I’ve been to Canada a few times and, among other things, I was amazed at how attentive people were to common spaces.

I once stayed with a former client of ours. She had a mansion with a small yard in the back and a large, green meadow in the front. When she saw a dandelion had appeared, she quickly went to cut it down. It looked like a splash of color to me. She told me that everyone did that, that all the people around were taking care of their own and common places. She said that if they let anything grow anyway, the place would look unkempt. When I would go out with her to walk the dog, she always had a bag to pick up any mess, then she would immediately find a bin to throw the bag in. There were a lot of trash cans, it’s true. Other people did the same.


Care for personal space and care for communal space was commonplace there.
When I was little, in the Bucharest neighbourhood where I lived, everyone cleaned up in front of their house, in the street. We would pull weeds, pick up garbage, sprinkle the street. Some would say these are rural customs. Maybe there’s some truth to that. But if these customs, whatever their origin, put at the centre of attention and concern for the space that did not belong to anyone in particular but belonged to everyone, this common space, then I think they were good and worth preserving. But they are not preserved.


In my block there are posters everywhere urging us to keep the hallway, the cellar, the passageway between the two staircases clean. This passageway, which connects the two staircases on each floor, often becomes a place to store rubbish. Somehow, we leave boxes, bags of bottles there, maybe at night or very early in the morning, when no one would see them, then expect someone else to come and pick them up. Who? I don’t know, someone from Rebu, the town hall, whoever cleans the stairs. Anyway, we are not responsible for what happens outside our door.

In the life of the community, of the city, some of us are absent. We are somewhere, in the shadows, more like crouching, with our arms crossed or in the wall position at free kicks, at football, each as we know or can.
Assumption means being present, assertive, vocal, respectful, responsible, and doing ourselves what we preach.