The early Greeks understood something very important about what the position of humans should be in relation to the world around them. One wise old Greek philosopher said the following words: "panta rei", every thing flows. What these wise people meant was that there is no permanent structure that applies to anything. Things change, people change, you cannot walk through the same river twice because a different stream will lead new waters around your unnoticing body.
It is very sad that one of the latter Greek philosophers, Plato, became the leading figure to lead humans astray with his emphasis on a different - and according to him - more important world that lies behind the reality that we experience. He taught us to dream about great things in the beyond, which as such is not such a bad thing because we need dreams to overcome the harshness of reality (Nietzche said we needed art in order not to perish of truth). The tragedy of this direction was that it tilted the complexity of life completely to one side, the world of ideas, and that the vision of the earlier philosophers, being that the focus should be on the real world faded away for a very long time.
We humans developed many philosophies and theological perspectives that put us in the centre of the universe and this cancer spread through almost everything in life. This to our own detriment, and to the sad point where the being of things have become mere objects to "reigning homo sapiens".
We lost the capacity to be the spokesmen of what the earth was (and still is) whispering to us and thus we started to loose our own soul - big time. The monster of nihilism was born and although we talk it pretty, at the end of every endeavor the lack of substance comes howling back.
Property has soul. When one stands on an open field planning to buy a stretch of that land in order to build a house there, it makes sense to keep in mind the people that will be living there and their needs accordingly. But it is just as important to know how the sun will rise over it and where it will set. To asses how the winds will blow and not to build so as to keep that away from the people that will be living there.
To build in such a manner that one will be able to listen when the winter winds will be howling and to see them playing, rustling and raging through the trees and shrubs that will be planted in your part of the breathing earth. The ability to walk out in the early morning onto the verandah and see and smell that the season is changing and to be part of that as well. To become sensitive to the flow of seasons, history, people, and yourself.
Property has soul. You can buy it and deem it yours as an asset. But eventually your title deed will fade and after you other people will be the so-called owners of that property for another period of time. In the end all owners come and go and the land will remain. With it’s own stories that last many thousands of years.
Van Morrison sings in one of his brooding songs of a house full of shadows. I believe that one should build a house in such a way that the scary ego of the human species must be kept at bay. A house should be built in such a way that the human spirit can become something more than just a one-dimensional being in that house. A house must be able to evoke feelings that transcend "everydayness". It must enable one to be coached into laughter, to feel deep sorrow, to feel the joy of existence, to be truly alive, and not to live to middle of the road standards.
All of this can only happen if the buyer of a property will bring his/her soul into play when starting to create the space where humans must later live. If we don’t want to live dull lives, we should not build dull houses born out of mediocre feelings to fit in with the others around us.
What about existing houses and apartments? Being an estate agent, I have walked into many human dwellings and have felt that a house has no soul or that, in another, one wants to stay there because you sense that the human soul has started a meaningful dance with this structure of the providing earth. Sometimes humans can bring such sorrow and pain to a house that one yearns to pull open curtains and start breaking down walls, to paint bright colours onto walls and to plant some trees in the waiting garden.
I have had times when I shuddered in horror when I drove past a house where the previous owners handled their piece of the earth with such care and where new owners come in with too much money, and being completely caught up in a spirit of egoistical display. But sometimes the passing time will rectify this also and the next owner will once again sense something more meaningful behind the raped walls and will bring a kind hand to the structure again.
Our own home is called "Soul Mountain". It once was a very practical single level face brick house and I used to climb onto a bench outside to get a better view of the mountains that lay there beckoning me. Then I started to sketch a house that could talk to that mountain in a reciprocal manner. The mountain being a mountain and the house being a house, but that a meeting of soulfulness could be established. We then succeeded to half nelson a bank manager against all odds to grant us a bond and today we continue to change, add this and that, with that silent mountain watching us all the time. Now and again it gives a silent nod.
But then there is also a house that dreams to be built against a mountain slope where the sea can for a while leave the ocean and sit on a verandah and breathe in foam. It just awaits a human to come in to play.
The soul of a property will be on display when the human spirit is really inclined to be fully human and that means that real people will be living there in a manner that implies unfaltering willingness to be completely and loyally part of this evolving planet.
But it does take a lot of guts to climb over the constraints of blatantly biased human perceptions and unlock the door to the soul of the earth and let all things, including property, start breathing again.
Wim van der Walt
30 April 2007
