Building It Up / Knocking It Down

A friend sent me this lovely, evocative photo. Most times when I’ve gone past that bike has been lying on its side; I’ve stood it up more than once. It has felt disreputable somehow, slovenly. I’ve been annoyed with it, as if it’s letting me down intentionally. I’ve probably muttered under my breath. Here, though, the kickstand is engaged and polished, the seat protected from the elements, and it all feels very prim and proper, like a kid dressed up for a visit from the grandparents.

In general, the way things fall apart is more interesting to me than the way they pull themselves together. Touring century-old farms I love most intensely the way sunlight will slice up an exhausted barn or, in cottage country how a perilous dock slumps wholly rotten into lily-rich shallows.

I’m not sure what this says about me. More than I should admit, probably, if the goal is to sell some more houses. On its face it suggests that decrepitude trumps renovation and rebirth. And that’s not it, not at all. I am excited in all the regular ways by spring, the sight of a tulip’s lime leaf nosing through last fall’s leaf litter, by bracing architecture, a chef hassling pans expertly over a hissing grill. Creation is everything. But it is sometimes less clear whether something is being built or destroyed - when a curlicue of perfect wave tears itself to aerated shreds on slate coastline, for example - and at those moments I am both entirely lost and thrillingly alive.