the Old house

Now that I could see it via Google Earth: flat, insignificant among millions of similar rooftops.

My home.

We left it in a very hurry. 2 minutes max. Without goodbyes. Without looking-back.

Just leave. NOW.

Bang! never to return, to have what they call closure.

The body might have been relocated, but the brain locked and frozen in place and in time.

As if the images stop transmitting. Forever pause, stood still.

In so far, how many square meters my old house was, it was enough shelter for millions of cherish moments. Guitar d’amour….Quel Sera Sera….Ngoc Lan (the streamy stream)….

Every afternoon after school. Music started flowing past supper.

Violin, guitar, hoarse voices, even mandolin. We were loud. We tried to break the confined walls. We wanted to be transported out of the box. Back to a selective past. Tin roof, brick walls and iron gate? Nothing could stop the mind and imagination. Then, it’s time. to water Mom’s flower vases, it’s time to set the table.

Neighbors tolerated us. Where else could we all go? At the end of the serpentine alley was a print shop where workers were bustling like busy bees, stapling and cutting rims and rims of paper. Two tombs were in the way of the alley, like two MGM lying lions, forcing traffic to wind left then immediate right. No wonder it was called serpentine alley, an alley in smooth concrete. which made for a good water slide on rainy days.

We slid and slide through childhood. Our version of snow day. Kids play jump rope, hide and seek.

Then boom. The end of everything. Hurry hurry. Evacuation.

The US is leaving, for good. This time, it’s real. It’s like Paris before Liberation. Only in reverse. Paris of the Orient, before Liberation (depends on whose POV). Families left behind. Momentos unbrought. Memories lingered.

Same rain on rooftop. Without the view of Google Earth.

We have the technological benefits that are the envy of past royalty (Louis XIV with all this art collection wouldn’t come near what I now see from my desktop). I see home. I see home from above. Bird-eye view, satellite imagery. Ant-like we move to find better pasture. Yet, the past is not even past.

It’s still here. Like the lay of the alley. With contour and detour. With connection and links. With dots and data.

I see it now. TIME. The flow and fluidity of history, of technology and disposable values. Love and loss. With each tangible gain, we experience ten intangible losses.

No wonder I feel hollowed out. Unpaid and accrued debt. The Old House. The music sheets, the guitar, the songs and the singing (pre-karaoke).

Echoes of the past. Like a ghost dream. We just exist, for a while. Sharing pain and frustration.

Occasionally, joy. Happiness eluded us quite often. Not during war time. We mourned more than we celebrated. We cried more than we laughed. In pain more than pleasure. In the end, after zomming in, the past condensed into a viewable photo from above, with the help of Google Earth.

It never was a castle, Just our home, where once, I experienced time past, surrounded with loved ones. My incubator, my alley with two huge tombs, there to constantly remind us that time is short.

Louis XIV himself would have been envied. His view from above would be from his castle, now laid hollow like an abandonned construction site of a glorious past. Even the past doesn’t seem to past. At least for me. With a press of a button, I can revisit it. Can post it. Can write about it and share.

You hold on to what is near and dear to you. I mine. Tin roof and all. But when it rains, like, really hard, there is no music in the world could sound more pleasant and endearing. It gave us amateurish musicians a break, from the briskly heat and inequity of war-time living. When it rains, it democratizes. Just like in Les Parapluis du Cherbourg. Just like in Louisana or Philadelphia.

Just like the view from above just now. Every roof looks all the same, and my pain of the past seems so universal. I wish for you what I always for myself: a roof over your head, and love in your heart. That’s why we, despite being nomadic, still linger and refuse to leave the site of our loved ones, albeit buried underground for days.

6 feet under, or 30,000 feet above ground. We traverse forward, experience TIME and hopefully love that lasts. Too bad Google Earth can only show the tin rooftop from above, and not the depth of sentiment my home once afforded me.

We left in a very hurry. But what we carried with us stay with us. I saw my old house for as long as the screen still flickers before “shut off”, but Home stays.