Ruin

I’m in Athens. Not the one that sometimes feels like hometown in northern Alabama. I’m in the Athens that all the Athenses of the continental United States are named after.

I’m here for a day, no time to play tourist and visit places like the Parthenon, twenty minutes by foot from my hotel.

But that’s okay. I was here forty-six years ago. I didn’t go up the hill then, either. The ruins of the Parthenon and several other precious sites were fenced off for restoration.

Besides, if I want to see ruins, I can pull the blackout curtains away from my hotel window. The building next to my hotel is in ruin: still standing, but with decrepit bits.

I first noticed it when I pulled back the curtain to look for the pigeons I could hear. A family (I’ve seen mom and dad but can only hear the chicks in what I assume is a nest inside the window) has taken over at least one room on the fourth floor.

When I look down I can see seven more pigeons on sills and in nooks above the remains of a bathroom—a toilet no longer walled in—and a stairwell whose landing is no longer protected by a roof.

I wonder if the ruin of this building will ever be restored or simply become something new. Perhaps a pigeon condominium.

I’m curious what we choose to cling to, to restore and keep. Not all old structures and civilizations were coddled and protected through the tests of time. Some simply went to ruin, returned to the wild, or sunk beneath the weight of modern structures.

Bits of my own home have returned to the wild while we focused on the restoration or transformation of other parts.

Curate

One of the quotes I used in this month’s InkWell WordShop is:

Change is inevitable, but transformation is by conscious choice.

—Heather Ash Amara

Change is inevitable.

Transformation is a choice.

But what is restoration? Is it resistance to change, a clinging to the past? Maybe. We can also frame it as preservation.

The thing is, we don’t restore and preserve everything.

This building adjacent to my hotel may linger and decay until it’s just a pile of dust between buildings. Perhaps someone will turn to it with money and attention for a face lift. But it will never be fenced off for restoration and preservation.

We curate.

And I use the word in all of its layers. Shine to clarify what was. Spin what was into story.

Not right or wrong, good or bad. There’s a time and place.

Writers do the same. Our words are microfiber cloths to rub against the panes for a clearer view. The same words spin our stories, what’s true for us in the moment.

On this visit to Athens I’m mostly loving these pigeons. I may not get up to the Parthenon, but I’d put a few euros on the bet that the pigeons have also made homes out of some of the nooks in that restored ruin.

Pigeons live between the wild and the curated. They’ll make their homes in urban ruin and sprawl and rural limb and bush.

I think I can learn from them.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2026