Layered images of a home in different light at different times of year. A flipbook or kineograph of sorts. Half imagined, half left standing.
In the images, different dogs run by as do a variety of people. Or so it seems, each in their own way, visibly marked by time and age. Years alter faces from one season to the next and to the infrequent visitor, these faces surely belong to different people. I stand by a stop sign. It is planted on our property and marks a crossroads of sorts, its roads leading to both golf course parking lot and highway, river and dead end. Juxtapositions of life and its many stages.
Memories flit recently, like a book on a beach with its pages blowing in the wind. Only the sands of time leave impressions on these pages and the pages don’t ever quite settle near the spine.
Cars drive by in the early morning. Classic cars whose rust patterns change but whose models stay the same though these are undoubtably accompanied by luxury models, updated every few years by the suburban nouveau-rich of a mid size city. Yes, that Mercedes is a luxurious piece of work but in 98, luxury becomes having access to a wood burning stove. Water sits with few ripples in the tub. The fridge stays cold so long as you know what you’re grabbing for in advance and light switches are switched on and off upon entering the room, though the light itself never changes save by what the window dictates. Candles are used and evince warmth rather than romance. They become the light by which we play euchre to. A functional one rather than that which sets the mood, whatever that meant when I was 7.
That winter, I go around the block with a dog on a lead and a pair of skates on my feet. This year I’ll be wearing flip flops. The firework show on New Year’s is set to happen on the beach rather than in a friend’s frost covered apartment. While white sand replaces white snow, the same songs are sure to be played in the background. That way, we can all be let down by the false new year revelations and resolutions in a tried and true manner. All that remains is true reminder that soon, if we’re lucky, we’ll be one year older and one year closer to death.
Over thirty, it feels as though it is within this setting that we start to compare not out of spite but out of necessity. Who is where in life. What matrimonial dream was recently shattered and which of our friends got old young. Did that kid with the curly hair go on to write that novel he was always talking about? Did the high school sweethearts stay together? If we’re lucky, in a few days, we’ll get to playfully argue about politics and most likely take on the same positions as last year, only now we’re all informed by new information from those different but ever present echo chambers. Education systems did in fact lie to us one way or another, and we’re all small fish in an ever expanding pond. The currents keep changing and the neighbours keep moving and we might miss some, but all too often, if they stay, they’re the ones with the boombox that stays on until 3 am on a Wednesday.
The guppies are filling in the office space. Old friends get new jobs and the lucky ones get to complain about a mortgage or their lack of free time. Babbit and Rabbit, Run come to mind. I realize these old men I read about aren’t that much older than me anymore. I realize I always say you can’t teach experience and I realize I can’t keep convincing myself that these books which so clearly address the fears of adulthood or parenthood or the simple mundane realities of daily life, those things that make Monday so tedious and seductive, are ever really going to inform my choices in life. It’s dangerous and soul crushing when you realize it. We’re warned from the time we’re young be it in Silverstein or Vonnegut, that it is all about the journey, much less about the destination. Roll your eyes as the same platitudes find their way yet again into the conversation. Yet ruts are worn by time, and it is in a worn and poorly held posture that we follow in the footsteps of others in our trade and wake up with Talking Head lyrics rambling about “Well, how did I get here?”, only to fall asleep again.
There is a hollow I used to find in a park an hour’s bike ride from my apartment. Hollow as in a tree whose bark is left standing long after the core’s been emptied by termites. It was big but no longer stronger, beautiful but no longer useful. Rugged but frail to the wrong touch. It stood and towered over its space but provided little consolation as the fear it could fall over was always present to those sitting below it. I wonder if it still stands.
A neighbour with cancer dies. Another is moved to an old folk’s home. One drives us to prom and I’m haunted, unsure if we, or I ever thanked him properly for his time or his car.
A train track runs near me still and I’m still at a crossroads, only the roads lead to more roads and this apartment I’m told is a home, but it’s more like a big house and the neighbours are kind but they walk backwards down the stairs. But I don’t really know the people here and I don’t know how long before we move and time, well time doesn’t move the way it used to either. Come to think of it, when you move around, home can’t be a physical space. It’s the people and the memories. And the people change and the memories change and the emotions, well, they’re simply out of your control. But what happens when the people and the memories fade and you’re left in an empty room, with open windows and with something to say and no one to talk to…
describing space 