Read Rob Lenihan’s piece called, The Memory Milll on his blog, , Luna Park Gazette. It is about memory and his Brooklyn house. The text is from a performance piece written by Lenihan and it is quite moving.

My house is so empty there should be an echo.

Oh, there’s plenty of stuff: furniture, closets bursting with clothes, rows of bookshelves.

It’s a two-family house, with three bedrooms, dining room, porch; it’s huge, a relic from a time when they really knew how to build houses.

The only thing the place doesn’t have is people; no people at all. Except me.

My family bought this house in Brooklyn 1948. My grandparents passed the place on to my mom and dad, and now it belongs to their four children. It’s gone through many hands over the last 60 years, but it hasn’t moved an inch.

My mother died five years ago and my father followed her in January. My sister and brothers all moved out years ago, and the last bunch of tenants took off for parts unknown.

I’m the only one here, the master of the house—until we sell it.

I lived most of my life in this place; even when I was living somewhere else. Whether it was Connecticut or Pennsylvania, I was always close enough to dash home whenever I wanted to.

Now I have full run of the place. Every morning I get up, make breakfast, and get ready for work with only the voice of the radio news to keep me company.

At night I come home, eat supper and make sure all the doors are locked and the lights are turned off.

I feel like a sentry at a distant outpost, or one of those Japanese soldiers found hiding in the jungle long after the war ended.

I’m still on duty, bowing to the emperor’s tattered portrait. For years I complained about not having any privacy. Now I don’t have much else.