Squatting

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.

And so, it continues to be reclaimed and reused for a new purpose; to build a new community. It is squatted by this tree, and perhaps it has been by others also. Perhaps a seagull made its nest here in mating season, protected from the bustling noise and rattle of people visiting the busy seaside town. Perhaps fish have resided in the waters that slowly digest the building’s walls, using its stone facade for shelter. Perhaps nature has turned this building, built for us, by us, into a haven for its own kind. As protection. As a safe house. As a place for new life to start living, away from the unstable touch of man. It has repurposed this house through the hands of the squatting tree.

Mr. Hermit Crab:

Mr. Hermit Crab, you are a squatter! You occupy your empty, scavenged mollusc shell to protect your fragile body. Your non-calcified abdominal exoskeleton, soft, spongy, and spiraled, requires an exogenous shelter system. That is an obligation for your survival, or you will be defenseless. A spear, or tooth will otherwise puncture your spongy skin, and you will die. Your insides will spill out into the expansive dark everything of the sea, and you will disappear. Into nothingness, with only your claws remaining, floating in the open. Each time you leave your shelter, you will present an opportunity for the next one just like you. You will signal to others as you leave that your shelter is now available. Even when you die in that shelter. Even if you die in that tin can, or that human debris that you have found as your new home. A home you can no longer crawl out of. A home of slippery plastic waste, now stuck to your skin. A home in which you are stuck forever.

The Clownfish’s House:

A clownfish will always have a special relationship with its anemone. Its anemone is its host from birth, but although a host, an anemone is squatted by its clownfish friend. The sea anemone is its own predatory marine organism, surviving, built through itself. Grown alone, was it built for the clownfish to reside in? Was it made to be occupied by it? A columnar trunk topped with an oval disc ring of tentacles and a mouth, it is armed with stinging cells which it uses to catch its prey, engulfing them whole. Crabs, molluscs, and small fish, just like the clownfish. But not the clownfish, for the clownfish is immune to its sting. It is protected by a mucus coating, as it lives between the tentacle fingers of this sea oracle.

Your shelter is a mobile, repurposed property. You have taken it from another sea body that has left it behind before you. A sea snail, perhaps eaten from within its shell, in death has presented you with your new home. You will live within this reused structure, that you did not build for yourself and that was not made for you, until you have outgrown it. Then, you will pass on to the next, reusing that one for your own purpose yet again. Maybe this time it will be the shell of a Bivalve, or a Scaphopod, or perhaps a hollowed-out stone or piece of driftwood. Maybe this time you will be immobile in your home. You will be stuck, inside a coral or a sponge, until you outgrow it once more. Until you move onto the next squat. This is a different kind of squatting. If a building was an organism and could form a symbiotic relationship with a human, if it relied on us just as much as we relied on it to survive, we could begin to understand the symbiosis that occurs between a clownfish and its anemone. Between the anemone and its clownfish. What the anemone gives the clownfish in its ability to squat it, the clownfish gives back to the anemone. The clownfish receives protection from predators by the anemone’s stinging cells, and the anemone, in turn, is protected from polyp-eating fish by its clownfish. It uses the nutrients present in the clownfish’s faeces and employs the clownfish as a cleaner that eats its algae collection, and food leftovers.

What the one benefits from, the other does also. The squatter, for its whole life, repurposes the toxic environment of this tentacle grassland as its shelter, and in so doing is eternally bound to its home base. And so, the home base is too, for the eternity of its squatter’s existence, physically bonded to it. The anemone needs its squatting clownfish.

Henry, You Suck: inside. The unused space that, with him in it, becomes unusable for anything else. For mats, or blocks, or belts.

Henry and I are connected in the action we create together; in the action of cleaning this space. A space neither of us own, but both of us occupy. We are keeping it clean together, for others. Only occasionally do we reap from the benefits, when we get drunk side by side on Friday nights.

Henry is a squatter of the cupboard he resides in. Day and night he waits for the ritual to restart. A ritual between him and me. The cupboard protects Henry from strangers; the users of his building, of his place of occupation. Of his life with me. There he is protected from the others who will use him, who will abuse him, who will use his tube to clean the dirt they have brought into this place of meditation. Destroying our ritual. They will use him for convenience, as if he was an inanimate object. As if he was not real. As if he could not talk.

‘Oh gosh! Look at the filth I’ve brought in on my shoes. Look at all those leafy crumbs! I will go hoover them up.’ It’s complicated, this thing. Him and me. Henry and I. We aren’t even made of the same material, but we depend on each other. We love each other.

Henry is an anomaly in the yoga studio, just as I am! The mats, the blocks, the belts are meant to be there, but he with his wide smile, and me with my hectic attempts to dust the dust from the cupboards, to wipe the muddy footprints from the floor, and to peel the used pads from the toilet sinks, are not. We are not supposed to occupy this space. But without us, its image cannot be maintained. We maintain it together in our ritual.

No. No. No. That is not part of our routine. That is not part of our ritual.

Henry is a squatter of his cupboard. It was not made for him. It is too small for him. His hoover pipe is crammed inside like a knotted piece of wire, bouncing off, wall to wall. He is bursting out at the seams, and I am pushing the door shut; his rounded, red body fits safely inside, but his arms are flailing about, pressing outwards forcibly. But Henry is not stuck, for when Henry is with me, he becomes himself. We are him together. I activate him. We activate each other. And so, he wants to occupy this space. Maybe because I want to occupy it myself. He is seduced by the claustrophobia, as he waits for the ritual to restart. He wants to squat the cupboard; this unoccupied space that was not made for him to fit