Clutter, solitude, and a little theatre of spectacular life. There are no ways to enter a tiny flat: you have to merge with it as soon as you walk through the door frame. Sometimes even force yourself into it. There is friction. It is a sardine’s tin can, in which we become soft vertebrae curving and recurving, having to bend to fit in, flesh macerating in clutter and chipboards.
You are an excellent writer. Strong flowing style that kept me reading about something I don't like to think about. Like boxing prose from someone who is a language master (and so young!) - reminds me of the late great Muhammad Ali Fighting methodology - 'Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!' I am going to subscribe.
In France where I live it's also about to take a shit turn. I take note David and will soon report on "How to house yourself in nothingness", as I am writing from unemployment.
You described all the feelings with such precision and beauty. I realised living in a small space forces you to be more aware of your own thoughts, the solitude then becomes sweet but hard. Whatever it is, you grow inevitably ✨
wow, this was a delight to read! So many phrases to turn over and over. especially love: "Not a one (wo)man show but a show of one-for-one, one-to-one, self-to-self. Playing every day the absurd performance of existence—just for the beauty of it."
I believe you were strolling around in my head as you penned this piece. The space I physically live in is not by any means similar to what lives in within my mind. What a clutter it is! Your words are refreshing. I don't really mind some clutter; it shifts and changes and reminds me that someone lives here so that it can exist.
As you talk here about clutter, I’m thinking that clutter isn’t nice when it’s unharmonious but if, as painters, we could curate our clutter by choosing only aesthetically pleasing objects and things within a colour pallet, then it becomes a masterpiece, right?
That is a gift. If one has it, then maybe one lives in a world of psychic curios? There is a place in Wisconsin, north of here, called House on the Rock. It is the creation of an abstract genius. The place is huge. The gallery images don't do it justice...there is no overriding theme, just wonderment. https://www.thehouseontherock.com/gallery/
"You can’t push walls but you can push your own barriers to expand inside, sinking into your infinite well. Collapsing all the walls from their centre— you—venturing inside of inside until there are no walls left and that caging feeling vanishes into its own illusion. An inscape; a landscape of immense possibility of openings. You learned to live small, to think small, to dream small. To make do with less."
the way these words flow so perfectly to describe something so singular and compact has me rereading paragraphs like this one. I also loved the voyeur of sounds imagery of the surroundings outside of the flat that are yet seemingly inside of it too, an "inside of inside" the shoebox-closet living space. I often wonder if this style of writing and subject matter is going to become more common nowadays for writers to describe these types of surroundings, emotionally and economically... Amazing post Camille!
Thank you so much for your words! I do think that poetry and dreams are the only things that can save us from the unavoidable, hopefully just transitional, ugly things of life.
“You sculpt the beauty of less. Tiny flats teach you to be light, to shed the excess. You become all you’ve got and it’s enough. This is the essence of your being, stripped down to its rawest form. You don’t need much, just a place to think, a place to numb, a place to mutate from dirt to fresh.”
This and your last paragraph… I resonated with much of this essay in my bones, as a woman finally living alone in tiny, tiny space. (Mine is a cabin, with my bed above my tiny kitchen/bedroom/lounge/house and a bathroom outside). I think of it as confinement and my personal asylum but also as my artist studio on better (more hopeful) days. It is always my cocoon and I do await metamorphosis. There is a distinct poetry to living in a tiny space, alone with yourself and all your clutter - both physically and mentally. A distinct poetry. I have been contemplating writing a piece for a month or two (I’ve been here a month or two, but I’m still moving in and finding space and storage for my things, to be honest) and your piece has inspired me to write a piece about it.
Laura! I totally romanticised this little cabin of yours that I know nothing about haha. Please send your writing this way when it’s ready! I would love to read it and wouldn’t like to miss it!
I love the expansion within parameters. i have a tiny kitchen, I can reach everything without moving my feet, but I have learned how to cook great meals that I love within limitation.
That is very nicely put! Constraints are a great tool for creativity. It gives something to start with in the immense pool of possibilities. I love that you find a way to make your kitchen dance.
I browsed your writing David, and I have to say you have the best notes on Substack. And a wonderful flow of words! So, when you say that, it means a lot to me. Thank you.
About your disorientation, I suggest a little tour around, until you become familiar enough to understand where you are!
"There is no emptiness to preserve your wholeness." This is so good that I admit to going to your portrait and staring at it for a bit, looking for the lines that would suggest the decades spent learning to write so well.
Maybe it’s not about learning to write—when I only knew 5 words and school was teaching what was the proper order to put them into, I was just fascinated by how moving them around would simultaneously build and deconstruct all forms of meaning. I had a sense that was what poetry was all about.
The rest is learning to feel, and respond to those feelings, learning to observe, learning to read, learning to object, learning to lean on the absurd, learning to listen, learning to draw, learning to absorb, learning to be generous, learning to love, learning to live.
Love this! Here is where this piece took me: In the 90's, I lived where I could afford as a college student working 3 jobs in Montana, USA. It was an old sheepherder's shack containing two VERY small rooms and a closet-sized bathroom; rent was $175 a month. As small as it was, with inconveniences to the hilt, it has been one of the BEST places I've ever lived, because it was where I found 'myself'! Your essay made me happy in remembering. A big smile for me, too, in reading your writing, about your tiny flat, as it has shown me a portrait of you, in your little space, AND IT IS MARVELOUSLY CAPACIOUS!! JUST LOVE IT!
No matter how small the place is, there is no limit to the memories we can store! I'm so delighted to read this little snippet of your journey, I'm glad you found a way back to it. As for my little space, I can say for sure it contains all of me—and that alone makes it gigantic hahaha.
Yes, this---'No matter how small the place is, there is no limit to the memories we can store!'- SO TRUE!!! There is miraculous capacity in our brains for storing everything! Often, my struggle is in the digging through, as I ask, "Where did I put that?!" Heehee
I resonate with this. Once spent nine months in a pantry converted into a room. I spent a lot of time in other places like the library though. But it does force you to contend with your belongings and self in ways you poetically describe.
It does! A boat, converted van, motor home, mobile home, tiny house, treehouse, giant seashell, cave, hole inside a tree, drawer, american fridge, wherever we fit in right?
You are an excellent writer. Strong flowing style that kept me reading about something I don't like to think about. Like boxing prose from someone who is a language master (and so young!) - reminds me of the late great Muhammad Ali Fighting methodology - 'Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!' I am going to subscribe.
Wow. Thank you Christopher, for reading, for this comment, for subscribing. Your support truly fuels my desire to keep writing!
You have a gift - use it to make the world a better place!
I intend to :)
An age ago, I in youth,
clutter my future mistress met.
Hid she well, uncouth,
from parental regret.
Thence in studio, on my own,
a blossom she put forth.
With young love and petals down,
she wrapped in love my girth.
Now with salted hair I see,
conjoined in larger space,
a mirror reflects gently,
my heart’s mistress’ true face.
What a treat! Thank you. Beautiful!
Thank you for the inspiration!
Hell, the way Biden has killed our economy, we’ll need lessons on living in dumpsters.
In France where I live it's also about to take a shit turn. I take note David and will soon report on "How to house yourself in nothingness", as I am writing from unemployment.
Hang in there!
Don't blame Biden. Blame the corporations for gouging. tRump could have given middle class tax breaks but he chose millionaires to give tax breaks to
😆 Yeah, ok.
You described all the feelings with such precision and beauty. I realised living in a small space forces you to be more aware of your own thoughts, the solitude then becomes sweet but hard. Whatever it is, you grow inevitably ✨
Cheers to growth Mari! Any challenge makes a good fertiliser and for sure small spaces are full of them.
wow, this was a delight to read! So many phrases to turn over and over. especially love: "Not a one (wo)man show but a show of one-for-one, one-to-one, self-to-self. Playing every day the absurd performance of existence—just for the beauty of it."
Camille! Camille!
I believe you were strolling around in my head as you penned this piece. The space I physically live in is not by any means similar to what lives in within my mind. What a clutter it is! Your words are refreshing. I don't really mind some clutter; it shifts and changes and reminds me that someone lives here so that it can exist.
Jon
As you talk here about clutter, I’m thinking that clutter isn’t nice when it’s unharmonious but if, as painters, we could curate our clutter by choosing only aesthetically pleasing objects and things within a colour pallet, then it becomes a masterpiece, right?
That is a gift. If one has it, then maybe one lives in a world of psychic curios? There is a place in Wisconsin, north of here, called House on the Rock. It is the creation of an abstract genius. The place is huge. The gallery images don't do it justice...there is no overriding theme, just wonderment. https://www.thehouseontherock.com/gallery/
"You can’t push walls but you can push your own barriers to expand inside, sinking into your infinite well. Collapsing all the walls from their centre— you—venturing inside of inside until there are no walls left and that caging feeling vanishes into its own illusion. An inscape; a landscape of immense possibility of openings. You learned to live small, to think small, to dream small. To make do with less."
the way these words flow so perfectly to describe something so singular and compact has me rereading paragraphs like this one. I also loved the voyeur of sounds imagery of the surroundings outside of the flat that are yet seemingly inside of it too, an "inside of inside" the shoebox-closet living space. I often wonder if this style of writing and subject matter is going to become more common nowadays for writers to describe these types of surroundings, emotionally and economically... Amazing post Camille!
Thank you so much for your words! I do think that poetry and dreams are the only things that can save us from the unavoidable, hopefully just transitional, ugly things of life.
“You sculpt the beauty of less. Tiny flats teach you to be light, to shed the excess. You become all you’ve got and it’s enough. This is the essence of your being, stripped down to its rawest form. You don’t need much, just a place to think, a place to numb, a place to mutate from dirt to fresh.”
This and your last paragraph… I resonated with much of this essay in my bones, as a woman finally living alone in tiny, tiny space. (Mine is a cabin, with my bed above my tiny kitchen/bedroom/lounge/house and a bathroom outside). I think of it as confinement and my personal asylum but also as my artist studio on better (more hopeful) days. It is always my cocoon and I do await metamorphosis. There is a distinct poetry to living in a tiny space, alone with yourself and all your clutter - both physically and mentally. A distinct poetry. I have been contemplating writing a piece for a month or two (I’ve been here a month or two, but I’m still moving in and finding space and storage for my things, to be honest) and your piece has inspired me to write a piece about it.
Your writing is always beautiful Camille, merci.
Laura! I totally romanticised this little cabin of yours that I know nothing about haha. Please send your writing this way when it’s ready! I would love to read it and wouldn’t like to miss it!
I love the expansion within parameters. i have a tiny kitchen, I can reach everything without moving my feet, but I have learned how to cook great meals that I love within limitation.
That is very nicely put! Constraints are a great tool for creativity. It gives something to start with in the immense pool of possibilities. I love that you find a way to make your kitchen dance.
I really enjoyed this. Especially, the way you wove the negatives into positives.
Thank you L, I am trying to bring perspective to the things that can so easily drag us down. I am glad you enjoyed it.
Wait, what? How is it even possible to find writing so good anywhere, let alone...wherever we are.
It's so good it left me disoriented. I hadn't thought to find anything so lovely.
I browsed your writing David, and I have to say you have the best notes on Substack. And a wonderful flow of words! So, when you say that, it means a lot to me. Thank you.
About your disorientation, I suggest a little tour around, until you become familiar enough to understand where you are!
"There is no emptiness to preserve your wholeness." This is so good that I admit to going to your portrait and staring at it for a bit, looking for the lines that would suggest the decades spent learning to write so well.
Maybe it’s not about learning to write—when I only knew 5 words and school was teaching what was the proper order to put them into, I was just fascinated by how moving them around would simultaneously build and deconstruct all forms of meaning. I had a sense that was what poetry was all about.
The rest is learning to feel, and respond to those feelings, learning to observe, learning to read, learning to object, learning to lean on the absurd, learning to listen, learning to draw, learning to absorb, learning to be generous, learning to love, learning to live.
And that, is three decades in the making :)
No?
"There are no ways to enter a tiny flat: you have to merge with it as soon as you walk through the door frame."
The kind of observation a seasoned writer would make. Amazing.
Thank you for that David.
Love this! Here is where this piece took me: In the 90's, I lived where I could afford as a college student working 3 jobs in Montana, USA. It was an old sheepherder's shack containing two VERY small rooms and a closet-sized bathroom; rent was $175 a month. As small as it was, with inconveniences to the hilt, it has been one of the BEST places I've ever lived, because it was where I found 'myself'! Your essay made me happy in remembering. A big smile for me, too, in reading your writing, about your tiny flat, as it has shown me a portrait of you, in your little space, AND IT IS MARVELOUSLY CAPACIOUS!! JUST LOVE IT!
No matter how small the place is, there is no limit to the memories we can store! I'm so delighted to read this little snippet of your journey, I'm glad you found a way back to it. As for my little space, I can say for sure it contains all of me—and that alone makes it gigantic hahaha.
Yes, this---'No matter how small the place is, there is no limit to the memories we can store!'- SO TRUE!!! There is miraculous capacity in our brains for storing everything! Often, my struggle is in the digging through, as I ask, "Where did I put that?!" Heehee
I resonate with this. Once spent nine months in a pantry converted into a room. I spent a lot of time in other places like the library though. But it does force you to contend with your belongings and self in ways you poetically describe.
It kind of force you to explore the world (and libraries, mostly libraries). To hunt for your needs.
Wow! The sailing metaphor is apt in multiple ways. Living in a small flat sounds like living in a sailboat.
It does! A boat, converted van, motor home, mobile home, tiny house, treehouse, giant seashell, cave, hole inside a tree, drawer, american fridge, wherever we fit in right?
american fridge, lol
Biaised European perspective haha
Ha, yes! Still haven’t tried a giant seashell or a drawer, but there’s time yet.
I am sure opportunities will appear soon on airbnb.