/ Creative Reflection
‘Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.’
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
In writing, ‘A Room Within a Room Within’ I wanted to dream into the geometrical space of the small bedroom at my grandparent’s house. A room that has been the one constant in a life of changing homes, schools and countries.
Whilst the other rooms of my childhood are physically unavailable to me, I can still travel to this room. A space full of objects and memories: the ship and hat on top of the wardrobe. The painting of the naked woman. Objects that exist in relationship to me. And yet they also existed before me…
To uncover and discover the mythic elements of this geometric space, I began to write from memory letting sounds, textures, colours and smells inhabit me. By not discussing the project with friends or family I was able to experience my own unique relationship with the room and its objects. In ‘Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer’, Turchi speaks of old maps in which the white space - the unknown - was filled in with sea serpents, dragons, griffins, hippogriffs and other exotic animals… (Turchi, 2004 p.34) By writing from my own reservoir of memories and experiences, imagination began to colour in what I did not know. The room was alive. And it was living through me, through writing…
After the first draft was complete, I contacted my grandmother. We spoke about what the room was like when my father lived in it. She sent photos of the room and the objects in it. I amended a few details. Kept writing. By the third and fourth drafts, I began to focus on structure. What to include and exclude? As a writer, I found it very hard to resist turning the project into a neatly tied up story with a beginning, middle and end. As Turchi comments, ‘we need to distrust the urge to scoop up theme and meaning, as if the things we can neatly pack are necessarily the things we came for.’ (Turchi, 2004 p.97) The piece was asking for more than that. It was asking to be told as truthfully and directly as possible. Admittedly, I am not sure how successful I was in this. Even as I hand it in as a ‘finished’ piece, I am aware of information left out and details that need filling in.
However, in creating a ‘structure’ I found the timestamps to be very helpful. Just as a room sits in a house, in a street with a name and number, so that it might be found: dates orientate the reader in a landscape of memory, dreams and imagination. The texture of open possibility allows for a self-enclosed centre to open up to a broader experience of identity; the reader placed within a present moment in which seemingly disparate themes and ideas begin to emerge.
In the moments of most lucidity, I felt my writing was being guided by an invisible hand, with an autonomy that existed beyond me. Which leads me to wonder: who made these memories? How much of this ‘memoir’ is made up? What have I chosen to forget? What am I not aware of? As Fra Mauro (a 15th century, Italian cartographer) once said, ‘My map absorbs me with what it does not reveal.’
/ Reading List
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