(account deleted) 23 Jan 2021 22:59
So what about cities that we never realized are cities? What about the true nature of the cities we always thought were an enclosed phenomenon?
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(account deleted) 23 Jan 2021 22:59
Lovely as always, and a unique take on the idea of forgotten cities. I especially like the sharpness of the transition between the second and third paragraphs.
And of course, it goes without saying, the imagery and descriptive language are incredible.
That the line drawn between artifice and wilderness is entirely false, only an imagination, only the way the light lay upon the fallen leaves.
Oh my god… This piece is a positively luminous take on the planetary and the urban — an extension of consciousness, a wonder-filled exercise in becoming-world — that I'm outright offended there aren't more votes on this. Oricat, you've been one of the most freshly consistent voices in this small corner of the internet, plumbing the depths and breadths of the speculative's sentiments, and I'm looking forward to more of better. Thank you so much for writing this.
My only complaint would be the first sentence, since it's a little full, but other than that this is incredibly well done. The imagery is awesome, and I really want to read more from this author now. Easy +1
fucking incredible. i've been thinking a lot about the ecosystems of cities and of the "more natural" not-cities, and how i find myself occupying both ecosystems—i didn't stop enough to really consider the relation between the two systems, the ways they mesh together into a singular pattern. i love this piece for pushing me there. the language of this piece is also absolutely incredible; every single phrase is oozing awe, worded perfectly to heighten the senses, so wonderfully wisely graceful. thank you for writing this.
Absolutely rich with description, and none of it feels wasted. You really show how to set a scene, a journey, even, in a short, tight piece of writing.
Very very strange, but not at all unwelcome. The first paragraph feels a little clunky, but that's a minor criticism given that the rest of it is just one glorious analogy after another.
I must admit that the first half was rather difficult to get through, but the second one more than made up for it. This was a delightful read, and the comparison between the natural and the man-made was honestly exquisite. Really well done.
+1
This recalls for me the beauty of all that I have seen and felt and thought on my hikes and camping trips of my childhood, all those summers and autumns and winters where we'd say, Let's go somewhere warm, and I'd protest and say I liked the cool and still wanted to go to Alaska, as I still do, but we'd go to Utah or the Hoh rainforest or the Oregon coast and we'd travel by car and foot, stopping at every pull-off and Mother saying, Oh, look at the view, isn't this gorgeous? Doesn't this make you feel so at peace? And I'd be tired in a way I still to this day don't know how to fully experience without doing it all over again, like my body was a machine and I was its lonely spirit inhabitant who could barely move the joints. But it was spectacular, though not the kind of thing that puts me at peace — it's what thrills my veins and sends me into the fur and feathers written in my blood, the sharper teeth hidden behind lips that are the inside of the mouth turned out because our species lives by expression. It recalls for me while Mother was watching the views I'd find a small creek or waterfall of moss and stone and examine the twinkling of dewdrops — her the landscapes, the picturesque, the keep-in-a-photos and I the freezing alpine water up to my wrist, the taste and smell of cedar rot in the spongey mycelium of the earth, the glittering of dewdrops on moss in their icicle-drip waterfall and sometimes frozen bluffs where if mountain goats, descendants of antelope and actually quite distant from goats, were the size of ants they'd cross over one perfect-preservation second-grade-cutout snowflake and leap onto the edge of the next, never scrabbling, never uprighting because they are as real as I make them. Gorgeous.
What is life if not the contrast between what has been and what will become?
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