A Change of Scenery
I recently moved into my boyfriend’s house. Moving is a strangely emotional and disorienting process, in addition to being a notoriously stressful life event.
I had given a lot of thought to this move in the sense of what it meant for my partner and I in terms of our relationship, but I hadn’t necessarily thought about the other new relationship I was entering—the one with his house. Were we going to get along? How would its small office off the back of the kitchen support my work habits? Would its white chocolate walls bring out my best self? Those questions might sound silly, but I have a strong belief that our surroundings are more than external walls and objects. They stimulate our senses, trigger our memories, and dictate our movement.
When I first started sleeping at my boyfriend’s house I would wake up in the middle of the night, groping at the wall for the door handle. Disoriented, I would realize that the door was on the other side of the room. In the middle of the night my sleeping-self forgot where I was. Luckily there were no disastrous consequences. But it did take a while for my body to re-pattern itself—information my body has without conscious thought.
How significant is this re-patterning? Henri Lefebvre says that from the moment we wake up our body exists within the context of our bed, bedroom, house, city etc. and therefore its day-to-day habits, emotions and sense of self are consciously and unconsciously co-determined by these spatial relationships. It’s almost impossible to prove exactly how our environment influences us but I think it’s important to consider. What happens to our psyche when our physical environment changes? Is some of the stress associated with moving triggered by changes occurring in our bodies?
I approached getting to know my new house the same way I might begin a friendship. At first I listened. I began to discover the origin of each creak, drip and hum. The next phase was more physical—the only way I felt at home was to touch everything. I needed to feel, at a tangible level, where I lived. Even if something is already clean, I had a desire to re-clean it—to purify every surface. There is often an almost ritualistic cleaning or cleansing of new apartments. However this urge feels like more than cleanliness, there is an intimacy created during this process. I paused at scratches on the wall and dents in the floor created by years of use by those who lived here before me. The walls hold, in addition to multiple layers of paint, evidence from past tenants.
In his book The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Botton speaks of the house as a witness. He writes: “It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary. It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were.” So, if houses are a reminder of who we are, then moving or creating a new space can either be an explicit opportunity to re-define ourselves, or perhaps a more unconscious process that that manifests itself through the placement of objects. Arguments about what belongs where might be less about taste and more about who we are.
I’ve only been here a month or so, but I’ve already noticed a difference in how I feel. I am grounded and more open. The more things settle into place, the freer I become.
