TO THE HIGH-RISE

It could be argued that living high up in a high-rise increases one's attention to the world, inculcates an alatheic gaze upon it, increases one's state of alertness. Weather is more evident in its wholeness, its metamorphic wanderings. The city, upon which one gazes, reveals itself as an animal that lives and breathes, comes and goes. The high-riser becomes a sort of astronaut looking out on the beautiful entity that once he could not see for being totally and utterly enmeshed within it. It is only with his removal to the upper floors of the high-rise that he can now come to understand the greater implications of the world.

Moreover, as an 'axis mundi', a pillar that connects earth to heaven and all four points of the compass, it is not just the world that is engaged by the high-riser. Seventeen floors up, the night sky becomes all the more apparent. The cosmos states its case. Our state of being alert ('all'erta' meaning 'at the watchtower') is never in question. The beautiful whole appears.