I love the grand scale of everything here, this city that spreads across the expansive flat terrain, these streets so spacious and generously so to let you take in the magnificent proportions of their regal buildings .
I love the architecture here, particularly the Neo-Renaissance apartment buildings which are pleasant but to the point. There are no flowery excesses or fru fru decorations here. Simply order and unpretentious design. A pragmatic restraint. I like that. And on a sunny day like today, the bright beams of high noon take these facades of flat columns and entablatures, and zap them through space time, carving out deep geometric shadows in the recessed windows, rows and rows of laser sharp triangles and rectangles like some hip crisp neo-modernist print.
And I was enjoying the symmetry and uniformity when suddenly there was a breach in the pattern, hit me like spit in the eye. A tiny tiny hand, extended by a tiny tiny arm opening one of the windows and punching a kink in the design, high up there.
High up there… and even higher up there on a plane today you fly over head. I won’t even see your hands, or your arms or your sleeping face as you scribe an ark through the sky round the curvature of the earth, right round to the other side. My days with you I took for granted. I let go. And some other unseen hand plucked you away from me. I don’t like that, but I’ll deal with it. It’s time to show pragmatic restraint here.
