Brussels dream time

The rain is lipping off the cafe parasols on Rue Neuve and I wish the Marivaux was still derelict.
Last year or the year before the rain fell from the ruined arch like a monster's wet dripping mouth. Brussels gives me buildings like gargoyles, half-deserted places, the nineteenth century shipwrecked on the twentieth. Days when the rain meets the concrete and pummels it back into a malleable medium; something you can sculpt a story out of. Round here, abandonment isn't just something that happens to old things. There are malls no younger than me, where the spirit of business has moved out, leaving just the shells of shops. They hum musak to themselves as you walk through them heading for somewhere else. They're charming. Peaceful.

When novelty dries up the first urge is to abandon ship. Move out. But you've got to make your own novelty. Bored with atoms? Crack them open and see what's inside. Bored with writing? Ditto.