Sean's Journal, Part Six: An Apartment of Promise

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself,

again and again."

-Joseph Campbell

Years ago we bought an apartment in a quiet district, near the railway station, in central Riga, the principal city and capital of Latvija. We bought it for our children and our extended family, so that we, together, would have a place to gather, and not forget a history of heritage. The apartment is but minutes from the Old Town of Riga and at night one can walk along the canal that runs like a green ribbon through the city’s center.

During Soviet times the apartment had been a communal space for three families. Two cheap gas stoves were set in the tiny kitchen and each family lived in one of the three bedrooms sharing the kitchen, the hip bath, and the single sad toilet that worked by poring buckets of water down a hole.

However, the apartment was intended to much more splendor, built in the Czarist time in Latvija, in the 1880’s. The walls and floors are built upon six inch thick hand hewn pine that had been floated down the Daugava River from Belarus. The ornamentation of its hallways and ceilings was grand long before it had long been striped away.

The five story brick building that our apartment resides in was built when the famous Jewish School was erected across the street. Our building was built to house the Jewish School’s director and principal staff. When free Latvija was lost the Jewish School became the principal Ukrainian School of Riga. The last family member of the original inhabitants who was raised in our building died in the nineteen nineties and spoke of our apartment and the building as a place of grace.


We love the apartment. And after rebuilding the bath and toilet in the early 90’s, we have come this summer to finish restoring the rest of it, the walls, ceilings, floors, windows, and doors. By doing so, we have leapt into that odd and singular craziness that always accompanies getting anything truly and cleanly done in Eastern Europe. But which marks those who try with the subtle air of difference, moving them closer, male or female, to the heroes whom Joseph Campbell so well describes.