May 07, 2007 22:52
I'm sure everyone at some point has had this phenomenon happen: you're driving/ at a stoplight/whatever and suddenly look over and realize, "Hey, where did that building come from, I don't remember that being built?"
I noticed such a building today, while on my drive home. The building is not at all remarkable. It's green and has a few stores and is supposed to be appealing in a modern, strip-mallish sort of way. It is not a unique facade, just the sort of thing that blends well into the landscape unnoticed enough that it can look like it's always been there, unless you are wise enough to know better.
I hate these sort of buildings, their total lack of personality and uniqueness is a shame. Take any five building complexes in a suburban area, shuffle them and put them in a different order. That's how these buildings go on, block after block.
I was reminded for a moment of a film I saw a long time ago, called "Dark City."
The gist of the film is that otherworldly peoples are controlling the human population of a city, putting them to sleep at night and erasing their memories. They then change the landscape of the city, put people in different houses in different clothes in different settings, and then give them new memories so that when they wake, they feel as if things were always the way they are at that moment. There's more to the story, but that's the general gist.
Sometimes I feel like these buildings just sprout out of the ground, only to be swallowed and rebuilt later, into some other shapeless, unmemorable complex. Endlessly shifting, endlessly the same.
...or maybe they've just always been there.
musings