Your Only Bones
The singing started early. A high pitched shriek of earth moving equipment as it seared away at the rock that didn’t want to be woken at this time of day. These rock solid foundations that were being carefully chipped away at to accommodate a new building on top of the old. Inner city living was the thing now and that factory, that had always been abandoned as long as anyone could remember, was being woken up, to be knocked down. Carefully, carefully, piece at a time so as not to stir the sleeping giant too much. Just enough to mask the ancient façade with another façade that was made to look ancient. With a sharp industrial edge of course that made everything old new again.
Sharp.
That was the sound that accompanied this early morning start, and the noise went almost unnoticed. There was a lot of it going on. You didn’t live in the city if you didn’t like the noise. A truck rolled into the bowels of the building, immersing itself in a black bath to do undetected things to the unassuming, still slumbering core. The core was to stay; had to be reinforced to take the weight of the new upon its back. The rumbling added bass to the shrill cry of the drill up top, at street level, screeching as the sun came up, waking up the other earthmoving equipment around the city. A cacophony ensued and no one noticed a thing. You don't work in the city if you don't like the noise. The rock started to fly and the men with hard hats and those without, in expensive cars and suits, grinned as they watched the operation proceed.
Smooth.
Very smooth. On time. The new apartments would be up on schedule because this damn old building was so yielding. Desperate for the facelift that would get the pigeons out of the broken window frames and clear out the stale air that was choking the empty walls and doors and shelf space. All that was to go. Just the core. Just keep the core intact and strip back, strip back as much as possible. The building was never very dear to anyone’s heart. The ancient building character would have to be added later, a plastic tribute to the character the building may have once possessed. It’s doubtful it ever did, but don’t mention that to the punters. It had been a wholesale fashion warehouse, a store house for last year's Christmas decorations, a very temporary studio for aspiring young artists, until the brief government funding was 'reassigned'. It was a lace factory. Once upon a time it was even a dormitory for young ladies learning to become nurses, until it was thought to be too risqué a part of town. It was definitely and often a place for large-scale drug deals to take place and a convenient place for people to be taught a lesson. It was a potential site for a new department store and renovating even began before Haverely's owner was audited and the company was bankrupted. Haverley threw himself from the top of this building. He had 22 stores to choose from. This one had been a risk. He gave it everything.
But that was a long, long time ago, certainly before the fashion warehouse took over but not long after the student nurses were relocated to a nice part of town. This area has always had potential the developers say again and again, loudly applauding themselves for recognising it before anyone else (unaware of the dealers who have long known it's advantages), but secretly giving themselves stomach ulcers over the thoughts of re-zoning and city planning. One wrong move by a well meaning planner and the trendy designer apartment block might be neighbours with the light industrial end of town. The developers made a note to do lunch with the mayor.
The world is a beautiful place. Even amid the squalor of a deconstructed building, the world has beauty. The light at the very beginning of the day can reflect off any surface and make it look fresh, alive, organic. Even when there is not a single tree to remind us we did not make the world, the earth can be felt pushing up through the pavement. And the pre-dawn city noise of nothing can let us know that there are still silent places within the world, and the people who crave those places. The builders turned up their radios louder than the screaming of their machines. The noise was toxic. And no one noticed. You don't know about silence if you've never heard it. The developers weren't at the site today. The laborers moaned loudly about the bosses eating a cooked lunch as they munched on their luke warm pies and soggy sandwiches. They avoided the work they were bought there to do as much as they could and cheered enthusiastically at passing women with all their unused energy. The women didn't hear them anymore. You don't live in the city if you can't handle the verbal barrage that a building site can produce. The men knocked off early. The foreman had gone to see his wife at the hospital. She'd just had their third daughter. He wanted to call her Jack.
Suddenly the building was quiet again.The setting sun isn't seen often by the city worker, whether they're in their buildings or out. But tonight it was unmissable. A volcano in Indonesia made the sky electric orange and the sun a massive ball of cleansing fire. Everyone stood mesmerised, inside and out. For a moment. And then it was home time and nothing can distract the city worker from that.
But the setting sun was watched without pause by the empty, gutted building. The light rays shot through the knocked down walls and empty windows, deep inside as it got lower and lower so that even the unseen bowels became illuminated. No one saw it, but it was there to be seen. And perhaps the fractured building saw itself. And perhaps it liked what it saw because it wasn't the same from then. It was realised, somehow aware and everyone noticed the change.
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