinism held that geographical influences such as altitude, fertility of the soil, and proximity to an ocean were closely related to the personality – and even looks – of a culture.

A bit narrowed, that thinking, but certainly true for Wine.

“Terroir” – the combination of geographical location, soil, weather conditions, aspect (or the angle of the slope) and the grapes themselves – is manifest in the specific personality of the wine.

The Riesling from Austria’s Kamptal displays different characteristics from the Riesling cultivated in Germany’s Middle Mösel, or the one from Australia’s Clare Valley. Even the same two Rieslings cultivated in the same estate with the same philosophy and vinified with the same methods, reveal different characteristics depending on whether they grew in Red Devonian Slate – or Blue. The Red Slate wines tend to be very mineral-driven even when young and dominated by primary fruit; whereas with the Blue Slate, citrus and white peach flavors predominate in the wine’s youth, turning to a pure expression of the mineral soil as they mature.

The personality of a Wine is not only the result of a “terroir” harnessed, but of winemaking savoir-faire as well. For instance, a wine matured in French oak from the forests of Limousin expresses different nuances from one barreled in white American oak from, say, Missouri. Several other factors such as cellar conditions and length of aging are also major influencers. Winemaker Stéphane Tissot in the Jura region of France goes so far as to believe that “… you can find in a wine the personality and the character of those who made it because each gesture, each operation, each decision has its importance”.

Consider the influence of Religion on Wine. It was monasteries that preserved viticulture in the Dark Ages of Europe. It was the Cistercian monks of Cîteaux who lovingly nurtured the vines at Clos de Vougeut in Burgundy since the Twelfth Century. And it was the sparkle in Dom Perignon’s eyes, which facilitated the fermentation process in the Champagne Method and contributed to his bubbly advocacy of organic winemaking.

What if we were to even touch upon the impact of Politics on Wine? Does the Roman Emperor forbidding the import of French wines to eliminate competition have a faint resonance with Parker's softness for Sonoma?

Let’s continue this discussion over a glass of complexity.

RO ON SPACE & GEOGRAPHY – 2

THE WORLD THROUGH A WINE GLASS

A glass of wine has the ethereal, magical quality of calling to mind the “somewhereness” of a certain place on earth. If you were sipping a Sangiovese and you let your imagination wander away, it could evoke the green curves of Tuscany’s hills, the sun’s gold glinting off the wires to which tendrils of vines cling.

A Grenache-Mourvedre-Syrah blend would no doubt conjure up a village in the South of France – Roussillon, perhaps? Poised precariously upon a hillside in layers of terrace, it would be daubed with hues of chalky ocher, sun-tanned saffron, smoky sienna, mustard yellow and burnt brick. Your nose would scent the wispy wafting of lavender set against a startlingly blue Provençal sky, which, at sunset, would change its garb again and again like a fickle woman. Now, a filmy wrap of Lilac-Blue, then an iridescent stole of Peachy-Gold; now a chiffony wrap of Fuschia, then a flimsy veil of Flame-Red georgette! Next, a translucent mantle, the color of bruised blueberries. And then – running a little late for its sexy nocturnal tryst – a velvety cape of the deepest shade of Midnight, speckled with glittering diamanté.

Put your glass to your ear, and you might even hear the faint howl of the icy-fingered Le Mistral, sometimes blessing the land, sometimes threatening to flatten the vines with its mean gusts – but always challenging them to struggle and stress, so the result might only be character of unquestionable integrity.

Could one really discern the distinctive taste of the Missoula floods in a glass of Washington Red, and be transported to the Ice Age, as Northwest vintners loftily claim? Or sip the misty beauty of Sonoma’s winding wine trails, peppered with a multitude of wayside flowers, its creeks giggling to the gossip of birds? I am going too far, you think.

Apparently not. A journeyed palate could scan the geographical characteristics of a wine within the space of a wineglass. That palate would guess the grape variety, based on the typicity of the grape (the bell pepper notes of a cool-climate Cabernet Sauvignon, or the herbaceous leafy character of a Cabernet Franc, if you’ll pardon my viticultural racism), and also its origin (Tempranillo, usually from Spain). Not to mention its vintage amongst other things (it was a warm summer).

It’s an educated guess that often employs the process of elimination. To put it in broad terms, “It isn’t a Pinot Noir, because it’s too pale and thin a red, too muscular in body and too tannic on the tongue”. Or, “It’s reminiscent of coconut, so it will likely be a New World wine from Australia, New Zealand, or the Americas.” And then, “It can’t be from Australia because it’s too rustic and chewy with dark berries and spices… (and so on and so forth) so it must be a Petite Sirah from California.”

So the next time you raise a glass of wine, think of all that travel that lies ahead – at the very least, in your own imagination.

MAX ON SPACE & GEOGRAPHY

GEOGRAPHY ON THE TONGUE

The spaces of geography have a funny way of making their way into cities - with different accents. In New York City, for instance, there are three predominant accents. 1) The uptown accent, 2) The Manhattan or the “normal” accent, and 3) The regional Brooklyn-Staten Island accent. The further north you go, usually anywhere past 96th street, you hear the real street slang. People drop their “R’s” and words like “here” turn in to “heah”, and “over” turn into “ova.” There’s a very distinct New York street accent that is really found in, well, found in the hood.

So now, traveling down toward the middle – There is the “normal” accent. “Normal” being what we perceive to be the way the English language should be spoken. We pronounce our all of our consonants and vowels and we say, “coffee,” “orange,” or “forget about it.” The words come out with no deviation from the way they are supposed to be pronounced.

Now, once you start heading south into Brooklyn, the stereotypical New York accent runs rampant. “Coffee” is turned into “Caw-fee.” “Orange” is turned into, “Ah-ringe.” The phrase, “forget about it,” turns into one giant mashed up word – “fuggetaboutit”. In Brooklyn, you don’t hear, “I’m going to call him later.” No, no, you hear, “I’m gonna cawl him lata.” Similar to the uptown accent, all the “R’s” are dropped off of all words and replaced with an “A.”

Different spaces in the geography of the city create these different accents. Despite living in Manhattan for barely a few months, you start to pick up on all of these little nuances, and you catch your self saying, “Whateva, I’ll cawl him lata,” without even realizing it.

[Max Kestenbaum, originally from Los Angeles, studies and plays in New York City.]

RO ON SPACE & GEOGRAPHY – 1

“THE SUN IS A VERY MAGIC FELLOW”

“November has tied me
to an old dead tree,
get word to April
to rescue me.”

How do the Spaces of Geography affect the cultures that live within them?

Perhaps we should ask the Grapes.

In spaces of increasing geographical latitude, grapes look to natural sources of light and warmth to ripen – just as people do for their happiness. The angle of the sun (also called “aspect”) is everything. If a certain slope is more exposed to sunlight and warmth than another, it is likely to produce far more vigorous vines – and far more qualitative wines.

When vines grow on South-facing slopes, the quality of the grape is said to be exemplary. Not too dissimilar to South-facing apartments in Manhattan, New York, where quality of life is also enhanced by this rather dear orientation.

In the Rhone region of France, the outstanding wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape are outstanding because of the characteristic terrior; Pudding Stones or “Galets” soak up the Provencal sunshine during the day and hold on to the heat, to reflect it onto the grapes, long after the sun has left for an assignation with the other side of the earth. This helps the grapes ripen and the wines get concentrated in a peculiarly delicious way, accounting for the "outstandingness". In Germany’s prized Mosel-Saar-Ruwer wine region, the Riesling grape grows in Devonian Slate, which locks in the moisture and heat to radiate warmth to it at nightfall. In Bordeaux, it’s the gravel that does it.

In a manner alike, Northern Scandinavians resort to natural sources of light and warmth with an abundant use of candles – in their offices and during meetings as well – to fight Winter Seasonal Affective Disorder, an inexplicable “sadness” that creeps in with the onset of winter darkness.

Serotonin brain chemistry has long been known to change with changing seasons, suggesting why people tend to be less happy, with lower energy levels during winter’s bleaker days. Social, scientific and economic researchers have found that even stock returns are significantly related to the amount of daylight through the fall and winter – the shorter the day, the higher the aversion to risk, it seems. The influence of climate upon happiness, with climate variables such as rain, hours of sunshine, average temperature, and windiness are strongly linked to household costs, financial satisfaction, and general satisfaction.

It’s just as well, then, that Wine makes us so happy.

RO ON THE ABSENCE OF SPACE

"DEATH: ABSENCE OR PRESENCE OF SPACE?"

As Silicon Valley continues to mourn the sudden and shocking absence of Rajeev Motwani's space on Earth, I reflect on his continued presence in the media. His Facebook wall, for instance, where people are sharing their sentiments. (Rajat Mukherjee has a very considered post on just this - a link I've shared at the end of this musing.)

When a person ceases to exist physically, their space will never quite stop occupying mind, memories and heart.

What of the space taken up by the physicality associated with both Rajeev's life and its cessation? His reading glasses, his clothes, the home he left behind, the mark he made on everyone's computer as advisor to Google's founders, the Stanford classrooms he lectured at, his wife Asha, his children... even that wretched swimming pool which so wrongfully took away his space? The sound of my husband Vedant's voice as he told me how he felt about this (over the phone when I was in India) still rings in my ear.

All of those physical representations make his space that much more sharpened by its absence.

In many ways, Rajeev's space is so much more expanded just by the fact that he no longer exists. And he is so much more alive than he ever was.

I hope his soul reads his Facebook wall with a smile:

ERIC B ON SPACE & CITIES

PARIS: WHEN LIFE WAS DEFINED BY A CERTAIN DISTANCE

I say this with affection and regret: Paris is like a tough old whore. Not one of those who market themselves on the Internet, but a woman who stands in a doorway for hours, smoking cigarettes and screaming out to people across the street. She is plump and sweaty, old enough to be your aunt.

There are fewer street hookers around these days—victims of changing tastes and government crackdowns. They can be found in the dusty streets near the rue Saint-Denis, where they service men above cut-rate dress shops and agencies that sell plane tickets to places like Cameroon. From a distance the hookers look like spots of colorful paint flicked down from above. Up close, their yellow hair, red clothes and blue eye shadow don’t look quite bright enough. Drabness, like time, is their enemy, and with each day they get a little paler. When one of them gives out and disappears from the street, no one takes her place.

The pleasure lanes near rue Saint-Denis and Les Halles used to have names like rue Tire-Boudin (“Sausage-Puller street”) and rue Trousse-Nonain (“Tumble-Nun street”) and rue de la Pute-y-muse (“Idling Tart street”). The streets are still there, but their names were changed long ago to rue Marie-Stuart, rue Beaubourg and rue Petit-muse. By the time the German Baron Haussmann was done redesigning the city in 19^th Century, the collection of streets whose names evoked “shit”—the rues Merdeuses, Merdelet, Chieurs and Chiards—had disappeared. Paris was becoming hygienic.

Haussmann went much further than sanitizing street names and installing sewers. The thousands of buildings he put on the city’s boulevards are all about people’s relationship with shit. The prime living spaces were put on the third floors, called the étages nobles, where there were tall windows, spacious apartments and ornate balconies. The idea was to let the wealthiest tenants live as far as possible far from the piles of wet manure on streets while still not having to climb too many stairs. The further up you went past the étages nobles, the smaller and stuffier the apartments became. In a city where horses were still everywhere and there were no elevators, quality of life was defined by one’s distance from shit.

All of that has changed. The top floors are now the most valuable, both for their light and their distance from car noise. There are toilets in apartments and the smell of shit is gone. So are most of Paris’s native street whores, called traditionnelles. The tight doorways that functioned as their offices on the rue Saint-Denis and its tributaries are unoccupied. The doors are their gravestones. French-born hookers now make their connections online and take cabs or the Métro to meet dates. They don’t need to stand out in public, so they wear the same clothes as everyone else. The remaining street trade is left to women from places like Kosovo and Sub-Saharan Africa, who are willing to put up with a higher risk of violence.

No matter how pretty Paris’s streets are now, all of them have tasted blood. The ancient neighborhoods of Les Halles and Saint-Denis are soaked in murder, which no amount of urban renewal can erase. The slaughterhouses have been replaced by an indoor shopping mall and the mass graves in the Cimetière des Innocents are gone. But the traditionnelle spirit remains. It glows like a pink ghost in the evening sky; it calls from the music in porno DVD and tattoo shop; and, in the cold looks of cops, it still frightens.

With their wicked and dangerous attractions, the French street hookers of this quarter were a core element of Paris life. The few who are left are like the last living speakers of a dying language. Once they are gone, the tongue is extinct.

[This piece is a contribution from Eric Bewrkowitz.]

GUY ON SPACE & INDIVIDUALITY - 1

DEFINING, FINDING, AND “SEPARATING”

Discriminating something as individual or unique in some way is a process completely distinct from any concept of space. Space, spatial relationships, and spatial metaphors help us understand the individual, but do not define it.

It's easy to think of examples of people, places, or things that are undistinguished by space and yet contain individuals within them. Janus. Yin and yang. Yourself reacting with an equal mixture of fascination and horror at some dramatic event. This last example is illustrative: fascination has a pleasurable aspect to it, horror a painful one. Each feeling is individual and what we would normally call "separate" … and yet you can experience them at once, in response to one thing, at one moment. There is individuality, but no physical, temporal, or spiritual space to be found.

In more detached terms, individuality applies only to our ability to recognize something by its features. That ability is independent of any spatial relationships that may or may not exist at that moment of recognition. Fascination—how it looks, what is causing it, and how it feels—is perfectly separate in all these features from horror. A sensation of its own, unique to each being that experiences it. Thus definable and individual, without enclosing, filling, or being separated from anything else by space.

So once we imagine any space existing with reference to individuality (when we say, as I casually did above, that something is "separate" from anything else), we are artificially creating a construct in our minds. Space thus helps us examine and understand individuality, even if it is not intrinsic to the individuality of all those, animal, vegetable, and mineral, that we encounter every day.

So the relationship of space to individuality rests only in how we apply it. We can enclose with space; we can fill with space; we can create distance with space.

Fascination. If we enclose fascination with space, we see that it ends with familiarity: what always fascinates is what is always new in some way. If we fill fascination with space, we see that it suppresses understanding: we are too entertained, while fascinated, to question. If we create distance around fascination, we appreciate the particular kind of gratification it provides.

Bread. If we enclose bread with space, we understand, among many things, that it is destroyed by desire: cravings must be fed. If we fill it with space, we know that bread ends deprivation, because whether spiritual or material, bread provides sustenance. If we distance bread, we begin to comprehend the warmth, contentment, and satisfaction it brings.

A nice exercise. How would you apply space to your own individuality? Your friend's? Your lover's?

RO ON SPACE & INDIVIDUALITY

‘I’ IS A SINGLE-LETTER WORD

My approach to individual space springs from an ingrained desire to acknowledge and respect my own existence. This strong belief has fed the choices I have made even as a child, unbeknownst to my family, and even to my conscious self.

Today, it’s reflected in my single, carefree lifestyle; in the emotional and physical space I surround myself with; in my one-on-one interactions, be they professional or personal; in the fact that I don't have a large family or any offspring; in the specific choice of my husband.

Yet, when I look at dear friends who have chosen to create miniature versions of themselves, I believe their individuality is not at all diluted; if anything, it is intensified, and multiplied manyfold.

So what are your thoughts? Is individuality selfish – or self-respectful? Are you the pure essence of yourself? How individual would you want your space to be? Or would the freedom that comes with too much space be a chain of loneliness around your ankle?