Broken concrete
As anyone who knows me well will tell you, I have a bent towards the post-apocalyptic. Books, comics, movies, pseudo documentaries, television shows.....they all entrance me with their broken bits. Intellectually I understand than an apocalypse would be traumatic and devastating, still it appeals to me. With that said, I have found a beautiful peice of a degradation in my little Seattle neighborhood. I'd made the drive up this particular road hundreds of times before, but this day I was driving up just as the sun was cresting the horizon. When I was stopped at a light I looked over and saw an old abandoned car wash. It had peeling blue paint, cracked concrete and gouges in the exposed steel beams. The office lacked windows, but the door was shut tight and locked with a padlock. The morning sun was kissing softly the plethora of green grass, morning glories and poppies growing throughout the structure. The morning glories had crawled over the wall in the back and were wending their way around the buildings support columns, slowly destroying what they clung to. The grass and poppies had happily pressed their way through the cement, cracking ever wider the broken seams. The sun glinted off of broken glass and old pop cans to through rainbows of light onto the peeling blue paint. I thought it was stunning. Now that we are headed into fall and knowing I do not even thing of getting out of bed earlier than noon, I fear I will never get to see the brightness of the degradation again. Even if I do manage to get up early enough (on a work day), the sun won't be peeking out until long after I have arrived at my cubical many miles away. Sad. I will carry the memory of the moment until my memory fades. Maybe, if the structure is still there next year, I'll stay up all night to snap a photo of it. Finis.