Less than a block from the place I work was a building. Over
the years it has had various incarnations as different night clubs. I can’t,
for the life of me, remember any of the names. Over the years the economy got
worse, and nobody wanted to roll the dice on an urban club, in a run-down
building miles from where the clientele lived. It sat empty, and decaying. The
roof began to cave in.
It was a grey, black stucco covered eye sore. But it was
old, and it had a history. A history no one man probably knew. It had a house
that was probably over a hundred years old, and at some point, probably 60 or
70 years ago someone had added a squat, rectangular, windowless building. Why
is lost in the ages.
A family of feral cats moved in and sometimes if you looked
out the kitchen window of our building at the right time you could see one of
the homeless people sharing food and milk he got from the mission with the
cats.
Since the economy is better, and people are willing to roll
the dice they tore the building down. Some big moneyed investor is probably going
to construct a new apartment building. A glorious marvel of profitability overlooking
the scenic homeless shelter. Until the can find a way to relocate the shelter. As
long as the economy stays strong, anyway.
I looked out the window and saw a guy standing there holding
a garden-hose spraying water on the building. It seemed odd, he wasn’t a fire
man, at least he wasn’t dressed like a fireman, the building didn’t appear to
be on fire, and it was raining lightly. Then, in a display of raw machine anger
and fury, a deliberate, malignant show of mechanical superiority a claw rose
over the roof and smashed down. Puffs of dust rose, and were quickly
extinguished by the rain and the guy with the hose.
In one day, one guy with a big tractor, and his side kick
with a hose knocked the building down. It was an astonishingly efficient act of
destruction. Now the cats and the homeless have to find someplace else. We
never really try to do anything about homelessness just the homeless. They can live with the problem, just not the symptoms.
It was gone, years of memories, parties, and friendships,
brought down to an elemental pile of splintered rubbish. To add insult to the
injury they parked the tracked, claw wielding tractor on top of the heap. Just
to make sure it didn’t reassemble itself overnight. Then they bought in a
parade of dump trucks to haul the pile to some final resting place.
Progress has to march on, I understand, but does it have to
be so thorough, and so callous, so cruel? Months later it still sits, an empty lot filled with weeds.
I can’t help but think this is how things will end for me,
knocked flat in one ridiculously casual act of terrible, violent indifference. Moistened
to avoid any flashes of brilliance, no chance for a final act of neon glory to
offer hope to the disillusioned and lost, just torn to pieces and hauled away
by a force much greater than my own. Turned into the moral equivalent of a
parking garage, or office building.
