Home is Where the Hearth is III – Return

Departure | Displacement | Restoration

SEPARATION | INITIATION | RETURN

One of the regularly cited problems with modern cities is the constant feeling of displacement that can occur in the repetitive landscape of supermarkets, airports or office blocks. A restoration for this is often found in cultural movements and architectural developments that adjust a population’s sense of place.

Maria Lewicka describes home as ‘a symbol of continuity and order, rootedness, self-identity, attachment, privacy, comfort, security and refuge’. This importance of the idea of home is continuously repeated in studies on the concept of place, and also in literature and art. But most profoundly, it finds its way into our daily lives. Order is the key point, but in consistently displaced circumstances people cannot find this sense of order.

A graphic showing the word "restoration" with a settled, symetrical aestheticIn Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, the pathetically pitiable protagonist Quoyle meanders back from New Jersey to the home-land of his family, Newfoundland. Quoyle is a clod, unable to help himself or his family, and he seemingly does not fit into any public society. His work and life are in as much disarray as one another. But when he returns to his family’s home-place something happens that makes everything fit into place. There is not one event, just a coming together of place and person, and a type of normality is restored. The place does not create the identity, the journey does. But the home-place creates stability, order and sanctuary.
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Home is Where the Hearth is II – Displacement

Departure | Displacement | Restoration

SEPARATION | INITIATION | RETURN

Displacement from home is an uncomfortable feeling. It breeds suspicion and a feeling of nervousness, and rightly so. If, as previously discussed, home is a refuge, then displacement from home must create an opposing effect.

A graphic showing the word "displacement" with the letters jumbled up

During displacement there is a chaotic element. People find it hard to settle; rules can change regularly if moving from

one place

to another.

Everything becomes temporary.

And abrupt.

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Home is Where the Hearth is I – Departure

Departure | Displacement | Restoration

SEPARATION | INITIATION | RETURN

You go to a place, you go to another place. You return home.

You don’t return for 5 minutes to the bank. So what is the difference between home and another place? Why do we separate these two entities, and how do we create this separation?

Home is safety and privacy. It is outside of public norms; we do not have to behave with the same social rigour at home that we do in public places. A home allows us to dance on the kitchen table wearing our favourite Speedos if we should so choose; it does not conform to public rules and order, but to our own system. Continue reading “Home is Where the Hearth is I – Departure”

Perpetual Motion Machines – Why I don’t believe in bicycles

I don’t believe in bicycles.

No, let me specify: I don’t believe in the physics that govern bicycles.

Even more specific: I don’t believe in the physics that govern the movement of bicycles.

A gif animation of a cyclist moving in three frames

A bicycle cannot stand up unless it is in motion. It will slump in a rigid heap on the ground in an instant if left to balance by itself. So how can something that does not have enough balance to stand still manage to stay upright while moving. My theory: human imagination. Continue reading “Perpetual Motion Machines – Why I don’t believe in bicycles”

Heaven or Hell: Two literary journeys in the afterlife

Early warning:

This is a post that analyses themes in two books – Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and JM Coetzee’s The Childhood of Jesus. There will be reference to the plots, including the endings, of both books so beware of spoilers!

Hell has been imagined in many circumstances. Heaven, perhaps less often, has been used as a plot device or a theme for artistic creation. The dichotomy of “eternal suffering Vs eternal bliss”, in whatever form these two things take shape, is a common theme in religious teachings, and has also been used to form philosophical theory in literature. After recently reading JM Coetzee’s divine The Childhood of Jesus I was reminded of Flann O’Brien’s devilishly good satire The Third Policeman, and this post is an analysis of the concepts of heaven and hell through these two works of literature. Continue reading “Heaven or Hell: Two literary journeys in the afterlife”