Bellows (final part)

(Click here for part one.)

(Click here for part two.)

(Click here for part three.)

(Click here for part four.)

Of course, the job is never done until it is complete, and though it took GWB Enterprises five long years to recoup the initial round of investments and to establish the waters' readiness, the time came to finish the thing. Call me sentimental, call me a conservative, call me whatever you wish, but you must always call me honest: finishing things has always tweaked my heartstrings. It's hard to explain. Completing projects causes me simultaneous happiness and sadness. It isn't bittersweetness. My heart isn't a dollop of hardened chocolate. Rather, it's both ends of the spectrum, shaking hands. It's hard to explain because it's harder to understand. You can spend your life studying your life only to never know it better than you did when you were a child, watching your father's body be buried in a rat-holed burlap sack.

No law requires the presence of a city builder on the grounds of his creation at any point during the construction or existence of his city. I've known many of the finest minds of my generation who have never once set foot within the borders of their work. Some prefer not to even see photographs or film of their cities; inexplicable superstition runs deep in this industry, and can be one of the most confounding aspects to our youngest architects. Myself, however, I've always felt the need to break through the so-called fifth wall at least once for every project, and it so happened with this project that of the few days my schedule afforded me on which I could visit Bellowsville, one of those days happened to be the day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony and the unrolling of the new Bellowsville River. This, I feel, was one of those little coincidences that make life seem so vibrant and true.

My memories of the proud day are a wash of color, a wash of blues and whites and greens and reds from the time I stepped off the airplane to the time I stepped onto the podium, my skyline rising behind me like a monument and the masses filling the land below me, their eyes all lifted, voices raised. A wash. They, someone said, refused to move. Every opportunity lost. Speeches followed speeches. Oversized shears operated by cranes snicked the oversized ribbon stretched across the border by helicopters. Above the fray, I smiled for the cameras, for all those watching on television; I said something remarkable, pressed the button, and the water began to flow. One charge detonated first, like a firecracker on the horizon; then came the thunder; a trickle created a torrent, and the water stumbled over its feet and thrust itself through the crumbling dam to the north and over the land a southward flow and through the path laid so carefully for it. So much clean water bore down on the slums like unstoppable traffic, pushing bodies into the dirt and the sides of buildings. Families were torn apart as the hands of men were removed from the hands of wives and as babies--why do the poor always insist on having so many babies?--were shaken away like tiny grains of salt while the fireworks exploded in the sky between the waves and my parents, tickling the soles of their feet with the color of success.