Beautiful Destruction

My company (a large tax-preparation corporation headquartered in KC, as you mostly all know) is building a NEW headquarters downtown. This is a good thing - KC is attempting to make downtown improvements, and it's a tough row to hoe.  As a result of the planned move, they are also tearing down a lot of used and unused buildings in the immediate vicinity.

I drive past this one old brick building every day on my way to work.  It had a mural of a guy dunking a basketball painted on it. I think it was a very permanent Reebok ad.  I liked the mural, but even more interesting has been the wrecking-ball procedure to tear it down.  Yesterday, they were actually smacking the building with a wrecking ball as people drove by not ten feet to the right.  I was kind of surprised, kind of worried some debris might fly over and smash my windshield and kill me, and I even briefly wondered if my family could get some sort of compensation from my company if that happened (isn't it SICK that I would think that?). 

Then, this morning, which is a very Catherine-and-Heathcliff sort of foggy morning, I drove by it and there was no wrecking ball. No people.  Just this half-demolished building with the floor pulled away and kind of fluttering down in a graceful pattern.  The outside of the building is brick and the exposed inside is sort of a fawny green color. It almost looks fluffy, like the blankets babies have with slitted edges.  Behind this torn building is a tall, cold, black-glass building with shiny edges.  The juxtaposition of the two is rather peaceful.  Sometimes destruction makes me feel good, like we're finally tearing apart the things that don't work and preparing to make them better. This building is like that.  I wish I had a picture.