Last Sunday, some friends and I broke into a condemned school building. Who even knows how much asbestos we were inhaling. But hey, you only live once, right? You only develop lung cancer and die once, right?
This place was creepy. Stark and bare and crumbling, with wide strips of pink insulation hanging from the ceiling and broken floor tiles everywhere. The smell was incredible, stale and musty and chemical. And it got me to thinking, about how when our modern buildings, made of lab-produced materials, fall into ruin, they become utter wastelands. All this plastic and fiberglass--how is nature supposed to reabsorb it? I kept comparing what I was seeing to pictures of other ruins, where stone walls are mixed with trees and plants, and the sight of it is so incredibly beautiful. I couldn't imagine this building ever being beautiful, no matter how overgrown. I couldn't imagine it ever BEING overgrown. The only plant I saw was a tiny, scrawny bush, growing out of some unidentified organic matter in the locker room. I felt weighed down by the sheer ugliness, unnaturalness. Humans used to build with whatever we could take out of nature, and in time, nature took it back. Now we are creating all kinds of man-made, nearly indestructible materials, and covering nature over with them. Permanent trash. Before humans became so clever, there really was no trash. Everything had a cycle of formation and breakdown. Dust to dust is how our material world works, and it's a beautiful system. Why are we so very intent on fucking it up?
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1 comment:
Love your thoughts. Sad I missed the excursion.
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