My Studio Apartment By Anjelo Reyes

     In Virginia Woolf’s short story, A Haunted House, the house seems to hold a kind of memory. Not only that, it holds the emotion and love of its previous inhabitants; it holds spirit both figuratively and literally. 


    I often wonder about how places possess a kind of spirit or energy about them. In German, there is a word  called zeitgeist, meaning spirit of the times (zeit=time and geist=spirit). In imagining this word I like to imagine a literal spirit who goes around affecting a people’s character. In the roaring twenties, there was the zeitgeist of economic prosperity and daring self expression. It caused people to defy prohibition and experiment with new styles of dancing and dressing. During the founding of America, as we read from Tocqueville, there was a zeitgeist of industry, equality, and freedom that rendered the people of America with strong values and work ethic. 


    Similar to zeitgeist—spirit of the times—Woolf seems to show us the spirit of place. When we live somewhere, we begin to attune ourselves—often unknowingly—to the memories and spirits that that place holds. Indeed, places hold energy and emotion; they hold meaning and history. When we inhabit a place, we inhabit those aspects too, and it necessarily affects our mode of being. For instance, Tocqueville talks about the very geography of America, and how the structure of its land was averse to aristocracy. Did the spirit of the place naturally dispose the people towards Democracy? 


    I’m currently writing this at two a.m in my studio apartment. It’s dark, and I can only make out shadows from the moonlight coming down from my sunroof. It’s quiet. For almost an hour now, I’ve been thinking about the spirit of this place, and how it makes me feel. Honestly, I don't really feel anything. I wish I was as sensitive as Woolf was to such things. 


    It’s an old place. So old in fact, that it used to be a goat barn (I think that means it’s old). So really, if I’m going to think about the memory or the spirit that this place holds, I’m going to think about all the goats that used to eat, sleep, poop, and make babies here. What if they’re looking for treasure too, like the ghosts in Woolf’s story? I don’t think there would be a way to make a story like that beautiful and romantic. I don’t like goats. I don’t like their eyes.


    Though, really, I do wonder about the people that used to live here. If it’s old, how many people have lived here before me? How many people wondered the same thing I’m wondering now, in this very room? How many people called this home, as I do? How many people have cried on this bed, or jumped on it, or, you know. Luckily I changed the sheets. 


    These are just some of my two a.m thoughts about my studio apartment. Although I don’t feel any spirit, I’m sure it affects me in ways I’m unaware of. It’s all kind of nice to wonder about. 


    —AR

Comments

  1. Krishnan VenkateshFebruary 24, 2021 at 11:05 AM

    "To the Goathouse." This rumination will become more significant as we read further -- because later the two places, the house and lighthouse, will be enveloped in memories. But what animates a place, what gives it its geist? Is it only the imagination that inhabits place and history, and if so, what access do we really have into the spirit of a place?

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