chalkdog
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This used to be a hospital. Now — just a pile of rubble. For about a month now, Jay’s been periodically documenting that transition. There’s something melancholy about it, something sad in seeing a former place of healing turned into bits of broken brick and twisted rebar.
But this is what happens. This is what happens to everything. And everyone. Sounds rather grim, doesn’t it. That whole Nothing Lasts business? It can seem pretty discouraging. But it’s a wrong-headed way of looking at it. Sure, this didn’t last as a hospital — but all that rubble is on the way to becoming something else. Most of what could be salvaged was removed before the building was demolished, but even this pile of debris won’t just disappear.
Because although nothing lasts, everything remains. An 18th century French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier, told us that. He came up with the notion that matter can’t be created or destroyed — it can only be rearranged in time and space. All of this stuff? It’ll just become different stuff.
That’s what happens. That’s what happens to everything. And everyone. I find that comforting.
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