When Memories Become Unmemorable

The last piece of furniture has been disposed of. It was the worms that got all of them. Some, most maybe, were 150 years of memories written in wood. Eaten through, shedding little showers of sawdust every now and then, when you nudged them. Hours, weeks, months spent to try and stem the inevitable. Whatever for did I do that? Why did I try to save cabinets, wardrobes, trolleys I never cared about. Guilt? No. Trying to make them part of a new history. 

This furniture could have changed into new memories. 

None of them was Antiques Roadshow material. With an aging European population, and its consequence, the oversupply of Boomers’ inheritance, there is just too much of these emotional left-overs on the market. They had once been in France the cherished reminders of the proud move from countryside to The City. Look at this cabinet, we made it, and yet, we do not forget our provincial roots, they said. Oversupply and shrinking homes did them in, the gigantic, squeaking oak wardrobes, dressers and cabinets. Grandfather clocks stand in rows in warehouse cemeteries, their creepy chimes slowly fading from memories. 

Each furniture passing through the door onto their final trip is another shred of history vanishing. 

One of the first ones to go was a low table that had been in their living room in Panda, a local piece, standing in pride of place in all the living room pictures. The wicker work destroyed, ornaments ripped off by children, feet eaten by dogs. The last to go was a glass, brass and mahogany trolley, one you could imagine carting desserts in an upscale restaurant for tiffin. Bird cages had stood on it for 40 years. And another 20 as operating table for various dying plants … The rubber wheels had given up, so it Looney Tunes squeaked on brass rims. I cleaned, de-rusted, polished, cherished, even replaced its tyres with the historically accurate material. Restored. Until Johnny Worm invited himself, a hole at a time. The little trolley was done for. Forever gone, memsahib.

Only the pictures remain. And what I want them to say. Was it even what they meant? Furniture just is. It is enough for memories. Furniture don’t try to say or express something, they are. Were.

These pictures I know since I am born. And I know as well that they had then already been sanitised, disciplined, enshrined in an educational saga; everyone had a defined role to play in it, a script to follow. These pictures were the factual evidence. Some photos became the saga itself. But they all were props to the telling, the explaining, and, most importantly, the moral of the story. The family fable. Their significance had been vetted, agreed, rehearsed upon by the sorority. Badly. Dates always went awry, chronology, occasions mixed up. Storytelling badly rehearsed, or badly edited. 

The narrative had taken over from actual memories. Yet, memories overflowed from trunks and drawers. The things no-one seemed to wish to remember. 

Only the curio cabinet remained an exciting, silent, witness. What was that stone, what was that pipe? There was the round-the-year Exhibit of Our Youth, or the storage facility the house had become. A pandemonium of things that “could be useful one day”, and, as is the fate is such things, never did. And books. Dangerously leaning walls of books. A canyon of self-styled libraries, planks held together by wire, glue and prayers. A House straight out of Wonderland with wonky shelves and books leaning over. Pick me they said.. No, me!  Breathe, and it would collapse and squish you to death. Creepy books without cover, unglued, just kept because. No one truly remembered where any had truly come from. Or when. They were there, everywhere, ready to pounce. 

Jump through the Looking Glass: these books were, are, will be the record of several lifetimes before TV, before Radio. 

This is where you can measure what was lost, the memories that are gone. Orwell and Tennyson, Hemingway and Kipling, were replaced by Guy de Maupassant and Guy Des Cars, Jean Dutourd and Philippe Bouvard. This is where you see how Africa was stowed away. In crates and minds. As the colonial wars ended, no one spoke about back then anyway. You were the baddy. Only silence could answer that. And so, to the sorority, the place, their place, their time, their society, was gone. For ever. The only thing worth remembering then was when they were young. Nothing else. 

All other memories lost any meaning, only curios, really. 

France, Belgium, UK, Netherlands made this history vanish. Easier that way. For everyone. No judgement. Just boo-hiss. Who, me? No, them.

It was true around Europe. Europe, with its deep provincial roots, preferably with signet rings and roofless manor houses. Sorry, castles. Why remember anything else then? Ever adaptable, that had become the quest for acceptance for the entire family. Meet your ancestors, find local roots. Except there was none, nor affinity. So, lets re-enact yesteryear, where and when we never were. 

In between dreamworlds in a house dreaming itself gigantic. A once-world shrank to a micro-dot packed with undecipherable memories. Limbo.

They just came back to die. It took for most of them a long time. Africa was a dream denied, a state more than a fact, and life had shaken them awake. 

Today? An AR experiment. All around me their dreams, their hopes, successes, failures, my past and the present. It all superimposes. They cross the rooms, point and giggle at the horns, busy with their day errands. They laugh in delight, puzzled at the even floor. They still argue the choice of a wallpaper that has been removed. They rush around the kitchen, eager to say how it should be done. Cutlery clatters in the dresser; it needs to be put on the table. The flies buzz angrily, the cats miaow on the window ledge. The balcony curtains billow as the backdoor opens. The furniture squeaks and moans upstairs. Someone walks up the stairs, tired and weary. The clock booms 10 pm. The movie clatters away, the pictures flicker on the wall. 

There are no traces of any of this, except these words. 

What was that? I can’t remember. 

---

FOLLOW Pascal Bollon is on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok