A space exists and exists and exists until it encounters an edge. The edge says, here I am, there you must be. Like water, defined by its container, maybe we, like space, like water, are all defined by our encounters. A coffee shop. A house. A book. A city. A person. What makes a space real? Maybe it is the encounter.

Two people meet in a coffee shop, meet at the measurable space of a table. The name of a book is uttered between them and each retreat to an immeasurable private space, one they have shared with only this book. They are sitting at the table but for a moment they are not.

Two people live in two houses located in two cities and read one book. The book distorts the space between them; it becomes the space between them. They enter it. The book contains houses, it is a house; it inhabits the two people living in two cities.

Two people live in two cities and decide to write to each other about a book. They encounter each other by way of their language while inside another’s language.

The Poetics of Space is a book that brings us into the world of dreams, the unconscious, the imagination, and we inhabit these most intimate of places, alone. This is a book of solitude, and to have a conversation while inside this book is to share something much deeper than the content of the words. It is to reach out across layers and layers of space, physical and abstract, and touch another. It is in this kind of touching that our own being is sent back to us; we are receive ourselves slightly changed by such encounters.

The following is a conversation of three voices: Kaitlin, who lives in an old house in Hanoi; Christophe who lives in a tall house in Saigon; and Gaston Bachelard, who lived and wrote in the houses of human consciousness in 20th century France. The encounter took place through electronic mails during the month of January 2014.

- with Christophe Robert, Kaitlin Rees & Gaston Bachelard

 

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