But it occured to me the other day that in some ways I am not a writer at all; I am neither a creator or a storyteller, but a listener.
I discovered a long time ago that there are stories all around me, camuflouged as the mundane and the ordinary, shrouded by the dusts of reality. But beneath all that incoherent noise, the flustered chaos and realities timelapses, there is always a story. One must only learn to listen.
Well, that is exactly what I did when this last spring I wrote a piece for publication: I listened! So, without further adue, here is The Story of a House. (For, believe it or not, sometimes houses tell stories too.)
The Story of a House
There was once a house which stood in the woods down the road. It had been a wise old house. A house whose floors creaked with age. A house whose walls were filled with knowledge and dusty precarious corners. The house had been a home to many, but mostly it had been home to time. Time, which like ever pattering footsteps wandered through the silence. The house whispered of time when the wind howled through its drafts and hollows. It groaned of time, like old bones that creak when it storms; and, when the sun shone onto its old wooden floors, you could see every withered wrinkle.Within this house time had stored its riches, like a vast trove of treasures. The house remembered them all, every memory, big and small; every life which had lived under its ancient roof.
It remembered the retired professor who lived there once, long ago, after the war. He had a strong sturdy voice and walked with a cane. He had been a storyteller at heart. He filled the house with tales of war and memories of friends deceased, like faded photographs hung along the walls. He filled the house with tales of battles, not those fought on the fields, but the battles that time invokes on the soul; the battles of a boy that does not wish to grow old.
The old man had died there in that house, old and weary. The house was younger then, but even so, the weariness, which was once the old man's, lived in the house even after he was gone.
The house remembered the young man who lived there after. He had dark hair and bright brilliant eyes. He had been a man of great ambition. And, when he moved into the house, he had brought with him a lifetime of potential.
The young man had tried to be a lot of things throughout his lifetime. He had tried to be a writer and a painter, an explorer and an adventurer. Unfortunately, the young man's ambitions outdid him. He fell ill at quite a young age. He left the house one winter's night, coughing and hacking. He never came home. His unfulfilled potential wandered the house for a long time after he left, like a ghost stuck in his routine, making coffee in the morning and shuffling around in his slippers and housecoat in the evening. And, sometimes, late at night, you could still see his desk lamp burning and the thin silhouette, like a distant memory, of a young man of great ambition sitting hunched over his typewriter, the rhythm of ideas churning and working, coming to life as he writes tales of unfulfilled potential.
After the man of ambition there came a young woman. She inherited the old house, and the house remembered her too. She might have been the young man's niece, but that is not what the house remembered. The house remembered her face, reflected in the windows as she looks out at the sun and at the rain. The house remembered her silent footsteps, wandering the house through her sleepless nights. Most of all, the house remembered her laughter, clear and full of wonder.
The young girl married in the backyard of that house, under the great oak tree that stood beside it, its ancient companion standing by it through the turnings of time. The girl had two children in that house, and the house remembered their laughter too. It remembered her midnight wanderings and nighttime kisses, and the sound of her voice singing lullabies.
The girl's husband died ten years after their wedding day. After that the girl no longer laughed as often as she cried, a silent weeping in the night, a stifled sobbing that no one ever heard. Over time the children grew, and, eventually, they left her.
But the house had stayed. The girl stayed also.
She wandered the house often at night, and she stared out the window, murmuring lullabies to the moon. Her laughter was a sound that became unfamiliar, forgotten by all but the reminiscence of the house. She rarely cried then, but there was sorrow in her step and pain in her silence.
She too died in that house.
The house stood empty for a long time after that. Its only inhabitant was the ever-persistent ticking of time which, bit by bit, took its toll of the house.
Houses do not age like people do. But even so, the house grew weary, for it knew the weariness of old men when life runs thin. For a long time, the house had ceased to be a home; it knew the bitterness of unfulfilled potential and the frustration of crippled ambition. The house became stale and numb, undusted and uncared for. And the house was filled with sorrow. It knew that best of all.
What the house had not known yet was what came after. What came after would undo the house. For neither heartache nor affliction can cripple quite like addiction. What came after was anger.
Many years later a car pulled up to the house and a man dressed in black stepped out. He had lived there once as a boy. He had grown up in this house. He had played in its yard and climbed the great oak tree which stands beside it. He learned to ride his bike in its driveway and looked out the little round window in the attic where he had slept all throughout his childhood. He had cried in that room when his father had died. He had whimpered into the pillow so that no one would hear him.
The house had heard him.
The man moved back into the house. He knocked down some walls and fixed the roof. He filled it with anger and lined shelves with bitterness, empty bottles and half-drunken ones. He rarely cried now, but he screamed. He screamed at his children and he screamed at his wife. He puts dents in the walls and so, bit by bit, the man broke his family apart.
Eventually, the children moved out. Neither said goodbye to their father when they left, and they rarely came home except when their father was not home. His wife stayed by him though; his tender wife, who cried when he screamed, who hid her bruises and covered her pain. His wife who whispered her unnumbered excuses into the night when he slept beside her.
And the house, well, the house became frail and silent; the homely presence which once inhabited it almost gone.
Then, one stormy night, the couple's screaming continued. They screamed, and they screamed, and when they could no longer scream, they started to cry. They cried about the lives they had ruined. They cried about the life they might have had. They cried about the anger and the weariness and the pain. And, when finally they stopped crying, the man's wife got her things and she left him. She got into her car and drove off into the loneliness of the night.
The house was silent for a long time. So silent one might almost have thought it empty. But the house listened intently, and in the silence, it heard the quietest of weeping. The drunken man wept like he wept when his father died. He wept like a child whose mother neglects him. He wept like an infant whose family forgets him.
No one would have heard the man weep had the house not been listening. The house that knew weariness, sorrow, and pain, it knew his pain also.
But the man died not know the things that houses know. So, the man got another drink and eventually he fell asleep on the floor. And when the smoke started to stir on the ceiling, and the fire cracked and seared, the man was sleeping still.
The man died in that house.
...
There is a yard with an old crippled oak tree, blackened by flame. It is leafless in summer and hollow in winter. It died long ago. A girl got married under this oak tree once, many years ago when the tree was far younger and its life full of potential.
The yard is empty, but a house stood here once. A great big house filled with silent wisdoms and many lifetimes of stories.
A young boy drives up one day to this empty yard. He hasn't been here since his father died. He takes a deep breath and gets out of the car.
He walks the yard for a while, contemplating about sorrow and unfulfilled potential and how addiction can cripple a man. After much wandering, he finds himself standing where the front used to be. The fire has left a black scar on the earth. It has healed since he was here last. New grass is just starting to grow.
Though the yard is empty now, there was a home here once. Somehow, though there is no house, there is a home here still.
And so, the boy builds a house. He builds a new home, and this house still remembers the things that the old house once knew; the things that those who had once lived here seemed to have forgotten.
Life is a little like a house, is it not? It is furnished and lined with the days which we live, filled like a shelf with the stories we make.
And so, the boy builds a house, and he fills it, not with bitterness, sickness, or pain, but with something new. The boy builds a house, and he fills it with life.
And in the shadow of this great big new house, at the foot of an old oak tree which died in a fire, sprouts something new.
Thank you Heinrich Nikel Photography for this photograph and for capturing stories not with words, but with pictures. Although the story of a house was not inspired by this photograph, it certainly could have been. I can almost hear the houses weary groan by the sag of its walls. Oh, what stories this house might have to tell!