The house was a sprawling thing...
Dreamed on 2009.09.11
The house was a sprawling thing, hugging the rocks and cliffs of the hill in a way that, while perhaps initially fearful, had given way to a calm and organic trust. While conventional wisdom would count three separate floors for the house, the new owners knew that conventional wisdom did not apply here. Some rooms were higher, lower, above, or below other, but they were not separate floors, even though the porch out back from the kitchen did have stairs that went to the lower bedroom and a ladder up to the study.
It was a quiet and waiting place, a place where the imposition of ticking clocks would be a sacrilege on the timelessness that let you swim in each intaken breath, and not worry about anything that someone else thought needed to be done.
While the rest of his family was moving in, a young boy sprinted down a flight of stairs, through a hall, out a door, over a bit of porch and onto a rock, a huge section of bedroom exposed like a bald giant's skull, or a bit of a tooth worn down over the ages, a great molar, smooth and sloping down to the sea of wiry grass and fern.
Before him, a new world stretched out as a deep valley, surrounded by peaks equal to the one bearing their new abode. He could see neighboring houses in the distance also, smoke rising from chimneys, firelight flickering against the windows.
Huge trees – prehistoric trees, compared to what he'd been used to in town – grew freely and prolifically, avoiding the tendency to tower in uniqueness and independence as they did in town. What worlds could be found down there? Streams, caves, trees to climb and build in! Old world wonders that here were still part of today, an effect of the timelessness of the place.
At one of the nearer houses, perhaps a mile away across a shallow valley, he thought he could see a man walking out from the house, with dogs – two or three of them – eager at his heel. What lives there must be to lead out here, the boy thought!
And behind him his family continued to move through and bring life to the veins of the wood and stone creature that would be his new home, for the next ten years, at least, until he was ready to return to the city. A thought he hardly cared for, especially with a view like this prospective life lying open before him.
The house was a sprawling thing, hugging the rocks and cliffs of the hill in a way that, while perhaps initially fearful, had given way to a calm and organic trust. While conventional wisdom would count three separate floors for the house, the new owners knew that conventional wisdom did not apply here. Some rooms were higher, lower, above, or below other, but they were not separate floors, even though the porch out back from the kitchen did have stairs that went to the lower bedroom and a ladder up to the study.
It was a quiet and waiting place, a place where the imposition of ticking clocks would be a sacrilege on the timelessness that let you swim in each intaken breath, and not worry about anything that someone else thought needed to be done.
While the rest of his family was moving in, a young boy sprinted down a flight of stairs, through a hall, out a door, over a bit of porch and onto a rock, a huge section of bedroom exposed like a bald giant's skull, or a bit of a tooth worn down over the ages, a great molar, smooth and sloping down to the sea of wiry grass and fern.
Before him, a new world stretched out as a deep valley, surrounded by peaks equal to the one bearing their new abode. He could see neighboring houses in the distance also, smoke rising from chimneys, firelight flickering against the windows.
Huge trees – prehistoric trees, compared to what he'd been used to in town – grew freely and prolifically, avoiding the tendency to tower in uniqueness and independence as they did in town. What worlds could be found down there? Streams, caves, trees to climb and build in! Old world wonders that here were still part of today, an effect of the timelessness of the place.
At one of the nearer houses, perhaps a mile away across a shallow valley, he thought he could see a man walking out from the house, with dogs – two or three of them – eager at his heel. What lives there must be to lead out here, the boy thought!
And behind him his family continued to move through and bring life to the veins of the wood and stone creature that would be his new home, for the next ten years, at least, until he was ready to return to the city. A thought he hardly cared for, especially with a view like this prospective life lying open before him.
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