leap year, baby...: my mother's house- notions of space

I wonder if anyone else dreams of spaces, layouts, blueprints, MAPS as much as I. It seems that every morning I am sketching out a map of the spaces within my dreams:

dream map from last night

because it is that relevant- things, people, are often "on the left" or "down two steps", sub-level, walled, steep, or behind. They have some specific feeling of space; a relationship of myself in regards to a person or a structure or surrounding scenery.

This could be exacerbated by my current read. I don't read very fast- I let it sink in good and deep, absorb it as if by my pores, let it assimilate in my organs, self, essence. If a book doesn't seize me immediately, I have no qualms moving on from it without finishing. Its kind of 'love at first sight'-y, my approach to books (and I won't deny I approach other things this way as well...).

Right now I'm intoxicated by my latest juicy introvert book: The Poetics of Space by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. He describes the nature of homes, both structurally and metaphorically, describing how our homes and structures of [day]dreams are influenced by literal experiences with homes and structures of all kinds. Quickly the concept of home becomes exponentially more complicated, both as concrete structure constructed by nature or by man and as metaphorical, oneiric structures constructed in the imagination or [day]dream of man's mind.

I've always thought there was something unexplainable about returning to the home of one's upbringing. Whenever I have found myself visiting my mother in that home of youth in previous years, I have struggled not to transform into this other version of myself, somehow antiquated, youthful, outdated. Simply 'different'. There's so much history in that structure, those rooms, the things that decorate it, that my [day]dreaming mind was swept to another place. How can one's experience of a space not be colored by previous experiences in that space, or prior ideas about that space? It seemed each time my mind wanted to go to the same little blink in history and dwell there, conjuring all these teenage connotations of the rooms, the walls, the smells, the contents.

This time I'm here with earnest purpose, serious shift of roles and expectations...and the coloring of visits-passed has changed. Now more than usual I'm noticing the beauty in this space, this structure, and my mind's dream of this space now and before. The birds sing eloquently outside my old bedroom window, and the winds are strong yet gently engulfing. The greens are greener than I remember, and a passing breeze carries my mother's smell past my nose. And instead of associations of adolescent rebellion, feelings of stagnant qi trapped in decades gone by, I conjure ease, a smile and momentary sense of comfort here.