A house where the body was left unattended for several weeks, a house in which maggots were infested and flies were blown, and a house with a pile of trash piled higher than its height. What do you think of when you see a house like this?
These houses, which are likely to be used as subjects for horror movies, give a gloomy and ominous feeling just by listening. The haunted house, where there is only one in the neighborhood, was the main place for the test of courage during school days, and'House where a person who lived here committed suicide' is the main subject of horror movies. For me, these houses were so terrifying and ominous fear.
But the book'Cleaning the House of the Dead' taught me a great lesson. 'Cleaning the House of the Dead' is an autobiographical essay written by a writer who has a job as a special cleaner. Special cleaners are jobs that clean up the house left behind after a person dies. In a house where a person died and his body was removed, the artist works to erase the traces of the person and arrange the person's last.
The artist's ability to describe situations is amazing. As a writer with a poet's background, he vividly depicts the situation of many houses he faces. His excellent portrayal skills naturally reminded me of horror movie haunts. And those images gave me discomfort and fear.
However, as the descriptions of such situations piled up one by one, the hardships of the people who lived there began to become clearer than the fear of the space. Delinquency bills piled up in the mail box, red and yellow labels in front of the front door, food waste scattered around the house, various specialized books stuck in bookshelves, and a diary that wrote down each day. The weight of a person's life felt so close that it was impossible to guess. Each episode was so vividly buried in the suffering of a person who had been covered with such fear and fear.
The many haunted houses and abandoned houses that I have seen so far were all spaces containing this one's story. Many of the spaces consumed by horror movies and tests of courage were actually spaces that contained the other side of this life. 'Scary place','Ominous place', etc. I have been focusing on the stimulating appearance that it gives, and I have not been able to see the essence of this space. My awareness of this was added to my mind and made my mind heavy throughout the reading.
It is said that the artist is often asked questions such as'Do you see ghosts there?' Certainly, many people, like this questioner, will think of words such as'ghost' or'spirit' when they hear the word'the space where the body was.' But why have we ever considered these spaces simply as terrifying spaces? These spaces weren't actually ghosts or spirits that terrified people, but spaces that contained the story of a person who had lived hard. The book'Cleaning the House of the Dead' is a great book that helped me rethink this space for me, who looked at the house of the dead with horror.