Home is our school of intimacy, where we first learn to be human. Its corners and nooks conceal the sweetness of solitude; its rooms frame our experience of relationship. Its shelter, stability, and security work to concentrate our unique inner sense of self, an identity that imbues our day dreams and night dreams forever. Its hiding places—closets, chests, drawers, locks, and keys—satisfy our need for mystery and independence. Doors—locked, closed, half shut, wide open—trigger our sense of wonder, safety, possibility, and adventure. Bachelard plumbs not only the imagery of the human house but also of nests and shells, the “primal images” of home that convey the absolute “primitiveness” of the need for a safe refuge: “Well-being takes us back to the primitiveness of the refuge. Physically, the creature endowed with a sense of refuge huddles up to itself, takes to cover, hides away, lies snug, concealed… a human being likes to ‘withdraw into his corner’… it gives him physical pleasure to do so.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1521