In which The Gay Recluse explores a longstanding obsession with moss-covered brick.

Bricks, it seems, are the literal building blocks of civilization, whereas moss is the incremental destroyer. To see them together — and to appreciate the beauty of this — is to understand that you cannot have one without the other, just the way you cannot have spring without winter, love without pain, or Lauren without Heidi. Many are the hours where we have sat trying to figure out whether we are made of moss or brick, and only now and again does it really seem as if both are there equally — so that we are in equilibrium — and for just a second we are filled with a fleeting sense of truth and revelation that is replaced by longing and melancholy as soon as it is gone.