It is Saturday, November 9, 2024.  6:22 PM.  Its pretty warm out for a New England November, so I am sitting in the backyard with some candles and its already been dark outside for an hour.  Been spending more time writing lately (typing as opposed to my preferred hand written format), because it’s more easily accessible than other therapeutic forms right now.

Been working on a piece of writing for a while about space, or, all the spaces we’ve inhabited throughout our lives and what gave us meaning from these spaces. I couldn't finish it (or maybe this post is what it turned into, idk), because I ended up with too many questions instead.

Is the meaning of spaces derived from the people who we inhabited them with? Was it the decor/colors/layout/structure? Was it the smell? Usually when I time travel to various spaces I’ve inhabited, I remember the vibe more than anything- and I think for me the things that constitute a vibe are a combination of these sensory input: the sounds of daily living (what that door sounded like, what were the outdoor noises that were always present), the quality of light at various times of day/seasons, the colors around me. But I wonder what constitutes this vibe for other people since our internal experiences are all so different.  For example, I've heard other people talk a lot about smells of spaces past having a profound effect on them when revisited or encountered later in life. 

I feel like most ppl don’t really choose where they end up - it just happens as a matter of circumstance. But some ppl do hav a choice to an extent, or maybe at various times in life. So what are the differences/similarities between these two scenarios? And how does that impact how we interact with our current spaces?
When someone doesn’t have a space to call their own (especially against their own wishes), and/or: never did, how does this impact them and their internal world? Or what about people who are violently and forcibly removed from their spaces? The ppl of Palestine come to mind immediately.  Also ppl in countries of empire like here where ppl lose their homes because of WaRz of cAPitAL™ R-US ongoing.  Or this morning I saw a post on the working class history ig about the ppl of the Chagos Archipelago, who were all removed from their homes to make way for a US military base to occupy that land instead.  What does that do to a person's internal world? Furthermore, how do these internal worlds then get reflected into the collective experience of their communities, and then our world at large?

I started pondering spaces when I found this footage in a box of my old videotapes.  This video is from a trip my family and I took to Poland back in 2004. I was 17 years old and we had been living in the US together as a family since 1992. I had visited as a child, but this was my first trip back during my teen years. We were clearing out our apartment in Warsaw because it was being sold. I had decided that I would be a filmmaker, so I was obsessed with filming everything ever on my precious miniDV camcorder. But I also knew I would never see this space again, and being weird about spaces I’ve inhabited- I had to record everything and save every little treasure I could possibly fit in my suitcase. Please excuse baby-Alex's poor analysis of economics towards the end lol, I was v young!

This apartment was about 180 square feet - but it contained so many lives within its walls.  When I was born, there were 9 of us living there: me and my sister, our mom and dad, my mom's brother and his wife plus their kid (my older cousin), and two of my grandparents.  It was a common practice to put your bed away every morning to make space for daily living.  Lots of people in cities lived in apartments and situations like this so I did not think it was strange until I moved to New Jersey.  The town I grew up in there had lots of mansions (not an exaggeration) and this style of American excess was very much normalized.  It felt very weird going over your friend's house and seeing how starkly different your spaces were.  Their moms were home to pick them up from school.  They had their own rooms and even one just for the activity of watching movies.  There were cookie jars, staircases, and entire basements to do whatever you and your co-inhabitants wanted to do.  I was too young to verbalize what I felt, but I think this was the first time I became aware of the concept of class?  As a child, I was wildly embarrassed about having friends over or sharing details about my home life.  Luckily I discovered punk at some point between 6-8th grade and made the necessary adaptation to stop giving a fuck lol. Bless. I am still grateful for all the stress this has spared my future self, and is why I continue to say *long live rocknroll*.

I spent my childhood being very confused by my external surroundings maybe because nobody explained to my child self the How&Why of what we were all experiencing. For example, I used to think there was something inherently wrong with my family which must have been why we didn’t have mansions (lmao ???). Instead, I often retreated to my internal world for comfort and support and distraction. I’m actually thankful for this because I still do this as an adult. I think it’s called having a vivid imagination and it’s one of my favorite parts about human consciousness. It comes in handy a lot as my physical body ages and becomes more difficult to inhabit as a space itself.

Living in a country where the acquisition of wealth, power and status, even at the cost of other human lives, was considered normal and even encouraged as a “survival strategy” is still weird and definitely one of many reasons america is so hopelessly fckd & shameful.

I'm curious to hear what other ppl's first conceptions of space were and their reflections on how that impacts their relationship with spaces now.  I imagine it's wildly different for everyone because everyone adapts to their situations in various ways.  In my immediate family alone, I noticed that some ppl adapted by adopting a nomadic way of living while others adapted to being hopeless homebodies (me, lol).  Anyways, I need to have a yard sale soon, because current adaptation requirements are demanding that I interact with less stuff.  (I am nervous because I hope it doesn't require any bad decor.)