Andrei Baciu – Granny’s Place

 

I doubt people eat caviar mainly because they like it, but rather for the mere reason that it’s, well, caviar. And it’s simply not true that between Beauty, Truth and Good there are some deep abysses. On the contrary! Whatever, anyway, I don’t know, sometimes you feel like keeping all the words only to yourself, for fear the indiscretion you convey to them as humanly as powerlessly should break in upon the silence that has gently fallen all around. And yet, it’s true, yes, places that God left on this Earth hoping that, in this all-denying era, we’ll get to meet ourselves, do exist.

One of these spots is the one that, for as long as I can remember, I’ve called ‘Granny’s Place’. Although one might think otherwise, it is where not my grandmother, but my great-grandmother lived. It was Her that I called this way, ‘Granny’. It’s an old country house built precisely in 1900 AD, made up of two rooms, a small hall and a veranda. In front of it, a courtyard with grass perfectly suited for you to lie on and look at the skies, the clouds or the stars – your choice. Eventually, you can even watch all these, thing that I myself sometimes really succeed in doing. Well, again, only in case you want to, definitely. To the right after entering the gate you come across with a small two-windowed kitchen, on whose blue wooden door the paint has started to shrivel.

But the real festivities begin in the few chambers which Maia (read: ‘Mamaia’, the Romanian for ‘Grandma’) has been keeping intact since her mother’s death, that is more than fifteen years ago. You simply have the sensation that Granny has just gone out for some small chat in the neighborhood and they, the chambers, packed with old stuff, packed with light, continue to breathe at the same time with the play of the shades through the window and with the idle flight of some specks of dust that got lost in the area. This is something – and, let’s make this clear, it’s very plain to me – that concerns them and only them: the cherry syrup glasses stacked up on the sash, the bed in which the window spills pink-redly, all around, its gentle light, the wooden vase with a candle and some basil in it, the clothes in the peg or the two stools that stretch their legs so lazily.

And yet, you know, it is here where I feel the need to retreat from this every so often very sterile agitation of the mundane, from this soulless rattling of the world. Yes, it is completely true, this is one of the places where you are given the chance of becoming, hmmm, wise.

Andrei Baciu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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More images and an article about Granny’s Place on Liternet (in Romanian). Other interesting projects on Andrei Baciu’s website. Andrei lives in Magurele, Prahova county, Romania and he has a Ph.D. in literature. You can view more of his photographs on his blog and follow him on Facebook.