Nesting. Breeding. Empty nest syndrome. Whenever we use the bird analogy for our desires for home, a place of our own, it falls short. A nest is a temporary abode, one to be abandoned as soon as the young have fledged because by then it has served its purpose of keeping them safe long enough to do so. Birds may return to the same spot year on year, but not in any expectation of finding their old dwelling intact and waiting. They come back to build again, to start all over in the same spot. Are they superstitious? Do they return only to places where they have been successful in the past for the very reason that they were – or to places where they failed, determined to break the curse?
My naturalist friends tell me such notions are anthropomorphic, sentimental, absurd.
I don’t tell them that they cannot know: they are not bird.
I do not claim to know different: I am also not bird.
I simply believe that there is much we do not know, perhaps cannot ever know. Much is perception, theory, deduction, guesswork. The medics cannot tell my very human brother what is happening in his brain, for all the scans and tests, and theories, assumptions, deductions… much is still guesswork, so forgive me for questioning what we think we know about the workings of the minds of swifts or eagles. After all the work of nest-building and young-raising, the birds may be sad to leave. They may resent having to start all over again next year and the next.
Or they may not think about it at all.
Or of course, they may relish the chance to fly freely again, now that the structure or scrape has done its job of shelter, protection or impressing a mate.
It seems to me that some humans feel exactly the same way about the places in which they live: simply structures to provide shelter, protection or to impress a mate, places to be maintained or enhanced purely to sustain those functions, places to bring up a family (or fail to do so, or
choose not to do so) and then to leave.
Some of us though feel a deeper desire, for more than a nest, for a home. A sanctuary. Somewhere that is not just physically safe, but which holds us more deeply secure, somewhere that is a reflection of who we are, a soul-safe space. A place where we get to make up the rules, or to decide that there are none.
We want not to nestle, but to settle, not to roost but to root.
When we recognise that that is who (or maybe where) we are in life now, we stop building a nest and start curating a heart-space.
The fact will always remain that we are judged on the basis of our homes. Personally I think that is legitimate because, deliberately or subconsciously, our homes are an accurate reflection of who we are.
If I walk through your rooms and find no books…if everything is glitz and pristine shiny surfaces, if there is not so much as a glass left out, a half-drunk cup of coffee, an unplumped cushion…I will not judge your worth as a human being on the back of it, but I will make a whole raft of deductions and assumptions about what matters to you, how sympatico or not I will find you on the deeper level.
I reckon that’s ok, because you will do exactly the same to me.
You will notice that there are books everywhere, read, unread, half-read, page turned, lain spine up and open, that not everything is back in its place, always assuming it has a place, which by the looks of things is not guaranteed. You will almost certainly find last night’s wine glass or this morning’s coffee mug (or both) unwashed or unwiped. The vegetables in the fruit bowl on the worktop are likely to be past their best and sprouting. There’s likely to be washing drying – either on radiators or on the line outside. I might do a quick sweep of the cast-off clothing that has not yet made it to the laundry basket. There will almost certainly be dust, or smeared windows. Pens and notebooks. You will gather that this is a lived-in space and not one intended to impress anyone.
You might guess that I don’t share my living space with anyone. You might surmise that it has been a long time since I did so. You might look for clues of an other inhabiting this space, just in case.
Perhaps you will recognise the altar for what it is: a place for me to pause and acknowledge earth spirit, stone, wood, the creative, the oriental, the growing in shallow waters, the season. Or wonder at the Buddhas who watch over my dining table and my sleeping space.
You may notice the photographs. For years I had no family (or any other) photographs on display. I often wondered what the forensic police would make of that fact should they ever have cause to
deduce me from my living space. Now there is a feng shui inappropriate corner dedicated to the ancestors. It wasn’t a conscious decision, more an intuitive ‘yes’ – this is where you will find me from now on. I can call you in, now, because I do not intend to move further.
You will definitely notice how I kick off my shoes as I walk through the door and perhaps you will assume that this is a shoes-off house. It isn’t. Not unless you’re trailing mud behind you. It is a barefoot house, but only for me, and only because I dislike wearing shoes, or socks. I like to feel the ground beneath my feet, even when (sometimes especially when) that ground is warm laminate or soft carpet. Perhaps you will notice the grit and gravel that such bare feet track in from the garden, if I haven't yet swept the floors today.
What you will make of the furniture, I have no idea, except that the word ‘old’ will feature – as in old-fashioned. Some of it is actually old, much of it is not. It speaks to my love of texture and wood. It speaks to my connection with the people it came from. It carries its stories and I am working to capture those, and I will live with the scratches and stains and the wearing of fabric for a while longer yet.
When it comes to artefacts, if you look closely you might spot tasteful, even expensive, monetarily-valuable, pieces among the cheap tat, but not many and in some cases even I couldn’t tell you which is which, because it does not matter. I keep what I keep because of the usefulness, or the beauty, and more often because of the stories, the memories, the linkages back through time.
Telling those stories is a work-in-progress alongside the ongoing curation of what there is: what stays, what goes, what comes in and where from and why.
You will judge me on the back of all of this. Perhaps you will notice the ageing and low-level tech, or the absence of drapes at the windows, that there are few plants but always cut flowers. Maybe you’ll take a view on the pictures on the walls – or the blank walls without them. You will look at my space and wonder why I have not done with it the things that you would have done – and some of those may well be things I thought I would do if the place ever became mine, but when it did, I did not. Do not deny it, you will judge me on the back of all of this. Not judge my worth as a person, but make assumptions about what it says about me as an individual soul: about what matters and doesn't. And maybe some of that will make you flinch or cringe, and maybe some of it will delight you, and most of it you will probably notice and forget about.
And that is ok.
The conscious curation of my home-space into a soul-space is now deliberate, but it began in an evolutionary flow that I was not even aware of. The beginning of rooting is when we notice it happening, and rooting is what happens when we begin think of home-space as soul-space and not just a temporary nest. It begins when we realise that we are not bird.
~ / ~
“The business of nidification” which simply means nest-building is taken from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selbourne, as quoted in the anthology The Wild Isles.
