August 17th, 2013: A Hollow House

My Love,

One would not think, upon entering my house, that anything could be amiss; the coats are hung neatly in the closet, shoes lined up beneath them. Books and toys are tucked away, lonely but lawful. Run a finger along the top of the television or any bookcase or out-of-the-way planter and you’ll find no trace of dust, not one mote. Everything’s orderly and desperately functional, a smile that’s all teeth. All households have troubles, however: those with gleaming counters and floors scrubbed-raw of their spots merely host troubles that run deep.

Tension knotted between my shoulders as I heard this evening’s argument crescendo into shouting. A ringing nothingness saturated my senses, shattering the comforting fantasy world I’d been desperately trying to escape into. Though it is oppressive and suffocating, this void is better than reality. Its emptiness is soothing, like an endless overcast sky on a moonless night. Since my reading immersion was broken anyway, I tilted my head down and allowed my curtain of bushy mouse-brown curls to fall over my eyes. My hair was only a fragile barrier, but it was always there for me.

Someone’s cursing shattered its funereal serenity, lightning and thunder imposing jagged anxiety upon my perfect, velvet darkness. My book slipped from my hands to land with a soft thwump on the thick carpet beside me. For an instant, a precious instant, my greatest worry was that I failed to mark my place. Furious footfalls in the upstairs hall dragged me struggling back to reality, and I grasped the cozy carpet pile between my fingers in a desperate effort to brace myself against the tide of inevitability. I’d have gladly held myself in that empty moment forever rather than be swept into the incipient calamity, but time cares nothing for spatial anchors.

The sickly domestic-death-knell crunch of drywall splitting reverberated through the house as a fist or a foot or some furniture impacted a wall... another open wound in the house. The silence I preferred to wrap myself in while reading, the same protective veil I used to ward off the mundane unpleasantries of my physical environs, now served only to amplify the symphony of vitriol echoing down to me. 

I considered turning on the television, loud, to drown out reality, but I feared the consequences of making my presence known. Perhaps music? Deafen myself figuratively and eventually literally in exchange for a soundscape of my choosing? Sweet gods all around us, what I would give for the ability to shut my ears as I do my eyes. Such would render me vulnerable, however, and an atavistic echo from deep down the well of genetic memory signaled panic at the notion of having a sense cut off while under threat. I sometimes wonder if it’s a problem that I’m so in touch with that tiny quivering creature who huddled in the shadows of antiquity; a primordial prey item. The slavering dinosaurs look a little different now, but for many people not much has changed since the first days of the world. 

In the basement of the house there is a hollow behind the hot water heater between the furnace and a load-bearing pillar of the foundation. It is a secret place, never visited except by me and totally obscured from sight. I’ve been taking refuge here since I was small, and even though I’m now grown and gangly, none can fit here besides me. Gumbiful* flexibility and a freakish high pain tolerance that negates the repellent effects of abrasions, burns, and a cheeky dislocation here or there also help greatly. My sanctuary is mine alone, the only part of the house that approaches home for me. It is dark, dry, soothing, and always the perfect temperature thanks to the radiant warmth of the furnace in winter and subterranean coolness in summer. I fled there before the miasma of anger could steal my breath completely.

Much lives in the basement that fears the light, and tonight that description applies to me as well. I welcome the tickle of a spider skittering across my hand as I wrap my arms around the water heater; with my cheek pressed against it I can hear the muted rumble of the furnace like the bass purr of a monstrous kitten. The warm metal is a good huggable circumference and would be a perfect friend if not for its unyielding hardness. Luckily that problem is easily solved with a plush bath towel I keep here in my burrow for the purpose. 

The inanimate water heater and the wandering spider – my beloved companions in the dark. Neither one is my friend in actuality, but critically neither one is my enemy. They simply are, living or imbued by me with the aesthetic of life, and we can coexist in the blissful stillness of this place, this moment, to prove in some small way that we’re not alone. There is just enough room here to snuggle myself down into a comfortable ball for sleep. I will slumber now, Love, and dance with you in dream.

May the morrow find me changed, or not at all,

Violet

*Maybe more like Pokey, I suppose, at least in terms of energy.