WFH: Day Two, "Time Transfixed"

As I was looking at the Magritte, my mind kept wandering to the edges of the painting, imagining the room beyond what we can see. It got me thinking about the physical spaces inside of houses, and how a house might perceive this.

I am made of the cheapest stuff--particleboard and fiberglass, plaster walls that crumble to dust when they stick so much as a thumbtack in me. I do not scab. Mold spots my ceilings, a constant itch, and on cold mornings my windows are slick with wet, the outside seeping in. I cannot see what happens inside me, for I have no eyes. I can only feel--is that rumbling within the children jumping from a top bunk, a dropped piano, two bodies rocking a bedframe against the wall? A slammed door--a gust of wind in my chest--takes my breath away every time.

So, kinda didn’t follow directions...Instead I ended up writing from feelings brought up from viewing the artwork.

I woke up in the middle of the night. 12:43 to be precise. It was quiet except for the furnace chugging along, trying in vain to warm the cold, grey house. The fireplace was bare, the white marble clean of soot. I had been too lazy to stack wood and much too melancholy to even care. Instead, I brought extra blankets into the bedroom to stave off the chill. Although there was no moon and I hadn’t turned on the lights, the house had a slight glow to it as I walked down the hallway. Not a comforting glow-more like the glow of sad souls stuck in the history of the hand-planed wood floors and the layers of chalk paint that tried to cover the years of stale breath that stuck to the walls.

I continued down the hallway, around the kitchen table to the back door. I knew my cat would be waiting with her nightly offering of death. Most often, a mouse- grey and cold like the house. Sometimes a nightjar. It’s mottled brown feathers the same color of the hardwood floors, strewn about the step. Or a lizard-tail missing, its body pasty green like the walls in the hallway. More sad souls to keep the glow from fading.

She was waiting for me with the night’s creature dead at her paws. This time it was a baby rabbit. Its white fur and vacant eyes reminding me of the marble fireplace I didn’t care about. Empty of warmth, the flue shut.

With a quick swish of her tail, she darted in, under the kitchen table, down the glowing hallway towards my bedroom. I crawled back under the layers of extra blankets and placed my hand on the only warmth in the house-my cat-the purveyor of death.

I listened to the tick of the old clock as I tried to fall asleep. When was the last time I saw a reflection in the mirror? Where did all the candles go? Would there ever be warmth coming from the fireplace again? This house was death. Not a warm purveyor of death. Just death itself.

In this exercise, I became so transfixed with the image that when it came time to be my house, it was the house in the image I became.

A Curiosity

There’s a simple explanation for it. Though people have puzzled over it for generations. I can’t think why. “Isn’t it obvious the boy died?”, I want to say. Still, with no material record save the locomotive projecting out of the fireplace, I don’t suppose any of the families could figure it out. I’m certainly not talking. But surely, I mean, look at the wry toothsome smile formed by that wheel just under those slate grey eyes at the front of the locomotive. Couldn’t they figure it out? Apparently not, and it’s so vexing. You know there is that expression: “If these walls could talk…” --Such an invitation in that phrase, such longing. Don’t they have any idea that of course we could and would if only they would listen. Every time we try, however, someone brings in the exorcist or sages our four corners until we’re so smoky we can’t really proceed. Look in the mirror there, you can see the evidence of the last time they tried to silence us. Do you see the smoke lingering, just there beside the bevel mirroring the candlestick?

It didn’t work though, did it? No one lives here now. They haven’t for years. I’m haunted. That’s what they say about me, and I don’t appreciate it in the slightest. I’m afraid the train betrayed me. It was alright until the smoke rose off the engine and straight up the chimney. That was really the end for the last family.

I want to live in Riverpark Loft for a while; I crave a day uninterrupted . Is that too selfish? What if no one made sure I had coffee and a newspaper? I would still exist, right?

selfish

Riverpark Loft I do stand out a bit - a modern-style apartment complex in a town full of traditional New England architecture. My exterior is colorful and almost futuristic compared to the old brick shops and houses so typical of the Boston area. There are dozens of identical one and two-bedroom apartments inside me, all newly completed with sleek hardwood floors, smooth gray walls, and shiny metallic kitchens. I am beautiful in my youth, housing my very first tenants. In one of my second floor one-bedrooms, I house a young couple. They decorated my walls with framed pictures of Maine beach scenes and Target wall art depicting high contrast photos of cacti and succulents. The furniture in the living room consists of two navy blue couches, from Bob's Discount Furniture, that the woman brags she got on sale. The bar stools, TV stand, and coffee table are from IKEA, the Mecca of millennial furniture. Books and magazines are scattered on the coffee table, some of which the woman has finished reading, others that she pages through, puts down, and picks up again months later. The man stores his toolbox behind one of the couches, since I do not offer much storage space. He complains about my small size, the high rent, and how thin the walls are, and the woman nods in agreement, occasionally looking up from a book. I know both of them love me, deep down anyway. I am their first apartment together, and they are my first tenants. If my walls could talk, they would sing love songs all through the long winter nights.

Sunlight drifts into my empty atrium in late afternoon, sliced by window sashes and splayed onto the thickets of shag carpet sprouting from the floor. The moment of natural light comes each sunny day and I quiver in delight. I gorge myself on these golden beams, gasping them in through the towering western wall of glass. This sunlight- this harbinger of the natural, this forebearer of wild growth, this champion of life that teams outside my walls- it is my only relief.

They did this to me. For 40 years they marched around, twitching and humming as they went. Their daily actions were so routine I often wondered who wound them up every morning. Life itself, with its infinite possibilities and ineffable logic, seemed to wither under the steely consistency of these hyper-punctual necromancers. I had become so hypnotized by their regimen that I hardly noticed the rolls of plastic unfurling across my glorious shaggy floors and overstuffed furniture until I was entombed in a cellophane sarcophagus. Now that plastic strips guided the occupiers through their daily performance, their brains became vestigial and I became like Descartes attempting to distinguish between coats, hats, and humans.

Sheathed in plastic and cloaked in infernal immobility, each part of me receded into itself. No longer could I claim to be a home, or even a house. I was a collection of items under a roof. Every furnishing was so thoughtfully placed it seemed an army of philosophers dedicated their lives devising a grand theory of lamp location. The logic in itself unimpeachable; the plastic espoused the aesthetic of Lenin's tomb. I was no longer a stage for the rich caprice of life or a place worthy of witnessing youth’s dance towards old age. Thus my cyclical existence. Daily sunlight rejuvenating enough to outlast the day only to asphyxiate the next under the torturous weight of immaculate design.

Beauty Bends the Rules

I’m so clean. At least I appear to be clean. What does that even mean? My corners are swept, my floors are mopped, my shelves are dusted, my fireplaces are free from soot and my windows have not one oily smudge. Sunlight streams in without the glistening illusionary sparkle from dead skin, hair, dust and whatever else makes up the floating particles of filth fluttering freely in the vacuous spaces between hard surfaces.

I breathe softly, as if I am sheltered from impending storms or perhaps even impending raids. It is the beginning of World War II in London. Yet, because I sit amongst similar clean houses in a quiet neighborhood of privilege - not quite measuring up to what would be considered prestigious - I feel safe from harm. The feeling is familiar, comfortable, and utterly, rather redundantly; boring.

In this state of boredom I casually wonder if I am doing enough by sitting solidly here being clean and safe and compliant? Since I am merely a house, I wonder if I am enough? Surely I am not made of straw or sticks. The foundation of stone must amount to something. The marble mantel of the fireplace glows distinctly in strength and beckons Beauty to participate in this line of questioning.

Beauty boasts that she is willing to bend the rules for a moment. Perhaps a deviation from the classic shape of the empty brass candlesticks, the resounding tick-tock of the relentless mahogany clock, the not too flashy golden glint of the oversized mirror begging for reflection, and the brown hues of paint on walls and wood attempting to blend and mute anything calling for attention.

The moment of bending arrives with Beauty beckoning imagination. Perhaps there is a locomotive steam engine arriving from a tunnel hidden in the marble mantel where feeling trapped is a transformative experience to freedom. Maybe the candlesticks suddenly give rise to tall red beeswax candles enflamed by consuming air like passion consumes distant lovers. The paint on the walls drip and swirl and blend in a kaleidoscope of color mimicking the painted faces of tribal people whose rituals marry them with spirits of status promising abundance.

My heart catches on to this game and remembers, like Beauty, that home is where the heart is. Effortlessly, this house sinks seductively into a mindful meditation that truly hears the beating heart of home. In a dreamlike state, a symphony of music - in sync with the rhythm of life - transcends the cleanliness of mediocrity into a colorful cacophony of all things possible in a mess of life yearning to be lived in light.

House Story

I was constructed on a damp spring morning in 1958 in a little town known for celery. I know this because Frank, the tri-level house next to me, once told me. He was always cranky and wishing he was a Cape Cod in New England. I’m not sure how he heard of it but I think one of his previous owners read and owned many interior design magazines. He is a cantankerous tri-level who hated living in the Mid-west. Anyways that’s enough about Frank! I’ll get back to telling you about myself.

Hi! I’m Johnny and I am also a tri-level. I was built in a quiet suburb behind a brand new shopping center. If you listen you can hear in the distance the engines roar as people go about their daily lives. My foundation was built with concrete blocks giving great support but lacking the waterproofing of poured walls. More often than not Michigan basements without poured walls tend to build moisture and provide ample opportunity for mold to grow. So in my basement you will occasionally hear the electronic humming of a dehumidifier. Like most houses in the mid-west I was built with 2x4s and plywood and covering my exterior is vinyl siding. I provide warmth in the harsh winters and refreshment in the hot summer days.

I’m what you would call an open-plan tri-level. The main level is spacious and the vaulted ceilings provide unobstructed view of the three floors. I’m pretty average for my style of house. However, I do have two sky lights in the kitchen. This provides plenty of sunlight into the kitchen giving it a warm invitation. Throughout the main and second level my floors are made of red oak and squeak when stepped on. In the late 80's I was provided with a sun-room attaching to the kitchen. The sun-room provides a great view of the back yard and the plethora of squirrels scurrying up and down the trees. Unlike Frank, that ungrateful heap of lumber, I enjoy my quiet Mid-west suburb with its cool autumns and green summers.

Out of Nothing

It’s funny to think I haven’t always been here. And it’s funny to think of what came before this hushed neighborhood with its rough, narrow sidewalks and gnarly maples. I sit in a row with the other houses, all of us wearing vinyl siding and pinned with iron dragonflies or smiling suns.

It was swamp before us, I’ve heard. And I feel it still, smell it even, on certain summer nights, in the softness of this ground I settle in.

I was one of the early houses in the neighborhood, and the couple who would move in visited me often as I became. “She’s gotta have large windows and tall, tall ceilings,” said the woman in a wool jacket and black nylons over bare legs. She raised her mittened hands high above her head in the biting spring air. “And I want the light fixtures to be white with curlicues. And skylights in the kitchen. I want her to be like…like, like a lady professor of biology and art who’s deeply lonely and aware.”

So that’s what I was, empty and ornate. The woman and her husband moved in with thin rugs scrolled in red and gold and matching leather chairs. On all these walls, they only hung a single painting of one sun-dappled pear.

It’s funny to think I appeared here one day, and I can’t remember before. First, a construction company moved the earth, then they wrestled and nailed tree-planks into place. I came from the natural world to shelter people from it, to be the glass between the blue skies drifting across the kitchen skylights and the woman dicing onions below, to be the walls between the chilling Midwest winters and springs and the man and woman sank chinlessly into their chairs, silent for hours at a time.

I guess we all come out of nothing. Do people feel that way too? Is that what made my woman and man so quiet? Is that what made them want to embellish the light with curlicues? They -- we -- couldn’t say where our bones really come from, can we? But here we are.

Is it enough to say will and energy and sometimes accidental collision make us appear? Is it enough to say those things make a house or a person? I guess we aren’t so different in wondering what could ever really explain us. I guess, maybe, we don’t have to be so alone in that.

I'm a little scared to post--everyone else seems to already share a sensibility and a vocabulary I'm eavesdropping on. But: some bits from observing and emoting:

the fireplace is so cold and empty and perfect

no fire has ever been there

where are the candles? Why?

something forced itself in and stopped

I am not safe here

House Story

That old preacher/farmer and his spindly wife and their solemn son started my foundation when their cabin succumbed to crumble, right here beside the Ponca. One floor was sufficient, but they added the second in case some future came. The white paint on my siding gradually flaked away, but that must not have bothered anyone. There was a cottonwood to the west and an elm to the east, for shade someday.

After a while it was the solemn son and his solemn wife here; they laid down that gray speckled linoleum and brought in the big iron cookstove, complete with reservoir to lean against in chilly mornings. There was suddenly a flock of babies, breathing their first air here in the north bedroom, sleeping in clothesbaskets near the crouching cookstove, now breathing the air of warm bread and frying. They grew and worked and seldom spoke; they filled my hollows, snatching food or sleep, but seldom laughed.

One of those quiet boys stayed on when his brothers went to war. A quiet neighbor girl soon joined him. There were new babies, not born here, but brought in blankets from their first-air rooms. The quiet son-now-father built cabinets hung on my kitchen walls, and a counter for kneading bread. And a dinette with an arched entry and pale yellow curtains. In the north bedroom there was still crying, but not from babies. Sometimes someone would dare the words "new linoleum" or "exterior paint" or "indoor plumbing".

One afternoon in May, clouds of strident blackness forced the family inside my walls and down on into the root cellar for refuge. They made a ball of themselves against the potato bin while the raging trackless locomotive roared over their heads. By the time they found their way back up the steps and forced open the battered door, the sun was shining. The cottonwood and the elm laid twisted and broken. The cookstove stood on its linoleum island.

What a fun exercise, thank you Tessa! This is a home in a short story I'm working on. It was so great to explore the house as a character.

Here it is:

I was built on the bones of an avocado green split-level that had long fallen from style by Y2K. What wasn’t trucked to the landfill is now buried below my feet. I, the new, usurped the old. Don’t be fooled by the white vinyl siding mimicking oak clapboard. Or the asphalt shingles mocking a hand-split cedar shake roof. Or the machine-carved trim impersonating the precision of a detailed craftsman. I’m a product of the twenty-first century designed to look like a home of the 1700s with better insulation. Those homes had been discarded a generation or two before the avocado split-levels and the style was making a comeback when I was conceived.

A “modern colonial” will be the real estate pitch when the current inhabitants decide that forever has expired on their forever home. I’m no fool. I’ve seen the short attention span of humans. Less than two decades old and my innards have already been torn apart, the rose-washed marble countertops replaced by milky white granite, the porcelain tiles of the foyer ripped away and smothered with misshapen limestone to better match an industrious light fixture hanging above, and the plush pastel shag of the once-nursery now a dull heather grey carpet of the study.

It is the un-trafficked attic where I find peace. In the company of spiders spinning webs from the rafters, moth larvae nibbling forgotten clothing, mice pillaging boxes of Italian leather and craft projects made of rice. It’s a tiny rebellion up here. A mutiny against the clean lines, the white walls, the spotless floors below. Up here, the window frames the tops of oaks, and maples, and elms. Up here, the wild endures the constructs of the human.

One day, I’ll be unwanted, but up here, I almost believe that I’ll never really be gone.