Art moaned. He sighed a melancholy sigh of resignation.
Penobscot, or “Belle” as she was known to most of the other buildings, felt that Art’s bricks looked more forlorn, more crumbling as of late. The two faced each other across a broad sidewalk that ran along the south end of campus. Through the decades she bore witness to the damage that time and the elements had inflicted on Art. The weathered lines on his façade, particularly at sunset, were external manifestation of his beleaguered psyche. Facing him every day, Belle was more aware of Art’s distress than were the other buildings. She worried about him.
Art sighed again.
“It seems like you’ve become quite the subject for the architecture students and the art students, and photography, too,” Belle blurted abruptly, apropos of nothing. She tried to sound jealous. “It used to be that they would set their sights on me, but now all I see of them is their backsides.”
“I do not think they have come so much to admire as to chronicle,” Art groused. ” I spied more than a few journalism students stopping to take notes. Vultures!”
“Oh, dear. Excuse me one moment,” Belle interrupted him. She cleared her throat and then from her belfry the chimes signaled the start of another hour on campus. Once the first note sounded, pretty much all conversation on campus suspended until the hours were fully counted.
“Mon dieu!” Foreign Languages cooed when Belle finished. “Bellisimo! Such a delicioso way to mark the passing of time.”
The Vincent and Melody Lane Performing Arts Center, on the other hand, simply smiled to itself. It knew an out of tune F-natural bell when it heard one. Still, it was nice to hear such harmony amongst the buildings.
“Foreign Languages, you have such a way with words,” Belle demurred.
“Ah! Merci, beaucoup!” Foreign Languages tittered, appreciating the joke.
“By the way,” PAC interjected on cue, sensing Belle’s attempt to lift Art’s spirits, “that was quite the crowd that showed up for your last exhibition, Art. What was it called again? ‘Campus Nudes‘ I believe.”
Art’s red brick façade turned a deeper shade of red. “Well,” he sheepishly stammered “it did cause quite a stir.”
“There’s never such excitement at my front door,” Mathematics added. Its jealousy was genuine.
The other buildings chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Mathematics asked the rest of campus.
“Oh, don’t worry,” one of the dormitories answered for the rest. “We’re laughing with you, not at you.”
“But I wasn’t laughing.”
“Ok, then,” Engineering shot back, “we were laughing at you. Did you ever bother to take a look at yourself? Did you ever wonder why you were stuck at the edge of campus? You look hideous, that’s why. And what’s inside is useless! Theorems and such!”
The other buildings found Engineering to be overly blunt at times. Practical, but blunt.
“How could I look at myself?” Mathematics asked, confused and hurt. “That doesn’t make any sense. It’s not logical. I am the one building I cannot possibly see.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Engineering rolled his eyes, irritated with Math’s precision. “You don’t have to look at yourself to see yourself. Just look at your reflection in Miss Performing Arts Center’s mirrored front.”
Melody muttered that Engineering should stop being so haughty. “You’re not exactly the Taj Mahal.”
“Excuse me?” Engineering retorted indignantly. “Miss ‘Performing Arts’ drama queen is telling ME to not be so haughty?”
“MISSUS Performing Arts Center,” she corrected him. “After all, it is the VINCENT and Melody Lane Performing Arts Center.”
“Well, and don’t we know it! All flashy and shiny steel and glass façade! Talk about ‘sound and fury signifying nothing!'” Engineering raged. “When was the last time you staged any real culture? Huh? All those pop shows! Give me a break!”
“Well, what’s a venue to do? I AM at management’s mercy, you know. They can schedule whatever they want. And, besides, students nowadays. No taste, whatsoever.”
“All glass and metal. You look like a pair of cheap sunglasses.”
“Oh, come on, now, you two,” Social Sciences interjected. Belle’s attempt to cheer up Art was floundering. The discussion was veering off to the land of insults and regrets.
“Oh, put a brick in it!” Engineering retorted.
“‘Put a brick in it?’ That doesn’t even make sense,” Mathematics piped up.
“Melody is right,” Belle chimed in. “We really do not make the final decision on things.”
“Especially the BIG things,” Art agreed. “Like when your time is up.”
No one knew quite what to say to Art at that point. “Art is Life” had been above his front entrance long before any of the rest of them had even been blueprints. After Art, The Octagon was the next oldest, although few of the other buildings took Octagon seriously. Art had often referred to Octagon as an “Adventure in Poor Taste.”
“It seems my fate has been decided by some pencil-pushing bean counter armed with a spreadsheet,” Art despaired.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re not going to start crying again, are you?” Engineering moaned.
“No, I’m past that.”
“Good,” Engineering harrumphed. “And at least you’re not behaving childish, like you did when it first hit you that the rumors were true.”
“Childish?” Art was indignant. The pressure in his steam heat pipes started to rise.
“Yes, childish! Like when you purposely stopped up your plumbing as an act of defiance. It took maintenance three days over the long weekend to clear you out.”
“I don’t remember it that way. Not at all. That can’t be right.”
“I am afraid Engineering is right,” Administration weighed in. “I saw the paperwork for the overtime myself. Plus, an outside plumbing contractor had to be brought in to assist.”
“Well, it wasn’t childish; it was a perfectly reasonable reaction after hearing all the rumors and murmurs and then being confronted with the reality of it all. But I’m over that now,” Art said resignedly. “Although it did sting when the campus newspaper ran with ‘Crappy Art‘ as their headline afterward.”
“That was definitely a cheap shot,” Melody concurred.
The other buildings agreed, even Engineering.
“Look, Engineering,” Art continued, “you’ve no idea what I’m going through. And that goes for the rest of you, too, especially you younger ones.”
“Well, Art,” Engineering offered in a conciliatory tone, “for what it’s worth, I do agree with you that we are at the mercy of a bunch of administrators and lawyers. No regard for functionality. The whole emphasis is on the bottom line.”
“If you think about it,” Philosophy piped up in its corner of the campus, “from the day our foundations are first dug, the wrecking ball looms somewhere off in the future for each and every one of us.”
The buildings considered this for a moment.
One of the dormitories broke the silence, “Even dormitories?”
“Yes,” Administration confirmed, “even dormitories.”
“But people live in us!” the dormitory protested.
“Ha!” Art exclaimed. “How does it feel?”
“I’m just not going to dwell on it,” the dormitory replied.
“Carpe diem!” Foreign Languages declared.
“Well put,” Administration spoke up. “For each of us, there is a scheduled Termination Date, although budgetary considerations or unforeseen circumstances could ultimately alter the actual Date of Decertification.”
“Of course,” Engineering interrupted, “for one as sturdy, well built, and functional as I, that date is way further off in the future than for the rest of you.”
“Don’t be too sure of that,” Administration cautioned.
The buildings pondered this last admonition.
“Administration,” Engineering ventured slowly, carefully, “you have all this information in the Master Plan for the campus, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Administration allowed, warily. It knew where this line of inquiry was headed.
“Well,” Engineering probed, “what might those dates for some of us be?”
“Yes, me, too,” Mathematics joined in.
“And us,” the dormitories chorused.
Art felt a twinge of sadness for his fellow structures. He detected a hint of alarm in some of their voices. He could almost feel Belle’s pulse quicken from across the wide walkway.
“Parts of the Campus Master Plan are Restricted” Administration quoted the Plan itself.
“That includes Dates of Decertification,” he added with a touch of gentleness. “I’m sorry. Those are dates I cannot divulge.”
Anxiety permeated the campus and none of the buildings said anything for some time.
Philosophy was wanted to speak up but then thought better of it.
A gentle breeze blew through the campus. The softness of the breeze helped calm the nerves of some of the buildings as they all stood silently in thought.
This was, after all, something new for each of them. Before Art, new buildings were erected on available space within campus. With that space now all occupied, existing buildings would have to yield to new ones.
The buildings had never considered this before.
Art broke the silence meekly.
“Administration?”
“Yes?” came the kindly reply.
“Is there anything you can tell me about this? What to expect or what will happen to me or what comes after?”
Administration sifted through what he knew carefully for some time. Finally, he addressed Art.
“Well, Art, the demolition plans are still in the works and nothing has been finalized.”
Art groaned.
“There are a few other details which will be announced shortly, though, and I do not think I am out of line in passing those along to you before they are made public. Unofficially, of course.”
“Of course,” Art agreed quietly.
“The first thing that was decided, before any discussion of a replacement or timeline or anything of that nature, was that a memorial must be established to acknowledge the place you’ve had in the history of this campus.”
“Really?”
“Really. There was quite a list of school benefactors who wrote to the school president asking if they could contribute, on the condition, of course, that they had input to the memorial itself.”
“Really?”
“Really, Art. I’ve seen the letters myself. I house them. They’re official university correspondence.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Art, really. Then there is the issue of your brick façade. Being that it is of aesthetic, historic, and cultural interest, significant portions are to be preserved. The thought is to create an “ambient space” within the new building that will foster a connection with the creativity of the past.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Art. Really. You know me. I stick to the facts.”
The buildings all were silent, waiting to see how Art reacted.
He became quiet, thoughtful.
The breeze stilled and the campus settled in for the night. Belle gently asked Art if there was anything they could do for him.
He answered no, there was nothing. He just needed some time to think things over.
After a few moments, though, he softly asked, “Belle?”
“Yes?” she answered just as softly.
“Remember that song the opera student played on your bells a few weeks ago?”
“O mio babbino caro?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“Would you like me to chime that for you?”
“Yes, that would be sweet if you did.”