It is lit with rows of lamps that glow in orange lines that converge far ahead down the street. At night the orange lanterns look very beautiful against the violet sky, with rows of dark trees outlined beneath the humming night sky. The houses are gorgeous: heterogeneous and built with care and an aesthetic enthusiasm. Riding down the street, one feels as if one is transported to the past when neighborhoods were built with an eye for beauty, before monoculture and the awful sterile beauty-death of mass-produced homes.
But then it is too easy to dream up some mythic past when all was gold and everyone had a beautiful, ornate home. In reality, the poor seem always to be left with barely passable shelters thrown up in haste, the middle class with "luxury" shelters built with economical and repetitious means, utilized by the rich to accumulate wealth, while the rich themselves are able to afford the time and energy for an aesthetic dwelling.
The same happens with food, with entertainment, with transportation. The good becomes increasingly expensive as wealth becomes concentrated...the wealthy and powerful accumulate more resources and control and most goods are stripped down to their bare utility functions, and then to less than that, so as to transfer as much energy and wealth to the producers. Soon goods have no aesthetic value, they are stripped of their meaning. You have to search carefully or pay a lot for quality. Why does it happen? How does it happen?
Why not share?
Tonight there was a towering wisp of what looked like steam, or just a thin cloud in the sky, which rose above the row of lanterns. Purples, violets, blackened trees, oranges...those make for a nice color scheme. The night air was pleasant and there was an ocean smell in the air, along with some jasmine. It was enough.
