Room and Narrative

There he was staring at me with his watery eyes. His clothes were tattered, his face unshaved. His left hand was holding a shiny pewter jar, his right hand a snow-white Gouda pipe; sitting on his chair, leaning to the right on an oak cask, looking as, if he was not there. And ‘there’ was a strange place – a dark room, maybe a basement, maybe another world, with wooden walls and barely any decoration, except for an earthen jug and a small writing board, both hung on the wall behind him.

This burrow, he was staying in, was more like a retreat from the clean world above him, an escape from the condemnation of his being. An elaborate safe house, just as the one he was entering into, through the shiny pewter jar. But once there, everything was fine, no worries, no cries. A warm and welcoming place, where to forget all he didn’t want to remember, where to deprive himself from everything he didn’t want to know; hidden deep, where no one could reach him, where no one could teach him.

Built for him and by him, it was somehow strange and mysterious like his owner. A level further down reveals more and more spaces; tunnels leading to different sites and rooms especially carved in the earth for his needs.

An underground safe house, made by and for an old drinker – an expanding place, ever changing and ever growing with its inhabitant’s needs and interests.