hills

Today I repeatedly imagined I saw hills & mountains in the distance, between buildings, at the ends of streets. I'd never realized how flat New York is, or how the real point of the Wienerwald around Vienna (besides supplying firewood) is to make city-dwellers conscious of the geography beyond the city. Here there is no beyond, really - we're on a couple of islands filled to the brim with city; it's impossible to get off. Even when you do leave the city, it doesn't seem like a geographical journey, in the sense of stead progression from one place to the next. Even driving in, one suddenly arrives, lands, as though by plane. There is no stitching between the city and its surroundings, no ties, no reminders visible or otherwise that life exists beyond these islands. And it doesn't, really, at least not to any degree of importance :-)