A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams

by Michael Pollan

What came as news to me was the way a particular arrangement of hinges and handles on a sash could call forth a particular physical gesture in the act of opening it, engaging the body in a very specific way. This building now summoned a whole vocabulary of these gestures, and each expressed a slightly different attitude toward the world outdoors. It was something an actor would have grasped immediately, how, say, hoisting one of the big awning sashes and hooking it to its chain (they hung from a chrome chain suspended from the ridge beam) felt like lifting a garage door overhead and heading out into the bright workaday morning, or maybe it was more like propping up the wooden flaps on your root beer stand—another hopeful A.M. gesture that said OPEN FOR BUSINESS. Whereas pushing open the rock window, which was hinged on the side and swung out like some kind of utility door, had something distinctly hatchlike and vehicular about it: You almost wanted to reach out and give somebody the old thumbs-up before shoving off. As for the French casement on the south wall, this window opened in an altogether different and more genteel world—a bedroom, say, or kitchen—and the action of its sash called for a refined, even feminine gesture, two hands drawing the day in like a breath. This window you could open in your pj’s, where the side window called for a uniform, maybe, or jumpsuit.