Fifth and Craig

(Date is approximate)

Buildings adorn the quaint street corner outside my window. Brick towers filled with tenants, draped with neat white balconies and windows, each (showing vainly) slight shades of particularity (illumined rooms, windows lowered at different heights, closed curtains, open curtains, or intriguinly almost-closed... the flicker of a television), suggesting personality and occupancy. The 123 windows and 14 balconies I make out from my seat betray the residency of hundreds of people. The brick, utilitarian, straight-angled apartment building.

Across the street from it, a cathedral, that seems of smooth stone, of beige covering. It's fake stone, I know, but its appearance is grand and its shape is majestic. Gothic, with multi-armed crosses atop each peak - atop every front, every corner, every bell tower, even the two highest and most grandiose on its front. Twice as high as the brick building, dozens of times lighter, hundreds less useful. When I go inside it I see almost up to the ceiling. It cannot host more than ten regulars, and its primary occupant is air. But it is more eye-catching, more inspired, less simple. A useless block of stone remains simply because until now it has, and people here may know the building more than the place.

~August 2011