Yesterday, as the sun was setting over us here in Albany I took this photograph. I was looking to get some shots of the sun falling westward, but instead I was captivated by the urban ruins nearby the Corning Preserve. It’s easy to become depressed by the shuttered buildings that are so common in our cities in Upstate New York, but I suppose there’s another way to look at it, which is that the shut down businesses are just a part of the natural progression of life which is towards disorder. After all, nobody who visits the Roman Coliseum, stands by the toppled pillars of ancient Greece or sketches the crumbled churches of the middle ages has the first reaction of morbidity. There’s something strangely beautiful with things coming apart, though it’s harder to appreciate them when the are coming apart in your vicinity and your lifetime. I suppose that’s the difference. As I was staring at this car through the viewfinder I wondered a few things about its life, questions that only God himself I suppose knows like how it get to be pushed up against the fence, if it broke down at the side of a road or simply wouldn’t start one cold morning despite it’s owner’s desperate attempts to revive it. Who was in the Oval Office when it was driven of off the lot and who was president when it stopped running? Did an eager, horny couple ever steam up its windows and paw at each other in the backseats or the front. How much carbon did it spit out during its life. Nothing deep to think about really, but interesting to me. This car, like the abandoned buildings around it, was once reliable. Now it’s scenery and nothing more. Someday it will likely be moved to a junkyard to completely rot away, but right now, I suppose you just have to appreciate that it’s there to see.