Ext, Night

This place, this city, is faceless and inscrutable at street level. Years walking its pavement lend an air of familiarity, but it is a mere conjurer’s fancy – a trick of the light. No-one who remains at street level ever truly knows the city. To see it from above gives context that cannot be had from the ground – gives distance without which the true whole can never be grasped. To know this city from the fifteenth floor is as knowing a friend, the face of whom brings not just familiarity, but comfort – not just memory of times past, but memory of times shared. To truly know this city, however; to know it as a lover; to know it so well as to predict its moods, to predict the topology of streets not yet walked; to _truly_ know this city, you must know it from beneath.

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