Ev Arkeolojisi

 I've been slowly digging a trench in the backyard, turning over hard packed soil. It's been almost two decades since the backyard assumed its present form, and every so often I'll feel a small shiver through the pick axe. Strange things from a previous world turn up, a chunk of the old patio, the bolt face plate from an old door.

Small things, but they reminded me in some quiet way of Elif Batuman's recent lovely essay on the Marmaray excavations in Istanbul. The whole essay is wonderful, but it's her closing observations that I liked most:

Strange questions may pass through your mind as you travel on this escalator. If fifteen houses are built on top of one another, which one is the most important? Whose voices should be heard—those of the living or those of the dead? How can we all fit in this world, and how do we get where we’re going?