…and then I walked and walked in the rain that turned half into snow and I was drenched and frozen; and walked upon a park that seemed like the very pasture of Hell where there were couples whispering in the shadows, all in some plot to warm the world tonight, and I went into a public place and saw annunciations drawn and written on the walls. I came out and felt alone and lost in the world with no home to go home to and felt robbed of everything I never had but dreamt of and hoped to have; and mocked by others’ midnight victory and my own eternal failure, un-named by nameless agony and stripped of all my history, I was betrayed again.
…then I was standing against the wet, cold wall of this building in the park and I slid down against the wet wall, wanting to die, squatting there in the dark….
…and I melted down like the gingerbread man that ran and ran and melted as he ran.
…I began to name over and over in my memory every beautiful and loved image I ever had, to name and praise them over and over like a rosary….It was like a procession through the rooms of the house, saying, now this is the hall and there is the bottled ship and the seashell, this is the breezeway…and here is the map in the kitchen…
~Extract from The House of Breath, 1949
Notes to myself:
(indulge me)
an epiphany (or validation) of form!
Goyen’s The House of Breath is a striking, exacting, revelatory narrative that defies traditional narrative form with no sacrifice of cohesive strength.
“More than a story, it is a meditation on the nature of identity, origins, and memory.”
While there are many ways to tell a story, home is our universal starting point and natural end.