There’s something I really love about places that have been
abandoned and are being gradually broken apart by time. Things that were once
used gathering dust, crumbling and rusting… paint peeling and walls eroding.
Places that might have once buzzed with conversation and people coming and
going now silent and empty bar the nature that gradually encroaches and takes
over. It gives a sense of something that is lost, that can never be returned
to, a sense of impermanence. Probably the people who lived in and used these
places never imagined they would be ruins like this, probably we in our own
houses and the other places we use do not imagine they will be ruins too, but
it is likely one day that this will be the case. One day the room I am writing
this in will be gathering dust, the building around me crumbling… even if it is
occupied and well-kept by tenant after tenant eventually none of this will
exist, the earth is after all at some point going to be engulfed by the sun (I
doubt being able to survive that featured on the requirements for this building…).
Perhaps I like the way these places are in the transition between existence and
non-existence, that one day people will not know that they were there, that
gradually they are fading out of reality and it feels like you are one of the
last people to see it, that it is almost a privilege or a secret. We see
something as it is in the present but we imagine how it was in the past, or
people might actually be around to tell us, and in our minds we time travel,
and speculate and bring the past to life.
I think that is enough on this topic, it reminds me of the
poem Ozymandius, which I am pretty fond of mainly because of the message (at
least that I get) that no matter how great or how powerful you may be you too are
impermanent, and you will be forgotten
no matter how much you try to immortalise yourself.
To quote (by Shelley).
“I met a traveller from an
antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away”
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away”
I used to read a lot of poetry, now not so much… I should
start again.
