Home is a distant sound

When I was a little girl, I was told me that “when you put a shell to your ear you can hear the sound of the sea, the waves and the blowing wind.” In the cold northern breeze, I would wonder about distant places, and about the whole world locked up in that tiny shell. Besides the sea I could hear the living sounds, people’s voices, screams, laughter and children crying because they were unwilling to obey their mothers and running away into the sea. Home is a subtle sound, a voice, a melody from the past, a faded image, the place where all the roads lead. After my parents passed away I inherited their house “The Great Shell”, the secrets keeper. While wandering through the familiar rooms, I came across some old pictures and household object which brought back memories of my childhood; testimonies of past lives, faces, looks, distant presences to which it’s useless to assign identity. Only a name, a place and a date on the back. Nothing more. I tried to tell the story – where the past and the present intertwine – by taking pictures: clippings of my present, while reminiscing about the faraway places where I use to live as a child. Everything is blended together in an embrace called home. All we have to do now is to welcome the noises of the past listening to the shells rustling as time ends – and the sound, just like a light, continues to exist.