F4A #11: The view from in here
F4A #11: The view from in here
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I’ve spent the start of 2023 in a state of restlessness. The year started slowly, but from its early days, my life revolved an absurd amount of bureaucratic red tape, even by German standards. Throughout January and into February, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning, then began sorting papers, contracts and emails with an almost robotic regularity. Even now that the hurdles in my path have been cleared, I still find myself coming back to the this routine because I find the comfort moreish – I crave the contentment and the smooth self-reflection I find in these semi-automatic motions. I let my hands and eyes run across binders and Excel sheets while my thoughts drift further and further afield.
I found myself in Lisbon at the start of the year, where I made my way to the Pena Palace in Sintra. Built first as a monastery in the Middle Ages, the convent was destroyed by lightning and the earthquake. A young Prince Ferdinand took interest in the ruins that remained and after marrying Queen Maria II of Portugal, Ferdinand (now, King Ferdinand II) acquired the monastery and its surrounding grounds, then decorated them with the flamboyance that European men are often permitted. Ferdinand II fit the monastery’s refectory with a fabulous extendable table from the Barbosa & Costa factory for entertaining between “four and twenty persons woven reed chairs that were brought to the table at the time to be seated”. Over the years, the division of rooms and hallways was redrawn for more intimate arrangements; upholstered seats and couches were pulled away from the wall, directing the footfall around them like rocks in a stream, and leaving visitors to perambulate with more care and attention. Walls were lined with papers and paints and cloth as the palace filled with decorations from around the world: Andalusia, China, Japan.
Over the next century, the palace passed hands first to Ferdinand II’s last wife Elisa Hensley, then to King Luís and finally to the nation of Portugal following the revolution. Queen Amélia, the last queen of Portugal, spent her final evening wandering through the palace before she fled to France in exile. While restorations of the repossessed palace in the early 20th Century sought to repatriate the building to its 16th Century status as a monastery, more recent museological interventions aim to “maintain the memory of the royal family’s experience” – to let the space live like it did under royal rule.
When I read this on a sign somewhere in the palace’s central courtyard, it struck me as strange: To me, the space didn't feel alive. It wasn’t dead, but restless. Signs posted here and there apologized for the maintenance staff speckled across the grounds patching tile work, trimming plants and hoovering dust off of the paintings and tchotchkes that lined the many bedrooms, parlors, baths and halls. Like a lot of domestic work, this labor was not particularly generative – when we wash our windows, scrub built-up mineral deposits from our showers and polish our floors, we’re erasing the time’s passage. We do not create or even celebrate anything at all.
The need for our furnishings to look and feel as if it came straight from the factory is one that disturbs me about modern attitudes towards furniture. I despise the IKEA kitchen wagon I inherited from previous tenants, but I still maintain it, and wonder if it’s worth sanding out the errant water marks on its surface. The wagon’s lived in its spot for longer than I’ve lived in this flat. I almost respect its inertia, but it’s this stillness that drives me insane. Maybe, it’s because it’s more comforting to admit that I don’t know how things should be, or how I’d like them to be – this wagon, for example. I want to know that the many things in my life have a purpose – in sum, that our lives might have a purpose, too – instead of seeking out a purpose for it myself.
When we commit ourselves to this kind of maintenance work – sanding, dusting, sweeping, a more – we understand its many semi-automatic motions as part of living. A necessary part, even! But I often worry that this stops us from seeking out true satisfaction, or a deeper understanding of what that might entail. As I walked through Pena Palace, I noticed that the royal family’s experience of the palace was one of great change and showmanship: In just under a century, the royal inhabitants morphed the palace into a reflection of their respective reigns not once, but many times over. Now, it sits still.
Over the holidays, a friend asked me if I ever felt like I lived in a showroom. At first I was appalled. My furniture is old, I thought, but it’s still very much alive. Weeks after speaking with my friend, I realized that I felt affronted by the idea that I live surrounded by things, and not with them (an idea that was very much my own—not one of my friend’s!). It’s not how I feel at all. When I walk through my flat, I see opportunities and change around every corner – in every vase I see flowers I could gather, on every countertop I see frames I can fill and on every shelf, I see things I might, well, shelve. I see how I might work with my space, not work on it. My furniture has lived lives aplenty, but I see how much more it has to give every time I reorganize my living room cupboard or pull my couch from the wall.
When I feel directionless, I move through my house like a storm. I crash into every wall and corner, making myself known as I train my eye on the darkness under cupboards and behind the radiator coils, attending to every spot I can find. I move past maintenance work, and into the work of change, which is much more involved. I mop the floors, then scatter shelves and cabinets in new tessellations. When I slide two tables together, they share a conversation between them that echoes through my flat, so I sit and listen. Since the start of the year, I’ve flipped my flat twice already, reordering how I live in it once, then once again. It’s not as mindless as cleaning but I rarely remember what was going through my head as I tinkered about the flat.
When I’m done, my home is full of energy and movement. I see life in the things with which I live, and in my space as well. On principle, I don’t often seek out problems, but as I move through my flat, I appreciate the abundance of solutions that surround me, and the full enthusiasm with which they live on today.
As for the wagon: I recently realized it’s the perfect size for the crawl space in my bathroom, weirdly. Lofted off the ground on a split-level platform, the water pocked surface will be out of sight and out of mind. You live? You learn.
What I’m Writing: Brutalism: What is it, and why is it so reviled and revered? For Dwell’s Pretty Ugly package, I found out.
What I’m Reading: I’ve been making my way through Empire of Pain (terrifying – I love it!) and just ordered Jenny Slate’s Little Weird off the back of this quote, which a friend shared with me and which I found quite moving (So what if I’m a sentimental sop! Sue me!)
What I’m Watching: I wrapped up Fleishman Is In Trouble last week and found the production value obscenely satisfying, but the actual experience underwhelming. I then read this review, which made me scream. This weekend, I also watched Don’t Worry Darling (good ole fashion fun!) and Holy Spider (no clear thoughts yet other than “that was A Lot”), have since started on the new season of You.