The Leaning Tower of Pisa Crashes to the Ground!

That’s the news headline I’m really waiting for.  It’s bound to happen, right?  See, I collect newspapers of noteworthy events: 9/11, Katrina, the death of Reagan (which was printed in error and corrected the same day), Obama’s election (which I’m sure some of you wish had been printed in error, myself not included).  As a budding historian, I consider these primary sources priceless!  And someday, I’ll have this one too: The Leaning Tower Crashes Down! (no lives lost).

So I jumped on my good friend Wikipedia to see how long I would need to wait to get my hands on this paper.  Call me uninformed, but I had no idea about what I would find.  Turns out that the official word is at least two hundred years!  If you can even believe it, that tower has been “stabilized”, that’s right, “stabilized”.  The threatening lean is just an illusion now.   Major restoration efforts in recent years have removed dirt from the raised side of the tower’s foundation- successfully.  For the first time in History, it has stopped moving!  It is not falling!

Even more interesting is that the tower itself was built crooked.  In the 12th Century they reached the third floor of construction only to discover that wet foundation was causing the tower to lean so drastically that construction was halted.  A century later, the tower was finished, crooked, on purpose.  On purpose!  They intentionally built the last four floors taller on the lower leaning side, and the staircase uneven to assist in longevity.  Maybe I’m the only one who had no idea about this, but I am shocked.  That changes everything!  Here I thought that there was this miraculous tower, built in perfectly straight glory so long ago, stretching it’s Gothic pillars to the sky, now still standing against all odds, against even the un-tamable force of gravity!  That’s what makes it a wonder of the world isn’t it, that gave it its popularity?  But no, it’s just a crooked old building, intentionally built that way, and maintained that way through centuries of human intervention.  So why is it such a tourist attraction, such a well-known piece of architectural history, an icon in our time?

I realize that I often assess the value of knowledge based on my ability to over personalize it, so here’s what I’ve come up with.  That overrated tower is just like me.  And maybe you.  Probably not all of you, some of you probably built your lives on a strong foundation, tested and sturdy.  You worked diligently and measured each brick against your blueprint for success as you added each layer, as you watched them growing up towards the sky, each floor complimentary to the one on which it rested.  Undoubtedly even for you, there were revisions along the way, major plan changes, surprises, blessings, compromises, devastating losses that brought you to question the whole damn thing, gashes that ate away at your humanity, maybe entire rooms full of tragedy, confusion, elation, or awakening, that weren’t in the original designs.  Love, pieces of your heart.  But your tower stands tall and straight, because of and in spite of all of those things.  And your project continues.

Maybe it’s your sister or brother that is leaning :o)  For us, crooked structures halted in construction along the way, possibly time and time again, maybe we reached the third floor only to realize that to build on would lead to our certain demise.  Maybe our foundation flooded us out, or we started building before the foundation had settled.  So what do we do, we intentionally adjust.  Maybe a century later.  We muster up the caution to build each proceeding floor in order to balance the one below.  Our rooms of surprises, blessings, tragedy, elation, and awakening are visibly uneven.  Love.  Each floor with one side taller than the other, directing us higher and decreasing the angle to which we lean.  And then we find that we want better that than, more permanent, less likely to succumb to gravity, so we dig.  We cannot go back and add dirt to our foundation, but we reach a height where we can clearly see the angle at which we need to dig.  And our project continues.

So after all the beautiful buildings that our society has torn down to build “parking lots,” why will we never let the Leaning Tower of Pisa fall to its shattering death?… because we love that imperfect piece of high maintenance stone.   We as imperfect people walking through the perfect angles of our lives have a special affection for Pisa.  It’s one of the only honest creations of humanity.  We are a race of striving, progressive, perfecting people.  We master things, tame them, stabilize them.  We package our lives in summarized Christmas card adjectives and tie bows around them before presenting them to the people around us, even the people who love us.  Even our grief we share neatly in the presence of acceptable instruments of sadness: movies about people who overcome special needs, pictures of military men and women embracing their children in an airport.  These things are approved outlets for our sadness.  We fight with our family instead of crying for them in our loving concern.  We soak up the snot and tears in disposable kleenexes and then throw them away to disintegrate in a covered landfill.  Even our excitement we corral: permission to kiss at our own wedding, our inside voices, and the meaningfulness of a standing ovation.  We wait for the opportunity to unbridle our favor and scream ENCORE!  It is our straight tower.  It works for us.  It keeps us on track.  We have decided that this helps us to continue in our projects.  But not Pisa.  Pisa is exposed.  Only seven stories high and it competes in the ring of national attention with the tallest structures made by man.  Its glaring imperfection has given it longevity, superiority, and attractiveness beyond its design.

But is it a wonder or is it the only attraction in the world that I have never visited but have already seen- every morning when I look in the mirror.  Sure, even though I am naively shocked to find that it is not still standing against all odds, I still want to visit it, to take a cheesy picture of me fake holding it up as it towers over me.  Who wouldn’t?  But now that I know, the wonder does not remain.  There’s no gravity defying tower, only a work of restoration.  One restoration after another.

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