i'm renting out my grandmother's old place. noticing stuff. like, when we tried to rent it last spring (or was it the one before that?), nobody seemed interested, and now, i can't stop the phone from ringing. how the house had a different purpose. the oddity that was my aunt's brief, brief arrival and departure from this country (and this life). is really nothing accidental?
i answer calls, take down names, notice. the dogs circling. quite literally. it seems everybody's got a pet now. i tell them i don't mind, there used to be another dog there, once. but who cares now about my aunt and her old dog, who cares how somebody lived and died. a different aunt. it seems strange, to have to distinguish between them not in terms of "the one who died", but of how this one died versus how that. whatever happened to that dog? i heard it ran away in a strange country, when there was nobody to look after him anymore. died somewhere. did he miss my aunt, before he died?
do even bad dogs understand love?
it seems like the apartment will be settled by week's end, as i'm already losing track of people who've called, viewings i've arranged. tell you a secret, i've got my eye on a few favorites, but who knows where a dark horse will come from. it's odd. i suffer for those with later viewings, as i suspect the flat might go before then. the way a life arranges itself, the missed windows, all channeling into some higher good, perhaps.
the fact i wasn't there when i should've. the act of going to the point of meeting you. it's interesting to think about, or maybe i just got too much time on my hands. where we'd be if only we'd had a free afternoon on thursday instead of saturday. how much lives change in the minuteness of an act.
how my own life's different for being at the right place, in the wrong time.
who will come.
i'd like it to be someone who respects the house. me growing up in that house. the memories of people long dead. the awful knitted jackets an old woman used to bring for christmas. my aunt chastising me in private for not being grateful enough. my grandfather's memory that i keep in this house, even though he never actually lived here.
we tend to say "but it's only stuff". some. others, like james hillman, would say "but stuff also is part of our inner geography". of how we understand ourselves and our family. there's a line between materialism and animism, the line between accumulating stuff you just sell and buy, and loving something, having something become - for better or worse, wanted or not - a part of you.
i think a lot about the way that happens with memories, with songs, but things, also. these pants that remind me of a place and time. the wardrobe i scratched my hand cleaning. the smell of painted radiators, the way i thought it'd never get out of the house, but it did.
in the end, the house unaired still smells like her. her lithe, ghosty frame shambling down the corridor, leaving the door open for me, becoming small and loving me so unbearably much.
i know to accept death, and do what must be done, but if i think about it too much, it occurs i'll never be gossiping at the kitchen table with her again.
the stack of old newspapers is now gone. the flat is about to welcome new life. and me, with my shambling ghosts, go to unlock the door.
