Stephen Gerard Dietemann Design

We seek safety. Confronted with a world increasingly defined by its dangers, we tend to isolate, to control the variables we believe to be beyond our control. This isolation is increasingly evident in the form of ‘gated communities’, ‘industrial parks’, ‘outlet villages’, and, less obviously, the ‘privatization’ of many formerly public activities, like the exponential growth in the purchase and construction of private pools, exercise facilities and equipment and transportation; this is surely the golden age of the automobile. We are increasingly gathering less frequently, in both smaller numbers and only, whenever possible, among those ‘like us’. These things can be seen in light of the larger trend away from participation in ‘civic society’ in favor or going it alone or as close to alone as we can get. Increasingly the ‘safe places’ we seek are more often fortress than forum.

Ironically, while we must have some degree of safety to function there is significant danger in seeking too much ‘safety’. Politically it is axiomatic that the vitality of our democracy depends on the sharing of the talents, energy and resources of all. As discussed in previous columns the ‘Balkanization’ of the activities comprising our lives - shopping, living, working, even worshipping - limits the necessary friction that results from participation in a multifaceted, multicultural society. It is easy to delude oneself into believing that the world is just like you are if no one is ever allowed to challenge that belief. Democracy is essentially an occasionally messy and uncomfortable business, but it must be so. The price of forgoing that occasional discomfort, of assuming that everyone has the opportunities and thus should be just as content as you are has a name, revolution, and that is a far messier business. Often it is the most privileged and talented who choose to isolate and this is especially detrimental. Abraham Lincoln warned about having, “a house divided against itself” in the context of slavery, but any major societal divisions born of isolation and self-delusion are equally destruction to the democratic union.

Equally importantly, we are by nature a gregarious animal. The ancient proverb is correct: “One man is no man”. Tellingly, a baby isolated from human contact will not simply be stunted developmentally; he or she will die, even if otherwise cared for with adequate food and liquids. Nature does not tolerate excess safety; in fact is designed to prohibit it. We seek the fundamentals of our lives -- food and mates -- but the price is increased exposure to a wide variety of dangers. The price of enlightenment is even higher; the challenge of all one assumes one knows, even one’s very identity.

Architecturally, I have envisioned the representation of the archetypical unsafe ‘safe’ place as a room without doors or windows, silent and dark. In a short story I recently wrote I described the discovery of such a room. In the story the protagonist, a widow once married to an architect, is attempting to renovate her home a year after her husband’s death: “… as she looked carefully at the drawing she saw that something appeared to be wrong with the plan. Near the center of the first floor her husband’s precisely drafted lines ended, replaced by numerous hesitant lines, some drawn and erased many times each a fraction of an inch apart as if he were trying to reconcile conflicting information. Then, as if finally accepting his measurements he again drew dark, steady lines. She understood immediately why he had hesitated. Those last lines revealed the unmistakable presence of a room located nearly in the middle of the sprawling floor. A small room, no more than six foot by six foot, but a room nevertheless. A room she had somehow never noticed before.

How could she - they - have missed such a room? The possibility filled her with both wonder and fear. This room was situated right between the staircase and the back of the kitchen, enclosed by walls she had always assumed to conceal nothing, simply wood, lath and plaster. Confused, she walked downstairs past the small finished family room and through the door used to access the older part of the basement. Light cast from the single suspended light bulb provided enough illumination to make her certain that there was no access, no floor panel leading, to this room from below. A few quick measurements on the second floor told her that it was located below the landing at the top of the stair. Standing beneath the brass chandelier above the landing it suddenly occurred to her that not only was there a room, but this room had no entry or windows.

No entry or exit. No light. Inside she imagined only indecipherable, muffled sounds alternating with absolute stillness. Existing apart from night and day, oblivious to spring's emergence or winter's retreat. Beyond the reach of man's many transgressions or occasional triumphs. Sealed against the turbulent flow of molten metals far below the surface, or the vast streams dragging life through the canyons of the oceans. Immune to the moon's pull or the fragrance of a lilac.”

Last month I described my temporary refuge, my momentary ‘safe place’. But one must eventually leave such a refuge, or be trapped forever.