Bricks

Katie’s alma mater has this weird connection to bricks which I’m not going to go into here - it’s long and not very interesting - but suffice to say that it’s one of those bits of information that sort of sticks in one’s brain, to the point that I think about it whenever I see buildings made of brick.

Because you don’t see buildings made of bricks very much these days, since it’s easier to make them out of steel frames and concrete, cheaper too.

So as I’m sitting in the courtyard of the building where Katie has her studio, enjoying the sun and watching the planes overhead glide down the sky on their approach to LaGuardia, I saw starlings and sparrows flying up into little nests where the bricks on the facade had fallen away. And I couldn’t help thinking about what this buliding used to be, back when they made entire buildings out of brick - maybe a factory, or an office building - and what will happen in the future, when we’re all gone, and the birds take the place over, and the planes are gone, and the vines start pulling the bricks down, one by one.