On shapeshifting

We’re alive, life is change, change is god

There is a creature in Japanese folklore called a Uwan that is known to occupy abandoned buildings. It has yellow bulging eyes and spiky little black hairs all over its body, a distended belly and gleaming white claws.

Part of a class of fantastical mischievous spirits called “yokai,” the Uwan is a “bakemono,” or a shapeshifter. The word “bakemono” means “changing thing.” The Uwan appears on an Edo-period Japanese scroll called the Bakemono zukushi, which depicts a group of yokai that are characterized by their ability to physically transform, as well as the sorts of places they haunt: borderlands, thresholds, crossroads, edges. Their existence is entirely concerned with the in-between, with moments and locations of transition.

Uwan inhabits abandoned buildings (via Wikimedia)

The Uwan lives in spaces that were once homes or centers of commerce, full of life and exchange and energy, and have fallen into neglect. Its spirit dwells on the fringes of our society, living on the outskirts, the unused, the nearly forgotten. It has the look of an outcast, malnourished and misanthropic.

We may be well-advised to be leery of the Uwan. But what if this gremlin is not a reject, but a caretaker? Inhabiting a space that still holds traces of life, shepherding the transition into its next use, whatever that may be. Perhaps the Uwan is doing the structure a favor by living in it, making a home of a place that would otherwise be sitting alone.

I’m biased toward this more generous interpretation, not only because I think the Uwan is kind of cute, but also because I am, in some ways, a Uwan right now. Far from a misanthrope, but a dweller on a threshold — the sole tenant of an otherwise empty house.

I’ve lived in and loved this house for my entire life. This spring my family sold its contents — 80 years’ worth of photographs, paintings, cutlery, and furniture — in preparation for a handoff to a new owner. When the sale fell through, we were left, surreally, with another summer in the place we knew so well — but a different version of it.

The most inspired I’ve ever been by this house has been this summer, in this strange metamorphic state. It’s deeply familiar in every possible way, except it’s also new. I am witnessing a kind of transubstantiation, as a building full of history and family and creativity turns into a memory. In July, I invited forty artists, musicians, chefs, and artisans to spend two days here for a retro, grassrootsy art festival. I’ve also hosted singing gatherings, storytelling events, and oddball dinner parties where we all sat on the floor surrounded by candles. We thought this place had seen its best days, but here we are, enjoying it in all kinds of new ways. To me, the space is begging to be used. It has become bakemono territory — an alchemical landscape.

People ask if it’s creepy or lonely, living alone in a vacant building that holds so many reminders of the past. Have I heard any ghosts? (Maybe a fellow Uwan?) Do I lock the doors at night? The real and honest truth is that I sleep with all the windows and doors wide open, and I find the emptiness charming and uncanny. I spend all day checking clocks that are long gone, glancing into mirrors that have found new walls, hanging my bag off the backs of invisible chairs. Every time I’m reminded of how much this place is home, how second nature it is.

I know my days are numbered here. Holding on too tightly to the past or present is a recipe for pain and suffering — this is old news. I don’t want the house to stay as it is now. Part of the beauty of it this moment is that it is in-between. How often do we get to spend such intimate time with something, or someone, that is in the middle of a state change? I am here for the sunset, to honor this house as it moves on, the way I would any loved one. I have come to sit bedside with a being that I owe so much to, as it moves into its next chapter, one beyond my experience. Where else should I be?

The emptied sunroom

We humans have a fraught relationship with change. We’re suspicious of shapeshifters and their slippery identities. We struggle with transitions and feel uncomfortable in the uncertainty of crossroads and margins. But these flux zones are engines of potential, fonts of creativity. And the only thing scarier than change, of course, is forced stillness. To go stagnant is to die.

“Creator” used to be one of the few g-word proxies that didn’t sit right with me. A little too “man-with-a-plan.” Then one day a friend explained that “creator,” to him, pointed toward a central energetic force, the spark of generativity at the heart of all life. “Creator” indicates the central truth that existence is a constant evolution, that the only thing you can know for sure is that nothing is permanent. It’s just like Octavia Butler said: god is change.

An “anechoic chamber” is supposedly the quietest place on earth, so noiseless that you can hear your heartbeat, your blood rush, the thrum of your own life. In an account of her visit to one of these rooms, Caity Weaver wrote for the New York Times: “an anechoic chamber … removes the noise that otherwise drowns out the soft, ceaseless sounds of a body, enabling them to be perceived with novel clarity. The body is only totally still — totally silent — in death.”

I like the idea of listening to your own life force, being compelled into presence with the constant state of change that constitutes having a body. It’s a reminder that we’re all shapeshifters moving through one threshold or another, transforming all the time. From my solitary bed in this big empty house, I can’t hear the symphony of my blood pumping, but I can hear the ocean, which I imagine has a similar cadence. It’s the song of constant evolution, the soundtrack to a world in transition. I lie in bed listening to the waves and repeat my latest prayer, I’m alive, life is change, change is god.

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