Egostànzia

 

“And the supreme mystery was simply this: here was one room;
there another. Did religion solve that, or love?”
(Virginia Woolf)

I recently happened to read a website created by John Koenig, “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”.

Playing with etymologies, prefixes and suffixes, he has created dozens and dozens of neologisms, some of which have already entered the social media idiom. It was 2015.

He thought of these new words as a necessity for the writing of his poems, because he had in mind some concepts that had not yet been expressed with the words in use.

Crazy and brilliant.

 

Moreover, in the discussions I am often having with the anthropology professor Antonio Riccio, with whom I am collaborating on a project on Filipino single mothers in Rome, an interesting topic has come up.

There was talk of a research conducted by an anthropology teacher and researcher from “La Sapienza”, Vincenzo Padiglione and Silvia Settimi, called “Museums of Self”: an ethnographic research that has also become a book, on the rooms of the children photographed by themselves.

 

In recent months it has become increasingly difficult to go outside and our rooms become protective shells, real carapaces, like those of crustaceans or turtles.

So I wanted to think how I would tell myself by photographing my room.

Given that, despite the interesting theme, I don't like the term “museum of the self” very much.

I don't feel my room in the least as something that keep in museum myself, on the contrary, it's absolutely alive and sparkling.

Thinking therefore of Koenig's “obscure words”, I coined the term “egostànzia”, combining the Latin term stànzia for room and ego for the “self”: the room of the self.

 

From an early age there was no safer place than my room and, year after year, I accumulated objects that kept alive the memory of who I was.

As I have already written, I am a compulsive accumulator, and the room reproduces in reverse what my soul is.

 

I accumulate memories, faces, pains, colors, wounds, laughter, loves, just as I keep plastic bags, receipts, books, images.

All of this in an organized chaos that can only be understood by me.

Sometimes I am surprised how this deep connection with my room leads it to reproduce my wounds and scars as well.

When my father wants to fix something cracked or unglued, I stop him.

I like to see the wallpaper slowly unfold like a scar over time.

Rightly so.

 

We must be wary of those who don't care and live their own room, keep it anonymous, without identity.

Either they are a monk or a liar, or an egoist.

 

I don't know how much you can understand of me from these photos, they are only ten polaroids of my carapace.

 

READ ALSO:

• An Old Green Letter 
• Postcards from The Philippines 

https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

 

Italian version