The Lookout

I wrote about things with a soul last week (“artifacts“) – how they can make a place your own. The same can be said about certain corners and spaces.

One or two days into the two week I spent alone in quarantine when moving to Taipei, I got frustrated from circulating between the desk and the bed in the room. My yoga mat on the floor marked the third place in the room, there was a slightly-too-hard-slighty-too-dark-slightly-too-far-away-from-the-window couch, and that was it for the beginning. Then I realized the window ledge behind the tub (there was a tub!) was broad enough to sit on!

I moved a pillow there and picked my favorite towel for some extra colors. (Douglas Adam’s style – this was a space journey after all!) Thus my “nest” was born, in which I spent much of the evening hours the next days.

Al this was very very very deliberate, as every tiny way to make that small place more “gezellig” with the little stuff I had had a direct impact on many hours spent over the days and weeks to come.

There are parts of the apartment I currently live in for which I have similar attention and care. And yet others are a bit forgotten. Was it the limits of time and space that had called for such deliberation – compared with the change and chaos of everyday life now? We like to speak offhandedly of “mindfulness” in these circumstances, but doesn’t this risks to reach once more inside, not into our surrounding?

For me, photography once more became a nice tool. It allows us to see the space we live in in a fresh way. To capture the random items lying around as a story of us – or not, by reminding us of them during composition and nudging us to remove them for a more pristine image.

How do you create and remind yourself of your favorite places at home?