I'm reading Yi-Fu Tuan's book Space and Place, which hints at physiological bases of spatial organization. (He's looking for human universals too, so you know the book preceded all the Post-Whateverisms that natter on about contingent and situated and partial truths.)
The chapter I read yesterday on space and time got me thinking about why traveling is so disorienting. In the past week, we stayed two nights with my sister-in-law, one night with friends (Bunk beds! I got to sleep on top!) and two nights with my parents. We have stayed in all these places before, so we know where the light switches are and how to turn on the shower and where the power outlets are for all our little gizmos and such. And yet, I came back to Mpls having lost my toothbrush and toothpaste, never having found my shampoo when I needed it, and never having hand lotion on hand (so to speak). Unusual for me - I am quite good at micro-managing "stuff" to maintain the semblance of the Order of Home.
What I'm getting at is the body's spatial memory - how certain acts are so ingrained into how the body moves that a change of location completely dislocates all those acts. Thus the having-to-think about those acts takes mental effort that otherwise is expended on "higher level" activity and this is one reason (there are others) why traveling is so exhausting. Think of when you rearrange a couple of things in your kitchen and for several days you automatically reach for where they WERE rather than where they ARE. That's the old spatial memory.
Add to this the dislocation of being in our old house but without our old stuff in place. So I could automatically reach for light switches (the memories may be supplanted but they can be uncovered and used when circumstances require) and my feet exactly knew how to navigate all the stairs.
Freud, in thinking about trauma, suggested that all memories are THERE - but just buried and sometimes repressed. What's intriguing to me about these spatial body memories is that they are completely out of conscious mind. You walk into a room where you haven't lived for 2 years, and your hand automatically reaches for the light switch behind the door. You can't see it - and you are not even directing your mind to think about where it is - your hand just goes there.
I am not being very articulate about this. I have to think more about how it relates to experienced space - particularly in emotive content. (A concept that is thought to be completely bogus at the moment: a legacy of the Post-Whatevers. But nevermind - the tide will turn and spatial meaning will be all the rage again. That's where the new materialism is headed, surely.)