Bird Mail 038
Bird Mail 038
A few thoughts on 🏠
Welcome back to Bird Mail, I’m Bruce, your gatherer of internet ephemera. If you have forgotten why you signed up, Bird Mail is a 500-ish word newsletter written to surprise and delight. If Bird Mail no longer brings you joy, no hard feelings, you can easily Marie Kondo it right out of your inbox.
Like everyone else, I think it is fair to say that I have spent far more time than I expected thinking about “home” and what the space and idea of it means.
This is a map of a few of my homes, at least the ones I’ve had in Austin. I have been playing around with Between The Places, a beautiful little map generator by designer Matt Miller, based on The Area of Manhattan Between The Places Where I Have Lived Is Removed, 1980 by Sol Lewitt. I started with the map you see above, and later added on the other homes I’ve had in life: one I can’t remember in Gretna, LA; two in Midland, TX; two in Oklahoma City; a tiny college campus in Arkansas. It was fun pushing at the edges of my memory—rummaging around for house numbers and names—to make my map a bit more precise.
The actual home Bird and I share is a small one. Nearly seven-hundred square-feet for two people, four bikes, and a small dog. Space is hard to come by here. Space for things, space from each other, space to work, space to stretch(we love yoga with Jessica or Dustin). We have gotten a tremendous amount of joy out of watching Never Too Small to see how architects in other parts of the world make use of spaces far smaller than ours. If you only watch one, make sure to watch our favorite, this Art Deco masterpiece in Australia.
We may not have the full freedom that Austin Kleon does when collaging houses, or the skills of the This Old Housecrew to build our own, but NTS has inspired us to think more about our own space and how we can design it to feel even more like our home.
Letting the idea of home extend beyond the walls of our house has helped too. We live near a large park and network of hiking trails in Austin and making those our yard has certainly helped make our indoor space feel less confining. Normally, Austin winter doesn’t look like this:
…but when it does, we are learning to practice the Norwegian art of friluftsliv to enjoy our time outside, or if we are feeling lazy we will get our hygge on (though those who know us know that hygge-time is rare, much to my chagrin). Bird will often remind me—especially when I’m complaining about having to pile on layer after layer before one of our bike rides, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” As I mentioned last issue, we’ve taken to rucking which definitely keeps us warm and has given us the opportunity to walk our current home town.
Now, I am curious, dear readers, how you are feeling about home of late. Has home changed for you? Have you done anything that has expanded your sense of home? Do reply or drop me a message at ohhi@birdmail.club and let me know. I promise to check my email sooner next time—I kinda forgot I had that inbox to check.
Stay home,
Bruce
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