Sullenly & Silently Over The Fragments Of The House
Friday, October 17, 2014
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-red-moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely- discernible fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened - there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind - the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight - there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters - and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."
Edgar Allan Poe - September 1839
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| Abies koreana and house in wait for the excavator |
In a few days we will
wake up (if we are asleep at 8 am) to the noise of a
house in death throws. An excavator will run over a house around the block from
my house. Everything inside will be crushed and become landfill. To me that horrible
crunching racket is no different from the one my mother made in her death bed
in our home in Arboledas, Estado de México in 1973. She breathed in. She was silent. It is one of those
events that Rosemary and I have bonded with. She was there.
These days I keep
dipping into Jorge Luís Borges – La Obra Poética 1923/1977. There are poems
about my Buenos Aires
where Borges mentions long zaguanes (narrow courtyards) potted plants, metal
gates as entry to a garden, the noise of the Pampero wind, in a home that was
his home as a young boy. He returns and writes on the time it takes for the
objects in the house and the trees in the garden to recognize him.
Simplicity
Simplicity
It opens, the gate to the garden
with the docility of a page
that frequent devotion questions
and inside, my gaze
has no need to fix on objects
that already exist, exact, in memory.
I know the customs and souls
and that dialect of allusions
that every human gathering goes weaving.
I’ve no need to speak
nor claim false privilege;
they know me well who surround me here,
know well my afflictions and weakness.
This is to reach the highest thing,
that Heaven perhaps will grant us:
not admiration or victory
but simply to be accepted
as part of an undeniable Reality,
like stones and trees.
Jorge Luís Borges
These days those poems
take me back to my own roots. I can smell my mother’s wisteria and hear the
noise of the portón (the metal door to our house at the end of our long garden)
when my father returned from a day at the Buenos Aires Herald. I can imagine the rattles of the horse-driven carriages of the
milkman, the iceman, the funeral carriages, on the cobblestones of Melían.
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| My mother & her wisteria |
Llaneza
A Haydée
Lange
Se abre la
verja del jardín
con la
docilidad de la página
que una
frecuente devoción interroga
y adentro
las miradas
no precisan
fijarse en los objetos
que ya
están cabalmente en la memoria.
Conozco las
costumbres y las almas
y ese
dialecto de alusiones
que toda
agrupación humana va urdiendo.
No necesito
hablar
ni mentir
privilegios;
bien me
conocen quienes aquí me rodean,
bien saben
mis congojas y mi flaqueza.
Eso es
alcanzar lo más alto,
lo que tal
vez nos dará el Cielo:
no
admiraciones ni victorias
sino
sencillamente ser admitidos
como parte
de una Realidad innegable,
como las
piedras y los árboles.
Jorge Luis Borges
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923)
I remember the night when my mother with
candle in one hand and scissors in the other went hunting for slugs. She was
too close to one of our two palm trees and it caught fire, The flames shot up to
the top. The bomberos arrived and put out the fire. The palm tree survived.
This was in 1950.
 |
| Melián 2770, Ruben Derlis, Rosemary, Rebecca & paramour - Buenos Aires 2004 |
In 2004 I returned with Rosemary, Rebecca,
Rubén Derlis and his paramour to
Melián 2770. The house was still there but the owner when he opened the door
did not let me in. The palm trees were gone and there was a garage on the left
side of the property. The portón was the same one that I had helped my father
paint in 1949. It had the addition of a brass door knob.
It is not remarkable,
in the case of Buenos Aires
that a house that was built in the 1920s would still be around 84 years later.
Like Borges I could imagine my youth and playing with my friend out in the
street and in the garden. Most of my barrio was almost the same but the corner
grocery store was gone. The boliche (store) on the other corner was also gone. It was
there where my father’s friend Julio Cortázar (when he visited) would send me
to buy him a pack of Arizonas.
Rosemary and I
purchased our first house in Arboledas, Estado de México in 1972 with help from
my mother. It was a brand new house in a brand new development in the outskirts
of Mexico City.
I was most proud of it.
I invited my friend
Raúl Guerrero Montemayor, who worked for a posh real estate company, for dinner
one day. He told me, “Your house is not a detached house.” It was then that in
my ignorant simplicity i first noted that fact.
In 1975 we moved to Vancouver and rented a town house in Burnaby. We were on a corner so it was attached only on one side. We were given the chance to purchase it. We did. Rosemary wanted a house with a garden. She wanted a house that was not attached. In 1986 we moved to our present location on a corner lot in Kerrisdale. It has a garden. We live on a street, Athlone that is only two blocks long. It has 40 houses. In 1986 all of them were either Georgian or Mock Tudors with laurel hedges or none at all. Some like ours had a white picket fence (in our house it’s on the long side as the front is a laurel hedge).
In 1975 we moved to Vancouver and rented a town house in Burnaby. We were on a corner so it was attached only on one side. We were given the chance to purchase it. We did. Rosemary wanted a house with a garden. She wanted a house that was not attached. In 1986 we moved to our present location on a corner lot in Kerrisdale. It has a garden. We live on a street, Athlone that is only two blocks long. It has 40 houses. In 1986 all of them were either Georgian or Mock Tudors with laurel hedges or none at all. Some like ours had a white picket fence (in our house it’s on the long side as the front is a laurel hedge).
By the beginning of
the 90s there was an uncertainty on the final political outcome of Hong Kong
when the British handed it back to mainland China.
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| Ned Pratt on Athlone Street - Our house on left corner and Mrs. Allm's |
By 1992 houses on our
area slowly were being demolished and replaced by what the populace and the
media called monster homes. Attempts were made by the city to regulate the look
of these houses. These attempts all failed.
Around this time, in
1993, I invited noted Vancouver
architect Ned Pratt for a walk in my neighbourhood. I suggested he write a
story for the Georgia Straight on possible remedies that he might suggest. I
took this picture of Pratt by a lot on Athlone. On the left is a new house that
replaced a Mock Tudor. On the extreme left is our house. Pratt envisioned
putting restrictions on the airspace over houses and developing a style that
adapted the American Cape Cod cottage. That of course never happened. An
article, a fine one by Kerry Mc.Phedran became a cover for the Georgia
Straight. Ned Pratt told me, “I am non compos mentis, so I will suggest working
on this project with two young architects Marko Simcit and James Boldt.
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| Georgia Straight, October 1 1993 |
As I write this,
Athlone now has only 8 of those 40 houses left. I am inundated daily by phone
calls and knocks on the door by people in the business of buying houses, sight
unseen, simply by the location. As you might imagine a corner lot is special.
Even though we
(especially my money savvy wife) have always felt that a house is a home and
not an investment, time has made it obvious that our home was an intelligent
investment.
Back in 1973 we used
to make fun of the nouveau riche in Mexico who built large houses near
our development that was called Tecamachalco. The people who lived in these
houses had their lampshades covered in cellophane and their Formica tables
protected with plate glass. They drove brand new cars with clear plastic covers
that protected the upholstery and had the quaint habit of placing crochet
doilies on their car seat backs.
But when we came to Canada we
wanted a new house. We could not afford one so we settled on the one on Springer Avenue.
The first thing I did (really stupid) upon arriving was to buy a brand new Fiat
X-19. I wanted something shiny that was not a Volkswagen Beetle. I remember
fondly the day Rosemary came home with a brand new Audi.
By 1987 the shine on
shiny things was off and I was making trips to Maple Ridge and Cloverdale to
buy antique furniture. In that sort of wisdom that comes with age I was
beginning to appreciate what was not new.
My neighbourhood has
four kinds of houses. The first are the few that remain that may have been
built like mine in the mid 30s. The second are that first generation homes
built by developers (dishonest in my opinion and who used shoddy materials) for
the immigrating Hong Kong families. They were
ugly then they are uglier now. When they go on the market they are immediately
torn down.
The third generation
was an improvement over that first wave of houses for immigrants. In these, to
my symmetrical delight, Scottish or English masons built stone walls and fences
for the Chinese owners. The table was suddenly turned. These houses have heated
floors and are generally made of good materials.
The fourth generation of
houses are all straight lines and much in vogue now is wood siding that is a
mid/orange/brown and I wonder how they will look years from now. They have lots
of concrete and have elaborate concrete stairs that go to large basements. One a
block from our house has an elevator.
A gentleman who lives
nearby is a successful real estate man with four adult sons, two dogs, 8 cars,
one trailer and one motorcycle. Obviously the four-car garage that is the width
of the house can not accommodate all of those cars. In fact our street has many
autos parked on the street as the families that live on Athlone have many
children with their own cars.
Building regulations
stipulate that if a house to be demolished is going to have a garage for three
cars any big tree on that end of the property can go. These trees are going
fast. One advantage for us is that we are getting a bit more light and sun into
our shady garden.
Twelve years ago a
family, two children and one dog, from Toronto
(a Saturday Evening Post Magazine kind of family) moved to Vancouver. The father had a very good job for
a local communications company. He was paid to come and funds were made
available for him to buy a house across the lane from us. It’s one of those
houses that was perhaps built around 1945. The family did not have a Dalmatian;
it was a Labrador Retriever that went blind two years ago. The children, one
boy and one girl grew up normally (abnormal these days). They went to nearby
public schools and the boy practiced slapping hockey pucks at a net on our
lane. They had a cottage in a nearby island. The mother liked to garden and
hired a landscaper to get her good plants and trees. She has on her
property several rare trees including one Cornus controversa
‘Variegata’. For those who know they would say that is one “choice” tree.
Things
My walking-stick, small change, key-ring,
Things
My walking-stick, small change, key-ring,
The docile lock and
the belated
Notes my few days left
will grant
No time to read, the
cards, the table,
A book, in its pages,
that pressed
Violet, the leavings
of an afternoon
Doubtless
unforgettable, forgotten,
The reddened mirror
facing to the west
Where burns illusory
dawn. Many things,
Files, sills, atlases,
wine-glasses, nails,
Which serve us, like
unspeaking slaves,
So blind and so
mysteriously secret!
They’ll long outlast
our oblivion;
And never know that we
are gone.
Jorge Luís Borges
About 6 years ago I
gave her one of my three Abies koreana (Korean Fir) which I bought at
the UBC plant sale years before. All three were about 6 ft high by this time.
They have beautiful erect cones that turn purple. The Abies on her property is
now about 18 ft high. If the tree service I have alerted on the possible
availability of these trees does not come in soon to ask the developer for
permission to remove them, they with the house, and good appliances inside (one
bicycle) will become landfill.
Las Cosas
El bastón, las monedas, el llavero,
El bastón, las monedas, el llavero,
La dócil
cerradura, las tardías
Notas que
no leerán los pocos días
Que me
quedan, los naipes y el tablero,
Un libro y
en sus páginas la ajada
Violeta,
monumento de una tarde
Sin duda
inolvidable y ya olvidada,
El rojo
espejo occidental en que arde
Una
ilusoria aurora. ¡Cuántas cosas,
Láminas,
umbrales, atlas, copas, clavos,
Nos sirven
como tácitos esclavos,
Ciegas y
extrañamente sigilosas!
Durarán más
allá de nuestro olvido;
No sabrán
nunca que nos hemos ido.
Jorge Luis
Borges
I am not alone in
wanting to keep photographs of my family, items of clothing, a Spanish fan, my
daughter’s baby dresses and other such things. Objects can carry the remnants
of a person’s soul as the soul once was. Our garden is full of plants, shrubs
and trees that Rosemary and I liberated in the middle of the night from doomed
houses nearby. I can look at a plant, a Spriraea
japonica and think of where it came from. I came from Mrs. Alm’s garden
across the street. In the middle of hot summer afternoons when her siesta was
interrupted by noisy quarreling crows she would come out and clap her hands in
a futile attempt to shoo them away. Some of the trees in our garden, where
there when we arrived. I can imagine the former owner
of our house, Mrs. Young planting them as seedlings with the hope that they
would grow and in some away affect favorably her future in her Athlone home.
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| Our house & laurel hedge on left - right where Mrs. Alm's house used to be |
As I look at the derelict and empty house across the lane, its grass untidy as it never ever was before I can imagine the mother briskly walking with her dog to the nearby elementary school (when her children were young) to pick them up and bring them home for what would have been a nice dinner.
Like my Mexican poet friend, Homero Aridjis
I believe in the presence of ghosts that are there, invisible as they may be, haunting
the derelict house. They clamor silently for us to remember that they were once
there corporeally and not to forget them, at least for a while.
These ghosts can affect the fortunes of
those who might live there in a new house built over what once was a home. I
can understand the idea of immigrants coming to a new country and wanting to
begin anew in a new home with new things. I suppose that belief is simply the
other side of my coin of knowing that indeed houses can die. Even when the
house is demolished, all trees are removed, 9 bathrooms installed (where Mrs. Alm’s
house once stood) I can still imagine, when I look across the boulevard, if not actually hear her hands clapping
on a lazy and hot summer afternoon.
