The air escapes my mouth. The sigh comes from deep within my lunges and blows some dust off the table before me. I slowly let my hands go over the fabric of the chair I’m sitting in. This once was a good, green suede chair, I can remember it was an expensive one. The green color now had faded away into a vague grey. On some places, the fabric released its tight grip on the chair and showed the pillow beneath the surface. I pluck at the pieces of the pillow while my eyes glance around the room again. Amazing how quick this place has changed. From the furniture to the floor, everything is covered with a grey blanket of dust. I can see exactly how I walked in here, because my footsteps are showing the only bright colors in this sea of grey. Just a couple of minutes ago, I entered this long forgotten house. My shoes filled those footsteps, while growing astonishment filled my heart. How is it possible that this house became so old, so musty and so dead in such a small amount of time?
I stand up and walk around the living room. Couches, chairs, cabinets; it’s all still here, but it’s not the same anymore. I let my hands go over the shelf above the fireplace. A cloud of dust finds it’s freedom in the air and irritates my throat. Coughing I try to let the dust out. I pick up one of the photo frames from the shelf. The glass is broken and the colors of the picture have faded away, like the world inside the photo wanted to adjust to the grey world around it. Yet I don’t need the colors to know who are caught on the camera here. I see smiling faces, so close to each other that their cheeks are almost touching. Even through the faded colors and scratches on the glass I can still see the light of life shining in their eyes. That once was me and she once was close. I quickly put down the photo, I won’t allow my mind to go there.
“My footsteps are the only bright colors in this sea of grey”
My feet move, ready to go to the other side of the room, but they are stopped when they step on something. I hear a breaking sound and I squat down to see what’s just been crushed under my feet. Another photo frame, this time with more than two faces. The photographer managed to put both energetic little kids, their parents and their grandparents in one snapshot. My throat hurts and I’m not sure what caused it, either the dust or the memories attached to the pictures. Friends, family, love. Words I hardly used the last time and the experience behind those words seem to be ages away from me.
Memories flood my mind: sounds of laughter, the feeling of a hand in mine and a kiss on my cheek, the smell of home-made dinner. The memories feel so close that my senses can almost grab them. Almost, but there’s still a gap in between. A gap called reality. The reality is that I’m staring into the fireplace before me with the photo still in my hand. The fireplace is actually nothing more than some space in a stone wall, with only black wood in a soil of ashes as a remembrance of a fire that once warmed and lighted up a whole room. Cold and dark is this room now, it could sure use some of that fire. But I first want to see the rest of this place. I stand up, put the photo frame on its place on the shelf and put my memories back in their place on the shelf in my heart. The dusty shelf of a forgotten life.
Next to the fireplace is another green chair, this one looks even worse than the one I just sat in. A huge painting fills the wall behind the chair, but one of the hooks let go of the right corner, so it’s hanging on its side. I can vaguely remember that it’s a painting of a beautiful ocean view, but because it’s turned upside down and covered with cobwebs, I don’t recognize it. I turn around and see a huge piano standing in the other corner of the room. Its wood used to be so varnished that it reflected the light of the lamp on the ceiling. But now the pianoforte is nothing but matte, scratched and, once again, dusty. The stool is creaking loudly when I try to take a seat before the piano, but it bears my weight. Even though my head doesn’t know how to play anymore, my fingers seem to find their place on the keys. The sheet music before me shows a lot of black dots and stripes, curls and numbers which form music when you have the right knowledge. I used to read this and hear the melodies playing in my head, melodies echoed by my fingers on the keys. But not anymore, these signs are now nothing more than just black on white letters of a foreign language I no longer speak. As if unconsciously, I watch my fingers walk over the keys from the highest one to the lowest. My ears hurt when they hear the off-key music after so much silence. The off-key sounds of the old piano seem to harmonize with the brokenness inside.
`The off-key sounds of the old piano seem to harmonize with the brokenness inside. I’m trying to find words between the black and white keys which have been long untouched.`
I’m trying to describe the feelings this house gives me, but my thoughts feel as covered in a grey blanket of confusion as this room is covered with a grey blanket of dust. I’m trying to find words between the black and white keys which have been long untouched. I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Dust fills my lungs once again, but this time I hardly notice. All my focus is for the melody that begins in my memory. It becomes louder and louder, till the melody of the memory reaches my mind and takes the journey all the way down to my fingers. Slowly I press the keys, three whites ones with my right hand, one black one with my left. It’s like my fingers have been waiting for this start sign, and I let them go. They run over the keys like children who run around their house after being away for a long time. In the dark room of my closed eyes, I’m watching scenes of a movie full of memories. I haven’t allowed my heart to play this movie for a long time. My fingers play the soundtrack to the movie, until my eyes are too filled with tears that they can no longer contain them. A drop of salt water runs down my cheek and falls on one of the black keys. I open my eyes and force my fingers to let the silence take over again. This is too much. Silence must return, in my house and in my heart.
`Stains and scratches only carry stories for the ones who made them.`
I release my heavy burden from the stool and stand up. I walk through the door and enter the kitchen. A wooden table, four chairs, some cabins, sideboard and the stove, everything is still standing on their place. But yet, it looks so different, so much smaller. The emptiness seems to enlarge every inch of the room. The chairs seem to know that they’re missing their purpose without people to give a seat. The table seems to feel useless without plates, knives, forks, food and drinks to carry. I open one of the cabins, only to find out that there’s more emptiness hiding inside. In the fourth cabin I open, I find a lost can in the shadow of the corner. The label explains that the content of this can once had the potential to become tomato soup, but the expiration date tells me that this potential faded away a long time ago. I put the can back in its place and close all the cabins. I let my eyes dance over the whole room again. The kitchen lost its purpose with the absence of food and lost its spirit with the absence of people eating in it. This kitchen is filled with emptiness and it seems to know it. Only the scratches and coffee stains on the table give away that there was once life here, life too vibrant to let dust settle in its place. But stains and scratches only carry stories for the ones who made them. But this house carries more stories for me than I can handle, even without staring at the details. I let the kitchen alone with all her loneliness and find myself in the hallway again. The door to the living room is still open, but I don’t feel invited to enter it again. But the front door on the other hand is calling my name, responding to my heart’s cry to open it, enter it and start running. The world behind that front door has enough space to run until my heart beat can’t keep up anymore with the rhythm of my fast feet. The world outside offers me all the freedom I need to escape from every memory and every dusty flake of the past.
But the same speed that helps me forgetting when running, will also force me to lose any weight I’m carrying. Weights like my identity, my dreams and my relationships. Losing those weights made me feel as light as a feather, but feathers are tossed in the wind and moved in any direction it’s coming from. I have lived in the strings of freedom long enough to know that it can entangle me until my breath is taken away. I used my last strength to come here, in this house full of dust. No, the freedom of that outside world will never offer me the safety and shelter this house has always covered me with. I turn around decisively and take the second door in the hallway. A sight of relief fills my heart, but it’s not strong enough to fill my lungs. Thankfully, this is the last door in the hallway I haven’t entered yet. The new discoveries of a known place are almost over. The room is in the shape of a square. It’s like the walls wanted to be in perfect equality to create the peace that’s expected of a bedroom. Here, too, all of the furniture is still on its place. Time didn’t have the strength to move it. A white sheet covers the bed, as if that could protected it from the grey colors and moldy smell of neglect. Besides the bed is a little side table, patiently waiting to support anyone with books, glasses of milk or a lamp to make sleepless nights easier. The other side of the room is empty, like it understands that the bed has to be the center of the room that’s named after it.
Right next to the door is a huge bookcase. I brush some of the dust away from the sides so I can read the titles. Not that I need to see the letters to know to titles, I know these books good enough to recognize their names just by the way they feel, their size, their shape and the way they smell. Without counting I know there are 66 books, some books are study books, some are full of stories, some are about the future, some about the past, some are full of rules and some are giving practical help on different topics.
“The freedom of the outside world will never offer me the safety and shelter this house has always covered me with.”
Smiling I take one of them in my hands and carefully blow the dust off the cover. From all the kinds of books in this bookcase, my favorite ones have always been the books full of love letters and love stories. I read them over and over again, at some moments my heart became so attached to the words that I expected the letters on the pages to transform into little butterflies and fly like the ones in my stomach. All these 66 books shaped me, molded me, created me, they know me and I know them. Or actually, as the dust on the shelves remind me, I knew them and they knew me. My heart feels heavy, too heavy to stand, so I let myself sink into the pillow at the side of the bed. The book falls out of my hand, but I can’t find the courage to pick it up. The atmosphere in this room that I once called peace now feels oppressive. I close my eyes, trying to escape, but only more memories fill my mind. Memories of love that was shared in this room and intimacy that was shared between these sheets. I quickly open my eyes.
I see a person, as white as the sheets on the bed, looking scared and hopeless. I stand up to take a closer look. This mirror reflects the real me, I’m shocked by the raw reality I’m seeing. The face I’m observing seems to fit perfectly in the house I just wandered around in. Black hair with starting grey colors at the crown, even this shows that anility always starts at the roots. The smooth surface of the skin is harshly interrupted by lines like waves of emotions. The wrinkles are deeper in my forehead. My biggest fear has come true, I have more wrinkles from frowned eye-brows than from smiling mouths. The eyes I’m staring in are nothing like the eyes I saw on the picture in the photo frame above the fireplace. The light is dimmed, the life is dead and the joy is deafened. I try to remember where I’ve seen such eyes before. The memory hits me like a lightning and the thunder of realization comes just a second later. My eyes are just like the eyes of a dead person.
My heart beats faster than ever before and my lungs try to get breath in and out as quick as possible, like they want to prove that they’re still working. Death and life. Past and present. Memories and reality. My mind is split in two camps who are fighting for the ownership. Gunfire of words, explosions of memories, loud voices yelling, the smell of the death of loved ones. They’ve turned the ground of my heart into a battlefield. I’m drowning in the fast and unexpected flood of realization, as I stare in the eyes of the person I’ve become. I was walking in the dessert, but I forgot that I was actually walking on the dry riverbed. I ignored the signs down the road which told me that riverbeds are dangerous, I ignored my knowledge that most people drown in a dessert and I even ignored the rumbling sounds of the coming flood. And now I can hardly breathe, water surrounds me and strong currents toss me around and around. In a last attempt to survive, I stretch out my hand. A last cry of my heart for help.
“Dust always returns to dust. Drowning is the only chance to live again”
A voice comes from deep within me as I hit the mirror. The reflection breaks into a star, pieces of glass fly around the room. A sharp pain reminds me that my soul is still attached to my body. Blood flows from my arms and tears flow down my cheek. The streams of blood and the streams of tears mingle together with the stream of memories. This time I let myself go, this stream will bring me back to the place I came from. Dust always returns to dust. Drowning is my only chance to live again.
It must be hours later. The well behind my eyes has dried up, my head has recaptured every memory and my heart is exhausted of feeling. Emotions have pulled and pushed me like currents underwater. Regret, pain, expectation, despair, anger, fear, grief, frustration, disappointment, shame, guilt, hate, pride, desire and hope; all the colors of the emotion pallet has been used. And now, nothing. All the colors are mixed and blended until a deep black is formed. I crawl to the bed behind me. Pieces of glass are getting stuck in my hand palms and knees, but I hardly notice. I fall on the white sheet and leave red stains of my blood like marks on it. My eyes are already closing and my body is too heavy to even take the effort to get under the blanket. I fall in the emptiness and let the blended darkness surround me. I doze off to a world where there are no feelings, no memories, but yet every feeling and memory exists.
“The past en the present must reunite to let the future happen” “It’s never… It’s never too late… become who… be. Become… who… meant to be.” The more my mind gets reactivated, the more words it captures. By the time my eyes can be opened again, I clearly caught the voice. The wisdom feels all too familiar, like the forgotten words of a mother. The words keep circling through my head until they find the courage to travel to my lips and move my tongue.
. Like a soft breath I whisper; “It’s never too late to become who you’re meant to be.” The words now circle around me as I keep repeating the sentence. As my volume increases, the spark of hope gets ignited. The warm blanket of wisdom surround me, I let the blanket wrap around me as strong, protective arms of a loving father. I breathe in and breathe out on this little fire of hope that just got started. The flames of hope stir up a determination I missed for way too long. The smoke signals send out a message of reconciliation. The past and the present must reunite to let the future happen.
With an inner-strength that surprises me, I stand up and walk to the side of the bedroom. I take the fabric of the white, semi-transparent curtains in my hand. With one quick movement I pull the curtains away, so harshly that I’m tearing apart the fabric. I hardly notice the huge rip from the bottom to the top I just created. The only thing I can see is the ocean, just separated from me by one layer of glass. I lay my hands on the handle and push down. The window opens with loud squeaking, but for me it’s the most beautiful sound I’ve heard in years. I let the brisk sea wind enter the house. A stream of cold air comes in and carries the smell of salt water, the sounds of seagulls, playing children and the breaking of the waves. . Dust particles are whirling around, but this time they look like little fireflies when they’re caught in the rays of the sun. The white curtains are fluttering in the wind, like white flags as signs of surrender. As I see the wind lifting the whole blanket of grey, I take a deep breath. I roll up my sleeves. It’s time for a spring-clean. It’s time for a new beginning. It’s time for life. Houses were never meant to be filled with dust, they were meant to be homes.
Design and story by Eline Millenaar Photographs not made by me. Š All rights reserved. January 2013