The Love of a Building

There's a building that I'm in love with. It's not perfect, but it has character, and an uncommon beauty, whimsy and delight all its own, and I see much of my own character in it as well-- although I'm unsure if its architects would agree.

When I pass by the building, sometimes its lights will turn on, lighting up my face. But when I try the door, it's locked, or doesn't open easily, or opens, but sometimes there's a chain-lock on the inside. Sometimes the lights won't come on at all when I pass by, while at other times, they will, and the door will open, but remain open, allowing in a chilly draft or a bit of rain after I've entered. If the door does close, sometimes I'll discover that there's no hot water, or a ceiling tile will fall. There's the timer on the door-lock, too, that, when it starts, I'm faced with the prospect of either being trapped inside with no heat, running water or in the dark, or again outside-- as has always been the case.

To my further dismay, the building seems to allow in questionable tenants or visitors that, at least in one particular case, apparently committed vandalism.

Unfortunately, AFAIK, it's a very rare building, with perhaps only a handful of its kind in the area, and one of the rare few of a character that especially seems to fit me. Not only that, but its knowledgeable experts-- its architects, builders, renovators and design-experts-- have all but vanished, and the town seems to have little value for that kind of building as far as I can see.

So for the time being, I don't know what to do.

Reply to
Warm Worm
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Picture? (Building, not you.)

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

If you'd requested the picture from Ken about a building he liked, without the admonition, you'd get one of him standing in front of the building naked...and waving...in the breeze. =:O

There's a building I've always liked that faces the LIRR tracks. I always enjoyed seeing the Art Deco edifice plunked down in the midst of trash (literally and figuratively). It stood there abandoned for years. Then someone - sorry - something bought it. Apparently an Asian church had a need for a lot of space and the desire to desecrate good design. I no longer commute and had not seen the building in a while, when I saw it a couple of months ago I was dumbfounded. The church added a horrendous, huge addition. It looks like two buildings sailed together in a fog.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

Ironically, the building is a metaphor for a woman. I almost kept that indication in the subject header, but decided to remove it and see if anyone might have noticed anything odd about my description of it, or offered something that might have had actual application back to the subject of the metaphor.

By doing that, it also remained on topic; architecture as metaphor.

Anyway, I decided to give up on "the building", seeing as I think it would take too much time and effort to deal with. As a result, I'm a little bummed out today. :/

But I'm still open to advice, especially now that you know.

Reply to
Warm Worm

That would be prostitution. ;)

Reply to
Warm Worm

Many marriages end in divorce because of that.

Reply to
Warm Worm

Picture?

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

It might be nice, if only for historical reference.

How do we choose that which we love, assuming we do? And in that regard, can the heart do battle with the mind and vice-versa?

Reply to
Warm Worm

Sure, but despite the doors being sometimes closed and the lights out, there seem to be mysterious shadows in the dark. The building seems unfit for a real occupant, despite other indications to the contrary. I feel a sense of general soundness of structure, but wonder about how that might be affected over the long term, given its general state of curious neglect and ongoing retrofits.

In that building in particular, or favourite buildings in general?

Reply to
Warm Worm

What's all paid for?

Reply to
Warm Worm

Too many implied assumptions there for me. We'll spend months just defining terms.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

Well, the water's pretty warm... Are you just going to stand there on the wharf then?

...If my heart spontaneously loves something or someone, I imagine it can instruct my mind something about it, and then vice-versa; an inner-dialogue.

"...I've seen the nations rise and fall I've heard their stories, heard them all but love's the only engine of survival..."

-- 'The Future', Leonard Cohen.

Reply to
Warm Worm

Yeah, until it gets too hot to bear, I'm staying dry.

Lenny's always been a Romantic. I liked his stuff back in my teens, and I still admire him, but he doesn't speak to this practical middle-aged anymore.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

Ideally I suppose.

Oddly enough, that seems to make sense, especially if we assume that it isn't really love, just insanity. ;D Do you think love conquers all? I mean, would it conquer marriage and the intricacies of living together?

Sounds like the head talking... What if it's love at first sight? Do you believe in love at first sight? I wonder how many couples are/were actually in love, or know what it is.

I'm beginning to think that there might be something to that-- the idea that one can be in love, but not realize it, say until something changes that suddenly confronts the issue.

There's a torrent available.

Reply to
Warm Worm

Warm Worm wrote in news:foo647$1na$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

THat question probbly has as many answers as thre are people on the planet; to answer it, you can't look at what others do, you have to look deeply *and honestly* into yourself and explore your own motivations, desires, responses, and so on.

Do they actually battle? Or it is just that the superego, that part of us which is created by society, tells us to not be who we are and to not want what we want, because we're "supposed" to be, and want, what we are told to be and want? Society teaches us to present a persona, because ti is our "duty", our "obligation" - we are supposed to do and be what society tells us we "should" do and be - i.e. present a persona rather than to honestly be a person.

That screws up relationships, because the whole dating game, with its little rituals, is designed to encourage the persona while relegating the person to the distant background. Ritualized behaviors, such as a male bird presentign a female with bits of nesting material and/or plump insects, work for other animals, but with humans, it's eventually a hindrance, because all too often, people marry the personas, and then start having problems when it becomes inpossible to live a facade 24/7 and the real person comes out - then people wail, "You're just not the same person I married!" Well, of course not, all of the rituals are designed to set up baby-making couples, NOT form the basis of emotional imtimacy.

One of the offshoots of the dependence upon ritual is thae perennial, and perennially stupid, question of "What do women/men really want?" Such a wuestion assumes that ALL women and ALL men are simple, are simplistically capable only of following instinctual patterns. THe fact is that humans have *drives*, but not *instincts* - an instinct is a specific bahavior that is inborn, i.e. carried out by compulsion AND

*exactly the same* in all members of a species - even if an animal is raised in isolation, it will still attempt to carry out the stereotypical behaviors; learning from other members refines behaviors but the bahaviors are largely intact.

Humans are not that simple. So it's not just a simplistic matter of "give gift, get sex" for males and "give sex in return for child support" for females. What a woman wants depends upon the individual woman; what a man wants depends upon the individual man.

Re: specific cases? I dunno, it depends upon the people involved. And I don't have any intuitive understandiing of people, just facts and theories.

Reply to
Kris Krieger

Warm Worm wrote in news:for2n1$evh$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

Depends upon what one means by love. Being "in love" is usually actually infatuation, excitement with the New, and sexual atraction. It's not sustainable. The development of long-term love depends upon the individuals, upon htei rindividual capacity for that different sort fo love. IMO, aprt fo it is emotional and part is intellectual, but then, everyone always tells me that I "overintellectualize" - OTOH, I've been in a stable and rewarding relationship for 30 years.

Not first sight, but I do know that sometimes, two people just fit together, compliment each other not only emotionally, but also intellectually, physically, and , dare Isay it?, spiritually, in terms of "weltanshau" or basic/fundamental philosophy.

A lot fo people have *plans* - meet someone at this age, marry at that age, have kids X years later, and so on. ANd have specific ideas concernign the type of person who would fit in with those plans, i.e. whom they could "love".

The test of love is when those plans hit the skids. Maybe one person is infertile, maybe one turns out to be gay, maybe one says "I have to give up this damn rat race, and move to the middle of Alaska" - most people would react in a predictable way, and that way proves that, by and large, love is *not* unconditional, not by any stretch; a lot of "love" is as above, how well two peole's plans mesh.

I'm not even saying that these plans are conscious - many times, poeple are so non-introspective that they have no idea what their own motivations really are. And those plans can be completely sub-conscious

- then they're called "expectations".

IOW, most people, IMO, do not separate the reality of love, from the fantasy of love, and bya nad large, taht fantasy isn't even their own, doesn't even spring from their own souls, but rather, are inculcated socioculturally.

That's because part of the fantasy of love is that it *always* MUST start off as obsessive infatuation, as irresistable sexual passion.

Reply to
Kris Krieger

Met my wife in January '64 and we married in July of '64. Back then we were considered old at 28 and 27 years. Going on 44 years now. Invited our parents to our wedding the weekend before. Simple and economical. The wedding business made nothing from us. EDS

Reply to
EDS

Same here...city hall. The old WASP JP mispronounced my name terribly, of course, as a way of illustrating to my new wife what she was in for.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

"EDS" wrote in news:89-dndmUssxY4ynanZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

It seems to me that the simple weddings I've known of have also been the most personal. IMO, an insistance upon an orgy of spending that ends up putting people into debt literally for decades, does not bode well for a happy union - IMO, it indicates that priorities are askew.

Reply to
Kris Krieger

"Don" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news5.newsguy.com:

Of course - two reasons, in my own personal and prob rather jaded ideas base dupon what I've personally seen: (1) the emphasis on all the materialistic "queen for a day" stuff shows where the bride's true priorities lie, which is, fantasy and illlusions of grandeur, and (2) the guy has missed the first major opportunity to have a say in things, IOW, has wimped out right from the start.

Actually, there is a third reason, related to what I said about most/common dating rituals being about presenting a persona rather than being a person - this rushing headlong into the whole insanity of spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to create this elaborate fantasy of a royal fete IMO is erally setting people up for a hug let- down, because the fantasy quickly fades, and the couple is left with the reality of the daily grind: morning breath, dirty laundry, hair in the bathtub, gas, and all of the other plain everyday things that nobody ever mentions, never mind admits to, during the whole fantasy phase.

ANd fourth: money. It's extremely rare for peole to have frank, honest, and practical discussions about finances before marriage. And money is, IIRC, the number one reason people give for divorce. OF course, bickering over money is usually a symptom of a deeper realization by the two people that they had no idea who they were actually marrying...

That's why I don't hold traditional/"conservative" notions of marriage in high regard - it's all very plan-oriented, and the "important" thing is to mary young and have kids ASAP and then justtolerate the other person "for the sake fo the kids" (who in turn grow up and just do the same thing) and, once the kids leave home, just slog it out in misery for the next 50 years. There is so much emphasis upon "finding that one person who will make you happy", and so much time and energy spent upon running down potential spouses, that few people ever have the chance to learn that (1) nobody else can *make* you happy, it has to start from within; and (2) a person who has never spent time developing his/her Self isn't going to have much to bring to a relationship - it's like trying to get a harvest of wheat from land that has been let go to dust.

Reply to
Kris Krieger

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