Ballylucas
It has always fascinated me what we leave behind.
The lingering smell of baking in a warm kitchen at evening time that tickles every hopeful nose, the smell of gel and toothpaste from a steamy bathroom, the indentation of a head on a pillow, sleep rumpled sheets.
These memories of a life. The things that hold the energy of the owner. I never find it morbid, in fact the total opposite is true.
The flotsam and jetsam of a life.
I love unearthing treasures in the most unlikely places. The remnants of a day, a napkin pressed between the folded pages of a diary, a train ticket creased neatly into a purse.
All of these tiny things tell the story of Us.
In the rooms that house the people of no memory the very bricks hold the imprint of their story. The slates above them witness their confusion and tears, the agitation, the frustration. The halls ring with their calls and taps, a hand knocking, knocking softly on a closed kitchen door. The handbags open and gaping and the sticks tap tap tapping down the skirting boards. The bulbs in the garden spring up with the memories of all the hearses that have parked in front of these double doors.
Today I am in an abandoned derelict house with a camera and a tripod, being apprenticed to a master. The windows are gone and the house is open to the elements, shards of patterned wallpaper blowing in the breeze.
It is a woman who has left this place.
Her ornaments are on the mantelpiece, a line of poignant plastic pegs strung across the hearth of the fireplace, a bunch of rusted keys hanging on a cup hook, a sacred heart lamp, a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, a Readers Digest dated 1956.
The wind whistling in through the open pantry would shave you. The vegetation is lush and encroaching steadily, vines and creepers and crawling things are taking back the bricks and all the memories of what happened in here, dragging them down through the wet wormy clay to the core of the collective consciousness.
Once upon a time a woman laid down in that back bedroom and thought about the long day she had put in. Up for first mass to read one of Paul's endless epistles to the Corinthians, home to bake soda bread and tarts with her own apples, she watched the daffodils rear their impossible yellow heads while she waited for the postman to cycle by, digging beds for spring onions and lettuce and rhubarb, She listened to the hurling on the radio on a hot August Sunday while she got herself ready for the bingo bus. She drank sherry at Christmas and always gave coins to the Wren Boys
She blessed herself nightly with Lourdes water from the font and said her decades and her "I confess" before sleeping the sleep of the just.
She is gone now.
On a shelf I find a tattered book with her signature on it and find that it is a play in 3 acts.
"Would it be terrible if I took this home with me?" I ask he-who-must-be-obeyed-today-
He is trying to check the light and cue up a shot and he arches one devastatingly handsome eyebrow at me.
I put it in my bag.
I am the woman who remembers everything, and for everyone. I live surrounded by the energy of those who have gone before me, and I sleep in their house, surrounded by all the little things I find, or collect, or am given.
If Death is merely the closing of one door and the opening of another then I like to imagine sometimes that I have my foot wedged in the crack and that by retaining their memories after all else has gone, that I am connected to all that is and ever was and ever shall be.
The lingering smell of baking in a warm kitchen at evening time that tickles every hopeful nose, the smell of gel and toothpaste from a steamy bathroom, the indentation of a head on a pillow, sleep rumpled sheets.
These memories of a life. The things that hold the energy of the owner. I never find it morbid, in fact the total opposite is true.
The flotsam and jetsam of a life.
I love unearthing treasures in the most unlikely places. The remnants of a day, a napkin pressed between the folded pages of a diary, a train ticket creased neatly into a purse.
All of these tiny things tell the story of Us.
In the rooms that house the people of no memory the very bricks hold the imprint of their story. The slates above them witness their confusion and tears, the agitation, the frustration. The halls ring with their calls and taps, a hand knocking, knocking softly on a closed kitchen door. The handbags open and gaping and the sticks tap tap tapping down the skirting boards. The bulbs in the garden spring up with the memories of all the hearses that have parked in front of these double doors.
Today I am in an abandoned derelict house with a camera and a tripod, being apprenticed to a master. The windows are gone and the house is open to the elements, shards of patterned wallpaper blowing in the breeze.
It is a woman who has left this place.
Her ornaments are on the mantelpiece, a line of poignant plastic pegs strung across the hearth of the fireplace, a bunch of rusted keys hanging on a cup hook, a sacred heart lamp, a plaster statue of the Virgin Mary, a Readers Digest dated 1956.
The wind whistling in through the open pantry would shave you. The vegetation is lush and encroaching steadily, vines and creepers and crawling things are taking back the bricks and all the memories of what happened in here, dragging them down through the wet wormy clay to the core of the collective consciousness.
Once upon a time a woman laid down in that back bedroom and thought about the long day she had put in. Up for first mass to read one of Paul's endless epistles to the Corinthians, home to bake soda bread and tarts with her own apples, she watched the daffodils rear their impossible yellow heads while she waited for the postman to cycle by, digging beds for spring onions and lettuce and rhubarb, She listened to the hurling on the radio on a hot August Sunday while she got herself ready for the bingo bus. She drank sherry at Christmas and always gave coins to the Wren Boys
She blessed herself nightly with Lourdes water from the font and said her decades and her "I confess" before sleeping the sleep of the just.
She is gone now.
On a shelf I find a tattered book with her signature on it and find that it is a play in 3 acts.
"Would it be terrible if I took this home with me?" I ask he-who-must-be-obeyed-today-
He is trying to check the light and cue up a shot and he arches one devastatingly handsome eyebrow at me.
I put it in my bag.
I am the woman who remembers everything, and for everyone. I live surrounded by the energy of those who have gone before me, and I sleep in their house, surrounded by all the little things I find, or collect, or am given.
If Death is merely the closing of one door and the opening of another then I like to imagine sometimes that I have my foot wedged in the crack and that by retaining their memories after all else has gone, that I am connected to all that is and ever was and ever shall be.
Her name was Mary.
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