Over spring break I began to realize that I preferred certain areas of my apartment to others, and that this preference was tied directly to my daily activity and use of space. It's gotten to the point where I strongly prefer sleeping on the couch, because my entire bedroom reeks of work to be done. Nobody who visits my apartment would have any clue what I normally do inside my home, because home is a space that is considered private. Yet home is the primary site of true culture. The monuments of economic excess we so often show our visitors, have everything to do with the modes of exchange in civil society, but little to do with the subjects of society. Isn't culture at least partly produced by the behavior of its people? In the humanities, we are always quick to talk of cultural production and ideological conformity, but it's because we speak in abstract terms that such notions seem so powerful. Sure ideology exists, sure behavior is learned, but not in black and white terms. People still make decisions, and ultimately those decisions are culture. No need therefore, to search for symbolism in the Eiffel tower or Space Needle. No need to escape to another country to understand one's own culture. If culture is contingent on behavior, if places gain cultural significance as a by-product of their usage, how much can one really learn in travel? Instead, I propose that we can learn a great deal about ourselves by studying the places we inhabit the most.
To demonstrate this point, I've mapped out my apartment according to personal and cultural behavior. I will here openly admit that I'm terrible at visual art, but I guess that's not the point. Behold:
I've split the apartment up into five distinct areas. They have been named according to their primary use, and the feelings I associate with those uses.
The first section of the map is called my "center of calculation." This part of my home functions as my window to the outside world. My computer is my only means to follow current events. It is also the primary place from which I do my writing and research, and the space I use to pursue my recording hobby. For that reason, this room has not been heavily associated with rest, despite the fact that it is my bedroom. You can clearly see that the very pathway to the bed is blocked by a microphone stand, which is almost ironic. Lately it hasn't been music that's stopped me from sleeping, it's been sheer academic workload. This is an area that's relegated to nervous coffee drinking, anxious internet use, and dreamless sleep.
I've called the second section of this map a "war-zone" in part due to the student papers that have accumulated over the last week. This entire side of the house is associated with work. The concept behind this map began originally by simply splitting the apartment down the center- one side for work, the other for leisure. Sometimes, I swear I don't even think while I'm sitting at that table. I wake up early, drink my coffee, smoke a cigarette, and literally plow through as much paperwork as I can on a daily basis. It becomes automatic, robotic, inhuman. But before I started doing this, my body was falling apart. I wasn't sleeping, and I do sometimes suffer from simple insomnia. This is the restless part of our culture, the part that privileges work over leisure, responsibility over personal comfort. I don't like eating at the table because it makes me feel like there's work left to be done- and there always is.
No man's land... the bathroom. A shower plastered in soap scum, corrosion inside the pipes of the toilet causes a disgusting slime that looks the exact same color as shit. There is body hair on the floor, and a stack of books on the back of the toilet. This is no man's land, because I am frankly embarrassed when other people use my bathroom. Stay away... nothing healthy can come from that mess.
I've called the kitchen "social space" because I don't like cooking myself. I have people over to eat three times a week or more, and it is during this time that I find myself forming my strongest friendships. Cooking is something that everybody should be able to enjoy. It is work for the sake of leisure- an art that is basically dedicated to bringing people together. There are stale fruit-loops under the microwave- signs of late night shenanigans, and the only dishes in the sink are coffee cups. I am not healthy, unless I surround myself with people.
It is curious that my living room is my "major area of study" because it is also my major area of leisure. For some reason, I just don't associate reading with hard work. I do almost all of my academic reading on the couch, using the reading lamp. I have had some of my most profound intellectual realizations in that very spot, but it is an area of leisure because I also have the television in that room. In this area of home, I learn passively. If I exert effort I enjoy doing it. I have also, incidentally, been sleeping on that couch. For some reason, this room never seems to remind me that there is work to be done, even if there is. This is an area of supreme comfort, and also the area that I show to my guests.
What we don't often see in travels, are the day-to-day patterns that people get caught in. No-one could possibly make the sorts of connections I've made without an intimate knowledge of the individual. So what's the point? Why travel? Not to learn... no. We travel to escape those very routines, to go to places to have no personal meaning, and to enjoy them.
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