Decay. The slow process toward ruin. Isn’t that a natural process? Perhaps, however, some structures don’t decay at all. You know the phrase, “They don’t build ’em like they used to.” Some things permeate, don’t they? I mean they just last without going bad. Maybe there was perfection in the design and in the build so that there are no flaws and thus nothing ever breaks or rots or comes loose or rips, or any of those things. Or perhaps it’s in the materials that are used. If you pick the best ones, parts that are strong, perfect in their measurements and sizes and angles, and of course have the best people or automated systems there to put it together, maybe that’s what creates permanence and non decay. Either way, we can’t actually prove that some things last forever. Even if they have been in existence for 10,000 years, they might not be there in another 10,000. Or if they do still exist way off in the future, perhaps they too, eventually, will start to decay.
Besides the design and content of something, another thing I try to think of is what makes things do what they do. What is the energy that moves or motivates things, whether they be living creatures, like a rabbit or a spider, or whether they be non-living entities such as a gasket or a spoon or a long piece of steel. What about if they are in-between type things, like trees. A tree is like a cross between a person and a building. It is alive but it is also stationary like a structure, a living structure. Trees grow until they are mature and then they stay there until they are cut down, or struck by lightning or eaten alive by a tiny insect that gets into its brain. Trees must have brains too, or do they just have veins and no brain? What if the tree was its own brain? The brain not being a distinct separate organ located in one section of the tree’s anatomy, but instead infused into the entire tree like a network; in the leaves and bark, the sap, the roots, the buds and flowers and each branch, all together one giant brain for the tree, which would mean that the tree is its own brain actually. Something like that.
There are a lot of trees lining the river below the Education Sciences Building. There is an old railroad bridge there that I once walked across. There is a nice little bend in the river below there with a small beach where people like to build fires and hang out at night, sometimes even until the sun comes up. I used to like to sit there, or maybe it was only one time, and watch the barges come up the river. At night, they would use spotlights to see where the hell they were going and figure out how to maneuver their load through the bends in the river. Now the barges won’t be coming up the river any more since they closed the lock and dam. No way to go further upriver and drop off stuff or pick up stuff, or both, drop off and pick up, Load and unload and load again.
Barges don’t last forever because they probably get rusty and banged up. Or maybe they do, but even if stuff would last forever they wouldn’t let it do so, because every so often they make you buy a new one. For no reason other than that it’s something to do, and that it keeps the economy moving and people can have jobs and make money and then spend the money on some other new thing that somebody else is selling. The trees that line that little stretch of the river are probably oaks and elms and maybe some birch trees or other things that i know the names of but can’t identify: hackberries, coffee trees, ash trees, They have maybe been there a long time but not forever and they will not be there forever I don’t think. But hopefully “trees” plural will be there forever but not necessarily individual trees, like the same ones as are there now.
There is a big crow’s roost down along the river, and driving along the river road at night and looking up into the trees you will see them full of crows, by the thousands. The crows fly there to roost at least during the winter months, at about 4 pm in the afternoon. You can see them heading over there from all parts of the city, like a big parade or commuter highway. When they get there they share information with each other, perhaps regarding where the best overflowing dumpsters are located. I don’t know if the crows prefer certain kinds of trees or not. During the last century, the river was a giant sewer for all the people. Now it’s not. It’s cleaned up and the decades of decay have been reversed. Will the river be there forever? Will the trees?
THE MOSSY BOG 