This is my house; there are many like it, but this one is mine. In that one’s house is an acquired thing unique in its complexity but common in its overall form, a house is like a self: I live in mine, I peer out from it on others, I reflect on how the neighborhood affects it, and sometimes I wonder if by changing it I will be happier.
But I am neither my house nor my self. I rent the former and similarly inhabit the latter on a moment-to-moment basis, occasionally moving out or painting it or burning it down and moving in without someone else.
Both are automatic, though: as they say, home is where the heart is. Wherever I am I begin to build a perimeter of interiority and soon a hotel becomes my house; just so with my self, which seems to exist wherever the “I” is: an observation becomes a memory I identify with; an opinion casually expressed is repeated, defended, expanded, and then a belief that defines me.
I think my self is unique, but put me in a line with others and see: it is only some paint here, some ornament there, an accident of weathering and an address.
