Katharine Greider's The Archaeology of Home: An Epic Set on a Thousand Square Feet of the Lower East Side (2011) is going to serve as a writing prompt. In her book, she researches the history of an address, a house, its inhabitants and changes through and over time. Her writing is driven by two things that I strongly advocate: curiosity and contemplation. Why not add, as she also does, research, gathering facts, attempting interpretations and seeking universals while we're at it?
Now, dear reader, take your living space. Is it newer, older, in between? Where is it situated? How is it situated? What remains from before your time? Is there stuff you carried in with you, old family artifacts and treasures? How about the exterior, yard, interior furnishings, street facings, street names, walkways, trees, brickworks, stones, coal bins, basement, attic, breezeway, outbuildings, anything at all?
Go back in time with this abode space. Ten years. A hundred years. A thousand years. A million years. A billion years. That should provide plenty of variables to work with. Now, go to town with it. Whatya got?
Today's Rune: Defense.
5 comments:
after 20 years aboard this boat
we will be looking ashore. . .
New adventures... for us..and for the boat...Kitty will come along with us.
Aloha from Waikiki;
Comfort Spiral
> < } } ( ° >
These kinds of studies are always very interesting.
I am reminded of Robert Frost here : "men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever!" :)
That's so neat. I always wondered who owned this house before my step dad bought it. When my room was down in the basement I used to read all the little scribbles that were on the wall in places. A couple of them were height charts for some of the members of the family. I added my own :p lol.
I think I love written things people leave behind in houses they've lived in and such like that the most. I think it tells you more about the person sometimes then some little toy or other object they may have forgotten.
Cheers all - much obliged ~~! And nifty stories & images & texts , to boot ~~
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