Fire bursts out of an entrance, and an image is seen; the owner runs out. For now, he is safe in this large house. He is alone. One group doesn’t understand the other in a home without an end when the house owner enters a room or place because there might be a door or an open entranceway. If any of these entranceways are joined, they could be a room with specific things, a place, a landscape, a seascape, a desert, or an ocean. Once he entered, there might be no way of getting out; he could become a permanent prisoner of another place. Yet if that same room is seen again, it displays a different play; it could be another standard room with a bed, lamps, a study, a workshop, or a landscape. The threat isn’t the places; it’s the people. Each room is like a nation; sometimes, the owner sees many people marching into the other rooms to invade another. Within this eternal house, the owner tries to stay upstairs to avoid the room-to-room wars. Sometimes, the fights are as violent as any typical battle or like family scuffles. In a room with giant storms along the shore, the adjacent rooms and hallway are drenched with water; fires in a room are dangerous because some of the halls are wood, so the owner has a hard time keeping the fire from burning. On overcast, rainy days, the owner goes into a room to sun himself along a clear blue sky beach, swim, and then returns to the endless house.

Hatred in the rooms is shared; in the world’s living room, where there are several pieces of furniture, the ceiling is as high as the sky, but it’s faint with moving clouds and rafters of intricately carved designs. People gather there to live as in any other society; there are many room partitions, social divisions, and groups, which means avoidance of certain groups and embracement of other peoples. The owner sees this as entertainment as he sits on his chair, watching the many societies interacting.

The owner was born in the house; his parents were born there, reaching back centuries; his ancestors were there forever. Over the years, other family members carved their own lives and endless houses in different rooms, never returning to the original eternal home. Although the owner has no children, others will come to take his place because it’s the house of forever.

Robert J. Matsunaga