Cranes, excavators and vast swathes of gutted buildings with empty window frames overlook grey rubble.

What remains standing in the CBD is at times an odd mixture of the sacred and the profane.

The Cardboard Cathedral abuts a Gentleman's club that offers pole dancing on the second floor, a Masonic Lodge stands in close proximity to a homeless shelter.

Out in the suburbs where there are fewer visual reminders of destruction there appears to be more enervation.

Meanwhile back in the city, the iconic brown tourist tram makes its lonely journey through the inner core of the city past streets that conjure verdant landscapes: Hereford, Cambridge, Oxford, Salisbury.

Remember in Art class at school when the teacher would instruct children in the art of perspective? Two lines merging at infinity.

Looking down those tram tracks, I saw nothing but emptiness and heard only muted sounds.

There is a huge mural of a Maori girl looking out on Christchurch with a haunted, wistful, far-away look.

Other street art valiantly attempts to resurrect the spirit:

 "We got the sunshine" it urges, pugnaciously asserting optimism in the face of another winter of discontent.

Much has been said about the vagaries of insurance policies and corporate behaviour but people have gone. Ten thousand of them have gone elsewhere.

In a shopfront, the photocopied sign: "There is no-known reason for this building to remain unoccupied" speaks only to the desperation of reassurance.

I walked along these boulevards of broken dreams for hours, following the Avon stream that seems to fitfully flow.

Long strands of grass and algae hold fast to the bottom resisting the slow pulse of flow as it passes under Victorian bridges on its way to the Canterbury Plain. Streams go on, as does life.

To remember heritage or start from scratch?

The Catholic Cathedral in bluestone is the metaphor for what is happening here.

Does a large organisation such as government or church tend to the future or hold on to the precious memories of the past?

So much new steel and residual grief - 185 dead.

A small wooden tower with a bell and inscription, one hundred and eighty five plastic chairs arranged in respectful order in a rubble-filled block are stark reminders of what happened here.

Ten thousand will possibly never return to this place.

The tread of their feet, the banter, the laughter and minutiae of daily life compressed like the inner-city buildings on that fateful day.

Towers imploded and some were trapped.

Some emotions, like that young Japanese girl, are trapped in places forever.