Observations from a rainy Saturday afternoon

Behind the locked door, a sitting room, cold and musty with tired decor that has passed into silence with its era, an antique writing desk that died with its owner. Another locked door, this time shielding two twin beds side-by-side, closets of unworn clothing, an old table lamp, stacks of boxes, memories of children grown up and gone. A third locked door, in the bowels, old leathern easy chairs cowering behind dusky cobwebs and ancient desks, a prehistoric computer crouching in a far corner, piles of boots, knickknacks from a decade when Communist fears penetrated these walls and darkened the sky, wall-hangings, photographs, albums, a faint odor of gas and ghosts left behind. A fourth locked door, an attic, partitioned into unequal quarters, open rafters and creaky floorboards, two massive oak wardrobes stuffed with mothballs and old-fashioned dresses, comatose suits, things long forgotten.

Half of the house is dormant, pushed away, closed up, a perpetual state of dream, almost dead. But not quite. With a slip of the key, at a turn of the doorknob, the silent beast stirs, caressing the senses with icy drafts, sad, forbidden, lost, pleading for remembrance, or for peace. Someday, upon the passing of the last living remnant in this memory, the torment of these empty rooms will finally slip away.

In many ways, my whole life is ahead of me, assuming of course that I survive long enough to have a whole life. But with every day, things, memories, items of the past find their way behind my own locked door, abstract though it may be. At the end of my day, what will I have locked up, tried to forget? There's something to be said for destroying the past instead of holding on. No keys. I hope I'd have the courage to air out the musty rooms, get rid of their contents, move on, simulaneously acknowledging what was and letting it all go. Only after this can one embrace what is alive, what is real, what is.