Dec 2020
My childhood home was built in 1886 with bricks from the ruins of the Chicago Fire.
Living surrounded by death bricks was definitely comforting to me. I feel most secure sleeping in houses that have been through something. I can’t stand to be somewhere flimsy and unreliable.
It’s like, no matter how great the plans or the design team’s ideas are, I don’t trust a house that was thrown together in a weekend, painted shiny white, given some plants and supposed to last forever.
Still, everyone is gutting their buildings and turning them into grayscale spaceships and soulless farmhouses. Pretty 1920s schools close and get rebuilt to look like prisons. Storied college dorms turn into 5-star hotels with no graffiti or missing exit signs.
I like to be able to look through photo albums and memory boxes and forgotten closets and look at the same people and places growing over decades.
I like to walk through patchwork schools and see ghosts in letter sweaters and poodle skirts and the first person that came to school in a tank top and Soffe shorts who probably looked hot and that’s why we can’t have nice things.
It overwhelms and comforts me to know that I’m standing somewhere that’s seen so much.
But everyone says,
“Well, the electric bill was too high.”
“Well, the ceiling was leaking.”
“There were a lot of complaints.”
“Well, it was going to take too much work/be too expensive to fix. We just decided to build a new one.”
They’re all just quitters and lazy and don’t want to put in work to save what’s been so beautiful and protected them for so long.
I don’t care how high my electric bill is.
The windows are big.
The ceilings are high.
The hardwood floors are original.
My house is a little haunted, but I’m friends with the ghosts.
I can peek in the rooms and see myself years ago.
I’ve smiled at her and asked her how long she plans to stay here.
When she told me she plans to stay forever, I got to work making sure the walls never collapse and the paint stays fresh.
Things that are old were built to last.
I feel like it’s my job to make sure they do.
Living surrounded by death bricks was definitely comforting to me. I feel most secure sleeping in houses that have been through something. I can’t stand to be somewhere flimsy and unreliable.
It’s like, no matter how great the plans or the design team’s ideas are, I don’t trust a house that was thrown together in a weekend, painted shiny white, given some plants and supposed to last forever.
Still, everyone is gutting their buildings and turning them into grayscale spaceships and soulless farmhouses. Pretty 1920s schools close and get rebuilt to look like prisons. Storied college dorms turn into 5-star hotels with no graffiti or missing exit signs.
I like to be able to look through photo albums and memory boxes and forgotten closets and look at the same people and places growing over decades.
I like to walk through patchwork schools and see ghosts in letter sweaters and poodle skirts and the first person that came to school in a tank top and Soffe shorts who probably looked hot and that’s why we can’t have nice things.
It overwhelms and comforts me to know that I’m standing somewhere that’s seen so much.
But everyone says,
“Well, the electric bill was too high.”
“Well, the ceiling was leaking.”
“There were a lot of complaints.”
“Well, it was going to take too much work/be too expensive to fix. We just decided to build a new one.”
They’re all just quitters and lazy and don’t want to put in work to save what’s been so beautiful and protected them for so long.
I don’t care how high my electric bill is.
The windows are big.
The ceilings are high.
The hardwood floors are original.
My house is a little haunted, but I’m friends with the ghosts.
I can peek in the rooms and see myself years ago.
I’ve smiled at her and asked her how long she plans to stay here.
When she told me she plans to stay forever, I got to work making sure the walls never collapse and the paint stays fresh.
Things that are old were built to last.
I feel like it’s my job to make sure they do.
