Postcard #14

reading/dreaming our rooms

It makes sense from our standpoint of a philosophy of literature and poetry to say that we “write a room,” “read a room,” or “read a house.” Thus, very quickly, at the very first word… the reader who is “reading a room” leaves off reading and starts to think of someplace in his own past. You would like to tell everything about your room. You would like to interest the reader in yourself, whereas you have unlocked a door to daydreaming… the reader has ceased to read your room: he sees his own again. He is already far off… (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space)