Many years ago we viewed it above the shop called simply , a luxury the apartment opposed, its floors already soft, ceiling convex, falling into the arms of gravity as do we all. Vacant now it’s on the bus route and so I see it too often, first tentative tags given way to bubble and wildstyle climbing the brickwork, a paste-up of Shiva, destroyer of worlds, and the inscription . As radiation accelerates the evolution of the feral dogs of Chernobyl, greed and neglect have hastened the building’s transition into a state beyond purpose.
The land beneath it has its ear, it inhales the amnesia of spores, light filters through its soaped windows like light through the soaped windows of all the deconsecrated churches awaiting resurrection as condos with paradisical walk scores. They are released for a time into a common meadow. But Denise is right: “The past can’t tell it is the past,” and won’t go gently.
When a mysterious and purifying fire prepares for demolition, one more trace of us will vanish with it, one less excuse for sentimental nonsense, in this life one has to be hard. Honestly, it can’t happen fast enough. And the owner will say it’s for the best, he couldn’t give that place away.
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