Change Incarnate

Change revealed itself to me incarnate just before 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday. Along my pedestrian stroll to an evening meeting, I witnessed a small crowd of rag-tag bystanders witnessing the same manifestation, capturing these fleeting moments with their digital cameras and video recorders.

Across the street, three industrial size backhoes were putting the final touches on ripping down decades worth of history on half of a city block. The giant yellow robots rumbled back and forth over the rubble, which was being dampened with fire hoses to keep the dust down.

Splinters of two-by-fours, piles of crumbled brick and concrete were all that remained of a woebegone era once represented by a row of buildings. These old commercial spaces were once home to many human activities: drinking, dining, outfitting and living to name a few.

As I walked up closer to the scene, the air was permeated with the smell of dankness; old moist dust, musty. The smell was cold and unwelcoming, hopefully not a sign of what's to come.

Later in the week I received a note from an old grade school friend, alerting me that my high school is being bulldozed this summer to make way for a brand new set of campus buildings. One degree of separation is that my close friend Max's company is the architectural firm designing the new school.

Max and I got together a couple times this past week, and I broached this topic with him. He said, "If it's any consolation, we're doing a similar project at my old high school in Medford." Well, I suppose it is much more comforting to broach change with someone who can also relate to it. After all, change is the one true constant in this life ...