The
house sets the scene, it steals
the scene, it keeps time; time past, time instant, time to come. The
house is the centre round which everyone else and everything
else revolves; the house is the plot. The kitchen is the heart, the
house itself is the brain.
The
house contains and retains
all the events that unfold. The everyday meals, the everyday chores,
the celebrations, the catastrophes. Its walls record words, its
floors, footsteps. The slam of doors echo long after the fact of
being slammed or blown shut. The same stair always creaks in the same
spot. A dog's paws make the same tap, tap, tap, tap on the kitchen
lino; his tongue makes the same lap, lap, lap as he drinks from a
bowl; the bowl scrapes. No sound is ever lost in a house. It's there,
right there,
waiting to be heard: can you hear it?
The
house is a vessel; the house is its own person. The house doesn't
forget: anything or anyone.
And
we don't forget those that are special to us or those that have for
some other reason become fixed, in time and place, in memory. We
don't forget what they looked like, what they felt like, where they
were, who lived next door. Nor how light filled the rooms; views,
windows. Chimneys and roofs and sky; birds and trees and green
pleasant country. Nor what rooms contained. Furniture, mirrors,
pictures. Things and more things. Odds and ends.
Imagination
tricks, but in it there's truth, the fullness of which might be
restored the more you think back, the more you call up that house.
The house never left – you left it; the house never died. You can
visit whenever you like, if that is your wish.
Houses
I don't know, though, I struggle to believe in. Completely, utterly
with my very being. They might exist, but they don't exist to
me, in
me. The author instructs, provides detail, sometimes too much, but
still I find I can't enter. I knock but the door isn't opened; the
windows, curtains closed, are shut to me. My mind, too, shuts down.
Words about this house are just words. Words I read but don't gather
to my breast. I semi-comprehend, this is where such a character is,
this is where this takes place, but don't ask me to tell you where
this room is in relation to others or what it contains, or how, if I
was there, I would get from here to the dining room, to the lounge.
But seeing as I haven't in this instance been let in I don't have to
worry; I merely follow with eyes only. Left to right; left to right.
Even
on occasions when I've somehow managed to slip in I suffer the same
confusion: a guest lost and left to her own devices in an unknown
house, although where everything is has already been patiently and
rather elaborately explained. Where was I told this passage led? If I
go through here will I come out into the garden? What's this room?
The author said, the author said... I have nothing. I retrace my
steps, and now I'm not only lost, but I've lost where I was, where I
had travelled to. And so, as before, to avoid this ground-hog
scenario I just read. Left to right; left to right, without any real
sense of place.
The
house built; the mind won't construct it. The house spoken of; the
mind escapes. I'm not in this house, I'm in another house entirely. A
house I know. A house I've lived in, stayed in, wandered around. A
house I can enter at will, at random. Its doors and windows are
always open to me; its rooms are always filled with light. The
furniture I knew is still there, waiting for my visit. Everything is
just the same, though the house itself is empty; emptied of people.
I, the ghost, exploring its abandoned rooms.
Picture credit: Interior with a table, 1921, Vanessa Bell (source: WikiArt).
This post was written in 2019.
