The Anatomy of a House

What's in a house?

You've got walls and a roof and windows and doors. You've got piping and electric wires, running like veins deep beneath skin. Stairs and hallways connecting everything. Rooms to put stuff in. Some designated this or that when the innards were laid. Maybe there's a basement collecting memories that no longer had no room upstairs.

When I was younger, I was so afraid to be forgotten after my death— to never have left my mark on the world— never have done anything grand. Wondering if I'd just disappear. Never mattered.

The other day I was helping family with the renovation of my grandmother's old house. Surrounded by dust, wires spilling out of gaping walls and an old-fashioned telephone sitting on equally old-fashioned green tiles, I started thinking about all the humans who touched this place through decades of existence. All the old ghosts, their lives and the things they left us.

Pieces of each of them in the layers of long-out-of-fashion flower wallpapers, measurements scribbled on bare by construction workers. A patchwork of plaster over old wounds. Each part of a story.

We all leave crumbs wherever we go, some bloom into flowers, some rot or blow away with the wind. It doesn't always have to be grand. I know this is no new insight. It's nice to stop and reflect and to appreciate the labour that went into building this house even if we may have forgotten the names of those that did. Their deeds remain. A combined effort of many hands. Lives lived leave lines (yes, I tried very hard to find a work for "mark" starting with an L).

The green tiles will be replaced by whatever is in style now. The old generation passes the keys to the new. Forever changed, never the same again.

The theme of the house continues to fascinate me and I feel re-inspired to create the Zine me and a friend have been musing about.