His collegues in the cityhall of the ancient town L. thought Edwin Rector a strange guy. It was not because he was always at the office on time, or even that he always wore a necktie, even when the weather was very nice.
But still...
He worked at the department of city-planning and from the look of it, he even knew a lot about construction as well. In any case he hung sometimes a nice blueprint of a cornice on the wall opposite his desk. And sometimes he said all of a sudden things like: "Yet, there is more between heaven and earth then this fuss about buildingpermits." When they asked him what more there was, he smiled and kept silent.
Nobody knew anything more about Edwin, exept Hank Mason of course, with whom he walked in the nearby park sometimes during lunchtime.
When he celebrated his jubilee after a couple of years it turned out that he wanted a drawingboard, pencils and triangles as a gift.
He used to follow as young man a few months of courses at the technical evening college, of course. Well, anyway he received those gifts, even though nobody understood whatfor he wanted them.
But in his word of thanks he said suddenly, that he wanted to use these beautifull gifts for his new hobby: he was going to build a invisible building and for that purpose he wanted to make the floor plan.
Everybody shook his head and the two youngest secretaries even giggled with the two youngest civil servants, with whom they went regularly to a very badly lit, yet very visible discotheke. Barend had said at the end of his word of thanks something like:" Well, but for my building I dont need a permit in any case." It was indeed a peculiar man.
The years passed by and nobody ever spoke again about Edwin and his grand plans. But, Edwin had not sit still meanwhile. He had, meticulous and calmly as he was, thought long and deep about his plan and his building.
And on a certain day, he pinned a piece of paper on his drawing board, took his perfectly sharpened pencil resolutly in his hand, and put the ruler on the bottom of the paper. He did not know how it happened, but all of a sudden he was determined that he would draw the plan for a invisible temple. No, it should not become a church, he would need some sort of a imaginary permit to draw a church from a minister or a priest or somebody like that. But despite this beautifull idea nothing came of it that night. Such a temple needed a name, or a God, or a imaginary year on which the creation could be based upon, our symbolic archtect thought.
Something like: in honour of, built by mister so and so in this or that year. And Edwin did not want that actually. He laughed, when he said loudly, only for himself: "In any case it should become a detached house".
A few days later he was again at his drawingboard. He had cleaned the livingroom in his apartment extra neatly and he had, what he never did otherwise, kept on his jacket and his tie. Tonight he would put his first line on paper, perhaps. It was dead silent around him, or did he only imagined that ? He knocked with the knuckels of his righthand on his drawingboard and waited. Suddenly he thought:"how can one make a plan without knowing what kind of stones you need for the building?"
That night he dremt, that he stood in the dark befor a enormous door, which opened, when he had knocked. It was dark and silent behind that door.
The next weekend he visited a couple of equipment stores, but they had things more appropriate for the new bathing room in the mayor’s house, and not something for the temple Edwin wanted to create. To be sure, he suddenly thought, you should make those stones all by yourself. Beautifull stones, all equal and linked to each other perfectly, just like cristals. Edwin again thought long about this: It should be like this, but how can one do something like that?
For fun he bought himself a old chisel on the market and a nice round wooden mallet. He held them in his hand from time to time, just like if he wanted to make a flat surface out of a rough stone.
And again he took his drawingboard and saw befor his eyes a image of a cornice with steps of equally formed stones and a harmonic construction. A gate too, of course, but he did not came past this yet.
Suddenly it occurred to him, that to make such a temple thousands of people needed to work at it. He did not want to ask his colleagues. They thought him a peculiar man without all these ideas already. He sighed and thought to abandon his plan. Before he went to bed, and closed the curtains, he looked outside his window across the rooftops to the stars.
As lights in the ceiling in a temple. He shook his head and said to himself:" Ach, this temple of mine, somebody else must have thought about this and perhaps he exists for a long time already. Perhaps I should talk to somebody about it.
One night, after a long meeting, he again looked at the stars: none of them was there by accident, all were organized according to a vast incomprehensible plan.
And when he let it slip in the office once, that the world in reality was organized and planned in fact for a eternity already, this strange Hank Mason suddenly said to him:" Well, if you think about it deeply, your entire life is sort of a building structure too". "for you, with a name like that, it is perhaps so", Edwin teased him back. But Hank had a point there.
Meanwhile he sort of had abandoned the plan. Or should he talk with Hank about it? Anyway , at work such a opportunity never occurred, meanwhile there were again new very young secretaries and public servants who giggled about these things.
He started to get very annoyed for his silly fantasies, and decided to get rid off his drawingboard and the mallet , the ruler and the chisel. In fact he was angry at himself. As a young guy he should have finished his technical evening college; he would be able to draw real buildings now. It was all nonsence. He was on the verge of kicking himself on the head, and simply out of rage, he did so too. To his annoyance he was left with a headache. "So", he said, "the architect is dead. Edwin Rector starts to do sensible things from now on." And, as these things go, yet, he did not threw away those drawing stuff. They disappeard to the storeroom under his apartment. Edwin was pensioned of a few years later, and neat as he was, he decided to clean up. He found those old things again and contemplated about his weird plans from those days. Why had he never talked with other people about his fantastic idea, was that why he never found the drawing plan? When he put everything on the table again that night, the idea played through his head, that just like the stars, also people have their places, that they, as he had once said half mockingly, the poeple too where ‘organized’, just like the world. That must be the plan. He decided to phone his old collegue Hank. Together they talked every week for hours about the world and life, that they came to see more and more as a building. A construction plan where they needed to work on, even at their age.
Edwin said on one of those evenings: " You know Hank, the plan of that Temple was written in the stars, in the hearts of the people, in the flowers, in the clouds, and in the rivers... But I just could not find it then. Hank answered: "Then we should start to draw it together, dont you think?"
And thus, they became architects at the drawingboard, even if they knew real well, that they would stay apprentices for their entire life, and also, that the temple was invisible, with a beauty as great as they themselves,wanted.

When Edwin dremt about his temple now, he saw through the wide-opened doors Light pouring over colums and steps and he heard voices from his friends, also the voices from his collegues and from the secretaries and their young friends. For whom else had he built his temple? Nobody knows it, but a smile apeared on his face , during this dream.

Every architect has his secrets, havent they?...

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