Golden Gate Bridge

Citizenship is a kind of real estate, the space you and I occupy for which we are responsible and through which we express and share our private and public lives. The notion's been underserved for the past 50 years or so to the point of perversion, as we've instead cobbled together a social and economic mechanism (I hesitate to call it a system, as system seems too good a word, a system implies organized thought applied to a specific situation in order to create a coordinated scheme) that destroys the present almost as quickly as it's 'made' and ransacks the future. Only the past has true appeal--it hasn't yet been gutted and left to the rich, those who have the least practical use for it.

From the rear window of my home I can see two real estate landmarks--the almost new Salesforce Tower downtown and The Golden Gate Bridge. Salesforce--the name is so WiIlly Loman-ish--the tallest building in San Francisco, the great testament to the city's wealth creation through innovative entrepreneurism and high-tech brilliance. It's lockdowned now, empty. In the evening when the sun is setting the light sometimes hits the tower in such a way that it sparkles for 10 minutes or so: and every once in the arrangement of light makes it possible to see right through the building as if I am a doctor viewing a patient's  x-ray, examining his or hers spine.

When I look slightly to the north from the same window I see the towers of The Golden Gate Bridge, a public works project of the 1930s, and have a completely different feeling for what I am seeing.

Birthday notice for Golden Gate Bridge, newspaper clipping placed so that your eyes can walk across it, from The New York Times, May 28, 2020.