At every stage of development, we build a life structure that is
“good enough” for now, managing as many of our disparate needs as
possible. Some things never fit, though, and when they can no
longer be denied — when other voices in the other rooms of our
souls are too loud to ignore — we evolve or catapult into the
next stage.
Although I ought to know better, I always think the stage I’m in
is “it.” I think, now I’m an adult. But the snake is already
growing a new skin.
The house as a metaphor for the psyche is archetypal. Theresa of
Avila described her inner exploration as “The Interior Castle.”
Horror movies are often set in haunted houses. But those creaking
footsteps in the attic or noises in the cellar aren’t intruders,
they’re metaphors for aspects of ourselves that have been left
out. If we talk to them and integrate them, they dissolve into a
larger life. If we refuse to listen, however, they get louder and
louder until, one dark night, they descend from the attic and
insist that we pay attention.
The ancient Greeks remembered the interiors of large temples as a
way to make long speeches, placing paragraphs here and there and
walking through the imaginary buildings as they spoke, collecting
sentences. We do the same, but our temples are the limitless
horizons of cyberspace. The graphical interface most used on the
computer desktop is a house or other architectural space,
defining the boundaries of our collective Self as it projects
itself into air, into thin air, in digital form.
Cyberspace is haunted, but the only noise is the noise of our own
minds, clacking and clanking as we build a digital multiverse of
memory and imagination, shaped more or less like a potato, finite
but unbounded.
