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All Systems Go
November 20, 2005
Unfamiliar Systems
It's not just old jeans and boots that grow to fit the wearer; it's living spaces. The last few days I've been living in someone else's guesthouse while looking after their horses and dogs. Nothing's in quite the right place. Some things aren't there at all. Light to read by and a surface to edit on, for instance. No writing implements anywhere, even by the phone (which has so many buttons I need the manual to answer it), and to sharpen my red pencils I have to go over to the main house. My morning ritual is different here, and not just because I've got six horses and two dogs to feed, hay, turn out, and clean stalls for. My usual breakfast, strong black tea and Irish oatmeal, requires a fair amount of paraphernalia -- tea, teapot, tea ball, double boiler, steel-cut oats, raisins, brown sugar -- none of which can be found in the cupboards and drawers. Rather than schlep my own, I switch to coffee and cold cereal for the duration.
Sitting here at my computer, I'm within reach of reference books, paper, telephone, pencil sharpener, several pens and several bottles of ink, stapler, calculator, and paperclips. If someone else sat down to work here, she might be surprised to find a matchbook in the ceramic goblet that holds the paperclips. (She might also wonder why the paperclips are in a goblet, but let's not go there today.) I don't smoke, and is this the smartest place to put matches for when the electricity goes out? Aha. See the candle at one corner of the typing table? When I write, I like to have a candle burning. If there are matches in the paperclip cup, I can always get a candle lit.
Form Follows Function
When I started at Georgetown University, a new library had just opened. It was located along one of the short ends of the big rectangle that made up the heart of the campus. The rectangle was a long lawn with an asphalt walkway around the perimeter and a traffic circle in the middle, brushing the main administration building. Within weeks two dirt paths had appeared, forming two sides of a triangle with its apex at the library's front door. Despite signs advising against it, nearly everyone was taking the shortest route to the library from the main admin building (which also housed classrooms) and the university's main gate. No one was walking on the asphalt walkway. Eventually, as I recall, the ad hoc walkways were paved and made permanent.
I live alone: my living space fits me like my old jeans. No, on second thought, I share the space with Rhodry Malamutt. He has a bed -- a folded-up old comforter. He sleeps on the bed because I put the bed where he likes to sleep, not the other way around. He sleeps other places too, like on the bathroom floor when it's hot and on my bed when it's cool.
Dueling Systems
I've lived with other people in the past, and in group houses. Could I do it again? I wonder. I'm set in my ways, quite literally: my living space is my habits made manifest; it expresses who I am and what I do. Who messes with my space messes with my head.
Nearly all of my housemates over the years have been women, which is to say that none of us had a sex-linked drive to avoid housework; in theory, at least, we all believed in sharing the workload. In practice, there was considerable divergence of opinion about what the workload was exactly. The person with the lowest tolerance for clutter did most of the cleaning; the person with the highest tolerance could never find the stuff that she'd left on the sofa or the dining-room table. The person who liked to cook did most of the cooking, the rest of us ate whatever turned up at the appropriate time, and sooner or later there'd be a humongous row about moochers and exploited labor.
That was in all-female groups, mind you. Over the decades and centuries the culture has developed a template for male-female groups, especially couples, and in that template the female cooks and the male eats; the male clutters and the female cleans it up. Small wonder that an awful lot of sexual politics has to do with housework (and the office equivalent).
My System Trumps Your System
Horses have their systems, and the human who doesn't recognize and work with them is riding for a fall. At best, you won't get anywhere; at worst you'll get hurt, or your horse will get sick. Over the centuries -- millennia, I guess -- equine systems evolved for a life of ambling and grazing, punctuated by occasional flights from danger. The safety of each horse depended on the safety of the herd, and the safety of the herd depended on following the leader's lead. This is why, when there are several horses in a pasture, you don't put hay in front of the #2 horse until #1 has been fed. Otherwise #1 may run you down trying to get to supper, or #2 may knock you over trying to get out of #1's way.
So what do some people do? Coop horses up in stalls and feed them big meals two or three times a day, then wonder why they develop the fidgets, chew the stall doors, and founder or colic when they're fed too much or watered when they're hot
I can't help thinking of the U.S. of A. and its determination to export what it calls "democracy" all over the world. U.S. democracy -- or, more accurately, our republican government crossed with a market economy -- evolved in response to certain historical conditions, sort of the way my little apartment has evolved in response to my preferences and needs, shaped by my particular (generally limited) resources. Grafting it into a different culture, with a different history and different conditions: can it be done?
Maybe, like horses adapt to life with humans, and I manage to live for short periods in other people's houses. Or maybe it looks more like a movie set, all facade and no real life within.
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