Tuesday, May 28

the old home

I walked through the back estate today, the same route and same stretch of roads that I have taken for 20 odd years now. The trees didn't seem particularly taller, the sky was still as clear. The roads, still as smooth.

But at the junction where there used to be a quiet block of houses, was blue stripped canvas wrapping, desperately trying to cover up the obscenity behind it. I still remember how they looked like. Even with my eyes open, I still see them there, those brown and yellow nondescript standard houses, with their patterned tiling that a strange malfunction in the early 90s cultivated an aesthetic interest in. The black aluminum window grills fitted in the rounded windows that were short and pudgy.

That was gone now. Behind the canvas was a hollowed out shell. A heavy excavator weighed down on the rubbles, its scoop reaching into the abscess of the violated house. The bare walls and crumbling edges. The empty window frames, forced open for all to see.

It used to be a confident monument. A structure containing life and self-sustained in its awareness of its purpose. An architecture proud of its designs and its significance. Now it was stripped of everything. Every last bit of meaning peeled from its wall. It looks confused, lost, utterly and absolutely lost. Emptied of its meaning, the house could not remember why it fought so hard to stay upright. 

No comments:

Post a Comment