Laura Săbău

THE EMBRYO BETWEEN REAL AND ONEIRIC

There was a place, strongly linked to my existence, in which the reality I was living in day by day reflected the cohesion between the real and the imaginary, hallucinatingly exposing my own fears. A place where the ordinary became in fact the seed of a tense state, through the strange mixture of objects, smells and shapes, defining the existence of a hidden breath. I can’t, after all I have lived in that place, stop questioning myself regarding the reality we perceive and the role that the imaginary has in shaping it.

I remember that place, my grandparent’s house, so ramshackle and dark that any wind blow made the walls vibrate in a strange hissing. The mountain home let itself be surrounded in its numerous rooms by strange sensations, given by old objects, all too dusted, by the uncertain sound of the worn wooden floor and the cold air in which a dark vibration hovered. The door of the ground floor summer kitchen, where there was also a sofa, stood always open, leaving the smell of red roses to mingle with that of the food. I could feel yourself hit by a sleepiness sensation, and then you would fell into an abyssal, dreamless sleep.

The dark breath of the house could be felt once you went up the 3 stairs towards the intimate area where you could find a huge bedroom, connected to a kitchen, and after several more steps, 3 bedrooms lined up along a hallway.

The night would set heavily each time, waking up every fear a person holds deep inside them. Including mine.

The path to the bathroom seemed to get lost in the depth of the darkness. Every window in the hall was always covered by a heavy dark green curtain, which blocked any light from outside. In both ends of the hallway, the shadow sank into an abyss which could have been hiding my greatest fear: the Wolf.

Each room of the house had its contribution to my nightmares, becoming so well defined, that I could name each place by the feeling it gave me.

The summer kitchen was the place where we would always gather, laugh and play games. It was intoxicating to see how the time seemed to stop under the soothing sound of crickets in the yard. Through its harmony, everything seemed to predict, the terror of the night.