Patios (unfinished)
I used to live in a basement in South London, which estate agents call a lower-ground floor flat. It has its own door, accessed by a spiral wrought iron staircase; a small but big difference that sets it apart from the basements of parents and sitcoms. It also has two patios: one at the front and one at the back. The front patio is bigger; big enough for a round table, four chairs, a handful of pots and a makeshift washing line in the summer.
According to Google, a patio is “a paved outdoor area adjoining a house”, which my patio fits neatly under. But as it’s below ground level (lower-ground), it also has walls. It’s enclosed. Or in other words, It’s in something, which makes it feel more like a room, almost. For example, when I sit there in the summer, it’s as if I’m both inside and outside simulatenously. It’s hard to tell them apart. I don’t feel like I am all inside or all outside, although the robin that came and sat on my knee would say it is certainly outside. “All inside or all outside” is an awkward phrase — as if my body can be split between them — but that’s how it feels to sit in my patio. And when I look out of the bedroom into my patio, it is into not out to. Sure I can see trees and sky, but I can also see walls, tumbling ivy and the Virginia Creeper that I’ve become overly attached to. All of this is in a definite space. Which makes me think: is my patio outside after all?
Gaston Bachleard wrote about insides and outsides in his book, The Poetics of Space. I haven’t read it all, just the chapter The Dialectic of Outside and Inside. I’ve never really understood the word dialectic, which I used to feel bad about. Then I read that Moyra Davey (an exceptional writer), also doesn’t understand it. Now I feel much better. Bachleard’s text is painfully murky, full of dense terms and wordy wording. It’s difficult. From the little I gleaned though, it seems that Bachleard sees inside and outside as diametrically opposed, but more in feeling that physically. He sees the inside as protected and intimate, but not only because of the space itself. In part it’s because of the feeling of the outside (its vastness) butting up against the inside. In other words, inside and outside depend on each other; completely different but reliant and inseparable...
I used to live in a basement in South London, which estate agents call a lower-ground floor flat. It has its own door, accessed by a spiral wrought iron staircase; a small but big difference that sets it apart from the basements of parents and sitcoms. It also has two patios: one at the front and one at the back. The front patio is bigger; big enough for a round table, four chairs, a handful of pots and a makeshift washing line in the summer.
According to Google, a patio is “a paved outdoor area adjoining a house”, which my patio fits neatly under. But as it’s below ground level (lower-ground), it also has walls. It’s enclosed. Or in other words, It’s in something, which makes it feel more like a room, almost. For example, when I sit there in the summer, it’s as if I’m both inside and outside simulatenously. It’s hard to tell them apart. I don’t feel like I am all inside or all outside, although the robin that came and sat on my knee would say it is certainly outside. “All inside or all outside” is an awkward phrase — as if my body can be split between them — but that’s how it feels to sit in my patio. And when I look out of the bedroom into my patio, it is into not out to. Sure I can see trees and sky, but I can also see walls, tumbling ivy and the Virginia Creeper that I’ve become overly attached to. All of this is in a definite space. Which makes me think: is my patio outside after all?
Gaston Bachleard wrote about insides and outsides in his book, The Poetics of Space. I haven’t read it all, just the chapter The Dialectic of Outside and Inside. I’ve never really understood the word dialectic, which I used to feel bad about. Then I read that Moyra Davey (an exceptional writer), also doesn’t understand it. Now I feel much better. Bachleard’s text is painfully murky, full of dense terms and wordy wording. It’s difficult. From the little I gleaned though, it seems that Bachleard sees inside and outside as diametrically opposed, but more in feeling that physically. He sees the inside as protected and intimate, but not only because of the space itself. In part it’s because of the feeling of the outside (its vastness) butting up against the inside. In other words, inside and outside depend on each other; completely different but reliant and inseparable...