Unstellar Cellars

Cellar Door

I try for a clean sweep down in the cellar of my house, but the broom is ancient and its bristles are worn to a sharp slant. So I end up sweeping with the stubby ends. Down in the dark, damp cellar there is much to sweep: dead leaves, live spiders, stone dust, earth, webs, bugs, rusty screws, nails, shatters of clay pots and clumps of potting soil.

I’ve always wanted a real basement in my house, but like a separate bathroom for guests and a mudroom, a clean, dry basement has eluded me. I look longingly at those subterranean family playgrounds with big-screen televisions, modular sofas and pool tables, or workshops with tools and saws and jars of nails, or even studios where the artist sits on a high stool under modern, squiggly lights with all the flotsam of her art meticulously arranged on shelves behind her.

These images are all dreams. Since childhood, life has given me cellars in the true sense of the word: always dark, always damp (often with dirt floors and empty coal bins), stone-walled, spider-flecked, web-spun…the kinds of cellars Freud believed dwell deep in the unconscious…where we are lost, alone, scared out of our wits, keeping company with pale ghosts and little brown mice.