Quotes enable us to breathe – Flusser

“Even reason forever lost its bottom. One could never rid oneself of the conviction-totally irrational, but appropriate for the times-that “actually” one should have perished in the gas ovens; that from this point on one is leading a “unforeseen” existence; that through emigration one is responsible for separating oneself from one’s home, to throw oneself into the yawning abyss of meaninglessness… From this point on one is consuming one’s own energy, not the energy that comes from the nurturing earth… A life in bottomlessness had begun”.

Vilém Flusser

Bodenlos(1992), pp.28

in Writings pp. xx Introduction, Edit by Andreas Ströhl

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Home( )House Project Participants #2

Any place… Temporarily.
Everywhere I sleep or lodge turns into home.
Some were just places, hotels, friends’ apartments, “beach cabinet”… My parents’ house. A few felt better than others yet I never felt home, neither now that I’m on my own.
That feeling went lost a long time ago. I’ll always be searching, looking for a place to prove me wrong, hoping for this constant feeling to go away. Now I know for sure: it’s me.

I have two countries. One I truly know, it’s the place that saw me grow… The other, it’s the place where I was born. For me, the sense of home fades with aging, like a wooden floor, and houses are what’s left when the comfort is gone.

— ARobin, 24, Chicagocropped-hhproject.png

Home( )House Project Participants #1

I dunno… sometimes it’s hard for me to find home, sometimes not. Usually it’s hard. In fact, I’ve come to think it’s this way because I’m indeed looking for it. That is, it’s when I’m not looking for it that I feel most at home in a space, which can be no space in particular really. If I come to realize that I’m in a place that I should derive a feeling of comfort and/or familiarity but don’t, I feel less at home…because I’ve become too aware of what “it” is, I believe.
There are more or less two instances I can remember that point to some type of difference or designation between ideas like “home” and “house,” these are: moving outta the projects I grew up in at age 12 or 13; and, moving to Chicago. Both were outta my control, in theory, and I didn’t understand where I was going or why. Neither, was too strange for too long once I understood that I was…lost. Since then, most houses don’t feel like a home at all even my momma’s, more like spaces with varying degrees of comfort. It’s been annoying. But, I try to remember to forget, or that I don’t have total control, so I can feel at home. Maybe that’s why walking and getting lost were important and valuable for Thoreau and Solnit, they’re more natural and appropriate than anything else.
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    — MMoore, 37, Chicago