A Sad Place

Have you ever, accidentally (or not), stumbled or stepped into some places, a place with a kind of peculiar quality, a place that looks so quiet, still, and lonely, that makes you feel that time, perhaps, doesn't exist at all in this kind of place? A place so pronounced that its atmosphere lays heavy in the air, despite its quietness?

I have seen that place.

This place is a road that runs parallel alongside a wide river, the riverbank dotted with small, crooked trees and the streams clogged with mud. Sometimes floorboards, plastic bags, and other kinds of litters gather in the corner, they're just kinda stuck there.

Old, abandoned factory-like buildings line the other side of the road, opposite of the river. While some buildings are not entirely abandoned and are still functional, their gates are never (or rarely) open or they just don't have gates at all, because the buildings' yards are separated by high gray concrete walls.

This road is actually like a back road that runs behind the back side of the buildings. Their fronts face the main thoroughfares, which are on the other side.

There are cars still occasionally taking this road; but even that doesn't diminish the fact that this place, somehow, oozes something that makes the notion of time seem foreign.  

When I was little, my dad often took this road as he drove us to a nearby mall to visit a bookstore and buy me books. But I don't have any specific history with this place; I don't have any sad memories here. It was just a road we used to take, and I didn't even think too much of it back then.

So it kinda strange, how it makes me sad now, the wholeness of it. The monotonous gray color of the old buildings, the way things are carelessly stacked, the fluttering dead leaves that dust the side of the road. And the river itself.

Now that I think about it carefully, this place doesn't really change much. Even back then, the road was so quiet, always almost deserted, the walls of the buildings were cracked and yellowing and the sidewalk pavement was already full of wild grasses and rough gravels.

Have you ever encountered a place that makes you abruptly sad?