Third Places And A Single Person: A Space Of One’s Own
I’ve been seeking out the raw materials to furnish my life the way I want it. Not expensive or cheap; just value for money. Deep & insightful rather than shallow and shiny. Gentle. And not clingy. Sociology calls these Third Places. The place after home (first place), work (second place) where we engage in community, connections and relating.
I went on a photo-walk in a fish market. I ambled along on a gallery hop. I sat in on the launch of the kind of book I wouldn’t usually read (nonfiction, political interviews). I met a never-boyfriend male friend for an unscheduled coffee-book-launch-sizzler dinner-nightly amble through sweltering heat. I went to a Readers Mixer.
But these take effort. Finding such occasions is not as simple as a Google Search or asking ChatGPT. I frequently scour through social media accounts. When I hear of someone doing something I haven’t done before, if it’s affordable and accessible to me, even if I can’t imagine an interest in it, I look it up.
That’s how I ended up sitting at MCubed library, listening to a political prisoner out on bail talking about their life journey. It’s how I found my way into performance. And these are the things that seem like an ‘obvious’ fit for my literary, artsy self. But that self has been shaped by seeking out experiences.
Third Places Are Either Gated Or Unsafe
Not all of them result in pleasant memories for me or become part of my journeys in the long run. I attended a mathclub meet and it was horrible because the host was a condescending IITbro. I fought my way through toxic techdoms for 20 years and decided just recently that I didn’t have to anymore. There were other options for me that didn’t involve being harassed or gatekept for my gender. So much confidence was gained by weathering those supposed dead-ends.
I find the hardest part of these is the lack of effort in people around me. I enjoy spending my time in a variety of pursuits and luckily for me, I live in a city that offers a lot of options. However these are not resume-building, PR plant, Instagram-defined pursuits. I want to do these with other people. I’m aware that not everyone shares my interests but again, luckily for me this is a populous city so it’s always possible to find other people who’re interested.
But I enjoy intimacy. It’s one of the many reasons music does not feature in my life-enhancing plans. Music events, even the smaller gatherings are rife with random jealousies and petty vindictiveness and so many people. It’s as if most people don’t know what to do with their time. Music is an easy space to enter with zero effort. And since they don’t know what to do with that energy inside them that seeks connection and intimacy, it sours into gatekeeping, competition and money-grubbing.
It’s not like other social spaces are devoid of this. There will always be people who show up to places ‘for timepass’. I am differentiating this from what I do when I try out something new because I’m aware that there is some work to be done to learn this new world. Why do people show up to literary events, to swim meets, to city tours when they haven’t read a book, don’t like the water and find walking ‘low-class’? Because they didn’t bother making the effort to think about what the event would involve. It has been annoying. Perhaps I gatekeep too.
Now, months after I started attending book events I’m nursing wounds inflicted by toxic fandoms and misogyny in addition to the ever-present ‘for timepass with zero investment’ kind. Factions carry the kind of fanticism for genre that we usually see in religious despots. People are ageist and outright hateful. I mistakenly assumed that reading opens the mind. But we are in times of ultimate weaponisation and all education and words do is make our worst instincts sharper and more efficient in drawing blood.
D asks why I care what people do, why I expect them to be perfect. It bears consideration. Why, after all? I’m just over 45, the end point to the life plan I made at 19. And I’m still learning how to be fully me. Maybe the world has been too small and tight for me to truly breathe. I need room to exhale and fill out and maybe I can only do this alone, even unencumbered by past identities. I need to stop turning Third Places into places for belonging (first place) or commercial value (second place). Third Places need to breathe in order to let me breathe.
Third Places I Dissolve In
The last month has consumed me in duty and efficiency, pushing me to test my newfound boundary-laying and mental health preservation skills. And I realise that I need these third spaces where I can exist in nothingness.
They’re actually better when nobody knows me or has any expectations of performance from me. Things I’m not an expert at. Of course, the mansplaining and narcissism characteristic of urban spaces are unsavoury. I guess that just means I need to not develop roots or connections in any one place or stay too long.
With those reframed expectations, I agreed to meet a stranger at a book event. I didn’t try to ‘make it nice’ for them but let them find their own way around. I didn’t edit myself hoping they wouldn’t find me to be too much. We contrasted and compared book views, life experiences. It was a nice 6 hours.
During the week, I had other familial duties as well as some professional ones. It was easier to function in familiar stresses since I wasn’t overstretched in emotion. Those mental boundaries helped me work without the ego baggage of my past. Work is work; paying work is money in the bank and grease for my wheels forward.
Birthday Week Third Places
Mid-week, I followed a whim without overthinking. I set up a birthday gifts registry and shared a link on my socials. People responded in the most surprising of ways. Nobody mocked me to my face. And the gifts came, bringing with them mirrors on my inner dialogue.
Most of the books have come from people I don’t think of as being part of my life. Longtime readers, a student from a class I taught years ago, a friend in another city, a Clubhouse contact. I let myself say Thank You and believe Yes, I do deserve this.
Books as gifts leave documented trails of the connections between people. These are the architecture of the third places I’ve built virtually and which exist in my mind.
At the end of the week, I had no confirmations from anyone else. I found myself free, hopped into a train and went to a talk at Asiatic Society by myself. In the hallowed air of that beautiful historic building, I munched a khakra, sketched the speaker and let the words wash over me. And then I slipped out before there could be conversations. Instead, there was a solitary walk. I savoured unfiltered cynicism and appreciation alike in my own mind through architecture, bookshop and train journey.
On Saturday evening, I went to a film club meet by myself. I lingered in room of cinema with people who knew more than me and for whom this was more important than it is to me. I liked seeing myself at ease and still finding room in an unfamiliar space like this.
The next morning, I set aside the unpleasant memories of the last book club meet and went to a discussion with a different club. It was nicer, smaller, gentler. Maybe it was the book, maybe it was the people. I enjoyed my birthday with strangers united in the objective appreciation of how tender emotions are expressed in words. It was quite lovely.
The next day, I received this wonderful message from the owner of one of the third spaces I’ve visited. I want to think of her not within the prisons of relationship labels or transactions but just as Tanu who tends to the world with the care & light touch of a gardener. A gardener of books.
I stopped writing The Thirty Diaries quite organically. Not just because I left the decade but because at the end of it, I found a pandemic that changed the way I related to words, confessionals and other relationships. Today, two days after 46 I have a new fullstop, a different me. Am I over the midlife crisis? Is the ‘prime of life’ really beginning? It feels easier, lighter to do this without the weight of needing company. When you are nobody, the world is full of third places.
