On Builders

Does anybody else know any unreliable feckless builders? How did the trade get such a bad name? You can build all sorts of things, given time. You can build kitchens, extensions, and decks onto houses. You can build walls, ladders to scale walls, or ladders for angels to descend and ascend from heaven to earth, earth to heaven. We hope the plans for these are correct.

The Romans built roads you can walk on today. We build machines of surprising expressiveness, hotels on wetlands, prison camps for exiles and wounded refugees. We’re exhorted to build ourselves into cathedrals of living stones, a gruesome image in these days of climate change and accelerated devolution. What would you build with a living stone? Where are the jaws, the paws?

When the stone the builders rejected was made the head of the corner, it gave us England’s greatest Queen. What did the builders know, after all? The architect would appear to have exerted authority here. We build towers of words upon laws and scriptures: the architect is always right. We can build houses of cards and cities of gold and can follow the money where it flows, more active than stone.