5. commissions
5_0262022
of places lost & imagined
id-dar ta’ mary vella & the stories interwoven within it
commission for luke dimech
“When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted.”
- Mantel, 2003
“
Every so often, if we’re lucky, we are struck with what Virginia Woolf called ‘moments of being’. I say ‘we are struck with’ as opposed to ‘we come across’ because that’s what it feels like, or rather, that’s what it has felt like to me. Not quite a slap in the face, nor some divine revelation. You are suddenly faced with a reality that seems almost new, though in the light of that newness everything seems realer and clearer than ever. Who you are. Where you are. Who you are with.
This house, this space that was occupied by my family for decades struck similarly every time I stepped into it. This house was, IS, central to my existence. I feel that everything I am has only been made real through this house. Every single person that has occupied it - the people born, the people that passed on, the people cared for, the meals cooked and eaten around the tables, the oranges picked peeled and savoured, the jokes told and laughs had. The chairs so worn in by the weighty bodies that claimed them they’re dented. Their seats now leather craters made by great buttocks… great-grandparent buttocks. This house, which I’ve always known as Aunty Mary’s house, is a moment of being in itself, this house makes us all real. This is where my grandmother grew up, this is where my father spent a fair deal of his childhood. This is from where we’ve inherited our sense of humours, our love of food, our appreciation for gathering around a table and being together as a family.
But any moment is fleeting, every moment has an end. And unfortunately this one is nearing its end, at least in the physical realm. This moment of my family’s life shall live on in our memories and in our blood. It is part of our inheritance for many more decades to come. Ths is a testament to what the house was and what it meant to us, but also to the lives that filled it and the purpose it served.
‘Id-dar ta’ Aunty Mary’ is still standing, though not for much longer. I will forever be grateful to have been one of the many to haunt its rooms, even if for a brief moment of being.
But any moment is fleeting, every moment has an end. And unfortunately this one is nearing its end, at least in the physical realm. This moment of my family’s life shall live on in our memories and in our blood. It is part of our inheritance for many more decades to come. Ths is a testament to what the house was and what it meant to us, but also to the lives that filled it and the purpose it served.
‘Id-dar ta’ Aunty Mary’ is still standing, though not for much longer. I will forever be grateful to have been one of the many to haunt its rooms, even if for a brief moment of being.
”
- words by luke dimech
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mary’s spot when peeling & savouring oranges after picking them fresh from the garden
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uncle victor’s spot & grandmother’s spot
“my dad tells stories of playing at this water pump as a child”
fresh from the garden
layers of a house
locking up
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