The poet Kahlil Gibran, in his epic The Prophet, wrote:
Then a mason came forth and said, "Speak to us of Houses." / And he [the Prophet] answered and said: / Build of your imaginings a bower in the wilderness ere you build a house within the city walls. / For even as you have home-comings in your twilight, so has the wanderer in you, the ever distant and alone.
And the Prophet asked the mason whether their houses had peace, remembrances, beauty? Or "only comfort, and the lust for comfort"? And then he added:
But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. / Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. / You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. / You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
But whose homes have masts for sails?
In Walden, Henry David Thoreau praised Indian wigwams as not only clean, snug, and warm, but as cozy as the finest houses in England. Most importantly, they could be assembled in a day and taken down in a few hours. They required no outside "experts," just two strong hands, and every family could have one. In contrast, "though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter."
Modern people, so proud of their own cleverness, must work half a lifetime to acquire a dwelling, yet "our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them." Thoreau scoffs at modern pretensions, saying that people make their houses so large and elaborate they end up like rats in a maze.
Thoreau did not think relying on professional architects was wise, and preferred that the style of a dwelling organically reflect its owner, like the shell of a turtle. "What of architectural beauty I now see," he added, "I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller." The dweller is the only real architect, and all other embellishment is vain.
This month's cover story focuses on people's search for homes that reflect their individuality, with each person asking a different question about what their homes will be like, and each finding a correspondingly different answer. Whether these answers are appropriate or not will perhaps only be known in the future, but we cannot ignore the attempts and the courage being shown.
This month's Taiwan Panorama also has another article on people who are trying to find peace and well-being in their own way: by learning how to breathe "afresh." Both our external homes and our internal thoughts can be more open, less obstructed, more free-flowing-if you are willing to let go.
As I prepare to leave Taiwan Panorama, I wish all our readers happiness and reinvigoration. This is my last issue as editor-in-chief, and is filled with more emotion than paper can record. I hope you enjoy it.
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