dear internet,

the house next door is being broken down. the first few days they took down the walls but left up the rafters and windows so that they could preserve the raw material. we went to the terrace to look down at the slatted skeleton of the house. ​good wood, my mother said. the windows had no glass and inside were piles of brick. the inner walls, which i'd never seen before, were painted pale yellow, pale purple, pale green. i could see beyond to the taller buildings further down the street—everything in the neighbourhood is two, three storeys high—and the trees surrounding us looked so small. in my head a tree is the height of a house. in my head a house is forever.

on saturday night while i tried to sleep they drove in one of those big machines that demolishes houses. slightly past midnight i heard the sound and thought it was someone drumming. on monday as they used the machine—giant claw arm, loud hum—my house shook, all day, relentless. i said, this feels like an earthquake. (april, feeling my first significant earthquake, i said, it felt like my neighbour was doing construction). i walked around the house jelly-legged; the way you play badminton all day, or ride a roller-coaster, and at night in bed you still feel like you're moving. my head throbbed. i drank grapefruit juice and used a white noise website to cycle through sounds: irish coast. waterfall in rain. wet jungle. laundromat, street view. pebble beach. i told myself through each vibration, this is like turbulence. i used an ice pack on my forehead. i drank two glasses of wine. my parents seemed completely unaffected by it all. 

in the evening it rained suddenly—thunder, lightning, wind—and i went up to the terrace with an umbrella to rescue my father's camera, which he'd taken up with him. (my father can handle a little rain.) next door the house was reduced to stone, but sections of an outer wall still remained. more vibrations tomorrow then. my legs ached from holding tension. the only thing left whole next door is a well. 

all night i continued to feel as if everything was shaking. what a time to test foundations. to break, to build. lately i've gotten voyeuristically, possibly overly curious about a demographic of instagram users who are very, very religious. they post a lot about signs and patterns in their lives. okay, jesus, they write in that uppercase italic font that everyone's using in their instagram stories right now and which i personally find unreadable. i get it. i get the message. everything in this letter is a metaphor.

love,
t