Reading Day 7
SquattingES #lyricalessay, #house, #nature, #object, #ownership
‘To squat, to make use of a space without owning a space, is to throw open the question of what space is for, to be released from the obligation to fill all the rooms in a certain way.’ (Ahmed 211) As Nature Inhabits the Uninhabited: A tree inhabits the uninhabited inside; the inside of the remains of an old hut in the marshland, now a shell one observes from outside. Observed from a well-trodden path only sometimes covered by water. A path only sometimes uncrossable; there are days on which we cannot visit this abandoned hut. There are days we cannot visit its inhabitant, squatting tree. These days we cannot visit the nature that feeds off its branches, its roots, and its leaves, or that which floats in the salty marsh water below. No one seems to know who owns this house, or what it was used for, and for more than 20 years it has been left to sink slowly into the marshland water. It has been left to be enveloped by the green and mud that surrounds it. And in this, it has become more separated from the path that connects it to the town it resides in. The path that connects it to the people. Now it is squatted by nature, and as the squatting tree grows, and grows, and grows, crumbling the foundation on which this sinking house sits, this building’s future is becoming more fixed. It can no longer be repurposed by humans, or used for its original purpose.
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