Editor’s Note: This is the fifth post in the Dwelling in Place series edited by Nicole Miller. You can read other posts in this series here. Selected posts from this series, including this one, will also be cross-published on Germinate: An Environmental History Review.
What follows is a meditation about my experience inside Falling Water, the house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for the Kaufmanns in Mill Run, Pennsylvania during a writing retreat in October 2025. The house was closed to visitors for the night, so only those of us at the retreat were inside, making for an intimate feeling. I thought about how dwelling influences our experiences, how this place shaped, contained, and enabled the Kaufmann’s relationships just as how we tend to where our relationships dwell, be that in our minds, our homes, and our communities, determines our experiences of them. I imagined the Kaufmanns being in the house alongside me and wondered how the design of the house influenced their relationships and interactions as I lay on the rug inside the master bedroom digging my toes into the furry carpet. In this piece, I muse on the relationship between people and place, nature and relationships as someone who teaches about and studies close relationships.
During the private house visit to Falling Water, the caretaker urges us to take off our shoes so that we can feel the polished flagstone floors, imagine ourselves as guests of the Kaufmann family. The stone is a contrast of cold, lumpy, and smooth, so I focus on not tripping, as I know a fall would necessitate some stitches. At least in bare feet, your sweat can act like glue. The caretaker invites us to find spots that call to us– as long as we don’t touch the things or sit on anything other than the floor. After all, this is a UNESCO heritage site. And the caretaker likes her job.
I lie down on the animal rug in the master bedroom,
not asking if this counts as touching the things,
to see if I can become as obsessed as the tour guide the day before
who spilled some of the People magazine version of the Kaufmann family—
the parties and partner swaps.
And oh, how I love this version as someone who studies close relationships.
I dig my bare feet in, squish the fur between my toes
memorizing the texture, wondering if Edgar and Lillian walked here without shoes.
Did they feel the smooth wavy stone and the soft fur under their arches?
Were there other partners who stood on the patio outside the bedroom
or was the guest house up the hill the place to show your toes?
Frank Lloyd Wright wanted this place to blend people and nature. Two of my favorites.
I think about poetry and relationships and how most of my poems are about close relationships and how I feel most grounded in the woods and calm when I hear the sound of falling water. Sleeping outside beside a stream is my version of being back in the womb. Would sleeping here, in this room, feel the same? Did the Kaufmann’s feel sanctuary here? Or was all that water too much?
How can I not think about nature and relationships as I lie on this rug and stare at the ceiling, which is also textured? Because nature is all about that, textures and layers. The ceiling is rippled like the surface of a lake when you skip a rock across. Or perhaps that is just water damage given that Wright’s roofs were known to leak. This was one hazard of living in this house. I imagine other dangers as my butt starts to go numb from the inflexible pressure of the stone. Dwelling in a relationship that is too comfortable can also be damaging. Taken for granted assumptions do not bend with the inevitable changes of people and place. Relationships are metaphorical dwellings.
I am supposed to be making notes for writing, but all I want to do is sit and rub my feet on the stone and rugs. I sleep with a weighted blanket, because I like the heft grounding me to the bed and the life I have built with people I would get into a knife fight for. Did all this water and the currents do the opposite for the Kaufmanns?
If relationship is the foundation of everything– as I tell my students–
then relationship is nature, and building can only be temporary.
So Falling Water is returning to water and rock and mountain.
This is entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.
Things naturally want to fall apart and move toward this state.
So relationships, like this house decay unless we maintain them. The centrifugal force
of time and relationship and rot.
Maybe this is a good analogy for me as a professor who studies and teaches about close relationships.
I have my students practice building expectations for their relationships
in the shape of a cantilever with the tension of independence
and interdependence on top stretching outward as the real world compresses
them from the bottom; How they anchor their interactions determines the shear and moment whether their relationships can resist the vibrations and twists
from moment to moment to stay flexible
to not fall off some mountain with no repair kit
We build our dwellings interaction by interaction
Being present in the house making only mental notes, cantilevering intention to relationship, rock to hillside, and desire to effort is my takeaway.
Sandra Faulkner