FEBRUARY
Heterotopia, a word I didn’t know I needed
Heterotopia is an abnormal place existing outside of societal norms. No utopia and no dystopia, it lingers in between, providing a refuge from polarities. Think Roman baths, Persian gardens of paradise, a theatre, or a library.
Or it can be home.
My home is my own private universe. It suspended on a thin thread from boiling heaven above, and underneath is a reality that I have to go back to to get groceries. It contains things - and people - I want around me. It has very little of what I don’t want and what is weighing me down, and I’m working hard on separating the two. It will never be done completely because things constantly change and sorting process never stops.
Oh the fearless and confident people who knew what they wanted ever since they crawled out of diapers, how I envy you! You’re light years ahead of me and on a nice day I can catch a glimpse of a sun reflecting off the back of your feet as you keep running toward horizon. I had a dream too but I didn’t believe in it enough to let it carry me. I saw a door but was too scared to try it for a fear it might be locked. It’s called “being reasonable” and it’s encouraged.
After everything happened to me no matter how reasonable I was I lost interest in fitting in and now comfortably enjoying being a square peg in a round hole. I love quietly and live gently, I’m awkward and socially challenged, I’m immune to irony and sarcasm is wasted on me. I understand plants and animals better than I understand people, but I do try. I love humanity the way ocean is loved - for all eternity, from the safety of the beach. And this is where the need for heterotopia, a different kind of place, comes into sharp need.
Sanctuary, refuge, or an asylum - home is where i can just be. At four pm in my pajamas, if I must. With a brush in my hand and another in my teeth, painting walls into phantasmagorical bestiary. Playing loud folk songs or sitting in absolute silence. Losing sense of time in my studio, sewing, embroidering, beading my thoughts into wings of flying creatures. Reading, reading, reading, piles of books everywhere, dried flowers and postcards between pages. My strange little world, not happy but not unhappy either, shelter from constant noise, soul nourishing, barefoot comfortable, a deep rabbit hole, heterotopia. A different, sacred kind of place.