Mysterious buildings. You see them all
the time. Nowhere places in places near places between other places.
Intermediary architecture, filling the gaps. Perceptually vague. Both
ugly and beautiful. Wind moves around them. Sun beats upon them.
Traffic sighs beyond them. You don't know what's in them or who built
them. You don't know what they are for. Maybe no one does. You rarely
remember them and may have just dreamt them. Sometimes there are
words writ large upon them. Words without context. Words like
'Paradigm', 'Felt', 'Sunrise', 'Best', or maybe a name like 'James
Reid' or 'Tom Evans'. Imagine if you saw one with your name on it.
Would you go inside? What would be in there? A load of filling
cabinets containing the details of your life. A distant descendant
asleep behind a reception desk. A crackling Tannoy playing
soundtracks from obscure and forgotten moments in your past.
Corridors that look like the streets you were raised on, played on,
bought property on, started a family on. An endless maze of such. If
you went inside a mysterious building with your name on it would you
find your way out again? You might be frantically running around
trying to get out and pick up where you left off. Maybe there'd be an
emergency exit or maybe these are buildings you enter when you are
dead. Once you go inside you stay inside, forever.
****
Maybe all buildings are mysterious.
Even buildings you are familiar with can become mysterious if seen at
an unfamiliar time of day, when caught off guard. A closed down
supermarket. An off season holiday home. When I was a child I broke
into my school at night. Empty classrooms and halls. Silence. Could
this place really be my bustling school? This is what it was like
when we weren't around. This is what it really was. Unoccupied,
inert, indifferent. Not lonely, just alone. Staring into space.
Bereft of the human life that provides meaning and purpose. The world
without people is just a stone. Buildings without people are just so
much concrete. People without people are the same, revealing normally
unseen, emptyish aspects. Once, as a drunken teen staggering home in
the early hours, I passed the father of a friend in an empty car
park. He was sitting on the bonnet of his car. He was normally an
ebullient sort, the life and soul, jocular and genial, but not at
this time. He didn't notice me as I walked by. He was zoned out,
expressionless. He was rolling a cigarette. I could have sworn I
heard him muttering the word 'cuntish'. I wonder if that would've been the
word writ large upon him if he was an empty building. All I know is
that he passed away soon after and I felt duty bound to scratch that
word into his tombstone in an effort to commemorate a facet of the
man that was not widely known. To help people appreciate that there
was more to him than just a 'loving husband and father'. His family
didn't understand. They were hurt. They assumed my intention was
disrespect. The court made me pay for my work to be removed. I tried
to explain but was misunderstood. 'Misunderstood', I think that might
be word writ large upon me if I was an empty building. That or
'Dickhead'. I get called that a lot. Sometimes, I even mutter it to
myself. I hope no one scratches it into my tombstone.
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