Clean, clear and uncluttered - something I don't really know much about. I was getting articles out of the car and noticed a calico bag that I'm using actually has my sister's name on it... just so I can be sure to return it to her one day (or at least think of her lovingly as I use her possessions). My sister is the Label Queen, and most of her hard items are emblazened with a sticky label with her family name on it. I wondered what makes her so enthusiastic about identifying all her stuff?

And why do we have so much Stuff? Our society urges us to buy, buy, buy and then hoard, hoard, hoard. All the Stuff we have we are so keen to hang on to, so much so that we label it, etch it, lock it up and refuse to share it. Who knows - someone may actually use our Stuff and wear it out! Much better to just look at our Stuff and feel somehow secure in the goods around us. 

But if only our Stuff somehow said something about us - it might be worthwhile to display the Stuff as a sign of our character and our interests. But most of our clothes are mass produced in China, ditto for the furniture, the cheap bits and pieces we use to store, decorate and run from our electrical sockets. No wonder my sister has to label everything - one person's calico bag or lunchbox is exactly the same as the next person's. Where is the individuality?

I recently read the book "A House in Fez" by Suzanne Clarke, who is an Australian journalist who bought an ancient house in the city of Fez, Morocco. This house was inside the medina, the original walled city part of Fez. Within the medina, no cars have access, the houses are joined together in a patchwork of walls and laneways. The medina is further divided into 'quarters' - neighbourhoods with a central laundry, public water source and bakery. Most people don't have their own ovens and so make their bread dough at home, to be baked in the community bakery. At the end of the day, the completed loaves are delivered to their homes. The amazing thing is that the baker knows each individual loaf by the style of the person who kneaded and formed the loaf, so he knows which home the baked bread belongs to. 

How's that for individuality and community awareness? If I lived in the medina I could imagine the baker saying, "Oh, yeah - this one's definitely Susan's bread. Look at the way she kneaded it! And you call that a loaf? That's more like a strangely shaped dough-animal." But at least they'd know it was mine.

How can I duplicate that sort of intimacy with my community members?

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