The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this word bauen, however, also means at the same time to cherish and protect, to preserve and care for ... To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free, the preserve, the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its essence. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing. (Martin Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking")

[L]anguage that carries weight in our culture is very often fuelled by a search for home." (Carol Shields, "About Writing")

When at last you are reduced to this, when there is nothing left to relinquish, what else is there to do but to build anew? To dig a new burrow path low to the ground and gather materials for a new shelter, a place where you might live and call home and dwell. A place where you might, once again, remember what it is like to be possessed of your own wounded self.

Especially here in this city whose inhabitants seem perpetually compelled to discard solid dwelling so that they might be reinvented as something bigger, newer, more transitory. If they haven't lost everything, they act as though they want to. The innards of entire dwellings -- whole kitchens, baseboards, toilets, windows with curtains still attached to their frames -- all slung into dumpsters thrust upon front lawns like glacial erratics, leaving incongruous moraine-scars in their wake. The dwellings of this city vanish and reappear in a strobe of constant revision, jagged slow-motion. The brutal, fresh, brittle facade of the new. The map has again replaced the territory, and the entire city is left homeless. At night it curls itself in architectural renderings: by morning the ink has leaked into the soil and only framed-in skeletons remain, stark shadows against the dawn.

The homeless are believed to slide gradually into irretrievable dereliction. There is something we are presumed to lack, some instinct for stability or talent at grabbing what is available to be claimed. But perhaps what we lack is the destructive urge, this desperate flight from entropy. It is true that we do not resist the downward pull of things over the edge.

But there are so many different ways to be homeless in this city. Sterile condominiums furnished for binocular gaze. Silent, empty homes built to garage unused sectional sofas. No one looks out their picture windows; the doors are locked but there is nothing of value behind them. All the life has gone out of these places, or has never been permitted to enter. And in this way, I am no more homeless than you are. I have merely admitted it. I have enumerated my losses. And it is only out here, amid the discarded ruins of this lost city, that I might recover them.

(excerpted from Acts of Salvage, a work in progress)

Imagining Toronto (intersections of literature and place in the Toronto region)

Lodestone Salvage (architectural salvage)

1. You say “The old word bauen, which says that man is insofar as he dwells, this…”

   A question/comment:

   Bauen is a contemporary German word, does it exist in old English too? Here is what I know about the German word/meanings of “bauen”:

   In German, BAUEN literally means “to build”. And, interestingly, “a Bauer” is not a builder but a farmer. “Bauten” are buildings, while dwellings would normaly be called Wohnungen. “Where do you live?” in German normally goes as “Wo wohnst Du?”. Etc.

   The article is GREAT – bothe contents and style.

   Hella

   Posted by  on  03/12  at  02:09 PM

2. Hella,
   From my extremely limited knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, the related words for “build” were “byldan”, akin to the OE “buan” – to dwell, inhabit, “ge-buan” – take possession of, settle in, and “bold” – a dwelling.

   Posted by Bernita  on  03/12  at  02:50 PM

3. Heidegger begins “Building Dwelling Thinking” with the same observation you’ve just made about bauen, namely that its proper or literal meaning is “to build”. He traces it through related words, such as nachbar or nachgebauer, or “near-dweller”.

   It is Heidegger’s claim that building belongs to dwelling, and that we are dwellers before we are builders. He considers how an act of building—a bridge, for example—can positively establish a locale. He says: ”[this] takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own essence, when we return it specifically to its essential being”.

   Yet, an act of building which ruptures the unfolding of things in their essence (for example, a bridge that utterly destroys the character of the stream it crosses, as with so many culverted and buried creeks in Toronto), is contrary to dwelling. Under these circumstances the fourfold (earth, sky, gods, and mortals) is ruptured and we become homeless.

   Heidegger asks, “What is the state of dwelling in our precarious age? On all sides we hear talk about the housing shortage, and with good reason.” He concludes, “The proper plight of dwelling does not lie merely in a lack of houses. ... The proper plight of dwelling lies in this, that mortals ever search anew for the essence of dwelling, that they must ever learn to dwell.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  03/12  at  02:51 PM

4. And to add to Bernita’s comment, it is worth noting that the Anglo Saxon for beaver—befer connects with the German word bauen, “To build”. A beaver dam is both a bridge and a dwelling.

   (I suspect Bernita’s being modest about her anglo-saxon)

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  03/12  at  03:00 PM

5. We build and rebuild because we don’t value what we have. But what we have isn’t really valuable, or we wouldn’t be willing to sacrifice it.

   We may be building ‘silent, empty’ condominiums, but we’re also bringing people into the city core. Those condos prevent the silent suburbs. And if those condo’s lye empty and silent, all the better, it means it’s residents are inhabiting the city.

   And in doing so, the city will become richer, a place which people value. A place where people build things of value. A ballet school or opera house.

   We are merely pioneers in this country, forgive the city for losing it’s peasant houses. All great cities grow, rebuild, and reinvent themselfs. If Toronto stays stagnet, it will die, along with all those people living in the suburbs.

   Posted by  on  03/13  at  01:11 AM

6. I concur with much of what you say, although I don’t agree that what we have isn’t really valuable. I think the problem is that we so often fail to recognise the value in what we have, looking ever elsewhere for some new visceral sensation, some new act of destruction and consumption to give meaning to our lives.

   Certainly not all condominiums are void, and not all suburbs are cold and empty (at its worst, Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood can be far more smugly insular than any other neighbourhood I know of). But we deplete the city and our dwellings of value when we occupy them only as brittle mannequins and move in frenzy through the streets, when the best or most interesting of our architecture is destroyed or reduced to pastiche, and when we praise vibrant neighbourhoods while rigorously effacing their diversity.

   The city of stories needs to retain its rough edges and its organic shape. A living city needs to acknowledge the pull of entropy, and preserve the fertile soil in its rebirthings.

   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  03/13  at  07:38 AM

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