Washing Dishes In The Vast Night

Our house here in Burlington is a continuing revelation to me, a simple wonder slowly unraveling with the passing seasons. The rambling, strange design of this 1910 folly offers unending surprises and tiny, mysterious secrets to pry open. We moved here for the space; Denny wanted a larger kitchen than we had in Hillsborough, and I wanted room for recording in a more atmospheric setting, something imbued with cobwebs and a little dusty age. I had known the area from past visits (good friends attended college nearby), but the house was what drew me in, a towering old relic bound with aging gray siding and burgundy shutters, wrapped with an endless porch and skirted by an expansive, sprawling yard.

There's much to love about our large but modest home. Details leap into focus for me even as I type this post. The tarnished squares of faded white where pictures once hung on the walls, the elegant curve the staircase takes in its final steps descending into the darkness of the foyer, are all frequent reminders of the grace in past generations of residential architecture. Upstairs, the original hardwood floor is burnished and scarred, and downstairs, beautifully-carved designs in the door-frames and moldings remain, geometric shapes in white. The rooms are populated with brightly-reflecting French doors and a series of crumbling brick fireplaces, and in the yard stand three magnificent oaks withering with age.

The house is in a working-class neighborhood in Burlington, and it's admittedly not in anything but livable shape. Affordability was as much a factor as space. But where some would merely scoff at the peeling paint of the back stairs or the cracking, splintered porch-boards out front, or would roll their alarmed eyes at the corroded bathtub or the sloped warping linoleum of the kitchen floor, I find the same tarnished beauty I see in all of Burlington. This decayed manse suits me well, at least for now, until we inevitably flee to the solitude of the woods again someday, having tired of 'city' life downtown. For now, we've made this place our own, a rickety battlement against the rising tide of sprawl around the state. By clinging to our history and tenderly caring for it, we preserve it it alive and whole. 

"Ever since I have been so involved

In loving the feeling of keeping a small house warm and clean,

I'm not always aware that there are stars above stars

Just above that ceiling.

Or that the rain gushing throws the trash into the street,

Or that the wind in dark parking lots, at this moment,

Holds a leaf to the fence.

I sort of remember the world, but my small house is glowing.

A car playing music drives past the window

While I'm washing dishes in the vast night."

                                              -Mount Eerie, "Small House"