For Sale_ This Old House

[Van Canna]

On the promenade by the sea at sundown _ a very short distance from my front door...

Shadows, lights…squeals…noise…momentary silence…then a group of youngsters laughing and joking in a kind of merriment hard to describe but easy to understand.

The pleasant clinking of kitchenware and cutlery from nearby open air restaurants…steps of young men and women out walking by the sea in a fall evening of joy…clatter and chatter…a cool breeze keeping company to leaves and convertible's tires rolling on the asphalt, ever so slowly, conveyors of a seemingly never ending happiness_ a sunset that warms the hearts and caresses the smiling gazes.

A sun that vanishes as the moon makes its grand entry into the magic of the evening. Cars being parked…and parked cars beginning to move… a distant wail of desperation…a tolling of bells…a shout of contentment… gently amplified acoustic music of a jug band filling the air…

And so pass the cars, pass the cats, pass the elegant couples…

And so pass the seasons…so pass the years…slowly the noises of life recede in their own retreats… to make room for their colleagues…the silent shadows of the night…but some stragglers don't want to go home…

Night life has shut down… lights and kiosks have been asleep for a while…a yawn comes to keep me company…

The night is what has shown me the road is still there…
Until tomorrow my son.

[Van Canna]

Night life has shut down… lights and kiosks have been asleep for a while…a yawn comes to keep me company…it is always in those final moments of glorious scintillating evenings fading away into the night that I feel an indescribable melancholy and sense of abandonment as I retrace my steps back to my old house, around the villa fiorita and a glance up to my left checking out the 3th floor balcony of the building where my dear friend John lived.

And then...there she is my lovely old house with the mysterious façade I loved so much.

I remember,as a young child, how excited I was_ the first time ever out the front door alone standing across the street gazing at my old house's façade…admiring the structure and loving it so much happy to know it belonged to me... yet overcome by a sense of being on the brink of a well with a strange future, desolation and sadness being reflected to my eyes.

Such fears as a child to contemplate.

And now I find this house in the night... old and lonely…much in need of the love this old house knew only I could give it through the wheel of time.

And I am now inside and seated on the comfortable old sofa of the radio room…always my favorite sitting place....as from this chosen location I can well observe this beloved great room's ambiance_

My father's library, taking up a whole wall, on the right both sides of the balcony is well furnished by books of every category and author_ I would spend the longest hours reading as many books as I could, while holding a beautiful long knife encrusted in ivory …a gift from a friend of my father while in the military stationed in Benghazi…a knife which sparkled behind the glass of the library.

And now, in the silence and the mystery of the moment…the room is basking in the eerie light of a blue moon ...the entire neighborhood below is aglow ...

I see some people sitting at the oval family conference table in the middle of the room_ several are writing their own life stories, others are reading books under the dim light of the moon right over the room's balcony. I don't know who they are but they seem ancestral like, totally ignoring me.

Across the way I see my friend John step out onto the balcony, look down my way and wave his hand.

But as I am feeling a familiar disembodied presence radiating warmth_ I see some of the people stand up _ seemingly overcome by a strange sadness…and head towards the other rooms of the house…but where are they going? What's there at this moment calling on these people to visit?

I remain in my seat and in my deep reflections…yes, I am back in my old house breathing the peace of this sacred space…yes…my first step has been taken I am here to await a new squall of conflicting emotions.

[Van Canna]

I continue to remain in seated in deep reflections. Thoughts of my childhood beckon…

it is a time suspended of memories, smells and tastes. And of times long gone, of sunny Sundays, of home made pasta, of Christmas nights sneaking a peak at presents, of my mother and father always looking the same, never growing old, with the same faces and the same voice.

My mother always waiting at the window for my return_ and the feeling that all was mine, my trees, my garden, my playroom, my streets where I would go out and play, my street lights shining in the night, my beautiful toys, my make believe resplendent future, my dreams of adulthood and adventures.

And of my ancestral old house and all neighborhood and familiar places surrounding it…not just places but sacred surfaces treaded upon by great grandparents…and the stories I know, the secrets I know of these places…knowing when it would rain, and when the clouds would cede to the sun…and of happiness and sadness…the stories of life intersecting with places…becoming one.

Of my grandmother always there visiting waiting and praying…for her son , my uncle, to escape from Nazi labor camps...
Rosary beads slipping through her fingers worn out from a lifetime of family labors…

The need to learn to listen to these magical internal voices_ to learn to see the depth of those places…and understand that a journey is not only a trip to places but also one within the self.

Inside of us is the real journey, inside us live places and past dreams…and future dreams.

But before an arrival there is a departure that means a voyage . The coming and going, departing again…the thoughts slide with speed along the railroad tracks, and the dreams chase one another between the tracks' crushed stones ballast.

A journey is that segment of time suspended between points of departure and arrival. But as the train speeds to destination, we are prisoners of the mind. And when the train slows and stops at stations along the way, there is an awakening and a release from that lockup…the locomotive's engine winds down its mesmerizing huff…

Then puffs and whistles anew …the swarming of passengers that alight …walk and get aboard… …and it is there in the stations that there are welcoming hugs and goodbyes, and when the smokestack trembles, it signals impending separations, smiles and tears, as a daily mocking metaphor of life…

a reality theater that flashes through the eyes and the minds of travelers as they look outside their window seats and suddenly see their image reflected while the train whistles and picks up speed.

In the whistling and the shuffling madness of locomotive breath…your thoughts release their grip and you find yourself on green wooden seats worn out by time with your heart open to the journey.

And all that bringing to mind the importance of time, the necessity of the voyage, a trip that must take place in the landscape of the heart.

[Van Canna]

In my subconscious mind _ the long dark corridor of my old house, flanking the railroad station, is one of the repositories of my memories…of old and more recent. Something strange…

But memoirs belong to a strange category_ The reliving of the past provokes shifting mind states. The returning to the past, even if driven by subliminal forces, in particular _when we were very young or as children_ generates that strange sense of tenderness and melancholy of a "time gone by never to return"_

But then there are memories that are heartbreaking causing deep regrets and guilt.

In 'the space' we evoke in us even the 'thoughts' of those times and years_ the 'thinking' we did then_ and that we had completely forgotten, or decided unworthy of giving reflection to , or even the thinking we had sought to suppress then or continuously seek to obliterate as our lives move on presently.

Very often a simple 'input' is enough to suddenly trigger a mysterious world of reminiscence opening before our eyes.
And our subconscious_ knowing the really unique primal method the brain has for never forgetting_ is allowing those past moments to continuously live on _in our intimate self.

There, in the sealed drawers of the mind , memoirs remain in custody, care and control….in love and jealousy, to impede in all manners possible that someone or something might contaminate them.

They belong to us, they are our story , our refuge from the sometimes and inevitable darkness of life.

Each single experience lived and linked together with others, remains inscribed in our remembrances in different ways. Each one of us 'locks in' different moments and sensation very unique to the self.

At some point in our lives _the time always comes when we begin to look at our past and ask the inner self what our existence has really been like.

What or who has remained in our minds, even the things and people we, try as we will, are not able to eradicate from consciousness, because a word, a phrase, a sensation, a strange springtime 'air' _ or a smell in the air or in the rain carries us to reminiscence.

Tonight there are thunders and lightnings outside my window.

If we all stopped to reflect and remember of times past, we would certainly notice that life is an alternating of events and situations, at times most welcome, at times unsolicited _frustrating, maddening_ and at other times_ instead _causing much suffering.

And in the circumstances particularly saddening and tragic, we have the habit of saying that what occurred was maybe a malediction, a family curse...night shadows...

[Van Canna]

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