Hello and welcome to the 13th issue of Place! Do you ever walk into a room and just feel like something is off? There’s something about the placement of a table, chairs and bed in relation to the door or window gives an unbalanced feeling, making it a space that you may not want to inhabit for long. Places have an unmistakable energy but one that can be disrupted or nurtured, Nina Unlay writes. Whether it’s rearranging her hotel room to align with the principles of Feng Shui or examining the architected “spirit of place,” taking the extra step to examine the way we set up our rooms and how it impacts our lives can have deeper meaning, especially in a time when we’re more confined to these spaces than ever before.
At Place, we believe that the experiences, sensations and conversations we have as we move about the world stay with us, stacking up as the years go by, forming who we are and the way we view the world. Do you have a letter to share? Send it to us at placeletter@protonmail.com. If you are interested in writing for Place you can find our inaugural pitch guide here. If you’re the social type, follow us on Twitter (@place_letter) where you can share your favourite pieces and Instagram (@placenewsletter) for a visual feast. Yours, The Place editorial team.
Spirits
Whenever I go on vacation, the beds are often in the wrong place. On a trip to Malaga, Spain, the bed in my Airbnb was against a wall with a door, next to the bathroom so I would hear my then-partner flushing the toilet as I napped. Big no-noes. We spent a good hour rearranging the room—at my behest—so that the bed was in the dominant position (the corner of the room, diagonal to the front door) and the energy moved around freely. “Hey, it does feel better!” he commented approvingly, to which I replied: Obviously. That is the point of Feng Shui.
Sometimes I choose Airbnb rentals and hotel rooms based on my personal Feng Shui rating. I zoom into the available photos and lay out the room in my mind, mentally redesigning, like in a Sims game. A fixed mirror (which should never be in front of the bed) usually ruins the best ones. My best friend and I joke—well, half joke—that Feng Shui should be a filter on Airbnb, a checkbox for those who like their restful sleep, like us. Feng Shui, to me, is like the lofting smell of lavender, a window with indirect sunlight, or newly cleaned sheets; it just makes a room better.
Born from ancient Chinese culture and astrology, the core belief of Feng Shui (literally “wind-water”) is that the right flow of energy (“qi”) creates harmony. Originally, the process starts by choosing the right sites to build on. Now, there are many formulas that commonly use the front door as a reference point. The Feng Shui Bagua is incredibly popular, a kind of energy map that divides a room into eight sections, each with its own needs and equivalent value. For example, you have Reputation & Fame in the south section, and Love & Relationships in the southwest; take care of those corners, and they will take care of you.
Proper Feng Shui is said to produce these things and more, like good fortune and good health. Over time and travel it has morphed into a sensibility, a phrase that is common in interior design magazines and raises real estate prices.
My Feng Shui awakening came at a time when I badly needed good things in my life. Eventually, the good things did come—and whether it was because of the Feng Shui or the passing of time, a part of me will always credit the former.
When I was in my early 20s, I went through a bad spell: a combination of heartbreak, stomachaches, and generally malaise that neither therapy nor medicine could cure. My mother—a huge self-care enthusiast—recommended Reiki, a Japanese healing practice that focuses on relieving energy blocks in the body. When I went to see the Reiki healer, she floated her hands on me for an hour, searching for parts of me that needed attention. At the end of the session, she asked something that stayed with me: Are you living in a good space?
I thought it was a silly question at first. My bedroom was great! It was clean, well-painted, and spacious. But then I went home and started emptying out cabinets. I found relics of the past deeply undisturbed in their corners: dirty crumpled papers, an old lip tint that had started to grow mold, a sticky pile of rusted keychains. Pieces I had ignored over time. I looked at my walls and realized that the combination of maroon and lavender was dizzying. We painted them an off-white color. I started sleeping on the other side of my bed, so that I had the door (and any unwanted guests) in my peripheral vision. Breathing became easier.
I started approaching rooms differently. I began to say hello to hotel rooms so that we weren’t strangers. I thank them when they are nice to me. I apologize when we don’t get along. But the existential idea that places and people have a relationship doesn’t belong to me, or even any one particular culture; it began long ago, with the people who designed our spaces.
The phrase “spirit of place” started in the Roman era. Christian Norberg-Schulz is credited as one of the first to apply phenomenology (the philosophical study of structures, rooted in experience or phenomena) to architecture; he struggled, for the majority of his life, with the idea that there was meaning in architecture, what we might now pass off as ambiance or atmosphere. In one of his most famous books, he says: “Through building man gives meanings concrete presence, and he gathers buildings to visualize and symbolize his form of life as a totality. Thus his everyday lifeworld becomes a meaningful home where he can dwell.”
This was in Genius Loci, which he wrote in 1979. In the Philippines, where I live, there is an equivalent phrase called “diwa ng lunan” which also means “spirit of place.” Similarly, it asks: How does a place make you feel?
It’s a wonderful thought—the belief that we bond with corners and curtains, water and windows, asking them to anchor us to all the things that don’t take form. I think about my favorite places, and how they all feel different, with personalities to acquaint with: like the distinct mix of humidity and smoke that wafts from my favorite street, or the quality of dreams brought by naps on an old couch. They acquaint themselves with me as well.
Although the concept of spirits is far from exclusive to the Philippines, “diwa ng lunan” carries a different weight here; the idea of a “spirit” is less abstract, it has shape. There is another belief that trees house actual spirits, fairies, elves; similar to how traditional Feng Shui references ghosts and devils. It is an old Filipino custom to say “tabi tabi po” (a more respectful translation of “excuse me”) when passing through wild foliage. We excuse ourselves, as we do whenever we enter anyone’s home. I even found myself doing this all over the world; the first time I said it to a tree in Europe, I paused, wondering if trees all over the world understood Filipino. (They’ve never spoken back, so I still wonder.)
Back within walls, my deep-seated belief in the spirit of things and that where my furniture points matters has led to a symmetry in all my bedrooms. In the last two years of my life, I’ve lived in five different bedrooms, a product of the uncertain life as an international postgraduate student. Home was but a feeling I crafted, packing and unpacking pillows and sheets that moved with me from place to place, in cardboard boxes that got heavier over time. The more I read about architecture and design, and the ways we give rooms meaning, the more convinced I am that we nest because we also know that eventually we may have to leave.
Norberg-Schulz also wrote: “Architecture is born from the dialectic of departure and return. Man, the wanderer, is on his way.”
There is a weird comfort in treating furniture like a north star, an invisible safety blanket that travels along wherever I go. It fills the gaps of the unfamiliar. When I move from city to city, all my rooms are the same room with twin souls.
The bed, in the right position, is usually next to a window whose light wakes me in the morning. A desk with a view, tables with soft corners. A consistent soft green hue that reminds me what colors I like; a tattoo on the skin of my walls. Though they never stayed for too long, neither did I. After I pack up, I always pause to look at where I am. I say thank you and goodbye before I go.
- Nina Unlay is a writer based in the Philippines. She is also editor-at-large of Place and editor-in-chief of indie travel publication GRID Magazine
-Watercolors and photos by Karis Hustad
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Join us next week for the aforementioned reflection on India’s northeast.