Day 46

'Impersonal space' Pen on Paper

Having shared a room with friends whilst on my break in Austria I noticed something, something I've noticed before but never really thought about in any great detail. When you consider any space that is shared with other people we normally start by immediately designating specific areas for our own possessions in our head after giving the space a quick once over. The next step is to 'cleverly negotiate' for the space that we actually want... and by cleverly negotiate I am of course referring to the process of hurling our effects head long into said area peppering it with all manner of implements, instruments and trinkets... essentially marking our territory much in the same way a dog would piss on a fence to leave behind his musk. Also In these shared spaces there are sometimes native objects that had existed before we even occupied it. We then tend to attempt to take ownership of these as well by sitting in our favourite chair, drinking from our favourite cup and basically labelling things as our favourite 'whatever' and that seems to make it ours. There then exists an underlying and unspoken struggle over the ownership of the space as each person attempts to wrestle that little bit extra for themselves. The main point I'm trying to make here is that we like to own things and space is just another commodity that we can apply this to. It is something that, like any possession, we can become very protective of and in many cases get angered when other people encroach on what is now consider to belong to us.

A further thing you may notice in any shared space is that the inhabitants themselves will normally stay with in the confines of the space they have allocated themselves and these people tend to be fairly neat and organised, the kind of people who think, 'I'll do this now and it's done'. While on the other hand there are those people that subtly invade, envelop and engulf the remainder of the space as they redistribute their effects bit by bit over time. It is not something that you are completely aware of either as it happens, mostly due to the incremental nature of the take over... however as with most things there is that point of realisation where after pausing for a brief moment you realise that you are standing in the middle of kitchen which now resembles someone's laundry basket and has a faint smell of feet as a result of the small mountain of clothes and shoes discarded at the end of a hard day. The people that do this tend to be a little less organised, a lot more untidy and are prone to that feeling that, 'I'll come back and do that later, I just couldn't be arsed now'. Whether you are the person causing the mess or the person picking up after, the one thing that helps you to make the most of any shared space is compromise. If someone gets a little more space here, then obviously they should get a little less space there. It is then just the process of negotiating the best compromise to ensure that each person gets the most from the situation... failing that you can just burn everyone else's stuff and replace it with yours.