A House


A house is an active space. A house can be said to do…. to house. A house is an active process of providing space…. an active process of enshrining activity…. or inactivity. A house is an active allowance for something else… to be, or perhaps not to be.
A house therefore is a eudemon. A house is a ghost because its work is active and passive at the same time. A house is, though, a dependent (or enslaved) ghost. Why? A house is an enslaved ghost because it cannot BE without an object, or the lack of it.
Consider a house that depends on an object that is…
Place an object of choice in open space: the object -needless of help- defines the space, offering it character by virtue of itself. The space around the object and that which it occupies is then attributed to the object. Yet, it can be said that the same space is “housing” the object: and therefore that the same space is a house for the object. Say, remove the object, does the house stay? No. Then, if the existence of the house is dependent on the presence of an object (to give it birth), who plays the active role, the object, or the house? Who is doing whom a favour, the house, or the object? Who takes the credit for the security (physical or metaphysical) of whom?

Suddenly “a house” begins to seem like a state of mind. Like an imaginary (or real) frame to help us (or objects) pronounce a sense of being. A frame that results from our needs or insecurities: from our need to relinquish responsibility of where we are, or perhaps, who we are. How? Say, you stand in open space, what stops you from claiming that that space you occupy is a part of you, as opposed to you assuming the auxiliary role. If a friend of yours stands at a stone throw away, do you walk to your friend, or to the house he occupies-albeit in space. The same spirit with which a new home owner seeks to adorn his house with elements and languages that he relates to: be it through attraction or nostalgia or some other sentiment. What is the desired result? A “thing” that can among other things represent him.

Consider a house enslaved by what is not there.
“A house” that is enslaved by what is not there would primarily depend on its own sense of materiality to be defined. In other words, a tree shade would not “house” the volume underneath it unless, well, the tree exists. Consider four posts, lintels joining them and a plane over it all: the first question one would ask would probably be, “what is that space for?” This “house” has defined a sense of place with its materiality, and the concern has shifted from its passive existence of, well, being there, to what is its active role of what it actually “houses.” Even if the answer to the question is “nothing”… the “house” maintains its integrity and, indeed, its functional dignity as “the thing that houses nothing.” What does such a “house” communicate, or represent? A house is dependent on the spirit of its occupier for its own spirit. It follows that the house that contains nothing-deliberately- communicates nihility.

On the other hand, there is actually no such thing as a “house for nothing,” simply because the man will inadvertently ascribe a use of whatever nature to whatever house. Just as a noun is only a noun if it possesses a “verbal companion,” a house is not a house unless it has a proper primary function, from which it will derive its spirit. So the house gives, and the house takes, but the house cannot be unless needs qualify it… like a genie that one summons out of a lamp, to answer to ones needs.

Yonde Mirou is a pseudonym, the Author reserves the right to withhold his Identity.


Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here