Tuesday, February 10, 2009

house

I gasped and sat down. The rapid journey through the air had quite taken away my breath, and for a minute or two I could do nothing but hug the little lily in my hands in silence.




When people let me down, I cry. Stale food makes me cry. Unrealized potential, in general, makes me miserable. “It’s all just glimpses,” I said to him, paralyzed by the idea. Moments earlier he climbed closer and resumed explaining to me, so much younger and so much more confident, how he is looking for a full-size happiness in life, and not just for its little poorly unbuilt glimpses.

Would I choose to build my happiness slowly, start from afar, and bring myself closer day after day, spending, investing?

Or would I choose to make love here and now to little explosions, passionate and berserk, lasting only for a beat and then dissolving?

“It’s all just glimpses,” I repeat on my own now. I settle into the fog, sleepwalking through envelopes of thick air. I come upon an abandoned skeleton of an unfinished house. In someone’s forgotten past, building of the basement was partially completed, but no floor was ever put over it. It is a lonely pocket of things unhappened. I now look at the naked torn brick walls forming narrow uneven steps up and down. I throw shoes off and jump inside the unvisited room. The ceilings above me are the unchattered skies.

The deserted floor is covered with tiny pieces of broken mirrors. Under my feet they are like little lost hearts. “Hello Hearts!” I say melodramatically, “It’s all just glimpses!” “Maybe you have already found out,” he said to me then, trusting my seniority. He was too beautiful and ageless to give away. Yet I am facing instead this unbuilt house with mirrors covering the floor. “I want you to know that it is nothing you did,” I said to him, disappearing. “I hope not,” his voice was heard.

I remember my own voice sheets of time ago fading away like this. “Just juice please,” I said then, and the words came out as a coarse whisper. Have I heard myself since?

I am now in an unbuilt house, listening.

Dust of unmade plans blankets the disarray of the mirrors. I pace back and forth, naked, in fever, undecided. This house, unfinished in a rush, reminds me of a shipwreck down by the Icelandic rocky shores. That ship, like the dreams of this house, was on its way someplace no doubt. Until it was over with, as it happens.

I pick up one of the little broken mirrors and dust it a little. I see my face reflected. It is a ridicule of an expression. I almost drop the mirror as I see another face showing through the features of my own, the face of my mother. I resist the fear and remain holding the mirror. After all, our fears come from insecurities. I will not run away, I have decided not to sleepwalk any longer, I say to my mother in the mirror. I am still holding a lily in my other hand. I offer it to my mom. She used to love lilies.


‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre gimble in the wabe.

I am going to not run away one day. And for that to happen, I am going to move into my basement and try and finish building the whole house. There will be lots of big opened windows and pots with living lilies all over. My Mom and Dad will come to stay here as soon as I am done.

Forgiving.

As soon as I live in a house.




“people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” Carl Jung

“But it’s not a show… It’s my life… It’s my [stands and thrusts his arms up in victory] HOUSE!”
“House” by Daniel MacIvor

“I’d rather not go
back to the old house
there are too many
bad memories”
The Smiths

“Little solace comes

to those who grieve

when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

Moments before the wind.”

“House Of Leaves” by Danielevski