Waiting to be Written

I find abandoned buildings fascinating. Any time I see one I want to go in. I think I see them as time capsules. No...more like a time captured forever, unchanging, maybe even a portal to another time. And an adventure.

Circles of light from a flashlight in which dance particles of dust. Exploring, finding a time and a place, frozen. There's something very Miss Havisham about it. Trying to hold on to something ephemeral through what is tangible, graspable. A wedding cake festooned with cobwebs, a wedding dress in dirty tatters, a stopped clock.

I remember going to the Hotel Lands End in Bandra and being transfixed by Hotel Sea Rock that sits across from it. Dark, desolate, echoes of another time trapped within. Ever since Sea Rock was damaged in a bomb blast it was deemed too unsafe and was left as it is. Just recently they opened the first floor, the Lobby Bar. I wondered if I could go in, get a drink, and the quietly slip away from some hidden stairway and enter one of the sealed floors.

Will I find televisions tuned to ghost stations? Socks abandoned in a drawer? Cobwebs spun on sinks and tubs? Will I hear panicked footsteps heading down, trying to escape?

Each time I take my dog to the dog park I pass by this other abandoned building. All the windows are boarded up. Kids from the nearby skate park have sprayed graffiti, including one giving passersby the finger. Underneath it says, "This Sucks."
A sign on the door informs me that this building was closed down because of asbestos. "Danger," the skull and crossbones scream at me. "No Trespassing," another says.

Still, there is a part of me that wonders if I can bring a crowbar and break down the back door and wander in.

Abandoned buildings are like stories waiting to be written.