From Brick to Bone

The fabric of life, the architecture of self

Hello, Mentatrix readers! I took an impromptu break last weekend, knocked out by what has been an intense time at work in my day-time job. Thank you for still being here.

If you’re new, or a chance reader, Mentatrix is a place for self-reflection, whether it’s through personal stories, recent happenings, a fictional character, or an aspect of nature and life in Germany, where I live.

Today I’m pondering on how humans and buildings are similar, prompted by a friend’s text.

An old friend texted me this picture of my old high school the other day.

“Are you in Bucharest?” I asked. He’s been living abroad for ages.

“Yes. I thought you might like it. Don’t get all too nostalgic, though!”

I instantly thought, seeing the school, oh but it’s holding itself so well!

And then I realised it was but a building; it wasn’t one of us, who left school almost four decades ago, now with inflated and sagging bodies, eyes gone matte, hair gone missing.

Whereas that might be a historical building, roughly a hundred years old, but it’s undergone at least one major overhaul since I left school.

Is it still the same? I pondered. The façade sure, but...?

The terror of the Young Communist uniform and its forced tidiness, the beloved leader’s portraits hanging in every single classroom or lab, the teachers wearing fur caps and overcoats in the biting cold ambient, plumbing itself freezing in the dead of winter (school off for a week hurray!) – that is all for sure gone.

How about the tremor before a test or a term paper? The fear of consequences for skipping a class to go roaming in the park across the street? The feverish anticipated calculation of the final grade, or the sizing up of the syllabus chunk that still needs revision ahead of the threatening selective, in-or-out exams?

I captured some of this in my novel Lili Comes to Herself, which recently went live as an e-book on Amazon.

Funny how buildings are like humans, in a way. Sure, buildings can be completely refurbished to look hale in old age — even in very old age, like my ancient high-school. People cannot — although, hold on, the attempts are there to halt and turn back time with cosmetic surgeries piled up on the face and the body. Until they get back at us and the price is usually higher than if we’d left time to its own devices.

But both buildings and people are faced with a few common dilemmas.

What needs to be renewed so that the whole can keep going in a good state of work? We maintain and revamp our houses and bodies alike, whether it’s plumbing, carpentry, insulation, or just the superficial interior design like flooring or wallpaper. Sometimes it’s minor tweaks, other times it’s a major overhaul.

The German language makes an interesting distinction here between renovating and rehabilitating a building: renovieren versus sanieren. I always found it interesting that the word sanieren has that drastic nuance of a capital medical intervention, of re-establishing the ground-level health of a building.

Beyond the maintenance procedures, there’s always the check of the Bausubstanz, the building fabric, or its structural condition. Again, I like the German substanz here. Isn’t it similar to what we tell ourselves and others when we undergo some treatment but overall our health condition is still good? When is the Bausubstanz still good?

And when is the renovation — or even Sanierung — still worthwhile instead of pulling down the whole edifice and building it anew? Not that we can dissolve our bodies and get ourselves a new one; but don’t we sometimes need to let go of an energy-draining, health-eroding chase and start anew?

When is a building still itself, past renovation and beautification, even past Sanierung? A new façade, new windows — just thermo-insulating ones fitting the old design, or a new design altogether? — a new interior staircase, new plumbing: does any of this change what the building used to be?

I find it intriguing when in the urban landscape I see buildings hidden behind their own image printed on a huge lifelike canvas, while they are undergoing Sanierung in the backstage. Isn’t it so human to pull a curtain while we’re adjusting our look? Even more so when we’re in hospital undergoing Sanierung?

How about buildings that were destroyed by war, fire or other disasters, and were re-built to match their historical look? Are they still the same?

From what point onwards can we feel that we’re no longer the same for having replaced capital items in our bodily inventory? New teeth? A new heart? A limb prosthesis? A different skin colour? Applying makeup that changes the image we project?

Where does the self reside, in a human being as well as in a building?

The body is your temple, says the New Testament. The obvious reading one could easily take away is, idolize it and adorn it with utmost devotion. Pile up makeup, train those muscles, treat that skin with lavish cosmetics, build your image and project it project it project it.

Or is it more along the lines of: just like a temple, give it loving care, maintenance, and above all, inhabit it (which is what, ironically, the Church has totally misunderstood in the following millennia). Have you noticed how visibly buildings deteriorate if they are vacant? What does that suggest about a lifestyle where we’re constantly on the go, on the chase, scarcely inhabiting our bodies —or our minds, for that matter?

The other metaphor I often come across is that the body is the vehicle, or the residence, of our Selves. And that might sound like what I’ve been on about here: the similarity body = building. What doesn’t feel right to me, though, is the implication that the body and that Self are separate. That the building is only the walls and its pipes, while there’s a distinct spirit inhabiting it.

But aren’t they unsplittable? Isn’t our body the embodiment of who we are? Is the body just the organs? Isn’t the heart held by tissues to hold it fast within the chest? Doesn’t it throb with our fears, our in-love thrills, our grief?

Is the house just its plumbing, flooring, carpentry, even its Bausubstanz — or is it also its vibe that echoes in our night dreams, the mystery of its haunted basements and its attic stuffed with forgotten memories?

Buildings, like humans, are an elusive story.

If I were to go back into that impressive building that is my old high-school, would it feel like it’s the same?

Are my old classmates the same, when we meet for the old times’ sake?

Hard to tell.

Lili Comes to Herself is discounted this week as a free e-book (minor price variations, possibly adding a few cents, might be due to the differences across geographical markets. The paperback is due out within the next ten days.