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.

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….”