Departure

Last morning. Soon new people will arrive and the house will no longer be ours. The memories in the place, the mental, almost instinctive maps of easy circulation, avoiding the obstacles, the little tricks of convenient use, will go with us and fade for lack of practise. The intimate knowledge of the minute topography of the walls, floors and ceiling, the cracks looked at in moments of despair and locked in the memory, will fade. Not the memories themselves, but our ready access tot hem. And then when the furniture is gone, the house is no longer the same. It is a different thing, transformed, a waiting place.