Once, there were glaciers—slow/solid rivers and boulders scraped from one place and carried along with the indolent flow of ice. When the glaciers melted and the “wandering rocks” were left stranded, there was a lake, and at its southwestern tip, a swamp. Onions grew here, and redolent, skunky cabbages. Humans—latecomers to the scene—settled in the flat swamp land and named the area for the stink in the air. As time progressed, more humans came: different humans—hairy pink ones as inscrutable and alien to the ruddy-brown natives of the region as men from the moon. With these hairy, pink newcomers, irrevocable change followed. The flat land became something else: a spot on a map where roads (both real and metaphorical) crossed. Centuries passed. A city grew, was burned to a crisp by a likely bolide though the catastrophe was blamed on a particular cow. No one knew what bolides were at the time, no one could imagine a meteor pancaking in the earth’s atmosphere and going “boom” before raining superheated fragments of itself onto the ground below. After things went boom, blaze, and fizzle, the city rebuilt itself. Having learned the dubious usefulness of pyrophobia, the city—named for stinking onions and cabbages—shifted its architectural nature. Buildings were hewn from stone and mortared bricks rather than wood. They were placed at a distance from one another with alleys (fire-breaks) in between. And now, much, much later, the city is home to buildings of iron and glass. There are still alleys (fire-breaks) between them; the land—still flat—at least carries the pretense of irregularity. It became a major point of trade, and (for a brief time) the planetary abattoir-capital. The stink of wild onions and cabbages was replaced by the stink of blood and slaughter. The air is clean now. Cattle no longer fear the city. Industry has migrated—to China, to Mexico, to places far, far away; and the city—always one for reinventing itself—has become a tourist mecca, a shopping capital, a mall with streets. It is home to world-class museums, and sports teams that aren’t very good at winning. It is home to da mayor and memories of Al Capone. On spring nights, when fog rolls in from the lake, the city becomes something else: a crystalline citadel, shrouded in billows and wisps like a garish, electrical dream. It becomes beautiful in ways that are purely nocturnal, and on such nights, it is possible to imagine that the city is a wholly different place. On such a night, I took this and other photographs, pleased that I’d captured something so easily overlooked. It was a good night, and a foggy one too. *** As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all on the verge of a fantastic weekend.