#8

#8, Rue du Pépin, Bruxelles

While on the topic, I couldn't resist another bit of Brussels street art. I'm sure that in the year and a half since this was taken, this forgotten wall on a side street has since been stripped, re-painted, billboarded, or graffiti-ed over, and this delicate number 8 lost forever. Adding to the necessary loss, I wonder how many stopped to notice it while it was there. Though change is a constant everywhere, I can think of few cities as vulnerable to these relentless rips and tears in the urban fabric as Brussels. The walls and buildings of the city truly create an architectural palimpsest with layers covering other layers and pieces of history continually being knocked down, renovated, written over, erased, but always transforming into something new. Every now and then, in such a moment of transition, a scrap like this peeks out, asking to be noticed.