HOUSE STORY
A short story
A man walks through an empty room. As he passes the tall windows long shadows are cast. He stops to look out. After moving on the shadows remain. If you were to see this room it would become apparent that the space is empty of furniture and objects, but not immediately, where once there were chairs, lamps, books these remain in the form of shadows cast by those objects - fixed shadows, left as memories of what has been, stains of a past life. It is a room with a history, a memory of itself.
In this house people and things have died. That is not unusual, everywhere, everyday, people go to sleep and don t wake up, and this is an old house. Throughout it are the ghosts of what was, remains of a past neither exceptional nor dramatic but nonetheless strange, forms so familiar as not to be noticed or obscure enough to be overlooked. It is a history formed with little direct human interaction and a selection process dominated more by time and environment.
Across the corridor is a small room taken up almost entirely by a large chest of drawers. From floor to ceiling drawers of varying widths but all equally shallow make up this block. Each compartment contains one item, flat or slightly raised forms made of wool or felt. Reminiscent of garments or strange toys, these gray and black objects lie mute.
Throughout the house a number of mirrors still remain: in the bathroom, in the hall, on dressers, nothing unusual about that. Some over time have become etched, etched with words spoken continually to the mirrors over many years. Others, when glanced at sideways, throw back unexpected reflections.
This house is as selective in its choices as it is varied in its presentation, its documents. It does occasionally allow in what is outside of itself, images and forms from worlds other than its own, which have entered through broken tiles and windowpanes. Not only the stains and sounds left by the wind and rain, there is also a sense of the seasons and times of day, the sun and the moon.
LEO 1995 (Amended 1998)
House story was initially written as an introduction to the Shadow works.