Growing up in Virginia, I used to take many walks into the woods near our house. I had many adventures in that place, just me and nature. It was on one such excursion that I stumbled upon a curious surprise. An old, collapsing cabin. No roads, no neighbors, just this ancient home dropped in the middle of a large wood. It was certainly mysterious, showing no signs of life for many years. But it did have more than first met the eye. Since the day I discovered it, I spent many a day journeying back and finding treasures, the old things that once belonged to its tenants. It was like being let in on a secret, the home life of nameless families, with clues to their lives that were at the same time tangibly concrete and impossibly esoteric.
I have always had an intense fascination with old, broken down things. Whilst in Ohio, I loved driving by barns, houses and factories that had long been out of use, imagining what sorts of things happened in those places, the people that lived there, then reflecting upon the relentlessness of time, the inevitability of decay. And this, I suppose, contributed to why our basement so intrigued me.
As landlord B was showing us around the second day, he took us down to see where we could put a washer and dryer.
OK, not the most glamorous spot, definitely need to clear a space for the appliances. But a few minutes later, B decided he had something else in the basement he wanted to show us. As he led us further back, he explained that his late father was both very "handy" and one who never threw things away. As if to illustrate, he turned on the lights revealing a workbench with dozens of containers and shelves full of, well, stuff.
It was true; nothing the man had used in all the decades of projects and home improvement was thrown away. It had just been stored here! B told us that we were welcome to use anything that we found down there for our domicile-rehabbing needs. We thanked him out of courtesy, not yet understanding what we had just been given.
The impact of this grant did not hit me until later. Our kitchen light needed another screw before the cover could be placed securely. Remembering the open invitation we had received, I searched the workshop for something resembling the screw I already had. Very soon, my search was waylaid by a hundred detours: parts of door locks that were stripped of their skin, skeleton keys with spare handles, a drill bit without a drill, a model of McDonald's coffee cup that had long been rebranded, faucets, gears, and screws of every shape and size. I was overwhelmed as the artifacts surfaced from a life of someone I would never meet. I was filled with wonder and curiosity about who this man was and how each of the hundreds of pieces of hardware translated into hours of his life. Was that long screw with the tight threads for some new ceiling fan to keep his family cool, one unbearable summer? Was this bolt just too big for what he needed and so was set aside for when it would be "needed"? Was it only when he moved away that the old doors and locks yielded their place to newer models, rendering these skeleton keys forever useless?
The other sensation I had as I looked through all this was that the whole room felt like those picture books I used to look at that packed as many things onto a page as possible and called upon you to locate the items required for the catapult to spring you into the castle, or some such thing.
Like this. 
It was the hand to a clock.
Interesting. Continuing on my search, I ran into another one. Then I realized that I had passed over a gear somewhere along the way that was quite small and finely tuned.
This must have been part of the clock mechanism. It was exciting to begin to see a logic amongst all the chaos.
And besides all these things--the thrill of discovering another's life, the curiosity it raised, the scavenger hunts--another curiosity presented itself. It dawned on me that I was only seeing part of the basement. There was more that had to be there under this large house.
Next to the work bench!
A door not unlike the ones in our apartment, only with windows and a curtain behind, obscuring it's contents. No handle, but it must be locked somehow as it won't budge. I try the keys on the bench and find none of them to work. Looking around the corner near where the washer and dryer are, I realize there is another door, this locked with a padlock. Opposite this is a door that is closed and would appear almost to be painted shut. It is just one more mysterious and exhilarating part of our adventure. And perhaps down the road, we will discover the answers to those questions as well. I haven't yet found enough parts to make a whole clock, and I don't know where these doors lead. And now I would love to hear B tell stories of his dad, just to know better to whom these things belonged. It is the old things that remind me that life is complex, life is busy, life is meaningful and beautiful. But it is also to remind me that life is frail, and very short. As you look at the pictures I hope you get a glimpse with me of the oddness and quirkiness, the brevity and gravity, the complexity and simplicity of life.
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