Brutalist Stories #8

There’s the person that he was, and the person that he is. There’s the memories of the Brutopolis that tear through him, and the memories that float above and around him, coating him in a warm light.

He walks through the old concrete town, the sharp winter air on the back of his throat, the sights and smells all so familiar, the memory of the time and place where he grew up.

A moment, a face in the crowds of people, someone he might have recognised, someone that might have recognised him. A friend once? The face glances, it’s older and more weathered than it should be for the person he thinks it is and they brush past quickly. Maybe they were embarrassed, at their condition, at the comparative hardship they had had to face, at the life they have lead compared to himself.

A life that lead him away from this place. Somewhere he fit for a time, but isn’t so sure now. Time has taken its toll on the town as much as its people and the translucent memories that lay themselves over the weathered buildings dissolve as he considers what it’s trying to tell him. Memories, of so any places over so many years, and always back to this place he comes. What does it hold and what can it tell him? About his past, and what made him into what he is today?

There is a reflection of one’s self in the environment in which you are contained, and the environment is reflected back through the being. He stands and reflects, on every moment he can remember from this place, every word spoken, every step taken, every laugh laughed and every tear that rolled and he is. For that moment, he exists, resonating with the reformed matter of the constructions around him. He holds them and they hold him. Arrested in space.

Building inspiration:Sunderland City Centre – 1960s