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It really is beautiful, sometimes.

Started by Kai, September 13, 2011, 03:56:55 AM

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Kai

Left El Museo today at 7 pm, and the sky was perfect blue, no blemishes. Just the sky, the water and The City.

I'm really not a fan of cities. The crush of people, most of them barely conscious, gives me anxiety. The air is generally unpleasant, road fumes mixed with carbon monoxide, sewer ventage and particulates, with the occassional wiff of dumster or dog shit. The traffic of crazies who can barely stay on the road and make it dangerous to cross at crosswalks when I've got the signal. I've handed out my share of single finger salutes. Then there's all the factors that I know but are more invisible, the actual cost of upkeep, the crumbling infrastructure, the bad schools and homeless veterans, the plutocrats up in their towers looking down.

Tonight it was different. I stepped out into the cool and sound of wind from the water, the sun setting behind the skyscrapers. The edge of the world was a rainbow from red to blue, and then blue all the way to the zenith. The blue was reflected in the towers and for a few minutes it really felt like something out of those futuristic novels, where the cities are clean paradises of the pinnacles of knowledge and humanity. It was one of those almost beautiful moments, where something that feels so dirty and ugly for so long takes on a glimmer as it grows on you, as you see it day after day and come to treasure it out of familiarity. Because the details become that much clearer with that constant attention. The blue silver of steel, the sheen of windows, the browns and tans and grays of brick and concrete. Like a human recreation of pillared fields of icelandic lava and tinted hills. The stench lessens, the people receed. Just a person and The City, a huge manufactured creature, nearly biological. The wind blows; The City breathes.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

LMNO

If I haven't said it in a while, I say it again now.  Kai, your descriptions of the world you see are incomparable. I'm no slouch, but I wish I had your talents for that. It really brings the non-human environment into perfect clarity.

Kurt Christ

This is exactly why i enjoy walking places when I can- it gives me time to just enjoy my surroundings
(The fact that I don't own a car helps, but I'm much less resentful of that fact than most would be).
Formerly known as the Space Pope (then I was excommunicated), Father Kurt Christ (I was deemed unfit to raise children, spiritual or otherwise), and Vartox (the speedo was starting to chafe)

Phox

Ah... the love of the City.... and that City.... that City I know. I've seen the same sight.

Nothing quite compares with Chicago at twilight.

I've seen a few cities at various shades of day, but looking up at the skyline from Lake Shore Drive just as the sun is setting.... that's why I fell in love with cities....

Kai

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on September 13, 2011, 04:14:44 AM
If I haven't said it in a while, I say it again now.  Kai, your descriptions of the world you see are incomparable. I'm no slouch, but I wish I had your talents for that. It really brings the non-human environment into perfect clarity.

Thanks. Expect more. Write more yourself. You have a gift for exposing horror.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Elder Iptuous

that's was really quite beautiful, Kai!