There will be many, as many as there might once have been public pissing places—which there will also be—and they will be in convenient locations. Their design will not be prescribed or prefigured, but will be welcoming and easily identifiable, by eye and by touch, to those living in the neighbourhood and those traversing it alike.
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Quiet ramps whose declivity is gradual so that people, young or old, highly mobile or with restricted mobility, is enabled to grieve alongside and with others and in order to ease the transition from outside to in. They will be open all day and all night and there will neither be an entry fee nor any need for currency inside.
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They will be clean and warm and well lighted, except where darkness is preferable for the practice of certain rituals and in acknowledgment of different sensory preferences. There will be space and enough equipment for all manner of rituals: candles, paint, herbs bound together with garden twine, water in different states, paper, soft shawls, scap fabrics, sewing kits, spices, garden tools, soil, bulbs, seeds, and companionship.
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Everywhere the floor will be soft enough underfoot that people can kneel or lay their baby down without pain and with ample support. Every seat will provide adequate lumbar support. There will be film, art and music for the facilitation of catharsis and contemplation. Visitors can open a circular aperture in the roof to watch the sky in manageable quantities. In another, a porcelain basin sunken into the floor like an impluvium will collect mourner’s tears. Whether or not they were truly used by ancients, mourners can fill lachrymatory bottles from the basin to wear out of respect for what is common. Some might rinse their mouths with the tears, to soothe and heal ulcers occasioned by the stress of grief. Others may salt their chicken soup with it.
Well remunerated, unionised people will ensure the space is clean. Others will ensure that those expressing consternation at the desire to grieve outside the privacy of one’s home—which everyone will ‘have’ in the formulation that is most suitable for them and for as long as they need it—do not infringe on or add to the mourners’ griefs and are reassured that it poses no threat to their own practices of grief.
Others, like the convenor of a grief circle, death doulas, or professional mourners, will pay attention to those who might benefit from or require the attentions of someone with special knowledge and will introduce themselves and their offering with tenderness.
Guidelines to the space
There will be no preordained uses of the space.
No one will be accused of or expelled for incorrect practices—there are no incorrect practices—and no one will be hurried through their expression.
c f prior 