“It is getting harder on me lately. The hardest thing is the loneliness. Once I used to stand tall, taller than anything on this big square and the bigger the square was getting, the prouder I was. Now I feel like I am disappearing into a pit in the middle of this endlessly big square that keeps me away from everything that could pull me back to life. A pit as deep as my memories and as grave as my sorrow. I weep not for the times that have gone by never to return, but the times that are to come, which I will see, but never really live. Looking forward to a brighter future is what makes a present so exciting. Looking forward to my future… I become desperate.
I believe that changes are a good thing. I have lived through so many. Every time when change came and so I embraced it and was also changed. But then all these different changes started happening so fast, and I tried to keep up, I also changed but… it wasn’t enough.
I guess it depends on what business you are in… or so I try telling myself, because I see some of my neighbours doing quite well these days! And I don’t want to complain, I am being wonderfully taken care of, but… I just can’t help but feeling somewhat melancholic. It’s not nostalgia – how could I ever bring the old times back! That could never be and honestly… I want to go on, I want to reinvent myself as some of the others did, but it’s so difficult! I was so important and so big… how can I now transfer this importance to the new age?! A new age that values speed, democracy and immaterial goods – ha! I am all about material riches, hierarchy and timelessness. Who would I be if not a display of power and grandeur?!… nobody. Exactly the one I will be in the future. In that same bright future, everyone is blessed to look forward to, I will be the one they look to when they want to look backwards… and I all can do is proudly sparkle in the induced coma I am to remain in for the rest of my existence.”
This post is intended as a monologue from the cycle called By Buildings. The rubric aims to spark more interest from the wider public towards architecture, by giving some fictional inside into the lives of buildings. This piece refers to The Royal Palace on Dam Square, Amsterdam. Although all stories are based on facts and real buildings, the work remains fictional and subjective to the authors imagination.
For more writing of this kind, check out the link to the rubric By Buildings on the Home Page.
Fair Tales 