Many Rooms

by Judith Findlay

The hut was a find. We stood still and considered it silently, tense with that hazy detached but completely connected alertness possessed by animals and children. It was an ordinary wood-slatted hut ripened with age, weather and moss and clad with a red corrugated iron roof. Perhaps if the hut had been somewhere else – in a garden, in the corner of a field or on a roadside say – we wouldn’t have given it much thought. Though having said this aren’t all huts special? But here it was in the middle of the forest so surrounded by trees that sunlight had to be content with warming one or two little patches of timber or metal at a time. Then the breeze would ruffle overhead leaves and the sunspots would be snuffed out just in time it seemed before the whole lot burst into flames. Nooks and crannies remained long-term-damp due to never being touched by the sun at all. Still, the hut looked sturdy enough and it felt good to be standing here wondering about a hut in the middle of a day-dreamy earthy forest. We had explored for what felt like ages and had lost all sense of time. Time in fact stood still. It was warm and peaceful and the sunlight played on the forest floor and climbed the silvery barks of the ancient gnarled, cracked and lichen-covered mile-high trees. We sniffed, like dogs, the soft, sometimes pungent singular smells of plants and vegetation caught in the occasional whiff of wind. The soft brackeny ground of ferns and decomposing leaves quietened sound even as it highlighted particular noises: the cracks of twigs as we now slowly made our way around the hut and our breathing like heartbeats which hung heavy, claustrophobic and close in our ears even though it seemed to come from somewhere else. It was odd that really the car park and picnic area were only a few metres away. But that’s the thing isn’t it about this state of being attentive, of being present – you’re here and now but you might as well be on the moon.

The hut had a chimney on top though it looked small and unreal, a doorway with the door ajar and a window with four grubby pains of glass. We stood on the tips of our toes straining to peer in but not being able to see we pushed the old door open and entered. The floor was patchy – a mixture of bare hard earth and crumbly floorboards. On the opposite wall flanked by two faded deck chairs was a fireplace, not a real fireplace but a crayoned one with orange-red-yellow flames and brown logs with the grain picked out carefully in felt-tip pen. Blue and white painted wood to look like tiles created the hearth and surround. It made sense to a degree of the chimney on top. Gradually our eyes became accustomed to the warm shadow and the cracks and slits of light caressing the walls and floor and we were able to see the most curious thing of all - that the walls were hung with pictures and tacked with writings and notations. All the pictures you’ve ever seen and imagined, all the poems, stories, verses, facts and ideas you’ve ever read, been told and remembered, any bar of music you’ve ever heard played, any hint of a remembered scent, any scene you’ve ever seen in a movie or a dream, anything… A small oil painting of a hut set back amongst trees in a forest hung at eye-level opposite the window. On a shelf and on a small Formica-top oval table a collection of various objects were carefully arranged: a ring with three green stones, a string of wooden beads, a shark’s tooth, a large pine cone, three shells, a few sticks of bleached driftwood, a bell, a feather with a softly curling black tip, two pebbles, a pressed snowdrop and a crocus, a small, metal car, a half-used candle in a jam jar, a pile of rose petals, a Dutch fire tile depicting two children (a boy and an older girl), a little ball of blu-tac, a pocket telescope, a pottery mug three-quarter-covered in bright turquoise glaze and seven multi-coloured glass marbles. Nothing was cluttered. Rather all things had their rightful space even as the relatedness of one to another was explored, suggested, shown and created. We experimented with looking at things from different points of view and watched as the changing light altered how they looked.

It occurred to us that the hut must belong to somebody and that perhaps then we shouldn’t be there. But of course our pinpricks of anxiety were short-lived for we were fascinated and besides although the hut appeared owned and cared for it felt available and communal like a secluded garden meant to be shared, a secret created to be passed on. The hut we realised was set before us as an open door and so was an invitation: an offer of hospitality not of food and drink, though we shouldn’t have been surprised if we’d found a plate of biscuits and cups of juice, but of sights, things to gaze at, touch, smell and hold, reflect upon, talk about, imagine and wonder at. It was a place that, nurtured, encouraged, remembered, listened, asked and beckoned: come and see (where I live).

Since that day in the forest I’ve travelled the world and seen and loved so many pictures, so many beautiful things. They have passed through my hands, been placed in different arrangements, locations and collections and some of them stay with me still: The Bricoleur’s Daughter, Sun in an Empty Room, The Artist in His Museum, The Astronomer, Things to Come, The Architect’s Dream, The Sacred Grove, Conversation, Certain Mornings, A Man in a Room and a few others. I know now though perhaps I knew it then and it is only now that I am able to put it into words that our joy was in the connections of everything to everything else and in the creation of proper spaces in which to see each picture and object. Its an arresting but life giving thought isn’t it that even as our world is rocked by pain and fear one can find importance and meaning in the exact placing of two pebbles and in the images and titles of a few pictures. Does the placing of two stones and a few pictures stop destruction, suffering and violence? Even as I answer ‘no’ I know that there are ‘placings’ of stones, pictures, words, buildings and music that have stopped a person in amazement and wonder, that have enlarged their understanding of what it is to be a person, that have connected them to others and others to them and that have awakened them to the wonder and worth of human life. I’ve heard that wonder and compassion go together. When, so long ago, we stumbled on our hut we encountered the secret of seeing (a burning bush, a pearl of great price). This is a story that whispers as much as listens to something ineffable about me and about you that does not amount to one painting, piece of music, poem or tale but rather moves through each one to something beyond and yet something so close. When we understand it’s like a shock of recognition and a sense of homecoming. What you see, what you hear, what you say, what you do, what you make is the means not the end. Be open: there are many rooms to follow, many rooms to come.

© Judith Findlay 2005