Dear Trivian,
I recently got a hand-me-down wool jacket from my mom. It's a men's knitwear with an enormous fake fur collar. Ugly but warm. She doesn't wear it because the sleeves are a bit tight. So I've given it a shot these days.
It's true, this is warm stuff.
Wearing it I realized something that made me think of architecture. Any old thing makes me think of architecture, true, but hear me out.
While this jacket is OK for sitting and writing with a tea brewing on the desk, it's not that good for mobility. For one, it's just too hot. And you can't just take it off, because you're wearing so little underneath that you'd be cold. It's true, the sleeves are a bit tight and the fur lined collar is so thick it's sort of keeping your neck in a weird position.
So I notice these days (all the while looking like a Russian noble visiting the peasants on the field with my furry neck) I tend to be more... static. I linger with coffee a bit more after lunch. I avoid big gestures. I stay put.
The jacket is literally shaping my actions.
Just a bit. The worst part is it's growing on me and I only take the jacket off when necessary now, even though it's not actually comfy. The power of habit? Well, you get the picture.
One other thing this jacket does is that it's making me feel a certain way, the specific way of this jacket. You know how you wear some fancy dress you like and you feel all nice and sexy and confident or whatever. And then that old pink hoodie gets you in a homey but a bit unhygienic mood (you know what I mean).
Well, this jacket has it’s own personality washing over me and I’m not sure I like that.
The very same thing happens to us with the buildings we live in, I will bravely advance :)
Each environment makes us feel a certain way. From the obviously depressing crappy messy dark room to the more subtle "tickling my ancestral brain" nuances of great architecture. Yet we ignore this with a constancy fit for nobler causes.
We live in hand-me-down houses that shape us into being less this way or more that way, depending on their nature, not our own will. They make us linger in one room, avoid another, hurry up with something else.
They make us feel comfy, ready for action, inadequate.
Most of them are benign I guess. Just not optimized for your specific needs, like a batman car. Remodeled social apartments downtown, where you place your office in the kids bedroom and there's no room for Alex to lift his hands all the way up. Or former townhouses where the attic is refurbished into living quarters, so there are more windows looking up than on the side.
All of that's OK.
I mean, it's the most sustainable thing to adapt spaces instead of rebuilding. I am not the one who is going to preach against that, ever.
But how about a place that fit the person I want to become? Like a custom-cut jacket that makes me feel (and act) like I'm acing it? Or at least one my size and without an ugly fur collar.. Clothes and homes that sustain us in our quest for becoming better people. Or at least happier ones. Mindful homes as backdrops of our lives.
Building homes used to be more like this. Because it was more economical to build to last. So buildings had to be fit for purpose for a long stretch of time. Today, buildings are being built to be sold to real estate investors who will then sell them to other real estate investors and so on. Their purpose is not “you” anymore, let alone the future “you”. It's looking good in the brochure that matters. The same goes for smaller scales, all the way to door handles.
But door handles are a whole other story.
Please come for coffee now that the weather is nice. I’m expanding the garden towards the stream.
As always,
Jo, and her ill-fitting jacket
P.S. A hand-me-down Arctic weather station (more bear photos here).
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