Anniversaries
Jun. 24th, 2012 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rumpelsnorcack
@adriennerewi took this picture yesterday. Knox Church one of the more prominent buildings that was destroyed by the quakes that has been accessible to the viewing public ever since the first cordon reduction after the earthquake. I remember walking past this building with its bricks shrugged off as I headed towards the memorial one month after the February earthquake hit. That was the first time I'd been back into the city and it was quite confronting. In a weird way, however, it has grown on me. When it had bricks on it was a fairly typical red brick church building. Afterwards you could first see the fascinating slatwork that had been behind those bricks and which were oddly beautiful in their own way and now that has been removed you see this - the wooden structure of the interior. Illuminated like this at night it's quite attractive really, and you feel and understand the building in a way that was never possible when it was fully clothed in its brick. The church itself realises this and there was talk a while back about keeping this structure and adding a lot more glass so these things can be appreciated by the public from here on out. The picture I saw of the plan was quite ... um ... ugly. But I did like the idea behind it. I kind of hope they'll stick to that and utilise what they have left in whatever comes next.
I'm getting nostalgic over this because yesterday was six months since the last of our big quakes and the day before that was the sixteen month anniversary of the February one. You can't escape, even now, from the thoughts, memories and conversations about the quakes. Some people don't want to talk about it, but it still seeps into conversation almost every day. On the plus side, we've made it to a whole six months since a big quake without another big quake, almost the longest time between big ones. That's something to celebrate! People are getting twitchy, though, wondering if there's another one on the horizon. I've been asked a few times if we think it's about over now and I think generally people aren't ready to relax yet. It'll be years before we're ready to accept that it's 'over' and I'm not sure I'll ever not react to things shaking.
There's a lot of stuff going on here that's a bit depressing, too. The authorities are busy patting themselves on the back about how brilliantly they are doing, the Council is busy planning a whole bunch of permanent structures that will almost certainly be overturned by the new government department who will be coming out with their own plan at the end of July and there are some legal challenges against the 'recovery' in train along with petitions to treat the elderly displaced with more compassion. The whole things is making a lot of people really angry and it's hard to keep a positive outlook alongside the stress from the worry of another one coming and the rage the powerlessness of the community generates. So, to help myself again, I'm going to do some more Rediscovering Christchurch wanderings. For my own sake, it's important to get back into a positive frame of mind especially over winter. I have a couple of ideas so look out for them soon.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-24 01:39 am (UTC)I adore that about the church and the structure and seeing underneath and wanting to preserve it!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-24 05:26 am (UTC)I love that about the church too. The other really cool thing that is resurfacing is a whole lot of old ads on the sides of buildings that have been covered by other buildings in the intervening years. I kind of hope we'll see some of those preserved as well. We're losing some parts of our history but also uncovering others and that's a nice thing from all of this :D
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-27 08:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-28 11:07 am (UTC)