As the pandemic shifts gears, we’re bombarded by bad news — mass shootings and domestic terrorism, inflation and food shortages, rising energy prices and an escalating war in the Ukraine. Home, we have discovered, can be a refuge or a battleground — its status changing in an instant. It’s time to consider our search for a safe haven in uncertain times.
During last winter’s endless cold, breakthroughs, and lockdowns, Mr. Covid paid our family a visit on Christmas morning. I was so sad. No grandchildren, no gathering, no Christmas as planned. But (shhh, don’t tell anyone), a teeny little part of my grandmotherly soul was relieved. I would not have to witness the over-the-top largesse that is the way of the world these days nor deal with the tsunami of lifeless plastic toys. I am not alone. My feelings are shared, albeit quietly, among my cohort of Nanas and Nonas, Omas and Grandmas. It’s time to consider the astonishing range of benefits children get from playing with traditional toys.
What is home without a familiar shadow at our feet? At Reinventing Home, we can’t get enough of cats and dogs, so we were very pleased to receive two inspired anthologies from Notting Hill Editions. On Cats, compiled by Margaret Atwood, and On Dogs curated by Tracey Ullman, feature delightful paeans to our pets by those with literary pedigrees. These books explore what we learn from our animal familiars—and why it helps, sometimes, to view the world from a four-legged point of view. And they also reminds us why pet lovers, in general, are healthier, more creative, and have more fun. But who knew reading about them could be so enjoyable?
While strolling through a park in Berlin, Franz Kafka met a young girl bereft because she’d lost her doll. To console her, Kafka explained that the doll was off on an adventure and had even sent him a letter! When the child demanded to see it, Kafka went home and composed it. Over time Kafka sent many letters from the doll, taking great care to fill in her back story—how she had grown tired of living with the same family, wished to travel, then became engaged and married.
This issue of Reinventing Home explores the role of play as our nation—and the world—emerges from a great pandemic. Our message: After two years in lockdown, we need joy, delight, and a dose of make-believe in order to feel whole again.
Three new offerings from our creative partners at SoulAtPlay—join us for an exploration of the Fool as the key to new beginnings; Music as means of exploring your emotions; and Theatre improv as a way of staying sane in an uncertain world.
Reinventing Home is pleased to bring you a series of interviews on home as sanctuary from SoulAtPlay, a platform that connects people interested in depth psychology, embodiment, and expressive arts. This online community promotes deep conversations about home as a source of beauty, intimacy, mystery, and play, with talks by experts and a series of journal questions or conversation starters. Each talk is broken down into bite-sized segments so you can listen at your leisure.
Below, we feature a talk with the Jungian analyst James Hollis: “Nostalgia and Longing for Home.”
In the last few years, we’ve learned a lot more about the writer and psychoanalyst, Lou Andreas-Salomé, friend of Nietzsche, lover of Rilke, colleague of Freud. There’s a new bio-pic that focuses on her independent spirit, and now the first English translation of her novel, Das Haus, by Frank Beck and Raleigh Whitinger. A recent annotated edition, titled Anneliese’s House, will soon be released in paperback. In the meantime, the book is gaining the attention of literary critics, feminists, and followers of depth psychology.
For weeks, a bright-green advertisement for Meals on Wheels in The New Yorker delivered the bad news: Social Isolation is as deadly as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness. It is toxic, pernicious, erosive. Popular and academic publications are exploding with articles about the current epidemic. Experts all over the world are trying to figure out its root causes and possible antidotes. In The New York Times Jonathan Haidt and Jean M. Twenge note that “smartphone access and internet use increased in lock-step with teenage loneliness.”