I feel vibrations in my feet when I stand on the stairs, after I’ve come in from a run on a weekend morning. I like to think it is the past residents of this old building buzzing through the place; I close my eyes and imagine they are leaving impressions of their lives. I trust they are content.
The touch of countless hands on this body remembered. The hum of past lovers reverberates long after the affairs. I am at peace with history.
Shh! Listen. Feel. After a while they are distinguishable from each other. That one was tentative, this one furtive, a precious one was musical (I the crescendoing instrument), this one assertive. Several were soaring arias, passionate, uninhibited. Some playful leafy branches, giggling on a summer breeze, dancing in a young meadow.
Two were overbearing, their after-effects long ago muted with the insulation of time.
The most recent one — a fearful sadness.
This one here? Feel that? Deep longing: oh yes still even now so many years later.
What has become of these previous occupants who have left traces of themselves? Some would have left me creaking and groaning with worry each time the wind blows in from the strait, if I had let them. Most inhabit a still, quiet place in the roots of my being, having left a fortifying beam of heartwood. Still, they resonate.
Photo Credit
“that which endures, that which fades” © Evan Leeson
Thanks Michael! 🙂
@coffeewithjulie – I am the most rational person you’d ever want to meet, but there have been places that seem to have affected me in a most negative way … possible further blog post hmmm.
I have a habit of feeing the “karma” of a house, too. Like its past residents have left a positive resonance or a negative one … and if it’s negative, I don’t want to live there. I’ve never lived in a newly built home before and I sometimes wonder what that would be like. My home is one of the originals in a village. It’s more than 125 years old now and I feel like the people who lived here before led a good, satisfied life. The place has good karma!
very nice…tight, evocative, positive.