Room for the unreal
ADHD via Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
At the beginning The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard describes the “chief benefit” of a house as follows:
“[T]he house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.”
Wise friends and teachers have recommended this beautiful book to me for years. When I finally started reading it (very slowly, a few pages at a time before falling asleep), I’d recently moved houses. My bedroom was hardly a room at all—a walk-through station en route upstairs with a crevice for our washer and dryer. Stalled out in the book’s dense introduction, I put Bachelard down and meanwhile we relocated our bed into a small attic room painted green like ambrosia salad or a matcha latte, a soothing shade like an anachronistic dessert. The cold spring rain hit the roof as I laid on my belly in bed (ceiling too slanted to sit upright) and finally slid from the dense theory at the book’s beginning to Bachelard’s own poetics, those opening notes on attics and cellars.
In the seclusion of a room reserved for nothing but rest, the insomnia I described in my March letter began to subside—not because of the relocation, but I’m sure it helped. Now the sweet attic room has concentrated the pre-summer heat, making it unbearably stuffy. I have almost a hundred pages left in The Poetics of Space and am trying to figure out where to move our bedroom next. What thematic synchronicity will emerge between that space, and the text?
This book has felt uncannily and unusually resonant with my daily life, refracting my own questions about how to create structures that honor and facilitate dreaming in more and less literal ways. This is very literally a quest related to homemaking, which the book has helped me to connect with other kinds of creative endeavors. Bachelard’s strange, deep engagement with houses have helped me see my fixation on things like paint colors and the location of shelves as a creative reflex (not just a compulsion), and also to see nesting as an interesting poetic rite. It reveals something about the function of a home, which also makes them reflections of the world at large. (In an extended meditation on houses and storms, Bachelard writes, “Come what may, the house helps us to say: I will be an inhabitant of the world, in spite of the world.”)
I love these bridges between “home” and “the world,” especially because it’s easy for the labor of homemaking to feel atomized, individualized, and consumeristic, and therefore also addictive and depleting in their quality. There’s that beaming brightness of Target aisles, irresolute hyper-focusing over the Ikea catalog, voyeuristically sifting treasures and trash at thrift stores. Moving houses means vexed shopping experiences and money anxiety. But expand the scope beyond the privatized context, and I see this nesting impulse as very animal, a somatic feature of being alive.
Those tangible, embodied aspects of my life have been sites of turbulence, even as I’ve settled into my house and the constellation of physical symptoms I had through the winter and spring mellowed. My fingers aren’t as swollen and sore, and getting good rest has made everything easier, too. But now that I have more energy and more feels possible, all of that “more”—all the small and big things I’d like to do—has felt remote in its abstraction. It feels like I’m re-training myself to open the hinge between what I envision and the material plane. From one angle, this maneuver is exhausting, boring, and virtuous. It is to do lists, reminders, and trying to get my shit together. But from another angle, it is bold and exhilarating. It is dreaming into physical space with my body.
I’d originally intended to focus this letter just on ADHD, because I’ve been thinking about it a ton and also dealing with its symptoms a ton lately. Instead, I found myself writing about Bachelard. I’d still like to write that ADHD-specific letter, but ADHD is totally relevant to this one about re-framing the structures I’m setting up as ways to protect dreaming, not discipline it.
I once heard someone describe their ADHD as, among other things, making it hard to channel ideas from their imagination through their body and into the material realm. That resonates for me, at least as a symptom of my challenges with the chore-like tasks that execution often involves. Frustrated with my own avoidant tendencies, I’m tempted to focus on the tangible things that need to be done, like that will help jostle me out of a stalled-out mode that I definitely wouldn’t describe as daydreaming, though it probably looks a bit like that from the outside. It’s ethereal, but more stabbing and urgent in its pause, like not having enough gas to move the vehicle forward.
So what’s that gas or juice? The things I do (or don’t do) when I’m running low on it look a lot like practical problems that want practical solutions. And the longer this dysfunctional pattern goes on, the more dire things seem, and like a more rigorous, serious approach would get me out of the fog. My writing practice has been my biggest (or at least most meaningful) challenge in this category—not moving my project forward in tangible ways. This is a problem involving structure and rhythms, which has to do with the architecture of a day, but also with the energy that flows through it. That energy is elusive when I’ve lost track of it, but a wellspring when I’m in its seat. I don’t think it’s something I manufacture, but there are specific things I can do to put myself in its direction, a combination of private spiritual things and also things that break my isolation.
Giving myself some deadlines (a practical solution) has created a scaffold for my writing goals, while re-connecting with friends and the parts of myself that are motivated to write for more dreamer-ly reasons has been making those goals feel more attainable and meaningful. I’m trying to tend more to the more invisible side of creativity, which is helping me move towards the practice willingly instead of avoiding it like the other chores I don’t know how to begin tackling.
Here are ways I’ve been creating structure for my writing:
I sought out coaching support to help me identify a couple reasonable writing-related goals that I was excited about, and which fit with my overarching, long-term vision for my project.
I told friends about these goals, and told them I’d send them some drafts by deadlines I gave myself—not necessarily to read, but to know that I followed through.
In general, I’ve been trying to connect with friends more regularly through text messages, voice memos, and phone calls, because even though the mechanics of correspondence is challenging for me, the conversations themselves frame everything I’m doing.
I’ve been aiming to engage with my writing for 10 minutes a day, as a gentle on ramp and way to keep the channel open. (10 minutes may be too much and not feel gentle for someone—it just depends on where you’re at!)
I’m practicing not doing tangible tasks that feel urgent—but aren’t really—in the interstitial space of my day and seeing if I can do things that are more creatively fulfilling instead (whether directly related to writing or not).
I’m actually not sure if my writing practice looks that different on the outside from how it did a month or so ago, when I was first articulating the holding pattern I felt trapped in. But below the surface, I feel momentum building and a deeper connection with why I love to write. I feel like I’ve been working with my tendencies, including the tendency to not want to do things I don’t really want to do, instead of forcing myself to be somewhere I’m not.
I don’t feel fully out of the fog yet, and I wanted to think here about the road that conjoins daily life and my imagination. How flexible (and poetic, even) can I make the structures in my life—structures that serve seemingly quotidian purposes, from living space to manuscripts? What allows me to connect domestic space, daily life, and creativity in more than superficial ways?
Even just asking those questions is helpful, often feels like taking care of my home, my body, and my writing practice are in opposition, given the time they take away from each other. Inhabiting the space of a Bachelard’s book feels like dreaming of a world where the quotidian exists in a horizontal (rather than a hierarchical) relationship with more abstract and lofty parts of our lives/selves. That relationship runs more deeply than just making home an outlet for creativity; in its intimacy and stillness, there’s no need for outward expressions or results, like both living and imagining can exist for their own sake while still serving each other.
Dreaming of this world is often the place I write from or the feeling I am trying to write towards. Sometimes it is like writing backwards into a part of myself that dreamt without worrying about not knowing how to do something or about what is impossible.
This is one of Bachelard’s points, I think, about the role of unreality even in the most basic structures of our existence: we inhabit them, and they help us to see beyond them. They are capacious enough to hold our interest in the unreal (or the less visible), but also the lives we are already living, lives made more livable by the dreams that shape them or have otherwise been invited in.
P.S.
I’m still much quieter on Instagram that I was last year, but I’ve been dipping my toes back in and actually have been enjoying it in bites. My favorite recent post: I shared a “deinfluencing” video about Notion and note-taking apps which is pretty related to this topic of quotidian concerns and ADHD, but more specific to digital clutter. (It’s fun/funny to think about what the poetics of digital space might be, and what pockets of loveliness could be riffed on.)
Quotes from The Poetics of Space
The first quote from The Poetics of Space is found on page 6 of the 1994 edition, translated by Maria Jolas and published by Beacon Press. The second quote is found on page 47.
ADHD resources
While I’m at it, these are some of my favorite ADHD-related books and podcasts:
❤️ ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life by Judith Kolberg and Kathleen Nadeau — probably the most immediately useful for me; has helped me make small but impactful changes in my life (and taught me about others I’d like to make).
ADHD 2.0 by Edward Hallowell M.D. and John Ratey M.D.
Delivered From Distraction: Getting the Most Out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. and John Ratey M.D.
Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder by Edward Hallowell M.D. and John Ratey M.D.
ADHD Rewired — platform and network of podcasts, including ADHD ReWired and ADHD Diversified. I haven’t joined their Adult Study Hall yet, but keep wanting to for 24/7 “Body Doubling” opportunity!
It’s not ADHD-specific, but I’ve got a lot out of Atomic Habits by James Clear.
How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis is great—discusses ADHD as well as other challenges with “the quotidian.”
Rachael Stephen’s “constellation system” (introduced in this video) is an ADHD-friendly method I use to organize different kinds of tasks and projects.
Culture list
A short list of things I’ve recently read, watched, or listened to that have nourished my thinking, imagination, or both!
Queen Charlotte — Oof, I didn’t expect this Netflix series in the Bridgerton umbrella to so intensely depict psychiatric illness and its treatment. But it actually is really odd and interesting in that respect, a sort of revisionist mash-up of crude biological psychiatric treatments and psychodynamic ones. (There’s a doctor character who’s sort of fictional and sadistic Regency-era pseudo-Freud.) I’m now scheming some kind of essay about psychiatry and this Netflix show. (I actually still have 2 more episodes to go—No spoilers!)
“Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen, the Front Line in the Stunt-Food Wars” by Antonia Hitchens — This is The New Yorker article I didn’t know I was missing, but here it is, Crunchwrap Supreme analysis and all.
Letters from a Hopeful Creative podcast — I listened to this podcast a bunch around when I was moving from San Diego back to Washington, and found a lot of encouragement in Jen Carrington and Sara Tasker’s thoughtful and chronic-illness-friendly advice about setting up a business. They just started releasing new episodes and I’m happy to be listening again.
ADHD ReWired podcast — Already mentioned above, but I’ve been listening to this podcast lately. I especially enjoyed the recent episode about “design thinking” with Abby Wilson (episode 481).
More
My website — Learn more about my writing and opportunities to work with me.
Writing in Unknown Shapes — A course for ambitious writers working in ambiguous forms.
Experimental Practice podcast — Conversations about cross-genre and interdisciplinary work, culture, writing craft, and creative practice
Practice Space — Drop-in guided writing sessions — On hiatus while I sort out my health/energy, but I look forward to writing with you again soon!
Follow me on Instagram — I’m there sometimes!
Read more Essence of Toast — Archive of past letters