EPILOGUE

A figure in red contemplates a stone ruin, from
Caspar David Friedrich's A Walk at Dusk c.1840

Having arrived at the end of these explorations, it may seem to some that, while much ground was covered, little territory was actually gained — that the view from our current perspective appears all too similar to that which we started with. Others, meanwhile, may find the view simply unclear; the sight-lines obscured, or the vantage too low to make out much of anything.

If the theories presented here have seemed vague or incomplete, the connections abstruse or tenuous, it is likely, in part, because they are so, and because our approach was deficient. But they have also, to some extent, been left in this way to allow — in the spirit of Béresniak — for further "discourse" and "free association." Much, in fact, has been left unsaid; while, presumably, much remains to be found by those with the impulse to do so. No claim, in any case, could be made for completion from what amounts, after all, to the best guesses of a first pass.

That said, in ending, we might revisit just one of these tentative guesses — that which suggests our grouping of Lucifer, Faye, and Warfield Drives may render the city as a kind of magical battleground, in a conflict fought through symbolism and architecture. As absurd as this theory may sound to some, if one is willing to accept it through suspended disbelief, or simply indulge it as metaphor, they will observe that a certain side of this conflict is currently in retreat.

As strong a material as concrete may be, even it cannot withstand the full onslaught of change. Armed with progress, decay, and the fickle whims of "taste," change conquers all in the arena of time. We will note that the Massey-Harris pattern shop, catalyst of Toronto's later concrete epoch, was demolished in 1999; while numerous others, "born in an era when exposed concrete design was the order of the day," are, at the time of writing, slated to be, or have already been, re-clad or completely replaced — 45 Charles Street, the Yonge Eglinton Centre, Sutton Place, and Global House to name but a few.

Whether concrete was ever considered in any way sacred to those who made use of its substance, undoubtedly now it is being profaned by the acolytes of glazing and sterilized palettes. Yet concrete is not alone in facing this assault. Facades of various materials across the city, and around the world, have lately succumb to an incursion of diaphanous, monotonous superficiality; "disappearing into their own translucent reflections," or just simply disappearing all together — taking with them any magic or sacredness that they might have once possessed.

By 458 AD, Majorian, during his brief reign as Western Roman emperor, had time enough to lament the state of his capital city, complaining that "the splendid structures of ancient buildings have been overthrown, and the great has been everywhere destroyed in order to erect the little." These remarks came a mere two decades after his counterpart in the East, the Christian emperor Theodosius II, sent forth an edict ordering the demolition of all pagan temples within his domain — many of which had already stood empty and abandoned for over a century.

Perhaps our ruins are neither "splendid," nor "great," but they have managed to endure...so far. Could it be they have done so through some continued use? Some abiding patronage, or persistent reverence? While it is more likely that their mere obscurity has allowed them to remain as they are, it's intriguing to think that something, if not someone, is hid away, out in the wilderness, resisting the march into so-called modernity. This, in fact, may be the greatest allure of these ruins, or any others — that they bravely wage a losing battle against time and change itself; content, like those reputed followers of our suppositive Red King, to stay put and slowly disintegrate, rather than move with, or be moved by, the ever-advancing moment.

With that, we'll leave the last words to Edmund Spenser, fellow traveller in the realm of Faeries, Mutabilitie, and The Ruines of Time; letting the reader judge whether these final few lines are a cause for despair or for hope:

High towers, faire temples, goodly theaters,
Strong walls, rich porches, princelie pallaces,
Large streetes, brave houses, sacred sepulchers,
Sure gates, sweete gardens, stately galleries
Wrought with faire pillours, and fine imageries,
All those (O pitie!) now are turnd to dust,
And overgrowen with blacke oblivions rust.

...

But whie (unhappie wight) doo I thus crie,
And grieve that my remembrance quite is raced
Out of the knowledge of posteritie,
And all my antique monuments defaced?
Sith I doo dailie see things highest placed,
So soone as Fates their vitall thred have shorne,
Forgotten quite as they were never borne.