15 + 10 points
Zathras Warn, but No One Listen to Zathras by Dr. Subtle
January 14th, 2008 10:35 PM
Last night I took a long walk from my house. I left at about midnight, and I don't know when I got back. I brought no electronics, took no pictures, and did nothing but interact with the world directly.
My Praxis is my word alone.
I walked from my house down a long residential road, past brick houses both old and new.
You can roughly guess brick house age based on construction technique- if one brick every few square feet is turned 90 degrees and extends into the wall, its an older house, no later than the 1930s, as there is actually a second layer of bricks behind it to which the turned bricks connect.
Completely regular faces (no patterns or inward-moving bricks) tend to be newer houses, and based on grout and smoothness and pointing, might very well be facades on top of concrete, or similar newer cheaper construction.
I came to a park, Schenley park. It's one of the larger metropolitain parks in the world, constructed in the same era as Central Park, not by Frederick Law Olmsted, although still as part of the City Beautiful movement.
I walked to a grove of trees which topped a hill from which I could see the whole of the city- the towers of the University of Pittsburgh campus, the lower buildings of Carnegie Mellon, the three hospitals, the hills of the South Side, a large bend of the Mon, and the skyscrapers of Downtown. I stood under the tallest one and listened to the city.
Wind and rain sounds were there, yes, but also the howls of trains, the screams of sirens, the low machine noise of a few hundred centralized steam heating systems. I could see the blinking pulses of cars and streetlights and windows, the far glimmer of rooftops and walls. In my mind I could replace the gloom of night with the pithy fog of industrial pollution, the black clouds of a hundred factories. I could see the street lights of the Southside replaced with huge gouts of flame, burnoff from the Bessemer Engines.
I kept walking, all through the park and back towards my house along a far different route. I did not see for the rest of the night such a grand view of the city, but my local interactions seemed just as portentous and spectacular. Small rabbits ran before me. The detritus of a hundred front yards was mine to behold. I caught stolen glances of broadcast from TV sets near windows, and interrupted the nighttime prowls of a half dozen cats.
I returned home exhausted, and promptly fell asleep. My dreams were low and quiet, and I woke up three or four times in my bed but out of it, still suffused with the lifeblood of the city, still half-dreaming of an era long past.
My Praxis is my word alone.
I walked from my house down a long residential road, past brick houses both old and new.
You can roughly guess brick house age based on construction technique- if one brick every few square feet is turned 90 degrees and extends into the wall, its an older house, no later than the 1930s, as there is actually a second layer of bricks behind it to which the turned bricks connect.
Completely regular faces (no patterns or inward-moving bricks) tend to be newer houses, and based on grout and smoothness and pointing, might very well be facades on top of concrete, or similar newer cheaper construction.
I came to a park, Schenley park. It's one of the larger metropolitain parks in the world, constructed in the same era as Central Park, not by Frederick Law Olmsted, although still as part of the City Beautiful movement.
I walked to a grove of trees which topped a hill from which I could see the whole of the city- the towers of the University of Pittsburgh campus, the lower buildings of Carnegie Mellon, the three hospitals, the hills of the South Side, a large bend of the Mon, and the skyscrapers of Downtown. I stood under the tallest one and listened to the city.
Wind and rain sounds were there, yes, but also the howls of trains, the screams of sirens, the low machine noise of a few hundred centralized steam heating systems. I could see the blinking pulses of cars and streetlights and windows, the far glimmer of rooftops and walls. In my mind I could replace the gloom of night with the pithy fog of industrial pollution, the black clouds of a hundred factories. I could see the street lights of the Southside replaced with huge gouts of flame, burnoff from the Bessemer Engines.
I kept walking, all through the park and back towards my house along a far different route. I did not see for the rest of the night such a grand view of the city, but my local interactions seemed just as portentous and spectacular. Small rabbits ran before me. The detritus of a hundred front yards was mine to behold. I caught stolen glances of broadcast from TV sets near windows, and interrupted the nighttime prowls of a half dozen cats.
I returned home exhausted, and promptly fell asleep. My dreams were low and quiet, and I woke up three or four times in my bed but out of it, still suffused with the lifeblood of the city, still half-dreaming of an era long past.
