Spaces and Selves

A friend from Boston came to visit some months ago, and I was hesitant about whether she'd fit into my new Madrid apartment. My US condo was spacious and comfortable -- perfectly laid out to reflect "me" and respond to my needs. I loved it. Visitors tended to fall asleep on my couch with the afternoon light streaming through the windows, but I took this as a compliment to the space's calming influence rather than a sense of boredom. So, needless to say, I was dubious about my friend's reaction to my Spanish quarters of 50 sq meters. Now, she's a kind girl as well as a small girl, so I wasn't expecting her to drop her bags and look around aghast.

But I wasn't expecting her to love it either. To my surprise, she thought the apartment perfectly reflected me. She would have been able to easily pick this poor, small, shabby apartment that tried to sneak by without a kitchen, right out of a lineup. (It did boast floor to ceiling windows and a central location.) Granted, I had brought a rug and some small but prized frames with me to Madrid, and there were some books present. But I was surprised.

And so, months later, I think of this surprise as I lay on a new bed in my new bedroom in a new barrio of Madrid. Supposedly, my whole living situation has changed. I'm sharing with roommates after a long stint of choosing to do otherwise. This is quite different. This is a change.

But my room looks quite familiar -- and will undoubtedly look familiar to this friend when she pays another visit. And it makes me wonder -- based on these very physical indications -- is change really possible? We may change our surroundings. We may change our appearance. We may change our job and even our daily routine. Our tastes evolve. We can choose to change how we spend our time, and we can choose to take our past history into consideration and change how we react to people, places, things.

And yet, we keep dragging our selves with us wherever we go.