There may be more answers in the next room. I’m tempted to scan ahead as I read, wary of both time and awkwardly occupying a physical space, but I might miss an important detail. Interdimensional rifts are hinted at, although the exact nature of the disturbance always seems one or two documents away from being revealed. Each member seems to have their own story. There’s a government conspiracy of sorts. Do you move quickly to discover the spectacles beyond the house, or do you slow down and take your time with the story that develops inside the domicile, savoring the anticipation to the big reveals? There was no question I was in the latter camp, perusing the books and newspapers that lay strategically throughout the living room and kitchen for details that might help enrich my understanding of the house and its occupants, the Selig family. There are many ways to engage with the House of Eternal Return. “Beyond Here, There Be Dragons” warns the doormat as we step through the front door.

The House of Eternal Return gives us the radical freedom to go almost wherever we choose, but at first it’s comforting to delegate that freedom to others and know, “this will be my path and it will be good.”īut don’t get too comfortable. The attendant recommends checking the mailbox, reading the letters within, then going through the front door of this family home tucked within a black box warehouse. Although as soon as you enter the exhibit there are hidden passages you can take to the far left or the far right, most first-time visitors aren’t even aware of these options. Would I look back on how I made use of my limited time here with gratitude or regret? With so many possible worlds ahead of me, each choice in every moment became impossibly heavy. I had three hours, give or take, to experience whatever I was going to experience here… and the House of Eternal Return is nothing if not experiential. Every masked breath was a reminder of this fixed moment in history I found myself in. I’d been hearing about Meow Wolf since its debut in March 2016, and now five years, three presidencies, and one global pandemic later, I was finally, belatedly making my pilgrimage. On my first visit to Meow Wolf’s debut installation, Santa Fe’s House of Eternal Return, time felt heavy. The question Nietzsche ultimately asks, when you take stock of the life you lived and are living, does the prospect of eternal return becomes a horrifying burden, or a divine prospect? The consequences of each moment weigh forever. Rather, they are cemented into the timeline, with all other possible worlds now closed off for all eternity. By considering that every moment will repeat infinitely, our relationship to time becomes incredibly heavy. Often, we treat any given moment as something fleeting, ephemeral, and thus of little lasting value that cannot be made up for later. The question asks us to reconsider our relationship to time.

While the concept has roots in ancient cosmology, Nietzsche was more interested in the existential implications of believing it to be true, even if only as a thought experiment. “What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness, and say to you, ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence.’”įriedrich Nietzsche popularized the concept of eternal return, which is that all the universe and the life within it will eventually repeat itself, and continue to repeat itself ad infinitum. Santa Fe, New Mexico – Sunday, August 22nd, 2021

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