I took the bus into town today. A slice of mushroom pizza, a peek at new and old books, and a final cup of coffee. What I found will keep me going for a while, but as time goes on, its importance will diminish. In a hundred years none of this will matter. The bricks and stone in this picture were set in place just over one hundred years ago. In these parts that’s a long time. The building is an historical monument. But I remember walking up marble steps in Copenhagen that were bowed in the center from the motion of feet walking up and down, not for a hundred years, but for hundreds and hundreds of years. These bricks and stone were laid in place by a San Luis Obispo contractor who probably had his picture taken next to the final work. I imagine him with a thick mustache and odd looking clothes. But the man or men who laid the steps in Copenhagen may or may not be known even by name. We look through a deep mist of time to form an impression of this event. It wasn’t someone’s grandfather or great-grandfather, but a person in the remote past. A person, yes, but someone with no connection to us. An alien of sorts. We do things and keep doing them, but for short periods of time. In the end, our contribution seems enormous, but in the longer end, it diminishes and fades and finally ceases. The town resisted tearing these buildings down because it hungered for heritage, thirsted for eons of time connecting it to the remote past. But all it got was some old buildings resisting the inevitable.