THE OUTDOOR MUSEUM…
Change is coming. The discarded goods of life litter the narrow space between footpath and house. An old structure. What is to come? Renovation? Demolition and rebuilding?
Many times I’ve walked past this old house not far from Hobart’s downtown. Classic weatherboard construction. A roof of galvanised iron that can’t be all that old. I recall there might’ve been a small tree in the front space. There was always junk, the discards of life. It’s a cottage, it is more than a shack. Small. Smaller than the houses adjacent. Old. But how old?
When I’ve walked past I’ve wondered who lives here. This is something I do when passing old dwellings. It comes from an awareness that old dwellings persist, but not the generations who pass through them. They are the shells in which lives are lived. How did the people whom for a time called them home live? Were their’s good lives? Prosperous? Poor? Happy? But I’ve never seen anybody in this little cottage. No sign of life. It has always been silent.
And now it appears that the time of change has come. Seeing it that day with its discarded contents out front reminded me that cities are constantly being rebuilt in the way the body generates new cells to replace the old. In so doing they perpetuate themselves. Cities, too, are organisms.
Speculative fiction author and scientist, David Brin, wrote that change is the very fabric of our time. This modest cottage and its impending fate may be yet another example of that.
