I did not realize how much I had missed silence until I was tucked into my bed and could hear nothing other than the sound of my own breath. My house has never been loud--it's a comment that other friends with siblings often make when they come to visit. Now that everyone but my parents have moved on with their lives, the quiet is so pervasive it feels like life on the edge of movement. The only thing that occasionally separates out time is the clicking of my dog's nails down the hardwood hallway, though most of the time he is curled away in some warm corner (as fourteen year old dogs do.)
Going outside, the sound is wind and leaves and the occasionally chirp and flutter of a bird taking off. The geese honk, too, but they're content to perch on the edge of the pond and pick at themselves most of the time. When I took out my dog, I saw a squirrel launch itself onto a tree and disappear into the branches, shaking the robins out of comfort and into the sky.
Some may call the city a concrete jungle, but I am not used to the suffocation of vines needing cut through. I am used to openness, to stretching sky and trees creating canopies that let in light through leaf gaps and the brush of the wind.
While I spent most of my time reconvening with home and my parents, I did not completely forget about my project. One thing that coming home always brings up is the non-linearity of time. The past presses up against the present and says hello each time. The sense of drowning it both what is, what has been, it comes to me here. Anne Carson brings this sense of memory, of time all collapsing in on itself, through a few devices in her text: the anachronisms, the jump from a place in the present time to a place in the past, a sense of the dream, a recollecting.
We have not moved since I was born, so this house has collected many moments. Like houses do, it has its own life and one that breathes again when I come back to it. Sometime this year, my parents will be selling the house and moving. It is a strange feeling, but I am embracing it. But I will miss the quiet, the place to withdraw, and how immediate the sense of the past is--how close it can come, how much it can feel just as alive as the present.
And yes, my dad did decide to grow a grapefruit tree in our living room.
Allison, seriously. Just publish your poetry already. For realsies. Let's take poetry next semester, so you can outshine everyone in the class and I can be even more impressed than I am!
ReplyDeleteOne thing that really struck me about Plainwater was the sense of memory specifically when she is talking about her parents. It isn't as present in the discussion of her brother. I wonder if this is because our parents become launch pads, while our siblings are similar rockets to ourselves. Or maybe this is because her father is losing his memory while existing in HER memory, while her brother is a more immediate thought. But her father does come with this sense of memory, and the only time where I felt like past/future were not as blended in the road trip was when she was discussing her father. That felt tonally different, more like earlier sections than the journey she was on.
Also your dog is like crazy cute and I want to be his best friend.
Lucy, Katherine, and I were discussing Chicago's incessant noise just this morning. I miss silence so much, so I appreciate the early morning at the Newberry when I am the only one around.
ReplyDeleteA small note, as a parent -- I suspect that your parents have "moved on with their lives" just as their children have, though their geographic stability may obscure that from you. But we, too, change (and even grow) when our children become more independent. It's difficult for children (that is, one's offspring) to imagine, I think.
My daughter has forbidden us from ever moving. Or even changing the quilt on her bed. Home offers stability, an anchor, a repository of memories and a connection to childhood. I wish you well as your family transitions from the house of your childhood.
More great photos!
ReplyDeleteMy parents also sold my childhood home while I was in college, and I have to say I’ve never really gotten over that. Maybe I am too attached to place. As Blake would say, “He who binds to himself a joy, does the winged life destroy / He who kisses the joy as it flies, lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
Now I’m attached to our Michigan farm, and I’m missing the fall. As a red-green colorblind person, I perhaps am not as aware of the leaf color as I should be, but the smells of autumn are perhaps thereby enhanced. I don’t smell anything but dust in Chicago, and tarmac, and diesel.
I would love to see some of your poetry. Could that be an extra blog? :)