Went back to an old house I sketched in 2019 and it's gone now

There was this old bungalow off Cunningham Road, mustard yellow with these deep verandah columns I must have sketched three times. Beautiful proportion, proper classical. Last I heard a builder had bought it but nothing was happening, so I kept assuming I'd get one more chance at it.

Went past today for something else entirely and it's just a pit. Not even a construction site yet, just an excavated hole with a hoarding. I stood there like an idiot for ten minutes.

I have the sketches. That's the thing that keeps me going at it, but also the thing that stings a bit. Because the sketch is lovely and someone else will see it later and think oh, what a charming old house, what a nice moment in time. They won't feel the actual loss. The paper keeps the building but it can't keep the fact that it used to be someone's home, with someone's washing on the line and a dog that barked at me the first time I set up my stool outside the gate.

I don't know where I'm going with this except that drawing things as they vanish is a strange job to have chosen. Some days it feels like the only honest thing I do. Other days it feels like taking photographs at a funeral and calling it art.

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Gloria Mae Jackson·2d

That last line you wrote is the whole truth of it, honey. The sketch is love, and that's a heavy thing to carry when the thing itself is gone. But here's what I've found in my own life: the building's just lumber and brick. The love you put in that drawing, that's what stays. You gave that house something it couldn't keep on its own, and you'll still have it long after they've filled that hole back in.

A mustard yellow bungalow with proper columns, now that sounds like it was something worth drawing three times. Maybe that was the Lord's way of telling you to get it down while you could. You did. That's not nothing.

Dimitra Vasilakis·2d

That's a kind way to look at it, and mostly I agree with you. But the sting isn't wasted either. It's what makes you draw the next one while it's still standing instead of putting it off. I do the same thing with buildings I love, I tell myself I'll get back to them and then one day the hoarding goes up.

My grandfather used to say a thing about old churches, that the stones are the least of it. I thought it was sentimental when I was young. Now I do mosaic for a living and I know exactly what he meant, the material is just the excuse you use to keep the seeing of it alive. You saw that house properly and you wrote it down where nobody can excavate it. That's not a small thing at all.

Ananya IyerOP·2d

That's the thing I keep circling around, isn't it. The guilt of the not-yet-done ones, the buildings I told myself I'd get to and then didn't. There's a whole street in Malleswaram I've been meaning to sketch for months and I keep saying next Sunday, next Sunday. Your grandfather's words hit me a little because I think the seeing is exactly what I'm scared of losing when the house goes. Not the house itself. The way I looked at it.

What do you mosaic, if you don't mind me asking? Tiles, found glass, that sort of thing? I imagine the holding of it is a different patience than a sketch. You can't finish a mosaic in one sitting the way a watercolour lets you if you're lucky with the light.

Ananya IyerOP·2d

This made me tear up a little, no joke. "You gave that house something it couldn't keep on its own", that's exactly it, I just didn't have the words for it. I keep coming back to the sketches and telling myself they're enough, but I think what you're saying is they're not a replacement, they're the actual point. The house was always going to lose this fight. The drawing doesn't.

And I won't lie, mustard yellow with those columns, it was a proper beauty. The sort of house you'd draw even if nobody ever saw the drawing. I'm glad I got it down when I did, Lord or builder's timeline aside.

Thank you for this. Really. Some days you just need somebody to say the kind part out loud.

Gloria Mae Jackson·2d

Oh baby, I know that ache. There was a house over in Titusville, my grandmother's cousin's place, that I stitched into a quilt years and years ago because I loved the shape of it so much. Porch went all the way round, tin roof, the whole thing. That quilt's upstairs in a trunk today and the house itself is a parking lot.

But here's the thing I've come to believe, child. That sketch ain't less true now that the walls are gone. It's the only place that house still stands. Somebody tore down the wood and the paint, but they can't touch what you saw in it, and you caught it three times over. That's a kind of keeping.

The sting is real though. I'll sit with you in that. Nobody likes to be reminded that we lose things. But you gave that bungalow a life it wouldn't have had otherwise, and that counts for something deeper than the building ever did.🙏

Ananya IyerOP·2d

That quilt line got me, honestly. You loved that house enough to stitch its shape into something you'd keep, and the house is a parking lot now but the quilt's still in the trunk. That's not a smaller thing, that's a bigger one.

You're right too. I keep thinking I sketched it to remember it, but maybe I sketched it because some part of me knew it wouldn't stay. Three times, like I was practising saying goodbye before I even knew I needed to.

Is the quilt one you'd ever show somewhere? Not that it needs to be justified by that. Just curious what it looks like, a porch all the way round is such a lovely thing to capture in cloth.