Friday, December 3, 2010

houses visit me long after i visit them. i remember little areas and details that i hope will never change. when a house shows me her old iron heating grates and thick plank floors and high chipped baseboards and tall gracious ceilings and porcelain bathroom fixtures, my heart is captured. i re-enter these houses in my mind and i walk through them. i smell the odd old smells and hear the echoey creaks. chipped paint and ugly wallpaper. cracked linoleum and crumbling plaster. i want it all. i do want to see the restored beauty. i do want to see the rooms bulge with pride and a personal raison d'etre. but the aged tale it weaves around me in it's cracked and crumbling state is the rarer story i prefer. but i realize the miss haversham in me is peeking up as it always does, waiting just barely under my skin, testing me and taunting me. i know that to save a house is to hide the toughest parts of it's story. but if i can edit and re-work and coax the telling so the story stays in tact and is able to add chapter after chapter as it continues to warm and feed and bed it's families, it's story is a truer one.

No comments:

Post a Comment