The Poetics of Space

Bachelard's text, The Poetics of Space was a really nice, intimate reading.  I've never thought about or hear the proverb, "Men can do everything except build a bird's nest."  I think that is a really nice way to set up the reading, by putting us as an outsider to nests.  I love that nests can immediately take people back to their childhood or "to the childhoods we should have had".  It is fascinating to me to think about ideal childhoods and what things represent a perfect childhood.  I think everyone has had an experience where they watched or had to move a nest to another location, but I have never just thought of it as a "thing".  The love the part where Bachelard talks about hearing a woodpecker that's annoying so he "naturalizes" the sound and transports himself to a garden in order to be calm and give himself a new perspective. I am definitely going to use that method when I hear crows in the future. To think about other spaces as nests or eggs is a very transformative process for the human consciousness.  "For, Quasimodo...the cathedral" was every place at once for him, including the universe. For some reason this reading kept reminding me of being outside other people's homes on Halloween where I grew up. Where I grew up on the east coast it would have been cold at Halloween and the homes were always glowing and warm and you could tell from the windows and front door. The sense of loyalty in returning to the same place day after day is amazing, I love home and everything it entails. I've moved so many times my whole life so home has always had the possibility of leaving any minute for me, but I think it makes me value it that much more. I definitely identify with past homes being, "the great image of lost intimacy". On a side note, I've been reading a lot of parenting books because I am a nanny, and they all say never to put children in the corner.