Pg 7

It is body

and soul. It is the human being’s first world. Before he is

“cast into the world,” as claimed by certain hasty metaphysics,

man is laid in the cradle of the house… Life begins well, it begins enclosed, protected, all

warm in the bosom of the “house.

Pg 13

What would be the use, for instance, in giving the plan

of the room that was really my room, in describing the

little room at the end of the garret, in saying that from the

window, across the indentations of the roofs, one could see

the hill. I alone, in my memories of another century, can

open the deep cupboard that still retains for me alone

that unique odor, the odor of raisins drying on a wicker

tray. The odor of raisins! It is an odor that is beyond description,

one that it takes a lot of imagination to smell.

Pg 14 and15

But over and beyond our memories, the house we were

born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic

habits. After twenty years, in spite of all the other

anonymous stairways; we would recapture the reflexes of

the “first stairway,” we would not stumble on that rather

15 the house. from cellar to garret. the significance of the hut

high step. The house’s entire being would open up, faithful

to our own being. We would push the door that creaks

with the same gesture, we would find our way in the dark

to the distant attic. The feel of the tiniest latch has remained

in our hands.

The successive houses in which we have lived have no

doubt made our gestures commonplace. But we are very

surprised, when we return to the old house, after an odyssey

of many years, to find that the most delicate gestures, the

earliest gestures suddenly come alive, are still faultless. In

short, the house we were born in has engraved within us

the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting. We are

the diagram of the functions of inhabiting that particular

house, and all the other houses are but variations on a

fundamental theme. The word habit is too worn a word

to express this passionate liaison of our bodies, which do

not forget, with an unforgettable house.

Bachelard, G., 1969. The Poetics Of Space. Boston: Beacon Press.

The house of my Birth

The path is shared with Mr and Mrs Rick, there is no divide but we dutifully walk on our side of the path despite it requiring a few extra steps. The porch door is half glazed with vertically striped textured glass. I stood on tiptoes as a small person to watch my sister go to big school but only saw her distorted extended figure bob up and down the path in vertical chards of light and dark. In the hall was orange carpet which was old and matted when you got close you could see the rusty coloured fibres squashed together, smokey and trodden down. Good for sprawling over with Lego and just to look all the way up through the stairs to the ceiling at the top of the house. The Lounge was special to Mum, she had it just how she wanted, strings of deep carpet pile and plastic coated chocolate brown shelves. I once cleaned the brass fireplace thinking how pleased she would be and realised that I had Brasso-ed off all of the ‘hammered effect’ finish then set about colouring it back in with a felt tip hoping she wouldn’t notice. She didn’t. As far as I remember the dining room was never decorated and was full of random things which were moved out of the finished rooms. The bedinet, a massive beast of furniture which held the guest bed like a monster, the piano (which was mine) and the record player which wasn’t mine but after playing old Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline records everyday for a month I was asked if I would like it in my room. The dining room was a mish mash of centuries and ladybird books. The kitchen was green, sausage casserole, dinners warming over boiling pans, rows, learning to tell the time, locking mum in the garden, breaking glass and visitors. Making cake mix with Jayne with no intention of cooking it just so that we could have more than a scraped whisk of uncooked madera. At the back of the house was the cold cold downstairs bathroom and its damp smell with scary noisy blue pilot light and smell of MacLean’s toothpaste and the dog’s basket. Sharing baths on a Sunday night with my sister filling Vosene bottles with water and squirting each other to the sound of Mum’s clackety spin dryer and waiting warm pyjamas straight off the ironing board.