Saturday 2 September 2006

Pic of the day: The (Off-)White House, as seen from the lawn. Yes, this is the house I rent. The picture is taken on a sunny day when the windows are blinded, shutting you all out. Think of it as an expression of my reclusive personality!

Fast forward

Isn't this strange. Back when I lived in the Chaos Node, I bought stacks of manga books (Japanese comic books), mostly in English but some in Norwegian translation. It was like a new hobby I had taken up, of which there haven't exactly been so many. But after the move, the idea seems rather alien to me. It is more like, I wonder why I did that?

I think it was the ancient Romans who believed in "spirits of the place", though I think other societies of the same level also had similar concept. I have thought about that sometimes over the years. It would probably be unseemly for me to give detailed examples from the village where I grew up, but it amazed me how at another farm there, two generations of owners - who were not related to each other, to the best of my knowledge - displayed strikingly similar behavior with regards to the land. I think my brother, the farmer, could tell more than I about the power of the land to shape thoughts. As if it were a person, or nearly so. I know at some point in his life he considered himself engaged to the farm. I think that was a very real thing. A farm is not like a job at an office, where you clock in and clock out and perhaps you quit and try another job for a while.

I wonder... there may be much less force in a simple house than a whole farm, but perhaps there is some? Where I lived before, the house was almost new and had barely been lived in. Perhaps I shaped its spirit to some extent? This house is not as old as me either, but it has been lived in since 1968 or 1969. There may be a subtle bias in the spiritual atmosphere.

Or perhaps it just seems more natural to read manga in a basement apartment filled with stacks of stuff, compared to a family-friendly house with plenty of open space?

Or perhaps the experience of having to cart away a metric ton of books, comics and magazines has made me wary of filling up a place where I may only live for a few more months, for all I know. ^_^*