DOWN TO THE BONES

By MICHAEL PERKINS

TOWNS, VERY MUCH LIKE THE PEOPLE WHO CREATE THEM, don’t pass away all at once. Over the lives of neighborhoods and villages, as in the lives of the people who populate them, there are various ebbings and flowings of health. Even years after there are no more comebacks or rebirths, decline itself takes on a slow, predictable rhythm. Streets and businesses can, indeed, take a long time to die.

America is a place where beginnings are over-ripe with hope, as if nothing that happens after the word “go” is even worthwhile mentioning. In such a place, nothing says, “this no longer matters” like the empty, featureless faces of ebbing storefronts. Once performing as mission statements for their proprietors (“now open!” “lowest prices in town!” “bargain city!”), these places start to resemble an old actress who no longer care to put on makeup of brush her hair. The buildings remain standing but their faces are blank.

Towns like this one (let’s protect its privacy) are so stripped of ornament that they become mere jumbles of rectangles, building-block puzzles with few messages outside, no hope inside. Still, as abstract versions of their old selves, they can make interesting compositions, even as their continuing existence is both mysterious and sad. We love the start of things. We avert our gaze rather than acknowledge the end of them.