Annemarie got off her bike in front of the door of the communal area where you could park your bike.
One of the fellow apartment residents appeared around the corner and took her key to open the door.
Great, she thought to herself, I don’t have to look for my keys.
In the meantime, she said hello to the fellow resident, who opened the door and walked inside.
She’s wearing a nice coat, she thought, but before she could give a compliment, her fellow resident shouted, ‘Look at how many bicycles have been added.’
Annemarie walked to the area where there seemed to be a lot of bicycles.
“I don’t have a permanent place,” said her fellow resident, “and therefore always have to put my bike in a different place, not that I mind.’
It sounded like “regular places” weren’t supposed to be your place.
How strange Annemarie thought to herself, I am not familiar with that perspective at all, that there are no fixed places.
Annemarie shrugged her shoulders and said to the fellow resident: ‘I always put my bicycle back in the same place. You’re wearing a nice coat.’
The words; You’re wearing a nice coat, it wasn’t heard.
The sentences that there were: ‘no fixed places and that she was not happy with it’ were repeated again.
Get out, Annemarie thought to herself, this is not going to be a good conversation. Annemarie wished the fellow resident a nice day, who replied that she was going to see an old girl next door who was ill.
Annemarie continued to muse.
What did the fellow resident actually mean by there being no permanent places?
Did she mean that it was her experience that you have no right to a permanent place, anywhere, and especially that you shouldn’t have to worry about it?
Did she mean that it is normal that you are not entitled to a permanent place, anywhere and that you should not worry about it?
The universe is big enough for everyone to have a permanent place, was Annemarie’s experience. Up in the cloud Both perspectives were strange to Annemarie. Perspectives, Annemarie thought as she walked, were about looking at all sides and linking your own experience to it.
