Peopling
Our house has become a reception center, a gathering place, a meeting point. People arrive alone or in small groups. Some ar- rive very quietly, as if they have slipped unseen through the back door. Others arrive like peacocks, strutting through the gate and up the driveway as if a red carpet had been rolled out all the way to the front door. Some leap into focus the moment we meet them, and within an hour, you feel like you know them. Others take longer to emerge from the background, a gradual reveal, and some you barely notice until suddenly they unfold-offering a story, an idea, a gesture, an experience-and all at once, you see them in color, brightly lit.
They arrive with all their stories. With their explanations and patterns. With their sorrow and confusion. By bike or car, and some on foot. They come because they have spotted a poster or two, their curiosity piqued. But these days, more and more come after crossing paths with one of us someone who has lived here or visited, and who mentioned the house and all our meetings. How you’re always welcome at the meetings, even if you don’t live here. We try to get to know everyone, but there are many of us, and often people are just passing through. Some move in and stay for good, others meet here, then find a place to rent together in town. Some only come for the meetings, others live nearby and make a point of regularly dropping in. There’s a group in Lugano, there’s Gita’s group in Liège, and Aikaterini Erb’s group in Osnabrück.
On the Calculation of Volume - IV · Solvej Balle · p. 109
This reemergence from a Rift Valley of progressive time. Peopling the earth again, but filling an emptiness of time instead of space. Groups that form and spread out, settle and then migrate. A center of migration forms, an axis. This is how I think of the Neanderthals. They move in bands that forms through affinities and shared ideas about ideal climates and optimal resources. Kinship forms out of these welded groups. But nomads come back to some central point from time to time. They gather for discussion, to share questions and answers that have come up in the group. The urgency to share and acquire knowledge. There is also some magnetic pole in us that seeks out a center point. Orbiting is falling forever towards something but never hitting it. Nomadic families gather in a green valley, their herds mingling separately on the hillsides. Carpets spread on the grass as people talk and sing and dance before moving off again.