i was with liam today. the sun was sinking. we were listening to radiohead, and the man who inspired me to follow my camera-shaped heart was sitting there in front of me. the thoughts of the house, burned down out there, sitting in a pile of blackened wood, intrigued me so much that i had to go. i had to do it.
so i left that funny little man to say goodbye to an old friend.
i brought my holga and my digital.
as i crept closer, flying down curving back roads in my beat-up car, i felt that familiar feeling of nervousness in my stomach.
the way i used to get when i first found it.
the feeling one gets when meeting an old lover for the first time in years.
i imagined it the way it had been, but shorter. fallen into a symbolic pile of cinders, blackened lengths of wood crumbled neatly into a beautiful mound. i likened it to a funeral pyre.
a perfect ending.
i rounded that hill and i was searching for it, through the crowd of people stepping off the train, through the road carrying me closer to my love, through the... trees
there were trees here.
is this the right property?
where is the house?
i am in the wrong place.
there is a giant dumpster, thirty feet long.
there is dirt.
there is a caterpillar.
i pull into the drive and i cant even think.
i am crying.
i am sobbing.
the house is not gone. it's like it was never there.
the whole fucking property is flattened. dirt. bulldozer tracks, criss-crossing stupidly over sacred ground.
i knew the trees had been cleared. but i had pictured a better view being created from the road, so she could be seen in all her abandoned glory.
i thought, when i first found her, that she had been raped and forgotten.
that wasn't the half of it.
fuck.
i somehow was able to climb over that gate, holga in hand, digital completely forgotten.
i actually heard a sob echo off those trees in the distance.
i was screaming like a child.
'no no no'
there was nothing left.
the house, my magical destiny, my sanctuary, was a construction site.
why why why?
and how could you?
how could you with your taco bell cup and your styrofoam containers take your popping murder machines and just fucking rid the world of one of the last magicians?
i searched for the tiles i'd expected to find.
i climbed that economy-sized dumpster and saw nothing but unrecognizables
and pipeline.
i found small bit of plaster, that beautiful green chipped paint from the kitchen pantry stuck to one side.
i searched for the well.
i still have no idea what happened to it.
they must've filled it in. with the remnants of my home.
it was as if my best friend, my lover, had been brutally raped and murdered, and for the funeral they left the casket open, and no one had even bothered to sew up the wounds.
it felt weird sobbing with my camera to my eye. i couldnt bring myself to do more than half-assedly raise it and click from the hip for a moment.
once the screaming subsided, i found myself running to the barn.
'you are all that's left'
i took god knows how many photos on that holga, and the final installment of this series was nothing, nothing what i'd expected.
but somehow i should've seen it coming.
it was a sucker-punch.
it found me one day in january, 2006.
(where will you go when you are gone?)
