I hear many different sounds and noises in the place where I’m living at the moment. The couple upstairs and I keep similar night-owl hours. For me that’s a good thing, because she likes running in her apartment. And even though she’s not light-footed, it’s not annoying. It strikes me as whimsical to run in your apartment when you’re an adult. Besides, I know I have dues to pay because when my children were young, they often ran around our apartment with a soccer ball at their feet, especially Michael who didn’t seem able to move without one. Our downstairs neighbors, three different ones in the time we were there, never complained and always smiled and spoke when they saw us, but now I know how it must have felt.
One day in this old building, my sweet next door neighbor developed bronchitis and coughed the night away. At first I couldn’t place where it was coming from, but when she left for four days all was quiet on the coughing front. On her return it began again. I would have brought her a cup of tea, anything to help the cough, but I know her apologies would never have stopped had she thought she was disturbing anyone. This sound had to be waited out.
Six days a week the office phones ring loud and clear downstairs. Some sounds are easily heard – voices are a murmur, but a laugh is clear. And the pipes in this old building always communicate when they’re working. It’s easy to get used to the pipe noises, but it’s jarring at 3am when someone turns on the shower. And no one can ever sneak into this building. The stairs are old and squeaky and always announce someone’s arrival.
Colin Wilson wrote about Ouspensky in one of his books. He wrote that Gurdjieff had taught Ouspensky about self-remembering. It’s about being aware of yourself and at the same time being aware of what you’re looking at. Ouspensky would walk around St. Petersburg in Russia late at night, and practice self-remembering by noting buildings, small objects, etc. The more he practiced the more he felt that these things were aware of him. After awhile he could sense their history. He said, “they were living beings, full of thoughts, feelings, moods and memories.” That’s when he “learned that everything indeed has a spirit. . . .”
And so, this old building has a feel of its own. What is its history? What are the secrets it’s keeping? Who are the people who built it? Sometimes when you enter a building there’s a feeling of something not being quite right. This one feels right at the moment. And even though I’m not able to sense its history, I’m thinking that perhaps it had a good one.
www.gurdjieff.org/foundation.htm
www.ouspensky.info