city skeleton

Every night, I drive by tall cranes hovering over the skeletons of a new shopping center. Red lights blink from the motionless beams, the cables hang slack, waiting for the return of their operators the next morning. Beneath these sleeping builders I see concrete and steel forming repeating geometry, the structure that will support the finished tower unseen - holding up the hallways created by cubicles, behind the walls with bland art, forming the basement delivery bay. It almost seems embarrassed with its innards laid bare, eager for the workers to return and continue stacking and forming the massive concrete frame and ready to house people in their desk jobs and busy shoppers underneath.

Driving by at night, I wish construction would stop. Frozen like this, I want to explore the construction that looks suspiciously like a ruin. I want to play hide-and-seek between the pillars and climb up the steel lattices all bathed in the eerie fluorescent lights that stay on through the night.

From the road, the shadows are compelling, telling me a story of the city growing and changing. Old edifices were cleared to make room for this new complex, and someday it, too, will be cleared away. The city is always growing and dying and changing itself, always expanding. Building replicate like cells out beyond the borders, pushing and growing further as the interior constantly renews. I wonder whether these cells are normal.