Ruined

I have been fascinated with ruins since early childhood.
Something about seeing remains of factories and manor houses in the process of disappearing from the landscape, their original function and identity lost, made them irresistible to be explored.

This fascination has not lessened, quite the opposite. With age, I have come to see these places with even deeper appreciation. There are no shortcuts to building a place with all those layers of meaning. Layers of local history, of societal shifts, of passing time and nature reclaiming everything we build sooner or later.

Maybe it is partly for these conflicted emotions they evoke, that we as modern people seem to have low tolerance for abandoned places. None of the locations depicted here exist as they were, and most have been completely erased to make room for something new. I understand it. Maybe these feel like morbid places to some. Skeletons and corpses that at one point were full of life. But life takes new forms and is endlessly malleable.

There is value in broken things and broken beings. Scars can be beautiful just as plastic smiles can be ugly. Where one sees a city expanding and a civilization prospering, others see the destruction of nature and loss of life that can not be justified. Is a summer day ruined by rain? Is a photograph of a unique moment ruined by a technical mistake? Is a ruin ruined by building over it?

Our world is in ruins. Our environment is under threat. The social fabric of our communities is coming undone. We are witnesses to the endless march of ends with no end in sight. But as is in the ruins of those who came before, new life will find a foothold. Decay is the fuel for what follows.

We are ruined. Be aware of the transient. Appreciate the disappearing. Love the slow erosion of all things, and love that in yourself as well. Embrace the entropy and dance with it.